Al Etmanski

Sean Moore: Where Am I Skating Towards? Effective Public Engagement

This is Sean Moore's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

Effective Public Engagement in Civic Affairs

My current preoccupation, my passion, my thing these days, is to very personally and directly do something tangible about what most everyone seems to agree these days is the abysmal state of public engagement in civic affairs. I know, I know - that sounds to be a rather grand aspiration, especially coming from a semi-retiree - and a semi-retired lobbyist, at that!! But challenges can be invigorating and provide new motivation to be active.

For years, I’ve have been part of the chorus that wails about the seemingly ever-expanding universe of people who don’t vote, who disengage from public affairs and whose skepticism and cynicism leaves them frustrated and disillusioned. Samara’s recent report, The Real Outsiders: Politically Disengaged Views on Politics and Democracy undoubtedly confirmed the instincts of many who see a growing sentiment of detachment, a by product of a witch’s brew of economic distress, fear, cynicism and popular incomprehension of the complex and often bizarre ways of politics and modern government. These days, even the most well-resourced and experienced interest group leaders express their frustrations in dealing with both political and bureaucratic decision-makers from city hall to Parliament Hill.

Vexatious as that might be, it doesn’t hold a candle to the pain and frustration I witnessed first hand last December in Vancouver. Al Etmanski and I were hosting a day-long workshop on “advocacy skills for families.” In the room were 3 men and about 30 women - almost all individuals who were the primary caregivers of a loved one, a child, a grandchild, a sibling or a parent. All of them were there because they were pretty well near the end of their rope in dealing with government agencies and other public authorities who they thought were there to help. They wanted to know more about how they might better cope with what seemed to be impenetrable bureaucracy and unresponsive political institutions - a sentiment to be found in neighborhood groups, advocacy organizations and professional associations coast to coast to coast.

How can we have one of the most successful societies this planet has ever known and yet have what so many feel is such a dissatisfying relationships with our government and political institutions? Though the reasons and causes are many and varied, there is one which I aim to do what I can to address: citizens’ ability to engage their government’s effectively and to maximize their impact on public decision-making.

I certainly don’t have all the answers myself but I am accelerating my search for examples of individuals and organizations that have developed effective means of policy engagement and lobbying. My goal is not only to include these learnings in the work of my newly launched Advocacy School but to find other means to disseminate these stories and their lessons to educational institutions and other forums for training. Well, let’s give it the old college try! Anyone interested in joining the cause is welcome to come along for the ride. Contact me at sean@seanmoore.ca 

Sean Moore is the founder and Principal of Advocacy School; a SiG Fellow and Public Policy and Advocacy Advisor to the SiG Social Innovation Generation initiative (a collaboration of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation of Montreal, the MaRS Discovery District of Toronto, the University of Waterloo and the PLAN Institute of Vancouver); and an advisor to a number of other Canadian foundations, NGOs, professional associations, law firms and corporations. He formerly served as a Partner and Public Policy Advisor at the national law firm, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP.  Sean’s website: http://www.seanmoore.ca/

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, Rchard Bridge, Steve Sunderland, Kirsteen Main  and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

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Linda Couture - What Am I Skating Towards? Celebrating Our Shared Humanity

This is Linda Couture's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

 Celebrating Our Shared Humanity

Looking back at this past year’s experience of living in my mother’s world of Alzheimer, and accompanying my dad in this journey, has taught me the most. I learned the greatest lesson of humility and a great deal about our humanity.

While our society is sickly preoccupied by performance, perfection, success and power, I am confronted with my mother’s loss of autonomy, loss of cognitive abilities. I am in a perpetual grieving process looking for connection, human touch at its simplest expression without a mask, reaching for belonging.

I feel the closest to her I’ve ever been, without words, just my mother’s laughter. The nursing staff call her Madam Smiley. The life of those who have a disability are the ones I long to embrace.

My mother is unable to care for herself, she fully depends on others for basic health care, including using the toilet, and her difficulty communicating with words distresses me. Her smile, her laughter, overcome everything.

As I experience and adapt to a new way of being with my mother with little conversation I find the human face, the raw emotions that brings us closer and provide a sense of deep care. My more caring ‘I’ rejects the idea of my mother being reduced to her incapacities.

She challenges me by her existence afflicted by Alzheimer’s disease. In a society driven by performance, some people wonder if people like her have a quality of life, deserve a place in our society.

