Community benefit groups of all kinds – traditional nonprofits and government offices and social enterprises – are all taught the benefits of running social change efforts like a business. But what happens when we throw all that out the window and run those efforts like… hockey? In this month’s 3 minute video, Creating the Future … Read more
Words matter. The words change leaders use to tell their story can make or break how effective they are in accomplishing their goals. Over the past few months, Creating the Future has been intently exploring what words best describe the work we are doing. Through online meetings and private conversations, experts and fans have guided … Read more
Ask people what power they have to change the world, and the answer is almost always, “Me? I’m just one person – and not an important person at that…” At the end of February, a group of those average, ordinary people gathered to learn together about creating change “from the middle.” These were not leaders … Read more
In Creating the Future’s immersion courses, one of the posters that greets participants is the one to the left here – Values as a Verb. Put simply, values are merely empty words if they are not put into action. At its August 2012 board meeting, the board of Creating the Future therefore discussed the talk … Read more
In Creating the Future’s immersion courses, one of the posters that greets participants is the one to the left here – Values as a Verb. Put simply, values are nothing but empty words if they are not put into action. At its August 2012 board meeting, the board of Creating the Future therefore discussed the … Read more
“Enjoy serendipity, discovery, emergent social learning, into a never ending journey towards understanding complexity. Make the emergent learning and spiralling of discoveries a social purpose, a learning to learn process, a metacognition…” * Being part of Creating the Future is always an adventure. As a living laboratory, our work is about pushing boundaries and exploring … Read more
When it comes to leading social change efforts, perhaps the most powerful and least recognized form of leadership is Leading from the Middle – bringing out the best in others, so that they can realize and step into their own potential to create change. Unlike top-down leadership, Leadership from the Middle is not a function … Read more
Last month, Creating the Future passed a huge milestone – the one year anniversary of our first board meeting. You can see the minutes of that first meeting here (as well as all the minutes of all our meetings here) Like most people, our board members tend to focus on the long list of what … Read more
Note: There are no spoilers in this post. Because seriously, it’s an action movie! Watching The Avengers this weekend, it struck me – whether one is working with an internal team, a community coalition, or a board of directors, at some point we have all seen the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, … Read more
In our April immersion course, consultant Anne MacKay posed this brilliant thought to the group. And I confess there has not been a day since Anne flew back to Canada over a week ago that I have not thought deeply about its implications. What if you don’t have to worry about being financially supported, because … Read more