The work included teaching and convening discussion. It included meeting slowly and thoughtfully. It included finally being face to face with colleagues we have known only online. It included seeing friends we truly love and wish we lived closer to.

It also included seeing and experiencing some of the best our country has to offer. We found vibrant arts communities in St. Louis and Kansas City. We found innovative thinking about this sector’s potential in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska.

Against this backdrop, with the visionary and insightful help of Dave Svet of Spur Communications, Creating the Future’s essence came alive. In the next few days, I will unveil just what this effort will be.

The intent of the work is simple – to once and for all unleash this sector’s potential to create the world we want.

The path is simple as well – applying the best wisdom about personal change from every discipline (Psychology, Business Sales Process, Coaching, Belief Repatterning, Fundraising), to create the cause-and-effect critical path to that healthy, vibrant, peaceful world.

I’ll be writing about all of that here in the next few days. For now, though, in the spirit of giving thanks, this post is for everyone who has been part of what we now realize has been a year of gestation. Each of you reading this blog has added your wisdom and your spirit to Creating the Future.

It has been a year of growth, a year of gathering, a year that has felt like something powerful is coming together and in one final push, being born – something that will literally change everything.

Seeing it clearly now, we know our excitement has indeed been justified. And for that, both Dimitri and I give our most humble thanks.

With particular thanks to Dave Svet, Renata Rafferty, and Rick Carter. You have given us more than you can ever know.

Note: There is video in this post. If you’re viewing the post in your email or an RSS reader that doesn’t show video, please click through and read it on the web.

This is the final post – Part 9 – of the Community-Driven Tour 2010 to New Zealand.  (To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

It’s hard to imagine all we have done and accomplished and seen in just a month. Virtually every day included work of some sort, whether that work was engaging a group of 300 conference attendees, phone sessions with coaching clients, writing, thinking.

And here it was, Saturday afternoon, the day before our flight back to the U.S. After our exhilarating time in Dunedin, we were pleased when Aly offered her home as our resting place for Saturday night. We anticipated a quiet dinner, an early night to bed, followed by a quiet day of packing and preparing to leave on Sunday.

Silly silly us.

Aly picked us up at the airport following our flight from the South Island, excited to tell us that Garth was in town to teach a course and would be joining us for dinner.

We had just enough time for a walk before dinner. And so we headed east from Aly’s townhome, through the tall trees and steep sloping paths of Western Park, down towards the harbor. On that very last full day before headinghome, we ended up in the exact spot where we had spent our first morning, watching our first New Zealand sunrise. The perfect circle.

Dinner with Aly and Garth was another perfect circle – a long night laughing and sharing stories with the two people whose relentless efforts had brought us to the land we now loved and couldn’t wait to return to.

Sunday morning. Aly had offered to use our few remaining hours to show us “her” Auckland. “You’ve spent a lot of time in East Auckland. Let me show you West Auckland.” How could we say no?

After a quick stop for coffee and pastries, Aly drove us into the rainforest of the Waitakare Ranges, barely ½ hour outside the modern metropolis that is Auckland. It is hard to imagine the city abutting so close to the dense green we are suddenly surrounded by.

The Arataki Visitor’s Centre is the perfect spot for us newbies – an interpretive museum to teach us about the rainforest, and all sorts of treetop decks to observe it from. Again we learn about the hazards of the possum; by now it has sunk in.

There are Maori totems everywhere in the Visitor’s Centre. Aly tells us that some fundamentalist religious groups have attempted to have the bold maleness of those totems covered up or otherwise “removed.” We sigh that fundamentalism everywhere is sadly the same.

We would love to stay, but Aly insists that we must get to our next stop during low tide. Another ½ hour’s drive and we are at Piha Beach, where the waves are huge and hazardous – the perfect draw for surfers. The tide is out, and I immediately roll up my pants legs to wade into the water, to explore.

Aly’s plans are about more than just wading, though. She leads the way towards the rocks, where we will climb to see what she keeps calling a “blow hole.” The rocks are covered with mussels of all sizes, from tiny babies to fully mature, ready-to-eat green lip morsels. Walking over that combination will definitely require shoes.

Unfortunately, I’m wearing my “toe shoes” – the Vibram 5 Finger shoes that cling to your feet and feel like you are walking barefoot (heavenly, by the way). Having taken off those shoes to go wading, I know I will never get my wet feet back into them. And so I tell Aly and Dimitri to go along without me. I’ll just hang out in the tide – not a bad consolation prize, I am sure.

The water is pure delight. I am smiling like a kid, thinking, “Tonight I will be on a plane heading home, and this afternoon I am…”

I don’t get to finish the thought. The tide came in with one wave, moving up from toes to knees to thighs in a matter of seconds. I turn sideways, letting the wave wash past me, intent that I will not be knocked down. I would like to say my resolve to stay standing was motivated by my desire to stay dry prior to our flight that evening. But in truth my only thought was, “Save the camera. Save the camera.”

The water recedes. I look at the mussel-covered rocks beside me, and there it is – a starfish. Not just a starfish, but a HUGE starfish. It has 12 arms. It is purplish orange, if there can be such a color.

Before I can say aloud, “Oh my God, a starfish!” I see another. And another. They are everywhere.

The starfish has great meaning around the Community-Driven Institute. Based around the work of Brafman and Beckstrom, we have strived to build the Institute’s work around the “starfish” model of leaderless leadership. I have no words to describe what it felt like to encounter the living emblem of that work.

Aly and Dimitri return from seeing the blow hole. Dimitri is all smiles, telling me it is magnificent and hoping his photos came out to show me. But all I can do is stare and point and smile. We are surrounded by starfish. Even Aly had never seen anything like it.