I say we need to celebrate their human dignity. She has alerted me to the value of living in the here and now. Every time I am in my mother’s presence, I feel the here and now. I am at peace in a place where body language is very much the means for communicating our sense of belonging together.

I want to celebrate the many faces of human dignity. I want to share the people who have inspired me with their courage, determination and joy of life even when confronted with challenges. I wish to help build a society where everyone could have access to palliative care at the end of life when needed.

The following slideshow is a celebration of some of the people who have inspired me a great deal:

http://www.vivredignite.com/en/media/celebrating_dignity/celebratinghumandignity.html

Linda Couture is Director of Living with Dignity / Vivre dans la Dignitéa grassroots initiative promoting palliative care and and alternatives to euthanasia and assisted suicide. http://www.vivredignite.blogspot.com/

Contact:info@vivredignite.com

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, Rchard Bridge and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

NOTE: Linda Couture's mother Carmen Lévesque Couture passed away recently.  Here are Linda's reflections.

I would just like to let you all know that my mother passed away peacefully and joyfully early on the morning of January 27, 2012. Throughout my work with Living With Dignity, she was the source of my inspiration and gave me my energy, my strength and courage to anchor my actions in reality. My mother was a devoted wife, a woman of action who was nicknamed “The Bee” for her hard work, who was always welcoming, smiling and ready to meet any challenge. She was there to help and to give unconditionally.
 
I was determined to accompany her to the end with the collaboration of the care team at the Centre Paul-Gilbert long-term health care facility in Charny, Quebec. She was wonderfully cared for by the staff, night and day. I wanted to ensure that she left us naturally, with dignity and without unnecessary medical intervention. Mission accomplished. She is now free from her weakened body though her soul remains ever present. She continues her work in a way that can be an inspiration to us all.
 
 What a mysterious and inspiring experience it was for me to live the last moments before she departed. I felt so honored to be a witness and to receive the gift that she shared with me as she left this world for another, where I know she will continue her work. I will never forget her gaze, her remarkable, enchanting eyes. She was radiant and happy to be welcomed among those who have gone before and who she loved so unconditionally. She was never closer or more present to me than at that moment. The experience is the concrete proof of the mystery of death. She died not only peacefully but smiling, even laughing.  

 

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Ted Jackson - What I Am Skating Towards.

This is Ted Jackson's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

Skating Towards the Corners

In hockey, when you skate into the corners of the rink, you know you are headed for a rough ride.  That’s the place where the elbows and sticks come up, bodies are slammed against the glass, and the hard, uncelebrated work of protecting the puck and moving it backward and forward, inch by inch, proceeds.   The players who do this are sometimes called “grunts,” which is a badge of honour in my book.

Hey, I’ll try not to grunt too much!  But, my plan is, in fact, to go to the corners to fight the small battles that will advance the play into strategic territory, to create the possibility of success.

Why?  Because there are battles that are worth fighting.

It would be much better, of course, if progressive change could be achieved by consensus and collaboration, through reasonable dialogue and mutual respect. 

Sometimes it can.  I’ve seen it.  I’ve been part of it.  Actually, I’ve tried to do it that way for a long time.  And I will keep trying. 

In fact, one of the most inspiring leaders for collaborative change has been Al Etmanski, editor of this collection.  In the US, Barack Obama has achieved much through consensus and mutual respect; in fact, he was elected because he held the promise of peaceful change.

However, more often these days, the opponents of a progressive agenda are so aggressively militant in their pursuit of conservative objectives—and so well-resourced and voluble—that real collaboration and dialogue are just not possible.  

And that means we need to go into the corners and fight for the things we believe in.

By “the corners of the ice” I mean politics, economics, civil society, the state, the private sector, the academy, the mainstream and the social media—these and all the other spheres of society where ideas and power contend, sometimes ferociously.

Take one of those things progressives believe in:  gender equality rooted in full human rights for women and girls.

There is a strong constituency that supports and defends gender equality; indeed, it has made major gains in western countries in the last 30 years, in particular.  But there are well-funded interests in our own society and around the world that actively, and too often violently, oppose full rights for women. 

It is time to renew the fight for gender equality—to skate into the corners to battle for the world we want—against the formal and informal forces of misogyny and subjugation.

It isn’t enough to be for something, unfortunately.  We must be against something, as well. 

Globally as much as locally, we must continuously oppose and disrupt those institutions, groups or individuals that actively work to oppress women and girls.  Perhaps at some point we can transform them—but in the meantime, they are opponents.

