Show Notes:
Tim: We’re doing all these interviews and then we have these little gaps where we get to stop and chat to each other and just riff a bit on what we are hearing, and learning, and how its impacting us… or not! Welcome back into the realm of conversation, thought, and heart that is Tues and I’s friendship.
Tim: We’ve had podcasts with three incredible humans; all whom have been influential to the development of you and I [Tues], as the kind of leaders and people we are but have also been really significant in their influence on the development of the field of large scale, systemic change. They want to tackle something at scale. These 3 people have been significantly influenc[ial] in the field of big change.
Tim: We want to pull those apart a bit because all three of them bring very, very different things and when we originally planned this pod, we had this idea of like, Adam [Kahane] holds the strategic lens, Arawana [Hayashi] holds the body work, and Meg's [Wheatley] work, at the moment, is all about the spirit and connection. And, of course, what we found is it is not as simple as that and you can't put these people into boxes, damn them!
Tues: It is not reflective of their work to put these folks in those particular boxes; I think it is descriptive of maybe where they're entering right now as they articulate their work. Adam is quite strategic and explicit - he is both strategic and tactical - here’s the strategy of what I'm doing and then here are the ways to do it… and he totally talks about having people go on walks, for example, so he's bringing in the mind and so it's not that simple as does Arawana even though her entry is through the body. I think that that's where her gift is and she's certainly, being a Shambhala practitioner, being someone who’s thinking about how to articulate what the body does in the world. She comes in through the body but she definitely talks strategy as well as spirit, and of course, Meg Wheatley’s The Warrior’s Songline feels like a very spiritual work and effort and she's unapologetic about the spiritual nature. And yet, it is posed as a journey; it’s a multi-sensory experience that includes your body and there's no way it is not about your strategy as a warrior in this world and so they all come in different doors but it's also interwoven with all three of them.
Tim: I love this idea that the work of Adam, although he actually started off an answer to one of our questions with “I'm not a spiritual person” and then went on to describe the completely unexplainable experience of flow… but I'm with you in that Adam's work appeals to the mind, it’s written in a way that appeals to the mind - that’s been really important for me to have someone out there that makes sense to dominant culture… saying it's unexplainable. It's a feeling in your body right, it's in the experience of being together. You can read Facilitating Breakthrough as someone who's been in this game 20 odd years and be like well yeah, this is like beginners 101, right? But who else has actually broken it down like that? Who else has actually taken the time to explain something that is actually incredibly intricate? You and I struggle with this in capacity building all the time. How do you get people beyond the experience to ‘we don't even know what we know?’
Tim: The Outside is really trying to find its voice - in terms of being able to articulate what we do - in such a way that the senior leaders in the institutions and organizations that we seem to be drawn towards get it. They don't have to have gone to a training. They can read one of our articles, they can look at some of the visuals we developed. I feel like Adam has really carved a path for us in that way. He has forged a path for people like The Outside to be able to turn up in the world and just be less weird; be more explained. Then you think about how Arawana has taken her embodiment work and partnered with a senior lecturer from MIT, who is a white man of German descent, and her as a woman of color, choosing to partner together and build something together. I just think there's something all of these folks have done is to bring something that was quite fringe into a mainstream consciousness. You could say that Meg started out that way. Her book, Leadership and the New Science, was a New York Times bestseller list book and it was really a breakthrough in terms of an articulation of how the new science, systems thinking, Chaos Theory, all of this new science translates into how we lead in the world.
Tues: 100% and I think that is where their mastery and artistry lies; that they were able to somehow break that barrier into the mainstream for some of these concepts and just to reiterate I think reading Leadership and the New Science would be helpful if folks haven't read it because it's so foundational to what we take for granted now. We take so much of those concepts for granted and she [Meg] was on the front end of that articulation, being brave enough to say it, and also just worth saying you know a woman writer around leadership at a time when that wasn't happening and in fact is still… we’re just still not seeing many leadership books by women writers. There’s Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg, but they're probably still outnumbered by men writing leadership books 20 to 1.
