Adaptive Action Labs

When people tell you to “think outside the box,” they don’t tell you where the box ends and the future begins. That is why we find ourselves so often trapped in our own blind spots and assumptions, driven by our ordinary worldviews.

When the future is clear, planning is easy. Traditional planning assumed stable markets and slow-changing technology. Few stakeholders and long-term investment made it possible to plan toward predictable ends. For most people today, the future is not clear. Planning is as risky as it is hard. You don’t know what you don’t know. The rules keep changing. The clock is running. Expectations are challenged by multiple external forces.

Our assumptions are like the water that holds the goldfish! We don’t know that we are swimming in our assumptions. They are like the air we breathe. We grow up thinking about the world in certain ways. We expect the world to respond to us according to perceptions and agreements that have established the curbs to guide and shape our lives at home, in the community, or at work.

Organization development professionals are taking a courageous stand. In place of their annual conference this year, they will gather to address three critical issues of our time. Climate change is, of course, on the agenda.

A narrative is made up of the stories we tell. Narratives are powerful. They frame expectations and assumptions. They motivate and inform action. But narratives can also lock us into patterns of the past. In today’s world, we need a narrative that describes the emerging future we want to live into and steps we will take move toward that future.

In simpler times, change came slowly, if at all. Consultants could build their careers on approaches learned in graduate school. They took successful solutions from one client to the next.

In today’s world, everything seems to be connected to everything else. We live in a web of networks. News cycles run 24/7. We’re plugged into online platforms like email, Zoom, Whatsapp. Trade and freight lines deliver products from around the world. We engage with a broad spectrum of voices, views, and cultures.

Personal and professional stress wears us down. Political and environmental disasters dash our plans, drawing our attention and resources. Obsolete infrastructures chip away at our sense of stability and safety. Sensational media threaten to overwhelm. In these challenging times, we need resilience to respond and thrive in the complexity around us.

Systems both constrain and enable change. The more you can see systemic patterns, the better you are able to choose success and learn from failure.

Racism and the act of “othering” is an “intentional or subconscious act of separating or distinguishing oneself as superior compared to those we believe to look, live, act, or think differently than ourselves.” It often shows up as judgments, assumptions, disagreements, and defensiveness. It leaves people feeling ignored, irrelevant, and invisible.