C’est la vie. 

The years ahead will be compelling ones, that’s for sure.   I’m putting on my skates right now.

Ted Jackson, is a community organizer, consultant, author and Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University. He is a frequent adviser to governments, foundations and development agencies around the world.

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, Rchard Bridge, Linda Couture,  and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

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Sherri Torjman - What Am I Skating Towards? Recreation and Community Engagement

Here is Sherri Torjman's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

Recreation and Community Engagement

I recently delivered a keynote address at the first National Recreation Summit. The event gathered from all regions people who are involved in creating recreational opportunities in communities. I say ‘recreational opportunities’ because the focus did not always take the form of structured programs. Some participants were responsible for safe spaces, like parks and playgrounds. Others were concerned with hiking trails and nature experiences. Still others were employed in arts and cultural programming.

Recreation is clearly a big tent. But at the end of the day, there is a common thread that binds together these disparate efforts. Recreation is a way to foster engagement. It is a strong and powerful method for enabling belonging in communities. A volume of evidence from a wide range of sources shows that recreation contributes powerfully to physical, emotional and social well-being.

What we know, unfortunately, does not translate into what we do. There are many barriers to participating in recreation, not the least of which is cost. Most programs and amenities charge user fees – over and above transportation and child care expenses. The fee problem stems largely from the financing of local governments, which are primarily responsible for supporting recreational and cultural programs and facilities. User fees are the tip of a big fiscal iceberg. The revenue-generating capacity of municipalities does not match their myriad responsibilities: renewing aging infrastructure, tackling social problems rooted in rising inequality and creating a good quality of life for citizens. The financing issue is a complex story for another day. The good news is that, even in the face of serious fiscal challenges, some cities are finding constructive solutions.

Vancouver is a prime example. It has introduced a leisure access card that waives fees to public pools and rinks for individuals and households living on low income. There is also a 50 percent discount on swim and skate lessons as well as admission to the aquarium, botanical gardens and similar public venues. Residents qualify for the card through their eligibility for other programs, such as social assistance. The cards also permit seniors and youth to pay half the adult rates. Perhaps most significant: A leisure buddy attendant card is in the works. It will help those who need a companion in order to participate in the community. Vancouver has taken a small, but noteworthy, step in helping all residents to take part – and become more visible – in the community.

Sherri Torjman is an author, policy analyst, researcher, Vice President of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy and one of Canada's most acclaimed and accomplished commentators on social policy.

View a video of Sherri's Keynote Speech at the Recreation Summit here or see below.

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, Ted Jackson, Linda Couture,  and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

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Cheryl Rose - What Are You Skating Towards? The Middle of Nowhere

This is Cheryl Rose's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

The Middle of Nowhere

Between the old and the new, there is a place that is a kind of nowhere-land and it is one of the most challenging places to be. It can be lonely and is full of uncertainty and tension. My work at the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) has offered me many unique opportunities to meet and talk with some of the most brilliant individuals I’ve encountered so far in my lifetime. They are system thinkers, institutional entrepreneurs, maneuvering in quite complex environments, always scanning the system landscape, minds tuned, watching for the openings that can result in real and positive change in the world.

They know how it feels to let go of the old and familiar and intentionally make the leap towards the new and innovative. What I hear them often refer to is an uncomfortable ‘space’ that is part of the journey; a ‘nowhere’ that is part of being in between. I want to skate towards that in 2012.

Most social innovators vividly recall experiencing, at some point, the unnerving sense of being somewhat lost, far from shore, compass-less.  The most difficult part about feeling that you’re nowhere is that it is so fraught with uncertainty – yet this very uncertainty is a necessary, productive, rich part of the process of creating conditions for social innovation. I’ve listened to my brilliant colleague, Frances Westley, encourage students of the new Graduate Diploma in Social Innovation to rest in ‘not knowing’ for as long as it takes a truly innovative idea to emerge. She reminds us over and over again that there is a direct correlation between a person’s or group’s capacity to tolerate uncertainty and the capacity for creating true innovation. 

We need to know that it’s not only okay to feel lost for a time in nowhere-land, but that nowhere is a kind of gift with much to teach us about our work and about ourselves. Wagoner’s beautiful poem, “Lost”, encourages wanderers to ‘stand still’ and to remember that although you may feel lost, the forest always knows where you are.

