Presence is the context | Julian Stdd learning blog

OUR impact is not only caused by our acts: Our presence in itself can be sufficient. Power throw a shadow, before opening your mouth. In this sense, it is difficult to be an observer, when we are not neutral for the system. The act of observation changes the thing observed.

I thought about it during the current work on “very efficient teams”, where we seek to create conditions of excellence to emerge. This is done partly through structured experiences, which play with roles, artifactsand behaviors.

To go from “good” to “excellent“It is crossing a chasm, and adopting somewhat stylized roles can allow us to play a role and repeat alternative means of” being “within the team and the system. Doing it can also help overcome the natural feedback challenges, by which we go from “I observe” in “I blame” too easily.

But we do it with “in” the system. We cannot disintegrate our point of view of the lenses that we use to see it. This is relevant if we also consider organization as a narrative structure – as an entity of history and belief. The “stories” are not neutral. They are “told”, associated with the “cashier”. We contextualize our stories with our “me”. All of this tells me about a gap, an association latency. That when we seek to act, to change the Social context, We do it in tangled networks of trust, truth, meaning and identity, each acts on us, ensuring stability and predictability, but also excess security, and perhaps sometimes resistance to change.

This is of course one of the reasons why it is easier to change a system when you are really external, because your presence carries a different type of context: perhaps a more closely associated with disturbance or change, or perhaps maintained in a different authorization or structure.