Reflection 1

Seeing ourselves as a living system nested inside a wider system gives us our context. It also helps us to see how our work connects with a wider world that is in crisis. The same language and principles explain not only our experience, but how our experience and our challenges are a reflection of much wider challenges...

...There were huge jumps (of progress) at different times in the process. People recognised and put together in a new way all the bits along the way and saw how they fit together. There was a kind of maturing in the group generally. Others can see it in us. We have a clear sense of direction, our group process has changed dramatically... People are more confident. They feel that what we’re doing makes sense. They talk with great confidence about where we are and what we’re at.... We are in a much clearer place, and we have a sense that we’ve really moved on. The listening is better and we’re managing better generally. It’s falling together better. It’s almost invisible, but it’s happening. And it’s really good, but at the same time it’s very hard to describe!

This is the mystery of change, I think, because it’s not about the meetings we have and the way we organise ourselves, though it’s about that too. But there’s something else that you can’t talk about like that. Somehow we are different, and we can’t explain it and there aren’t any words we can put up on a powerpoint presentation that will transmit that to others. We can’t give them our experience, we can’t even explain it to ourselves...

...This way of working is an idea whose time has come. People want to plan it out beforehand and don’t want the chaos and confusion. We’ve tried that before and it doesn’t work. Chaos and disturbance is an integral part of change - we have to learn to be tolerant with it because it’s part of the process. You have to trust the process... it’s a moving, living, growing thing. And we have to keep the continually changing, moving nature of it alive, so that we don’t get stuck.