Tues: And so, if you think about she [Meg] did 25 or 30 years ago, it just opened the door in so many ways - opened the doors to concepts, opened the doors to women writers. I heard recently that when men write books that reflect on their personal experience, they are often called Leadership books. When women write books that reflect on their personal experience, they’re called Self-Help. She's [Meg] continued to hold open - as a writer of leadership books - even this work, The Warrior’s Songline, is quite out of the norm gender wise. It's just interesting to notice how she continues to push the line in that way.
Tim: She’s [Meg] just always been ahead of the game. There's something about who she is as a long-standing, leadership writer and white woman that enables her to bring this perspective on the depth of the leadership journey not the strategy of it into a realm where otherwise it may not turn up. If it was brought by a writer of color, it wouldn't be taken as seriously. So there's something even in that that is intriguing.
Tues: It’s worth saying that while issues of equity aren't at the center of her work, I have found her to be incredibly supportive of my, and our, work. She's not foregrounding that in her writing, and maybe even her thinking, and yet she was more supportive than any other mentor, colleague, kind of master that I've ever been around. My experience of her is that it is in her action.
Tim: I don't think any of those 3 people in their work out into the public realm have centered equity but they have driven this type of work, this systemic perspective, this highly participatory approach carved out a space for it in the mainstream of how big shit gets done.
Tim: I think that's really interesting and it just leaves me with two things: (1) next generation leaders, whoever we are, I feel somewhat beholden to continue expanding that influence into the mainstream and I think The Outside, as an organization, has taken on that wholeheartedly as have many others in the field. We've come in the wedge that was made by these thought leaders and have really begun to populate that with practice and experimentation. I think there's also a piece that we're beholden to of building on what they've created and it's time to center equity in this type of work. It is time because that is a strategic imperative. We actually just don't have the diversity of perspectives we need to solve the complexity of problems we're facing.
Tim: What's the next generation of language? What’s the next generation of being able to articulate an approach that pushes to its next level? How are we articulating equity as a business opportunity? How are we articulating equity as a strategic imperative as we engage with change work? How does the lexicon of equity and the practice of equity just begin to feel like second nature, common sense? Like the pod with Rob Strang - your comment on that was that he wasn't even thinking twice about an equity analysis. It was just in his lexicon of how he talked about the work.
Tues: I think that Minnesota [Department of Health - episode coming soon!!! ] folks were the same, right? Public Health has had to deal with issues of equity through COVID in a way that they may not have had to in the past or may have chosen not to… and so I think they're on the leading edge of doing some of this work and I would agree; I think that it is our responsibility to push it forward, just like the folks hopefully that we influence will push our thinking in our work forward and equity is the place.
Tues: Two things that I came away with from every interview is how much their work has influenced mine and how much they're still pushing the edge of their own thinking in very different ways but none of them were like, here's my body of work, let me explain it to you, go kind of do it. It was like in here they were all still pushing themselves which I think must be a characteristic of that kind of leadership or artistry… that you're still hungry. I'm here to learn, and do more, and push more.
Tim: I would be highly suspicious of a mentor who's trying to have you replicate their product, have you learn their system and go deliver it for them. Meg used to turn up for free when we had engage in the Netherlands and help us run programs. Arawana was the first artist to really invite me as a poet to be part of an artist group and perform with them - in the prime of their performance careers - invited this random little British poet to come and perform with them. And so there's something about… an insistence that they're going to uplift others is what to look for in a mentor.
Tues: I think we are really onto something here - so, there is a willingness, a drive, a commitment to uplift others, here’s an ongoing curiosity. I experience all 3 of these folks as there is an expectation of those they mentor, that they will go do. And I also think there's courage. We talked about all 3 of these people breaking into new ground for the field and so I think that there's a level of courage. They're willing to say I have this idea and I'm gonna put myself out for it.
Tim: The final pod of the season is with Toke [Møller] who's obviously been a formative mentor for me since my mid-20’s, and he stayed with me really very deeply. I just had a lovely chat with him yesterday for like an hour and a half and there's a few things I really noticed in the conversation: he wasn't just interested in my work, he was interested in me and my kids and my family and I found that with all of these people, they’re not only interested in our work, they’re interested in us. Toke, like Meg, consistently has turned up to support and uplift our work. The other thing is at no point, from the mentors who've tracked me through my life, have they ever told me that what I was doing was wrong. They've just traveled with me as I fucked up and as I've succeeded but I don't remember Toke ever being like, “what the fuck are you doing, mate?” He’s never been short of giving advice [and] also willing to accept my decisions and then go with me and see where it takes us. There's something about that willingness to travel with you.
