Resources
Episode Transcript
Lisa: So Emma, Miki, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having this conversation with me.
Emma: It’s a delight.
Lisa: So I’m really excited to talk about this topic, because I feel like it’s a hidden secret, like a hidden treasure in this movement that many listeners of this podcast are in the kind of new ways of working movement, or whatever you want to call it. So I want to start by opening up this question about the capacity lens, as you call it. What is the capacity lens, or what is this work, and why do you think it could be valuable for people who are trying to create a shift in how we work and how we are together?
Emma: Well, I think what’s so important for people that are trying to make shifts in how we’re working together and working towards a new way of being in the world is essentially why we’re working in this way, to try and find new ways of being, is because we want to see something different in the world from how it is because we see it’s not working.
So how do we—the question me is like, how do we actually do that? How do we find those paths forward that actually go to something different, especially when you know all that we’ve known throughout our entire childhoods are coming into finding like work that’s meaningful to us, all of that whole pathway is steeped in the way of functioning that we want to change.
So it’s like it’s completely embedded within us how to do the way that we don’t want to do things. So it’s really hard from within that to find the seeds of what is actually a different path, and to be able to find the strength to actually walk that different path when everything around us is going in a certain direction.
So the capacity lens is a way of actually taking, like a really realistic view of where we are and what’s possible from where we are without trying to think of where we should be, or, yeah, trying to, like, wish ourselves out of where we are. It’s, it’s really kind of starkly soberly, this is where we are, and how do we actually move from here?
And, yeah, walking forwards like uncovering the truth of that, which is really hard. It’s really, really painful, challenging stuff to work in this way, to unravel all of what we’ve inherited from the long legacy of what we’ve come from, and to choose to look together at where we actually are and how we move from there.
So, yeah, the capacity lens is a way of actually doing that together and taking those steps. That’s like a larger picture at the start.
Miki: I have a particular example to illustrate what you have been talking about, which is a few days ago, I talked with a Palestinian friend who is obviously overwhelmed by all that is happening. And as we were talking, I was suggesting to him that the only thing that he can do is what is within his sphere of influence, which is part of the capacity lens. What is my capacity to reach other people and make things happen? That’s external capacity, and there is internal capacity. I imagine we’ll get to that as we speak.
However, the point is it hadn’t occurred to him—he was doing exactly what Emma is talking about. This should stop. This war should stop, and I should be doing everything that is possible to make this war stop. And without the simple question, what is it that I actually can do? And the reality is, none of us as individuals that I am aware of have direct access to people who can actually make the decisions that will bring this war to a stop. We are several layers away, but what is it that we can do?
And days later, he told me that just that bit of what is your actual sphere of influence and what can you do within that was a huge relief for him within the overwhelming context that he’s in. So that is a very concrete, tangible example of what the capacity lens makes possible.
Emma: I think to add to that, what it makes possible is that there’s a whole layer of thinking about what Miki is referring to, like how we want things to be, how they should be. All of you know what’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with this, all of this noise that goes on internally, that is essentially like trying to be somewhere that we’re not, and when we actually can land on what we actually have, where we are, what’s possible, that layer of noise can greatly diminish or disappear, and then from there, we actually have a lot more access to creative energy to do things, because we’re not putting our energy into trying to make things be different than they than they are.
That doesn’t mean that we’re just like, you know, settling and accepting and condoning how things are, like how things are happening around us. It’s not saying that we want it to be this way or something. It’s just really landing in where we where we actually are in relation to it, and moving from where we are, it’s like moving from solid ground, rather than from the shaky ground of all of the of all of the noise that goes on inside.
Lisa: Yeah, listening to you both, an example comes up for me that I’ve come across time and time again. I don’t know if this resonates, but let’s say a leader of an organization like the CEO or the owner, maybe a small organization, reads Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux or, you know, watches a TED talk, or, I don’t know, gets inspired, like, Yes, this is what I have to do. I want my organization to be teal, or self managing.
