Leymah Gbowee ... I had a dream, it said "Gather the women"

"I had a dream... the voice said, Gather the Women" ...

Leymah Gbowee, peace activist and Nobel prize winner, speaks in the first of three short films by Errol Morris

A link to the films is here: Three Films About Peace Errol Morris


I watched the film in the dead of night, unable to sleep. 
After watching, I was too moved and too inspired to sleep.

What can we see in this story?

It works as a human story on so many levels: politics, leadership, courage, gender, transformation, achievement ...

From a place of utter despair in 1990, follwing a slaughter in a church in the depths of a civil war, questioning her faith in herself and god, Leymah Gbowee found anger. Facing Charles Taylor's brutal regime, her dream told her to "gather the women". Initially 7 women gathered around a table, with $10 between them. 

Occupying a soccer field in the center of town, their protest began. Gradually 2500 women came to sit on the field. Charles Taylor has to pass the field twice a day. Eventually the women gained a meeting.

"We are tired of warWe are tired of beggingWe are tired of our children being rapedPlease tell this to the President of Liberia"

Leymah said, to Taylor's protocol officer.

"I was angry" she said, but not violent. "Come at them with non-violence and they don't know what to do. We spoke truth to power without saying a negative word against him"

The protest led to Taylor agreeing to attend a peace conference, and the women traveled with him, camping outside as "the conscience" of the talks to "do the right thing".

The peace talks dragged on: weeks became months and the women ran out of money and food. At the same time the violence increased. Leymah questioned her faith in non-violence, doubting its effectiveness in the face of the mounting brutality and carnage. She sent for more women, four bus loads, and began a sit-in outside the talks, refusing to move, until peace was agreed.The security forces arrived, threatening her arrest. She said:

"I will make it very easy for you ...I will strip naked so you can arrest me ... And they ran away" she recalled.

In a country where rape had become commonplace, this was a powerful re-framing and taking of power. 

"When you are raped ...people tear off your clothes..use force to make you submit ... but when you are so desperate for peace that you take off your clothes ...stripped of all of my beliefs ...you've taken it all, I'm giving you the last bit of my pride ...finally they listened"

This short film in which Leymah tells her story speaks to so many of the challenges of ecological and social justice faced around the world right now. There is much to learn here:


First, it speaks deeply about using different kinds of power. Using the terminology of VeneKlasen & Miller (2002) one sees how the women used "power with" (that is power enabled by coming together in a common interest) to challenge "power over" (the formal power of the military leadership). As well as this, Leymah's energy and anger, and her willingness to act, seems to be "power within", which the authors see as a claim to power arising from "the common human search for dignity and fulfillment" - the power to hope. Finally woven through the story is "power to": Leymah's individual power, which when linked to others fed into "power with" .... I have attached a link describing the work of VeneKlasen and Miller, and providing other resources on power and transformation here

Secondly, the story speaks about power in another way. It makes me think of John Gaventa's work on "Finding the space for change: a power analysis". Gaventa places value on finding and using "spaces" for power. Spaces can mean physical spaces, but also "opportunities, moments and channels where citizens can act to potentially affect policies, discourses, decisions and relationships that affect their lives and interests" (2006)

In Leymah's case such spaces included the table where the first seven women gathered, the soccer field, the meeting space where the 2500 confronted Taylor, the buses to the peace conference, and the corridor where the women mounted their sit in and threatened to strip naked.Space "is a social product" : it is not merely "there". So when Leymah threatens to strip naked, she creates a new kind of space, shifting a boundary. Taking the notion of a boundary from Foucault, Hayward sees power as "the network of social boundaries that delimit fields of possible action". Leymah's story is a story of creative boundary shifting that creates freedom through "shaping the social limits that define what is possible" (Hayward, 1998)

Thirdly, the story is filled with examples of re-framing and shifting strategic position. For me this is a rich illustration of Bill Torbert's "Four Territories of Experience", a note on which I have included below. The ability to go beyond merely shifting action, into shifts of strategic "points of intervention" in-and-on a system is an essential part of systemic transformation. In making such shifts a great dwal of "re-framing" occurs: shifting the deep and usually unspoken assumptions about roles, power, rights, conversations and so on, and changing the language in which such conversations occur.


