Being ‘Right’ is Still Not Enough — how holding onto control is [perhaps] the biggest ‘achilles heel’ when trying to do the ‘right things right’
Here we go again.
And again and again…
Look around. Observe what is going on in the world, in our work and in our lives.
We tend to lean on our strengths.
We are often inclined to continue doing the things we [think we] do well, the things that worked [for us] previously.
We tend to avoid the things that we haven’t mastered, the things we don’t do well.
Any strength overused becomes a liability.
Many of the traits and strategies that seemingly made us — our careers, organizations and institutions successful in the past — will not carry us forward into a viable future.
The modern Industrial Age that seemingly achieved so much, is now littering our world and lives with liabilities — literally and figuratively.
Achilles heel is a weakness in spite of overall strength, which can lead to downfall.
What is going on when:
🔶 We hit a wall?
🔶 Things get stuck?
🔶 Communication breaks down?
When the spiral of breakdown seems to take over, what is at the vortex driving things down and taking us down with it?
Our reasons for holding onto control vary. The feelings that underlie our need to hold onto control manifest, creep back in and show up in myriad ways.
Fill in the blanks. I’m holding on because I am_______________
🔶 Upholding a higher noble purpose…
🔶 Working so hard to get to a certain point…
🔶 The only one or [one of a relative few] with the knowledge and experience who can really understand what is required…
🔶 Holding the ground I [or some of us] have fought so hard to gain…
🔶 Not going to allow others to mess this up…
🔶 [Mostly] right and they are [mostly] wrong…
🔶 Certain of the bad things that will [continue to] happen and the good things that won’t [continue to] happen — if I let go…
🔶 Uncertain of the outcomes if I let go…
🔶 Afraid of losing______
🔶 Afraid of the vast open space of uncertainty…
🔶 Not trusting others to discern what is required…
🔶 Not trusting others to uphold a common purpose…
🔶 Not trusting others’ level of knowledge or competence to carry out what is necessary…
🔶 Not trusting others to trust me…
And on it goes.
At some point our own unwillingness to reasonably let go of our [personal] control of a situation and trust others within a wider collaborative collective context — has diminishing returns.
In many cases and for many reasons, the conditions required to cultivate and sustain trust — are absent.
Holding onto control erodes trust.
At some point our own unwillingness to let go of control and our inability to trust others, can make us untrustworthy. A negative reciprocal effect…
Yikes! A double whammy that often deepens the double binds and hastens a downward spiral.
If we cannot trust others [for whatever reasons]…why should they trust us?
Holding on, the felt need to be strong in the face of anything, withholding information, playing the metaphorical game of chess and holding things tightly to our chests, avoiding the disappointment of being let down [again] — feeds a recurring human pattern of distrust that is damned hard to break…
At some point our own often dissonance kicks in and takes over. We can easily become increasingly over-invested in the beliefs/perspectives we hold, the work and efforts in which we have invested and the knowledge and sense of knowingness that we have earned and/or acquired.
Understandably and living through these times, our well-honed defences can sabotage and betray our best individual and mutual interests.
A pervasive domination-oppression pattern shaped by societal norms, continues to play out over and over and over again.
Even those who seek to overcome current dysfunctional patterns, are easily sucked into the same old ways. Paradoxically when we find ourselves holding onto control, we may be reinforcing the very paradigm we have rejected…that we’re so determined to leave behind. And it can be damned hard to recognize when we are slipping or allowing ourselves to be pulled [back] down this slippery slope.
Me? Us? No!! No way!!!
…As if a higher righteous purpose warrants and justifies the same old tactics.
…As if making progress requires beating them (the others) at their own game…
…As if the ends (as we’ve defined them) justify the means (as we’ve rationalized them.)
The as if takes over…
It’s not easy to be in this world and live by and into different rules of engagement — to uphold and stay true to a healthy collaborative partnership way of being.
Navigating between worlds is fraught with difficult challenges.
It is easy to fall into the blame game, to become polarized, to label and demonize. It’s also easy [for any of us] from any side of any divide — depending on the circumstances and contexts — to justify and rationalize.
Breaking out of these recurring cycles and patterns demands ongoing conscious mutual choice and determination.
“All significant breakthroughs are break — ‘withs’ — old ways of thinking. ~ Thomas Kuhn
We gotta break up with these dysfunctional patterns, ways of thinking and being that fail to serve. There is no perfect time for this. We can’t wait for some future event that will make it easier. We only have now.
Many are still holding onto the status quo, for a variety of reasons…holding onto control within increasingly uncertain contexts where so much is truly outside of our individual and collective control.