And then they kind of go into the organization, and they sort of, you know, declare it from on high, like, this is where we’re going to go. And then they get really frustrated when it’s really difficult and it feels slow and it feels like there’s resistance. And some people don’t seem to want to do that, and they don’t know where to start.
It’s like we want to have self managed salaries. We want to change how we make decisions. You know, it’s like so many things, and so I think this principle of starting with where you are and what you’ve got and what’s in our capacity, you know, my capacity as an individual, our capacity as a collective, to do if this is the direction we want to move in, you know, not to try and eat the elephant all at once and then declare like, okay, self management doesn’t work when it gets really hard and messy. I think that would save a lot of energy, a lot of disappointment. So I see that example a lot in versions of that.
Miki: It’s, it’s, this is the wisdom of baby steps, which I—I was a hard win on this one, the baby steps approach when, when we created the non violent global liberation community, it was going to be a gift economy organization, from day one entirely fully 100% resources flow from where they exist to where they’re needed based on willingness, purpose, capacity, all of that in one fell swoop.
And colleagues were saying, you know, people are not ready for the fullness of the radicality of this. What’s the next step that we can do? And I was resisting. I was saying, Oh, that’s not radical enough. I don’t even remember what it was at the time that’s not radical enough. And I went along with it. And three years later, it took some years before we even started experimenting.
Once we started experimenting, within three years, as far as I know, we are the most radical thing around in terms of distribution of money rigorously based on needs and full transparency and all that we do. And if we had tried to do that right away, it would have crashed. So that, that, I think, is another angle on it. It’s like, don’t try to do everything all at once. What is one step that you can take? And don’t think about step 23456, and seven and 100 before step one is complete. Let it complete. See the ripples, and then. Okay. Now what?
Lisa: I think also, just to build on that, what I like in that as well, is something that you talked about in the course that I took with you, about the capacity lens to see capacity limits as information instead of deficiencies or judging or blaming.
Because, again, I think a lot of people I talk to kind of hear people sharing concerns or like that feels a bit scary and I and I don’t—that feels like I’m going to get punished. Then if I make a decision, and is this a way to just pay managers less, people have all these kind of fears that come up, and it’s very easy, I think for people to to then sort of see that as a deficiency, or to say, Oh, they just want to be told what to do, rather than really listening and being curious for No, that’s a capacity limit. And trying to push against that is not going to be good for anyone.
So to for me, this is like a really, like a game changing thing, to see capacity limits as information and not something negative both. You know, when I think about doing that for myself, I think, oh, that’s tricky, because I have so much judgment of myself. If I, you know, I’m too tired or don’t have enough energy to do something, I must be productive or and that’s so much the paradigm, right?
So it’s, I really like that too, to be like, Okay, people aren’t ready for this. And rather than trying to push that, or, you know, getting frustrated, meeting people where they are, and saying, Well, okay, what is ready then, within the capacity limits that we have, or what is possible?
Emma: Yeah, I wanted to point to this piece about information and really seeing what is happening as information. I’m also, I’m doing permaculture diploma as well. So things come through to me in that from that frame as well. So like the, you know, the observe and interact principle, it’s like if, if we want to actually make a shift with how things are, we need to actually first observe what’s happening and really understand it, like kind of get familiar with and ask questions of it, to really get that understanding of where we are, and then move from there, and then bring in those baby steps.
And it’s like, each baby step, then as an experiment, because we don’t actually know where this baby step is going to take us. It’s like, you know, so if someone isn’t showing up, say, when they say that they want to, it’s like, kind of like, why is it that that’s happening? What is what is it that this person’s longing for? What is it that’s actually happening? What are the capacities that they actually have that they’re not bringing forwards in this moment?
What is all of the different elements of information that we can bring to the table that can actually support us to move forwards together? So it’s like all the different pieces need to be seen as information so that they can become building blocks, the next steps.
And I actually had another example from my sister. I supported her recently because she she recently had a baby, and she wants to start up a forest school so that when a little one is old enough she can have a different school, different place to go to, and she was trying to create it with a friend of hers who was also, like, really passionate about it. She, like, has some background in this, so she has experience with it, and she’s also just had a baby, and she’s just not able to show up for meetings.
