Last week, Bruce and I were driving back from a one-day CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) workshop that we had facilitated for a client. We used the time to reflect on how it went and eat ice-cream on a lovely spring afternoon. Our first credit went to the client. They wanted a workshop on a
Responding to events does not require a lot of thinking. However, engaging with patterns requires a capacity to think broadly and comprehensively – across time and space.
The torrential flow of learning is disorientating, confusing and renders us less capable of informed action. An effective learning infrastructure enables organisations to balance learning flows with a stock of learning. All flow and no stock makes organisations stupid!
Learning cultures have the capacity to agree to everything – that does not mean they must agree with everything. Change flows and when everything is seen. Once difficult perspectives are aired and respected they lose their grip on the agenda and learning grows.
Organisations and teams are similar. Being able to stop is essential for moving ahead. Stopping enables learning. Lots of busy action is not the same as movement. Movement only starts from stillness.
This requires patient work where dialogue skills are key. Emergent facilitation is an especially useful technique for surfacing meaning. It involves creating “practice fields” where identity can connect with new pictures of the future.