Tim: The fundamental feeling I get when I talk to mentors or elders like that is a feeling of not being alone. I think often when we're doing this kind of work, it can actually feel quite lonely because there's not a lot of organizations out there like The Outside. I mean Reos is one but Reos is really different than us. The other feeling I get from all 3 of those people is a feeling of being held.
Tues: I feel like I had really clear takeaways from each of them for my own practice. With Arawana, I’m in my own personal journey so much is happening, somatically. I find myself just being more willing to bring in grounding exercises that I do personally. There’s some permission giving, some reminding, some remembering how good it is to be around someone who's in their body and so trying to bring that. She’s the gold standard of being in your body and moving from that place. With Adam, as we [Tuesday & Gabrielle Donnelly] write this book proposal, having someone who's bringing these complex ideas or feelings or senses into some kind of articulation, is like, oh it can be done! Meg is such an amazing thinker and kind of Way finder for people. I felt blown away by the concepts she brought and the way she provoked our long standing thinking and beliefs.
Tues + Tim: At The Outside, we’ve launched the Activating Change Leadership Cohort and I am absolutely delighted by it. The people are amazing, I feel invigorated and inspired by what they're doing and by being with them, and by doing it together. It’s really fun to do some capacity building together. We've been so immersed in client partner driven change work within institutions, within regions, and towns that the opportunity to bring together folks from all over the world, from various different contexts and constituencies… it's wicked. [We] LOVE it.
Original Poem that Tim wrote when he was at the ALIA Institute with Arawana:
“Are you ready?”
Are you ready?
To let go of this
20,000 year eddy,
which we know is just an undertow.
We be tuning into
The Real Flow
Here Now
You can’t compute
The impact of
The ALIA Institute.
It’s like taking off
The Mute
On the voice of life,
Stepping onto the
Edge of the knife
A slice
Of how humans might be.
Can you see
What we have done?
What we have begun?
This the form
Which holds the storm.
We feel the creature of
Learning
Burning
Invite the world in
It ain’ no sin
She is turning at 40000 miles an hour,
That’s a fact.
That’s power.
The big bang,
rang,
sang,
Echoing on to the mount
A blast form the past
At last!
Too much to count
The years of evolution
The earth, the human
Sufferin’ and compassion
We’re boomin’!
That’s a fusion
Of chaos and confusion
Away from the illusion
Of wealth,
Our revolution is coming with stealth …
Can you see what we have done?
Can you see what we have begun?
Do we dare
To share
The future of how humans might be?
Do we dare to be free
Do I dare to be me?
To be fully human
To love confusion and drop the illusion?
Now we’re bommin’!
Do we dare to step
Into the places we most fear?
Fuck career
and become clear?
To find a community
True to me.
Take of the mute
Bring on the institute.
I’m not being cute
There’s no parachute
We already jumped
out the plane.
Do we dare to become
Sane
Again?
This ain’t about brain
This is about livin’
the future now
Yes is the answer to how.
We movin’, we groovin’
But stop,
Listen to me:
Can you see
What we have done?
What we have begun?
My sisters and brothers from other mothers,
We are the ones
Where the oceans meets the shore,
We are the ones
We have been waiting for.
Resources:
Learn more about, and follow, The Outside by visiting and liking all of our channels:
Website: www.findtheoutside.com
Facebook & Instagram: @findtheoutside
Find The Outside podcast episodes: Adam Kahane, Arawana Hayashi, Margaret Wheatley, and Dr. Robert Strang
The Warrior’s Songline, by Margaret Wheatley
Facilitating Breakthrough, by Adam Kahane
Leadership and the New Science, by Margaret Wheatley
Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg
The Outside’s NEW Activating Change Leadership Cohort
The Outside’s first article: “The big bang of equity + systems change”