What’s New ‘Fey Lure’ Issue

I found the original pieces on the Chicago Reader's website and paid the five bucks
to download it. Head to the library or spend the five bucks. It's one of the best
literature purchases I've ever made. Here's the Chicago Reader URL. You can
download the whole piece by looking in the Archives for Lee Sandlin and "Are We
Finally Losing The War?" :
http://www.chireader.com/

Getting Real 2002
We postponed our 2002 Getting Real Gathering (what we were calling eXpose
Conference in our prior What's New column). The whole story of the gathering, from
conception to postponement lives on the Heretics' Forum, where I kept a journal of
the idea as it unfolded. Here's that URL:
http://pc.wiki.net/wiki.cgi?GettingRealJournal

The idea, as most of you might remember, was to conduct a conference on the
subject of failure. I remain convinced that this was a worthy concept. We developed
a “Fail Safe Kit” for use during the gathering. We also developed some delightful
and sustaining connections within our community. We have reschedules this
gathering for the same week in 2003, April 28, 29, 30, and May 1. Stay tuned for
more details.

Open Enrollment Learnings
There's an old adage in consulting that says no one else can do your marketing for
you. True North has over the years engaged in several "associations" with
institutions involved in sponsoring open enrollment workshops. The most long-lived
of these was our association with The Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and
Technology's Continuing Education program. We started way back in 1996. Mastering
Projects Workshop has weathered several changes of administration at OGI. Last
year's tech stock tumble and last summer's merger with the Oregon Health
Sciences University brought significant changes at OGI. Enrollments went from
reliably full to non-existent, with most classes simply cancelling sections rather
than play to a handful or fewer.

Our workshops (when held) continued to be wildly successful, with very high scores
on participant feedback forms and, most important for us, continuing connections via
in house workshops, follow-up sessions, our Attic Sale, and the Getting Real
Gathering. True to our original vision, we were not simply presenting workshops, we
were building a community. As with any experiential workshop, each class attracts
one participant who comes looking to be told what to do- to be given the cookbook
for managing projects. Our workshops - both in-house and open enrollment - have
always generated bi-polar feedback, a two humped distribution of satisfaction. (This,
I understand, is a common component of all experiential workshops. See Embracing
Contraries by Peter Elbow ISBN 0195046617 for a deeper explanation of the
learning theory involved.) Our clients and our workshop participants understand this
feature. Many over the years have left the workshop unsettled with their learnings,
only to report back months or years later, appreciating us for the learnings that
they finally integrated. Many of our most supportive community members left the
experience upset.

As sponsor, OGI became increasingly focused upon point-of-sale pleasing their
customer since the business turndown and the OHSU merger. The comments of those
participants who came looking for reinforcement of their notions of "right"
methodology and "orthodox" technique (two by our count in the last year) weighed
increasingly heavily on OGI's administrators. Earlier this year, we received a
letter from them, explaining that due to the strong negative feedback from a select
portion of those attending the workshop (again, two by our count in the last year,)
they would be suspending the sessions scheduled after April 2002. (Checking the
OGI site, I see that they have scheduled instead a workshop that focuses on
reinforcing "right" methodology and "orthodox" technique. Hmmmmm)

As the old adage says, no one else can do your marketing for you. We will continue to
offer open enrollment workshops in the Portland area. Watch our website and our
newsletter for notice. Our last OGI workshops were mostly populated with friends
of friends, people referred to the workshop by those who found real value attending
the workshop. This represents the finest marketing strategy, far superior to any
other method. Marketing in this business can never get very far from the
relationships between the real people engaging in the real work. Though the
aspiration springs eternally in every consultant (me included!) that someone else
could promote their work, this aspiration really represents a form of denial. A
denial of the responsibility, which remains a golden opportunity, to connect directly
with prospective community.

I appreciate OGI for the many years of support and service, and I wish them well
as they pursue a new identity for their organization.

Follow-up Sessions
Our Mastering Projects Workshop follow-up sessions have been evolving over the
last few years. Years ago, when we created the follow-up session agenda, we usually
framed it around Chapter Five- Sustaining Your Managable Project Over Time topics.
Increasingly, we have turned the agenda over to the participants. The agenda
focuses upon those issues most interesting to those who show up and, interestingly,
the agendas have become more and more focused upon simple conversation. Just
getting the stories out. Why? I believe simple conversation has become next to
impossible to schedule into our increasingly tightly scheduled work lives. Chronos,
the Greek god of time, rules. Karios, the Greek god of timelessness, suffers.

