I am a fan of collaboration and co-creation — they build buy-in and reduce blind spots every time. But I am also committed to meaningful engagement. Too often when people are planning stakeholder consultations or community engagement, they are doing so because they feel they should or have to, but when you scratch below the surface, they actually don’t have anything worthwhile to ask people. Instead, they either just have information to share, or they are simply “ticking a box.” (For more on this, have a look at the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation. If you’re at the “Inform” end of the scale, be there clearly and proudly!)
Continue reading “Tell Don’t Ask”Play the Game Well
How do you feel about board games?
[Some of] our family loves them, and when we found our holiday travel plans cancelled this year, we reverted [mostly] contentedly to our usual early January pastime of marathon sessions of whatever new games were under our Christmas tree.
Our favourite this year is Scythe, and our obsession with it is teaching me five things about living well amidst the tensions of adaptability:
Continue reading “Play the Game Well”Counterbalance
I have an early memory of working on a vocabulary treasure chest. I think I was in Miss Peterson’s second grade class. I had to choose from a list of words to fill in this sentence: “The man walked ____ across the tightrope.” Having no idea what any of the options meant, I chose “nonchalantly.” (The answer was “gingerly,” for those wondering). Weird that I still remember.
When Results Aren’t Your Goal
Sometimes the best way to tackle a problem is to come at it sideways rather than head on.
Four recent examples have highlighted the usefulness of this reminder for me:
If you’re feeling a bit stuck today, consider multiple ways you or your group could tackle your challenge indirectly. Instead of skirting the issue, you may find you are effectively solving it instead.
Continue reading “When Results Aren’t Your Goal”Nourishment
As I write this, we’ve had about a week to take 2022 for a test drive. My verdict thus far is mixed, and it depends very much on where I fix my gaze. If I think about what I hoped week one would involve (i.e. nine of us in Barcelona and Valencia), it hasn’t been great as we weren’t there. If I let my Twitter feed shape my impressions, it’s starting as one of my worst years ever. And I’ve thrown my back out for the first time in almost a decade. But here’s the thing: I wrecked my back building an awesome snowman with my granddaughter on one of the most magical winter days I can remember. January marks the start of a fresh new season, and even though it’s a challenging one this year, I still have choices about my attitude toward it. For this first entry of 2022, my “wiser decision faster” is to prevent and resist the funk I could easily fall into next week, rather than needing to drag myself out of it later!
Continue reading “Nourishment”