READ FIRST TO ORIENT.
This is POINT-OF-VIEW (POV), a brand new publication site that I am starting as a channel for sharing my 50 years working as an organizational development consultant, visual practitioner, process designer, and infographic designer. It replaced my old WordPress site. If you were a subscriber there you have already been added to POV. When you signin you will have to respond to an email.
Purpose
My purpose is to share takeaways from my lived experience that will be both inspiring and useful to the next generation of visual facilitators, coaches, and process designers. I will be offering issues that explore the role of PURPOSE in my, community, and organization life. Having a rich spiritual life has been core in my work. Visioning and finding direction is the beginning of everything else.
Practices
I will also be sharing PRACTICES for you who are professional collaboration leaders, coaches, and visual facilitators. I've turned around and created successful non-profits. I founded and led The Grove Consultants for nearly 50 years (since 1977). I've seen a global practice field emerge around visual practice. And I know that personal practice and inner work is essential for working across differences, dealing with trauma, and sustaining important relationships.
Perspectives
Another set of writing will be PERSPECTIVES drawn from working across public, private and non-profit organizations all around the world. How are we shaped by conditioning, cultural beliefs, mental models, process frameworks and plans? What mind-frames will guide us in a tribalizing, hybrid world being transformed by AI? What is the role of language, imagery, and numeracy in perception? I've tracked these questions all these years and designed successful thinking tools for facilitation, teaming, strategy and change. What's under all this? Are there integrative, reliable frameworks and source-codes on which people can create a new future? The name of this site was inspired by Alan Kay, who first imagined the personal computer at Xerox Parc. He famously said "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points." Welcome to mine.
Places
I also write about PLACE. I know California from my lived experience in the mountains and on the coast, both north and south. The image on this post is from the mesa north of Bishop where I was raised and where I had my first vision quest. People's disconnection from the natural world and place is an issue I care deeply about. Storytelling helps people reconnect. I once heard Ursula Le Guin begging for more voices from the land. Her request became a calling. It's time to share what I know.
Poems
There will be also be POEMS on all four of those channels and searchable through a poems tab. I've been immersed in poetry for years with my first wife Susan Herron Sibbet, a published poet and poet teacher. I've found her passing has transformed her into a real muse. I'm still active with California Poets in the Schools.
My Approach to Writing and Design
As I've immersed myself in all the changes roaring through our lives, and AI in particular, I've come to believe that sharing my actual, lived experience is the most contributive I can do as a balancing force. I use AI to do factual research and track what others are thinking and writing, and help designing this website, but I don't process my material with AI. You will be reading my voice. I love writing and want you to know that you are reading ideas that have my own life behind them.
You can subscribe if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published! I have hundreds of posts from the past that I may organize by decades, for those of you interested in time-bound perspectives, but sorting through the 207 journals and hundreds of pieces of writing that never showed in my blogs is what I'm doing now.
To read the PREMIUM content and NEXT-BOOK posting you will have to become a Contributing Member at a modest $100 a year or $10 per month fee to help support my writing. I'm using Ghost's Brief Theme to publish. Ghost is a non-profit open source platform designed for small publishers and writers that doesn't charge a percentage for subscription. It can link items to other social media feeds, knowing my content here is secure. If you were a subscriber on my old WordPress site you are already entered at a free level. Heads up that downstream I intend to set up a tiered membership with some pricing to help fund my further sharing.
I've retired from active management at The Grove Consultants International. My spouse Gisela Wendling, Ph.D. is now CEO and taking us all into new terrain regarding transformational leadership and coaching. I am still fully involved as a supporter/mentor and leadership coach and involved in some key consulting projects. In the future I would like to spend as much time as I can producing this publication. I majored in magazine journalism at Northwester and this is a digital return to my roots. Enjoy.