I am also curious to explore how system, culture, and role all contribute to “fall back” (per Valerie Livesay) of individual leaders and leadership teams (subsystems) and what interventions help minimize the frequency and severity of fallback.
I have been hanging on to a draft article exploring my own version of this question - exploring my cultural background - will strive to finish that article and will be very curious of your thoughts when I do.
Alis - I can’t thank you enough for your simultaneously tenacious and graceful efforts to pave the way for others to explore, discover, grow and evolve self and others. I’ve been following your work and thinking for about a year now, and I am continually impressed at the quality of thought you put forward and at such a prolific rate (very hard to do!). Your generosity in sharing the wealth of knowledge and wisdom you have unearthed in your own journey is such a gift and blessing to others.
When I saw that you brought Joan Lurie into dialogue, I was so excited. Seeing two of my favorite thought leaders come together for a “cross pollinating” discussion considering the intersectionality of self and system within organizational contexts, I stopped whatever I was doing and was all ears!
I am currently in a liminal career inflection point and have been allowing the spheres of complexity, systems, vertical development, ecology, psychology and even theology “rewire and repattern” my mindset, mental map and skills/tool box in my approach to org development and design.
I found the questions you put forward about how to hold the tension (and manage the polarity) between self/individual (vertical development) and system to be incisive and a critical one for practitioners in our space to have top of mind. I thought Joan’s perspective, that operating at the individual, sub system, and whole system levels simultaneously was spot on. The thoughts that emerged for me as I considered these ideas are as follows :
“What is the implication for organizational practitioners? Having the breadth and depth of knowledge, expertise, and skill required to competently, engage at every level of an organizational system might be beyond most individual practitioners capabilities. Perhaps practitioners, mental models need to shift from individual self practitioners, to seeing their “role” as part of professional subsystems to intervene collectively in the organizational work. This would require for practitioners to aggregate around nodal networks more readily, and more often than is the norm in our profession in order to make deep and sustainable change and transformation...
I would love the opportunity to discuss these and other questions with you at some point. It would be a pleasure and honor to meet and join alongside you in our parallel professional vertical development pathways. 😎
I'm very humbled by your kind words of support, Wesley! I also very deeply resonate with your observation here - that a shift in how practitioners approach this work (and ourselves doing this work) is needed. Incidentally, I have recently been involved in a couple of inter-independent projects - with fellow practitioners coming together to serve a larger client. It is so fun and rewarding to explore complementarities and how (in the words of a wise friend of mine) 'we can be more together'. To me this is the future. And it itself, transcending our traditional impulse to protect our knowledge or 'unique competitive advantages' and chosen instead to share, invite others in who hold strengths we don't, collaborate freely - is a stretch towards later staged development in itself and a practical way we can co-create sub-systems that maximise the efficiency of our interventions. Let's keep talking about this - how much more would be possible! Would love to catch up too!
I am also curious to explore how system, culture, and role all contribute to “fall back” (per Valerie Livesay) of individual leaders and leadership teams (subsystems) and what interventions help minimize the frequency and severity of fallback.
I have been hanging on to a draft article exploring my own version of this question - exploring my cultural background - will strive to finish that article and will be very curious of your thoughts when I do.
Alis - I can’t thank you enough for your simultaneously tenacious and graceful efforts to pave the way for others to explore, discover, grow and evolve self and others. I’ve been following your work and thinking for about a year now, and I am continually impressed at the quality of thought you put forward and at such a prolific rate (very hard to do!). Your generosity in sharing the wealth of knowledge and wisdom you have unearthed in your own journey is such a gift and blessing to others.
When I saw that you brought Joan Lurie into dialogue, I was so excited. Seeing two of my favorite thought leaders come together for a “cross pollinating” discussion considering the intersectionality of self and system within organizational contexts, I stopped whatever I was doing and was all ears!
I am currently in a liminal career inflection point and have been allowing the spheres of complexity, systems, vertical development, ecology, psychology and even theology “rewire and repattern” my mindset, mental map and skills/tool box in my approach to org development and design.
I found the questions you put forward about how to hold the tension (and manage the polarity) between self/individual (vertical development) and system to be incisive and a critical one for practitioners in our space to have top of mind. I thought Joan’s perspective, that operating at the individual, sub system, and whole system levels simultaneously was spot on. The thoughts that emerged for me as I considered these ideas are as follows :
“What is the implication for organizational practitioners? Having the breadth and depth of knowledge, expertise, and skill required to competently, engage at every level of an organizational system might be beyond most individual practitioners capabilities. Perhaps practitioners, mental models need to shift from individual self practitioners, to seeing their “role” as part of professional subsystems to intervene collectively in the organizational work. This would require for practitioners to aggregate around nodal networks more readily, and more often than is the norm in our profession in order to make deep and sustainable change and transformation...
I would love the opportunity to discuss these and other questions with you at some point. It would be a pleasure and honor to meet and join alongside you in our parallel professional vertical development pathways. 😎
I'm very humbled by your kind words of support, Wesley! I also very deeply resonate with your observation here - that a shift in how practitioners approach this work (and ourselves doing this work) is needed. Incidentally, I have recently been involved in a couple of inter-independent projects - with fellow practitioners coming together to serve a larger client. It is so fun and rewarding to explore complementarities and how (in the words of a wise friend of mine) 'we can be more together'. To me this is the future. And it itself, transcending our traditional impulse to protect our knowledge or 'unique competitive advantages' and chosen instead to share, invite others in who hold strengths we don't, collaborate freely - is a stretch towards later staged development in itself and a practical way we can co-create sub-systems that maximise the efficiency of our interventions. Let's keep talking about this - how much more would be possible! Would love to catch up too!