Author: Maya Mehta

Flawless Consulting: A Compass in Chaotic Times

Posted on by Maya Mehta

We live — and work — in a world that feels increasingly complex. Organizations are stretched thin, trust is extremely fragile, and it seems like every day, leaders are being asked to do more with less.

In the midst of uncertainty, it’s easy to slip into survival mode. Solve the problem. Meet the deadline. Move on.

But what if consulting — whether internal or external — could offer something more? What if it could be a stabilizing force in chaotic times?

In over 40 years of doing this work, we have witnessed how Flawless Consulting® is more than just a workshop for consultants—it’s a compass for anyone trying to lead with clarity, integrity, and courage, even when things feel uneasy.

When Everything Feels Urgent, Relationships Should Still Come First

Especially in fast-moving environments, it’s tempting to skip over relationship-building in favor of jumping straight to the solution. However, as Peter Block teaches, the most effective consultants and leaders understand that building relationships and trust is foundational to genuine progress. 

Relationships require clarity. They require certainty about our wants and the courage to express them fearlessly. Building relationships isn’t a process that can necessarily be expedited. It can be slower, but that steadiness can lead to sustainable outcomes that make all the difference. 

Flawless Consulting provides us both a methodology and a mindset to: 

    •    Slow down enough to contract clearly and openly

    •    Name what we want and invite others to do the same

    •    Manage resistance without overpowering or avoiding it

These skills enable us to build relationships that can withstand complexity, tension, and change, especially in times of crisis.

Control Is a Myth. Partnership Is the Alternative.

Chaotic times often prompt our instinct to control outcomes, people, or processes. Flawless Consulting offers an alternative stance: partnership.

Rather than trying to fix others or carry the burden alone, the Flawless methodology is about shared responsibility. Flawless Consulting invites us to co-create clarity, even when outcomes are uncertain. That shift — from being a pair of hands or an expert to being a partner — is what makes work meaningful. In other words, the way through the storm isn’t control — it’s connection.

What You Want Matters Too

In the midst of these chaotic times, it can be easy to put the needs of your organization, your coworkers, and your clients first. Sure, it’s important to understand how you can be useful to others as the world around them is changing. It’s equally important to consider yourself too.

Whether you are partnering with someone else to get work done or rescoping work that’s already been in progress, these chaotic times should prompt you to consider: What do I want? Flawless Consulting teaches you to ask for what you want – not merely to satisfy your own personal whims and wishes but enable you and the people you are supporting to succeed. By putting your wants into words as simply and directly as possible, you are treating your relationship as a true partnership.

Why Flawless Still Matters (Maybe Now More Than Ever)

We get it, consulting skills aren’t the first necessities that come to mind when times are tough. But the truth is, this is when they matter most.

At Designed Learning, we operate at the intersection of meaning and methodology. Flawless Consulting doesn’t just give you steps to follow — it gives you a way to show up with integrity, even when everything feels uncertain.

The Creative Economy Part One: Another Way Forward

Posted on by Maya Mehta

By Peter Block

We live in a culture where our attention is fixated on what is not working and who is winning and losing. The narrative is filled with polarization, conflict, wrongdoing. This is the major substance of headline news and a good portion of social media, which carries within it a negative bias. We begin to think this is who we are.

Some particular themes hold consistent and endless arguments over whether we should:

  • Further liberate capitalism or consider it being in a late stage.
  • Embrace or watch out for “social” as an ism or an adjective.
  • Have more or less government regulation and oversight.
  • Have progressive or conservative legislation.
  • Have more or less government funding.
  • Inhabit, celebrate, or occupy Wall Street.

In addition, the stock market is headline news and a popular measure of well-being. Inflation, the consumer price index, unemployment and inflation rates are central measures used to evaluate our condition. These conversations occur at every level: city, state, nation, world. The focus on these dimensions of life is sold as essential to preserve our freedom, democracy, well-being, and historical legacy.

Suppose that these versions of who we are and what matters had a purpose other than freedom and democracy. That these storylines were mostly driven by our religious devotion to a market economy. That we have simply internalized the idea that it is the market economy that best serves our progress and well-being. That the typical debates are really about whose point of view can make the market economy work the best. That the market economy, more than the well-being of our collective, benefits from endlessly focusing on the stance of government, the distribution of wealth, who is in charge of the rules. Not that these don’t matter, but are they really decisive?

These debates and objects of our attention do us a great disservice. They actually distract us, by design, from most of the human values which more authentically define us, our lives, our enduring culture, what really matters most. There are places the market economy, how it is funded and regulated, cannot take us: simply put, the collective well-being of us all.

The existing immersion in the market context, no matter whether progressives or liberals run things, has produced way too little reduction in our suffering. Our social and economic isolation grows. The climate crisis has been growing. Wealth disparity grows. Fear grows. Housing and family security are a struggle. Injustice thrives. The number of human beings who struggle each day is too many. The actions by urban or national military forces are growing. Perhaps the only decisive outcome of the current debates within the market context is which ruling class is in charge.

Walking upstream, it is time to more seriously question the impact of all these conversations confined within the context of a market economy. Perhaps they are a very narrow view of reality and are the wrong conversations. Perhaps there is an alternative to the market economy that would better serve us. Engage us in conversations and debates that truly have the capacity to create a more just, enriching quality of life and culture.

The Soul of the Market Economy

The market economy holds that we live in the midst of scarcity. This becomes the rationale that justifies too many of our actions. This recurrent debate is based on the myth that our well-being is best served by being more competitive. Which starts in the first grade with the grading system. It reflects the Adam Smith adoration of self-interest. It sustains the neoliberal belief that global scale and dollar volume are the real measures of success. Both sides of the debate are really concerned with how to make scarcity, competition, and scale work best.

