I must be getting sneakier with age. I challenged myself to ask as many people in 2015 to share with me what "act on what you want to see" means in their social change work. I was asked to host a webinar with my favorite heretical colleague out of Edmonton, Alberta Mark Holmgren. He is a creative thinker and conversationalist, thoughtful musician and darn good dancer. I said yes of course knowing that we would have a reason to work together a little and keep in touch. His talk, Working in Complexity A Case for Upside Down Thinking challenges us to consider the ways we approach thinking together and as groups. Around 45 minutes I sneak my question in.

Mark's answer was:

"If you are going to act on what you see or want to see it relates to a vision of the future, a stance in terms of how you approach it. That stance and the attitudes we bring to it are ways that propel us in that direction and do not stop us from acting.

When it comes to our ability to think and think together, one of the ways to look at that question would be, How do you act on who you want to be? Not just what we see but who we want to be as individual and how we see ourselves in the future picture of the work will be doing."

What resonated with me from Mark's webinar was the rigour and strength needed to standing up for uncomfortable conversations. And we could all sit with how that feels more and give it more attention. One of Mark’s quests to spend more time thinking and talking about how we think, how that impacts our capacity or our resistance to the changes we need to make.

Listen to the full webinar here.

Upside Down Thinking