We shoot for as long as time will permit, and then we are back in the car, heading to the third and final stop of the tour. Aly winds the car up one mountain road and down the next. I nap in the back seat until the car stops again.

We are at Muriwai – a rookery for Australian Gannets. Being from North America, neither Dimitri nor I had heard of these birds whose heads are shaped for diving into the water at speeds as fast as 140km per hour ( approx. 90 mph). Their flight is more like soaring than flying. It is majestic to watch.

However this is more than a place to watch these amazing birds fly. It is a nesting area. We stand above the ledge where babies await their parents’ feasts. Grey babies calling, “Feed me feed me feed me” and mamas doing just that. Not just one or two, but scores of babies and scores of parents. We stand in the wind, mesmerized. None of us wants to leave.

We make a quick stop along the way back to Aly’s – a roadside stall that sells ice cream and hot dogs and toasted cheese sandwiches. This will be our last Hokey Pokey Ice Cream for a long time.

Then it’s back to Aly’s for another quick snack – one I am still dreaming about. Olives the size of my thumb. Luscious bread with seeds running through it – bread I am still hoping to encounter at some bakery somewhere, here in the States.

And then we are at the airport, exchanging money, going through customs, buying a shot-glass for Nick (who gets a shot glass from everywhere we travel.) This “last day of relaxing and getting ready to leave” has turned into one of the most breathtaking days of the whole trip, thanks entirely to Aly.

After this full month of glorious adventures, sitting in the Auckland airport as we prepared to head home, Dimitri and I asked each other, “What was the best part of this time for you?”

With all we had seen and done, the answer came to me immediately. It is something we can always count on to be grand – the one piece of New Zealand that lingers delightfully in my mind, making me smile deep inside each time I think of it.

“Just spending time with friends, new and old,” I told my partner.

Yes, New Zealand was wonderful beyond anything we had imagined. But the memories that will linger are of the people who made this month so special. The hospitality for which New Zealand is renowned feels like a beautiful bow, gift wrapping friendships with people we look forward to seeing again. We are already talking about doing another “Community-Driven New Zealand Tour” in 2011 – hoping to do another consultants class, and to spend more time doing workshops in communities across the South Island.

The road leading to this point has been so life-giving, it is hard to imagine what’s next. One thing is certain, though. The road ahead is illuminated by thousands of starfish, born of the brilliant pieces of other starfish, multiplying and making this work their own, and shedding their own light on the future we are all creating together.

Photos: Hildy and Dimitri

Note: There is video in this post. If you’re viewing the post in your email or an RSS reader that doesn’t show video, please click through and read it on the web.

For those who were keeping track, you’re right – we never finished sharing our New Zealand adventures. Some of you know my mom fell just days after we returned from our Down Under Tour.  She’s doing great now – many thanks to all who sent well-wishes, strong energy, white light and overall great juju.  But between staying with Rose to care for her, and then navigating what masquerades as a healthcare system in the US, much of our work at the CDI, including blogging, was sidetracked.

And for those who are REALLY keeping track, yes I am finishing up this series on New Zealand from a hotel suite in Perth, Australia. Which I guess means Perth is next on the blog to-do list!

So without further ado, here is Part 8 of the Community-Driven Tour 2010 to New Zealand.  (To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

Dunedin
If it weren’t for our friend and colleague, Margy-Jean Malcolm, it is likely we would have skipped Dunedin this trip.  But with very little notice, Margy-Jean managed to assemble a dozen community development people to talk with us about their work, so there we were.

And a good thing it is, because no-one told us that Dunedin is AMAZING.

Dunedin is on the east coast of the South Island, towards the southern end.  The landscape instantly tells why the Scottish settled here to create New Zealand’s first city – rolling green hills folding into dramatic ocean cliffs.  The scenery is breathtakingly achingly calmingly heart-stoppingly beautiful.

We had less than 48 hours to spend in Dunedin.  In that time we met with community leaders to talk about what it really means to do community development work.

We slid down soft deep sand dunes to watch a lone yellow-eyed penguin gather food for his/her baby.  We experienced scenery we’d only before imagined from calendar photos. We stood surrounded by thousands of terns, guarded by seals (or is it vice versa?).

We had dinner and a long evening of conversation with the quietly intriguing Margy-Jean, learning about her art and her life.  We slept in 2 hotels in 2 nights, ate in terrific restaurants (which we came to expect in New Zealand, wherever we were.)

And mostly we vowed to return.

Penguins!
Our community meeting was at 3pm. At 5pm, we quickly changed clothes, and piled into Margy-Jean’s car for the drive to the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Preserve at Sandfly Bay.  We were there with the blessing of Sue Murray, General Manager of the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust. Sue had warned that we might not see any penguins, as it was molting season when the penguins spend most of their time pining away on their nests, wishing those new feather would grow in already.

According to Wikipedia, “The current status of this penguin is endangered, with an estimated population of 4000. It is considered one of the world’s rarest penguin species. The main threats include habitat degradation and introduced predators. It may be the most ancient of all living penguins.”  We have been warned that tourists often unwittingly get between mama and baby at feeding time, and that if we do see penguins, we should stay back and let the feeding proceed unimpeded.

The drive to Sandfly Bay is spectacular, with a view of Dunedin that I might not have believed if I’d simply seen it in a painting – the scene at the top of this post. Idyllic, dramatic – simply perfect.  As we head off the main road and up towards the beach, I tell Margy-Jean that if we see no penguins at all, the ride alone will have been thrill enough.

But we do see a penguin. Margy-Jean spotted him swimming almost immediately upon our arrival.  We photograph him briefly, getting out of his (her?) way quickly so as not to interfere with baby being fed.  Watching him/her waddle towards its nest in the grasses, we are 3 giant smiles-on-legs walking along the beach.  Later we see another pair, one laying down and one seemingly standing guard, high on a rock along the cliffs.