In 2012, I will skate more deliberately towards “the middle of nowhere”; gliding, sometimes elegantly, falling from time to time. I want to skate into those spaces of uncertainty and unknowingness because that is where encouragement is needed, and that is where important, complex questions appear:

“What does it mean to think like a system?”

“How do we manage risk so that we can experiment more in our communities?

 “Are we trying to build resilience or knock it down?”

Skating, even if a bit wobbly-legged, in the middle of nowhere offers up these good questions and, ultimately, can reveal new patterns and ideas about what the answers might be. This year, I want to skate a few laps with others in this space of letting go and living with not knowing. Just long enough to open up new thinking for innovative action. Just long enough for courage and commitment to be strengthened.

Cheryl Rose is a creative educator, well loved by her students.  She pioneered the development of  Community Service Learning in universities throughout Canada. She currently coordinates the new Graduate Diploma Program in Social Innovation at the University of Waterloo. She is also a colleague at Social Innovation Generation - Waterloo.

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by  Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, John Mighton, Linda Couture, Sherri Torjman and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

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Christian Bason - What Am I Skating Towards? Rehearsing the Future

 This is Christian Bason's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

Rehearsing the future

As we enter 2012, new challenges arise for MindLab, the organisation I run. An internal innovation unit for three national ministries, MindLab has for a decade assisted policy makers in crafting better and more creative solutions to society’s wicked problems.

However, MindLab's collaboration agreement with the three ministries terminates by the end of 2012, and so it must be renewed or changed. This makes us ask: What could a innovation unit look like five years from now? What should MindLab's future be, and could we begin rehearsing it this year? Today, MindLab is fully publicly funded, and we are mainly focused on citizen involvement at the front-end of the innovation process.

Here are some of the components that we are deliberating:

• Strengthen the element of implementation? Should MindLab take the change management role further and stay in (or with) the organization not just until ideas and concepts are formulated, but until implementation is completed?
• Strengthen the role of the citizens? Should MindLab openly invite citizens with innovation ideas into MindLab and help them to explore the potential of the idea. This is the approach at New Urban Mechanics, an innovation unit run by the Mayor’s office in Boston? Or should MindLab actively search for the “lead user citizens” who already have solved public problems and work on scaling their ideas?
• Horizontal expansion? Should MindLab invite additional central government ministries into the fold? This might enhance the capability to create true cross-cutting solutions, and increase trust and collaboration among an even broader section of policy fields
• Vertical inclusion? One of the mantras of the newly elected Thorning-Schmidt government in Denmark is “public-public collaboration”, across all governance levels. Could MindLab, which is already known to municipalities, play a role in enhancing collaborative governance across multiple levels of government, for instance by including a number of municipalities in its work? Or could MindLab move beyond the national level to assist international organizations such as the European Union, the United Nations and the World Bank?
• How about engaging more directly with not-for-profits, or for that matter for-profit firms, seeking to generate social returns. Would this also be an avenue?
• A consulting arm? The demand for MindLabs services has been rapidly expanding, not just within the three ministries and associated agencies, but also throughout Denmark, and globally from governments in India, Chile, the UK, Canada, Australia and US. Would it make sense for MindLab to run a profit-making entity alongside its public operation?
• More sister organisations? Just like the Ministry of Taxation has established its own internal innovation unit, might MindLab help create similar units via a network approach? Could this extend to other sectors and fields in Denmark or abroad?
• The role of research? MindLab has hosted four PhD projects and has extensive ties to research communities in design, ethnography, and public management. How should research be embedded in our work going forward?

One of the most challenging questions that arise in some of the options presented here is what the consequences would be for MindLabs governance structure. How would a vastly changed ownership situation look like?

Going into 2012, our sentiment is not to conduct vast and complex analyses to identify which are the most promising avenues to pursue. Rather, we want to “rehearse the future”, to try different approaches on a small scale, and discover what is valuable, to whom, how and why. This is, after all, the advice we offer to others. Should be interesting.

Christian Bason  is Director of MindLab, a unit for citizen-centred innovation in Denmark. He is part of a vanguard who are creating meaningful ways for government to become innovative and to do so in partnership with community and business.  His new book, Leading Public Sector Innovation is quickly becoming a bible for rejuvenation of the public sector.

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by Cheryl Rose, Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, John Mighton, Linda Couture, Sherri Torjman and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

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Sam Sullivan - What Am I Skating Towards? A New Wave of Urban Reform

This is Sam Sullivan's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

A New Wave of Urban Reform

My study of the history of Canadian cities leads me to conclude that we are ready for a new wave of urban reform. Canada has had three waves of urban reform. It is possible to locate pivotal dates for each of them.

