1. An Emerging View Interconnectedness: Resources and Relationships Jill Randles, UMBCs Assistant Vice Provost, Undergraduate Education

2. Characteristics that Foster Relationships Acknowledge our interconnectedness Acknowledge our interconnectedness Our willingness to be disturbed Our willingness to be disturbed Reclaiming time to think Reclaiming time to think Listening Listening Ending our silence Ending our silence

3. Current World View Dominance Dominance All encompassing materialism All encompassing materialism Mastery Mastery Mechanisticall can be understood, engineered to do what we want it to, and can be fixed. Mechanisticall can be understood, engineered to do what we want it to, and can be fixed. Question: What does this view mean for us personally? Question: What does this view mean for us personally?

4. It is one of the great ironies of our age that we created organizations to constrain our problematic human natures, and now the only thing that can save these organizations is a full appreciation of the expansive capacities of us humans. p. 21 -Margaret J. Wheatley -Margaret J. Wheatley from Finding Our Way

5. Dont establish the boundariesfirst the squares, triangles boxes of preconceived possibility, and then pour life into them, trimming off left-over edges, ending potential: let centers proliferatefrom self-justifying motions! P.23 -A.R. Ammons

6. Independence is a political concept, not a biological concept. Everywhere life displays itself as complex, tangled, messy webs of relationships. From these relationships, life creates systems that offer greater stability and support than life lived alone. Organisms shape themselves in response to their neighbors and their environments. p. 25 -biologist Lynn Margulis -biologist Lynn Margulis quoted in Finding Our Way

7. Simultaneously, the process of organizing involves developing relationships from a shared sense of purpose, exchanging and creating information, learning constantly, paying attention to the results of our efforts, coadapting, coevolving, developing wisdom as we learn, staying clear about our purpose, being alert to changes from all directions. p. 27 -Margaret J. Wheatley -Margaret J. Wheatley from Finding Our Way

8. Lifes first imperative is that it must be free to create itself. One biological definition of life is that something is alive if it has the capacity to create itself. Life begins with this primal freedom to create, the capacity for self-determination. An individual creates itself with a boundary that distinguishes itself from others. Every individual and species is a different solution for how to live here. This freedom gives rise to the boundless diversity of the planet…. Lifes second imperative propels individuals out from themselves to search for community. p. 46 -Margaret J. Wheatley -Margaret J. Wheatley from Finding Our Way

9. Rather than being a self-protective wall, boundaries become the place of meeting and exchange. We usually think of these edges as the means to define separateness, defining whats inside and whats outside. But in living systems, boundaries are something quite different. They are the place where new relationships form, an important place of exchange and growth as an individual chooses to respond to another. p. 48 -Margaret J. Wheatley -Margaret J. Wheatley from Finding Our Way from Finding Our Way

10. Stimulus Choice PessimistActivist Response Blaming Complaining Excusing Repeating behavior Response Seeking solutions Taking action Trying something new Result Seldom achieves goal Result Often achieves goal Adapted from Downing, Skip: On Course, p. 22.

11. Moving from a Reactive to a Proactive Way of Being… personally, in our organizations, families, and communities.

12. Reflection & Reflection & Exploration Exploration Feedback & Collective Feedback & Collective Assessment Insights Assessment Insights Conversation Conversation as a Core as a Core Process Process Implementation Harvesting Implementation Harvesting Discoveries Discoveries Action Planning Action Planning TRADITIONAL VIEW: TalkAction EMERGING VIEW: Adapted from The World Café, p. 37.

13. Enlivening the Culture of Connection Connection Community Conversations that Matter that Matter ContributionCommitted Action Action Adapted from The World Café, p. 104.

14. Knowledge/WisdomValueSocial Stakeholder Value Value Value Financial Ecological Financial Ecological Value Value Communities Communities of Practice Networks of Relationships Learning Conversations Questions That Matter Purpose Principles Tools Technology Adapted from The World Café, p. 35.

15. The whole globe is shook up, so what are you going to do when things are falling apart? Youre either going to become more fundamentalist (tied to traditional thinking) and try to hold things together, or youre going to forsake the old ambitions and goals and live life as an experiment, making it up as you go along. p.14 -Pema Chödrön

16. To quote Mary Catherine Bateson in Composing a Life. …life is an improvisatory art, about the ways we combine familiar and unfamiliar components in response to new situations, following an underlying grammar and an evolving aesthetic…. We need …to look at problems as the creative opportunities they present. I believe that our aesthetic sense, whether in works of art or lives, has overfocused on the stubborn struggle toward a single goal rather than on the fluid, the protean, the improvisatory. We see achievement as purposeful and monolithic…rather than something crafted from odds and ends, like a patchwork quilt... pp. 3-4.

17. Bibliography Ammons, A.R. Tape for the Turn of the Year. New York: Norton, 1964. Bateson, Mary Catherine. Composing a Life. The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, NY. 1989. Brown, Juanita and David Isaacs. The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. San Francisco, CA. 2005. Chodron, Pema. The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. Boston: Shambhala, 2001. Downing, Skip. On Course. New Youk: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 2002. Wheatley, Margaret J. Finding Our Way: Leadership For an Uncertain Time. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. San Francisco, CA. 2005.