My publisher had emailed me 3 days earlier with the following heartwarming message:

It’s here and it’s beautiful!!!!
Congratulations.  You should get your copy soon.

I am really happy, as my book is a unique application of Appreciative Inquiry to the world of learning and development.  Amid global challenges and complexities, the Appreciative Inquiry worldview asks, “What is it that we do already that is working for us, and how can we leverage our strengths going forward?”

The twenty-one workshops in this book are on topics of strategic importance, addressing the desire and need, in our interconnected world, for greater participation and active collaboration in meaning making and resource sharing.   This book is for change agents, leaders, trainers, facilitators, organization development professionals, and consultants.

All 21 workshops are ready for delivery; the topics are all highly relevant in today’s world, and with the Appreciative Inquiry design, they are equally applicable in global corporations, local communities, schools, colleges, universities, government agencies, non-profits, non-governmental agencies, special interest groups, communities of practice, and small business.

Workshop titles include classic topics, such as team building, leadership, and change, as well as on newer topics, such as cultural diversity, corporate social responsibility, intergenerational mix, and social media, to name a few.

This book takes Appreciative Inquiry principles and processes and applies them to real, everyday work and relationship issues in a workshop format that allows organizational members to resolve issues and create solutions from a strength-based perspective.

See larger image Appreciative Inquiry for Collaborative Solutions: 21 Strength-Based Workshops (Paperback) By (author) Robyn Stratton-Berkessel List Price: $60.00 USD New From: $49.91 In Stock Used from: $93.83 In Stock

The decade beginning 2000 was a good decade for me.  I married a wonderful human being in 2000; we have enjoyed great fun and a wide range of intensely pleasurable physical experiences; we have grown together and independently through many stimulating, engaging intellectual learnings;  and we have both experienced deeply meaningful emotional times.  We have traveled a lot and created a home we love. I am blessed in my relationship.

So, in this last decade, I have continued to change, as has the world around me.  A dominant and exciting force that is enabling this rapid growth rate of change is social media. We have new and additional ways in which we communicate and connect with people and we have many more topics and stories to share.  My sensitivity has been even more heightened as to how alike we really are across the globe.  How vulnerable we all are, and how much more we can become together.  I have been moved by so many stories shared in private and in public places – face-to-face, virtually, in books, on TV, in film.  All my senses have been sharpened.  For example, in Italy, I savored during and for months afterwards the landscape and the smells and sounds; the sensations and the tastes:  I admired the art work and architecture and imagined what it was like when armies of ancient Rome traversed the land battled against the Carthaginians and the Gauls;  I imagined the beauty of the Etruscans, even before the Romans, and then I imagined what life may have been like during the Renaissance when art and commerce flourished.  History and culture revealing how peoples continue to shape the future and leave their legacies.

I experienced similar emotions and wonderings while traveling in India and visiting Kathmandu Valley in Nepal.  My curiosity and interest is always aroused to learn how people get to where they are and what has shaped their current situation.   What are their stories?  My own birthplace, Australia, has untold stories that the land longs to share.  The more stories we can hear of all peoples on this planet, the richer we all will be.

I love to find the themes and connect dots.  What keeps coming up for me?  My filtering system is constructed to find the beauty, the goodness and what truths endure across time and space.  Horror and evil also endure across time and space. They co-exist.  History and the arts are full of co-existence. The victories of love overcoming fear, and good overcoming evil and beauty overcoming horror is the human story.

I learned at Christmas time, a dear colleague, whom I haven’t communicated with since 2002 has Stage 4 cancer in her brain and has very little time left in her present form.   Going about my business (busy-ness), I thought about her a lot, but didn’t call.   After Christmas, I learnt her condition had worsened.  I felt remorseful that I had not acted on my best intuition to call her when I wanted to.  I actually feared I had missed my opportunity to let her know I cared for her.  I had weak excuses, like a 14 hours time difference, Christmas was an awkward time, etc. etc.  Finally, I did call and our conversation was truly meaningful.  I also send the flowers I had been thinking about sending for four days.  I decided that moving beyond thought to action would be my commitment to myself in 2010.  To move beyond dreaming and thinking into action – action that serves others, and in doing so, serves me.