Many, if not most, of our established institutions are not fit-for-purpose and the systemic structures and underlying values that drive them, set the context for human behaviour. With every passing day across all domains of society, it is evident that the same old ways aren’t working.
Things are breaking down everywhere. Breakdowns are not evenly distributed. The most vulnerable and marginalized are being most affected — soonest and hardest.
There are more of us with every passing day recognizing the need for significant shifts — rethinking and reframing viable purpose, pathways and patterns for people and planet.
As we observe this breakingness all around, the widening cracks and chasms are also creating the space, the opportunities and the imperatives to forge new, alternative pathways.
In some ways we are paradoxically challenged to hold onto the better world we hold in our hearts and heads — as if that better world is here now.
To manifest it by being the change.
And yet, dilemmas lurk and blinds spots persist and emerge, even among those who are working hard to birth transformative shifts…
Navigating, living and working as if our own knowledge and capabilities are sufficient, as if existing conditions are adequate — also contain limitations and dangers. Even from this uncertain, emergent shifting space between, there are [some minimum critical] needs for enabling [provisional] semi-permeable structures and systems to guide us.
Some parameters…
Individual agency and collective coherent agency — freedoms within reasonable and transparent limits.
Some degree of form still follows some degree of function. Clarity of roles and accountabilities — being reasonably clear, within reasonable timelines [whenever feasible] about who we can count on, to do what, within what decision authorities and timelines — is still vitally important. At the same time, we also need much more fluidity — structures and roles that are as malleable and adaptive as the strategy and operational needs that define them.
When we operate [for too long] as if we can keep on functioning well without [some minimum critical] structure, we [can expect to] run into [a wide range of] difficulties.
Messy humanness easily takes over and fills the void — the empty spaces that lack enabling coherent structure and guard rails. In the absence of clarity, dysfunctional power dynamics and efforts to hold onto and wield control all too often slip back into those informal amorphous loosely defined initiatives and ventures.
When we operate as if our own limits don’t exist, as if we don’t need structure, as if the right enabling conditions don’t matter or as if we can and must somehow and compensate and hold the fort indefinitely — we run into walls that are still there in the real world we all occupy.
This might manifest or appear as blind optimism, obstinate denial, lacking a solid grip on reality and/or simply doing the very best we can within the contextual realities that we face.
Amazing efforts do get underway through loose networks and extended bootstrapping. However, many of these initiatives are not sustainable. They burn out, fizzle out and dwindle away — often at huge human and financial fallout and cost.
Heroic efforts to keep things going indefinitely, eventually break down, potentially [further] breaking down wellbeing and relationships. Given the complexity of overlapping challenges, those who take on and hang onto heroic leadership roles, trying to hold it all together and straddling too much without adequate resources and support can easily fall into a pattern of holding onto control.
They/we may believe this is justifiable under the circumstances.
They/we may feel entitled — having worked hardest, having sacrificed the most, having gained considerable knowledge and having earned the right.
Their/our efforts will invariably fall short. Notwithstanding significant accomplishments achieved and contributions made, heroic efforts can lead to unvetted assumptions and/or [perceived] overreach of legitimate authority. All-round feelings of resentment can build between those who have assumed and/or accepted heroic responsibilities and control and those who may become increasingly disengaged and peripheral to the efforts underway. When allowed to continue, this context can set people up for disappointment and dysfunctional conflict.
By and large, individual heroic leaders cannot achieve the breakthroughs and order of change required at this juncture of our human civilization.
A reframing of leadership, making space for its many manifestations and forms — is also warranted. The complexity of overlapping meta challenges we face calls for a fresh take.
Isn’t it time to view leadership through a much wider kaleidoscopic lens? Flexibility and accountability and the changing nature of work and role relationships required? (Co-)creativity and passion and collaboration and mutual learning? Vulnerability and empathy and a huge dose of humility? Coherent agency and co-intelligence and gifts differing — toward wisdom and life-affrming value in society? And-and…
The need to embed collaborative capacity and learning exchange across functions, organizations, industries, sectors, cultures, and generations deserves a serious shift in the way we think about and do leadership.
Diverse, fluid forms, capabilities and manifestations of leadership are potentially more effective and adaptive than conventionally boxed-in leadership roles.
🔶 How do we break with the tired patterns that keep things stuck and fail to mobilize?
🔶 Who are [still] missing from the equation?
Disrupting ourselves…means breaking out of our own expert bubbles…regularly… and welcoming a much wider spectrum of leaders and participation into the conversations — the places and spaces where leading and contributing can potentially take on new forms, enabling meaningful progress to flow.
