Inner and Outer Games: An Infrastructure for Belonging
“The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states.
Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.
Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts.
Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts.
Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge.
Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Things being investigated, knowledge became complete.
Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified.
Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated.
Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated.
Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed.
Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.
From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.”
From “The Great Learning”, by Confucius.
I was in my Circle Way practice group today, and we were feeling the pain. It seems like a painful time, a lot of change, a lot of oppression. But it also feels more than ever like a time of something that wants to be born, as Otto Scharmer would say. I sang a few lines from “Build a Better World” by London Elektricity (feat. Emer Dineen), it goes “I wish I did more to love you, I wish I did more to keep you safe, I’d build a better world for you”. I don’t presume to be able to do that, but I did assert my belief that we can do that together, and it’s already on the way.
The Inner Game
It’s worth talking about my circle way group a little bit. I met them as part of a course hosted by the inimitable Tennison Wolf and Amanda Fenton. They showed us some “techniques” and “theory” of the circle way, but we learnt as much by just being around them and other amazing people that showed up, the energy and intention that they brought to the conversations. When the course finished, there was energy, especially from me, to create a group that met regularly, and so after a lot of doodle poll wrangling, we locked down an hour a week, it’s a midday Wednesday thing for me but for the others it tends to be in the evening, them hailing from Bermuda, The US, and Canada (as well as an occasional show up from England). And so we begun. The “host” changes every week, and they can set the intention for the conversation. We’ve done an enormous amount of innovation in setting different intentions and ways of setting up the flow for these conversations, each with our own styles.
And it’s been a forum of enormous support and growth for everyone, especially me. I feel like in that space I have elders, and peers, that see me and want me to be well. They allow me to face myself and my doubts, I have doubted whether those folks care about me, until they held me in their gaze and penetrated my doubt. This allowed me to grow, and go to therapy, and form friendships that I needed in the gaps, and get into my body, and outside of myself, and learn to support other people as much as I challenge them. And trust the process. And trust myself. And trust other people.
And this very special, personal, seemingly idiosyncratic activity is what some Scandanavian countries in the 19th Century recognised was so important to being part of a real democracy, as discussed in “The Nordic Secret”; they realised that they needed people who had “found themselves”, had developed an inner moral compass, could make up their own minds about right and wrong instead of looking to authorities (the cause of much fascism, populism and leaders like Trump and Bolsinaro?). So they scaled up inner personal development massively. As much as 10% of the population in their twenties were going to retreat centres to do this intensive development. A cross-section of society; farmers, bankers, would-be politicians, developed these capacities.
What would Western Democracy look like if we had more people who could engage in mature pluralistic discussion? Would we have a truly participatory democracy by now, a deep democracy where the visions and aspirations of all people can be held and realised together, instead of aggregated, vanilla-ised, or just plain ignored as part of some inconvenient minority?
In my work as an Innovation Coach, I’ve noticed how co-design training isn’t really what makes people effective at innovation, it helps a bit. They’ve got something else “baked in”, that makes them good at learning things like co-design, and also makes them extremely adaptable; they can go from working in a library to doing dog registrations for a different department, from home, using excel on a smartphone (!). What’s the secret sauce? I think it’s this inner development, that’s described really well by Kegan with his Adult Development Levels. This guy’s research was robust. He basically studied a cohort of adults for thirty years, and busted the myth that we are done developing when we turn 18, have finished school, and can start voting for our overlords. He showed how an adult human is an adaptive organism, constantly taking in new information and using it to adjust and develop. He identified some key levels to development which are well described in this series.