All plans can change.  So when the world changes around you, what constants provide you with a sense of safety or equanimity that enables you to go on?  The tiniest belief in oneself helps; some hope for a future; the support of others.  I have been in that state, when I had no self-confidence, despaired of any future and indifferent to the support and love of others.  How I’ve pulled myself out of such low points is my story and some parts of the dark story I am not proud of and some parts I am.  I realize the parts I am proud of are when I found the inner strength to shift my perspective enough to make a different choice.  Through the tears and the pain (both physical and emotional) I could sense a faint awareness that I wanted to feel/do something different.  In such times, I open up enough find an inner resource that offers a glimmer of hope and possibility that I am willing to admit there is a different way and I will do something about it.  I also believe that having experienced the intense discomfort of chemotherapy and radiation, that in the future, and if in a conscious state, when faced with death I can have the same experience.  I will find an inner resource that offers a glimmer of hope and possibility that I am willing to admit there is a different way and I can find it.  I know I will seek peace and love over fear.

What is your story?  What victories, celebrations and joys have you experienced in the past decade?  In telling your story, what have been highpoints of your first ten years in the 21^st century?  What will you remember with a smile on your face, a warmth in your gut, a tenderness in your heart?  What are you most grateful for or even a little bit grateful for – personally and professionally?  Who have you met in the past 10 years that has influenced your life in a good way?  What have you done for others that you know has been of service to them?  What thoughts may inspire you for action in 2010?

We are offering some great presentations and workshops online using iCohere collaborative platform and we are seeking a number of volunteer online hosts who will be able to participate in the conference and perform some support activities.   This is a great opportunity for those who want to participate, but for a variety of reason can’t make it to Nepal in November.  Colleague, Sue James is co-ordinating the online hosting activities.

What are the benefits of volunteering?

• Receive support and training in the virtual conference environment, prior to the conference itself;
• Become part of a global network of volunteers, all of whom share your interest in Appreciative Inquiry;
• Gain personal and professional recognition across the AI community; and
• If you can act as an online host for six (6) hours or more over the four days of the conference, you will receive a 50% discount on virtual conference registration!
• (These hours will not have to be contributed in one block, but can be spread out in two-hour time slots over the four days)

For all the details and to register, please go to http://suejames.com/aihosts2009/

I am fortunate to be able to travel to Nepal for the Conference and will also co-facilitating an online workshop, “Flourishing Destinies: How to Sustain Positive Change.”  I will be happy to answer any questions and request that you use the contact form on this site to reach me.

So when life happens, it can mean we are thrown off life’s course as we have designed it.   Barriers and challenges get in the way of what we dreamed our life to be.  The vision we held becomes blurred, cloudy or even blacks out.  It can happen when we get very sick, lose family members, our jobs, our homes and businesses.  There are so many stories out there in our current climate that seem to suggest life doesn’t always go according to plan.

Right in your face steps the aliveness of life – with its fullest passion urging you to take personal responsibility for what you really care about.   History shows us repeatedly that  human resiliency and adaptability triumphs.  In times such as these, we reconnect to our universal human values and feel that which makes us alive.

So whether you are protesting to have your vote counted in Iran, for medical reform in the US,  for a fair living wage in developing countries , or in support of your own personal challenges whereever you are,  let passion be your power!