Many of the outcomes and potential pathways forward — the hows — while envisioned in the form of aspirations and possibilities, cannot be pre-determined or pre-measured. When shaped organically and by design, we allow the space for intentionality, ongoing learning and adaptation.
And whether or not we can discern this…uncertainty invariably means some mystery, randomness, wonder and awe somehow manifest in the midst of our best intents.
Even the most virtuous visions and missions with great intentions will sub-optimize or fail — at some point, as dysfunctional patterns continue or slip back in.
Being Right is [almost] Never Enough — the 1st article, reflecting an ongoing and recurring theme. There are so many facets to this hydra-headed issue. Being ‘Roughly Right’ is ‘Always’ and is ‘Never’… ‘Good Enough’ — a 3rd article that peels back yet more layers.
Our present here-and-now reality — how we choose to show up and how we behave and relate — is our best opportunity to live into the changes we are trying to make towards a better livable and workable future.
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” ~ Richard Rohr
This can also be described as futures literacy, ways we can navigate the dance of emergence and strategy.
An existential dance with complexity and paradox…
We are continually challenged to test our perceptions of what is real, to recognize the polarities that exist and to work with multiple [trans]contextual realities while navigating, imagining, manifesting and living into a future that is not definitively knowable and not yet here.
🔶 What are the patterns that persist?
🔶 What patterns tie us down?
🔶 What is possible when we liberate our imaginations?
🔶 When we do so, do we maintain a grip on reality? Whose reality?
🔶 Does having a grip on reality equate to holding onto control?
In his paper, Liberating the Human Imagination: Futures Literacy and the Diversification of Anticipation, Riel Miller invites us to reframe the way we think about future — how might we navigate, embracing inherent tensions…
A few excerpts:
“To be futures literate, to enable our imagination to wander with confidence, creativity, and openness, is to embrace both knowing and not-knowing.”
“It’s about confidence in the ability to learn and take advantage of the creativity of the universe, not as a master and slave, but as partners in improvisation, spontaneity, and mystery. Recognizing that modesty is expressed first by claiming to not know and caring by not imposing or exploiting.”
“There is no way to know if the disproportionately large proportion of humanity now imprisoned in this mono-culture of the imagination can break the vile cycle that sustains a world that pits human against human and human against ‘nature’.
“Right now, our planet is providing a message without any intentionality, volition, or purpose — it is feedback that can either reinforce the frenetic effort to impose outcomes, to conquer tomorrow, or to begin the experimentalist process of relegating conquest in its many forms to micro-pretensions like cooking a delicious dinner.”
“And the good news is we can do it by tapping into something we do day in and day out — which is use our imagination. Only now, with the aspiration of finding a balance between, on the one hand, yoking the future to goals, means, and impatience for your lottery number to come up, and on the other hand, cultivating the magic of non-teleological imagination to fuel the patience of not-knowing, not-doing, inviting our wings of perception to soar.”
The references to Kafka’s Metamorphosis kinda sum it up:
”In one shattering transformation the divide between perception and choice, between being and becoming, fuses into a monolithic imperative — a future determined and a determined future!”
As we explore these tensions, how to live into an unknowable life-affirming future, we recognize that this isn’t a binary either/or choice…
Recently reminded that the Greek origin of tension, tonos, might help us stretch, redeeming its inherent value and healthy purpose.
With intentionality and common[s] purpose, we can acknowledge, honour and hold the tension, rather than hold onto illusory control of a future that is not [yet] here now.
No matter what we mindfully choose — and our conscious choices are important — life happens along with its natural cycles…and mysteries…
When [unanticipated] life and sh*t happens…how do we respond? How do we cope? How do we choose to navigate forward in the face of new challenges as they arise?
Our adaptability, resilience and imaginative capacities can liberate us from some artificial constraints. As we navigate, present-centred while looking back and forward with hindsight, insights and humility — together, we might uncover…(co-)discover…what’s possible, figureoutable and doable.
The Three Horizons Framework, developed by Bill Sharpe (International Futures Forum) as described by Daniel Christian Wahl in this excerpt from his book Regenerative Cultures, sheds light on differing horizons, underlying drivers and ways to understand and navigate 3 future trajectories/pathways — in the present.
Many of us reference and build upon this model as a way to mindfully reflect on our futures literacy, navigation options and points of leverage. The model provides a very practical strategic and operational lens that can guide decisions today and along the way.