This conversational drumbeat relegates the common good to the sideshows of collateral damage and externalized costs.

The power over our existing culture is described by Ellen Meiskins Wood who, in her classic book “The Origin of Capitalism,” defines the contemporary focus of the market economy quite simply:

“Material life and social production in capitalism are universally mediated by the market. This unique system of market dependence means that the dictates of the capitalist market –– its imperatives of competition, accumulation, profit maximization, and increasing labor productivity –– regulate not only all economic transit actions but social relations in general” (p. 7, emphasis mine).

Wood explores the idea that the market economy has spread beyond commerce to define and shape our way of living. This includes how we school our children, how we value the arts, who manages our health and aging, what stories we highlight, our love of screens, how we manage our judicial system, taxation, and who keeps us safe.

An Alternative in Plain Sight

There is an alternative economy. We have a choice where our attention goes and we might be better served if we shifted our primary attention to what can be called the creative economy. This is an economy based on the conviction that there is enough. It replaces scarcity with imagination and memory and relatedness. If we shift the context from market to creative, it changes our patterns of solutions. We will still argue, but why not over something that cultivates our humanity? This can become the center of our attention. We have the choice to relegate commerce to something that is incidentally interesting. The Dow Jones average becomes a human-interest story.

The creative economy better honors the original definition of “economy”: Economy is “the management of a household, stewardship of a household’s resources.” It also arises from the original definition of “creative”: “to beget, give birth to.” The creative economy rests on a belief in stewardship for all that a household both inherits and produces. A household can be you, your family, your neighbors, your community, a nation, a planet.

“Creative” is not just about what we call art. It encompasses our local ability to innovate, make, and produce. This includes social relations and local memory and culture and preservation rather than commercialization of the land and nature. It incorporates local production. The arts are included, but extend to sustaining a creative culture. The creative economy focuses on the capacity of a neighborhood to give people access to and control of most all they need to survive and prosper. This encourages a career not dependent on schooling or class rank. It means keeping dollars circulating locally. Art becomes a way of bringing people together for the larger purpose of well-being.

The creative economy is dramatically distinct from the market economy. The market economy is where what matters most is surplus and profit. Convenience, cost, self-interest are driving forces. The market economy is used to justify what is sometimes called a command economy. They both call us to give structure and priority to the market-driven way of being. Corporations, central agencies, or government, under the lobby of corporations, control all major aspects of how we function as a society. This includes what goods and services are produced, how they are produced, and how they are distributed. The market economy is used to justify foreign relations strategies and agreements. Essentially, central entities, often monopolies, dictate most economic decisions.

The creative economy reports and puts attention and control of material and social well-being into aggregated local entities: households, streets, or a neighborhood. It exists in co-ops, urban farms, local production. Local enterprise. In rural communities, it means that farmers are connected. Cooperation thrives as a core function of rural communities.

A creative economy does have a place for competition, but competition is not a driver. It has more interest in sustainability than scale. In the quality of work more than its efficiency. It is more interested in restoration than accumulation, local circulation of dollars rather than profit maximization, spreading labor opportunities rather than increasing labor productivity, distributed rather than centralized control of production. Care for the soil.

An Economy Serving the Common Good

Among economists, the term “creative economy” increasingly refers to all economic activity that depends on a person’s individual creativity for its economic value. In this usage, the creative economy occurs wherever local individual and collective effort is the main source of value and the main source of a transaction. John Howkins developed the concept in 2001 to describe economic systems where value is based on novel imaginative qualities rather than central organizational control of the traditional resources of land, labor, and capital. It gives first priority to the question of how we can produce with each other what we were in the habit of seeking from government, institutions, and large global or national enterprises.

The most radical shift towards the creative economy begins with where we place our attention. With what we consider important news. Headline news reports on where we, together, are producing the care required for all that matters most to us. It lets self-interest be present but not as our organizing principle. The neighborhood or community sector –– not the government or private sector –– becomes central and defines our social relations.

Government becomes a convening agent and protects the rules and limits needed for communities to function. We always need institutions like we now have, but their attention shifts away from growing the private sector and growing their services; it shifts towards building community agency. Private enterprise with its market economy remains nearby, but it does not define who we are.

Luckily the creative economy already exists. It is all around us, waiting to be valued and made central to our way of seeing and speaking to and about ourselves. Tune into the next column for proof of concept, evidence, and things practical.

Part Two: The Creative Economy in Plain Sight

Posted on by Maya Mehta

by Peter Block

“The future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.”

––William Gibson 

We are surrounded by an economy that we rarely hear about, called the creative economy. It is not an economy for creatives, it is about the ways people create a life for themselves and others around them which cannot be measured by its commercial appeal. It arises from the original meaning of the word “economy,” which was household management. The creative economy is an alternative to the market economy, and it is all around us, though essentially unrecognized as news. Some examples of this invisible economy: 

  • After an operation a surgeon invites the patient’s family and caregivers plus nurses, lab people, and other technical support to stand in a circle with the patient once a day. Each states what they think the best course of action might be to care for the patient. Agreements are written on a whiteboard on the wall. The process is called Collaborate Rounds and takes twenty minutes. Results: Dramatically shortens the hospital stay. Quickens recovery time after release.
     
  • A teacher in grade four begins most days by having students in small groups have a fifteen-minute discussion of what is on their mind, what they are feeling at the moment. In the same school, there is a Restorative Practices room where teachers, family, and friends sit with each disruptive student to discuss what is going on and what might make a difference. Results: Suspensions reduced seventy percent. Classroom performance improves.
     
