I hope to build a team of five people to lead a project, as I will explain later. First, however, I want to riff on an article that makes good sense to me. And there is a connection between these two thoughts, which I will also explain.
Stop Trying to Change Mindsets. Do This Instead. by Jessica Böhme
This brings up the question: From an organismic, processual, relational, complex-systems understanding of the world, what does the iceberg model actually mean for theories of change?
We understand the world better if we view reality through the lens of complex systems and the lense of processes. I want to extend this thinking in a particular direction. I want to apply it to ourselves as human beings.
In school I was taught that a noun is a word that represents a person, thing, concept, or place. Yes, people are a thing but we are so much more. We are complex systems and we are processes. Yes, we need to expand our view of the world and we need to expand our view of ourselves. We need better models of ourselves.
A caution:
Yet simultaneously, this thing-like quality is itself an abstraction.
However,
This processual understanding turns these "things" into some”thing” that is already always changing, already always in flow, already always in the process of becoming something else.
A project team can be a better experience when we hold this view, that as we work together each of us is always in the process of becoming something else.
The greatest leverage may lie not in changing mental models but in becoming more aware of our participation in their continuous creation. This awareness itself becomes a form of intervention—not because we can control outcomes, but because conscious participation tends to generate more responsive, adaptive, and life-affirming patterns of meaning-making. That’s one of the reasons why the debate between individual vs. collective action is almost obsolete. The individual action is the collective action.
I hope to participate on a project team that has this high level of conscious participation. Adding a thought emphasized by my friend Claudia Dommaschk, how we work together is as important as what we do. For me, much of this is still aspirational and hopefully the project team will be a space where we can practice, practice, practice.
This doesn't dissolve the paradox of solidity and flow but rather invites us to get comfy with it. Like the electron that is simultaneously particle and wave, our paradigms are simultaneously solid enough to shape reality and fluid enough to be reshaped by reality. The greatest leverage for systems change may lie in becoming more skillful in relaxing into this ongoing tension…
If this is making sense to you, you may be a candidate for the project team I have in mind. You are also invited to browse the articles in Immediacy Forum by Claudia. There is much in her writings that informs how we can have a good experience as we work together on a project. For example, from her I have also learned the importance of proceeding at the speed of trust. The project team will seek to build a high level of trust before doing much of anything else.
I am also looking for average and ordinary people to join me. I am not a Galaxy Brain nor a Galaxy Heart, although lots people in those categories inspire me. It seems to me that five of us working together can accomplish something significant.
Finally, what is the project? We (we are currently a team of two) would like to build a container for an online community at scale. The basic building block of the community will be cohorts of five people, a small space connected to something bigger.
There is one more point that I would like to emphasize. I am not trying to create something that will generate an income opportunity for me. While earning a living is a necessity, it is sometimes a hidden objective in community building which, imo, reduces trust. I will not be offering courses or selling services. So, if you would like to explore this further, ask me anything.