The Grove Thoughts from and for The Grove Worldwide Network

In 2005, career counselor Mary Robins and I began collaborating on The Career Compass. I am one of many who worked on The Personal Compass and was delighted to create a new personal-development tool. Some of you may be wondering how The Career Compass differs from The Personal Compass. When Mary and I began designing, it became clear to me just how different the two tools would be. First of all, The Personal Compass is designed to guide you through an introspective journey. Most, if not all, of the information individuals fill in the templates comes from what is already in their heads.

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I attended the Institute for the Future’s Ten-Year Forecast retreat at the new Cavallo Point Conference Center at Fort Baker recently, called “Superstructing the Next Decade.” The Grove is an affiliate of IFTF and a partner all during the 1990s when The Grove and IFTF were researching groupware and its implications for organization. Our mapping strategies have become a mainstream tool at IFTF as a consequence. We were invited this time to share our work with RE-AMP (the Midwest consortium of 100+ NGOs and 15 foundations working to clean up an eight-state energy infrastructure), as a living example of contemporary “superstructing”—defined as “Su`per`struct´ v. t. 1.To build over or upon another structure; to erect upon a foundation.” (You can see a post on RE-AMP on my blog or click here for the RE-AMP web site).

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I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Otto Scharmer of MIT at Heartland Circle’s Thought Leader Gathering share about his new book Theory U:Leading From the Future As It Emerges. It was a stunning affirmation of Process Theory, the underlying operating system for The Grove’s tools and methods, and of the possibility of approaching social change and group work in a holistic way that honors body, mind, feelings, and inner purpose. He describes it as a process of Open Minds, Open Hearts, and Open Will, or moving from “ego-systems thinking” to “eco-systems thinking.”  Check out his book and the content of his talk at Presencing.com. For a longer, more personal post, click through to Coming from Source on my personal blog.

Dr. Otto Scharmer