Category: Transformation

Goals are not so smart

A shocking number of years ago, I was in a bland conference room in Vancouver, BC, presenting a workshop about goal-setting. I had come up with a little tweak on a standard approach, which I called SMARTER Goals, taking the old set of Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely, and adding Emotional and Relational. Choose a goal that matters to you, I argued, or all those other aspects will be irrelevant. Find a way to involve other people, either as collaborators or witnesses, and you’ll be much more likely to succeed.

But I’ve come to believe that goal-setting frameworks are a symptom of a broken culture.

Oops!

‘Setting a goal’ is usually an attempt to bring meaning or value to something I don’t fully want to do. It’s a tacit way to suggest that now isn’t acceptable, that I need to be different, that there’s something to achieve, or that my instincts are untrustworthy.

“We are socialized into systems that cause us to conform and believe our worth is connected to how much we can produce. Our constant labor becomes a prison that allows us to be disembodied. We become easy for the systems to manipulate, disconnected from our power as divine beings and hopeless. We forget how to dream. This is how grind culture continues. We internalize the lies and in turn become agents of an unsustainable way of living.”

― Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

We live in a context where we’re evaluated on our contribution to systems of extraction (be they resources or attention). We are not good enough for a variety of reasons, and so we should hustle, strive, improve. We want love, acceptance, and security, so we are susceptible to modernity’s idea that we can be both conveniently comfortable at all times and also impressive achievers who GSD.

Living in purpose is uncomfortable and mysterious.

Being in purpose does not have a set of steps that are specific, measurable, or realistic. Living in purpose involves taking actions, learning, having a direction, but also requires humility and an awareness that each step takes us into a place with a new perspective. What we think is the end-state from our current vantage is likely to be just a reinforcement of an obstructed view.

What is happening when I think I need a goal?

Maybe I have lost my way. Maybe I am getting mired in deficit, maybe I am afraid. Maybe I am hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Maybe I am avoiding grief.

Goals are what I have when I don’t have a connection to purpose. I have to invent things that need a structure or framework to accomplish.

What do I think goals will lead to? Power, money, status, being “better” than I am now?

What if I am already OK?

Goal-setting implies that without some explicit force on myself, I am likely to do absolutely nothing. That I am ‘lazy’ or ‘indolent’ and have no internal compass that will guide me to take action. My experience is the opposite. When I take the time to listen, to be still, I discover that not only am I driven to take action, but that so many of the things I might add into a list of goals are irrelevant to the purpose. When I take the time to feel what’s inherently there, I make choices that are healthy for my physical and mental health. I am not struggling with temptations. I’m not looking for distraction.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s studies on flow state indicate I can be happy doing something that is challenging enough to stretch me, learning something, being able to confront a challenge, being uncomfortable enough to be excited. I do not need a ‘goal’ to get into flow.

If am here to be of service, rather than to ‘win,’ I know that I will do what matters. I get to rest when it feels right, I push myself because there’s joy in it. I get to trust that I’m going to show up, and if I notice that I am avoiding something, I get curious. I am compassionate.

But wait! Perhaps there are useful things about goal-setting in collaborations. When I work with other people, it helps not only to be purpose-aligned but also to have some clarity, some structure, some ways of making agreements in the same language. Work with other people often involves projects, situations where it’s useful to have a distribution of tasks and levels of abstraction. Instead of goals, what if we think of collaboration in terms of well-designed experiments?

A goal that isn’t simply “I’ll have learned something” probably is delusional anyway. We set out to achieve a goal of the SMART variety without really knowing what it will lead to. Goal-setting typically leaves out the vast unpredictability of life circumstances.

We usually want to have a feeling, because that’s what decisions are built on. When I think I need a goal, I can wonder, ‘what is it that I am hoping to feel?’ When I think I need a goal, I might also ask myself, ‘what am I avoiding?’

A life without goals isn’t aimless. I can only be in purpose when I can show up without an agenda, without needing to be important. I matter, not because I met a target, but because I am here.

HOPE – How Our Practice Evolves In Us

Last night I spent some time talking to my step-kid, who is a teenager, about the future. He was wondering if there’s any point to doing things that support the health of the planet because it might already be too late. Looking around at the American kids his age, for every kid who seems interested in justice, climate, or any other kind of activism, there seem to be 10 more who are coveting Jordans, eating hamburgers, and spending hours a day on social media. What does this portend for the future? It’s a self-reinforcing paradox that is not confined to teenagers.

There are radical changes needed to shift things and even the people I am around who are doing deep thinking about these things often manifest what seem like irreconcilable dissonances between their behaviour and thought. We, either as humans or specifically as people who live in this dominance-driven culture, seem to regard self-honesty and taking the actions within our power as impositions, as “what someone else thinks we should do.” For Americans (and Canadians), if ‘doing the right thing’ might involve any level of ‘not doing what I want right now,’ then it becomes a weird political thing, or a way we shame one another.

