Transcript Slide 1

Imagine: A Conversation
with the Future
Bliss W. Browne
President, Imagine Chicago
www.imaginechicago.org
I’ve come here to tell of a powerful thing,
A thing as enchanting as flowers in spring.
It tickles your mind and opens the door
To stories and wonder, and oh, so much more!
This thing leads the way to worlds still unknown
And each time you meet one, you’ll find YOU have grown!
What is this magical thing?? (Can you guess?)
Are you starting to wonder? (I hope you say yes!)
You are already holding a very big clue
Whenever you say How? What? Why? When? Where? Who?
This BIG thing’s a QUESTION, a question that’s tall
(for the thing about questions is none need be small)
Each one has a purpose, each springs from a place
Of mystery in us that’s quite hard to trace.
And the magic discovered with practice, I find,
Is strengthening questions that open the mind
Asset-based questions inspiring and bold
That stretch the world bigger just so it can hold
The wonder created by what we have dared
To hope and to ask and, with smiles, to have shared!
~ Bliss W. Browne
December 5, 2008
Hope Mapping
What is the shape of hope?
What images of hope have authority in you?
When was a time you trusted beyond doubt
that “people working together can really can
make a difference… “
When have you stood in your strengths most
fully and shared them most eagerly?
?
Opening Worlds
?
?
What questions shape your growing edge right now?
What are you curious about , eager to understand
better?
What have you learned here that makes you glad to
have come?
Please share with someone near you an image of hope, a
current question, and the name of someone who has
inspired you at this conference.
Setting a Direction and Invitation:
The Power of the Question
A question is a living edge that opens a
world, opens a system.
What worlds are your questions
creating? Where do they lead? What
assumptions do they reflect and
reinforce?
•
The Questions We Ask
Determine What We Find
• People want and need to create better
worlds (and questions);
• Constructive questions move us forward and
help us identify experience we can draw on to
get there.
• People feel confident and energized to move
into the future when they can bring with them
experience that is trusted in areas that are of
high value and impact.
Leaders enable learning
Leadership is needed whenever
the learning in hand is not
sufficient to the challenge at
hand.
Ronald Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers
Inspiring Leadership Requires
Constructive Language and Questions
• The challenge:
Problem and deficit-based culture
of public communication
Cynicism which passes for sophistication
SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE:
Knowledge is relational. There is no
“immaculate perception.” We create the
worlds we live in with our words and
questions.
Language is a moral choice!
Our worlds are continuously recreated
through dialogue.
We live out of what we believe to
be true.
We live out of what we believe to
be true.
• What makes a question powerful,
stretching, interesting, bridging?
World-changing questions put to
me in October 1991:
What is God’s dream for Chicago?
What would it take to bring it to
life?
A New World Opens
The animating image awakened in response:
The recycling symbol as an image of the Trinity
and of God’s economy in which nothing and no
one is wasted
The resulting next question: How can we
encourage people to think about Chicago as a
whole, to create a place to belong and a way to
make a difference for everyone, especially those
whose gifts have been discounted?
Imagine Chicago
• Track record of nurturing hope and civic
•
investment on six continents since 1992
Holding space for what’s possible
–
–
–
–
across
across
across
across
generations
cultures
sectors
divisions of geography and economics
IMAGINE CHICAGO mission:
• Cultivate hope and civic engagement
• Catalytic partnership projects that build
capacity
– of the individual participant
– of their organization
– of the city
UNDERSTAND, IMAGINE, CREATE!
How do we create opportunities
for exchanges of ideas,
resources and experiences that
generate new public knowledge,
expand civic engagement and
enhance public good – in a way
that is reliably inspiring and
productive?
IMAGINE CHICAGO Key Decisions
• Positive communications frameworks
are essential to fostering hope and
imagination – ask constructive
questions around affirmative topics.
• Involve young people as leaders of
the process to disarm the cynicism
and activate hope
Imagine Process
– UNDERSTAND best of what is-- affirmative,
value-oriented, connecting
– IMAGINE what can be--possible, particular,
hopeful
– CREATE what will be--practical, visible,
organized
How does IC encourage constructive
community participation?
• Recognize what community values
• Connect people and opportunities
• Leverage existing community networks, especially
•
•
organizations which cross boundaries
Encourage creativity of expression
Create constructive public dialogue and encourage
articulation of what community members most want
and how it can happen
Imagine Chicago examples
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Intergenerational civic interviews
Citizen Leaders
Urban Imagination Network
(school/community partnerships and
family literacy)
American Pluralism and Identity (NEH)
Ubumama (arts-based global maternal
health project)
What Have We Learned Inspires
Community Engagement?
• Inviting Inclusive Participation
• Strength-based Communications
• Animating Vision and Voice
• Constructive Reframing
• Designing Enabling Structures
• Building Collaborations
• Empowering and Aligning Action
The Generative Edge
TRADITION
I NNOVATION
*
MANAGED
CHANGE
Successful community engagement requires
pathways to participation that include everyone.