There is, I am sure, much more that can be learned from the short film and this rich story. But for now I have focused on power, framing and strategic positions within the system, as one set of sources of systemic intervention and transformation.

Chris Nichols (October 2014)

A Supplementary Note on Bill Torbert's Four Territories of Experience

This framework offers a genuinely useful and powerful insight into the levels of learning and an aid to reflection to allow creative action.

The Four Territories of Experience are illustrated below:

We use it like this:

First, pay attention to the First Loop of learning (single loop learning), which is the relationship between Action-behaviours and Outcomes-results.  It is useful and important in first person inquiry to be curious about how our behaviours result in outcomes: what do we do and how do we do it? And how does this serve us, or not serve us, in influencing the world in ways we desire? If we are not getting the kind of outcomes we seek, what flexibility do we have to make changes, subtle or otherwise, in our actions and behaviours?

This is where having good peer support is useful, and keeping a journal matters a great deal. Being systematic about noticing actions and outcomes and taking time to make sense of what happened and why …. 

This is right at the heart of first person inquiry. And observing these relationships as they move, as you experiment and achieve (or do not achieve), all of this is Single Loop learning and is powerful. It is also where most traditional management / leadership courses stop and it is not the full picture.

Second, pay attention to the role you place in the system you are seeking to influence: these might be formal roles, informal roles or ways of playing roles. Your choice of role is “strategic” and can often be flexed. In the life of Nelson Mandela, for example the move between politically disinterested lawyer, political activist in the peace movement, freedom fighter in the military campaign of the ANC, prisoner, negotiator, Presidential candidate and Statesman were each different roles he played within the system at different times.  Sometimes strategic roles are played simultaneously (ANC leader AND negotiator AND prisoner for example.

Noticing the roles you play in a system and noticing the flexibility you have to occupy different roles is a massively creative act in developing potential narratives of yourself in a system. Each role creates the potential of a different range of legitimate behaviours and with it the possibility of different outcomes.

It is very likely that in your work you will bump against the barriers of your existing strategic roles and will work to expand or change these, and you may as a result experiment with occupying different strategic positions as you seek to influence systems and processes. Again peer support and journaling is a very important part of being effective in this Double Loop learning.

Third, you will notice the relationship between all of the above and your deeper intentions, values and purposes.  Sometimes being clear on your purpose will provide a source of strength to endure the difficulties of playing a strategic role when this might be costly. At other times it may explain a reluctance or weariness in a role, because either your purpose isn’t being served or because you have purposes that conflict and undermine your action.

Paying attention to purpose is therefore important a difficult Triple Loop learning.  This can be the most personal, most demanding reflection loop. The support of trusted friends and colleagues on the journey, including learning group tutors, is very valuable here.

If you want to pursue this more deeply you might consider these Bill Torbert, et al, sources:

http://www.harthill.co.uk/assets/files/Articles/08_DAI_Integ_Conf_Torbert_et_al.pdf

http://www.williamrtorbert.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/HAR-chapter-Torbert-Taylor.pdf

Sources:

VeneKlasen L & Miller V, (2002), A New Weave of Power

http://www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/expressions-of-power/

Gaventa J, (2006), Finding the space for change: a power analysis, IDA Bulletin, Vol 37, No 6, November 2006, downloaded from link below:

http://www.powercube.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/finding_spaces_for_change.pdf

Hayward C R, (1998) De-facing Power, cited in Gaventa (2006)

For once I liked something I read in Harvard Business Review. Christine Riordan’s article has it right: diversity without inclusion is useless.HBR Diversity is Useless

I have no time at all for the political socially correct form of diversity. The issue is far too important for that.  We need difference, real difference. And we need it profoundly and with urgency.

The problems we face as western industrial society, and as leaders in the kind of organisations that this society tends to create, simply cannot be solved from with the frame that created the problems in the first place. 

Unfortunately the frames are deeply held in our socio-cultural and neuro-psychological fabric: we can’t just “snap out of them”. We need the insights that come from engaging people with really different life experience, socio-cultural norms and different framings to join together in real collaboration to address these issues.