So my sister was, like, taking it all on and getting really heavy with it, and like, oh, this, you know, that’s where you can start having judgments about this person and like, they’re not pulling their weight off, whatever it is. And so I just helped her to see that, like, at the moment, she’s not able to do that she really wants to. The fact that she’s not able to right now doesn’t the take away from the fact that she wants to and that she does have something to bring to it.
So we need to look at like what is actually within your capacity to do, because you’re the one that has the energy and the skills to move it at this stage. And then we looked at what is the baby step that she could create. And she now has a weekly just group, where mum friends come together to do certain things that are in the direction of a forest school, but not the whole thing yet, to increase their collective interest and orientation to making something happen and see like, see what the next baby step is, from bringing people together and seeing what exists within that group in order to create the next step.
It’s like, what’s the material that is now available in this group, and what does that mean about what we can build for the next step that’s really being present with what is like humble, actually, because. As the places where we want to go to just may not be possible in the way that we think.
We refer to this as trust in life. It’s like, you know, you kind of let life know where is it you want to go, and then release and see what comes together with the energy that you have, what then appears to be a next step, and it’s very likely that you will actually end up where you wanted to get to, just completely not in the way that you wanted to get there.
This is another principle within the capacity lens, which is about it’s like not forcing. Like in how the organizations and how we function generally in the world as it is is based on force. So I want to get to this place. So I’m going to do these steps, and I’m going to do this by this month, this by this month, and then it’s like, you know, making ourselves do that so that we get to this place we want to get to.
It’s, it’s not actually attuned to what is available in life. And we’re not then moving together, and we’re feeding the experience of coercion that we’ve all grown up with, and that has destroyed our willingness to actually show up and function together, because we’re afraid that we’re going to be forced. We’re going to be forcing each other, which we are enforcing ourselves. So it’s breaking down that force pattern is really important, for integrating capacity lens and moving in a different direction.
Miki: I want to link this bit of the conversation to the larger patterns of how modern capitalism functions, which is that when we don’t have the capacity lens, we orient to ourselves in the same way that we orient to the planet, which is through an extractive lens, we become a thing, a source of energy, more energy from ourselves, and it’s the same mindset that is destroying the planet, is destroying us, and then we become numb and no overworked people are more willing to have atrocities be done in their name to other people and to the planet than people who are attentive to their own capacity limits.
So that that’s another link that feels very important. And I also want to bring in another piece, which is how important it is to release the any idea of fairness in order to be able to function within the capacity lens.
Lisa: Can you say more about that fairness piece? What do you mean by that?
Miki: Yes, we are very habituated to thinking that things have to be done based on principles of fairness. So I’ll use an example. There are three of us who are part of this experimental home pod that we live together. And if anybody were to come and look at how we distribute the different things that it takes to sustain group of people living together, they would be very distressed, because it’s not fair. It’s completely not fair.
From a capacity lens, what we’re doing makes complete sense, so I will introduce two bits of the capacity lens through this story. So for example, Emma and I are two of the three, and the third person, it is a man who has had his own share of male training and class training, which results in not having organically in flow, the capacity to track things, to hold things, to see what’s needed, to attend to emergent needs and stuff like that, which not all men don’t have it, and not all women have it, but there are clearly patterns of training that puts us, puts us in certain places at a certain point.
This meant giving him more to do in a certain area so that he could develop those capacities. And that increases his capacity. Now we have more capacity in the field, but from a certain tiny angle, it can look like that’s not fair, but that is only when. You don’t notice all the different things that Emma and I were doing, tracking little bits here and there that he wasn’t aware of and and so that’s one example.
Another example is that there are many things that I am able to do that so far, other people still are learning. We call these kinds of things non redundant capacities. And it’s a very common thing that you know certain people in leadership position or visionary founders of this or that have non redundant capacities. It usually doesn’t get thought about or discussed, but we are almost obsessive about, you know, writing down what are all my non redundant capacities, and what is it that I do, and how to teach other people, and meanwhile, it makes sense that I will do less of the material needs, because if I do more of the material needs, then some, some of the things that only I can do would not get done.
