[The following Op-Ed letter is from Bob Wentworth, who has had a close-up view of CNVC’s organisational change efforts since 2012, having served as a CNVC Board member and co-architect of Process for a New Future, a facilitator of much of the process, and a volunteer supporting the Implementation Phase. This letter reflects his personal views of recent events. This particular message was an open letter addressed to the CNVC Board, copied also to several mailing lists.]
Subject: Considering the possibility of a misunderstanding about the NF Plan
To: CNVC Board
Date: June 17, 2018
OVERVIEW: The text of the Board’s April 25 letter suggests the that there has been a significant misunderstanding about the nature of the New Future Plan. I outline the difference in understanding I perceive as being present.
Dear Katherine, Jan Carel, Raj, and Cate (in your roles as CVNC Board members),
As you likely know, I no longer have any formal role in the New Future Process. However, as a former Process Holder (along with Barbara Larson), I know the New Future Plan better than most.
Based on what I know of the NF Plan, I have to say that I was baffled by some of the logic the Board offered in its April 25 letter to explain its decision.
The only way I have been able to make sense out of the letter’s words is to guess that there has been a tragic misunderstanding about what the NF Plan means.
Would you be willing to consider the possibility that what was planned might be different than what you thought was planned?
(I will explain the difference in understanding that I perceive being present, in what follows. However, if you’d find a conversation more helpful in considering what I’m talking about, I’d be hapy to talk to you as well.)
* * *
The first clue to something being “off” came in the second paragraph of your letter, where it said “Forty two ‘Working Group’ members, 15 Integration Council members, many Translators, Outreach Champions, the NFP-Admin Team, CNVC Board (2014-2017), Staff (2014-2017) and NFP Process Holders and many more members of the community have worked for years to pull together a plan for a totally new organization.”
That statement is simply not true.
The New Future Plan is not a “plan for a totally new organization.” It is a plan to evolve, improve and extend CNVC.
(I have confirmed what I say here with others involved in developing and implementing the NF Plan.)
Yes, there has been a lot of talk about a “new organization.” And, the end result of the change process was even given a placeholder name, “NVC-O.” But such language does not mean what some perhaps have thought it meant.
The NF Plan is like a plan to renovate and expand a building. Talk of a “new organization” has been the equivalent of talk about how, “after we complete the renovation and expansion, we’ll have a ‘new building.’” Such talk does not literally mean a “totally new building.”
Nor does talk of a “new organization” literally mean a “totally new organization.” It just means some people are excited about the changes planned for CNVC, and they expect that in some ways CNVC may feel like a “new organization.” But it will still be CNVC.
In retrospect, I guess a lot of confusion was created by enthusiastic talk that emphasized the changes, without talking more clearly also about the continuity, all the things that would not be changing. I guess it was assumed that people would understood that most things would continue — but it seems that that was not the case.
I imagine that it has been even more confusing that the “new organization” has been given a placeholder label, NVC-O, that is distinct from the name CNVC. Yet, this has been the equivalent of talking about the “New Building” versus the “Old Building”. It is convenient to have different terms to distinguish how things will be in future after changes are completed, versus how things have been up until now. It does not mean that the new and the old aren’t, in important ways, the same thing.
Some of the way this has been talked about was an accidental side-effect of the order in which things were done in the New Future Process. People were first asked “What do you want the end result to be?” They said, “We want our organization to look like this.” They identified how they wanted things to work, and they called this way of working together, “NVC-O.” Then, people were asked, “How do you want to get there?” The answer was, “We evolve CNVC, building on what people value about CNVC, and incrementally make some changes — primarily to decision-making processes — to move towards the way of working together that we have envisioned.” So, it looked — briefly — like maybe something totally new was being created. Then everyone realized that of course that didn’t make sense; it made sense to evolve what we already have. But, sometimes the language did not fully catch up with the evolution in thinking.
I can see why the way things have been talked about has likely been confusing, and subject to misinterpretation. Given how much misunderstanding there has been, I very much wish different ways of talking about things had been used. But, evolving, improving and extending CNVC is what has been meant.
* * *
Because the NF Plan is about evolving CNVC, rather than replacing it, I found it very puzzling when I read in the Board’s letter, “It is becoming clear to us that when the ‘new organization’ moves from the emergent or idea stage and becomes a viable entity it will still take years to gain the necessary working culture and reputation to be effective in its mission. / Meanwhile, CNVC actually exists with an international reputation and has been doing the work of offering NVC all over the world since its inception in 1984.”
These words seem to presuppose that the NF Plan involves CNVC, its reputation, or the things that it does going away.
If so, that is not what the plan has been.
As I understand the NF Plan, none of the things that CNVC contributes to the world is planned to go away. Some of the ways that certain things are done are planned to evolve. But, I can’t imagine anything going away unless and until there is something as good or better fully ready to replace it.
In light of that, talk of it taking the “new organization” years to become effective is baffling. CNVC is the organization. If CNVC is effective, then the organization will be effective. There is no need for anyone to wait “years” for the organization to become effective.
When those involve with implementation talk of a “new organization” we have mostly been talking about the introduction of new decision-making processes within CNVC. And, even in that case, I wouldn’t expect existing functional decision-making mechanisms to go away until viable improved decision-making mechanisms become available.
If I understand that portion of the Board’s letter, it seems like there was a belief that continuing to follow the NF Plan would involve a functional, effective CNVC going away, and then there being years spent while a “totally new organization” tries to grow to a state where it could be CNVC’s equal. And the Board was, rightly, concerned that this would be a wasteful and unwise way of moving forward.
If so, I totally agree that that would have been a wasteful and unwise way of moving forward. However, I am also quite clear that everyone understood that wouldn’t have been a wise plan, and so that was never what was planned.
Does this make any sense to you?
* * *
One other place where the letter reflects this misunderstanding is in the line, “we suggest that the Implementation Council manage the NVC-O emergence independently and financially separate from CNVC.” I am guessing that perhaps the Board thought that this would amount to a modest change to the NF Plan? However, based on my understanding of the NF Plan, the Board’s suggestion was analogous to saying, “You know that renovation that everyone agreed to do for this building? Go ahead and do the renovation — just don’t touch this building.” The suggestion amounted to changing the plan entirely.
* * *
So, at least three different features of the Board’s letter seem to suggest a similar interpretation of the meaning of the NF Plan that doesn’t match the interpretation of the creators or implementors of the plan.
This seems important, in that the Board seems to have been saying “no” to something that was not what anyone had planned.
It is possible that I somehow misunderstood the logic of the Board’s letter, or what the Board was thinking. Please let me know if that is the case.
I want to acknowledge that there were other concerns expressed in the Board’s letter that do not relate to how the NF Plan was understood. So, I am not under the impression that an agreement that there was a misunderstanding would resolve matters.
But, I have experienced a painful lack of shared reality as being present in conversations. I would love to be able to have some confidence that what the Board is rejecting actually reflects what was planned.
* * *
My requests:
- Would you please let me know that you received this letter?
- If you believe I misinterpreted the Board’s April 25 letter, would you let me know? (If so, it would be ideal if you could clarify whatever I did not understand.)
- I have had the rather disconcerting experience of Allan Rohlfs and Alex Censor apparently not believing me when I have explained the NF Plan. Would you please let me know whether or not you doubt my explanations of what was planned? (If you do have doubt, would you be willing to check with an Implementation Council member to see if their understanding of what was planned matches mine?)
- Would you be willing to let me know if this letter offered you any new information?
Thank you for your consideration,
Bob Wentworth
CNVC Certified Trainer
[As of February 2019, no response or acknowledgement was received from the Board]