I'm a believer (wasn't that a song?). Countless the times when something of the vin ordinaire varietal transpires - give a talk, write a book, take a workshop, go hear someone else's speech - and then eons later, something else happens that connects back to that moment, one that you'd never imagine could have grown from that. I mention the "give...write...take..go hear" because in a few cases that I can quickly recall, such things have resulted in unusual follow-ons, sometimes years later, of which one came to pass yesterday.
It all begins in 1984, when Jeff and I were faculty in the
School of Management and Strategic Studies, the first online executive education program. Click around on that link and you'll get the flavor of the students, their sponsoring organizations, and other faculty. Quite an honor to have been faculty -- and the setting was, hands down, the most beautiful place I've ever given a speech: La Valencia in La Jolla, California, where the meeting room overlooked the Pacific and the people at the front, i.e., the speakers, got to look out rather than in. I think of it often, especially when speaking in meeting rooms with no windows, no ventilation, and that are typically freezing.
OK. Point is that
Don Straus, who passed away in September, 2007, was a student in that class, representing the American Arbitration Association, the organization that he headed for many years. You must read Don's bio at the link in prior sentence. His patrimony is astonishing: his paternal grandparents died on the Titanic, his grandfather having been a co-founder of Macy's. (There's more too.)
Soon thereafter, Don said we had to meet his son,
David, who lived in Boston and who was doing work with similarities to ours. The titles of David's books scream the connection:
How to Make Meetings Work (his classic with
Michael Doyle, who also passed away in 2007) and
How to Make Collaboration Work. David also co-founded
Interaction Associates (IA), a consulting firm that specializes in these topics and over the years developed unique expertise in the collaborative process. I could go on but I'll leave it here: we got to know one another, did some stuff, Jeff and I spoke at two landmark IA conferences, and we became acquainted with IA's spinoff,
Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC), a nonprofit founded in 1993, whose clientele is the nonprofit sector.
Fast forward to last fall, when out of the seeming blue, we receive an email from IISC's
Curtis Ogden, pictured (not well but you get the picture, so to speak) here. Curtis had just read
The Age of the Network, networks being a big part of what IISC does, noticed that we live in West Newton, and asked to get together. We had a great meeting at, yes, of course,
Taste, and agreed to hold a "download" session, in which Jeff and I would share our story around our work with networks.
That session took place yesterday, historic for us in that we've never
been asked to tell the whole story of how we developed our work in networks, what got us started, what we've learned, and how the whole thing has played out to date. Quite moving for us and useful, I think, for the IISC folks. One interesting element: IISC's colleague
Louise O'Meara videoconferenced in from Belfast, Ireland, which was an ongoing reminder of the challenges and advantages brought by the virtual world.
So back to the title of this post, the "you never know" principle: Had we not taught in the program in La Jolla, we would never have met Don Straus who would not have introduced us to David who would not have invited us to speak at conferences in 1995, which would not have led to our book being in the IISC library, which would not have meant our telling our story for the first time ever yesterday. (And I won't bore you with all the other connections, including one of my oldest friend's being IISC Exec Director Marianne Hughes's former housemate, etc.). Here we are with
the group (that's Marianne in the pink sweater in the front). Many thanks. Still whirling inside.