The sunset was dramatic against the huge rocks that look as if they had been tossed into the sea just to add “mood” to the scene. (It worked.)  We know it’s not fair to compare, but California’s Route 1 doesn’t hold a candle to the seascapes of Dunedin.

An Evening with Margy-Jean
We head to Margy-Jean’s house for dinner prepared by her chef son, Andrew.  The house has personality built into every room, each with ceramic-tiled fireplaces and intricate woodwork.  We marvel at the textiles Margy-Jean has created by her own hand, learning she has been studying in a masters program that will culminate in certification by a visiting textile master from the UK. A very big deal.

Her textiles are overwhelming.  A meter-long piece crafted from bits of ribbon and fabric to recreate the feeling of seaweed, with bits of actual seaweed sewn in – all of it the rich aquamarine color of the waters we have seen all across New Zealand.

A quilted vest made of tiny 3/4″ squares, each and every one embroidered with a different tiny pattern, some with beads, others with fuzzy threads. These tiny squares of wonder were then assembled into a fabric, then quilted, then turned into a vest.

We learn this overpoweringly beautiful work has been her therapy, the thing that gave her life during some tough emotional times.  We are in awe of the power the creative arts have to heal, to give us strength, to nurture the spirit.  I think of Jeane Vogel’s adamant declaration that Art Saves lives, and I want Jeane to know Margy-Jean.

We talked into the night. Talked about whether social media will mean the death of real conversation. Talked about American politics and how much it hurts our spirts to live there right now.

(Being out of the country for this long has me looking more objectively at what it means to live in America.  One question I am pondering is whether living in America is part of a pact – a commitment to perfecting our country’s being. Are the words “to form a more perfect union” an assignment? And does that mean being a citizen of the US will always be an effort?  Could that help me reconcile what it means to be an American? Could it help me reconcile what it means to form a more perfect world?)

Arriving at the hotel after midnight, we sleep as if dead.

Aramoana Beach
Thursday morning was spent moving hotels and handling other travel logistics.  And so our 2nd official “day off” since our arrival 3 weeks ago started at about 2pm when we drove to Aramoana Beach.

We walked about ½ mile along the beach against fierce wind, the sky changing every minute – sun clouds blue gray wind birds – a moody windy fall sky. The scenery was breathtaking beyond imagination. And we were the only humans around.

That would have been enough to have had this be a most memorable day. But then we walked another ½ mile or so out onto the Mole – a jetty that appears to have been furnished by rail many years ago, now abandoned to the birds and the seals. At the very end of the Mole we found a rookery of White-Fronted Terns, dotted with the occasional seal.

It is hard to explain what it felt like to be surrounded by so much LIFE.  There we were, the lone humans among thousands and thousands of beautiful birds, all facing the same direction against the wind, flying about us.  Seals lazing, sleeping, waking up to cough, going back to sleep.

It was 6:30pm when we left, heading back along the narrow harbour road.  Over dinner we vowed to come back to Dunedin, to take our time to explore.

Fleur’s and the Moeraki Boulders
And that’s all the day-off there was! It’s now Friday and we are driving from Dunedin to Christchurch, normally a 4-5 hour drive, but we make several stops and it takes the whole day.

The drive is the kind of idyllic we have come to expect – rolling green hills meeting other rolling green hills in a patchwork I am looking forward to playing with in fabric and paint when we get home.  Sheep everywhere. Bliss.

Our first stop as we head north along Route 1 is Moeraki, where we have a reservation at Fleur’s Restaurant.  And at 2pm on a Friday afternoon in the middle of nowhere, we absolutely needed that reservation!

An hour outside Dunedin, in a fishing village so tiny and off-the-track you could easily drive by without knowing you had passed a town, Fleur’s is legendary. (Stars like Gweneth Paltrow make a point of stopping at Fleur’s.) We’ve been told that Fleur has commissioned her own fishing boats, to be sure the catch is fresh.

And wow!  Fleur’s is precisely what we have been told it would be. Fleur herself is ever-present, choosing our meal for us after we tell her what we’re looking for.  Dimitri doesn’t know fish in this part of the world, so Fleur chooses. I don’t eat animals, so Fleur designs my meal as well.  And true to the legend, we had a feast fit for a king, sitting outside watching the boats rock and the gulls gather as the catch-of-the-day arrives at Fleur’s back door.  Dimitri’s whole fish is huge and – well – whole.  And my vegetarian meal is so artfully composed I became one of “those” tourists, photographing my food.

After such a lunch, we were pleased that the Moeraki Boulders were close by, as we desperately needed a walk.  The boulders look like they landed there by meteor shower, but actually they grow out of the cliffs that surround this beach. It is a grand sight, fun to walk around, a place we could stay and photograph all day as the sky changed its mood every few minutes.

But we had barely an hour before it was time to get back in the car to drive the rest of the way to Christchurch.  By noon tomorrow we’ll be on a plane to Auckland, and then the next day we fly home.

As happened at every turn during our month in New Zealand, however, even on that very last day in Auckland, we had no idea what was in store for us.

Up Next: Saying Goodbye to New Zealand

Photos and Video: DP and HG

We flew to Christchurch then drove to Queenstown via Lake Tekapo, a lake made mesmerizingly green-blue by mineral deposits.

Dimitri had made reservations at an apartment hotel in Queenstown that seemed online to be luxurious for the $150 NZD (approx. $110 US) per night we would be paying. It ended up being beyond our wildest expectations of what was possible. Kitchen, living room, dining room – the combined area of which was the size of the same rooms in my own home.  And while the bedrooms were spacious, the bathroom had a heated floor. Wow.

