Wise Practices and Inspired Standards for Co-Creating the Well-Living Community for Grandparents

Here is the 3rd article in the series about the Well-Living Community and Grandparents… Suggest you read this article first! Then this article!

The Well-Living Community for Grandparents — in general — is supported by its wise practices and inspired standards set out in this article.

This article describes and explains wise practices and inspired standards and their integration as a way to start — support — sustain communities of significance like the Well-Living Community for Grandparents.

Included as an addendum is the UNESCO (2000) Wise Practices for Environmental Sustainability. These statements highlight earlier thinking about community practices using a nature-based approach.

Wise Practices and Inspired Standards guide dialogue about the ways and means to organize and nurture the Well-Living Community for Grandparents — involving and evolving together and individually — in their use of a nature-based approach (i.e., eco-creation) when interacting with their grandchildren in the natural world.

Wise Practices

In celebration of this wise practice thread, here is a quote from the Banff Centre (Banff, Alberta, Canada) document (2010) used as a resource synthesis of earlier texts for a workshop in Indigenous Leadership and Community Development. Link to original, see Resource List

“Taking the critique above into account and the need for (Indigenous) Aboriginal case studies, we adopt the notion of wise practices as a basis for our community-based research model… With the understanding that a “best practice” in one situation should not automatically be regarded as replicable in other similar situations and describing this as an ill-founded “cookie-cutter” presumption, Thoms (2007) proposes the term “wise practices” as one that better reflects the fact that the Aboriginal world is culturally heterogeneous, socially diverse, and communally “traditional” while at the same time ever-changing.

The term “wise practices” has been actively propagated by UNESCO (2000) with an understanding that the definition, conceptualization, and implementation of wise practices will continually evolve and be subject to refinement, as individual and community experience and knowledge expands.”

Extending the meaning from the quote to Co-Creating the Well-Living Community for Grandparents — What are the wise practices for involving and evolving grandparents?

In response, here are general tenets thought applicable, suggestive, and more so, recommendable for use. A deeper dive is required by the community to determine its involvement and evolvement when agreeing and using its wise practices.

About Wise practices

1. are community-appropriate action-outcome statements that are measurable at a minimum by yes or no, with a hesitant yes as no;
2. have tools, techniques, and technologies available to support the action and outcome whether an app on your phone to a pencil and paper;
3. framed by principles, rules, and regulations to encourage legal boundaries and make it safer for involvement and evolvement;
4. encourage shared decisions to contribute significantly to the learning and educating of sustainable and equitable community conditions; and,
5. encourage individual decisions to guide shifts in learning and development of action-reflection to bring about consequences that matter to self with others

A wise practice is

• Particular
• Relative
• Bumpy
• With occasional inconsistency

And it

• reflects the possibilities of structural relationships meeting relational structures
• respects differences are the similarities that bind
• nurtures the shared springboard of management and leadership for each wise practice
• encourages the mix of members’ contexts to communicate community culture where nothing is static

When the community members take time to learn these wise practices, they map, manage, measure, monitor, and magnetize

A)) shared accomplishments by groups and the community as a whole

B)) recognizable achievement by a member alone and in contribution to a group

C)) the mix of efficiency, effectiveness, and relevance

D)) the complementarity of reciprocity and resilience

E)) the integration of well-living (profitability) and well-being (movement)

Seven Useful Factors Helpful to Co-Create the Well-Living Community Using Wise Practices

1. Issue-based Inquiry via Problem Inquiry, Appreciative Inquiry, and Humble Inquiry

2. Action Research and Action-Reflection for Learning and Educating

3. Narrative Approach using Story-Telling and Story-Sharing

4. Discussion, Dialogue, and Multilogue Conversations

5. Reciprocity, Relevance, and Resilience Guidance

6. Management (and Governance) woven with Leadership (and Peopleship)

7. Celebration of Accountability and Responsibility

Each factor listed above is a separate article that follows in the weeks ahead.

By extension — how might the above presentation on Wise Practices be extended — in layperson’s terms — for grandparents interacting with their grandchildren. More articles to follow.

Inspired Standards

Inspired standards are the voluntary descriptions and explanations to advance excellence. With wise practices, they guide the organization of work, the organization of the community of significance.

They include characteristics such as consistency, effectiveness, interchangeability, quality, relevancy, repeatability, and safety alone and in combinations where applicable.

When read and applied they move a community member and the community as a whole beyond working from technical-mechanical statements that frame head-speak to inspirational-joyous statements that frame heart-head-speak:

• We always provide excellent community support (head speak)
• We commit to co-create extraordinary community experiences that further each member’s learning approach and educating contributions (head-heart speak)

Also, when the community’s members help write the statements all gain inspired agreement because Words Really Matter.

With their involvement there is
acknowledgement + alignment + encouragement
= enrolment to engagement

Accountable to Inspired Standards & Consequences

When members join the community, whether explicitly stated or implicitly thought, they are asking each other and one another to be accountable to inspired standards and consequences agreeable to all.

