Today, David Nish and Cheryl Beamon of New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services Workforce Institute tell the story of how they’re designing a work environment to bring more voices forward. How can people-centred organizations shift their culture, focusing on the innate strengths and compassion of their people in new ways? If advocates connect with each other more, might they be able to work in a way that would bring true equity and social change?

One thing we’re all well-served to remember: no matter where you came from or how you came up, our ancestry is complicated. And we are all still feeling the reverberations of it. Tim’s episode was last week, and mine is next week. When you listen, try to hold the complexity of both realities without dismissing either.

Here’s more on why depth is such a primary actor on the stage of change, whether we’re embracing it or hiding from it: good change requires good vulnerability. If we embrace it, we all step forward. If we hide, our capacity dulls.

In Art of Hosting, there's no such thing as a hands-off host. If we are among any AoH cohort, we're constantly practicing how to host actively—to surface more voices that are often surprising, otherwise marginalized, and deeply valuable. In this excerpt of Tuesday Ryan-Hart's talk, we explore beyond the intention of equity to the practical implementation of it.

Think of how kids play, learn, and integrate new information. As we explore and push the boundaries of what's familiar, we endure (and perpetrate!) countless bumps, scrapes, and meltdowns. This is the formative glue of long-term learning. Without challenging days, we’d lack the context to capitalize on our best days. And without a playful spirit, the most serious blocks might break our best efforts apart.

Treated with care, the heat of friction can cure how we live together—not a ‘cure’ as the word refers to the eradication of disease, but the kind of curing that makes things solid, resilient, and fully-formed. Preservation, flavouring, osmosis. The kind of cure that requires patience.

How do we not mistake a bigger cage for freedom or transformation? How do we know it’s time for transformation? And how do we allow ourselves to liquify enough to do it? How do we hold multiple truths and still move forward together? You sought the future: How do we focus on what we have not yet even imagined?

Tim Merry and I are working together to create a model for systems change that has equity at the center. Check out our video below to see some of what we're up to... it's both exciting and daunting!

What would it mean—how might we change our practice—if equity were not simply a longed for goal, but rather a return to a natural state? The idea feels edgy for me, but in a good way and definitely worth exploring. Here are some of our reflections on a short video blog:

Intent is not impact. You’ll hear this phrase a lot in social justice circles. It’s based on the understanding that our actions may not have the consequences we desire, and that just because we didn’t mean for something to turn out the way that it did, doesn’t mean that we aren’t responsible. 

For Tim and I, the resolution is in our practicing relationship with each other, day in and day out, with its inevitable hurts and with a commitment to learning from each other. This resolution in relationship is not neat and tidy, but more real, deep, and entirely based in practicing together.