5.16: Outside Tues + Tim - On complexity and simplicity

Show Notes

  • Tuesday: Today we're going to reflect on our interviews with Meg Buzzi and Brandon Dubé of the Present of Work as well as Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé. These were wildly different interviews. One of the things I like about our podcast is how very different our guests are. I love that we put these particular sets of interviews together because they were on opposite poles with questions of change making, or how to view the world, and how to orient toward the world in our work. Bayo’s answers pushed me to complexity; reconsidering what I know, looking at things from a new angle and on the other end talking to Meg and Brandon I was struck by a sense of lightness of simplicity of we can do this work.  We actually know what to do. We need to turn toward our relationships and take care of those in some ways and then move forward together. So I loved having these two things together because for me, they were on opposite sides of the poles. And, I left both [interviews] feeling really inspired about the work in front of me.

  • Tim: Both are true, right? It is highly complex, intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, physically, demanding this work and these times, bluntly… and on the other hand it can be as simple as turning to each other and “having the conversations that matter” to quote Margaret Wheatley.  It's a recurring theme - when you don't know what to do, turn to each other and you'll begin to find a way forward. That's how human beings have navigated for generation upon generation.

  • Tim: What I find doing these interviews, is they begin to start pushing different parts of me but I'll also find where my tendency is. I've definitely got a tendency towards the simplicity. I think ultimately of  what's right in front of me. What's the next step I can take and how do I take it?

  • Tuesday: I was aware in both of these interviews that we were talking to BRILLIANT people and how different their brilliance comes up in the world. That's a really good point that both are true - the complexity and simplicity. But I was thinking that in this phase of my life, I'm in a little more wanting to expand how I'm thinking about the work… and I know that means I'll go back to implementing in a different way. I can find it in different areas of my life - in my early to mid 20s, I really needed to expand and understand equity and race and gender and power and was just hungry for information about that I went to trainings, did a period of implementation, and kind of came to the limits of that and that's when I found Art of Hosting; where I was exposed to all of these new thinkers and new thoughts and opened up again and then trying to figure out how to pull that power analysis as well as what I'm learning through living systems and complexity theory together into a practice… and I find that probably right now I'm also opening up again to what else do I need to know to begin to bring into my practice? I notice that opening and closing feels really real to me and these interviews really book ended it for me. I felt like I could turn to Bayo for some of that expansion and Meg and Brandon for like okay, so then what? What do you do in the world?What does that look like day-to-day?

  • Tues: “Power Among” - often when we talk about power, we are talking about transactional, completely finite kinds of power. We talk about different groups having “power over” other groups (or different people have “power over” other people) or we talk about having “shared power” or we talk about “power for” which is like an advocacy model. But in all those models, power is just finite, right? There's just so much you have… if I don't we share it. I use mine on behalf of yours but like it's almost like power is this pie and we just have to figure out how to split the pie a little bit better; but like there's just one pie. So, we just started to think about what would it mean to begin to think about power as not finite; as infinite. What does it look like to imagine that if someone dips their bucket in a well of power and gets some, I actually get some, right? It doesn't actually decrease the well. Dipping your bucket actually puts water in mine. How do we begin to expand our understanding of power beyond the finite and understand that it happens between us and that we can actually lift each other through our taking up of power rather than something that is taken from? That is the idea of “power among.” I always use the example of artists. This is a place where people experience it all the time. You see an artist simply expresses something from themselves. They pick up their power and they express something and you are lifted. I always talk about hearing the first female rapper. Something happened for me, something became more possible for me with that artist just doing what they were doing.

  • Tim: I love “power among” for many reasons… it's about raising our awareness to these these kinds of like moments of magic or where all of those transactional relationships stop depending on Ego. It stops depending on all the individuals around the edge and something actually emerges from the middle. As process facilitators, or people who are working in very, very complex environments, the special sauce is when you can feel, in a group, that something is beginning to pop out of the center rather than being driven by any one individual because the quality of ownership that is born out of that / the power has come from among us rather than been driven by one or few.

  • Tuesday: That is where Meg and Brandon are putting their attention - creating the conditions for that kind of flow and that kind of magic to happen in groups. They’ve turned their attention to creating those conditions for people and what I thought was so interesting, I’m just thinking out loud here, is that what they're doing in the world felt deeply relational and I was just kind of interested and glad that you and I were doing those interviews together.

  • Tim: OMGosh, yes! We're working with a client in Europe at the moment who is very appreciative of the fact that we're two people. She's a very senior leader and she's been considering models of co-CEOship or co-leadership… that actually that may be the best structure for organizational, institutional team leadership rather than having this single CEO or this single leader. There's real power in a co-leading a team and she also has an emphasis on thinking about that as something that happens across-gender, across-race and across- class and of course the increased strength that that brings.

Resources:

The Outsideshared work, participatory leadership, systems change