Still the most amazing part was the view. Huge bay window plus huge accordion glass doors to the balcony, all overlooking the ever-changing skies above Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding mountains.  We spent five days with that view as the backdrop for writing and catching up on work, skyping conference calls and coaching clients. Every hour or so, one of us would jump up to photograph the same scene under light that seemed to change with the whims of the gods.  Once a day we would walk the ½ hour trail that led along the lake from the hotel to downtown, to get provisions, or just to clear our heads.

And then it was time to pack up again, this time heading to Dunedin, along the east coast of the South Island. Margy-Jean lives in Dunedin, and she had arranged for us to meet with community leaders, all of whom are doing some form of community development work.

The questions we facilitated were the same questions we have been asking everywhere we go, as we work to elevate new conversations throughout this sector.

• What do we mean when we say community development?
• Is community development a specific program or a way of being?
• And if it is a way of being, are we being that in all our work?
• If so, that would mean the community is an integral part of making every program work, that the wisdom of community members – real people – is infused in every aspect of every program. Is that what we mean?
• And with all of it, to what end?
• What results are we hoping to create by doing any or all of our work in that way? And for whom?

We got into a little of the “how.” Governance focused on leadership. Programs built by engaging community members from the inside out. Programs built on a base of shared community resources.

But mostly we talked about empowering community members to find their own wisdom, and more than anything to create the future of their own communities.

From there, we spent a magical evening with Margy-Jean, eating and talking and sharing and sightseeing and visiting the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Preserve, where, despite the caution that molting season made it unlikely that we would see any penguins, we did indeed see a few.  Dimitri and I spent an amazing second day in Dunedin – just the 2nd day out of the entire trip that included no work at all (unless you consider spending ½ day moving hotels and dealing with rental car issues “work”).  I’ll share stories and photos of our entire amazing (really and truly amazing) time in Dunedin in the next – and last – post of this tour.

And so we are on our way along Route 1 from Dunedin to Christchurch, where tomorrow we will catch a plane to Auckland, and where the next day we will catch a plane home.

As always happens when we are teaching, Dimitri and I feel we have learned far more during our time here than we have taught. We have had a glimpse into what lies ahead, both for the Institute, and for each of our personal quests. That glimpse tells us that indeed the whirlwind will continue, that the ride will continue to be incredible, and that the reward is nothing less than transformation for this beautiful bauble that is our planet.

The future is indeed bright. And each and every one of us is creating it every day.

Tomorrow: The final post – a gorgeous travel log with gorgeous photos of the gorgeous places we saw.

(This is Part 6: Community-Driven Tour 2010 New Zealand. To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

Hamilton: Visiting the Waikato
Blink twice and it’s Tuesday. We’re in Hamilton, an agricultural and university community about an hour south of Auckland. As I noted in the first post in this series, we rarely know we are at the beginning of something amazing until we look back. It is that combination of happenstance that makes me smile to think of what has brought us to Hamilton.

It began last summer, with a post I sent to the listserv for the Association for Research on Nonprofits and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), offering sample copies of The Pollyanna Principles for professors who might use the book as a text in their nonprofit management classes. Suzanne Grant from the University of Waikato in Hamilton requested one of those sample copies.

When I sent Suzanne’s book, I included a note mentioning that we were actually coming to New Zealand, and that perhaps we could find a way to connect when we were there. And that was about it for our correspondence.

Fast forward 6 months to about a month before our trip. Suzanne sent an email, telling me she would not be able to attend the conference in Auckland. Is there a chance we could come to Hamilton as guest lecturers at the university?  And if we were to stop in Hamilton, is there anything else we might be able to do while we’re there – perhaps a workshop in the community?

Of course our answer was yes, and again yes and YES!

With those possibilities in hand, Suzanne involved Community Waikato, a capacity building provider in Hamilton.  And in barely two weeks, we had arranged for Dimitri and I to do a governance workshop at Community Waikato in the morning, then head to the University to do a lecture on sustainability in the afternoon.

We smiled at the wonderful serendipity, and then felt like we were in a Ronco commercial: But wait, there’s more!

Five days before our departure from the US, we learned that there was a last minute addition to our Consultant Immersion Course.  At the time we’d been too busy in preparations to see any significance in that late addition being Jane Stevens, the lead consultant at Community Waikato.

But here we were, driving on the left-hand side of the road, joyful that we would be teaching at the very facility that is home to our now beloved Jane. Between Suzanne’s finding me through an offer I made for a sample book via a listserv last summer, and our now delightful friendship and connection with Jane, we felt fated to be working in Hamilton.

Community Waikato
Our morning session at Community Waikato began with a blessing from Jane, speaking joyfully and authentically (as Jane does) about her gratitude for the work we had done together in the immersion course.  I had barely been introduced and I was already crying!

The group was as engaged as it always is, talking about Governing for What Matters. You would think I would become jaded to that reaction, but each time it is energizing and new.

Several things about this particular session stand out, though.  The first was Ruby.

Ruby is perhaps six months old, and that day she was accompanying her mom, Lou Belle, to work at Community Waikato.  Before we began, Lou Belle asked if it was ok to keep Ruby with her during the workshop.  “If she gets fussy, I’ll take her out.”  And of course we told her that Ruby was welcome, knowing that moms in these circumstances tend to be overly sensitive to disrupting others, and that Ruby would not be a problem at all.

When little Ruby started to fuss, Lou Belle would take her outside to nurse or just get some air. But for the most part, Ruby remained quietly smiling, absorbing “community” all around her.  When the group would talk about the future we wanted to create, we could point to Ruby as one reason why.

