Changing Habits, or Moving to Passion?

Just some late night thoughts that have come up while reading through my older blog posts on PI Community (the site has transformed into u.school). As the group started back in winter 2008 there had been an interesting thread started on new year's resolutions around our personal intention and awareness on the power of collective wisdom.

Reply by Ralf Lippold on December 31, 2008, at 7:53 am

Dear ...,

Thank you very much for the strong questions that wander around in my head all the time as I see the disconnectedness in the world (even though the issues could be easily tied together!)

1) How can we remain focused as the sharing of experience and information gets saturated?

The real action will give the opportunity of remaining focused. The mere talking is -at one certain point- taking the energy out of people's contribution to the issue. If you don't have real people around in your area who are thinking in the same way, online conversations are the starter and connector to the larger whole through a new -unfamiliar- medium. Nevertheless meeting in person will be essential - even with people who have not the same view or actually deny the ideas (like I realized here in Dresden and Genthin, where everybody is lamenting and when it comes to true action, no action will be taken, as that could be done by the others, please not me;-().

2) How can we transform virtual dialogues/conversations to concrete physical actions?

Start something small where you as a single person see some impact, act and reflect on what the outcome is. Bring this into the conversation (virtually) and let others learn from it. Sure enough -especially around with all these great people in this community- you will get valuable feedback. Others will see that your projects very well connect with their projects. Connections will be drawn, and it will be only a matter of time to connect in person and meet to get the thing running.

3) How can we engage face to face focus groups in physical places with a virtual online space?

....and I come back to my initial observation:

Stay local and get inspiration by going once in a while to other places to meet people in person. That is what I am doing, starting the Team Academy idea in Dresden, reconnect with the folks at Team Academy up in Finland and come back with new insights, ideas, connections, people, etc.

4) How can we leverage the power and energies of the committed in this common grounded community to respond effectively to the immediate needs and desires present now?

Always seeking for the leverage points in the system we are in and would like to be changed. That has drawn me into the field of system dynamics, which at first sight looks quite technical and just for the engineers. It is not like that at all:-) The holistic view in this methodology and the possibility to apply it to all different kinds of systems, such as human body, organizations, government policies, politics, education, disaster preventing, sustainable energy, people development, leadership development, etc., is what makes it even more applicable.

Of course, that is not enough and one has to explore other fields and methods around it to get to the change.

Best regards

Ralf