Asking questions as a practice of cultural regeneration
This is another post inspired by the questions I invited the students of the Indian School of Development Management (ISDM) to ask me in advance of a webinar with them in November 2019. The initial question was a little confusing, so it triggered me to talk about the power of questions and how I see the process of ‘living the questions together’ — in place — as an important catalyst for the emergence of regenerative cultures everywhere.
The initial questions was posted in the context of how to communicate the inherent potential of regenerative development and design. The students asked:
“As a development practitioner how would we communicate this vision effectively, which is currently different [from mainstream narratives], keeping in mind [the need for] a common shared vision?”
— Students of the Indian School of Development Management
I responded by highlighting that there is a deeper reason why I included 250 questions in my book. I believe that questions are more powerful in engaging people than principles. Of course principles invite questions, but posing them as questions in the first place immediately signals to others that their perspective counts and that you want to engage with them in co-creation rather than ask them to sign up to a manifesto.
If you would like some examples, the two excerpts from Designing Regenerative Cultures linked below show what happens when you turn Life’s Principles as developed by the Biomimicry Institute or John Fullerton’s eight principles of regenerative economics into questions:
Regeneration can start with asking deeper questions in a public dialogue — exploring the challenges and opportunities of a particular locality, the unique essence of place and people, and how the story of place can inform us about its inherent potential .
Such question-led conversations supported by a series of regenerative frameworks can invite people into personal reflections that trigger personal development (insights into how we see the world and respond to it), while also building the capacity of people to listen to each other and co-create. Living the questions together can help us to question the way we see the world and enables us to collectively unveil the potential of place and people.
[One aspect of ]“being a regenerative practitioner is about mastering the art of asking questions and becoming very skilled in facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogues that have people from all sorts of perspectives in the room and bringing them together around a shared issue, a share problem, like climate change … .”
— from the video linked below
I made the mistake of using the word “problem” in my reply to the students. What I should have said is: ‘bringing them together around the potential inherent in their place and its people to respond to problems such as climate change’. Regenerative practice works with potential rather than problems!
Part of working with potential is to acknowledge that a diversity of perspectives — even or especially conflicting ones — are in fact part of life’s diversity and requisite variety that can resource creativity and transformative innovation. Reconciling seemingly opposing perspectives by working positively with the potential for innovation and transformation they set up is another important aspect of regenerative practice.
In many multi-stakeholder processes it is important to enable people to not just speak from their professional roles but to deeply listen into their own experiences, intuitions and feelings beyond those roles — address them as private individuals.
In my own practice I have often witnessed how the same person can hold very different perspectives, hopes and visions of the future, depending on whether they speak in their professional role as a planner, developer, legislator, C.E.O. or government official in a public conversation or whether they are asked the same question — off record in a break — with regard to the world they would like their children to grow up in.
Professional roles can drive people into a form of values schizophrenia that a well facilitated conversation centred around the right questions and regenerative frameworks can help dissolve by bringing awareness to the cognitive dissonance and learning from it.
Taking people into that deeper place of connecting to their family and the people and places they deeply care about can help to shift the conversation. Asking questions and facilitating place-sourced dialogue can be a powerful practice of cultural regeneration.
Here is the recording that inspired me to write this post:
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Daniel Christian Wahl — Catalyzing transformative innovation in the face of converging crises, advising on regenerative whole systems design, regenerative leadership, and education for regenerative development and bioregional regeneration.
Author of the internationally acclaimed book Designing Regenerative Cultures