The “future” was not an abstract in that room; it was sitting right there with us.  And by the end of the workshop, as we shared lunch with the staff at Community Waikato, the conversation made it clear that the workshop had resonated profoundly with Lou Belle.

We were reminded in those moments that walking the talk of building community means more than the concepts we teach. It is a matter of seeing every single thing we do as an act of building community. Ruby helped teach us that for 3 hours that morning.

The second memorable part of this particular workshop came at the very end of the session, after the group had taken its last moments to reflect on what they had learned, after I had thanked the group, and after they had applauded.

As the group prepared to disperse, a voice came from the back of the room.  “Can everyone hold on for just a moment?  We’ve asked Jane, and she has said it is appropriate to share this, and so Hildy, we would like to share with you our traditional way of saying thank you.”

As if on cue, the participants all rose and faced me, as they sang Te Aroha – the same traditional Maori blessing our students had sung to Dimitri and me a week before.

Te Aroha
(Let there be Love)
Te whakapono
(Let there be Faith)
Me te rangimarie
(And let there be Peace)
Tatau tatau ae
(For us all – it is agreed.)

Thirty-plus people singing to me. As I stood in awe at the grace that surrounded me, an older gentleman broke the silence.  “You thought you were crying before the class, eh?” And we all laughed, as indeed that is how I ended the session as well.

University of Waikato
We had lunch with the staff at Community Waikato, and then Suzanne herded us over to the university, where a small group of perhaps 20 adult students gathered to talk about moving from sustainability to thriving.

I talked about shared vision for the future of the community; talked about the Diaper Bank model of building programs by engaging existing community resources; talked about community engagement as friendraising; talked about building funds upon assets organizations have laying around waiting to be tapped.

In reflecting at the end of the session, a PhD student summed up what we have been wondering for years now: “I’ve gone through the Nonprofit Management program at several universities, and I’m now on my way to my PhD. Why has no one taught me any of this in any of the classes I’ve attended? Why am I just hearing of this now?”

The question haunted us as we drove back from Hamilton to Auckland, where we would spend the next day preparing to depart for the South Island (including not only laundry and shopping, but 3 hours at the post office to ship stuff back to the U.S.).

Tomorrow would begin a whole new part of the adventure. And despite everyone telling us how amazing it would be, we are soon to discover we have no idea just how amazing “amazing” is.

Part 7 is next: Community Development – To What End?

(This is Part 5: Community-Driven Tour 2010 New Zealand. To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

Workshop: UNITEC
It is Monday. We have been in Auckland for 2 weeks, with 1 day off. Dimitri headed out first thing in the morning to get a rental car for our drive to Hamilton, for our workshops on Tuesday. If you’re going to learn about driving on the left-hand side of the road, what better time to do so than during Monday morning rush hour?

(Dimitri quickly became a pro at left-side driving, although remembering that the turn signal is on the right of the steering wheel, rather than the left, was trickier. Suffice it to say we had the cleanest windshield of any car around.  Now that we are back in the US, the turn signal back on the left where it was before we departed, Dimitri is having trouble readjusting – we now have a clean windshield here, too!)

With barely a moment to rest up from Dimitri’s maiden voyage, Aly picked us up and whisked us off to teach a 4-hour Governing for What Matters workshop for UNITEC’s Not-for-Profit Management Program.

And what a workshop!  The venue was a lecture hall so steep there was a temperature differential between the bottom and the top – clearly configured for teaching rather than collaborative learning.  Even so, I began the workshop as I had begun the conference keynote the week prior, asking folks to talk with their neighbors about the path that led them to be in that room, as well as their dreams for the future they wanted to create. Again, the sound-levels confirmed the appropriateness of that choice, even as they had to crane their necks to see those behind them.

The participants continued that level of engagement as they talked about their vision for the future of their communities, the values they want to uphold and model as they do their work, the conditions that would need to be in place in their community to create the future they want.

We talked about the current emphasis this sector places on mission – the actual work being done – vs. the visionary purpose behind that work. How vision and values are considered a luxury in this sector, rather than the only practical path to creating real change. That without that higher sense of purpose, we will always be reacting, always hoping for baby steps to make a difference, always be whipsawed by day-to-day circumstances, feeling unable to control even the little things, forget creating an amazing future.

It is one thing to say, “The group was engaged!”  It is quite another to show proof – in this case “proof” in the form of a fire alarm.

We were about 2/3 into the afternoon when it started blaring. We all streamed out the door to the grassy area right outside the lecture hall.

We watched all the other classes on campus take the opportunity to head home early. But not our class. They simply splayed out on the grass outside the lecture hall and told me to keep going, the fire alarm blaring in the background until we got the “all clear” to go back inside.

With the sound of the fire alarm still ringing in our ears, we grabbed a quick dinner, packed up the car, and prepared for a full day in Hamilton the next day. We were scheduled for a double-header – a 3 hour workshop on Governance in the morning, followed by a 2 hour University lecture on Sustainability in the afternoon. It was hard to believe the pace of our journey could get even more intense.

The most intense, however, would be the trip to Hamilton itself.  That would be the first test of my ability to ride alongside Dimitri as he drove on the left-hand side of the road, doing my best not to mutter the words “We’re gonna die” over and over under my breath…

For the Next Post in this series – Meet People Where They Are (Then Sing to Them) Click Here
Photo Credits: Dimitri

(This is Part 4: Community-Driven Tour 2010 New Zealand. To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

Waiheke Island
The conference ended on Friday. As happens during these events, the energy is both exhilarating and exhausting.  After two weeks of nonstop action, though, even exhilarating was exhausting!

We spent Saturday catching up on work and moving back into downtown Auckland from the luxurious resort that was our home during the conference.  Starting Monday I would be teaching another 2 days of workshops – Monday at UNITEC’s campus in Auckland, and then Tuesday in Hamilton, 90 minutes south.

