Saw a great bumper sticker today: “There’s no place like here.”

It raises interesting questions about the the power of spacial boundaries as experience and perceptions. What do we include in the “here” that we live. This week’s science section of the (NY) Times featured an article summing up tons of research on the evolution of species, indicating that evolution is always local - and at the same time within the contexts of global themes and dynamics. How we define “here” has everything to do with the culture of choice we build and nurture.

In a recent talk, Peter Block starts his suggestions for community transformation with “stop watching the news.” It is, he observes, packaged ideology that makes nothing clear. We need to stop paying attention to any media that keeps us in our place as spectators and consumers. He suggests an hour of bowling would be a far more effective social structure to create community because it’s so boring, people have nothing to do but interact.

Here’s a news flash. People who identify themselves with being Buddhist are not perfect, given the standard definition of perfect as that which exactly meets my expectations. We will disappoint some expectations as easily as life and others might disappoint our own.

During a day long weather delay at O’Hare airport today, a woman issued directions to me about how I should be standing in line with a condescending-bordering-on-haughty intonation and attitude that I might be an unknowing “foreigner” in need of her wise hand. In deference to her obvious sense of class, I graciously complied without a word to give away my clearly not-foreigner midwest-born accent.

I catch myself all the time with assessments and conclusions about people. I am most free without them.

Here in Chicago today, I worked with a group of 100 IS leaders who were passionate about becoming better leaders. It was evident that their leaders at the top of the organization set this tone in a very palpable and authentic way. It reminded me of how powerful leadership at the top can be. We lose faith in people at the top when they fail to act with faith in the people they serve. It’s actually that simple.

I’ve got this book coming out in a few weeks on what it means to be conscious. It follows my last 2 books on what it means to be appreciative. The consciousness question completely validates the vital importance of appreciative, and goes beyond that because it’s a larger and deeper question.

What’s exiciting is that it opens up new questions on distinctions like conscious leadership, conscious organizations, and conscious communities. My interest is in inviting the conversations, with faith in the power of the possibilities.

Here’s something from today’s NY Times interview with Kristin Gore about her dad’s input into her writing that I haven’t yet heard said by the Bush daughters about their dad: “He’s a fantastic fact checker.”

This morning in her dialogue with local emerging leaders, national sustainability leader and friend, Holly Harlan, responded to one of my questions with the following:

“I get to the powerful magnetic questions through new learning that’s ahead of the community.”

If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes.

Albert Einstein

Facilitated a gathering of academic and business IT leaders from the region here who interestingly have never come together to co-own the work of attracting, growing, and keeping the next gen of IT talent to firms here. Evident was that people had to even learn how to talk to one another, as conversations I designed connected people across wide chasms of need and opportunities for innovation. Exciting indeed.