Learning to dance with uncertainty
Regeneration Sessions for teams
A core reason for bringing Becoming Crew into being after years of experimenting and prototyping, is motivated by what we see as an urgent need.
It's not a need for more innovation or technology but of what it means to be human in these times.
How to collectively cultivate our capacities to live and work well with uncertainty, complexity, change and not knowing that the emerging future is demanding ?
Because this civilisation is moving closer to the edges of life threatening climate and ecological tipping points and towards widespread extreme social inequalities and civil unrest which means the future is only going to become more uncertain.
So how can business be usual in these times?
How do we work with energy, clarity and focus while carrying fears for our children's future?
How will organisations stay relevant when the context they’ve been established in is falling apart ?
Why will customers, members and stakeholders stay loyal as the things that really matter in their lives unravel?
How long can organisations stay silent as citizens are locked up for protesting for our collective survival?
Maybe you are asking yourself questions like this.
Is your organisation ?
We believe that to bring forth regenerative cultures at the scale and speed required will mean stepping into a new paradigm of transformative and continuous (un)learning, individually and collectively at every level of society.
This context needs new forms of human learning infrastructure and practices to support the messy, turbulent and courageous journeys required.
Journeys to let go of many destructive and divisive stories, behaviours, systems and ways of thinking from the last few hundred years that are perpetuating the crises. While at the same time supporting people in adapting and evolving to new life-sustaining practices and ways of being essential to evolve ourselves towards regenerative possibilities.
In short we won’t be able to think and talk our way out of the mess we’re in.
We’re going to have to embody the changes by learning our way through.
To evolve ourselves together.
“The future is not out there in front of us, but inside us.”
— JOANNA MACY
Many organisations have been built on fairly predictable and seemingly ‘solid ground’ - stable climate, steady finance, abundant resources and materials, reliable supply chains and distribution powered by cheap fast fossil fuel energy.
Most have been dreamed up and designed with linear ways of thinking and knowing the world, with hierarchical command and control operating structures.
These are not organisations designed with deep roots for resilience in a context of relentless uncertainty.
Many organisations have been established and currently depend upon a cultural narrative of eternal growth, endless consumption, productivity and winning.
While political, corporate and media structures keep us convinced of the illusion of this story of progress, though I suspect many know inside this to be false.
Because the lid is lifting and it’s all beginning to unravel.
Change is coming whether we like it or not.
We are all being called to evolve, to transform from the extractive, exploitative, binary, controlling and competitive logic of today.
To serve the wider community of life now and way into the future in regenerative ways, that brings life back to ourselves, to each other, to our communities and to our more than human family - the natural world, a world we have not made which we cannot survive without.
The real question for organisations to inquire with is - who or what will you become?
“ The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance.”
Alan W. Watts
As we come towards the close of 2022 and with most sane people recognising that we are witnessing the unravelling, decay and collapse of much that we once thought was solid and fixed, we are holding the assumption that many organisational teams - for profit, not for profit and NGO are experiencing intense uncertainty and complexity on multiple fronts and struggling to hold it all, to do ‘business as usual’ and navigate a way through which doesn’t upset how things ‘get done.’
Some big blocks I’ve witnessed in my work over the years with organisations in becoming comfortable with uncertainty and creating adaptive cultures are:
1. Fear of uncertainty and change and lack of capability to dance with it
( we live in a culture and society that doesn’t encourage dialogue, practices, tools or support to help us face into complexity, fear, not knowing)
2. A lack of capacity to imagine that things could be different and better
( we live in a culture where media, politics and institutions provide a very narrow lens of what good looks like and how we measure success)
3. Privilege and expectation that others will ‘fix’ the future for us
( we in the global north especially are rooted in societies and cultures obsessed with a modern ‘story of more’ with little shared responsibility for participating in collective action and long term thinking.)
4. Systems, institutions and behaviours shaped by a deeply ingrained and now dangerously destructive narrative that we are ‘separate from nature’ and ‘separate from each other’.
( we continue to perpetuate the crises viewing ourselves as separate from life itself - for reference see sewage in rivers, acidification of the ocean, toxic air pollution, dying soils, micro plastics in blood, youth mental health crisis etc etc etc)
The interesting and hopeful thing, I believe at least, is all of the above are learned logic and behaviours, we’ve been culturally shaped to know, think and act in these ways, and so they can be unlearned, re-imagined and realised in the world around us.
But to do that requires space, encouragement, support and infrastructure.
Uncertainty scaffolding.
The biggest challenge is often in how to begin.
How to step into uncertainty with radical honesty.
To speak openly the uncomfortable truths.
To show and share our vulnerabilities and not knowing.
To acknowledge everything that no longer serves us, our organisation and the future of life on this planet.
And then to create the conditions to re-imagine and co-create the changes in our everyday actions and behaviours.
To become active participants in shaping our collective futures, to have agency and responsibility - becoming crew.
In our experience the creative possibilities that come from embracing the above can be extraordinary.
These are regenerative practices in themselves that can build a level of trust in teams which can catalyse extraordinary things.
And boy do we need extraordinary right now.
And here’s a thing, realities are created through practices, and with committed new practices we can create new realities.
More beautiful realities.
Accepting the undeniable physics of climate and ecological breakdown and our contribution to it - is not doom and gloom.
Accepting and speaking openly to the perverse inequalities and injustices in our societies is not about giving up hope.
Questioning the limits of our human knowing and opening ourselves up to the vast intelligence of the more than human world should not seem odd but vital.
What can our hearts tell us about the future that our heads can’t?
“We may be living through times of unprecedented change, but in uncertainty lies the power to influence the future. Now is not the time to despair, but to act”
Rebecca Solnit
We offer Regeneration Sessions in this spirit.
We invite teams in organisations to consider…
How do we create space to remember what really matters ?
What would you be doing if responsibility to life on earth was how we measured success?
What if you dared to imagine how you might evolve your work to honour the future of all life ?
What is the unique gift that only your organisation can offer these times to regenerate the world around you?
How might you use your talents and influence to accelerate systemic change?
How do we act and support each other in new and committed ways to co-create the futures we dream of?
What if creating intentional spaces and practices to work more openly with our most difficult questions, our most alive challenges and embracing the messiness of that was preparing the ground for a true regenerative journey, to evolve our organisations to their most creative potential?
“It is possible and indeed necessary to open up the imagination and to open up the practices for a world which can yet be, but is not yet.”
Regeneration Sessions is a way to start this journey, a portal, a threshold for change for organisational teams.
It creates space to ground ourselves fully and honestly in the complexity, vulnerability and uncertainty of these times.
It provides intentional space to imagine what could be.
It offers experiences to begin to know ourselves, each other and the wider living, more than human world differently and more deeply.
It introduces practices to open up and dig deeper into the mystery of these times, and supporting each other to cultivate our capacities to co-create the emerging future.
Evolving ourselves together.
Stepping into service to life on earth.
"In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
Eric Hoffer
If you’re curious about what Regeneration Sessions could look like for your team, in your organisation, reach out for a chat with us, we are planning (un)learning adventures with partners for early 2023.
Come and learn to dance with uncertainty.
We’re here, we’re listening, we’re dancing.
Look here for more info on Regeneration sessions