That left Sunday for our first rest in 2 weeks.  To make that day perfect, our friend and colleague Aly McNicholl arranged a day on Waiheke Island. There we would spend time relaxing with Tim McMains – one of the founders of the Not-for-Profit Management program at UNITEC, and one of the reasons the program is the stand-out program it is. And while that makes it sound like a business day, it was anything but that.

Had we had only the ferry ride to the island and returned immediately, it would have been the nicest day. But that ride through a field of racing sailboats was only the beginning.

It was the annual Onetangi Beach Race Day on Waiheke Island – a celebration of pretty much anything you can do to compete on a beach.  In that festival atmosphere, people drank beer, ate festival food (i.e. fried stuff on sticks) and watched horse races, wheelbarrow races, boat races, foot races, sand-castle competitions and truly anything else you might imagine can be done to compete on or around a beach.

After watching the results of the local-folks-in-silly-clothes contest, Tim and his partner, Zach, toured us around the island that is their home.  We learned that Zach received her nickname from her brother when they were just kids, named after the cause of all things bad, enemy agent Dr. Zachary Smith from Lost in Space. The fact that we all knew who that was made us laugh even more than the source of the name itself.

Tim and Zach took us for a short hike in the Onetangi Preserve, along a rainforest trail that appears to be little used – we were the only ones there on a beautiful almost-fall afternoon. Under the protection of New Zealand’s largest independent conservation organization – Forest and Bird - we saw a sign that at first stymied us non-Kiwis:

Onetangi Pest Free Project:
Rat poison is used in this Reserve.

In New Zealand, it is likely this means one thing: Possum.  The havoc caused by invasive species in general, and the possum specifically, is perhaps the most commonly understood local environmental issue across the whole country.

Possums were introduced to New Zealand by European settlers in an attempt to establish a fur industry. With no natural predators, the possum is now one of New Zealand’s most widely acknowledged environmental threats.  With a current population of approximately 70 million, possums, the near-extinction of the famed Kiwi Bird has been tied to the possum, as has the actual extinction of several less famous bird species. And because they eat the new shoots on the trees, the possum is also a serious threat to New Zealand’s rainforests.

While the different approaches to eradicating the possum are argued vociferously in New Zealand, we met no one who was against eliminating them – and we were surrounded by nonprofit people all this time,  environmentalists and animal lovers included!  It took a while for this vegetarian to feel ok about purchasing Merino wool spun with possum hair.  But understanding that it’s either eliminate the possum or continue to see the devastating elimination of native species, I was reminded, as with all things, that life is rarely black and white.

Tim and Zach then drove us to Trig Hill Reserve, to look out over fields and vineyards and kilometers upon kilometers of blue ocean meeting blue sky.  The wind blew strong; a family was flying a kite, and its colorful swooping against the backdrop of that magnificent scene took my breath away.

By the end of the afternoon, we were seated at a table on Zach’s old stone porch under the watchful gaze of a two-faced sculpture and several sheep, surrounded by a cascade of lavender and rosemary.  As we sipped champagne and ate watermelon, Aly and Tim treated us to an impromptu ukelele and harmonica rendition of Never On Sunday.

The day had turned into a dream being dreamed awake. Joyful. Magical. Perfect.

The wind in our faces on the ferry home, a quick dinner, then bed. Tomorrow is a huge day for us.  Yes, we will be doing a workshop at UNITEC.  But more than that, Dimitri will be renting a car tomorrow, to get us to Hamilton for our workshop there on Tuesday.

During rush-hour traffic in Auckland on a Monday morning, Dimitri will learn to drive on the left-hand side of the road.

To see Part 5 – Passion Like a Fire (Alarm) – Click Here

Photo Credits: Hildy and Dimitri
Interpretive Signs: Waitakare Ranges – Arataki Visitor’s Center

(Part 3: Community-Driven Tour 2010 in New Zealand. To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

New Zealand’s National Not-for-Profit Conference
Every school-aged child in America would recognize the similarity between the story of the Maori – the native people of New Zealand - and the story of Native Americans. Europeans claimed New Zealand as their own, forcing the Maori into smaller and smaller areas, over time significantly reducing their numbers by force and by disease.

In the 1960′s, Maori culture began a resurgence. These days, one sees the Maori language everywhere, from the names of buildings on university campuses to the sign at the airport that simultaneously welcomed us to New Zealand and to Aotearoa – the Maori name for this land.

One of the things we learned in the week with our Consultants Class was the extreme value placed by the Maori on relationship-building.  “It is expected that every session will absolutely open by building a foundation of relationship between those in the room. This is taken very seriously – so seriously that a meeting that fails to take the time for getting acquainted runs the risk of losing credibility,” the participants explained. “In Maori culture, without relationship there is nothing.”

I had already planned my opening keynote for New Zealand’s National Not-for-Profit Conference – The Power We Have to Change the World as individuals and as groups. More to the point, I was going to talk about the sources of that power.

Knowing what I now knew about Maori culture, and wanting the conference to be as meaningful as possible for everyone in the room, I wondered whether the conference opening before my talk was going to include a relationship-building piece.

Learning there were no such plans, I rewrote my keynote to begin with some time for connection. After all, one of the strongest sources of our power is each other!  So I told the group just that.

“We all know the power we have to change the world is a collective power. None of us can change the world by ourselves.

So let’s take a moment and get to know each other. Please turn to your neighbor and share a bit about the path that brought you to the work you do. And then share your dreams for the future.”

I anticipated a quiet whispering that might build after several moments. I was wrong.