The first wave saw the formal incorporation of cities that can be seen as part of the ferment that accompanied the founding of the nation in the 1860s. The second wave was generated from the National Municipal League in the United States when they published their water shed document “A Municipal Program”. This publication attempted to apply rigorous theoretical and practical analysis to the structure of city governance. Although this was published in 1900, its first effects were felt in Canada in the 1910s. The third wave can be seen as part of the social unrest of the 1960s which included a postmodern reaction against an overreaching modernism. The 1860s, 1910s, 1960s… would lead one to expect a fourth wave of urban reform in the 2010s.

What is this reform likely to consist of?

The 1960s reform brought many wonderful values and ideas to Canadian cities but clearly not everything was positive. The negatives have only recently come to be understood. The 1960s reform resulted in a completely suburbanizing centrifugal force that delivered a highly energy intensive and land consuming urban form. The environmentalism of the day favoured a return to the land aesthetic of low-density which could be delivered by a suburban type form. The 1960s reform also promoted a “power to the people” that set market forces against human values. The natural densification that would have happened in the city cores were actively resisted contributing further to the suburbanization of the country.

Since the 1960s there have been many changes in values. The great debate about how to organize society, through central planning or through market forces, was resolved with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The world recognized that market forces did not have to be in opposition to human values. In fact central planning seemed to lead to egregious results that were worse than anything the market delivered.

Another important change in values occurred within the environmental movement. Whereas the 1960s favoured a more experiential environmental ethic in which each human would live close to nature surrounded by greenery a new biological/scientific consensus recognized that this kind of low-density “suburban” lifestyle would in fact be an ecological nightmare. Quantifiable measurements began to take precedence over existential ideals and the clear benefits of high density cities began to be recognized.

There are many other changes in values as well as improvements in understanding that may drive changes in a fourth wave of urban reform in Canada. I will be hosting a gathering in Vancouver in June that will consider a number of them. Who knows, perhaps Canada will be skating into a new period of urban reform that will see fundamental changes in the way we do cities.

Sam Sullivan is the former Mayor of Vancouver, a member of the Order of Canada, founder of the Global Civic Policy Society and Adjunct Professor at the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
www.globalcivic.org

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by Cheryl Rose, Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, John Mighton, Linda Couture, Sherri Torjman and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

Note: Vancouver is hosting the first Cities Summit February 1st and 2nd.

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John Stapleton - What Am I Skating Towards? Addressing Public Scarcity and Private Wealth

This is John Stapleton's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

I want to conduct ‘thought experiments’ concerning where Canada is heading as a nation as we race to create greater inequality through increased public scarcity and private wealth.

What does this look like? The area I know best is our income security programs so I start there.

This is the first ‘skate’. Our public narrative is the arena. A first experiment If Canadian governments were to cancel all income security payments to individuals overnight, the immediate savings to governments would be in the $150 billion range . This includes all Old Age Security, child benefits, EI, and disability payments. It also includes provincial payments such as workers ‘compensation and welfare. In addition to placing hundreds of thousands of Canadians into immediate destitution, grocery stores and other shops would take a huge hit to their sales and landlords would be forced to evict hundreds of thousands of tenants. Some would go out of business.

Although one can’t be clear if a $150 billion haircut would result in a contraction in activity of $150 billion overnight, the nominal short term Canadian balance sheet would get a sudden boost with this immediate change. In nominal terms, we could eliminate the $60 billion federal deficit and, over time, we would have many billions left over for all governments to make serious inroads in paying down their deficits and accumulated debt. Our fiscal house would finally be in order.

But something else very curious would happen. Since government and all other income security expenditures are components of GDP, the $150 billion in cancelled payments could reduce our GDP by over 10% literally overnight, placing Canada into a deep and long economic depression that would easily rival the Great Depression of the 1930’s. At the same time, millions of Canadians could become homeless. In essence, our economy would contract and tax revenues would deteriorate quickly and deeply. This pathology might sound familiar. It is the same prescription that our economies swallowed in the 1930’s. This prescription is now being recommended in part for countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Portugal in the modern day European Union.

If this pathology continues, it will spread to all of us. Why? Because you can’t shrink yourself bigger. Public scarcity is a choice and not an inevitability. This is the arena and I’ll be skating.

