I can change the world
With my own two hands
Make a better place
With my own two hands
Make a kinder place
With my own two hands
With my own
With my own two hands
I can make peace on earth
With my own two hands
I can clean up the earth
With my own two hands
I can reach out to you
With my own two hands
With my own
With my own two hands

Im gonna make it a brighter place
Im gonna make it a safer place
Im gonna help the human race
With my own
With my own two hands

I can hold you
With my own two hands
I can comfort you
With my own two hands
But you got to use
Use your own two hands
Use your own
Use your own two hands

With our own
With our own two hands
With my own
With my own two hands

from Jack Johnson

Bush today announced closure on a long search for a “war czar” for the country. Interestingly, a Google search of “US Peace Czar” turns up two, as in 2, hits, both referencing the same Dallas newpaper article.

That’s where the US culture is at the moment. Good news: a lot of room for improvement - room the size of the universe, to be exact. The root cause is that the thought of peace annoys many people, not the least of whom make a living from war. Until a peace czar helps us retool whole industries and careers, peace will be a long road to journey, but worth every step.

Interesting interview last night with a grassroots community leader in a thriving transformational community.

The summary statement after two hours of breath-taking sagas was: “We get ideas and make them happen.” Story after story where small self-organizing actions, fully self-empowered, move a community from demise to flourish in less than a generation. No political leadership, no community consensus, no big money, no institutional support. Just making things happen, one possibility at a time.

It’s interesting for me to daily observe the inner workings of people at executive levels in profit, non-profit, and public sector organizations. There are many people who are very capable leaders. And there are those who are experts or sycophants but certainly not equipped for leadership. This is not criticism of them, more a statement about how organizations allow the placement of the unprepared. The worst cases are elected officials who take positions for which no entry criteria existed as framework for public voting.

The defining factor for the unprepared is their passion for learning. Those who have it, make it. The implication is that assessing for learning passion is as critical as assessment for technical and people skills. Everyone who takes on leadership roles learn their way into these roles.

Worked with the Appreciative Inquiry Consulting group today in New York, introducing them to the art and science of developing knowledge and collaboration networks. It was an international gathering of amazing talent who were intrigued and jazzed about power of thinking in networks. It was eye-opening and inspiring because people have a deep intuition how the whole world is run by self-organizing networks.

It was easy work with the AI folks who believe that organizations and communities only realize their dreams to the degree that they are well-connected. What was most inspiring for them was the social network wisdom that there are specific intentional ways to help grow networks. And best of all, it’s the same whether you’re from Portugal, Poland, Australia, Denmark, the UK, Canada, or Yonkers.

I was listening to Thich Nhat Hahn last night, talking about how the present contains the past and future. It’s a perfect reflection as we transition into a new year, reflecting on everything good we take from 2006 into 2007 and everything good we will create in 2007 from 2006. When there is no separation in time between past and future, the present becomes the opportunity to heal past and dream future.

This from friend Chris Corrigan, thanks.

With over 30,000 different groups just in Christianity, could one religion in the world ever become possible? Could, as the Dalai Lama suggests, kindness be the one religion all aspire to? Given nature’s infinite tendency toward diversity, we could still have as many differences in how we approach kindness and build a world from it as a fundamental design principle.

Otto Scharmer points out that the root of the word leadership is to die, to let go of the known, the old world, and to cross this threshold to allow that which wants to emerge in us. It is letting go of the voice of judgment, cynicism, and fear in order to let come that which flows from our source.

Most people have beliefs and values, positions and opinions that they hold sacred. To love them is to love their dogma, not to question it, much less vote against it. Dialogue, research, and learning is definitely out of the question.

Here in the Divided States of America, the freshman class in the House and Senate seek the impossible: united states of america. This is a challenge on many levels since we have evolved to being a collective mosaic of religious, economic, social, medical, educational, political, environmental, and ideological dogmas. Most self-respecting dogmatists in any domain refuse to fall into the apostacy of abandoning comfort zones for the unknown lands of collective intelligence through dialogue, research, and learning.

The first step is in honoring the existential challenge of dogmatists to enter the conversation with more interest in curiosity than conversion. It will be difficult, but at the end of the day only collective intelligence will discover open spaces large enough to hold all views, and then some …