A joyful cacophony arose right from the start. The spirit in the room was so powerful, reminding me of the spirit we find on the very 1st morning of our Consultant Classes.  During that 1st half of Day 1, the participants take as long as it takes to tell their stories, sharing the path that brought them to that room.  When we then ask them to reflect on what stood out for them about the morning, the response is always the same. “We are rarely given the time and the space to really get to know one another, to begin to build relationships.”  When they then look at the syllabus, they see that is just what that portion of the day is called – NOT “Introductions,” but “Community-Building.”

Watching that same effect happen in a room of 250 people, I vowed to incorporate a “relationship-building” opening into all my subsequent talks, not just in New Zealand, but everywhere. Because the wisdom of the Maori is true everywhere – without relationship, we are nothing.

Building Thriving, Engaged Programs
Ask the leaders of community organizations about the strengths vs. weaknesses of the clients who walk through their doors, and you are likely to hear a lecture on the need to focus on strengths, not weaknesses.  Similarly, if you suggest to community leaders that they do a community-wide needs assessment these days, and you are likely to be asked if you would also suggest an asset map?

Thanks in part to the work of the Asset Based Community Development Institute, this sector has gotten very good at realizing we cannot build strength upon weakness; that strength builds upon strength, and both clients and communities have a ton of strengths upon which to build.

Now turn to those same organizational leaders and ask, “So, are your organizations strong?” and you are likely to get a long list of examples that prove how weak they are.

Tell an organizational leader, “Your clients are weak and dependent and they always will be.  Your best hope for them is to sustain,” and that leader would have you marched out of town.  Use those same words to describe that leader’s organization, however, and she is likely to nod in agreement.

“Doing the best we can with what we’ve got” has become the banner for this sector’s work.

And so after my keynote, I taught a workshop on building thriving, engaged programs.

The workshop guided those leaders to consider the strengths and resources hiding in plain sight within their own organizations.  The people they know. The physical ‘stuff’ they use to do their work. The resources that are actually created by the very implementing of their mission. And of course, the tremendous assets and resources in their communities overall.

We shared stories and examples as we talked about engaging individuals and organizations by asking them for their wisdom, their experience, their ideas.  “Focus first on the vision for the community,” I told the group. “That vision for what is possible in your community is the point where everyone you speak with will have a stake – will care.”

And that brought us back to the Maori wisdom that had begun the day.  When we combine our relationships with our vision for what is possible for our communities, we can create the future

The rest of the conference built upon that theme in every way for me.  Everyone I met was energized about what was possible, and excited that we were not just talking “inspiration” but practical application.  People were seeing ways to reach higher.  One gal told me she was entirely re-planning a new program in her head – one they had just begun and that she now saw could accomplish so much more.

The conference ended on Friday with two highlights, one expected, and one a delightful surprise. The expected treat was something I had looked forward to since a conversation with Meg Wheatley several weeks before the conference.  Knowing we would be bookending the conference – me with the opening, she with the closing – we spoke about our topics and about our work in general.  Her conference-closing remarks on fearlessness and perseverance didn’t disappoint, the proof of that heard when we heard a conference attendee quoting Meg’s remarks several weeks later, in a completely different context.

The surprise part of the day was a treat we sought from that day forward, during the entire remainder of our stay in New Zealand.  After the closing ceremony, the conference coordinators invited us all to partake in kid-sized cups of Hokey Pokey ice cream, complete with little plastic spoons.

Life, most definitely, is good.

For Part 4: Dreaming Ourselves Joyfully Awake – Click here.
Photo Credits:
New Zealand Reflection – HG
Conference Photos – Dimitri

(Part 2: Community-Driven Tour 2010 in New Zealand. To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

The Class
Consultant Class #8 in New Zealand.  Ten brilliant minds, all part of UNITEC’s Graduate Diploma in Not-for-Profit Management, spent 5 days re-training their brains to focus on potential and possibility (vs. problem-solving).  We learned from their brilliance, as we do in every class.

Here, though, we were also learning a new culture. We began and ended each day with a Maori blessing. We learned different expressions, different manners. We were reminded of our early days in Indian Country, where we had to get past our assumptions of sameness to find the uniqueness that might stymie us if we weren’t conscious of it.

New Zealand is known for sheep and wool, and so it was no surprise to find that just about everyone here knits. It was fun, though, to have almost the whole class knitting almost the whole time – beanies for babies living in poverty.  On the wall next to the flip chart sheets about vision and values were the knitting instructions for infant vs. toddler hats.

As happens in every class, the nurturing environment took over from Day 1.  People felt safe to explore together, to not have to be the expert, to be vulnerable. As seasoned consultants, it is rare to find a place where we can experiment, where we can feel safe to try something we haven’t done before while being honest about how insecure we feel “building the plane while we’re flying it.”  This is one of the blessings in each class we teach – the space for that vulnerable exploration. Not feeling the need to be the expert, our classes allow consultants to test things out, to confess their own concerns, their fears.  When you live by your wits and your wisdom, having such a safe place is a gift more precious than gold.

And wow did this group practice. There was barely a day when anyone sat out the opportunity to practice new approaches to facilitating social change. They imagined upcoming planning sessions with foundations and international development organizations and huge faith-based programs. They listed the assets and mapped the degrees of separation of small grassroots disability groups and national healthcare facilities.  At every turn we were in another community, often in another country.

Then they focused inward, reconsidering the content in some of UNITEC’s core classes, working through sticky issues, finding new ways to think about everything.  In each case, the setting allowed for exploration and discovery. In each case, things clicked into place, allowing participants to pre-think together. It was a gift to be part of their learning process, and to simultaneously learn from their wisdom.

