Athena Receives "Best for Colorado" Award
Our project partners (both professional and community partners) and the rest of us at The Athena Group are deeply grateful to the Alliance Center for offering this award and for choosing to honor us and our work. The award, in its essence, is for being a force for good in the world, in Colorado communities specifically. That basis of the award is deeply meaningful to me.
Read MoreThe Athena Group's Social Capital Assessment
An earlier entry on this topic made a case for intentional measurement and management of social capital within both organizations and multi-stakeholder or cross-sector collaborations. We also introduced the new Social Capital Assessment designed to enable an organization to survey and assess its baseline and ongoing levels of social capital.
Read MoreThe Importance of Social Capital
I chose the topic of my masters thesis after coming across a large body of research indicating that not only does social capital contribute to individual and community health and wellbeing (improved education, more resilient and productive economy, reduced crime, etc.), research suggests that a reasonably high degree of social capital is an essential prerequisite for functional organizations and any form of collective action.
Read MoreGoing Back to Normal is Not an Option
It’s time. It’s been time for a long, long time. The death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Abery and the many others who have suffered at the hands of systemic injustice and racism in America, are victims of my complacency.
Read MoreTo Be of Use: Mask Making for the Pandemic
While so many people in front line essential organizations are working harder than ever, some of us are disconnected from our work in this moment. If disconnected, it can be difficult to stay centered. We need work that matters.
Read MoreTurning Conflict into Creative Engagement
Athena Partner Paul Horton offers strategies to turn conflict in your organization into opportunities for creative engagement.
Read MoreLeading Teams Past Dysfunction and Conflict to Success
While collaboration has never been easy, we’re experiencing more volatility, uncertainty, conflicted ideologies, and cross purposes than ever before. This shows up in both our workplaces and our communities, stretching our capacities for effective collaboration to their limits.
Read MoreUnintended Consequences
Often, when we feel the pressure to not “just stand there, do something,” we take an action to relieve short-term discomfort. Often these actions are appropriate and necessary. And, just as often, we take the action and neglect to pause and think about longer-term impacts or impacts that we in no way intend to be an outcome of our action.
Read MoreDelight in Complex Systems
I recently read “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay. His aspiration was to write a daily essay about something delightful. He made some rules for his practice. Write a delight every day for a year. Begin and end on his birthday. Draft them quickly and write by hand. Later he added another rule, which he calls TEMPORAL ALLEGIANCE (his caps). By this he means he won’t stack and save delights for a future day of writing. Nor will he reflect on past delights that are recalled from memory. Keep it current. Find delight everyday.
Read MoreRedefining Power - Athena’s Purpose in the World
The Athena Group is actively engaged in a journey of reinvention into a self-organizing for purpose enterprise with an even more clarified purpose. So Athena consultants gathered at my house on a beautiful Olympia day and worked to get clear on our shared purpose.
Read MoreCome Down Off Your Ladder!
I learned this approach to conflict engagement from Hugh O’Doherty, one of Ron Heifetz’s colleagues. Hugh was visiting faculty for the Organization Systems Renewal (OSR) graduate program for many years, providing multiple cohorts an unforgettable visceral experience of “Adaptive Leadership.” You can read more about Hugh here. If you want to know more about the visceral experience, let’s meet for coffee.
Read MoreConvening as Leadership | CoResolve Leadership Program | January 16 & 17, 2020
Ultimately, whenever we collaborate with others, we’re trying to get things done that matter to us. Whether we’re looking for long-term solutions to challenging issues such as homelessness, improving youth educational outcomes, revitalizing our downtowns, or creating more resilient organizations and communities, we choose to collaborate because we understand that no one individual or single organization has the expertise, capacity, or, in fact, the mandate to tackle them alone.
Read MoreLove Is A Radical New Thing
Staring at our phones is just the beginning. Wagging our fingers, scowling at the world and isolating ourselves are symptoms. Seeing our lack of humility, facing the challenge of vulnerability, and harnessing the power of love are solutions. This article is about the crisis of self-disconnection in the world today, and how to overcome that crisis by acknowledging, enriching and empowering the connections we already have in our lives.
Read MoreWhat Is Your Youth?
A lot of us working with youth today came from hard times. Whether we came from adversity or trauma, or if we grew up in challenging ways, we have to take care of our heart. The times we live in today are conscientious and aware of how these hard times affect us. This article is about surviving youth. Your youth.
Read MoreIs Self-Organizing a Better Way?
About five years later as my own consulting practice began to grow bigger than what I could handle, I had a strategic choice to make. Do I want to grow the business and add more people, or do I want to limit the work to what I can do? I decided to grow the business – without any real business or management experience to speak of. All I knew was what I didn’t want.
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