So this, it’s a very complex, delicate, intricate thing that if you bring in fairness, it falls apart because it can only happen when you attune moment by moment to the flow of where capacity is and what makes sense.
Now, given the capacity, I’ll tell one more example. Some years ago, we were in in a community living experiment with more people. There were six of us at the time, and we had we were near a sister community, and we were doing a project there, and Emma had a piece that she was going to do there, and on the day when she was going to do it, she woke up with very low capacity, and it seemed not to make sense for her to go and do this thing.
But before deciding that, somebody suggested that we actually do a discernment, capacity discernment. And then it turned out, when we looked at everyone else’s capacity, that even though Emma’s capacity was low, other people’s capacity was even lower. And so in the end, with the low capacity, Emma went, however, because of knowing that it was a collective discernment, it actually gave her more capacity.
And then she went and did it and did it and loved it and came back energized from doing it. So it’s not static, it’s not forever, it’s not something you can necessarily predict. Those are the two examples that I wanted to give. I’m wondering if that illustrates this idea of fairness is not going to be helpful if you want to really stay attuned to what is possible.
Lisa: Yeah, it also, it’s a common trap I find. And Frederic Laloux, I remember him referencing it as well in one of his videos, where people will commonly say, Okay, we’re self managing, or we’re teal now, which means we’re all equal—and and that is, is not realistic. You know, to go back to what you were saying, Emma, like that, there are so many things at play there that mean that those people are not equal in terms of capacities, in terms of, you know, power differences and all kinds of other things.
So I think he said something like, rather than trying to aim for everyone to be equally powerful, to aim for everyone to be fully powerful, whatever that means for that individual. So in your language, I guess that would mean, you know, for everyone to be, to honor their own capacity limits, and for us all to sort of for that to be there, to be some transparency there and some agreements together of acknowledging capacity limits and therefore how we decide, you know, who does what, or those kinds of things.
Emma: It’s challenging because, because of systemic patterns. It means that, for example, people from more like working class backgrounds, for instance, are going to have more capacity to do material tasks because they’re used to doing it. And it’s not necessarily a stretch, like they track things, they just do things physically. It’s like it can flow. I mean, I come from that background. That’s fine. I know it’s really people who have not come from that background, um, more from like, you know, owning classes, who have had more money to be able to attend to those needs and haven’t needed to develop the creativity and the resilience of that are not going to have so much capacity to do material tasks.
So if we only relate to, you know, much capacity do you have in the moment it can actually repeat systemic patterns? Because I can be like, okay, yes, I have the capacity to do all these things. And he’s like, No, I don’t have the capacity to do that. Well, yeah, of course, because you don’t have the capacity to do that because you’ve never developed those skills.
So there’s also a piece about Yeah, the willingness to actually look at our systemic legacy and what that means about our capacity, and what is the vision that we have of the world that we would like to live in. What is the world that we would like to live in?
These are questions from our Nina—Miki’s sister, who has a lot to call it, like an area of I don’t know, her offering to the world is called the compass. And she has something in that called the awakening questions. And the first one is, what’s the world that you want to live in? Who do you want to be in that world? And there are further questions that specify, like bringing vision into, like, this relationship, this interaction right now.
But, yeah, if you’re, if you’re going to make this move together into working with the capacity lens, it’s, it’s important to have, like, a shared commitment and orientation to actually understanding what’s going on and unpacking it together, And to be able to look at, you know, people where we’re situated within, like our systemic, systemic placements from, where we come from, and what that means about our capacity, what that means we have access to, what it means we don’t have access to, because just because you have privilege doesn’t actually mean that you have access to more.
Because there’s a lot of aloneness in that of being disconnected from the interdependent web that we actually need to be connected to and aware of, that we’re a part of in order to flow together. Yeah, there’s some like relational skills or capacities that are needed in the area of willingness to actually look at self, willingness to look at self with a—yeah, this word sober comes again, like sober and honest and yet also tender eye, and to bring that information forward into the field is very vulnerable process.