John Stapleton worked for the Ontario Government in the Ministry of Community and Social Services and its predecessors for 28 years in the areas of social assistance policy and operations. He is a Commissioner with the Ontario Soldiers’ Aid Commission and is a volunteer with St. Christopher House and Woodgreen Community Services of Toronto. He is undertaking an Innovations Fellowship with the Metcalf Foundation. He teaches public policy and is a member of 25 in 5. John has published over 50 articles, studies, and op-eds. John serves on the Board of Directors of the Daily Bread Food Bank. His website is Open Policy Ontario.

Twitter - @rampagehall

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by Cheryl Rose, Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, John Mighton, Sam Sullivan, Linda Couture, Sherri Torjman and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

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Delyse Sylvester - What Am I Skating Towards? Investing in Collaboration

This is Delyse Sylvester's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

A more fully invested collaborator

We were very lucky to live our two daughters’ “success by six” years at a housing coop in Vancouver’s Commercial Drive neighbourhood. Last fall, after many years living in Nelson - our girls are now 19 and 20 - we returned to celebrate the coops 30^th anniversary.   

That night, as we made our go around introductions, I joked that we joined the coop 20 years ago embroiled in a heated debate about where to locate the compost pile and I wondered if a decision had been made yet. The room erupted in knowing laughter. Collaboration is hard.

Little had changed in that department over the years. Consensus still takes an inordinate amount of time and everyone had a laugh and talked about the other burning issues that had consumed the coop over its history. 

But what had changed - and was very evident to both my husband Lex and me - was that the coop had never been more vibrant. There was something in the air – it was electric – there were passionate conversations about the future and a real sense of fun expressed.

I was reminded of the challenge Adam Kahane, author of Power and Love, put forth at the BC Innovation Summit in November. It was in the form of a rhetorical question: Why would you work collectively if you can do something on your own? He pointed out that collaboration is time consuming, messy, and filled with dynamics that need to be unpacked.  It is much faster and easier to DIY. But some things can’t be done alone, and the joys of working together successfully are unparalleled. The first critical step is to know that there is no alternative. Then step into the collective space with your full commitment to the messiness and all it brings. Invest your whole self with power and with love.

Back in our coop days, I realize now, I didn’t quite do that. In the back of my mind, I knew that we could purchase a small home for $180,000, which meant for us that we had options beyond the coop. We didn’t have to commit fully to a life of dialogue, compromise, and unpacking. I dreamed of a family home and frankly my half-hearted commitment to the coop showed.

I continued to contribute to meetings that were a mixed bag of wonderful community sharing and frustrating discussions. When the girls reached school age, we left for our DIY dream in Nelson.

Returning 15 years later on that anniversary evening, and watching as children of the current young families were rocked to sleep in the arms of neighbours, I saw this collective had some new inspiring plans. They had a pool of skills - trade, administrative, sustainable acumen, modest funding and even childcare. This was a group focused not on “maintenance” but on “revitalization.”

Today’s residents have few options. This will likely be their collective home for generations to come. Perhaps because of that fact - they are committed and frankly, thrilled about the challenge.  I saw in them the same promise of the coop life that had drawn me, a practical approach to problem solving mixed in with vision for a sustainable future.

This is what I am skating toward.

I take to heart what so many people I admire state: we have less than 50 years to turn this world around. There is extreme urgency now. And yet, this is not a DIY moment. We are in it together. This is the home we have to share – we have the skills to pool and we can and must enter into this fully knowing that we must work together.  It is a time where my own tendency toward the practical and demanding clear results must come together with my belief in the power of collaborative problem solving. I have to commit fully to the global coop.

Inherent in a collaborative approach is what a wonderful leader in our community, Shayla Wright, calls entering the space where “no one has to be wrong.”

This is profound as judgment has been my life’s sidekick – a side effect of having high expectations. The ability to listen without one-upping -- or as Tim Broadhead cautions, the “gotcha accountability” -- is required.

This is my work: for the next 50 to continue to welcome partners to the table with whom I’ve shared a history of finger pointing. To listen fully and to let go of the belief structures I’ve collected over the years that have resulted in fears and suspicions that prevent me from doing so. For me, this means the citizen sector, government and the private sector together. It doesn’t mean I have to agree to all I hear. But it means I must commit my whole self to collaboration.

I realize now that perhaps it was not the messy, slow pace of change that kept me from being fully invested in the coop. Perhaps it was the other way around. Maybe it’s our inability to fully commit to collaboration as the only option that is the problem. Now is the time to test my theory.