So, the recent conversations have been rich. In our last follow-up session at OGI,
my son Wilder attended to illustrate the conversation, resulting in a remarkable
mural of images that captured the key metaphors uncovered there. We have the
unforgettable image of one participant who travelled from Reno to attend this half
day event in Hillsboro, portrayed in boxing gloves and a hard hat, the garb she
showed up wearing for a status meeting. A brush polishing a sailboat fitting
illustrated another's explanation of the purpose for seemingly useless ritual. The
maze and the bridge which would not meet in the middle (or was it muddle?) captured
other stories. The runner, speeding toward a finish line strung across the edge of a
deep pit, flowed out of another's story.

Meg Wheatley says that all accomplishments start with a conversation. We are
learning that many accomplishments, including the Mastering Projects Workshop, end
there, too.

If you have not made it back for a MPW follow-up session, I encourage you to enroll
in an upcoming one. Call us for details. 509 527-9773

Love and Marriage
Preparations for our May 25th wedding continue at publication time. We plan an
amazing convergence. Besides family, several will attend whom we met through
workshops. We met the minister who will marry us when he attended our workshop in
the summer of 2000. (Come to think of it, he had some choice words to offer about
the experience, which started a conversation with Amy, which continued the
relationship at a deeper level.) I have switched out the “peeing guy” fountainhead,
which I installed in the backyard pond for my fiftieth birthday celebration last
summer, and we have been pruning and preening the yard. Amy's felled three trees
which had outgrown their space. (Yes, she does know the Lumberjack song from
Monty Python.) We will sandwich a honeymoon in July between client work. Such is
the life.

New Relationships
I am very pleased to announce some new associations. Mark G. Gray, who has taken a
leave of absence from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he has worked as
a physicist the past seven years, to join True North pgs as a consultant. He has
already helped facilitate several workshops and developed a presentation called
"Mastering Research Projects: The Autobiography of a Feral Project Manager" I
will post a link to a QuickTime movie of Mark’s May 15, 2002 Los Alamos National
Laboratory delivery of this talk when it becomes available. Mark’s email address is
markggray@earthlink.net.

Susie Brame, who has served as the registrar of Weinberg and Weinberg’s Problem
Solving Leadership workshop, and who has helped True North pgs out as registrar
for our offerings in the past, joins True North in a more definate role. Recently
moved back to her Portland home, she will be responsible for marketing True North’s
workshops and services. Her decades of experience working with training and
consulting firms will bring a new depth and breadth to our community building
efforts. Susie’s email address is suzeque@aol.com.

A Secret Or Two
Have you heard?

The End of PSL?
The last Weinberg and Weinberg Problem Solving Leadership (PSL) Workshop will be
conducted September 9-14, 2002 in New Mexico. The enrollment’s filled as of this
writing. Join the waiting list by contacting Susie Brame at s uzeque@aol.com. I have
been associated with this fine experience since I attended as a participant in 1990
and joined as a faculty member in 1993. This has been the most satisfying affiliation
of my professional life.

Jerry has wisely chosen not to pass his workshop on to anyone’s stewardship. He
was a part of the group that inherited Virginia Satir’s material, and the experience
fragmented and destroyed many long-standing relationships. Even very congruent
communities tend to crumble under the burden of such legacies. In earlier
conversations with the PSL faculty, we made plans for the continuation of Jerry’s
work. True North spent two years studying how this material might be integrated
into our business, designing a new PSL brochure and newsletter in the process.
I have gotten to know several long-standing PSL supporters. Interest remains
among some of them in sponsoring another “initiating experience” to replace PSL in
the world. I have been talking with these people, posing my ideas for such a
community, and these conversations leave me convinced that there could be a place
for such a community. Expect to hear much more on this subject in the very near
future.

Back’s Back:
In 1989, I spent the best part of a week bent over double under a porch, cleaning
out stuff so the house I really didn’t want to move out of could be sold. The stuff I
scrounged out from under that porch was there when I bought the house nine years
earlier, but the buyer’s lender wouldn’t finance the house unless that treasure trove
of left overs was removed. I could almost stretch my legs out straight under there
if I bent over double. I started that work standing up straight but finished it
unable to stand quite upright.

It took me thirteen years to wend my way through conflicting diagnoses and my own
conservative acceptance strategies, but this March, I finally went under the knife
and had the surgery that would have prevented thirteen years of progressively more
intense pain. I am grateful that I did not have the surgery thirteen years ago. I am
very pleased to have had the surgery now.

The experience taught me more than I can easily relate. I learned (again) that not
everything can be resolved by changing my mind. I learned about my body’s ability to
compensate for excruciating pain; this is a terrific learning to have as I enter my
later middle age.