But that is where it gets hard: because we tend to celebrate difference only to the point where it is sufficiently familiar to us to be recognisable as valid.

Real difference runs the risk of rejection and exclusion because it references evidence and experience that lies outside our framing. It can sound off-beam, irrelevant and just plain wrong. We may want real difference, we may need real difference, and we may still drive it away despite our best efforts. 

To see how pervasive and powerful this is, just take note of Henri Tajfel’s work on social identity theory and “minimal groups”.  

Tajfel’s 1971 work showed just how minor an affiliation we need to feel to a group to begin to be prejudiced against other groups. Minimal groups were called that because they were formed on the basis of things that didn’t matter. But still, based on inclusion in such a minimal (apparently trivial) group, people will exclude, reject, ignore and harbour prejudice against members of other equally minimal groups.(For more on this listen to the BBC Radio programme podcast at  Tajfel on Mind Changers  )

At a more playful level, look at Jeff Milner’s “backmasking” site.  Backmasking

Play Stairway to Heaven backwards and try to make sense of it. Then read the reverse lyrics and listen to it again. You’ll hear every word. This “top down” processing is a powerful part of our neuro-cognitive make up. We hear what we have a filter to hear, we see what we have filters to see. And often these “top down” filters will be provided by the in-group of which we are part. 

Someone from a really different group will sound like they talk nonsense because they won’t fit our filters.

Watch out!! Because this is where we destroy real diversity and lose cognitive complexity. This is essentially dumbing down on seeing and conversation to the norms of the in-group. It is the ultimate societal risk and squanders much intelligence and talent.

OK, So What Can I DO?

Well, we run a two years MSc program to help people experiment with seeing and being different, and becoming open to rich and diverse ways of knowing, seeing and being.  

But if you can’t do that, at least do this: STOP!!

• Stand Still and Notice when you need some diversity. The more you are facing a strategic challenge the more you need cognitive complexity and diversity of framing.
• Take Time to notice your own assumptions and be aware about where they come from. Why are you so sure that this is the right data, the right way of seeing? On what authority are you accepting this source of expertise?
• Open your eyes, ears and mind to other stories, especially the ones that are the most difficult to hear and see, as these will be the ones of diversity most at odds with your own framing
• Privilege participation, become biased in favour of processes that “greenhouse” and protect dissident and diverse views. It is easy to kill them off: don’t allow diversity to die on your watch, don’t allow the subtle bullying by the majority culture. It is a leadership act to pay attention to real participation. Privilege real participation and collaboration.

Strong cultures make great organisations great, but they also blind great organisations to real difference. Superficial diversity won’t do the job. 

Make the most of every bit of complexity, intelligence and difference you have. 

It’s a real leadership act to do so.

Mary Poppins as Provocateur and Change Agent ....

.... Practically Perfect Change Agency, from the World's Ultimate Alchemist

A blog-post by Chris Nichols
August 2014

I saw Mary Poppins at the cinema this week - and the more I watched, the more impressed I became. 

This was a massively innovative film for its time (Technicolor, animatronics, integrated animation) ....  It was also incredibly far sighted in its core messages from a book of the 1930s and a film of 1964. 

It speaks volumes to today's concerns in so many ways. I think it has genuinely got much to teach leaders and organizational consultants, indeed anyone working to intervene in complex systems to bring about profound change ....

Here's why:


Enchantment and "Re-Wilding" ... 

Above all, for me, this film is about "re-enchanting" the disenchanted world. Bringing new life to No 17 Cherry Tree Lane, transforming the dead-to-the-world bankers .... About restoring connection to the birds, bringing in new narratives, music, new ways of seeing the world ... 

Mary Poppins leads the family in a dance beyond the confines of Mr Banks logical and mechanical worldview ("a British bank is run with precision, a British home requires nothing less") .... 

Mr Banks has lost all connection to wildness. Mary Poppins brings the sacred feminine to re-enchant the banker, the bank and the life of the children, returning connection to wonder, to wildness and to life itself.

It calls out to me in the same way as Morris Berman's (1981) Re-Enchanting the World And Frijtof Capra's The Web of Life (1996) about the limitation of the mechanistic and the fragmented, and the desperate need to breath life into our work and our organisations ....

