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 Some current topics in our

	A current subject offered in the Think Tank - what would yours be?
	Some current research questions - what would some of yours be?

Some current discussion areas

Public sector challenges: What’s next after “agreed direction?”

Workshop and course design

Leadership development challenges:

An Integral Leadership Model

Leadership Development Methods Catalogue

The Case for a Focus on Leadership

IN THE THINK TANK

Examine “Simultaneous Policy” Assumptions:

Employ the Integral Evaluation Process

Purpose: To examine both apparent and missing assumptions detectible in the International Simultaneous Policy (ISPO) approach (http://www.simpol.org) and how the implications might be (a) described and (b) addressed.

Outcome: An integral evaluation of the ISPO approach. Depending on findings, potentially a proposal for a large-scale research project (possibly in partnership with ISPO and others, including perhaps some futurists?) to "flesh out" any gaps and/or ways to address any unintended consequences suggested by our integral evaluation process.

Questions: As a large subject to bite off, and if there is sustained engagement in this topic, it will probably need to be split into sub-topics. For right now at the start, the introduction below includes some preliminary questions. 

Introduction: John Bunzl wrote a book called The Simultaneous Policy: An Insider's Guide to Saving Humanity and the Planet., and started the ISPO to implement the approach. There is a lot of good culture and structure-changing "stuff" behind this approach. At the same time, it is not apparent yet that it takes into account a range of things between commitment and implementation.

For example, it could make great strides toward helping citizens and officials transcend partisan allegiances in favor of policy allegiances. This is an evolutionary progression we sure need. Yet troubling elements include:

(a) are the "democratically selected regulations" designed, framed, and deliberated to determine myriad adjustments to local socio-cultural-economic-political conditions? Is there risk of "one size fits all?" What needs to be put in place so that wise combinations of regulations can be democratically selected, particularly when only thin veneers of “democracy” exist in many places around the world?

(b) the challenges ISPO wants to address - such as economic justice, environmental security, peace, and many others - are exceedingly complex, layered, and interrelated meta-systems that stretch across the planet. It's a great platform to get elected on the basis of pledging to implement simultaneous policy, and... is there something missing when citizens "pressure our leaders to start solving these global problems"...as if that's all it took? As if we "followers of leaders" had no additional roles and responsibilities? Are we really children who need parental leaders to fix everything for us (as if it were that easy) and as if they could? How can ISPO integrate a developmental approach *so that* where socio-cultural environments *do* have and need different kinds of leadership, implementations are tailored to take that into account?

 
(c) What are the potentials for - and how can we prevent - serious heartbreak, dashed hopes, violence, and perhaps anarchy, when people find out it just isn't as simple as they thought it would be (and they don't have methods to address the complexity)?

(d) What are the gaps, the assumptions, that we must address from an integral perspective so a significant effort like ISPO has significant chances to have healthy impacts and the fewest possible unintended consequences?

SOME RESEARCH QUESTIONS

 Research Q: How do we “notice our change”?

 Purpose:

1. Initially, to exchange our descriptions of what we have used in personal or professional efforts to help ourselves and/or others to notice *that* we - and our perspectives - do change. Describing how we first came to this awareness ourselves might be a good starting point.

2. Distinguish the contexts in which certain approaches have worked e.g., individually one-with-another like coaching, kinds of groups, even organizations.

3. Find out where the real research questions lie, if there are gaps between what we need to learn and what we know thus far.

Outcome: Specific research questions that we don't seem to have answers to. These need to be framed in terms of developmental stage-awareness too - blanket answers to these questions may co-exist with dynamics specific to certain stages of development.

Questions: The underlying questions here are something like: How do humans become aware that they, themselves, change over time (in general, and at specific places in their development)?  What sorts of experiences provoke this awareness?  What sorts of supports help people sustain attention to their own changes, and make sense of it?

Introduction: N----‘s post in another discussion area is one way to introduce this research topic. He wrote: To make things as simple as possible: every morning when I wake up, I am sure to be the same person than the day before, and the same than five or ten years before; but at the same time, I know that my worldview is so different that it's as if I was another person. We can say that there is a fixed part of the personality, and a changing one.

This general research question assumes there is value to humans becoming more conscious of themselves, more conscious of their changing relationships to self, others, and the world. If this assumption has merit, what are the initial sorts of ingredients that give rise to noticing changes in self? What supports do our cultures need to provide to encourage sustained attention to the ranges of changes in self? And the list of questions could go on and on....