  • A police force in Colorado declares that their purpose is to keep offenders out of the judicial system. Citizen groups join in restorative justice practices which give to offenders who choose to participate the support to shift the direction of their life. The chief and citizens walk difficult neighborhoods once a week to invite people into this process. Results: Thousands of offenders have not returned to unlawful actions. Overall safety compared to similar communities is one of best in the state.
  • A hip hop cultural arts center invites urban youth aged fourteen to twenty-four to learn how to compose, record, engineer, do graffiti art, and perform hip hop related music and dance. They are never asked about their background or their needs. They are just offered studio space and daily instruction on how to do, in a disciplined way, what they care most about. After four months the vast majority decide, on their own, to leave the street culture. Results: Over seven thousand youth have chosen to use this unique experience to create productive lives. 

These stories are vivid examples of what is widely occurring in every community. They are about health, education, crime, and youth. Popular topics. The outcomes are dramatically different from those we hear most about. And they happen all around us: in parks, libraries, coffee shops, churches, kitchens, arts venues, and front yards. 

What is puzzling is why outcomes like these remain invisible. In the current culture they are not considered news. They do not align with the commercial essence of another economy: the market economy. The market economy wants to know what is not working, where are the deficiencies, where are the commercial opportunities for scale, efficiency, cost, speed, revenue volume, profit to take advantage of conflict, wrongdoing, crisis, crime, litigation, competition, self-doubt, and fear. These are themes in the dominant narrative which are all drivers of the market economy and capture most of our attention and energy.      

The invitation here is to consider centering our attention on people creating a culture where the primary conversation is not driven by the modern market economy. It begins by seeking a name for the alternative that does not use the existing narrative in its title. Postmodern, late-stage capitalism, neoclassical. The term “creative economy” is in use and captures the primacy of citizen agency, connection, localness, and affection that frames the essence of what best serves us and the common good.

We can more fully choose to shift our primary attention away from the market economy and its effects. We can acknowledge that the creative economy better serves us and is waiting for us to make it central. The stories in this economy are mostly alive in their own disciplines like health, education, public safety, and art. Something shifts when we consider these stories of interest to all of us, all the time.  All that is required is to amplify our attention to them. We live in an attention world. Suppose we decided to shrink the discussion of the market economy to a side show, a human-interest story?

Economic Mindfulness

Shifting attention as the methodology of transformation is an extremely well-developed practice in many domains. It is the essence of eastern practices like Buddhism and its variants including mindfulness and meditation. The interconnection of body, mind, and spirit in yoga practice is all about attention. In the religious domain, devotion takes the form of contemplation, liturgy, prayer, communion, immersion, kneeling. All are practices to shift and reinforce where to focus our attention. Same for therapy, counseling, communities of practice. All are built on the idea that how and where we put our attention is instrumental in creating a life that best serves what matters most to us. 

In most of these movements, the focus is on the individual and how they navigate themselves and the world. While each advocates compassion for all, the individual is the center of attention. The creative economy is about communal efforts. It manifests the idea that cooperatively, through powerful, small-scale encounters and programs in a particular place, we create a world that best serves us.   

Participating in the creative economy, we shift our relationship with time. We believe there is enough time for what matters. We set convenience aside as the major selling point for goods and services. We consider the number of neighbors we learn to trust to be more important than likes, followers, or finding the right occupant of the corner office. We decide to keep our dollars very local.

On a bigger scale, there have been historical efforts to shift the economy to what we value most. Mennonites. Quakers. Co-housing neighborhoods. Utopian communities. Each designed to reshape our way of participating in the material world. These groups are sometimes called intentional communities. Our current effort might be to create attentional communities, whose purpose is to normalize paying primary attention to the economy that primarily values slow, small, local, inconvenient, relational, kind to the earth and the other.
  

Citizens as Agents

The creative economy is a shift in who is accountable for what we consider essential to our well-being. We become citizens, not consumers. It encourages us to reclaim the ability to shape our culture and how we build what is called social capital. 

Social capital is a term that captures the cultural force that produces our individual and collective common good. Social capital has two components: How much we trust each other and how much we work together to make a place better. Robert Putnam, in “Bowling Alone,” showed that communities with high social capital were more successful in domains such as livelihood, education, and health than communities with low social capital.   

One way social capital is produced is when we plan an event together. Street fairs, sharing food, arts, library, workshops, park events, anything neighborhood or street. It is not just the event that creates trust and makes a place better; what really creates social capital is how we connect to each other in the planning and production and hosting of the event. The event itself is a reason for a relational activism that creates a future we want.

The four opening stories show how social capital is built with a shift in the role of expert –– namely surgeon, teacher, chief, executive director. These people are important and vital, but it is the ways they build agency and connection among citizens, students, and peers that are decisive in the learning and healing process. These experts spend as much thought and time building relational connection as they do on pedagogy, instruction, and policies. Plus the primary focus is on the gifts of offenders, urban and school youth, and patients. 

In addition to the role of professional experts, the function of leadership comes from neighborhood connectors –– people who thrive on invitation, caring for the common good, bringing strangers in touch with one another. If you are still reading this column, you are likely one of them. 

The creative economy places in the hands of citizens and the neighborhood the agency to produce our well-being. Not to purchase it. Not to expect elected officials or social service or educational institutions, commercial organizations, or public programs to raise a child, care for the earth, provide livelihood, keep us safe and happy. 

