Process Values

Give a person a fish, you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, you feed them for a lifetime. In other words: Give a person content, you give them nothing. Give a person process, you give them everything. This month we are looking at process in some areas besides collaborative work. We are looking at other fields where you have a choice to focus on content or focus on process, to see if valuing process works in those fields. This week we are looking at teaching. Our church is recruiting Sunday School teachers for our summer time schedule. “All curricula and materials are provided. All you have to do is show up and teach.” That’s all. That’s a lot. I used to try and teach Sunday school. Sure, they provided me all the content I needed. But they never provided process. Most of our church’s Sunday School teachers are also teachers. The rest have been teaching Sunday School for so long that they are accomplished teachers. It never occurs to any of them that they need to ...

This month we are going to look at process in some areas besides collaborative work. We are going to look at other fields where you have a choice to focus on content or focus on process, to see if valuing process works in those fields. This week we are looking at the writing process, particularly the process of writing fiction. I recently completed my first novel. (Actually, at 42,000 words, some would call it a novelette.) It deals with the healing process after rape. It is the only novel I have been able to find (with my admittedly weak research skills) in which the victim is the main character, not simply a pawn in a chess game between the perp and the criminal justice system. When I was writing the story, I took the advice of Ann Lamott, Erica Jong, and many other writers and let my character tell her story. I was surprised when she told me a story of rape and healing. No woman chooses to be raped. I asked my character why she chose to tell me a story of rape. She said th...

For all of May we are looking at some of the precepts of the Tiep Hien Buddhist Order to see what they might have to say to us, especially about process values. [1] The ninth   precept of Tiep Hien Buddhism is:           9. Do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people. Do not utter words that cause division or hatred. Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things that you are not sure of. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety. For those of you who are comparing and contrasting the Fourteen Precepts to the Ten Commandments, this is completely analogous to the (coincidentally) ninth Commandment, 9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Except it is much more sweeping in scope. Remember that the Ten ...

For all of May we are looking at some of the precepts of the Tiep Hien Buddhist Order to see what they might have to say to us, especially about process values. [1] The third   precept of Tiep Hien Buddhism is:            3. Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others to renounce fanaticism and narrowness. I always have a lot of trouble with compassionate dialogue. I guess I read too many of the Dialogues of Plato in high school. Plato tells stories of the great debate victories of Socrates. I think we will never know if they are accurate retellings or stories Plato made up to let us know how great his teacher was. In the Dialogues Socrates uses logical proofs to make his point. A fundamental principle of logical proofs is the existence of the proposition. ...

For all of May we are looking at some of the precepts of the Tiep Hien Buddhist Order to see what they might have to say to us, especially about process values. [1] The second   precept of Tiep Hien Buddhism is: 2. Do not think that the knowledge you possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow minded and bound to present views. Learn to practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive other's viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and the world at all times.      Once upon a time about 2000 years ago in Judea there was a good shepherd. Well, at this time, there were a lot of good shepherds, because there were a lot of shepherds and most of them were very good. Shepherds epitomize what Drucker has said about workers everywhere: to even hold down a job and be thought competent, the average worker has to do...

In his book Being Peace, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn shares the Fourteen Precepts of the Tiep Hien Buddhist Order. Tiep Hien is a particularly Vietnamese order of Buddhism that Hanh thinks might find resonance with some Americans. We will spend May looking at some of the precepts to see what they might have to say to us, especially about process values. The first precept of Tiep Hien Buddhism is:                1. Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means: they are not absolute truth. When I first read this, I thought, “All systems except this one.” I had a little laugh at the naiveté of the author. But on reflection I realized that this is not a system of thought, it is a system of thinking about systems of thought. In our language, it is a process value, maybe the foundational process value that leads us to all the...

Peacekeeping There is a perennial debate among facilitators about voting during collaborative process. Most of them do not like the idea of using voting to select the final plan of action. The debate is about whether voting has any place – whether voting fits with our process values about how we treat evidence, inference, and one another. For a long time I never understood the passion of the no-voting-never-ever-not-even-to-take-the-group-pulse faction. We live in a democracy. How could voting be a bad thing? Then I read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. This is a novel about a family of missionaries serving in the Belgian Congo before and during the transition of the Congo from colony to democracy. However, the natives of the town where they are serving don’t understand this democracy idea. How can anyone do a good job of ruling a people when 49% of them voted against you? This changed forever my view of the role of voting in coming to consensus. It’s easy to...