Paradox, politics and power ....  

There is delicious paradox in the way Mrs Banks simultaneously acts as suffragette activist and compliant wife. One minute marching around getting the servants singing in support of women's votes - yes, the servants :-), and the next scurries to put away her suffragette sash ("you know how much 'the cause' aggravates Mr Banks" ). She is both empathetic to the children and largely abandons them to nannies and servants while she marches, being "absent" almost as much as Mr Banks himself ...And Mrs Banks is no fool, she picks her battles.

Mary Poppins uses power differently, setting her own terms for her "contract" ("Hmmmm, I'll give you a week as a trial")  whilst always apparently respecting Mr Banks' positional power she never fails to subvert it (such as when she leads him into taking the children to the bank) ... She works within the frame, to shift the frame: just delightful.

It's a lovely study of the many faces of power, and also in respecting and working artfully with paradox, without trying to take every power struggle as a battle to be faced head on. 

This reminds me of two sources of influence on my own practice and framing:

• Meyerson and Scully's (1995) work on Tempered Radicalism - the kind of radicalism that exists sufficiently "within the frame" of organisations such that it can act from within without causing outright "tissue type" rejection or terminal conflict
• Joyce Fletcher's Disappearing Acts (2001) work on women's leadership roles, in which she observes how many of the most powerful acts of making teams and relationships, acts of enormous power and significance, get disappeared and go unrewarded in orthodox organisational culture

Framing and frame shifting .... 

Much of the wonder of Mary Poppins work happens through frame shifting: diving into pavement art, flying up through fireplaces to dance on rooftops and staircases of smoke ... These are the windows of shape-shifting through which her access to other worlds become possible. 

It is the same in organisations and leadership. We are totally, cognition and imagination, the prisoner of our framing, and our framing language and imagery. The more we notice the framing the more we can use it intelligently. The more we dare to play with the framing, the more possibilities emerge.

This speaks to me of the work of both George Lakoff and Gareth Morgan (2006). Lakoff has written many books on how we form deeply held neuro-cognitive frames that influence how we see, speak, sense make and act - see for example Don't Think of an Elephant (2004). Morgan's (2006) Images of Organization showed how pervasive the most commonplace ways of seeing organisations - and of the implication for action that flow from this.

The ability to recognize frames, language, imagery, narratives and their consequences for action, is utterly essential in all organizational work. Much of Bill Torbert's (2005) contribution is about building the skills to recognize pervasive frames and work creatively with them using, and legitimizing, multiple narratives. I am also hugely influenced by my colleague Geoff Mead (2014), from whom I have learned much about the nature of narrative in organization and leadership work. 

When Mary Poppins leaps through the pavement art into a world of talking penguins and free-willed merry-go-round horses, she is doing Torbert's post-conventional work, in shaking the frame and allowing the emergence of magic. We need this work much more in organizations to allow us to see the possibility of addressing problems that absolutely cannot be resolved within the existing frame.



Focusing on life and what gives life ... 

Mary Poppins comes in with the east wind. East is the direction in the medicine wheel where native shamans turn to draw on passion, fire and spirit. When Mr Banks passion is dead, the wind from the East sweeps in to breathe new life. 

And so much of our organizational world is dead, or at least not working in the service of life. We need a gust of insight and life energy from the East.

When David Whyte (1994) talks about the day we look at the line on the corporate graph and realize that, somehow, the fire has gone out, that is when we are right there with Mr Banks, dead in the heart. 

When we work to serve orgnanization efforts that kill nature or harm people, and go home feeling sick in our souls, we are right there with Mr Banks, failing to see the bird woman on the steps of St Pauls, far from our deepest sense of being alive.

This is where the work of eco-psychology calls most potently to me, including work in the spirit of Joanna Macy (1998 / 2012), but also Giles Hutchins (2012) and the whole influence of "permaculture" as a design system (Holmgren, 2003 ). Each in their own way opens the possibility of ways of living, working and designing in ways that serve life rather than harm life. Each offers both insight and practical ways of working that re-connect fragmented and death-serving ways of being and working. 

