Permaculture - Leadership: Organisations as Organisms

We had a great guest speaker come in - Adam Wolpert - who is a consultant to organisations and communities on facilitation. Too bad our classes take place from 8-10pm when my eyelids are struggling to stay open. I do good until the sky gets dark. Once that happens, the lull of the ocean and the waning of the day pulls me to slumber. So, sadly, I slept through some information.

Here is what I gleaned while still alert!

A good facilitator:
- humbly serves the process
- watches, listens, learns
- keeps the meeting focused and on track
- creates a safe container
- works with the energy in the room
- includes everyone
- quickly and gracefully finds the points of friction/ tension
- remains calm and neutral
- catalyses decision making
- summarises regularly

Organisations are similar to organisms in that they need to adapt to change and evolve in order to survive. It's important that organisations make decisions that are durable and sustainable.

it's important to decentralise power in an organisation/ group. Very often power tends to concentrate itself into the hands of a few. This makes the structure power-centric, with many getting marginalised. A good facilitator will always work to adjust imbalances of power. Traditionally, power is associated with privilege. If this equation is knocked down and power becomes associated with responsibility, people will be keener to share their power as power is then about having extra work to do!

Where does the real power lie in groups?

- With the agenda (who controls what gets addressed?)
- With the speaker (who is given a voice?)
- With information (do only a few people have access to key knowledge?)
- With organisation (efficient people often become very valuable and take on multiple leadership roles)
- With emotion/ drama
- With relationships (the one with the most personal connections to others in the group holds the most power)
- With process literacy (being familiar with how the organisation works and does its business is a form of power)

Internal Power (empowerment) vs External Power (power over)

flexible rigid
agile slow
adaptive immutable
stable unstable
creative (dynamic) prescribed (stagnant)
resourceful resource depleting
non violent violent
inclusive exclusive
decentralised centralised
collaboration control
love fear

Hope you got something useful out of these college style notes : )