Measuring What Matters 

What we measure is a direct expression of what we deem important. In the market economy we evaluate an event by the number of people who showed up and how they rated the experience. We measure scale, likes, money spent or produced. In the broader look, we measure average annual income, GDP, sales, efficiency.  

One reason the creative economy has not been valued is that it is not monetized, nor should it be. If we hold to the belief that our measure of well-being is first and foremost our dollars, our wealth, our upward mobility, our global scale, and our convenience, then our humanity and the condition of the earth will remain an afterthought.  

This calls us to measure the creative economy in a unique way. In valuing the creative economy our attention goes to efforts and outcomes created by citizens producing something together. Our attention goes to a qualitative assessment of local efforts: How were neighbors engaged? What gifts were made visible? In what ways did people become less socially and economically isolated?   

We would measure people’s trust in each other and how much they belong to the place where they reside. We would be interested in their general well-being and happiness, how their children are doing, their involvement in the arts and local government. The tools for these measures are available. Canadian economist Mark Anielski has spent a career designing and applying a Well-Being Index. Used by countries, provinces, and First Nations, it focuses the conversation on how citizens are doing together.

Broadcasting the Creative Economy    

Our collective task is to imagine ways for the creative economy to become prime time, headline news –– the center of our attention –– in ways that are aligned with its nature. The traditional attention channels will remain committed to the market economy. Let them be. We need to find ways to publicize and report a version of news that draws attention away from our current habits. There are already islands of this.         

David Bornstein is a strong national voice for the community-serving possibility of journalism. He started Solutions Journalism as an alternative to the prevailing focus on what is wrong and who is at fault. 

Peter Pula has created Axiom News. He trains people in generative journalism designed to build and serve community.  

Next City in Detroit gives constructive attention to neighborhoods and works to support the strengths and struggles of Blacks to find full equity and participation in the life of the city.  

Perhaps we create The Connecting Times as a regular publication that is a container for the news we choose to value. It can focus on efforts where the future exists in the present. This is technically possible. We just have to decide together if we have the will to create some communal instrument that ties all our efforts together. Local newspapers are everywhere, so let’s have a regular column on the creative economy. 

Citizens are the source of the stories for creative journalism to support the creative economy. Suppose we treat as primary news those instances where local people are already telling their stories to each other. There are storytelling organizers everywhere. Suppose we treated these stories, currently collected for connecting people, as central to our economy. In the connector networks that exist now, we can document the stories of where the creative economy is operating.

An Invitation

Attention on the creative economy focuses on where social capital, rather than traditional financial capital, is at work. These are situations where three or more people trust each other and decide to make things better. Central to each effort is how it builds local relationships and affection. Wendell Berry has written about this elegantly. 

Again, the stories we are interested in start small and are slow, underfunded, and inconvenient. There are innovations all around us involving land use, youth, safety, urban farming, small community and cooperative enterprises, health, housing, the arts. There are already structures for innovative community capital investment and jubilee-minded debt treatment. These are all practices that allow every city and rural town to thrive.

This is an invitation to see if framing what so many are creating as an economy might be a thread that is useful. Let us know if you are interested. Or have a story.    

Naperville’s Book Read: A Collective Exploration of Community

Posted on by Maya Mehta

What happens when a city comes together to collectively explore what community truly means? The City of Naperville, located just 28 miles from Chicago, launched the “Embracing Community Book Read” initiative in the second half of 2024. The initiative invited residents, employees, and students to read and discuss Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging.

The book read officially began with a captivating conversation with Peter Block. Hosted in July, participants gathered in person to discuss the book while engaging with Peter via Zoom. Over the next two months, Naperville residents were able to read through Community at their own pace. The Naperville Public Library made the book accessible, offering not just physical copies but audio and e-book formats as well. From high school and college students at North Central College to city employees and long-time community members, participants represented a tapestry of Naperville’s population.

Geneace Williams, City of Naperville’s Manager of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, reflected, “What surprised me most was the similarities between the themes that emerged from the community, the students, and the employee participants. We are much more alike than most realize.”

Small-group discussions were held throughout October, and as we know from the book and from Peter Block’s wisdom, “the small group is the unit of transformation.”

A commitment to continued connection came out of the conversation. Inspired by their experience, one group decided to continue the momentum by selecting a second book for further exploration—David Brooks’ How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.

A standout moment came during closing discussions when the community united behind a powerful collective takeaway:

“Create an environment in which we intentionally embrace one another’s gifts and vulnerabilities to unlock the full potential of our community.”

This story from Naperville shows us how powerful it can be to invite our communities in, gather into small groups, and embrace what we have in common. It is an example of what can happen when citizens take control of their collective well-being. Thank you to the City of Naperville for breathing life into this work. You are an example of where the future exists in the present and what happens when we treat our neighbors as partners in creating meaning around what matters to us all.

Thank You. I Like Hearing That.

Posted on by Maya Mehta

By Peter Block

Gift:

Something willingly given to someone without payment.

A natural ability or talent.

Success at building strong communities and organizations is accelerated when we focus on and give full expression to our gifts and the gifts of others. This is in contrast to the more common practice of focusing on what is missing and problem solving for a fix.  

Giving full expression to our gifts requires us to know what they are, in specific terms. Once we know them, it is still a challenge to own them and treat them as if they are important. This is difficult not only because of our modesty, but at the moment I own my gifts, I become accountable for their application. So, we often prefer to give our attention to deficiencies, which demand little of us other than an apology and an improvement plan.  

Gifts come to life when we choose to tell others the gifts we are receiving from them. In this moment, not yesterday or tomorrow. More important is to invite others to tell us what gifts they received from us this time we are together. Awkward? Yes. Impactful? Yes.

