Strategic Questions for the New Year

As the new year begins, it is an opportune time to reflect on the past year and clarify vision and direction for the year ahead. Strategic questions enable people and organizations to move from the known (present) to the unknown (future) – exploring possibilities, seeing new options, and realizing where new information may be needed…. Read more

Questions that Open Up Emerging Potential

Asking questions and listening for the strategies and ideas embedded in people’s own answers can be the greatest service a social change worker can give to a particular issue. – Fran Peavey Questions invite participation and the generation of new learning and ideas. Our context is shifting rapidly. That means that what is needed and what is possible… Read more

What it Takes to Create Collective Impact – 20 Questions

I recently worked with the Garfield Foundation to design and facilitate a gathering of people who specialize in collaborative networks and systemic approaches to social change. This meeting convened about a dozen experienced practitioners for two days of rich, inspiring, expansive conversations about what it takes to do this work effectively. These insights will inform… Read more

Strategic Questioning and the Art of Network Leadership

In a complex world of interconnected social and environmental challenges, it is increasingly clear that no one organization can solve these alone. A new focus on “collective leadership” is emerging where people collaborate and align their work across organizations and traditional boundaries for greater impact. In this context, we need skills to engage the diversity… Read more

Insights on Strategic Questioning

When you teach you learn. I recently taught a workshop on Strategic Questioning at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, as part of a Leadership Survival Skills workshop series for New England alumni. For background, Strategic Questioning is a technique of asking open questions that inspire movement and new insights/ideas. Strategic questions are… Read more

Strategic Questioning

“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 five minutes.” —ALBERT EINSTEIN Since many of the challenges we face… Read more

Why Blog?

Another blogger I admire, Chris Corrigan, just wrote a blog called How to Blog stating his intention of trying to “single handedly trying to lift a near dead art form up from a seven year slumber.” He noted that a lot of people stopped blogging around 2015. Chris, I appreciate your impulse and will lend… Read more

The Most Frustrating and Memorable College Class

A few weeks ago, I attended my college reunion at Bates College. I co-hosted a conversation among around 60 alumni about leadership, with my friend J.J. Cummings. Instead of a typical panel presentation, we invited everyone to consider this question: Share a story from your experience of what you have learned about what it takes… Read more