Strength-based communications:
Creating a Culture of Possibility
Language is a moral choice
To frame social development in problem talk
creates expertise and focus on what
communities don’t want and what doesn’t
work. To regenerate communities requires
focusing on possibilities, focusing on what
works instead of what’s wrong.
Problem solving is limited as a process
for inspiring and sustaining human
systems change
Deficit-based analysis, while powerful in
diagnosis, undermines human organizing because
it evokes a sense of threat, defensiveness and
deference to experts and hierarchies.
Innovation methods that invite people to envision
positive images of the future grounded in the best
of the past have greater potential to produce deep
and sustaining change.
Problem Solving vs.
Appreciative Inquiry
"Felt Need"
Identification of Problem
Appreciating
The Best of "What is"
Analysis of Causes
Imagining
What might be"
Analysis of Possible Solutions Designing
"What we most want"
Action Planning
BASIC ASSUMPTION:
LIFE IS A PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED
Innovating
“ What will be"
BASIC ASSUMPTION:
LIFE IS A MYSTERY TO BE EMBRACED
Note: From D. L. Cooperrider and Associates (1996).
A constructive approach to organization development and change.
Appreciative Inquiry
• A major assumption of AI is that in every
organization/ community some things work well.
Lasting change can be catalyzed by identifying
what works, and building on that.
• AI engages people in asking questions around
affirmative topics that evoke powerful, grounded
stories. Sharing those stories stretches the
collective imagination. New partners connect and
find energy to bring the envisioned future into
being.
Appreciative Inquiry Process
• Select key affirmative topics – topic choice is a fateful
act. (These are orienting beacons… What do you most
want to understand? )
• Identify and Value the “Best of What Is” using openended constructive questions.
• Collectively discuss and imagine what can be, building
on this trustworthy foundation
• Design systems and structures which enable this vision
to be lived
• Work together to create the shared vision.
Encouraging Constructive
Experiences of Difference
• Uncommon partners often produce the
most innovative outcomes since difference
helps to shift perspectives.
• Positive experiences of difference (e.g.
constructive conversations and joint action
among unlikely partners) enlarge the
possibilities for cooperative action and
mutual accountability.
Embodying Hope:
Animating Vision/ Enabling
Structure
Communities need opportunities to
articulate visions of what they want and
are willing to work for. People find
energy to move forward together toward
the future they have imagined if there
are structures that support collective
action on behalf of their visions.
Futures Triangle
PULL
Futures
Triangle
PUSH
WEIGHT
- Sohail Inayatullah
www.metafutures.org
Shifting frames and setting
direction for Constructive Change.
Don’t want
??
Do want
Visible
difference
Communities Scotland Masterclass Images
of community empowerment
v
v
Reframing leadership from expert model to teamwork serving the whole.
Image: musicians jamming.
Trusting open-ended process. Image: open book. Some chapters not yet written but there is a
history here. Communities get to write their own next chapters building on a proud past. Policymakers
respond
to what communities propose rather than set out an agenda communities have to fulfill.
v
Harnessing local energy rather than social control. Image: garden maze with only one way
in. and no way through but couple hovering above asking “Why not fly?” How can the path to the future be
reimagined locally by communities rather than limited by external views and forces?
v
Clear and open communication with positive framing and actions. “Bloomin’
communities” or “communities in bloom”? Solving problems creates co-dependency between organizations
and problems. There is an alternative. Image: bright yellow flower not yet finished growing. Grass roots are ideas
(ah-ha moments). Stems of development support growth.
v
Following path of hope and respect. Image: Path of hope with inspiring people…fun…laughter,
telling stories, working in partnership, engaging…optimism, creativity, action purpose honesty, realism, this makes
sense
Risk taking. Image: Can of worms in various stages of being opened. Have to risk opening can of
worms for other things to become possible. If you open up the cans, worms can escape. Mayor of Singapore:
important not to confuse worms and caterpillars
Leadership Dynamics
• An Animating Vision (listen for this and
help name it)
• Enabling Structures
• Practices that show it is possible to live
this way
• Uncommon connections that keep the
system open
Harnessing Imagination for
Public Good
• How can we encourage expression of worthy
•
•
(and accessible) images of public life? (positive
image/positive action)
How can we learn to be “skilled midwives” for
birth of community dreams?
How will we help sustain the lives of those who
take the risk of giving birth to something new—
and create structures that sustain the promise of
life which is coming to birth?
YES, WE CAN!
www.ubumama.org
What worlds will you invite into being
with your questions?
How will you expand a culture of
blessing?
TAKE THE PLUNGE AT TEA-TIME AND SHARE…
What question would you appreciate being asked?
What question would you love to see your
community/country asking and exploring over the
next 3-5 years?