The larger meaning of this is that we choose to create a context where gifts are central, primary, the point. We choose not to treat a discussion of gifts as being self-centered or useful only on occasion.  

This is not easy because the dominant contemporary context gives great importance to deficiencies, problems, self-improvement. Our consumer culture attends to what is missing in us, what we might become. Otherwise we would only buy what we needed. What we are not in the habit of practicing is a conversation about gifts exchanged in the normal course of being together. The dominant culture does not see recognition of gifts –– our own and those of others –– as the essence of producing outcomes and of connection, belonging. Making a place better, whether a home, a workplace, a neighborhood, a council meeting, a town hall meeting, a garden or book or dog club.

Our purpose here is to encourage the importance of naming gifts as a routine practice. Plus, to detail what the conversation looks like.

Our Current Habits  

Naming gifts is most often saved for a special occasion. This is where we see three conversational gift habits:

  1. On Departure. Retirement and death are the established occasions when we talk about a person’s gifts. In the case of death, it is called a eulogy. In this moment, we will be forgiven. People will express their gratitude towards us and say what they will miss. People will describe what was unique and special about us. Unfortunately, we are likely to miss the conversation. And by just a few days.
    At retirement or leaving the workplace, same conversation. We get to listen to this one.  We will hear their gratitude. Our unique capacities. What is special about us. Unfortunately, this conversation occurs on our way out. We are gone tomorrow.  Plus, the occasion only occurs a few times in our lifetime.
  2. Personality Analysis and Self-Improvement. We have written tests for assessing and giving meaning our gifts. FIRO-B tells me about my leanings toward control, inclusion, and affection. Myers-Briggs lets me know I am an INFJ. Introverted, intuitive, feeling, and judging. Positive psychology helps us focus on our strengths and how to build them. Social-emotional training develops and indexes our path to relational maturity. Performance reviews are another common habit where our pluses and minuses are discussed. Therapy is also a prevalent practice.
  3. Victory. When we win, our gifts are celebrated. Best in class. Sports achievements. Promotions. Awards. Grades. The message here is that acknowledging our gifts has to be earned.

Exchanging Gifts as a Regular Relational Practice

As we seek connection and belonging or an alternative future, naming the gifts we have received from one another each time we are together is a powerful practice. It deserves to be ranked up there with Robert’s Rules of Order in the public sector, and PowerPoint presentations, updates, and staff meetings everywhere else. We can be very specific about what this would look like. To create the context for the gifts conversation, there are some distinctions that are useful.

  • Gifts vs Strengths. There is a distinction between stating what gifts I have received from someone on this occasion and a discussion of a person’s strengths. It is not our task to analyze or name what others are good at. Strengths are an abstraction and prone to projections. The word “strength” also brings the presence of weakness into play.  We want to tell people what difference they made, not what strengths they possess.
  • Being Enough vs Needing Improvement. The gifts conversation as envisioned here is not about self-improvement. Self-improvement functions out of a context that something more being needed.  It is a useful industry, but its larger context is that we are not yet enough. Advice is needed, and there is always work to be done. Still, there is something twisted when we take on the responsibility of helping the other become a better person. It is a colonial practice, packaged as mentoring and generosity.   

The context for building successful communities and organizations begins with the stance that we are enough. Period. What builds a better world is to create ways of acknowledging and amplifying the fact that each person has all that is needed. This begins with seeing our gifts clearly so they can be amplified. This is what creates agency and accountability.

The Practice of the Gifts Conversation

The gifts conversation is powerful when we decide that exchanging gifts for its own sake is essential. The intent is to learn what action I am taking, now, in this moment, has value and meaning for the people in the room and the purpose of our gathering. Naming this teaches each what to focus on and shifts the energy and potential for all in the room.  

Here are the practices that build a gift-minded way of being. This conversation occurs in the middle or the end of every gathering.

   Practice One: When you choose to describe a gift you have received: 

  1. Focus on the conversation you just had. Pick a person. Name names: Sally, Lopez, Derek … Say: I want to say something to you. State the gift you received. For example: You listened. You surprised me. You were vulnerable. Your way of thinking added something new. You named your doubts. You bring a quiet warmth to the discussion. You shared an experience close to mine. I have seen you around but never got to know you.
  2. State why their action matters to you. Example: This matters because … it is rare for me to be with someone who does not have something in mind for me. Also, I am usually very cautious, and I wasn’t cautious in this conversation. I thought I was alone and something was wrong with me. I discovered that is not so. Your presence with me told me I was not crazy.

  Practice Two: When someone says something nice to you:

  1. Say: Thank you. I like hearing that. Do not respond in kind. Do not be humble. Do not tell a story about your struggles, how your sibling is better at this. How you got lucky this time. How the other person brought it out of you. Do not deflect the attention. Courage is required to take it in without reshaping it with history, explanation, or humility. Thank you. I like hearing that. Pause. Inhale.
  2. Share with the person who named a gift of yours just now what that means to you. You might say that connecting with strangers is not easy for you. This moment is an antidote to your impatience for a to-do list and you find it challenging to simply connect with others for its own sake. You like to control things, and this moment is an example of knowing you are capable of just being present for another. Or you tend to think your ideas are too radical; it is good knowing they might have more value than you realized.
  3. Ask: Is there anything else in our conversation that made a difference for you?
  4. Repeat: Thank you. I like hearing that.

  The purpose is to accelerate connection and value it as the necessary path to outcomes, learning, and accountability. An alternative future is based on this.    

  Remember the conversation about you at the moment has a larger purpose: to deepen your connection with all who are on the call or in the room. Also, it affirms a context of our being enough. It also is of value to others who witness this moment.

