At the ALIA Summer Institute, we all participated in a track session of our choosing. Each such group met five separate times over the Tuesday – Friday span. This extended engagement allowed for much deeper work than is possible at a conference gathering. I chose “Cutting Through Complexity – Working With Power, Timing, and Action”, which was presented by Michael Chender, Barbara Bash, and Chris Grant. I chose this track months ago really because Barbara Bash was one of the faculty, and I hoped that her involvement would mean that I would get to make bold strokes with big brushes.
The central thread of “Cutting Through Complexity” was a five phase framework, or process of engagement. The five phases are Entering, Exploring, Acting, Completing, and Letting Go. This framework is useful in any complex situation or circumstance, and is adaptable to any scale (a single conversation, working with a team or organization or community). To operate within this framework requires that we have an intent to learn, to benefit ourselves and others, and to forward the basic goodness in the situation.
When entering a new situation, we might experience a quickening. This is a moment to clarify intention. At this threshold, we find a moment to pause. One might pause before entering a meeting room, or before deciding to make a proposal, or before having a difficult conversation with an employee. This pause helps us to enter the situation with a sense of “not knowing”. Then we enter, and try to experience the situation directly. Nowness. We avoid being triggered, or reacting in any habitual way. We add nothing to the situation, simply see it as it is.
Slowing down is the key practice, so that we can recognize our habits (our habitual reactions) and also see spaces. Michael called this the Purposeful Pause.