Background Reading and References
Here is a short list of people and writings that have created the ideas in this book. Authors whom I have quoted directly are also cited here.
Alexander, Christopher
The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life. Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure, 2002. (Passages quoted in chapter 1 are from pp. 20 and 122.)
The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book 2: The Process of Creating Life. Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure, 2006.
The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book 3: A Vision of a Living World. Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure, 2004.
The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book 4: The Luminous Ground. Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure, 2003.
The Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Axelrod, Dick and Emily
The Conference Model. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2000.
Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010.
You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: How to Involve Others to Get Things Done. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004.
Bornstein, David
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. Updated ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank. Paper reissue. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Brown, Juanita, and David Isaacs
The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter, with the World Café Community. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2005.
Bunker, Barbara, and Billie T. Alban
The Handbook of Large Group Methods: Creating Systemic Change in Organizations and Communities. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006.
Large Group Interventions: Engaging the Whole System for Rapid Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.
Clingman, James
Black Dollars Matter: Teach Your Dollars How to Make Sense. Los Angeles: Professional Publishing House, 2015.
Blackonomic$: The Way to Psychological and Economic Freedom for African Americans. Los Angeles: Milligan Books, 2001.
Dannemiller, Kathie
Whole-Scale Change: Unleashing the Magic in Organizations. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2000.
Erhard, Werner
Erhard, Werner, Michael C. Jensen, and Steve Zaffron. “Integrity: Where Leadership Begins—A New Model of Integrity (PDF File of PowerPoint Slides)” (June 18, 2007). Barbados Group Working Paper No. 07-03. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=983401.
Erhard, Werner, Michael C. Jensen, and Steve Zaffron. “A New Model of Integrity: An Actionable Pathway to Trust, Productivity and Value (PDF File of Keynote Slides)” (September 20, 2008). Barbados Group Working Paper No. 07-01. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=932255.
Gallwey, Tim
The Inner Game of Work: Focus, Learning, Pleasure, and Mobility in the Workplace. Reprint ed. New York: Random House, 2001.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua
Quoted in I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology, edited by Samuel H. Dresner (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1983). (See part 1 introduction for quoted passage.)
Jacobs, Jane
Dark Age Ahead. New York: Random House, 2004.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 50th anniv. ed. New York: Vintage, 2011. Originally published 1961.
Kahane, Adam
Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2017.
Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004.
Kaufman, Harriet
Judaism and Social Justice, by Harriet Kaufman. Personal communication to author, 1986. (Passage quoted in chapter 12 is from Shabbat 77b, Babylonian Talmud.)
Koestenbaum, Peter
Freedom and Accountability at Work: Applying Philosophic Insight to the Real World. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.
The Heart of Business: Ethics, Power, and Philosophy. Dallas, TX: Saybrook, 1987.
Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.
The Philosophic Consultant: Revolutionizing Organizations with Ideas. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003.
Korten, David
Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2015.
The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006.
When Corporations Rule the World. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2001.
Lopez, Barry
Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney, with an introduction by Barry Lopez. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2006.
McKnight, John
The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, with Peter Block. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010.
An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture, with Walter Brueggemann and Peter Block. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2016.
Building Communities from the Inside Out, with John Kretzmann. Center for Urban Affairs, Evanston, IL. Chicago: ACTA Publications, 1994.
The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits. New York: Basic Books, 1995.
Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization’s Capacity, with John Kretzmann. Chicago: ACTA Publications, 2005.
Mapping Community Capacity, with John Kretzmann. Evanston, IL: Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University, 1990.
Neal, Craig and Patricia
The Art of Convening: Authentic Engagement in Meetings, Gatherings, and Conversations, with Cynthia Ward. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2011.
Owen, Harrison
Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2008.
The Power of Spirit: How Organizations Transform. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2000.
The Practice of Peace. 2nd ed. Circle Pines, MN: Human Systems Dynamics Institute, 2004.
Putnam, Robert D.
Better Together: Restoring the American Community, with Lewis M. Feldstein. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. (Passages quoted in chapter 1 are from pp. 2–3.)
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Rogers, Carl
On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. 2nd ed. Boston: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1995. Originally published 1961.
Snow, Judith
What’s Really Worth Doing and How to Do It: A Book for People Who Love Someone Labeled Disabled. Toronto, ON: Inclusion Press International, n.d.