  Practice Three: When someone leaves early.  

  The gifts conversation is also useful for small departures, moments more frequent than death and retirement. This is when someone has to leave a gathering early. Instead of sneaking out at the break or when no one is looking, we take a moment with the one who is leaving to value the fact they showed up. This expresses appreciation for the time the person was present. This serves to complete the circle in the absence of the person leaving. Even if they said nothing all day.

  1. The process is for the convener to ask for any three people in the room to share with the person leaving: Here is a gift I received from you as a result of you being part of this today.
  2. Next is for the departing person to state what gifts they have received as a result of being there.
  3. Thank you. I like hearing that.

One More Thought   

The point is to put gifts on the agenda in as many ways as possible. This recognizes that asking what we can do better next time has limits; it reinforces the idea that focusing on what is not working takes us somewhere. One version to establish the value of the gift conversation, this one declares we have agency for this event: ask the question halfway through a gathering Are you getting what you came for?

This gives time to act, together, on getting what we came for. Surveying participants after the event is a nice gesture but treats people as consumers giving feedback, not as creators of the time we spent together.

Thanks for Reading

One purpose of every convening is to give form to the world and culture we want to inhabit. This happens when we reshape small and important elements of convening. The questions we ask and the way we convene are what creates a future we do not have to wait for.  Focusing on gifts as one category of meeting design enables us to believe that all we need for transformation or shift is present in this room. Something or someone more is not required for authentic change to occur.

Full Disclosure

I was in a day-long gathering recently and I had to leave early. I had led the morning session but would be gone for the afternoon.

It occurred to me that maybe I should treat my early leaving as a rare moment where I choose to practice what I preach. Before we broke for lunch, I told the group what the three gifts were that I had received from them in our time together.

I then nervously asked in a whisper, what gifts had they received from me? I know what the process is. See above. I just am not in the habit of following it.  

For the next ten minutes, I heard from people I have known and cared about for a long while, years in many cases, and from others whom I had just met. They were specific in describing what my work had meant to them in the past and the gift of how I had been with them in the gathering that morning.  

In hearing what impacts I have had on their practices, in addition to being appreciated, I received insights into the detail and texture of what words and actions of mine had meaning to them. Most were surprises. They mentioned certain times we had been together.  They talked about shifts in their thinking. Ways they had transformed their own practice. Ways they had received value from my words that I could not have known without this conversation.  

In those ten minutes, I was given –– in a way that surprised me –– the gift of being present in a premature version of my own eulogy. I received the gifts and experienced the discomfort of having to exhale into the realization that the work I have committed to makes  a difference. That moment answered questions and doubts that haunt us all. It happened not as the point of our gathering, or as a learning opportunity, but as a footnote to the bigger reasons for us to gather.

This is what the gifts conversation offers each time. A small metaphor of what will restore our humanity in the face of a commodifying culture. We may still leave the meeting with a list of what to do, but we will hold it lightly, knowing it was really not the point.

Thank you. If you want to let me know of anything here that was useful to you, I would like hearing that.    

Virtual Encounter, Real Gifts: Reflections from the China OD Practitioner (CODP) Conference

Posted on by Maya Mehta

It has been over two weeks since I returned from this year’s China OD Practitioner (CODP) Conference held on November 16-17, yet the impact of the event still lingers on my mind. I am deeply moved by the overwhelming feedback shared by participants, especially their reflections from a talk given by Peter Block, which was streamed via video.

Some Background

The CODP Conference is an annual gathering organized by the Innovative OD Center (IOC), an OD training and consulting firm based in Shanghai. This event fosters connections among OD practitioners in China and helps them share best practices, learn new perspectives, and deepen their sense of community.

The gathering of this year had a special significance as it was a celebration of the 10th anniversary of IOC’s most foundational program, the Competencies in OD Certificate Program. Close to 80 graduates participated in this gathering, representing about one-third of all alumni. As a graduate of the 10th OD Certificate Program, I am lucky to be one part of this growing community. 

The “Encounter”

Peter Block’s name is familiar to everyone in this community as his book, Flawless Consulting (3rd edition) has been one of the two pre-reading books for the OD Certificate Program in the past decade. However, the conference was first time that the participants finally “met” Peter, albeit virtually, through a 26-minute video excerpt from a recent 80-minute Zoom interview conducted by IOC.

The video played on Day 2 of the conference during a session focused on envisioning the community’s next 10 years. Peter’s insights addressed profound and wide-ranging topics:

  • The essence and value of OD in a world of uncertainty and change
  • Bringing authenticity into organizations often dominated by the “head” rather than the “heart”
  • His journey to becoming a Master of OD
  • Transitioning from organizational to community-focused work
  • Shifting people’s mindsets from being consumers to becoming co-owners of their communities

The Gifts

Unexpectedly, watching a short video recording turned out to be the highlight of the conference. In the small groups that were convened immediately after watching the video, many participants shared that they were deeply touched and inspired. In the WeChat group for the conference, many shared similar reflections.

The momentum continued even after the conference was finished. I saw many participants posting photos of Peter on video in their WeChat Moments, together with the lines that struck them most.

Here are just a few of the lines shared:

  • “The essence of OD is that relationship and our connection to each other is what produces outcomes.”
  • “OD is…confronting people with their gifts, confronting with what you want to bring to this place.”
  • “We’re not trying to protest or change anyone. We’re looking for people looking for us.”
  • “When you choose to treat people as subjects rather than objects, you’re going to feel lonely. And that’s why we need each other.”
  • “You’re not trying to convince anybody. You’re an invitation. You’re not a mandate.” 
  • “That’s the magnet you are and the container you are for your culture.”
  • “Leadership is to step into an uncertain future, to believe and face ourselves that we can create the future, even though we can’t predict it.”
  • “The future always exists in the present.”