“The framework helps us to become more aware of how our individual and collective intentions and behaviours actively shape the future today. By mapping three ways of relating to the future from the perspectives of the three horizons we can bring the value of each of them to the conversation in a generative way that fosters understanding and future consciousness as the basis for collaborative action and transformative innovation.” ~ Daniel Christian Wahl
The shifts are underway, manifesting as multitudes of networks, communities of practice (CoPs) and initiatives, growing mycelium roots and tender shoots. There are many efforts being conceived, birthed and renewed — some slowly and painfully, some picking up speed, converging, growing operational legs and gaining resilience.
The 2 Loop Model developed by Deborah Frieze and Margaret Wheatley with the Berkana Institute also helps us understand and navigate change, describing natural life cycles whereby a dominant paradigm shifts through stages of growth, adaptation and decline, and makes way for a new paradigm to emerge. The model sheds light on how we can work through destabilizing periods of breakdown while living into a new paradigm. This Systems Innovation video does an excellent job explaining this nonlinear emergence of new patterns.
As progress is made, living labs can be prototyped, commons governance frameworks can be tested and alternative work systems and structures can form. Well-being economic models and enabling life-affirming value flows and exchanges can become self-regenerative.
The new paradigm will emerge…organically and by design…aspirationally from the experimental edges…adaptively and increasingly adopted…as more of us let go and live into alternative workable ways and systems that take shape and become normative.
Everything. Everywhere. All at once.
Impossible to see and appreciate all that is underway.
We sense it. We get glimpses.
We press on…doing what we can…with gifts differing.
We learn how to dance with uncertainty…and monsters…
We learn when and how to let go of control, recognizing when control is an illusion that paradoxically holds us back from combining our collective capacities to make meaningful progress…to live into the regenerative future we are shaping and inviting…
Many aspects of the old paradigm are crumbling. From this unsettling space between worlds, we are learning and discerning what to carry forward:
🔶 What do we hold dear?
🔶 What can we hold onto?
🔶 What can/must we let go of?
🔶 Who has the right to decide these things?
🔶 How can we navigate forward cultivating individual and collective agency, along roughly right life-affirming trajectories that allow ample space for diversity?
🔶 What deep-rooted Indigenous wisdom traditions and ways of knowing have stood the test of time?
🔶 What de we need to unlearn, relearn and restore?
🔶 What scientific and technological knowledge and capacities are enabling forces?
🔶 What intuitive, creative individual and collective right brain capacities can we cultivate and harness to guide us?
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.” ~Albert Einstein
The future is not here now. Even when we think we are right about the pathways and methodologies we are choosing, we cannot force or control our way into a life-affirming future. Living in the world as it is today, while facing overlapping challenges and moving forward in ways that are congruent with the shifts that are needed — is not easy.
When we maintain or [unwittingly] fall back into [old paradigm] patterns of holding onto control, we might be letting our own achilles control us. We can impede or sabotage our own efforts. The thing about our blind spots — is that we can’t see them. This is true for us all. And when dissonance takes over, our blinders potentially become more limiting and damaging.
This will test us every day. We cannot do this work alone. We cannot expect to accomplish heroic feats. We cannot break dysfunctional patterns in a vacuum. None of us are masters of the universe.
To work well, people need to work together and work through the tough stuff. Interdependence is real.
The ‘new paradigm’ that many of us envisage will manifest in multiple forms. The best approach cannot be prescribed, mandated or ordained.
Looking back retrospectively, we are challenged to restore and honour what has been lost…
Present-centred, we are challenged to accept, grieve and heal the anguish and brokenness that is real…and the ways we’ve been affected and have contributed…
Forward facing, we are challenged to navigate and ‘swim’ in uncharted waters. The journey will take all of us out of our comfort zones, to varying degrees, at various points.
This work is not ethereal and hypothetical. It gets underway in real contexts and places wherever we work and live, and how we show up — every day. We can tap into a wider reservoir and spectrum of co-intelligence — embracing our interdependence with one another. Everything is nested. The tiniest of micro-moments and molecules. The largest meta-macro wholes.
Clinging, lingering pervasive domination-oppression patterns and cycles have damaged us and our nests.
Mark Wooding, Founder of the animation studio, After Skool who hosted the podcast with Daniel, is producing some short animated clips as well. So far, these focus on the human stuff. Aha! Why Modern Humans Feel So Empty and Why Good People Comply with Evil
Daniel covers a wide-raging landscape unpacking the meta crises:
🔶 Affirms what we [increasingly] understand — even if we weren’t knowledgable about specific manifestations of the patterns discussed
🔶 Looks through transcontextual lenses…without advocating definitive answers
🔶 Recognizes the dangers of solutions that produce negative downstream consequences
🔶 Holds the tension — feeling the despair of a world gone wrong, sharing his wisdom, opening the door to the need and potential for humanity to gain [nested] wisdom — ways of knowing in the midst of not knowing…
We recognize the underlying questions. He and we aren’t alone on this journey, seeking to widen sense making portals.
