update April 21

The beauty of having a group of engaged, attentive people is that the leader gets lots of help in creating a well-formed process. On Wednesday night, the group began setting directions, self-correcting and generating ideas. I started things rolling by asking the question, “What does this group need?” What followed was a very productive conversation that also included ideas of what society needs, what we are individually interested in and our next steps.

It also helps to have a template of processes off the shelf, ready to use. We are fortunate that Dave Pollard has written Finding the Sweet Spot, the very book we need.

Here are the things we identified on Wednesday:

What the group needs:
“The What”: What are the project ideas that can become viable enterprises? In other words, how can we identify under-served needs and configure them to become businesses?
Educating ourselves: How can we acquire the skills and knowledge that we don't yet have? I believe part of the answer is by sharing the skills already present within the group. Another very powerful source of excellence will be in finding “natural entrepreneurs” who are already doing it. These will be people who've found their sweet spot in enterprises that support transition to sensible, sustainable, regenerative life and livelihood.
Specific Business Skills, such as marketing and website building, portfolio creation and business planning. Many of these exist already within the group.
We need to be able to form “natural pods” within the group. These are groupings by interest and, eventually, by project. For instance, “Re-purposing Used Items” could be one such pod, or it could even be around a more specific class of products like clothing.

What the World Needs: We began a list of these ideas, which we will be compiling , growing and organizing in a Google Doc that is shared among the participants. If you wish to be included in this creative process, please consider joining us.

Passion: what we are interested in: Each of us articulated 1 – 3 ways to be of use that we could get excited about doing. It was not a complete list, and we will be continuing this process both individually and in the group, as this is the first step in finding that very important sweet spot.

Toward the end of the evening, we had a brief discussion of Dave Pollards venn diagram of the “sweet spot”. We also began to explore ideas of how we might structure the group, including the appointment of “connector persons” to act as ambassadors among members and outside the circle, using their talent for linking together people with similar interests, complementary needs and potential for other beneficial interactions. Forming “natural pods” will involve grouping according to interest, and there may be migration between pods for awhile, or participation of individuals in multiple pods. Once an enterprise begins to take shape, it will be useful to ensure that all the necessary skills for success are present within its membership.

Jordan has created a cluster of Google documents that we will be using over the next week to identify and share our Gifts, Passions and Ideas for unmet needs in the world. We will also be working individually with Dave's document to help prepare for Wednesday.

Next session (this Wednesday at 7pm) we will do two things:
form "natural pods" around a few of the ideas we will have identified in Jordan's documents
break into smaller groups (perhaps the same as the "natural pods") to workshop through the first 3 of Dave's handouts, specifically our gifts, passions and purpose.

I think it will be a very busy evening, and it will be wonderful if a few of you can bring snacks for a short break in the middle. I will provide tea.

If you are interested in joining us, but have not yet been to our circle, please email me:
cabot at telus dot net

Thanks,
-cabot