Now that my 4th weekend of class is over, I have new homework to do before the 5th weekend, which is in mid-November.

First, I have to make another series of collages. This time the topics are the 7 stages involved in giving a future to something. Most companies, for example, never progress beyond the 4th stage. The stages are:

  1. Listen/Express: Basically, coming up with new ideas or possibilities in conversations with people. We move into the next stage after group of people have one of those "Yeah!" moments around a specific idea.
  2. Remember/Forget: We forget most of our great ideas, and we get frustrated and annoyed with ourselves and each other when we later remember. We move out of this stage when we have a structure that works for dealing with remembering the things that are important to us.
  3. Strengthen & Build/Fail: Lots of drama in this stage. We get SO excited and then SO disappointed, and we often feel that the results we produce took more effort than they were worth. To move out of this stage, requires understanding how much we can learn and grow from the failures, and building support — both from people, and tangible evidence of the support.
  4. Predict & Tune: This is the stage where you actually, reliably, produce results. And by tweaking what you’re doing, you can manage those results. The risk in this stage is getting complacent and not trying anything new.
  5. Enhance: In this stage, the results are steady and growing, and we can and do take the opportunity to explore and play with new ways of doing things. The results of our experiments are so successful that they overwhelm the management structures we have in place, and can even destroy them.
  6. Distinguish/Understand & Explain: At this stage, people are dying to know how we managed to create what you created. Normally, we try to answer, but our answers may be inconsistent or contradictory. In order to move past this stage, we have to understand and accept that we actually can’t explain our success.
  7. Enroll/Lose: Almost no one ever reaches this stage. What distinguishes it is that we get that anyone could have done what we did, and we want to give them the opportunity. Our idea becomes all about humanity.

Second, I have to move my "initiative" to the next stage.

In an earlier weekend, we created "initiatives" in which we are taking some way of being that we are, and bringing it forth in the world. It isn’t a project or a thing to do, exactly, but there will be things to do that are necessary to get the way of being out in the world beyond us. (This is where it gets tricky.)

My initiative is in the area of leadership, or of helping people to be leaders. I’m calling the initiative "The Passionate Connection" because the intent is that people take on being leaders in an area or areas of life about which they are passionate.

I’m not sure if mine is at the first stage or the second stage. Probably the first stage.

Third, I need to continue my journal of daily observations and outcomes. That’s you! And I’m proud to say that I got an "A" on my journal last weekend.

Fourth, I need to go to my weekly homework parties and keep up my paperwork.

AND

Fifth, I need to invite the people I have regular communication — daily or weekly — to be acknowledged and appreciated at the next course weekend’s Community Event.

In Atlanta, that’s Saturday night, December 10; in Washington DC, that’s Saturday night, November 12. I’ll be doing the course in DC, but I should be back from my work trip in time to go to the Community Event in Atlanta too.