A reaffirming theme that runs throughout is the need to gain wisdom…and how some of those layers of wisdom might best be derived by humbly accepting the inherent “I and we don’t knowness” — as we navigate, guided by what is most precious and joyful about life in all its wondrous forms.
Isn’t it time to accept that no subject matter expert or heroic leader can lead the way with grand wraparound solutions? Myopic silver bullet prescriptive roadmaps and methodologies reflect the same patterns that created this existential soup.
Life…humanity…nature…we are messy, diverse and nuanced beyond any of our attempts to package up declarative sense-making world views in ways that can truly convey all the whole[s], holes and viable ways to shift the trajectory.
We try. We do our best and at best offer fractal glimpses. Those glimpses, in themselves pretty good, can quite never encapsulate the many whole pictures. There is always more…
Often those best well-articulated perspectives enter into discourse that become binary debates. While we might learn some important things along the way…binary world views that deny a wider realm of reality easily keep the old patterns on repeat-rewind.
This too is life for us messy humans…
Some attempt to sense and meaning make, producing longer podcasts and videos and writing longer articles and longer-still books [that some people might listen to, watch and read] — allowing for more expansive expression, words and space for nuance…
Many of us [increasingly] agree on the seriousness and severity of the degenerative, destabilizing spiral of decline impacting humanity and a living planet, as conveyed in this article, The Wildfires Raging in our Souls.
How to respond, pro-act, communicate, activate…these are the questions we are [increasingly] living — feeling the escalating urgency.
Some decisions and choices [might] seem obvious and clear …
Many depend considerably on context and place.
Many are caught between the rock-and-hard-places of double binds. There’s a need for thoughtful wise, mindful navigation and activation…not become paralyzed…not slide into tunnelled vision blinded by biases…not to become overly enamoured and attached to our own well-studied and honed expert perspective or roadmap…”
Yup. Not easy stuff. Letting go of illusory control and navigating wisely and well calls for”
🔶 Many more engaged as active participants with personal agency gaining collective coherent agency and wisdom
🔶 Grounded [not blind] hope that inspires purposeful forward-facing, courage and action
🔶 Accepting and facing some inevitable anguish, grief and healing
🔶 Finding and sharing some joy along the way
🔶 Mindful activation towards more interconnectedness and wholeness
This letter/blog by Tom Atlee poignantly expresses what many of us feel deep in our souls, as we relentlessly persist walking that difficult line of hope and despair.
“True, we can have too much challenge, too much uncertainty. However, if we look closely, we’ll find that that only happens when we’ve become too attached to outcomes. In the moment of that realization, our challenge becomes ‘How well can we learn to let go and stay engaged?’ That’s a real trick. The real trick. To be alive is to find out what’s possible, to see how far we can push/cajole/invite the flow of reality into the channels of positive possibility.”
Re-patterning from domination-oppression to a life-affirming paradigm is a bumpy ride!
Reminded of The Hollies song “He ain’t heavy, He’s my brother.”
Time for us all with lived experience, stories and gifts differing — brothers…sisters…all peoples…cultures…generations…genders…disciplines…walks of life— to ‘live into’ the deeper spirit that underlies and values our interconnected and differentiated Indigeneity…
…our humanness is integrally connected.
…we are inextricably rooted within a living planet we call home.
..wherever we are in the world.
Can we ‘mindfully navigate’ through uncertainty — ‘being the change’ we hold in our hearts?
At this precarious juncture in our civilization history, can we focus our energies toward interbecoming and interbelonging in an inclusive life-affirming pluriverse that holds many bio]diverse nests?
Life is too short and it’s getting shorter with every passing day…
*This article was updated again May 2024, reflecting additional perspectives and ongoing action research — fractal glimpses — as we continue to observe, listen, assimilate, curate and adapt — a learning journey for us all.
Unstitution was birthed as a collective creative commons and nested ecosystem. We (co-)catalyze and support collaborative communities, initiatives and coalitions where people from across sectors, disciplines, cultures, generations and walks-of-life work together on mission critical issues. From readiness through to regenerative progress — moving beyond polarization — is how we roll. The links embedded throughout this article are a warm invitation to go a bit deeper, at any time. For more insights reflecting our ongoing journey, our suite of Unstitution articles are published on Medium. They portray a small sample of the ways we are adapting and contributing among ever-expanding commons-based communities and initiatives inspired and fuelled by citizens — perhaps better described as denizens — anywhere in the world — living into the principles and spirit that govern our collaborative work.
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