The mechanism of change: The loop

- So continuous participatory change is about inhabiting a learning loop, and the first step of that loop is sensing tension. So what you're going to do as a team, as an individual, as an organization is ask the question, what's stopping us, what's getting in our way, what's frustrating us, what's holding us back? And those are the tensions, those are the opportunities, right? So maybe we do have meetings to prepare for meetings, or maybe we do have budgeting processes that take up, you know, 3/4 of the year and then we start all over again. That's the first place to begin, because now we know this is something we can work on that we all identify that we all share. The second step of the process is to find alternative practices, right? So we have a way we do it now. What's the way we could do it in the future? And that might be about taking something from another organization, somebody that's doing it differently that you look up to. It might be finding a pocket within your own organization that has a better way of doing it, or it might be about inventing something completely new to this world. The point is, what do we think gives us a good chance of moving forward, you know, one step, two steps, three steps, on this particular tension? What's going to hopefully give us a chance to learn something about a better way to play? And from there, the final part of the loop is to actually do the experiment. So we design an experiment that says what is a safe-to-try way that will let us find out if this alternative practice helps us address that tension? Doesn't have to solve it, it doesn't have to be the panacea, but does it move us forward in service of our purpose? So we design an experiment by saying, all right, what are we going to try, who's going to try it, how long are they going to try it for, and how will we know if it worked? And if we can answer those four questions, we have the makings of an experiment, we have the makings of an alternative way of working alive in our system, and as we do the experiment, we're telling the story to others. This is what we're trying, this is why we're trying it, this is what's happening, and if it works, if it's giving us value, other people will start to borrow what we have. They'll start to do what we're doing, they'll start to ask, "Hey, can you teach us "to do that thing that you're doing, "or can we have it too?" That's exactly what we're looking for as we close the loop, and then ask the question again. Well, what now is the tension? What now is present, what now is the next thing that we want to tackle, and we live in that loop over and over in every team at every level, working on things big and small across the whole organizational operating system to find our way to what's next, to find our way to what can serve us best.