The Structurist
University of Saskatchewan. (Passage quoted in Welcome is from no. 45/46, 2005/2006, p. 2.)
Uhlig, Paul
Field Guide to Collaborative Care: Implementing the Future of Health Care, with W. Ellem Raboin. Overland Park, KS: Oak Prairie Health Press, 2015.
“Improving Patient Care in Hospitals,” Journal of Innovative Management, Goal/QPC, Fall 2001.
“System Innovation: Concord Hospital,” with others, Journal on Quality Improvement, November 2002.
Weisbord, Marvin
Discovering Common Ground, with 35 International Authors. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1992.
Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!, with Sandra Janoff. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2007.
Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground in Organizations and Communities, with Sandra Janoff. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010.
Lead More, Control Less: 8 Advanced Leadership Skills That Overturn Convention. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2015.
Productive Workplaces: Organizing and Managing for Dignity, Meaning, and Community. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987.
Productive Workplaces Revisited: Dignity, Meaning, and Community in the 21st Century. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2004.
Zakaria, Fareed
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. New York: Norton, 2003.
Acknowledgments
Bob Havlick, then head of the Innovation Group, a forward-thinking association of city managers, got me involved in communities. He kept inviting me to their annual conference, and my contact with these public servants shifted the direction of my work. I will always be grateful for Bob’s faith and support. Work with some of those city managers—Jim Keene, Jim Ley, Ray Patchett, and Ed Everett—sealed the deal, and I am grateful to all of them.
My gratitude to Peter Koestenbaum, John McKnight, and Werner Erhard is infinite. I keep looking for sentences I speak or write that have not been shaped by their friendship, and I can find few. I do not know whether I have a thought that is truly my own, so I am happily relegated to the role of translator and secondary source for their insights.
Others who have given support to these ideas are Tom DiBello and Jim Tucker. They have invited me into places that were challenging and confirming, so I thank them both.
Bernard Booms thought he was the beneficiary of my work, but the opposite is true. Bernard taught me generosity with each call. Plus he was an economist and a marketing professor who both sustained and transcended his training to bring humanity and care into his work. Special and rare. Passed but not forgotten.
There are certain friends who are constant and always interested. Michael Johnston was an expert on living with integrity, playful when not working, and the best coach on the planet. This sentence sits quietly in his memory.
Leslie Stephen has been my editor for all of the books I have written. She is a beautiful advocate for the reader, has a genius for structure, and is profoundly interested in ideas and how they change the world. Above all, she cares about keeping my voice intact, as ungrammatical as it is. I would stop writing if Leslie were not in the picture. A special thanks for the care given to this second edition.
Steve Piersanti is a dream of a publisher. He has created an independent publishing company that lives out the ideas contained in what he publishes. Steve is a person of enduring faith and has the gift of editing that I pay attention to, even when I am not listening.
The original edition of this book was given life by its reviewers. I want to thank Frank Basler, Jeff Kulick, Ann Matranga, Elianne Obadia, and Joseph A. Webb, for they each put energy, far beyond any compensation for the task, into understanding and caring about the quality of the book. I am also grateful to Elissa Rabellino, who performed the copyediting for the first edition. She gave great attention to the manuscript and was a fine advocate for the reader. Elissa is really good at what she does. Also appreciate the keen eye of Michele Jones in the copyediting of this book.
Thanks also to Cliff Bolster and Bill Brewer, who read an early manuscript and were generous with their thoughts. Allan Cohen and Ann Overton have been central to the ideas in this book. Their friendship is sustaining, and their way of thinking and being is so convergent with mine that when I am in a difficult situation, I often think that they would do a better job than I.
I have dedicated both editions of this book to Maggie Rogers, but to fully acknowledge what she has given to the creation of them and all else I do would require a separate book in itself. Enough here to say thank you again. Years later, at the time of this edition, what I said then is even more so. We have worked together for twenty years at this rewriting, which speaks to her infinite capacity for tolerance.
I also want to express gratitude to my family. Thanks to Jim, my brother, a kind soul who has generously offered his genius as a photographer to all of us; he deserves special thanks for enduring me as a subject. He offered to airbrush my last photo, and next time I will take him up on it. My daughters, Jennifer and Heather, who, through their love, have given me a reason to live a decent life. My grandchildren, Leyland, Gracie, and Auggie, are beautiful beyond the natural pride of a grandfather. They give me reason to live a long time. Finally, I want to express my love for Cathy, David, and Ellen. Every day they keep me on my toes and engaged in a future. With them I am learning the value of surrender, of acceptance, and about the soft and tender fabric that lies within all of us. In return, they put up with me, so who could ask for anything more?