Meaningful Reflections

With curiosity, I asked some of the participants, “What made those particular words meaningful to you?” Here are some of their responses:

  • “Our work of HR and OD treats ‘people’ as the end instead of the mean. However, we often feel lonely and frustrated, because most people around us are focusing on the ‘things’ only. And I feel greatly comforted by Peter’s words that we just need to look for people looking for us.” (Leslie, an HR leader of a new energy automotive company)
  • “Treating people as subjects instead of objects is so important for our time. Nobody can be all-powerful, and we need everyone to be agent and give full play to our creativity.” (Jinfeng, a former sales leader of a bio-pharmaceutical company.)  
  • “Peter talks about the essence of OD and community in such simple but powerful words. And his way of talking just demonstrates authenticity. This encourages us as OD practitioners to trust and confront ourselves–we can create the world we want to inhabit.” (Victoria, an independent EQ and leadership coach, and OD consultant.)     
  • “Everyone is trying to make a change, and the change does not happen in the future but starts from now. And my reflection is how I can become to be the magnet and the container for that change.” (Wing, OD Head of a chain catering enterprise.)

Immediate Application

One outcome that was particularly inspiring to me was an action immediately taken by the Dream Team responsible for co-designing the conference made up of six volunteers from the OD practitioner community. Vera, one of the Dream Team members and an OD consultant of IOC, shared with me:

“I heard Peter talking about the subtle differences of questions, and I suddenly realized that our questions designed for collecting participants’ feedback on the conference were all ‘consumer’ questions, for example, ‘What attracted you to the conference?’ and “What is your takeaway from the conference?’ I discussed this with the rest of the team, and we immediately decided to change them to ‘ownership’ questions- ‘What intention did you bring to the conference?’ ‘Did you realize your intention?’”

Gratitude

As Maria Wang, the founder of IOC, reflected, “Peter’s presence made a difference to the conference. His words evoked and provoked a lot of thinking and reflections on OD and community. They are such precious gifts to our conference participants.”

Thank you, Peter, for the abundant gifts you brought to OD practitioners in China. Your words continue to inspire, guide, and elevate this community.

Article written by Mei Hong

Honoring John McKnight & The Gift He Was

Posted on by Maya Mehta

We are deeply saddened by the loss of John McKnight, a dear friend, author, professor, and co-founder of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute.

John laid the foundation for the work that we do in community. Because of him, our focus is always on gifts, not deficiencies. Because of him, we focus on possibility instead of problem.

The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, which John co-authored with Peter Block, reminds us that the greatest power we have collectively is to treat our neighbors with compassion, care, and curiosity.

To celebrate John’s legacy, we would like to share his final writing, From Reform to What Works: Moving from the Limits of Institutions to a Culture Powered by Neighbors. Within its pages, you will find thirteen stories of the power of association to mold the future of communities around the world. 

Ambiguity is the Enemy of Good Agreements

Posted on by Maya Mehta

In every aspect of our lives, we make agreements with other people, from day-to-day decisions like where to go to dinner to monumental topics like how we want to achieve our strategic/life goals together. 

We are often disappointed with the results no matter what kind of agreements we make. The other person doesn’t follow through, and I fully understand the changes I would have to make, so I don’t follow through. Even when we do both follow through, we often still don’t meet each other’s expectations. 

When I reflect on the agreements that were not effective for me, I realize there was some level of ambiguity present.  We tend to agree to things at a high level without getting very specific. 

Ambiguity is the enemy of good agreements.

Why do we choose to be ambiguous?  Yes, it is a choice.  It may not be a conscious choice, but it is a choice.  One reason may be that if I stay at a high level, it is easier to get someone’s agreement.  Without specifics, there is less risk. 

In Flawless Consulting®, we talk about sharing our “technical” wants (What are we going to do together?. We also share our relational wants (How are we going to work together?). 

Both technical and relational wants are important ingredients for a good agreement.  However, if I’m too ambiguous, we still won’t be effective with each other.  

An example of an ambiguous technical want is when I ask you to meet with me regularly to share the status of a project. That is relatively easy to agree to. However, if I ask you to meet with me for 30 minutes every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., that might need some negotiation. The latter is more specific and will help us reach a deal that works for both of us.

For a vague relational want, I might ask you for your support on a project.  Again, it is easy to say yes.  It also is so ambiguous that neither one of us will be satisfied.  We didn’t really agree to anything.  At best, you will support me in the way you want to. And, it may or may not align with what I want.  Most likely, it won’t align.  I need to be more specific in my initial ask. 

A great antidote to an ambiguous agreement is to ask yourself, “What would it look like?’  In this example, instead of asking for support, I would ask myself, “What would it look like if you were supporting me?”  To get more specific and less ambiguous, I could ask you to introduce me to your team and be an advocate for our project.  Again, this might take some more time to negotiate, but in the end, we will build a much more effective relationship by being specific.  Specificity is the antidote to ambiguous agreements.

I have found that the relational elements of an agreement are the hardest to get specific about. I am more comfortable asking for support, collaboration, partnership, buy-in, sponsorship, etc., but I am less comfortable describing what each of these would look like. We end up with poor agreements because we don’t get specific. 

So, if you find yourself frustrated with one of your relationships, reflect on how specific you were when you asked them for something.  If you were ambiguous, re-negotiate the agreement with specifics.