It’s a beginning and the ice feels a little thin. But like my backyard rink cousin says “yeah it takes commitment getting out there every cold winter night adding another layer, but in no time the ice is thick enough for the whole neighbourhood to skate on.”

Delyse Sylvester leads Ashoka's Changemakers Community Team creating compelling campaigns and messages that invite millions of changemakers to care and to act. She brings the lessons of successful fundraising and social marketing to inspire individuals, corporate leaders, media mavens, community organizers and enthusiasts to make a personal commitment for themselves and their loved ones as active members of the Ashoka community.

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by Cheryl Rose, Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, John Stapleton, Sherri Torjman and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

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John McKnight - What Am I Skating Towards? Cooperation

This is John McKnight's response to What are you skating towards in 2012?

Cooperation is the context for each of us to value doing well for ourselves and others.

I have always believed that competition is the thin ice of society and the further we get from it, the safer we become because we will be surrounded by rescuers rather than people who believe we should "sink or swim"

In his brilliant book, “No Contest: The Case Against Competition,” author Alfie Kohn defines competition as the process by which for me to win, you must lose.

Our children’s lives are filled with the competitive experience. Most of their activities called ”sports” are pedagogies in competition.  Although we teach them that a real sports person is a “good loser,” we all know that the truth was revealed by the great football coach, Vince Lombardi, who said, “Winning isn’t everything. Winning is the only thing.”

Our children’s video games are all about winning–war to car racing.

In schools where our children are graded on curves or continuums, the message is, “I’m not good enough unless I get an A.  Then I am a winner and I can see all the others behind me– the losers.”

When our young people move on to college, the competitive culture is reinforced as they learn that the real hero of higher education is the “winningest coach” – people like Joe Paterno.

The college classroom is a daily pressure cooker where an A is the winning recipe. All lower grades need an explanation on your resume.

Finally, having been immersed in the competitive idea for 21 years, our young people matriculate into the working world as bona fide members of the competitive culture. They understand that livelihood is all about competition. In their work, advancement is winning. Staying in place is losing, even if the work might be very satisfying.

After work their recreation is usually their enjoyment of winners beating losers. Whether playing or watching sports, the game is the same: who wins?

For entertainment, they are treated to normal non-competitive activities converted into exercises in winning or losing. Cooking becomes a competition between chefs. Making clothing becomes a competition among designers. Dancing becomes a competition among non-professional dancers. Even losing weight becomes a competition among the obese. In many of these competitive, ”entertainments,” the loser is publically humiliated and removed from the “fun.”

Undergirding the domestic competitive culture is the perception that the nation’s future depends on winning the race against China.

The result of our win/lose society is a deep belief in the myth that competition is the proven method for achieving efficiency and excellence. The truth of the matter is the opposite. Alphie Kohn’s “No Contest” is the primary text that provides the empirical evidence that cooperation “beats” competition in most of the important areas of our lives. His data clearly shows that people who cooperate are more productive, learn more, enjoy playing more, and have better character and interpersonal relationships.

Kohn explains the failure of competition as the inability to recognize that trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Cooperation is the context for each of us to value doing well for ourselves and others. Competition is the context for each of us who believes that doing well results from beating others.

There is a ready-made, accessible context for reintroducing ourselves and our children to a life of cooperation. It is our own neighborhood.  There, the possibilities for a good life depend upon cooperation rather that competition. A neighbor is not someone you beat. The word signifies a friend with whom we share a local community. And community is not a place where we gather together to beat each other and create lots of losers and one winner. The neighborly way is described in our book, “The Abundant Community.”

So when we admit that most of us don’t really know our neighbors, we are revealing that the primary site for genuine cooperation is absent from our lives. And, perhaps the reason for this unusual lack of relationships is that the only way many of us know how to act is in a world that creates one winner and lots and lots of losers.

John McKnight is emeritus professor of education and social policy and co-director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University. He is the co-author of Building Communities from the Inside Out and the author of The Careless Society. He has been a community organizer and serves on the boards of several national organizations that support neighborhood development.

Note: I am releasing individual essays from the collection, What are you skating towards in 2012?  on a regular basis. Upcoming contributions are by Cheryl Rose, Jacques Dufresne, Linda Perry, John Stapleton, Delyse Sylvester, Sherri Torjman and many others. You can access the accumulated essays here.

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