For starters, though, it seems our lived experience is a good place to begin. This implies some self-disclosure, it implies some perhaps lengthy posts, and it implies this is a long-term inquiry.

If anyone is familiar with work that has investigated this question, please post references, and remember we have a library to post documents here, as well as attaching them to postings. In fact, here and there a post might be quite brief and refer to a separate document attached to it.  

Research Q: What “kinds” of community…?

Purpose: To identify with as much distinction as possible, the different "kinds" of community people here and elsewhere, are attracted to, and why. This may include geopolitical communities, cyber communities, and any other ways we conceive "community." Another word for community might be simply "group" - we also use different words at different times of life - and use the same words differently!  This is a good topic for us to be very precise about our meanings, while it also uses a general, umbrella term "community."

Outcome:

1. Potentially develop some insights into the nuances involved when we hear the term "community."

2. Potentially develop some insights into the diverse motivations that attract people to particular forms or kinds of community.

3. Potentially develop a developmental schema that describes the various "kinds" of community we need to create to meet diverse, evolving needs - and articulate what it might take to create them.

Questions: Questions abound - here are some for a start.

1. Speaking from personal experience, how do we describe the different kinds of communities we have been attracted to during our adult lives to date, and what were our motivations (i.e., what needs got met) to be part of each different kind?

2. Reflecting on our experiences, what were the sorts of things that led us to depart from a community we associated with in the past? These might include naming how our needs changed, how the community/group changed, etc.

3. If we happen to be familiar with developmental schemas (and please note that not everyone is!!) can we correlate our shifts to and from different "communities" with descriptions of our own stages of development (however we choose to describe them - don't need to refer to theories, "real" descriptions may be much better!).

Introduction: This is an important research question for a multitude of reasons. […] All of us have some history with relations to groups and communities of various kinds. Yet there are soooo many different kinds, that it is in ARINA's mission-interest and I suspect valuable for lots of folks' work, to invest in some real exploration of these questions. Why? Because if we discover there are particular needs that humans need met by different kinds of community, we can investigate how to facilitate their development...and it'd be great if others identify more reasons why this question is worth investing in!

 Research Q: How do we come to recognize….

Purpose: Explore this social change question: How do we (and how do we help others to) recognize our own roles in "issues" that bother or concern us, on one side of the coin. And on the other side of the coin, how do we (and how do we help others to) recognize the role those very same "issues" play in shaping us, shaping how we support their existence, and shape other issues?

Outcome: Teasing this into specifically-worded questions that address different scales of attention, e.g., at the individual level, group level, organizational or institutional level, societal level ... *and* seeing their connections and impacts up and down the scale.

Questions: The essential question may boil down to: how do we (and how do we help others to) develop a systemic recognition of the interactive dynamics that we're an integral part of?  

Introduction: This is a big question. This topic area probably serves best as just an initial starting place before sorting it into more distinct attention-areas. I might suggest for optional background reading Integral Review's Issue 1 article about dancing the universal tango just to get some basic assumptions on the table.

If others have suggestions for background reading to illuminate the assumptions underneath this overall question, please post them in the library and tell us they are there.

This question might need revamping into other language, expansion with illustrations, etc. We can see how it goes and make course corrections as needed....

 Research Q: What kinds of power…?

Purpose: Identify the healthy kinds of power available to those who have to "manage up the ladder" (from lower on the ladder) in organizations. The kinds of healthy power that empowers even the higher-ups, on the way, not disempowers or overthrows them.

 Outcome:

1. Potentially, the construction of some new knowledge, sharing of knowledge and insights.

2. Distinctions among contexts to which ideas may apply.

3. Potentially, more refined questions that can be the focus of some serious research.

 Questions: Questions abound - here are just a few...
1. How would we describe, in developmental and other terms, the *nature of the need* for healthy forms of power?
2. How might healthy forms of power "look different" to people within an organization, depending on their stage of development in that particular domain of organizational culture and relationships?
3. Are there phases in our development during which the notion of "power" - even "healthy power" - might be un-hearable, un-welcome, etc.? If so...
     (a)  what stages/transition phases might perceive the construct of "power" differently?
     (b) Are there alternative terms that could or should be used in certain situations?
     (c) How do we discern this?

 Introduction: This subject arose in email correspondence, where someone mentioned that "one of the most difficult things I had to surmount in leading an organization is managing "upwards" - i.e., when the boss or officers or founders are clueless as to how to build an organization, and in many respects they work against you." This scenario might apply, also, to organizational consultants and coaches, yet this question is framed from the perspective "from within" a given organization.