Confessions of a non-swimmer

New approaches to organizing, campaigning and achieving your objectives.

Your Base is Just a Baseline

Dear Reader – I hope this post makes you curious about new approaches to organizing, campaigning and achieving your objectives.  Unless you have all the support you need, your twin organizing goals are: One, to maintain your existing base and … Read More

You Don’t Need to Start Another Movement

The question I get asked most often is, “How do you start a movement?” My answer is always, “You don’t need to start another movement. All you have to do is contribute to the movements that you are already part … Read More

The World Needs More Peace Makers not Social Innovators

The world needs more peace makers not social innovators. Why? Because there are already tens of millions of social innovators out there. Maybe more. There always have been. There always will be. People are very ingenious about inventing themselves out … Read More

Death’s Tug of War with Mystery and Science

Death grabbed my pen several decades ago when I was finishing a sentence that I had written a couple of hundred times before, “PLAN creates good lives for people with disabilities.” To my surprise the pen continued, “and good deaths for their … Read More

Intellectual Imperialism and the Vocabulary of Harm

The headline of a recent Medium post, “The Age of the Imbecile” caught me at a bad time. I’m immersed in examining the harmful impact of words on people who experience a disability. “Imbecile” is one of the terms developed … Read More

Confessions of a Non Swimmer in the Currents of Culture

( first in a new series.) All my life I thought that the way to solve social problems was to make a big splash. To protest unjust ways of doing things, change laws, secure large sums of money, elect sympathetic … Read More

Hockey Legend Ken Dryden’sTips for Changing the Rules of Your Game

One of the world’s best hockey players, Ken Dryden wants to eliminate concussions from hockey. There are two key rule changes that he’s certain will do it: 1) Ban all hits to the head (head shots) and 2) Penalize players for … Read More

The World Needs More…Of You

The world needs more of you. Not just your projects, programs, and innovations. It needs the thinking, values and aspirations behind them. It needs to understand the soul of your work. Otherwise your projects, programs and innovations will have limited … Read More

Hitting the Key Notes of Your Time – Learning from Margaret Atwood and Gabrielle Roy

People are inherently story driven. Therefore an important aptitude of successful movements and change-making efforts is aligning with the powerful and shifting cultural stories that are already out there. You can, of course, learn about storytelling, narrative principles and effective … Read More

Don’t Leap so Far Ahead of The Parade You Can’t Hear the Band

Are you a leaper or a grinder? Are you inclined to leap over the day-to-day messes and frustrations of social and environmental challenges, to demonstrate your solution for a better future, and to pull the present towards you? Or do … Read More