I think that’s where people you know hit up against challenge with doing this is that it actually requires unpacking ourselves and relearning who we are in this world when we’ve created such like fixed identities about I’m this type of person and you know, and it’s really, it really matters to be seen in that way and to be known and appreciated as a human being that is alive in this world in this way.
It’s like unpacking all of that. We reinventing ourselves, you know, only reinventing organizations as though it’s a thing that’s separate from ourselves. It’s like reinventing ourselves and how we who we are in this world, and what, yeah, who do we want to be in this world, and what does that mean about the world that we then create?
And the types of, I don’t even want to say organizations, because, like, you know, groups of people that come together to create something, it’s a big thing to undertake to do this work. And it’s, it’s not to be taken lightly, and it’s very sacred work as well. You know, it’s really untwisting the mess that we’re in, redesigning our world from connection with who we truly are, you know, and who the essence of our beings that we actually came into this world as.
Miki: To do this, what Emma just spoke about, also connects to the shift from looking only at individual capacity to looking at collective capacity. And how do we create collective resilience? How do we distribute capacities? How do we co-discern which capacities are necessary for the whole to develop, and who does it make most sense to develop those capacities if none of us have them?
So that is where we can go against systemic patterns and also recognize where they come from and what different gifts people bring, instead of only valuing certain gifts. So the capacity lens isn’t just about limitations, it’s also about strengths and beginning to honor the full palette of human strength instead of prioritizing certain capacities that then reinforce the world that we live in with all its structured command and control top down, all of this rational, logical thinking, I can play that game. I got me a good education, and I don’t want to play that game, because I don’t think that game serves life.
And so the attention to what is actually needed in terms of capacity, and where do we find it, and if we don’t have the capacity, the willingness to leave voids, rather than do things through coercion. It’s quite quite a bit and it’s also very exciting work. Everyone who gets into it falls in love with it because it moves from rigidity to flexibility, from predictability to emergence, from coercion to willingness, from judgment to tenderness. It’s like who wouldn’t want that?
Lisa: I want to share an example of what comes to mind in my group of colleagues and I and in Tuff because it’s very present for me. I had a coaching session in this just the other day that I’m someone who who sees many opportunities of things that we can develop in in our organization, and I’m, I guess I’m someone who’s kind of connected to a lot of people in different networks, and I’m not always very good at recognizing my own capacity limits, and I have a tendency to want to respond to all of the emails that I get from people who listen to the podcast or who have read my book, or I’d love to feel useful and respond to them, but it depletes my energy, and I nonetheless feel guilty that I still can’t answer everyone, or an email sits in my inbox for, you know, weeks.
Meanwhile, there are all these internal projects that I’ve sort of half started, these open threads, and I end up entangling myself in so many things. I think in some ways, I am quite a generalist. I have a lot of different capacities, but it’s been very liberating for me recently to to sort of practice another thing I learned in in your course about kind of confronting the gap between, you know, the vision of what I see as possible and all the many things that I see that I could, you know, give my my energy to and the capacity that I have, and we collectively have, and to really confront that gap and realize, okay, well, it seems like I, and no one else, has capacity right now to put energy into that project.
So let’s kind of mourn that, because there’s a sadness with that. Oh, that would be so great if we could do that, but we don’t have the capacity. So rather than what I usually do, which is try and half do it anyway, or keep sort of having a way of relating to it as, like, oh, yeah, that thing again, I really want to do that, and we still, you know, instead it’s like, kind of, you know, putting it to one side, like letting it go a bit like feeling those feelings. Yes, that’s sad, and we’ll have to park that for a while until that capacity becomes available to address that.
But then that frees up willingness and energy for the things that we are then committing to, and I’m then committing to, and also to say no and so on, you know? So I’m really realizing how liberating it is that I wonder if listeners were thinking before, you know, well, but what if I have this amazing vision of, like, what I want to do in the organization, and the baby steps are sort of, you know, unsatisfying. What do I do then? How do I be okay with this gap, you know? And how do we then mobilize with what capacity we do have?