Index
A
Abundant Community website, 199
abusive relationships, 51
accountability/responsibility avoiding, 141
cause and, 191–192
changing the mind-set to, 57
choosing, 21, 67
citizens’, 41, 100, 191
Clermont Counseling Center example, 51–53
commitment, force, and, 75–76
creating, 92
culture of citizens’, 70
essence of, 62
illusions about, 75
language of, 74–75
in large-group methodology, 24
questions for achieving, 109–111
in restorative context, 50, 102
for results of new programs, 81
toward our youth, 176
activists/activism, 69, 114, 123, 177, 178
addiction, denial and, 140–141
adultism, 73, 176
advertising/marketing, 37–38
advice-free zones, 113–114
advisory groups, 141
aesthetics for room design, 165–166
affinity groupings, 155
Alexander, Christopher, 18–20, 27, 30–31, 49, 87, 167
alienation, 142, 168
aliveness, 19–20, 30–31, 49, 162–163
alternative future. See future, creation of
altruism, 75
ambiguous questions, 110
amplifying the whole room example, 163
answers
hunger for, 107–108
questions versus, 192–193
unpopular, 112–113
See also questions
anxiety, 110, 119
art for room design, 165–166
Art of Hosting, 114
Asset-Based Community Development, 13
assets. See gifts
associational life, 13–14, 31, 43–45
auditorium design, 159
authentic community, 29, 98
authentic dissent, 137, 142
authentic invitations, 118–119
Axelrod, Dick, 22–23
Axelrod, Emily, 22–23
B
belief systems. See worldview/belief systems
belonging
in community, 187
creating, 130
design physical space for, 198
essence of creating, 190
identity and, 31
invitations for, 117
need for, 3–4
places of, 100
questions for creating, 111
requirements for, 80
small-group, 51
structure of, 1–2
See also social architecture of community building
Better Together (Putnam and Feldstein), 18
Blackonomics, 178
blame/blaming
absence of, 142, 174
assigning blame, 4, 38–39, 41, 50
blaming the media, 46
as defense, 134
giving legitimacy to, 141
ownership versus, 129, 134, 194
Bornstein, David, 25–26, 27, 78, 119
boundaries, 79, 123, 125–127
Bowling Alone (Putnam), 6–7, 17–18
breakdown of community, 34
breaking bread, 156–157
Breyfogle, Gina
, 83
Brown, Juanita, 23, 101
building community. See community building
Burke, Tricia, 51–53
Butler, Mike, 139
C
Café method, 23
cafeteria design, 161
capacities. See gifts
Carlsbad, California, 153–154
Cartesian clockwork worldview, 70
Cass, Phil, 114
cause, accountability and, 191–192
cause-and-effect worldview, 70, 74
Center for Great Neighborhoods, 83
centrism, 57
chair choice for gatherings, 164
challenges, 34, 125–127, 133
change. See transformation/change
choice(s)
of contexts, 15–16
creating conditions for, 65
as engagement of whole person, 120
framing, 125
inducements and, 118–119
reacting to others’, 76
Cincinnati, Ohio
change conversations in, 55
description, 7
Findley House example, 92–94
Freedom Center, 63
marginalization of compassion example, 44–45
ordinance example, 39–40
possibility of a safe (example), 124–125
citizen-driven design example, 168–171
citizens
advice-free zones for, 113–114
antithesis of, 67–68
attributes of, 69
authentic, 198
choosing context by, 59
cynicism about, 74
definition, 67
engagement of, 41, 45
giving a voice to, 100–101
inverting our thinking about, 72
involvement in physical space design of, 168–171
police example, 138–139
self-organization by, 82–83
citizenship
changing the mind-set to, 57
creating, 67
definition of, 68–69
inversion into (See inversion/inverting our thinking)
shifting focus to, 191
classes, social, 8, 174
classroom design, 160
Clermont Counseling Center example, 51–53
Clingman, Jim, 178
clockwork strategy, 81–82
Cohen, Allan, 26–27, 163
Cold Spring, Kentucky, 95