O civili, si ergo,
Fortibus es in ero!
O nobili, deis trux.
Vatis enim, causan dux.

A very savvy communicator told me the following story. He was part of a 50 person group and they were in the 3rd of a five day process.  The group was divided into five ten person teams and each team was asked to select a word .... any word.  His group chose "love".  Once they chose their word they were asked to independently write ten words that expressed "love" for them ... synonyms  for love.  Then they were asked 1) to guess how many words they had in common and 2) to compare their words and discover how accurate their guess was.  The group guessed that out of 50 words they had at least 10 in common.  It turned out they had three!!! Three common words describing love!

I later tried this and the word our group settled on was "empowerment". We had two words in common!

The opening passage of this journal page was written by Robert Carkoff in his book, The Exemplar.  He asked the reader to interpret the passage.  Of course I, like many others, tried my best to recall my Latin. I made assumptions.  Later he shared that by changing the pattern just a bit, the passage read:

O see, Willie See ‘er go!
Forty buses in a row.
Oh no Billie, they is trucks.
What is in ‘em? Cows and ducks.

Whoa! I think it is about vantage points!

Recently a few of us spent a day learning how to communicate between tech engineers and conceptual, process oriented thinkers.  Within a few hours we realized we have many different assumptions about why we had gathered together.  We had many different understandings and assumptions.  Getting clear on what we wanted to do was quite interesting! We have a lot to learn together!

Over the last several years, I have been trying to understand how process and technology support and amplify each other... both are tools and if we use them in symbiotic relationship to each other, we can change the world!!! Of this I am convinced.  Eugene Kim and I have set out to explore how to do this.  We are wanting to engage different tribes with different languages  to learn to do this. We have a long way to go! Communication and collaboration between very different learning and thinking styles is not easy! It will take work and many of us thinking and playing together.  I have a vision that I think is possible:

As a relay racer in a much earlier life, I studied the passing of the baton.  When we were "magic" we neither passed or received as separate events. Rather, something more happened ... a synergy that i can not describe.

I am interested in learning and practicing the tools and the process between unique thinkers (aren't we all!), doers, f2f, virtual collaboration and invention to be *of* the magic of the passing of the baton.  When we can do this, I believe we will have better options for improving the state of the world. We need each other!