Ambiguity is the poison for good agreements, and specificity is the antidote.

Article by Jeff Evans

Learn more about making good agreements here.

Why Expertise Alone Fails: The Partnership Secret Behind Flawless Consulting

Posted on by Maya Mehta

Consulting isn’t just about offering expertise—it’s about building authentic relationships and fostering trust.

That’s one of the most important of the many insights from Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, a book that has transformed the way countless individuals and organizations think about the role of consultants. But, here’s the key takeaway: this approach doesn’t only apply to consultants—it’s relevant to anyone who needs to work in collaboration. And it’s the backbone of our most popular workshop.

The Humanity in Consulting

What makes the promise of Flawless Consulting so unique and effective is its emphasis on partnership over expertise. Too often, consultants focus solely on delivering technical solutions; this is where they get stuck. The reality is that people choose to work with you based on how they make you feel- facing that reality is key to success.

As Peter Block emphasizes in all of his work, the real challenge is creating relationships that lead to long-term change.

The Power of Authentic Conversations

At the core of this approach are authentic conversations. These conversations are about wants, expectations, risks, resistance, and trust. In the workshop, we guide participants through strategies for having candid dialogue that allows both consultants and clients to operate in transparency when working together.

“Being right is not enough. You need enough leverage to have your point of view considered.”

Peter Block, Flawless Consulting.

From Expertise to True Partnership

One of the biggest mistakes a consultant can make is assuming that expertise alone will lead to success. The truth is that expertise without partnership rarely drives sustainable outcomes. Being a flawless consultant isn’t just about problem-solving; it’s about co-creating solutions with the people we serve.

 In our Flawless Consulting® workshop, participants dive deep into shifting from merely a pair-of-hands or experts to a true partnership. This is a vital shift that makes all the difference. Even if clients don’t know it yet, they prefer a partner over someone who simply tells them how to fix things. When consultants come in with band-aid solutions, it typically means the client will have to eventually engage another one. Why? To come in and clean things up because the solutions the former offered didn’t last.

Why People Keep Choosing Flawless Consulting

Clients continue to choose the Flawless Consulting workshop because it offers more than just technical training. It equips people with the ability to influence, create meaningful change, and deliver results that last.

Through flawless principles, our workshop teaches professionals how to step into true collaboration, ensuring that the client and consultant contribute equally to the process. Our approach is experiential, grounded in real-world applications, and designed to shift mindsets. The learnings stick.

If you’re ready to move beyond transactional consulting and embrace a deeper, more meaningful way to work with clients, colleagues, and bosses, we invite you to join us for our next Flawless Consulting workshop. You’ll not only dive into the principles from Peter Block’s timeless book but also experience the transformative power of partnership in action.

What people are saying about Flawless

“I have been a ‘student’ of Peter Block and his work for some time.  His philosophy and approach have shaped my own in my work.  I ‘got’ Flawless. And then I took the course. Through the excellent facilitation and exploratory discussions with classmates, the concepts found in the book took on new meaning. I developed a deeper and broader understanding of how to approach a consulting project, from relationship-with-the-client formation to determining the real issues to address and my role in doing so.  Methodologies were introduced that are invaluable. The book is still important and in a league of its own.  The class adds layers of value and is outstanding for becoming a truly exceptional consultant.”

Robin LeBlanc

Flawless Consulting: Setting Strategic Vision

Posted on by Maya Mehta

Thirteen years ago, I joined Designed Learning as an independent contractor to assist in marketing and sales. I knew absolutely nothing about Designed Learning, Flawless Consulting, or Peter Block. I knew even less about setting strategic vision and its importance to organizational effectiveness.

So, What’s the Point?

Learning the skills to avoid siloed work environments and embrace collaboration within the entire organization is essential to successful outcomes. Setting strategic vision includes establishing realistic goals and working with others — fully utilizing the expertise of all.  It is also about communicating effectively, developing working agreements across organizational boundaries, and solving problems long term. The results include increased job satisfaction, employee commitment, and bottom-line improvement.

Setting strategic vision means learning to convene others in a way that quickly builds connection and trust. It creates a personal view that you are part of something larger than yourself, the people you work with directly every day or a single client. You learn to look beyond the immediate and begin to hold yourself accountable, voluntarily committing to the well-being of the whole.  Acquiring these valuable skills will ensure that every project and conversation moves the organization forward in a positive direction.

How It’s Done

Flawless Consulting® develops tools that enable participants to be more strategic in their thinking and more effective at solving problems. These essential skills include:

  • How to recognize resistance in your clients and learn a technique to move forward effectively.
  • How to be assertive.
  • How to probe for underlying issues.
  • How to deliver feedback in a way that honors the client but challenges them to act.

During the experience, participants practice in real time the skills needed to have their expertise used. Every phase is discussed and practiced ensuring that no phase is skipped or ignored for the sake of expediency.

The first and most critical phase of Flawless Consulting is Contracting. Contracting is about building trust, exchanging wants and offers, and deciding what you’re going to do together and how you’re going to do it. In other words, establishing a working agreement. The success of the entire project and the decision to act and implement a lasting solution is incumbent on this initial phase.

During Flawless Consulting, participants also learn what role they typically choose as a consultant and partner: Expert, Pair of Hands or Collaborative.  

The skills learned in Flawless Consulting are essential in setting a strategic vision. Putting them into practice means ensuring that every person’s expertise is fully utilized, accountability and commitment are chosen, and individual success is achieved. More importantly, Flawless Consulting creates a culture of collaboration, sets strategic vision, and ensures the health and success of the whole.

Article by Chris Witt