There’s frequently a big gap between behaviour and viewpoint. Someone says they are very concerned about climate collapse, who even work on green initiatives, but still eats beef or takes frequent flights. There are many folks in my world of ‘healthier tech’ who are posting and scrolling for hours a day. I have found myself among them. I know the challenge in choosing something different, something that may risk me being left out or feeling invisible. (Or not getting my package in two days for free).

This is the state of affairs when we’ve abdicated our freedom- we think that our individual actions “don’t matter” and that it’s all about what politicians or billionaires decide to do.

My experience is that it’s quite the opposite. When I am coming into a situation and feeling into my own complicity, I recognise my agency and can work towards solutions in an embodied way, in a way where I am not living in pure denial and cognitive dissonance. The process of divesting doesn’t happen all at once and I expect to be doing things that are out of alignment for all of this lifetime, but I’m closer to freedom when I see my behaviour and seek to be in more right relation to the earth and to other people. I’m more alive when I am not policing other people or waiting for someone to decide my fate while I consume and pleasure-seek.

This is why communities of practice are essential. Doing this work alone is nearly impossible. A community of practice helps me to feel like I am not alone in holding myself to account, and it also allows me to see into my blind spots, to recognise areas for growth that I was unaware of. In a community of practice, I encounter people who seem stone-cold real with themselves and people who are currently going through inquiries or challenges that I wrestled with in the past and have now worked through. I can see my growth and my opportunity to grow. I am able to feel the love in the practice, to feel the deep and unconditional regard I have for myself and other people as we do our best.

In a community of practice, we can begin to experience what the future might look like when we become forced to recognise out interdependence. Our survival depends on our ability to cooperate and collaborate when we don’t have predetermined hierarchies or state-enforced power. In disasters, people often come together for a time to help, to work toward common goals, to surpass their own idea of what they are capable of. I’ve found something quite similar when people come together to do their own work and to begin to develop relationships that reflect a sense of total inclusion, where we are fully welcome, there by choice, willing to contribute.

The structure of communities of successful communities of practice allows us to experience collective purpose, strong norming, reflection, being witnessed, and witnessing others. It makes everyone a welcomer, even when they are practicing for the first time. Strong structures allow for every person to be there by choice, for there to be no individual who matters more than others, to function even when someone with a role or responsibility isn’t able to participate or doesn’t show up. They function as a reflection of the complete dignity and autonomy of each member while simultaneously creating a container of total belonging and connection.

There are many things we might do to contribute to a future that, as Buckminster Fuller put it, works for ‘100% of humanity.” It’s a collective hallucination to believe some people are more entitled to anything than others, that any of us are not completely responsible for our own roles in creating the future, or that we are required to participate in systems of dominance and extraction. That doesn’t mean it’s as simple as saying ‘no’– but if we’re thinking along these lines, we can start to innovate in powerful ways. The most important thing I have to contribute is my own self-ownership, my own freedom, and a recognition that my honesty, openness, and willingness to practice emerge in collective.

Love is change, change is love

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”

—James A. Baldwin

I am noticing more love within me, emerging, changing everything. Not like some kind of soft hippie peace-and-love but the force of uprising, the love that says I must exist, the love that sees all as worthy of love, the love that unmasks us. If we can’t start with love then the whole exercise is useless.

Here we are in it, finding the others who can hold the love because they’ve been hollowed out by pain. Love that knows that as long as we are willing to overlook ongoing trauma and systems of dominance and violence, we aren’t loving ourselves, we are against love for ourselves or for anyone.

This is a love that doesn’t require perfection but doesn’t permit delusion. In this kind of love you lose everything, everything. It feels gut-wrenching and beautiful. This love is grief and possibility, unmeasurable. This love rips away all your defenses and shows you they were unnecessary, they were all made of lead, offering a sense of safety that slowly poisons your mind and body.

This is a love made of responsibility, of freedom, of belonging. Made for liberty. It’s not a love of humanity, it’s a love of being, of beings.

This is a love that sees no difference among us, and that celebrates our differences, that is not indifferent.

This love is the only weapon against tyranny and this love is not a weapon, not a defense, but a force that triumphs, or just creates a different reality altogether. It is larger than life and twice as natural.

It’s not in the slightest bit naive, it is the force that says ‘survive’ when we are hurt or broken. It might be supernatural and it might be just the air and rocks and trees, if you’re listening. It’s what exists before. What will take us to the after. It’s here, always. To feel it is to be swept by a river, a flow, bubbly and rushing through, left breathless.

This love is a chemical reaction, a consequence of collective practice, it is connected and emergent. This is a love with, and not just among. This love changes us, me, everything.

This love blasts out from our chests like a warrior goddess, takes us to a new place, returns us to ourselves.

