Where have all the simple problems gone? It seems that every group I work with these days is dealing with long-term, often intractable problems. Water management, ag land preservation, housing, climate change, and rural economic resilience all challenge the very way we think about problems and solutions. Multiple layers of complexity often obscure both […]
On May 24, a coalition of Santa Barbara organizations announced the release of the Santa Barbara County Food Action Plan. The plan represents a milestone for both Santa Barbara County in reflecting community consensus on how to build a more resilient food system and for the food change efforts more generally in its focus on a postive […]
“The Healthy & Sustainable Food Action Plan can lead us to our final destination – a society where each of us has a place at a bountiful table, where we protect the natural world, and where true prosperity is created by those who grow and prepare our food.” – Joseph McIntyre, Ag Innovations It’s been […]
As anyone who has ever tried to work with a group on a complex design challenge knows, uncertainty is one of the most predictable parts of the job. Whether the topic is groundwater management, farm-worker housing, or building a local food alliance, project leaders are faced with the same challenge: they must bring together diverse […]
From Economic Inequality to Economic Sustainability: Lifting the barriers for everyone to thrive. May 26, 2016 8:00 am – 5:00 pm Sonoma Mountain Village 1100 Valley House Dr., Rohnert Park, CA 94928 http://www.equitablefutureconference.org/ Joseph McIntyre will present at this conference geared towards individuals working to level the playing field for greater economic equality and sustainability. […]
Even though systems thinking applications are well established in fields such as management, healthcare and psychology, its application in social change work is still a work-in-progress. There is a tremendous opportunity for us to have greater and more lasting impact by leveraging this theory and practice in our day-to-day work. Last year, we wrote about how to recognize and […]
This is the first of two posts on how we work with the persistent stories that often shape the contours of the projects we faciliate. In this article, we look at the stories themselves. In our Spring Innovation Newswire we will look at how we work with them. One of the most consistent challenges we face in working […]
I have been working as an organizational development and facilitation consultant on climate adaptation in Sonoma County since 2009, when the Laguna Foundation selected climate adaptation as its main focus at their annual conference. From that conference was born the North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative (NBCAI), a coalition of natural resource managers, policymakers, and scientists working […]
We are in an age of worthy challenges, interdependent and complex, that demand a new kind of leadership. Visionaries have realized that the only way they can really make effective change on these important issues is that they must collaborate. And these days, the human race needs us to be effective. Desperately. In 2010, I began to […]
