Evolutionary Navigation — for living lab pilots, initiatives and coalitions
(Oh sh*t! Not another system!)
Ya…we debated long and hard about what to call our various principles and the navigational ways and patterns that guide our work. There are many elements. It’s all dynamic, interconnected, adaptable and yet fundamental in order for living lab initiatives and coalition work to progress wisely and well — organically And by design.
But actually — it makes sense, intuitively and systemically. The patterns are recognizable when we peek under the hood and as the work gets underway.
Lots of messy human navigational support is unearthed here — vital human system stuff that is all too often overlooked, dismissed and undervalued
The human system ‘soft stuff’ really is the ‘hard stuff’ —posing our greatest challenges and potentially our greatest opportunities for breakthroughs.
The Unstitution Evolutionary Navigation System (ENS) — is the adaptive guiding process that enables collaborative initiatives and coalitions to become ready and then move through various stages that follow general patterns we have observed and mapped over decades. It is the natural way that our living operating system is activated through living lab pilots and coalition work and the multiple ways these evolve.
ENS has helpful building blocks that support mindful navigation and activation. The process is developmental and iterative rather than programmatic and linear.
It allows for emergent co-creative design. It illuminates the way as new people join and others exit, guided by progress and emergent needs and opportunities.
While there are core elements, the process incorporates the capabilities and methodologies needed by the particular initiative or coalition and its purpose, at any given point in its organic and designed evolution. We draw from the diversity of talent, experience, methodologies and toolkits that people in our WorkNet constellation bring to the work.
Our Evolutionary Navigation System (ENS) is adaptively designed or shaped to:
🔮 Identify the cultural and operational patterns, dysfunctions and shortcomings — monsters — of the current system/organizations and individuals
🔮 Identify the needs for coherent agency, key change agents and points of leverage within and connected to business, government and civil society that can affect regenerative progress.
🔮 Identify the chasms within and across sectors and divides where efforts typically get stuck or stall
🔮 Guide and support those who want and need to be involved (all individuals and groups) discerning and deploying methodologies and ways of being that are well suited to the specific context, culture and place.
The co-navigation journey potentially includes these broadly scoped (overlapping) stages:
- Lost, unfocused, disconnected, apathetic, insular or isolated — operationally dysfunctional/not ready
- Preliminary baseline awareness — the start of meaningful exploration
- Showing up/being present — acknowledging monsters and fully engaging
- Deeper, authentic acknowledgement — becoming self-aware, identifying needs, attending to grief, trauma and reconciliation work, critical targets and opportunities, scoping the work and forming, guiding and co-navigating living lab pilot initiatives and coalitions
- Experiencing preliminary significant breakthroughs — trusting the process, deepening learning exchange, sharing stories
- Repeating (recursive) pattern of aha breakthroughs — deep collaborative engagement and learning, systemically-proven, muscle-memory
- Systemic and (becoming) regenerative over time — effects, impact and value flows are documented and redefined with regenerative indicators and milestones becoming realized and normalized, with tangible horizon 3 movement (see previous)
Throughout the ENS process, we are:
🔮 Observing, tracking and assessing barriers and progress
🔮 Capturing and documenting learnings via storymaking, storytelling and storyliving
🔮 Undertaking participatory action research that incorporates learnings and (trans)contextual insights and demonstrates — indicators of meaningful movement and impact
🔮 Identifying potential opportunities to amplify and right scale towards further positive impact through imagination labs, bridge building and active learning modes.
Evolutionary navigation are activated through a variety of overlapping collaborative commons communities, initiatives and coalitions and themes. This only a glimpse into the ever-evolving stories. The work extends wider and deeper as ordinary people — all of us messy humans — who are the living, breathing, heart centres of our interconnected work, bring their own gifts differing and stories into the mix.
This is how we cultivate joyful resilience, and what we will increasingly experience as interbecoming— living into life-affirming ways for people and planet.
We’d love for you to be part of us and for us to be part of you.
We can all be unstitutional!
Unstitution was birthed as a collective creative commons and nested ecosystem. We (co-)catalyze, convene, curate and support a wide range of context, place and theme-based initiatives 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 our articles 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 reflect 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. Each article is a fractal-like glimpse into the unstitutional ethos.
You can follow Unstitution and engage with us on LinkedIn. Many of our posts and perspectives also pop up under hashtags #messyhumanness and #wisdomwithteeth.
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