Mary Poppins brings the Banks' household alive ... And as David Whyte writes in his poem Sweet Darkness ...

"Anything or anyone
That does not bring you alive
Is too small for you"

Even in the darkest of places there will be a glimmer of life: Appreciative Inquiry and solutions focused interventions allow us to work with the slenderest hint of positive energy. Let's make sure we use whatever opening we have to do only work that is big enough to bring us, our organizations alive. 

Stillness, Season and Rest ....

Mary Poppins in many ways represents the positive aspects of the Medicine Woman archetype (from Olivier Mythodrama, Olivier Mythodrama "What Next") She is animated, visionary, provocative, makes changes through story ... and has all the energy that goes with that.

But she has enough Great Mother archetypal energy when she needs it. I think her lullaby to the over-excited children is a masterpiece of paradoxical intervention:

Stay awake, don't rest your head
Don't lie down upon your bed
While the moon drifts in the skies
Stay awake, don't close your eyes
Though the world is fast asleep
Though your pillow's soft and deep
You're not sleepy as you seem
Stay awake, don't nod and dream

(c) Sherman Brothers / Disney 
http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Sherman_Brothers

Here's the link to YouTube for the clip Mary Poppins Lullaby

Simply magnificent as an example of a paradoxical intervention. No struggle: simply working with a shamanic sense of how to change energy. Leaders and organization practitioners can learn a lot from that.

There's also wisdom in recognizing the need for rest. Not everything can be done on the back of incessant upward energy. To everything, there is a season. This wisdom, that sometimes however great the energy there needs to be space for rest and reflection, has been represented in learning from the most ancient times, in yoga, in spirituality, in health. 

There is power in balance and we neglect it at our peril.



Humility over Hubris ... 

Somewhere in the film Bert says to Mary "the children love their father more than they love you".  May says, "and that's how it should be". In the end, the wind changes, her work is done, Mr Banks takes the children to play, and Mary flies away on the shifting wind ....

There is a lot of wisdom here about playing the right role, and about letting go & moving on ...

One of my great teachers Professor Bill Critchley once said that a consultant should play the smallest possible role in any intervention consistent with still getting the job done. I think this is massively important. It is so easy for us, as consultant, teacher or leader to become the central figure in the drama, the essential one in the spotlight. It is tempting and it is rarely right.

In the words of the Rule of St Benedict, humility is "the center piece of the true life". It is also essential in organizational work if the change in the system is to outlast the intervention. I am not calling for false humility here: more the knowing humility that the role is vital but transient. You might temporarily sit around the fire-pit, but it is not really your fire. There is often a vital role to be played in bringing difference, allowing a shift of frame to occur, revealing a new possibility. It is shamanic Trickster work in the deepest creative sense.

As Lewis Hyde writes in Trickster Makes this World (2008):

"A trickster is a boundary crosser. Every group has its edge, it's sense of in and out, and trickster is always there ...making sure there is commerce .... Trickster is the creative idiot .. the wise fool .. the speaker of sacred profanities" ...

"The trickster does not live near the hearth ... he passes through when there is a moment of silence... he enlivens with his mischief.."

Whilst it is wonderfully to become a central figure, a star in the spotlight, this is not the true work. We are not of the organization, and even as leaders inside the firm are often creating a future in which we will not fully share when our work is done.

Like Mary Poppins, when the work is done we have to let go and move on and leave the work to others.


I was utterly blown away by what I saw in this movie, and I will forever respect the woman who created this character. She managed to create a delightful comic figure of warmth and energy who embodied the wisdom of the ages: "practically perfect in every way", yet slipping out without ceremony, to serve others elsewhere.

CHRIS NICHOLS is Co-Director of the Ashridge MSc in Sustainability and Responsibility, a two year part time journey of discovery, challenge, insight, tears and joy, despair and plenty of Wow! Find out more at

Ashridge MSc - with tons of WOW factor and Much Much More

Chris is also an organisational consultant with 25 years of experience in over 50 countries who works with many of the world’s biggest companies addressing their most pressing challenges in innovative ways. He is co-founder of GameShift -  www.gameshift.co.uk

Not all of his work is magical all of the time, but every bit of it is steered by purpose, exploration and expanding our ways of knowing and being.