Suffice to say, what I’ve noticed so far is that when people are at the stage of being “socialised”, looking to society and other people for ideas, values, and their validation of themselves, they seem to struggle to initiate, to analyse a situation and decide what should be done. A critical shift happens when they begin to self-author, because they can stand on two feet, think for themselves, and act(this seems like the “classic” heroic leadership). When people become self-transforming, not only do they know what they think and what their value is, they can also take into account what other people think, and hold multiple, often conflicting perspectives at the same time (my new manager is a master at this!). The Reo Māori for leader is “rangitira”, which I was told the root of is “raranga”, to weave. I take this to mean that great leaders can weave together the perspectives, and energies of the people. Good innovators and executors seem to need at least a self-authoring mind, and great ones are self-transforming; they constantly operate on, reauthor themselves in collaboration with others. This is a capacity we dearly need as change accelerates, the half life of a business model dwindles (used to be a hundred years, now it’s down below 7 I believe?!?), and people need to become these incredibly adaptive creatures. (note: it’s not all about innovation; full circle leadership has pointed out how execution and maintenance are as important as innovation, and nothing new can be embedded without good leadership on the execution side of the circle).
And one really great way to move people through these levels is also very simple; a small group of indivduals that develop deep trust, and can share their challenges and successes, have a space to be heard and supported and seen without being judged. That’s what my circle group is doing for me. There are probably a range of practices depending on one’s introversion extraversion preference, e.g. journalling, one to one coaching (e.g. GrowthEdge, which is a developmental coaching method based on Kegan’s “Subject Object Interview”), or group conversation, that would support this development. This development supports our “inner game”. And anecdotally I’ve noticed, as my inner game improves, subtle changes happen to my outer game that seem unrelated but feel related; as I feel more confident, supported, less anxious, I find that I can easily structure my thoughts more, where before they would have been left trailing off or endlessly open ended (as an ENFP my perceiving preference means I’m always taking in new information and adjusting my models).
The Outer Game
Generally the need for co-production in communities is starting to be recognised; the fact that neither community nor local government by itself can produce the best outcomes for the community, and the collaboration of the two can produce much more powerful outcomes. But there is this question of capacity building for community to co-produce, what does that look like? Participatory City provides a useful model of developing community leadership through an “outer game”; first participating, then replicating an existing project, then starting a new project (reference needed). I am interested in how we develop the infrastructure to support development of the “inner game” of community leaders and innovators.
Participatory Cities provides a very holistic, complete working prototype for a participation and co-production support platform.
The infrastructure of “shopfronts” at the neighbourhood level with friendly neighbourhood designers ready to facilitate, coordinate, convene, and support community members to co-produce simple “common denominator activities” (making, learning, cooking, eating, etc.) that bring communities together are a powerful enabler of co-production between local government, communities, and partners. These common denominator activities are simple enough and relatable enough that diverse community members can connect and build trust using them as a medium: Community lunches are highly accessible, “Noodle nights” allow people of various cultures to bring and share their noodles, along with their talents, aspirations, etc. These activities form the bridged social capital between people who are different from each other, leading to an array of positive social outcomes (see below), and building the conditions for more advanced co-production, and eventually co-operative local businesses, organisations, and social forms we haven’t even thought of yet.
The Wider Game
These inner and outer games could create good preconditions for participatory democracy (great case study from Taiwan), where people make local, regional, and even national decisions about how things work together, instead of electing representatives to make those decisions for them. This democracy will become more and more salient as people move from “just getting by” towards the “imagination economy”, where more and more of our population will focus their attention on how they’d like things to be, and shaping our collective future. The self-transforming capacity at all scales is so critical as Covid-19 ushers us into the “flux economy”, where institutions and individuals must constantly reinvent ourselves in order to stay fit for purpose in a fluxating world.
Imagine if leaders of powers like the US and China were genuinely Self-transforming, able to see their rivalry from multiple perspectives and hold each other’s truths (in such stark contrast from our current reality which, from my perspective, feels like us trying to lean so deep into dysfunction to learn something important, as Neo-liberalism degenerates into populism, and “more is more” consumerism and GDP fixated economics draws to its logical conclusion with the help of Covid-19).
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
― Arundhati Roy
