I recently completed a new systems training called “Working courageously into the unknown”, by the amazing Joy Green, which was just what I had been missing from other systems change discourse and practice.
This training is grounded in mindfulness and truly relational practice. This involved centring and mediation-inspired exercises to facilitate liminal, imagination-based and somatic experiences and insights. Relational practice, in this context, starts with oneself and the body rather than being solely an intellectual exercise, which commonly includes an analysis of key agents of change, mapping their motivations, and what role they play in a system.
I particularly enjoyed an exercise about tacit futures: the narratives we hold, perhaps unconsciously, about our systems, their goals and how change happens, which inform how we respond to a system and often prevent paradigm shifts and seeing the emergence in systems. Trying to use a metaphor to describe my tacit future was very useful, and how that relates to the type of work we seek and the difference we are trying to make.
The chosen metaphor, and corresponding image below, is of a fictional town with a number of houses and at least two or three tornadoes coming from different directions. The town represents a community composed of family and individual households. Each tornado represents a major event in our current times, whether environmental collapse, geopolitical change, economic crisis, etc. Tornadoes also represent the uncertainty of the direction and impact that each tornado might have on different communities and individuals.
Each tornado is understood, felt and responded to differently depending on people’s tacit futures. For example, some people might see it as a threat, but feel it will impact other towns and houses, except for their own. This thinking typically results in no action or denial. This might include the climate change deniers and those who believe it just affects the Global South. Meanwhile, others might not see a tornado as a threat at all, but a wonderful opportunity. They will go towards it in an attempt to elucidate why it emerged to start with, what it is made of, how it moves and functions. As they have found, in the “eye” of the tornado, there is a relative calm that allows you to see it in a completely different light. This group might be represented by systems thinkers, researchers and other community-based pioneers.
But privilege, access to resources and values are powerful mediators of tacic futures and responses. In this metaphor, the privileged groups/individuals would have more than one way to keep safe. This might include a well-stocked underground bunker with water, drainage and power; they would also have access to advanced warning information and, as a result, could evacuate earlier than the rest. Moreover, they might not have just a vehicle or two to do so, but a helicopter too. As a result, the impact on them is vastly reduced or avoided completely. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of the community, whom might need to run and seek safety at the village hall with no or limited food and water supplies and bedding.
In my tacit future, as demonstrated by the metaphor, we have a complex system where it is not possible to control any of these tornadoes. This is in dissonance with a reductionistic view of the world and the popular linear approaches we employ. These include strategies that assume systemic change can be achieved by one organisation and/or use logic models that oversimplify complexity and how change truly happens. These practices are informed by zombie tacit futures: paradigms and mental models that, despite their decay, we continue to use, like inhabiting a near-death body.
So what? And how does that relate to the work we do at Nexus? To answer this, our last training session focused on grounded intention, foresight and visioning.
My vision of a beautiful future feels spacious (there is room for everyone, it is inclusive), is bright and more colourful (resulting from diversity and equity but also societal and environmental regeneration) and is even luxurious (countering the scarcity mindset that dominates). These are the types of systemic goals and futures we seek to contribute to, which reflect our values and ways of working and exemplify grounded intentionality.
Get in touch if you want to use any of these techniques to name and avoid zombie tacit futures, and engage in a strategic, systemic and learning-oriented process that leaves you feeling excited and has real transformative potential for all!
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