I have reason to be excited.   Our workshop “Flourishing Destinies: sustaining continuity for positive change” received media attention and was the lead story yesterday in  Axiomnews , based in Ontaria Canada and whose mission is “to publish news, on behalf of organizations, that catalyzes meaningful contribution.“

The New News Media such as Axiom News are helping to shift cultures to cultures of responsibility and positive, sustainable actions. Axiom News has “A Passion for Organizations that Make a Difference“.  From their website:

“We believe the organizations we all work for, and access goods and services through, are the best vehicle for influencing social change and for finding fulfilling, meaningful work. We are committed to our mission of helping organizations make the greatest contribution they possibly can to society, and the self-actualization of their team members.

We know that high functioning, open and dynamic social ecologies are the best environments for making this happen. As practitioners of the journalistic arts we are passionate about our Constructive Stakeholder Journalism approach as a high-yield catalyst for such environments, social contribution and the creation of meaning in work.”

With news networks like that, we will focus on growing that which we want.

The overall theme of the Global Forum is “Manage in an era of massive innovation” and our workshop’s purpose is to prototype a container for massive innovation. Our container is made up of a process with web-based technologies.  Our process is Appreciative Inquiry and our web-based technologies are Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter and a collaborative platform iCohere.

So through the Appreciative Inquiry process we seek to discover high peak stories of when the energy, innovation and  commitment generated in the planning process of a workshop or conference have not withered on the vine, but  continued to build after the event, spiraling into greater levels of achievement.  Through all of our shared stories and experiences of successful sustained implementation and our dreams for what such implementation could look like, we will develop a deeper understanding of how the energy and innovation created in the planning process can build after the event and spiral into ever greater levels of achievement that lead to flourishing destinies.  We will co-create insights and understanding that we can take away to apply within our own organizations and projects in order to create sustained continuity for positive change and innovation at the scale of the whole.

You are welcome to participate free by going to our site www.flourishingdestiny.org and follow the prompts.   To join the Twitter discussion, use @BAWBGlobalForum;  Facebook; LinkeIn

Is Democracy emerging naturally?

Mainstream anything is old paradigm.  Mainstream media is struggling, similarly mainstream politics, mainstream economics, entertainment, education and corporations – innovation is happening at the edges and the new connections are strengthening and making a difference – both positive and negative.

Tools help Us Evolve to Another Level

Through our increased use of digital tools, as with any other tool, we are evolving to another level.  We’ve come from rubbing stones together to settling in communities and tilling the soil, to building machines that both enhance and damage our existence, to designing computers that automate most manual processes leaving us now ready to move to the next stage of evolution and apply all our prior knowledge  – in the words of Ken Wilber,  we “transcend and include” as we evolve to new stages of development.  We are waking up to what can and cannot sustain life as we know it on this planet.   We can pass on this knowledge and at the same time co-create new hypotheses about what it is we can become.  We are entering an era of massive innovation that has the potential for us to actively participate and collaborate in ways of unknowable scale – and if we are truly wise – it could be at the scale of the whole.

How Can We Apply these Tools Wisely?

Digital, social media tools will facilitate such a reality, that’s what tools do, but will we apply them wisely?   What are the mindsets and cultures that will turn these tools into “wisdom” tools?   It takes participatory, collaborative mindsets and cultures to apply our tools wisely so we make meaning and sense of complex and rapidly changing situations.  It’s the software between our ears, the pulsating life force under our rib cage and our evolving consciousness that determine our destinies.  Technologies are mere enablers.

Wise application is knowing how to use digital media in a way that serves humanity.  As human beings, it is in our DNA  to communicate, to participate, to contribute, to inquire, to learn, to grow.   Digital tools are enabling such experiences at unprecedented rates, unconstrained by politics, ideologies, geography, ethnicity, income, gender, age or any of the traditional barriers to entry.

The values of openness, trust, transparency, integrity and authenticity that we experience as active participants using technology enabled social media in our personal and private interactions during our play time is infiltrating our work time.   These same values are prerequistes for the successful and wise application of digtial tools in our workplaces.  We have the tools, let’s focus on strengthening and valuing participatory, collaborative mindsets and cultures.

What participatory values and behaviors are you seeing in the application of these tools, socially or at work?