I’m writing to share about a wonderful collaboration with Alan Briskin and Amy Lenzo creating a new “gyrocompass” image for their on-line, six session series on Activating Collective Wisdom, launching this June. The Five Practices of Collective Wisdom is a distillation of work Alan Briskin has been doing over many years on the subject. How this image came to be is a wonderful story of emergent creativity.

Some Context

Gyrocompassv5The collaboration began in Germany last year at the Leading as Sacred Practice (LASP) Retreat held at the Beuerhof Farm in the Vulcan Eifel region of Germany East of Cologne. Alan presented about these five practices and led a rich inquiry into what is deep listening, as well as how to suspend certainty, welcome emergence, keep the whole system in mind and prepare for the extraordinary when working with groups. I graphically recorded the session. Read more…

Imagine holding the book you see here in your hands, and knowing that you wrote, illustrated and designed all 262 pages! I got that chance last Friday when Visual Meetings arrived from Wiley & Sons. The process began in December of last year whenVisualMeetingsBookImageS - Visual Meetings Arrives at The Grove Richard Narramore called and wondered if I would like to write a book about visualization for groups, following the success of Dan Roam’s book Back of the Napkin. Little did I realize then how fun it would be to deliver this sweeping review of 35 years of leading visual meetings all over the world.

I’m writing here to share some of the process I went through for those who might be interested in how books like this come to be. If you want to skip this post and go right to getting the book, then click on this link to a special page on The Grove’s website. If you want to hear my personal story of this journey, read on.

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