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Celebrate What's Right with the World
Dewitt Jones
Star Thrower Distribution
St. Paul, MN United States
2002, Jan 11
Annotation: Do we choose to see the possibilities? Do we really believe they are there? When we believe it, we can start to see it and connect with a vision that opens us to possibilities that gives us courage to soar.
A testimonial:
"Our organization, Company of Experts, is a network of 70 Experts on Call who have served hundreds of organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada since 1989. We often use videos in our work; we have more than one hundred in our library. But there's only one video we love.
Last year, my partner Charles Miller and I discovered Dewitt Jones' video, Celebrate What's Right with the World. Since then, we've used this video dozens of times and it always produces magical results!
We use the video in two ways:
(1) We use it in our organization development work in which we follow an approach called Appreciative Inquiry, or Ai. The Ai approach to OD was developed by David Cooperrider and others; it is a way of helping organizations build a more positive future by individually and collectively reflecting on the best personal experiences they've ever had. People use those recollected and shared experiences to create a positive vision of the future. Dewitt's video both encourages reflection and helps people feel the power of positive words and
images.
(2) We use it in presentations at conferences about Ai. The video reinforces some of the principles of Ai, such as "believe it and you'll see it," "look for possibilities," and "be your best for the world."
After facilitating an Ai session or presentation, we darken the room and project Celebrate What's Right with the World on a large screen and with the best speakers available. Participants are always stunned by the visual images captured in Dewitt's photos and moved by the words he uses to express his view of the world.
Still in a darkened room, as soon as the video fades from the screen, we begin projecting, through our laptop computer and an LCD projector, the very effective PowerPoint slides that come with the video--a short review of the video's seven key concepts. As we slowly point to each of the dozen slides, we use a stereo to play the haunting music of solo pianist George Winston: "Before Barbed Wire" on his "Plains" CD.
When the video, the slides, and the music end, we slowly raise the lights and find that people often have tears in their eyes. [Later, they thank us for giving them the rare opportunity to reflect on an important part of themselves, to reconnect with what Ai calls their "positive core."] After a moment of silence, we invite the participants to use a few minutes of further silence to create a six-word personal vision statement, "a vision that every morning when you say those words, you say: Yes! That's it! That's why I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing," a paraphrase of Dewitt's words in the video. They are invited to write their personal vision on the back of an index card we have given them; we've printed the seven key concepts on one side. That way, they can take both the seven key concepts and their personal vision home, in tangible form.
Here is the best indication of how effective this video is: more than 50 organizations have ordered their own copy of it after we've shown it. On behalf of hundreds of people, then, thank you, Star Thrower, thank you Dewitt Jones, for your magical video. We truly appreciate it.
Nancy E. Stetson, Ed.D., President
Company of Experts, a network of more than 70 Experts on Call
http://CompanyofExperts.com
Read Nancy's article on Appreciative Inquiry, "Creating New Energy
for Change" at
http://www.league.org/publication/abstracts/leadership/labs0702.html
Online Resources:
Star Thrower
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(submitted by Eilene Wisniewski)
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