Living in the tension between presence and vision

I'm feeling a tension between two dynamics:



To be faithful and live with integrity, we need to honor both sides of this tension.

I'm currently working as the Interim Executive Director for City House. We connect folks in the mainstreams and the margins for spiritual friendship. As we're discerning ways to take the organization to its next level, we're affirming that the practice of being present and loving without trying to change people is central to our work. At the same time, I think we're being called to do our work in service of the broader goal of "building the spiritual muscle to end homelessness and poverty." That goal pushes us into risks and partnerships that I think we need.

How can we do both of these things--be present and open without an agenda, and also commit to bold goals that inspire results?

How to dream big and attract others to the process

The world is shifting quickly. Most organizations want to dream and act boldly so they can respond to and inform these changes. Yet most organizations struggle with how to do this well.

I want to tell you about a visioning process that an organization that I'm working is using. Next month I'm facilitating a summit that Olney Friends School in Ohio is hosting. Here are seven suggestions for how your organization can dream big and attract people to that process, with examples from this high school's visioning and discernment process.

1. Connect your organization's questions with pressing global and regional questions. A guiding question for Olney's visioning is, "How can Olney be of service in the creation of a new green economy in Appalachia?" The school is combining bold questions about transitions in the broader society with questions about the future of their school. They are entitling their summit, "People, Planet, Place: Case Studies in Organizational Transformation: A Summit on the Future of Olney Friends School." This kind of broad thinking can make it easier to challenge the status quo patterns of an organization and open up powerful new possibilities for carrying out the mission of an organization.

2. Invite participation in personal and creative ways. For Olney's summit, they are inviting everyone that is already connected with the organization (students, alumni, parents, etc.), but also people they admire who are working on environmental and economic sustainability in their geographic area and professional fields. Olney has worked hard to make the summit a beneficial time of learning and reflection, even for those not invested in Olney itself. The summit will include presentations, music, and films about innovative ways people are working for environmental and economic sustainability.

3. Ask for support for the visioning process. Olney received grants from four Quaker funders to support the summit. They are also structuring classes this fall to integrate the summit process into student life this fall.

4. Make multiple ways for people to engage in visioning. Olney set up an online database of ideas for the school's direction that people can add to. People can also participate in-person at the summit. Summit participants will be able to sample hands-on experiences connected with the school, such as planting garlic and touring the farm on campus. During the summit, we're planning interviews, writing, small group and large group ways for people to give input.

5. Set compelling and bold topics that are both specific and open-ended. Olney's Board defined two broad dreams, "A new green economy in Appalachia" and "Sustainable independent schools," and they are inviting people to fill in the details of those dreams. They provided some direction so the visioning process wasn't too overwhelming, while resisting the temptation to plan all the details themselves.

6. Gather, gather, gather... and then let go and notice what emerges. Olney will be gathering oodles of ideas for how the school could carry out its dreams, and we'll ask everyone at the summit to help us process and absorb those ideas. But the core element of Quaker discernment involves holding all those possibilities lightly and settling into a place of inner stillness to listen for the possibilities that have the most life and sense of calling. In that process, entirely new directions or combinations of ideas might arise. Olney's process is based in Quaker practices, but adapted to welcome and include broad participation.

7. Connect dreaming with doing. I encourage groups that I work with to have a period of prototyping, where they can quickly test out ideas from their vision so they can fail often and learn quickly. The energy and learning of the visioning process can be carried into this phase of experimenting and learning. When a large group of people help shape a vision, many of them will be eager to help implement it.

Olney's summit still has space for people to participate, October 28-30 in Barnesville, OH. All events are free and open to the public. It would be fun to have some of you there!

The focus of my consulting work is facilitating visioning and discernment, to help build just, sustainable, and healthy communities. I'd be happy to talk with you, at no charge, about how this might work in your organization.

Engaging with Institutions as Living Entities

I was grateful to receive these reflections on the spirit of institutions from Michelle Bizek. I liked them so much that I wanted to share them here:

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It seems to me that the term “institution” could be synonymous with a living entity composed of living, interactive systems and that the simplest expression of this living entity is the individual and more complex expressions include groups (i.e. churches, social clubs, Boy Scouts, etc.), businesses, governments (local, state, national), nations, and finally, humanity.

Each of these living entities has a spiritual ethos and I think if we look at the simpler human system and what influences and shifts it toward a healthier expression then those principles can also be applied to the larger systems. For example, we know that personal change is more efficient when we receive permission and agreement from the subject. Of course we can intercede and practice aggressive prayer for a person, but the effecting of change, most of the time, comes more readily when the person expresses permission for your influence and agrees to work with you toward change. It is like the difference between walking around the block praying for the person in house #123 or knocking on his door, going inside, and opening dialog
with him. Once you are inside talking with him you learn what he believes, how he thinks, what he values, his habits, how he makes decisions, his history, his fears, and his dreams. Now you can pray with greater specificity and he knows you are connecting to what is relevant to him. You are engaging the spirit of the man, freeing him from the “illusions spun over” him.