Structure Lessness

This morning I had a few thoughts related to creating containers, which is how I think of an approach to designing technology to support transformation:

Freedom among people requires structure. As much of that structure that can be emergent as possible rather than dictated leads to self-responsible interaction,. For that to happen successfully, the container must be created with some constraints and intentions. The space must be named as a place for being self-responsible. Those who create the space do not control it.

Spaces are structures.

Spaces shape structure.

Maybe it sounds like a strange thing to build a business around, but I think this way of thinking about things creates a ton of value for any group that wants to make change, at least change that has an element of personal and collective transformation.

Jo Freeman’s essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness helps to frame the direction of transformational space design. We need the small, intimate, conversational experience to help us learn how to be together and to feel a sense of meaning and mattering. And we do need structures that support interdependent action. Neither is optional if we want to develop spaces where we’re not practicing dominance over our friends and allies.

To quote liberally from the essay, these are the specific practices that our spaces (in this case, digital spaces) should support and even encourage:

1) Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures. Letting people assume jobs or tasks only by default means they are not dependably done. If people are selected to do a task, preferably after expressing an interest or willingness to do it, they have made a commitment which cannot so easily be ignored.
2) Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to those who selected them. This is how the group has control over people in positions of authority. Individuals may exercise power, but it is the group that has ultimate say over how the power is exercised.
3) Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably possible. This prevents monopoly of power and requires those in positions of authority to consult with many others in the process of exercising it. It also gives many people the opportunity to have responsibility for specific tasks and thereby to learn different skills.
4) Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that person’s “property” and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the group. Conversely, if tasks are rotated too frequently the individual does not have time to learn her job well and acquire the sense of satisfaction of doing a good job.
5) Allocation of tasks along rational criteria. Selecting someone for a position because they are liked by the group or giving them hard work because they are disliked serves neither the group nor the person in the long run. Ability, interest, and responsibility have got to be the major concerns in such selection. People should be given an opportunity to learn skills they do not have, but this is best done through some sort of “apprenticeship” program rather than the “sink or swim” method. Having a responsibility one can’t handle well is demoralizing. Conversely, being blacklisted from doing what one can do well does not encourage one to develop one’s skills. Women have been punished for being competent throughout most of human history; the movement does not need to repeat this process.
6) Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible. Information is power. Access to information enhances one’s power. When an informal network spreads new ideas and information among themselves outside the group, they are already engaged in the process of forming an opinion — without the group participating. The more one knows about how things work and what is happening, the more politically effective one can be.
7) Equal access to resources needed by the group. This is not always perfectly possible, but should be striven for. A member who maintains a monopoly over a needed resource (like a printing press owned by a husband, or a darkroom) can unduly influence the use of that resource. Skills and information are also resources. Members’ skills can be equitably available only when members are willing to teach what they know to others.

(Underlines in original, bolding my own emphasis)

When we create spaces that allow people to matter, we don’t erase all of the ways that systemic power, culture, and lived experience shape us. Reverend angel Kyodo williams said this morning that we have to be intentional about shifting the loci of power so that these factors don’t reinforce status relationships that come from systemic inequities.

When we’re working in the context of transformation, we can be aware that growing up with certain advantages based on race, gender, or other statuses may mean some people may have certain skills or more money due to their opportunity to access. The group can choose to welcome these skills or resources without making them what confers power or governance within the group. You don’t need to be disappeared or feel pressured not to contribute because you’ve been seen more readily in school, work, (or even on social media) before you joined the group.

In Al-Anon, which has welcomed millions of people from very different backgrounds into decentralized groups with rotating and distributed governance, members are encouraged within meetings to “avoid outside issues” which can be things like profession, religion, or whether they are also members of other 12-Step fellowships.

We can go further by inviting ourselves to consider how our own way of supporting inequity might play into a space, even when that support comes in the form of believing limiting or negative things about ourselves. If our space leads us to feel like we should hide aspects of ourselves, we probably are perpetuating unbelonging in our collective.

We can also notice when we might be able to step back, know we are not ‘the only one who can..’, and hold space for those whose voices may not be as forthcoming. I’ve noticed that for me, I often feel reluctant to be vulnerable at first, but once I feel more comfortable, I need to pay attention to my pause and hold space for other people. I’ve also experienced people with more power pushing me to stay quiet, saying ‘you don’t know how much influence you have.’ In all of these situations, the solution is a mixture of self-awareness and structure, when there are roles and rotation of responsibilities.

In making technology that can support structures like this, which apply to most communities of practice, support, and changemaking, we can inform the options of a space (which technology always constrains and mediates) to support both intimate and trust-building communication and processes that allow for more inclusive, distributed, effective means of non-domination-oriented leadership and action.

What does this look like in actual design? Working on it! Of course I would love your thoughts or feedback.