My key learning (again) centers around how I deal with paradoxes. There might be a
lesson in here for you, too. For years I said I was embracing conservative
treatments (massage, exercise, acupuncture, etc) to avoid surgery’s pain and
inconvenience. By the time I finally chose surgery, the pain and inconvenience of
avoiding surgery had long before surpassed the pain and inconvenience of a hundred
surgeries, yet I didn’t notice the point where I’d passed my original boundary, when
my avoidance of pain and inconvenience became its opposite. I could have lived a
painless decade. Instead, I silently constructed a tottering tower of compensating
behaviors which kept me safely trapped within a belief system long after it had
stopped working.

I see the same thing happen on projects. In fact, more projects suffer from this
than do not. Why? The project plan’s at fault. Plans work to propose a path toward a
destination, but in so doing, they also blind us to other possibilities. Most projects
suffer some consequences from this self-imposed blindness. They miss opportunities.
Most do what I did with my back, they defend strongly against information which, if
accepted, could utterly tranform their effort. Consultants make a good living
helping to disable projects from these unnecessary but completely human defenses.
My back’s back. I’m moving through the world like a man 2/3 my age.

Recommended Reading
Turning to One Another: 
Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, by
Margaret J Wheatley ISBN: 1576751457
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001

We visited with Meg at a pot luck dinner at Craig Neal’s house in February. We
attended a Thought Leader Gathering (http://www.thoughtleadergathering.com)
where she attended as the thought leader the next day. This was one of the most
moving experiences of my professional life. Meg says, “I believe we can change the
world if we start talking to one another again.”

Meg believes that all significant change begins with a conversation. This book
reminds me of the power we have close at hand, and of the often overlooked
authority we each possess to become an agent for real change. We have been
encouraging more simple conversation with our clients. There are subjects that
cannot be meaningfully discussed under the stifling control of an agenda or a
schedule. The most significant changes seem to originate here.

Meg startled the gathering by declaring that everyone in the room had been in
special training all of their life to face the upcoming difficult situations. She
believes that there has never been a generation faced with the magnitude of
difficulties those now alive will face, but that we are exactly the proper group to
be facing these difficulties. I found her message extremely unsettling and
completely reassuring. I strongly recommend this fine reminder!

Teaching With Your Mouth Shut 
by Donald L. Finkel, Peter Elbow ISBN: 0867094699 
Boynton/Cook, 2000

Finkel (may his soul rest in peace) outlines the joys and the difficulties of helping
students connect with their most powerful and enduring teacher, themselves. I have
long employed simulation and personal reflection as mediums for teaching adults, and
found within this book much of the wisdom I have discovered for myself. Finkel
notes that for many, their most powerful learnings have not happened in a classroom
with a teacher present. Even so, we persist in creating classroom "learning"
situations, just as if that were the proper medium for learning.

As another reviewer noted, these techniques might not gain immediate acceptance
from students or administration (my story about the OGI above comes to mind).
Remember, resistance IS the first stage of acceptance. For me, the tangle centers around my neediness to control how the learning will unfold battling with the student's neediness to simply be told. Since for most learning, there is (and can be) no simple "just do this" explanation, whenever I crumble under my neediness and simply tell, I steal a learning opportunity from my student. Stealing learning opportunities might not be the best use of any teacher’s energies. Finkel explains how to set the stage and how to win this wrestling match with yourself. Explaining these opportunities away because of "unmotivated students" or "unsupportive administrations" merely guarantees that the neediness will win.

I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. It should be considered essential
reading for anyone fool enough to pin the title of “Teacher” or "Leader" to their
lapel. Like every competent professional, leading requires that the practitioner
understand that they cannot delight their customer by simply giving them what they
want in the way they want it. True delight creeps in under the guise of novelty and
surprise, as unexpected as Christmas in July. It sometimes requires that the leader
turn their mouth to the SHUT position so their “student’s” or “community member’s”
brain can find its own ON position.

Whistle While You Work: 
Heeding Your Life's Calling 
by Richard J. Leider and
David A. Shapiro, 
ISBN: 1576751031
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler, 2001

I happened upon this book in the local library, one of those encounters where the
book slips off of the shelf trying to catch your eye. This book has much to say about
finding your purpose in your work. The advice leans toward the unconventional,
though, because the search they describe has two directions: you searching for your
purpose while your purpose searches for you. I found this frame reassuring. I’m not
alone in this pursuit, but I am being pursued.

What would your “calling card” look like? How much passion would it elicit in you and
in those who meet you? This book might help you stumble on your first glimpse (or,
as Ogden Nash called it, your first glimp) of your life’s calling. If you’re more
familiar with your tune, the book also offers some insights for further developing
what you already know you should be doing into what you spend more of your time
actually doing.

I imagine a world where everyone pursues their calling with the worthy dedication.
Those of you who have attended our Mastering Projects Workshop know that I
encourage, as a necessary condition for success, using your project as a medium for
pursuing what you find truely interesting. Whistle While You Work offers some
practical advice for actually pulling it off.

See you next time!

David Schmaltz 5/21/02