At the end of the last day of class, our students returned the gift and then some, handing us a basket filled with goodies.  A book about the poet Rainer Rilke (into which I have been diving every night before bed). A set of coasters shaped to represent the Koru – the unfurling fern frond that is a common cultural symbol around the country, representing rebirth and possibility.

While we shouldn’t have been surprised, we were indeed surprised to find a newly-knitted hat for Dimitri and a newly-knitted cowl for me. It turns out we were among the “babies” they had been knitting for all week long.

And then they sang for us.

Aly had rushed home during lunch to grab her ukelele, and together the group sang to honor us with a traditional Maori blessing, Te Aroha. They then went beyond that tradition, to sing something from our own home – a tune so thoughtfully chosen to represent not just America, but specifically our home in the American West. Yes, the group we had taught all week about busting out of traditional ways of thinking – that group sang us Don’t Fence Me In.

Auckland
All this happened in Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand. Our hotel, the Waldorf St. Martin  (actually a “serviced apartment” that was high on amazing facilities and low-to-the-point-of-surly on service…) was a 5-minute walk from the classroom. Ok, it was 5 minutes downhill to the classroom, and about 15 minutes back up the hill.

The hills are just one of the many facts of life in Auckland. Another is the fact that women are almost more into shoes in Auckland than in NYC. It is one thing to consider walking the flat pavement of NY in gorgeous shoes; it is quite another to see women walking the hills of Auckland in fabulously sexy 4″ heels. But I digress…

Our apartment was on the 17th floor, and we took every opportunity to sit on the balcony and shoot – the full moon, the changing colors of the light on the Auckland Museum, the bay, the clouds, the sunrise.

The coffee shop next door  – Sierra Cafe – became our lifeline.  I confess to filling a buy-10-get-1-free card in the time we were there. New Zealanders drink their coffee strong – espresso is the rule, not the exception. Any attempts to wean myself off caffeine in 2010 went out the window by Day 2.  At Sierra Cafe, though, great coffee was matched by great pastries. I hold their white brownie and their cranberry / white chocolate muffin almost entirely responsible for the 6 pounds I gained on this trip.

Each night after an exhilarating and yet exhausting day of teaching, Dimitri and I would walk up and down the hills in search of dinner. One cannot find better food anywhere, and tons of it.  We ate Thai and Korean and Chinese. We ate wonderful French crepes. We even ate at the Brooklyn Bar – breakfast served any time.

Our class was over on Sunday night. By Wednesday, we had moved to the Waipuna Resort, 15 minutes outside downtown Auckland, where thanks to the persistence of Garth, Margy-Jean and Aly, I was to keynote the National Not-for-Profit Conference.

To read the next post in this series – Learning from Maori Culture - click here.

Photo Credits: HG & DP (fern is from a postcard)

Over the next several days, I will attempt to share just a taste of our immersion into this amazing place, as we realize we have just completed our second Community-Driven Tour.

The Beginning
Funny how we never know we are at the beginning of something amazing until we look back.  The beginning of this story starts about 10 years ago, when I met Garth Nowland-Foreman of Christchurch, NZ on CharityChannel.  Garth and I found ourselves to be kindred spirits even as I was just exploring what has now become The Pollyanna Principles, the Community-Driven Institute, and my whole life.

Garth tried to bring me to New Zealand once before, but the resources couldn’t be assembled to make it happen.  Since then it is clear he has been working every angle, including having us meet with one of his colleagues – Margy-Jean Malcolm – when she was in Phoenix for an ARNOVA conference years ago. (ARNOVA will play another interesting role in this story – isn’t it amazing how tiny the world is?)

The keystone in assembling the trip this time was a conference I would be keynoting.  Unbeknown to us, Garth, Margy-Jean and another colleague, Aly McNicholl, had been moving heaven and earth for several years, to try to find a way to get us to New Zealand. When the conference came along, they seized the opportunity, and on March 1, Dimitri and I landed in Auckland.

Barely 24 hours on Kiwi soil, by mid-day March 2 we were setting up our classroom. And by 8am on March 3, we were back in the saddle, teaching a 5-day consultants immersion course for faculty memebers in UNITEC’s Graduate Diploma in Not-for-Profit Management. (To put that into perspective, this was the 3rd such course we had taught in a 7-week period. It’s been an intense 2010 so far.  It doesn’t look like that is going to change any time soon…)

More Background
To understand the power of this particular group of consultants requires two pieces of background information.  The first is the power of UNITEC’s program – the only university-based Nonprofit Management program we have ever seen that is rooted first in values, then in management tools.  When one enrolls in UNITEC’s  program, the very first course you take – their “Nonprofit 101″ – is called “Values-Based Management and Leadership.”  Really.

Within that culture, UNITEC’s faculty have been using my writings in their classes and in their consulting work for years – part of the build-up to our being in New Zealand in the first place.

The second important piece of background is the power of New Zealand culture overall.  Around the world, one of the more positive things for which Americans are known is our can-do optimism. That frontier culture says, “Nothing is impossible. We can accomplish anything we put our minds to.”

I’d put New Zealand’s can-do against our can-do any time.  The legendary image that captures New Zealanders’ pride in their ingenuity is the #8 Fencing Wire that was used to tame the land for agriculture and sheep-herding.  The #8 Culture is one in which nothing stands in the way of getting things done.  It is a culture that knows in its bones that there are practical ways to accomplish just about anything.

Is it sheer coincidence then, that our New Zealand Class was the CDI’s Consultant Class #8?  Combine the Pollyanna Principles’ practical approaches for creating visionary social change, with a culture where #8 Wire makes anything possible, and you have nothing less than an unstoppable force for changing the world!

To read the next post in this series, click here.

Photo #1: Margy-Jean, Hildy & Garth
Photo #2: Aly