Stories
There are stories about the leadership and engagement work out there. They are not mine nor are they mine to tell.
The work started for me in 1992. I had just finished some post graduate studies in learning organization theory and practice at the U of T (O.I.S.E.) in Toronto and coming back to my federal government employer with a brand new philosophy and some great new tools.
The work was well received and quite soon, was expanded into the whole federal system, free-lanced into the BC and other governments and not for profit agencies. I also found a core of early adopting practitioners in folks like Lieutenant Commander Bob Thompson, Sylvie LaPointe, Karen Bonner, Rachel Pollard and Shelley Sullivan from the BC government and Ian Chisholm from the private sector. Later we were joined by so many interested and interesting people from management, the front lines and especially the hundreds of people who took up the work as their own little “corner of the desk” practice.
If we could hold a conference once a year with even a third of these people, just to hear stories about that one afternoon when we stared doing Stand-ups, held a Work-out on more effective communication, put our whole system into a Café, learned the Feedback Tool or transformed another boring meeting with the Interview matrix tool.
So, today on this website I am putting that wish out into the universe …
What is your story?
There are three ways we can tell these lost stories …
- You can write it and I’ll put it here on the site.
- I could interview you and write the story
- I could interview you and we will put it here as a mini podcast.
Managers … did a tool; work for you on a piece of work?
Practitioner’s … successes or failures?
Front line … did you get to participate in something that felt different and seemed to get the job done better?
Lost Stories … out there waiting for a voice.
Churchill ~ 1969
Listen to the story as you follow along ... With a beautiful hippie wife and two little flower children we took the Muskeg Special, a train full of stories, to Churchill, Manitoba in the fall of 1969. It was the quintessential late sixties...
Leonard
It is the Juno weekend of 2018 as I write this little story. Twenty-seven years ago, I went to my first and I suppose only Juno Awards show. am not sure how I might have scammed one more blessed press pass but it may have come from Sask. Report magazine looking for another story on our beloved Saskatchewan roots musician, Colin James. Colin did end up with Best Male Vocalist later that evening.
Joni
In spite of the full plane I was even more delighted to see that the seat beside me was empty. It stayed empty until the very last minute when a little old lady (that is to say someone of my age) shuffles in beside me. I realize that I am looking into the eyes of Joni Mitchell. This is the person who will be my seat mate for the next four hours unless I do something to piss her off and get thrown into the back of the plane for the rest of the trip. This is going to be epic or tragic, I feel, depending on my next move.