How do you change the world? One room at a time. Which room? The one you’re in.
We must establish a personal connection with each other. Connection before content. Without relatedness, no work can occur.
Relationship and connectedness are the pre-condition for change. Every meeting, every process, every training program has to get people connected first. Otherwise the content falls on deaf ears. So small groups are an essential building block to any future you want to create.
Transformation comes more from pursuing profound questions than seeking practical answers.
All we have to do to create the future is to change the nature of our conversations, to go from blame to ownership, and from bargaining to commitment, and from problem solving to possibility.
The task of leadership is to be intentional about the way we group people and the questions that we engage them in.
The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole.
It is a misuse of our power to take responsibility for solving problems that belong to others.
If we believe something does not exist unless we measure it, then we put aside: love, feeling, intuition, art and philosophy.
If there is no transformation inside of us, all the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institutions.
Good questions work on us, we don’t work on them. They are not a project to be completed but a doorway opening onto greater depth of understanding, actions that will take us into being more fully alive.
Advice is unfriendly to learning, especially when it is sought. Most of the time when people seek advice, they just want to be heard. Advice at best stops the conversation, definitely inhibits learning, and at worst claims dominance.
We must act as if our institutions are ours to create, our learning is ours to define, our leadership we seek is ours to become.
Why do anything unless it is going to be great?
The world does not need a better definition of issues, or better planning or project management. It needs the issues and the plans to have more of an impact, which is the promise of engagement.
The goal is to balance a life that works with a life that counts.
The price of change is measured by our will and courage, our persistence, in the face of difficulty.
The shift in the world begins with a shift in our thinking. Shifting our thinking does not change the world, but it creates a condition where the shift in the world becomes possible.