Taking this to the institutional level, I think that learning these same things about the institution will reveal the spirit of the institution. Once that is identified, abberations in the dominant
characteristics and expressions reveal “ the demonic…arising within the institution” and give us the specificity for targeted prayer for change as we “recall it to its divine vocation.”

Spiritual discernment will help us differentiate between the spirit of the man, the institution, the demonic, and the holy, and the information provided by each; this is essential for efficient prayer.

- Michelle Bizek

Seven doors into the spiritual development of organizations

I believe that every organization has the possibility of engaging spiritual depth as a part of the organization's development. However, my experience has been that each organization has its own unique language and ideas that are doors into that spiritual opening I'm looking for. The doors to spiritual development in one agency might not work in another group. When I talk about the "spiritual development of organizations," I mean finding ways of relaxing our attachments to our individual and organizational egos and connecting with a purpose and meaning greater than ourselves. Here are seven doors that I've seen organizations use to enter into spiritual development:


Deep Partnerships and Collaborations: Most organizations that I know are strongly driven by a desire for self-preservation and expansion. In some organizations, I've seen deep partnerships with other organizations help people transcend narrow self-preservation with broader purposes that serve the community. Even though this path can be hard and include plenty of conflict, external factors like reductions in funding are pushing many groups in this direction.

Creativity and innovation: An openness to creativity in product and project development can develop an atmosphere of openness. Playfulness and experimentation can get us unstuck from habitual patterns and open us to deep guidance.

Shared values and/or vision: Collectively developing and agreeing on shared values and/or a vision has been a foundation for many groups. The discipline of continuing to return to these values and vision for grounding can certainly bring depth.

Community: Trusting, close working relationships within an organization can lead to an openness and honesty that contributes to the collective spiritual development of the organization.

Crisis or conflict: Whether intended or not, the tensions and unexpectedness of crisis and conflict can throw us out of our typical ways of operating. Some groups are able to use this for deepening.

Systems thinking: Peter Senge's books on systems thinking have popularized methods for seeing individual actions as part of larger flows that we can influence but not control. I think the shift into systems thinking can parallel and cultivate spiritual development.

Discernment: I've seen secular methods for strategic planning tap into just as much depth as faith communities seeking to discern and follow divine guidance. Future planning can be a way of listening for calling--where the deep joy of the organization meets the pressing needs of the broader community.

These are preliminary thoughts about doors into spiritual development for organizations. I welcome your feedback and dialogue!

Photo credits

Language for bringing our deepest inspiration to work

A couple days ago one of my sisters said to me, "You know, I have no idea what you are talking about [in this blog or when I talk about the spirit of institutions]." She was curious and kind about it, but she was also letting me know that I haven't found language to connect what I'm drawn to with where my sister is coming from. I know that she isn't alone.

As I've been doing interviews with people this fall about spiritually grounded leadership, I've been listening for different language to describe what I think of as the spirituality of institutions.

This week I was happy to do an interview with Bob Wahlstedt, who co-founded a manufacturing company in the Twin Cities, Reell Precision Manufacturing. Bob was the co-CEO of Reell for almost 30 years. The company started with a direction statement that included, “Reell is committed to following the will of God.”

The idea of secular organizations following God's will can excite and motivate me, if I trust the values and discernment of that organization. To many others, the idea of a business following God's will is either meaningless or offensive.

For the past 38 years at Reell, they have been applying the spirit behind that language--they ask people that work there to bring their deepest inspirations and motivations to work. The language of their direction statement has evolved, but it is still explicit about following God's purpose, while also welcoming a diversity of spiritual perspectives and traditions. In practice, this orientation has been expressed through an approach to management that Reell calls "teach, equip, trust," which they contrast with "command, direct, control" methods of management. Workers on their assembly lines are typically hired as entry-level assembly workers, but they learn every stop on the assembly line, from scheduling to quality checks. Their products are shipped only when the line worker signs off — without inspection other than periodic audits.

Here are a couple quotes from my conversation with Bob Wahlstedt that I found especially helpful in thinking about how we use spiritual and religious language in the workplace:

“What we call God is an image, not actually God. It is far less than God. It is idolatry to worship that image. Anyone who is discerning meaning and purpose and discerning right and wrong is following a spiritual path.”

"We need to quit excluding the spiritual insights and motivations of the people who work in our organizations. People exclude it because it can be divisive, but it also pushes away a great resource."

There is much more to Reell's story that I've savored, such as how they tell employees that they should put family responsibilities above work. Here is a paper that tells more of the company's story.

With each conversation I have about this topic, I'm slowly learning about language (and the limits of language) to describe how we can cultivate organizations that bring out our best selves. I welcome your questions and suggestions, like my sister's, to help me down that path.