The concepts and practices of accountability and responsibility are ethical fundamentals for co-creating a well-living community. As the community forms and sustains itself, members mention these standards are worth improving, focusing on, and strengthening.

So as to remain clear:

Accountability … is the ability to account for the assigned competencies of membership and the action outcomes a member agrees to fulfill in contribution to the well-living of the community (and well-being of the member).
Responsibility … is the ability to respond to the assigned practices that support the accountabilities of others and one’s assigned accountabilities

Real Situations

The concepts and practices of “inspired standards” have been forefront in community development and community management/leadership through statements like:

• We nurture member service and support
• We co-create extraordinary experiences that further member’s return on involvement

As the community moves forward, it’s the members who write the inspired standards. It is not a power-over situation. it’s a “write with community situation.”

By extension — how might the above presentation on Inspired Standards be extended — in layperson’s terms — for grandparents interacting with their grandchildren. More articles to follow.

The Complementarities of Wise Practices and Inspired Standards

In the mix and match of wise practices and inspired standards it is possible to write action-outcome statements that embrace both using the conjunction “from”.

Here are five examples where the word on the left of “from” is the action verb — the synthesized wise practice and the word on the right of “from” is the outcome noun — the synthesized inspired standard:

Clarify from Consistency

Contribute from Confidence

Communicate from Commitment

Collaborate from Community

Co-Create from Capacity

When you read each of the “wise practice from inspired standard” statements mentioned above, it suggests an action taken to accomplish/achieve tomorrow’s outcome today!

Whereas a wise practice deals with bottlenecks (about systems), the inspired standard deals with bottlenecks (about persons). Therefore, the statements mentioned above support managing (the wise practices as systems) and leading (the inspired standards with persons).

Switch out the “from” — use “for”, “because of”, and ”your.” Ask So, What Else, Now What? For each statement. Consider the possibilities in time and space. Watch this 9 Squares video to learn more.

At its core, the Well-Living Community for Grandparents starts as a community, then moves forward as a community of practice to a community of significance to a community of well-living and more. And the “more” is co-created by the community.

Herein… An Ode to Grandparents! Their Legacy in Inspired Practice!

Side Notes:

A) These 5 statements are illustrative and not prescriptive. They are guides to writing these types of statements

B) The importance of community and co-creation is in the statements which are reflective of the importance of starting — supporting — sustaining a well-living community for grandparents for involving and evolving their participation with their grandchildren who in turn learn and educate the community

Addendum:

UNESCO Wise Practices (~2000) [the original source information has been lost — currently researching the origin of this information — a starting point, use this link

Of what you — grandparents (and those supporting grandparents) — are doing, does the nature-based activity meet these criteria? Appreciate the formal flavor of these statements — you will have to play with them as is. More resources are available on the WELLth Movement website. And, more articles to follow on Medium to nurture the use of these statements!

• Long-term benefit: The benefits of the activity are still evident ‘x’ years later and contribute to the improvement of quality.
• Capacity building: The activity improves managing-leading capabilities, and provides education and knowledge for the stakeholder groups.
• Institutional strengthening: The activity enhances existing managing-leading mechanisms/structures or creates new ones.
• Sustainability: The activity adheres to the principles of sustainability (the extent to which the results will last and development will continue once the project/programme has ended).
• Transferability: Aspects of the activity have been applied at other sites in and/or outside of the country or region.
• Interdisciplinary: The activity incorporates all relevant disciplines and sectors of society.
• Participatory process: Identification of, and transparent consultation with all stakeholder groups, as well as the involvement of individuals, is intrinsic to the activity.
• Consensus building: The activity builds agreement among a majority of the stakeholder groups.
• Effective and efficient communication process: A multidirectional communication process involving dialogue, consultation, and discussion is utilized.
• Locally responsive: The activity respects local traditional and cultural frameworks while also challenging their environmental validity.
• Gender and/or other sensitive issues: The activity accounts for the many aspects of gender and/or other sensitive issues.
• Strengthening local identities: The activity promotes and strengthens a sense of belonging and self-reliance.
• Contributing to national policy: The activity assists in informing shaping government’s environmental, legal, economic & social policies.
• Regional dimension: The activity takes into account the regional, economic, social, and environmental perspective among neighbouring countries.
• Human rights: The activity is sensitive to issues concerning the freedom to exercise fundamental human rights.
• Documentation: The activity & the lessons learnt are well documented
• Evaluation: The activity is regularly assessed to determine the extent to which it has been achieved and/or wise practice

This list includes a few grammar corrections — for the most part, the wording remains the same with a generalized reference (whereas the original list referenced coastal situations)

References

The Banff Centre Course — Wise Practices in Indigenous Leadership

Book Chapter: A Wise Practices Approach to Indigenous Community Development in Canada

Video: Indigenous Leadership: 7 Elements of Wise Practices

2010 Best Practices in Aboriginal Community Development: A Literature Review and Wise Practices Approach

Thoms, Michael J. 2007. “Leading an Extraordinary Life: Wise Practices for an HIV Prevention Campaign With Two-Spirited Men.” Unpublished paper, 2-Spirited People of the First Nations, Toronto