The Grove Thoughts from and for The Grove Worldwide Network

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

I’m always stunned by spring in Baltimore, and not just by all the trees that break into a riot of blooms at this time of year. For 23 years in April I’ve been going back to facilitate the annual Visioning Retreat for the Leadership, a program run by the Greater Baltimore Committee. Fifty five leaders from public, private, and community organizations participate in this one year program, one of the most evolved in the country for people who are still full time employed. It’s a cross gender, cross race, maximum diversity group. If you’ve ever watched The Wire (on HBO for five seasons) you’ll appreciate just how tough things are for many in this city. But there is another side, which is the incredible resourcefulness of local leadership as they struggle to deal with problems. It is these “buddings” that inspire me the very most. I can’t share the confidential stories, but I’d like to share the format for this retreat. It is a time-tested success model.

We begin the retreat with an introductory exercise on a big bird’s eye mural of Baltimore that I create the evening before. We ask “what would you support or change” and everyone introduces themselves with their offering. I record it all, and this is the result. It hangs up the rest of the retreat as everyone focuses on what is being called for from his or her as leaders.

What Would You Support or Change in Baltimore?

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The Grove has been working to support green business and collaboration for sustainability on many fronts, most immersively with the RE-AMP Consortium of 93 NGOs and 15 Foundation in the upper midwest. In the process we have been applying our Storymapping™ techniques to the problem of visualizing these concepts. (See my blog post on this at Can We See Progress on Global Warming?) Imagine our delight when Merc Martinelli, CEO of Verdafero, a new startup focusing on green business, sent me this amazing link to Computing for Sustainability’s Visualizing Sustainability post. Here is just one of no less than 138 illustrations of sustainability concepts, from simple to complex. This one is Ray Anderson’s comparison of the path to sustainability being like a Mt. Everset climb. It’s a visual feast so enjoy!!!

Ray Anderson of Interface Carpet Sees Sustainability as an Everest Climb