Miki: That’s where mourning comes in.
Emma: Yeah, yeah. That’s one piece we say that if we don’t fill the gap with tears, then we fill it with judgments and shoulds and all of that stuff that we familiar with to try and force ourselves to get there, and then obviously we fall, we fall over, and we don’t make it, because it’s not actually based on actual what is.
And another piece I wanted to speak about was also something that I’m learning more from Permaculture is about designing from the capacity, like how to design from the capacity, not going beyond it. And, yeah, we we’re experimenting, at the moment, within the non violent global liberation community with what we call experiments with truth, which is a term that comes from Gandhi, and where we are really kind of like taking on reality.
And it’s like, what is, what is a step that we can actually take? What does it mean to apply our capacity to this step? What do we learn from that about what we then, what next steps we then take? So if you’re starting a new project, that’s kind of like an experiment with truth, what is my capacity to actually do this project, like what’s possible for me or for you?
In this instance, like what is actually possible for you within the constraints that you’re functioning in, whatever it is that you want the experiment to be, and then defining what are the like areas that you’re experimenting with within that project. And then you assess your capacity in relation to it, and the capacity can be like Miki was saying, it’s not only limitations, it’s also like, what ideas do you have? Who is it that’s actually available to support you with this project? What are strengths that you personally bring to it?
What are, you know, in permaculture, this is this next bit I’m going to say, is called sectors analysis. So it’s about, like, big forces that that are at play within the project. So in permaculture, that’s like, you know, the sun or land masses or whatever. But this can be like, you going to move house? Is there some other big thing happening in your life that you either aware of or that could happen that if you were to design for that, you include some way of orienting to those possible things happening. You actually build a lot more resilience into your projects.
What are limitations that you’re aware of, that you have? What are limitations of people that are around you, that you interact with, that impact you and or that could distract you from what you’re doing? Like gathering all of this sort of information is like mapping the capacity that you’re actually trying to create something within, and then when you like, basically get really creative and create structures like, yeah, what? What could structures be that can either harness these strengths or compensate for these limitations or create pathways so you know what you’re going to do if x happens, and then those are the structures that you build.
So that day by day, you’re checking in with yourself about these things, or you, you know, just create a structure that includes all of that, and you have a lot more resilience. It’s much more likely to kind of succeed, or, like, move forwards in a way that is satisfying, because you’re actually connected to something tangible. It’s not just following the, you know, the, I know, sometimes ideas, you know, they have a lot of energy and pull to them, but it’s kind of like you can’t really grasp it so much. You just kind of pour your energy towards it. And it’s either makes it or it doesn’t, and it’s why is it that it makes it or it doesn’t? Looking at it like this is a way of understanding what happened and what didn’t happen, and then being able to make adjustments that are based on the capacity lens. Yeah. Exciting. I love this I love this stuff.
Lisa: Yeah. And I’m sort of, I’m mourning the fact that we need to come to an end of this conversation, but I, but I feel that in so many ways, it’s, it’s the beginning of a conversation, the opening of the conversation. So I wonder if we, at some point in the future, could have a follow up, one based on what people that resonate with, but for now, what? What would you like to share with, with listeners who are sitting there, perhaps now, reflecting on what you’ve shared and wondering, you know what, what they could try or what they could start with to, yeah, to start to explore this capacity lens in their work?
Miki: You are talking specifically about people who are in more traditional organizations as individuals. Is there anything that they can do?
Lisa: Well, it’s both because we have people listening who are, let’s say one profile is there’s someone in a public sector organization very traditional, and they’re so longing for something, you know, different, and they they listen to this podcast, and they’re inspired, but they’re not sure how, or if they’ll ever be able to integrate it.
And then we have people who are, you know, have lots of room within their sphere of influence. They’re in a, you know, a small, self managing organization, and they’re really doing this stuff. But oftentimes when I talk to them, I hear them say that, you know, we’re struggling with, you know, where to start, or it feels like there’s so many things to do, and many of us are still burning out. We don’t have bosses. So why are we? Why are we still nearly burning out? That’s so strange. What is that about?
