Gini Nelson's Engaging Conflicts

This is one of Guest Blogger Ombuds Thomas Kosakowski’s posts in his series “10 Things Lawyers Should Know About Ombuds”, part of the Engaging Conflict’s Taking Peacemaking Public series.

Introduction
Ombuds are dispute resolution professionals that work with individuals and organizations in conflict and crisis. (The terms “ombudsman” and “ombudsperson” are widely used, and “ombuds” is a common shorthand.) They work to resolve concerns and disputes long before the involvement of attorneys becomes necessary. It is therefore important for attorneys, whether providing advice on conflict management systems or litigating matters involving ombuds, to understand how ombuds work.

1. Organizational Ombuds Are Different Than Classical Ombuds

Ombuds fall into one of two main types. “Classical” ombuds generally are created by statute to receive and investigate complaints. (Classical ombuds are also known as “legislative” ombuds or, if located in the private sector, “executive” ombuds.) Classical ombuds are characterized [article Essential Characteristics of a Classical Ombudsman] by independence; impartiality and fairness; credibility of review process; and confidentiality. Read more »

From time to time, a Guest Blogger will share voice at Engaging Conflicts. Previous Guest Bloggers are introduced here. Today we welcome Guest Blogger Thomas Kosakowski. Tom is Claremont Graduate University’s first University Ombudsperson.

Tom majored in economics and minored in art at Occidental College. After working as an economist for eight years, Tom earned his law degree from Loyola Law School, where he was an editor of the Entertainment Law Journal and a member of Phi Delta Phi. In nine years of law practice, Tom represented and counseled clients in state and federal actions and in California State Bar disciplinary matters. Tom has also been an associate ombudsperson at UCLA and interim director of the ombuds office at UC Riverside. You can find out more about him and ombuds at his personal blog, The Ombuds Blog, with news and information for and about organizational ombuds. Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of his blog — congratulations, Tom! His site compiles and he covers (it seems like) all things ombuds, including primary resources for creating an ombuds office and links to (seemingly all) US and some international corporate and institutional ombuds offices. It’s a key resource, and perhaps the key resource.

Tom has written a 10-part series for Engaging Conflicts on “10 Things Lawyers Should Know About Ombuds.” Here’s the series list: Read more »

Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant have an article (which could be subtitled “Social Change Without Borders”) recently published at ChangeThis, described thusly:

Using Habitat for Humanity as a dynamic example,
authors of Forces for Good, Crutchfield and Grant, present this manifesto on what high-impact nonprofits do to achieve wide-scale social change. These methods are insightful for all organizations, including for-profits and individuals. You may just want to pick up a hammer and take a swing at changing the world.

They studied 12 highly-successful nonprofit organizations for their forthcoming book, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits. Their findings are overviewed in this article, which you can download at the end of this post.

These are the 6 things these highly-successful nonprofit organizations did extraordinariy well:

1. Advocate and serve. They realize that they cannot achieve wide scale systemic change through service delivery alone, so they add advocacy to access government resources or to change legislation, as contrasted to nonprofits that only provide direct services and avoid politics.
2. Make markets work. Use the power of self-interest and the laws of economics which are far more effective than appealing to pure altruism and avoiding engaging with business or capitalism.
3. Inspire evangelists. Volunteers are recognized as much more than a source of free labor or membership dues, and are engaged in meaningful experiences to build long-term relationships.
4. Nurture nonprofit networks. True collaboration, not merely lip service to it and seeing fellow nonprofits as “competitors”.
5. Master the art of adaptation. Nonprofits must listen, learn, and modify their strategies based on external cues and internal evaluation, instead of becoming mired in bureaucracy or overwhelmed with too many ideas.
6. Share leadership. Others must be empowered to take action, instead of maintaining a command-and-control hierarchy with the CEO as the “hero”.

You can download a copy of the article by clicking here:

Change the Way You Change the World: A Model for Wide-Scale Social Change

Cyberweek 2007 was lots of fun, well-attended, stimulating,supportive — well, as tech-ADR shaker and mover John DeBruyn said, Cyberweek is itself one way of making and celebrating community among conflict specialists.

Among all its activities, Cyberweek hosted four online programs in its Mediation Excellence series put on by John DeBruyn. Tuesday’s Online Mediation Role Play Workshop featured a live role play demonstration utilizing audio conferencing, desktop sharing, and a collaborative web platform to deliver an interactive presentation to demonstrate online mediation and mediator training. Parties to the mediation viewed the mediator’s “flipchart” on their own Read more »

Here’s what’s posted for tomorrow’s Cyberweek panel– call in to the phone bridge for the call. Phone 1-605-475-8590 and when prompted, enter the conference room ID number 5650382, with a pound sign added to the end. If you are calling using Skype, the number is +990008275650382.

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Cognitive Daily over at ScienceBlogs has several fine posts relating to science literacy. They are associated with both the desire and/or need for the general public to understand science better, and a debate over whether or how scientists should be “framing” their research in communicating with the public in order for the general audience to understand its relevance. I believe the points are directly relevant for Engaging Conflicts readers for at least two reasons. First, science and claims of scientific validity are used increasingly in training seminars and in our practical explanations of how and why we and our clients act as we do. We need science literacy to better evaluate these claims. Second, if we want the general audience to better understand the goals, values and methods of engaging conflicts (I go back to one of Bernie Mayer’s points that very few mediators have clients beating down their doors for their services, and that most successful mediators get the bulk of their casework through court-ordered programs), we need to communicate in the way the general public understands.

Read more »