The A Spot

So along with the blogs and e-mail newsletters which flood my in box every day I am also subscribed to updates from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. They have a great project on leadership and building state capacity which has had a number of interesting meetings over the years and whose staff conduct trainings and programs around the world. Recently the Dir of the project - Howard Wolpe - former Congressman and expert on Africa co wrote an article called Democracy and Peace-building: Rethinking the Conventional Wisdom. The lessons he and Steve McDonald cite underpin much of the work I have been doing with ISC. Working in communities which have been divided by ethnic, religious, political, cultural issues requires a focus on building trust, collaborative capacity and a focus on consensus building not political competition. I think we take on one particular piece of the puzzle - helping divided communities achieve results on issues of shared mutual interest in a collaborative way builds their capacity to work together on other more intractable issues.

Unfortunately it is in a Journal which is only available for purchase so I cannot cite the entire article. I have written Mr. Wolpe and asked for permission to post in its entirety. Click here for an excerpt from the paper. (more…)

Idealware has come up with another good article on - A Few Good Tools for Sharing Files with Distributed Groups. I was happy to help Laura out with this article and provide some examples from my experience working with coalitions and geographically distant teams of consultants. We are often faced with how to collaborate effectively over long distances and produce a high quality product with input from the widest range of participants possible. The technology we use is just one variable in the equation but getting it right can help get us over big social and cultural collaboration hurdles.

Read the full text here. A key excerpt appears after the jump…
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