Chris.nichols@ashridge.org.uk

On Twitter at chrisnicholsT2i

Eating with our Eyes Open

I don't know if we are exactly what we eat, but how we choose to eat certainly has a lot to say in framing who, and how, we are.

And we face some big challenges: with an ever growing global population and resource crunches of every kind looming, we need to think carefully and creatively about how we feed ourselves.

This theme was picked up by BBC World Service today on in the Balance. Looking mainly at the technological options for meeting our demand for more. Where on earth is all this food going to come from?  With the population set to top 9 billion by 2050, and almost 1 billion currently going hungry, what hope is there?

BBC Listen Again (time limited)



Starting with a reminder of the ever present threat of population outrunning food supply, as Malthus predicted in the late 1700s, Colm O'Regan explored a number of technologists setting out to create tomorrow's food solutions. 

Broadly solutions were seen in these areas:

• Chemically fabricated foods: essentially astronaut food and nutritional shakes
• Creating new growing areas using seawater evaporation cooled greenhouses
• Improving wheat yields threefold by 2040
• Using entirely untapped plant species currently outside the human food chain
• Improving practices: using advanced technologies like "precision farming using GPS" and simple technologies like social media
• Eliminating waste: about 50% of food is wasted before it gets to market, and more is wasted afterwards
• Edible environmental packaging

I was most hooked by Joshua Tetrick, CEO of Hampton Creek HC webpage
Talking about using a wide range of plants not currently used or underused, he discussed how factory farmed chicken could be replaced by a plant substitute used for everything from baking to scrambled eggs.

And then there's Wikifoods, http://quantumdesigns.com/wikifoods/
a company working on using natural skins (such as peach skins) to create edible food packaging, making food more storable and transportable without environmental impact.

If you're interested in where food technology might be going, the programme is worth a listen.


It certainly brings up front and centre the question of how to eat wisely. The decisions we take on how we eat impact very deeply on our health, the societies and communities around us and the natural world of which we are part.  Our decisions also play into the balance of power between local players and global food corporations. It is a major systemic intervention every time we have lunch.

So how do we even begin to think about all of this?

I have been very impressed recently by the straightforward good sense of Julian Baggini's book The Virtues of the Table: How to Eat and Think.

It's not a polemic, it's not a how to do it book, it's not a cookbook ....It's a guide to some really good questions to ask about food and eating based on qualities we might aspire to in ourselves and in society.

I see it as a kind of action research outline for a self-guided reflection on food. Where we get it, how we choose it, what we do with it, and how we form the right relationship with it. 

Claire and I are using it ourselves during a period of reflection and experimentation on the food we eat, and we are in the process of inviting together a group of interested friends to form a shared exploration of food and eating ....

I'll let you know what emerges as the experiment goes on

But for now, eat wisely, eat well.

When Wow! and Jumping for Joy are not enough ....

When Wow! and Jumping for Joy are not enough ....

A Blog-post by Chris Nichols, August 2014



Tom Peters tweeted that training must make people “jump for joy” and shout Wow!

I like Joy and I like Wow ….

And I have huge regard for Tom Peters and his work on innovation.

But is there a time when all this "Wow" and "Jumping for Joy" just isn’t enough?

I have spent well over a decade producing executive education and corporate events that score massively on the popularity ratings.

I have a party piece conference gig that rocks them in the aisles.

I can make myself richer and more popular the more I get on that stage.  

And I often do. I love it and I love the feedback I get.

And often it is exactly the right thing to do.  Positive energy, “jumping for joy” and “shouting  WoW!” works.

But when is something else required?

We face some massive challenges as a species and as an ecosystem.

Our corporations need re-inventing, and our markets need transformation.  

We need a different way of being, with each other and with our planet, if future generations are to thrive.

I see a danger in doing only the work that makes us “Jump for Joy” and “Shout Wow!”

The outer work will never be puny

if the inner work is great

- Meister Eckhart

Sometimes there is a place for work that is hard, that demands sacrifice and challenges us to our very core.

