Insights from our experience of facilitating the messiness of change….….based on learning from @forumforthefuture #SchoolofSystemChange@BoundlessRoots + more
1. Persistence - act like a squirrel cracking a nut 🐿 2. You get what you put in - put the time in, you learn and get things back ✨ 3. Feedback is essential - so you don’t just have the ‘things you learnt graveyard’ 💀
4. Learning to work with emergence, you can’t control it - it's about spotting patterns and finding a way of working with what's next 🐛 5. Paying attention to how we work is as important as what we work on 🌊
6. There will be different energies present that pull you in varying directions ↖️⏬⏫➡️ 7. Beginnings and endings happen all of the time 🌱
8. Relationships are central, conflict & unhealthy power are inevitable - we need to pay attention and learn how to work with it🤝 9. The importance of creating a safe space, invite the person as a whole, how the person embraces or not messiness in their life 🧜🏻
10. It can feel risky and you’ll feel vulnerable - it can be a sign you’re challenging the status quo *️⃣ 11. Have people you can call on when you’re not sure what comes next - human to human always works better than documents ☎️
12. You’ll be navigating between different mindsets in different places - it feels really hard especially if you try to get it "right" 🤪 13. Old patterns die hard - we need to learn about how to create compost from our work 🍂
14. Things always take longer than you think - you need to invest in the communication and feedback loops so people feel part of the journey ⏳ 15. There is power in the practice of holding questions ❓
Today we launched the latest Future of Sustainability report, something I’ve been working on for seemingly ages now. ’Launch’ days are often a bit of an anticlimax, so feeling really weird about it, so sharing some of the behind the scenes process with you #timetotransform (1)
The experience of creating this has been wild…
…wildly inspiring, frustrating and unpredictable in equal measure. Full of shape shifting and iterating in the midst of a global pandemic (2)
We started by asking what are the dynamics shaping the coming decade. Forest fires and Covid-19 the first major shocks of the decade…a turbulent and dynamic future not just a thing of the future- but a thing of our everyday reality (3)
Lots of great stuff in this piece that speaks to how the mindset and framings make a difference to what is possible and resonates with my own experience & patterns starting to hear from elsewhere. angelafell1.wixsite.com/website/post/h… Thanks for articulating @angelafell HT @DavidTWarner
Pulling out some highlight quotes:
“The local and national response frames people as the helper or the helped. The images used, reinforce the narrative of helplessness and vulnerability.” #civilsocietyfutures@NewCitProj
“Every large institution has a policy or a statement in place that goes something like this. ‘We want people to do more for themselves & each other’. The Covid_19 response has felt like it’s been created in a separate world-It encourages dependency rather than inderdependency.“
Hosted a webinar today with Joy & Sophia @forum4thefutre today...exploring the future trajectories from now and the underlying system dynamics at play. A contribution to making sense of this immense change we’re all experiencing happening right now. #systemchange
Kinda weird to know +200 were joining from around the world but not able to see their faces...
(Photo props from @kiajiehui's connections)
But here's the jist of what we shared -
…COVID-19 has caused a major, unprecedented, global discontinuity. And it is affecting everything, at all levels of the system - particularly of interest is that the deepest levels are being affected - the assumptions, mindsets, values and feelings.
Brexit became part of our lexicon, seemingly quickly - what is the equivalent for now, that has a longer term narrative in mind? Not reinforcing or turbo charging capitalism as we’ve known it.
How do we to start seeding the words/phrases now?
The reset, rebirth, reform, reemerge…..something else?
Spending the day @southbankcentre capturing and sharing lots of learning from the last few years….a thread being what it takes to create new forms of organising #livingchange#systemicforms