Miki: Yeah, I have something for each of those groups. So for the people who are burning out, and I think the we actually covered it, I just want to say it again, succinctly, more. Learning the impossibility of jump-starting ourselves into vision, just mourning that impossibility and then coming together, realizing when we don’t have bosses, that means that coercion is not there.
If coercion is not there, and yet the internalized systems of patriarchal conditioning and capitalist thinking and all of that are within us, then it’s very likely that that there will be struggle, because we need to replace the command and control with something else. We can’t just let go of it and think that everything will work out.
So it’s not just the capacity lens. There are other things. The two key things that we’re not talking about specifically here, because they’re not part of the capacity lens, are having a clear shared purpose that pulls people together and forward, and the other one is really robust feedback loops.
That combination of the two is really supporting the possibility of moving as one towards something instead of going into chaos. Because when there’s a boss who decides everything, there is some forced coherence. If we’re letting go of that, we need to create coherence in a different way. So purpose, feedback and the capacity lens together do that. So that’s in this arena for the person or people who are in more traditional organizations, there are two things.
One is, anyone has a sphere of influence within an organization. Anyone, it may be very small, but it’s still we have our sphere of influence. Within our sphere of influence, we can be as radical as we are capable of containing the consequences of so if I am a middle manager, so long as I’m able to produce the results that my boss wants, they are likely to leave me a lot of wiggle room in terms of how to do this. So even within traditional organizations, people can create bubbles of more collaborative functioning that is more based on capacity, and introduce this within a team, even if it doesn’t go upward or sideways.
And in fact, that’s always happened. Everyone has had, here or there a boss who is like that—that boss was amazing. We collaborated. They never told us what to do. And what are they describing? A collaborative leader who actually is able to tune into who is able to do what and how to pull people together, and it works.
And when we don’t have an active sphere of influence, there is a kind of an equation. It’s it’s a very difficult equation, and still it’s helpful. Any power that I don’t have officially, I need to compensate for it by relational skills. So the more, the more the gap is, and the less power I have, the more I need to actually work out step by step, how to bring people along with me to the idea of doing things differently. And it’s possible. It’s probably the topic of another conversation. It’s possible, and it requires a huge amount.
So many years ago, I worked in a very traditional organization, a software company. I used to be a computer programmer, and I introduced into that company having a separate department for maintenance of software, rather than creation of software. And my logic was that if you bring bugs to people who are creating new programs, they’re never going to give their good attention to the bugs, because they’re always going to be an annoyance.
But if you have a department for bug fixing, so they agreed it was an experiment. They wanted to give me a title and all of 29 I had the wisdom to say, No, I don’t want a title. And we pulled together a team that included me, somebody from Quality Assurance, somebody from customer support or whatever. And we met, I think, twice a week to look at what was happening, at what needed and what to bring, what to prioritize all of that.
No one had any authority to decide anything for anyone else. And the whole team was flying because we pulled it together based on a shared purpose and clarity of how we wanted to function. If I had been given the title and I could tell people what to do, it would be worse. So we made up for for it by by functioning with high relationality.
Emma: Thank you. I was going to say the same for the burnout people about creating, like creating your own constraints because the constraints are no longer there, but actually we get more creative when there are constraints. And I was thinking about harvesting, which is Miki referred to as feedback, but it’s like having spaces to actually reflect on together.
What are we doing? What’s working, what’s not working, like, what do we dream of? Yeah, creating those. And then the idea I had for the person in the public sector thing was actually about appreciations, and because, you know, we’re fed by by receiving appreciations, and that can actually, like when we know what, what we’re doing, that works for other people, because we’re relational beings, like we grow in that direction.
So it may be like a simple step to actually think about what this person actually longs for, and then to appreciate people in that direction and see what grows from there. I thought that was like a very small step that doesn’t really require very much kind of radical movement. Or, yeah, it may be possible. And I know for some people, it’s actually challenging to access appreciations I was in that place once myself that if so, then that may be a place to start to actually appreciate yourself in the direction of where you want to move.
