In order to get clarity about a topic or to determine your spiritual location, you go out alone into nature and trace this topic there. In the mirror of your environment, guided by your intuition, you receive “medicine”, a gift of impressions and impulses.
The Medicine Walk is an ancient and a modern practice. We have always made medicine walks into nature or pilgrimages, because the space out there gives us the possibility to reconnect. To reconnect with levels within ourselves that are not accessible to us through the mind alone, the deep inner knowledge about nature and being. It is a magical experience. Magical because it is animated by many different encounters – with plants, trees, animals, stones, branches, images…. All the living beings out there invite you to get in touch with them. For example, an encounter with a squirrel. You can ask a question about something specific that is on your mind and see/listen to what happens, what comes up as an answer while observing the squirrel. You can also let yourself be drawn to interesting places. It’s a free space out there, follow your intuition.
If you feel a burning question in you – take it with you on your Medicine Walk!
This tool comes from the Kaospilot school for creative business design and social innovation. It was used when students pursued their final projects, working individually on their chosen topic. The class came together weekly to support each other. The input from others helped to maintain a feeling of being part of a bigger cohort, even if everyone was working individually. Even when used with strangers it can elicit much gratitude towards the group.
PRINCIPLES
• Create transparency and trust about the purpose and the process of the interview; establish a personal connection early on.
• Suspend your voice of judgment (VOJ) to see the situation through the eyes of your interviewee. What matters at this point is not whether you agree with what your interviewee is telling you. What matters now is that you to learn to see the situation through the eyes of the stakeholder.
• Access your ignorance (access your open mind): As the conversation unfolds, pay attention to and trust the questions that occur to you, Don’t be afraid to ask simple questions or questions you think may reveal a lack of some basic knowledge.
• Access your appreciative listening (access your open heart): Connect to your interviewee with your mind and heart wide open. Thoroughly appreciate and enjoy the story that you hear unfolding and put yourself in your interviewee’s
shoes.
• Access your listening from the future field (access your open will): Try to focus on the best future possibility for your interviewee that you feel is wanting to emerge. What might that best possible future look like?
• Leverage the power of presence and silence: One of the most effective interventions as an interviewer is to be fully present with the interviewee and the current situation—and not to interrupt a brief moment of silence. Moments of silence can serve as important trigger points for deepening the reflective level of a conversation. More often than not, these opportunities go unused because the
interviewer feels compelled to jump in and ask the next question. Be courageous. Stay with the opening of the NOW.
You can use freewriting for various purposes, e.g. for reflection, integration, generating ideas or conflict resolution. Set a clear timeframe (10-20 minutes maximum) and start writing without stopping. If you have the intention to generate ideas, write down every idea you can think of about your topic, no matter how “crazy” it is. You can judge later (and no one else is going to read it). Don’t worry about correct grammar or spelling, that is not important in this exercise.
Systemic Consensus supports decisions as it leads towards constructive behaviour of all those involved, without being dependent on their good will.
Systemic Consensus is a participatory, solution-oriented, efficient, fast and sustainable tool/method that….
– disintegrates classic loser thinking
– looks for the path of least resistance
– focuses on the ideal balance of interests
– as an optimal approximation to group consensus it is thus widely accepted by the group
– dissolves existing disputes
– promotes the creativity of everyone involved
– is thus a very good problem solving method!
A prototype is a practical and tested mini version of what later could become a pilot project that can be shared and eventually scaled.
Use the following principles to determine what you need to do to stay connected to your vision and translate your idea, concept, or sense of possibility into action.
PRINCIPLES
1. Crystallize vision and intention: create a place of silence for yourself every day. Clarify core questions that you want to explore with your prototype and get to know your own role early, so you can adjust.
2. Form a core team: five people can change the world. Find a small group of fully committed people and cultivate your shared commitment.
3. Iterate: “Fail fast to succeed sooner”, as David Kelley from IDEO says. Do something rough, rapid, and then iterate. Design a tight review structure that accelerates fast feedback.
4. Platforms and spaces: create “landing strips” for the future that is wanting to emerge.
5. Listen to a bigger purpose: listen to what is emerging from others, from the collective, and from yourself. Take a few minutes each day to review your quality of listening.
6. Integrate mind, heart, and hand.
PRINCIPLES
A deep-dive sensing journey requires engaging in three types of listening:
1. Listening to others: to what the people you meet are offering to you.
2. Listening to yourself: to what you feel emerging from within.
3. Listening to the emerging whole: to what emerges from the collective and community settings that you have connected with.
Go to the places of “most potential” (the places that provide you with new perspectives). Meet your interviewees in their context: in their workplace or where they live, not in a hotel or conference room. When you meet people in their own context you learn a lot by simply observing what is going on. Take whatever you observe as a starting point to improvise questions that allow you to learn more about the real-life context of your interviewee.
Observe, observe, observe: Suspend your voices of judgment and connect with your sense of appreciation and wonder. Without the capacity to suspend judgment, all efforts to conduct an effective inquiry process will be in vain. Suspending your voices of judgment means shutting down the habit of judging and opening up a new space of exploration, inquiry, and wonder.
For Alex F. Osborn, the originator of the classical brainstorming technique, building upon ideas already suggested was an important factor of successful brainstorming. This technique is based on playfully and systematically modifying existing products or processes and finding alternatives to the original solution/process/product/situation.
The Pro Action Café is a space for creative and action oriented conversation where participants are invited to bring their call / project / ideas or whatever they feel called by and need help to manifest in the world.