Often when we are doing this work we do not "jump for joy" and we do not say "Wow" - that comes later...

We drag ourselves reluctantly to peer into the abyss.

We go into the dark and face the journey of self-discovery, of re-imagining our very being.

It is the very same journey taken by Dante, by Beowulf, by Thoreau, Muir, Arne Naess, Thomas Berry and countless others over the centuries.

There is a time for WOW! And for Jumping for Joy …

And there is a time for tears, and darkness. A time for stillness and finding the quiet voice that calls us to be braver than we can currently imagine.

Work that is all “Jumping for Joy” is work without balance.

Balance is dynamic and without balance, we fail.

But maybe the main issue here is that Tom is talking about “training” and maybe there "Wow" is enough.

I am talking about learning for profound change. And that demands a richer process.

CHRIS NICHOLS is Co-Director of the Ashridge MSc in Sustainability and Responsibility, a two year part time journey of discovery, challenge, insight, tears and joy, despair and plenty of Wow! Find out more at

Ashridge MSc - with tons of WOW factor and Much Much More

Chris is also an organisational consultant with 25 years of experience in over 50 countries who works with many of the world’s biggest companies addressing their most pressing challenges in innovative ways. 

Not all of his work is joyful all of the time, but every bit of it is steered by purpose, exploration and expanding our ways of knowing and being.

Chris.nichols@ashridge.org.uk

On Twitter at chrisnicholsT2i

Creative Sattvic Housing

Claire and I just spent a couple of days in Chris Seeley's shepherd's hut, which was very cosy, especially with the storm beating on the roof - quite wonderful ....Now we're home again in our tiny and lovely Dartmoor cottage ....

It set me thinking again about housing, because one of my main life challenges is to have somewhere to live that suits me, has enough space for my work, and doesn't cost so much that the cost of housing distorts the work I want to do simply to pay the bills ....

A friend of a friend has been looking at houses to buy near to Ashridge, and it makes my heart sink. It is so, so expensive up there. Cottages for £700,000, that kind of thing. About three times what I can buy based on Devon cottage prices .... Fed up of living out of suitcases, tired of renting flats I don't want ... But what do do instead??

It did make me think about my blogpost about the world's most expensive private house owned by Mukesh Ambani (learn about that house here Ambani House)

It brought to mind Satish Kumar's book The Spiritual Compass:

Satish reflects on the three gunas (from the sanskrit), or "basic qualities". He writes about:

• sattvic, which is the quality of calm purity and simple elegance. He compares it to..
• rajasic, which has energy and passion, but can be excessive, extravagant and showy, and
• tamasic, which has qualities of dullness, toxity, dark and depressing. 

The gunas can be applied to anything: food, work, homes, possessions, lifestyles ... I find them always a useful (if sometimes painful and challenging) guide, especially when I find myself yearning for more money, bigger houses and so on .... You can read more about the ideas here Resurgence Satish Kumar Review

Specifically in relation to houses, picking up Satish's book again made me revisit a great inspiration to me, Simon Dale's house. A simply beautiful eco-selfbuild. I think it is simply beautiful ....

Simon Dales webpage

And just today I saw in Permaculture magazine a feature on low cost low impact homes in Nicaragua ...
Permaculture Nicaragua article ....

There's a lot going on and people are being very creative in dreaming and making wonderful low cost homes that are in essence sattvic ... light, calm, elegant and rather wonderful


Maybe I am just not being creative enough yet .... and getting down about it isn't sattvic at all.

Still don't know what to do ... and I don't need to do it today.
A canal boat may be my best creative option :-)

REDACTED! That shale gas report in full

Well, here's good news.

All that money we spend on fighting wars so that people in far off places can have open and democratic government has not been wasted ....

The UK government's report on the rural economic and social effects of fracking is out .... and Caroline Lucas is on the radio complaining that it has been censored. So I had a look, being distrustful of most of what I hear on the radio ....

And look!! I have snipped in some extracts .....

And again ....

So I made a word cloud (thank you Tagxedo!) to celebrate UK democracy today ....

Let's go invade somewhere else and teach them how to run and open and fair government.

Read the report in full (well, as far as the censorship allows) here Shale Gas PDF