By Roger Duck and Jane Searles.
2. Jane Searles (biography)
Think of a time when you noticed how different ‘they’ are from ‘us’. In that moment, did the relationship become more interesting and alive? Or did it flatten into what looked like a boundary – a barrier to be overcome or a connection to be engineered?
This i2Insights contribution is intended to stimulate your imagination by giving examples from practice of relationships between people and teams being treated as opportunities for learning, rather than boundaries.
Most readers of i2Insights work in research. We believe there is much of relevance here for any context in which people are working together, including research teams.
The context
We expand here on the idea that ‘a system boundary is simultaneously a process of drawing a distinction and identifying an active relationship of mutual learning’ (Duck and Searles 2021).
We are not so much advocating for ‘rewilding’ boundaries, as for avoiding ‘taming’ relationships before they have had a chance to flower.
We have rooted this account in Jane’s experiences of a community initiative in Scotland, and our mutual learning through reflective discussion. In the winter months, volunteers provide a Saturday evening meal in a community hall. This is for anyone living in the area, provided on a ‘pay what you can’ basis, supported by other donations.
The volunteers organise themselves so that no individual is indispensable. This has been done by developing clarity of the roles required, supported by a peer-based culture that enables roles to be passed around between different people. There is no hard and fast divide between those who ‘do’ and those who ‘organise’, nor between those volunteering and those dining.
We highlight four examples of learning situations: 1) working as a team, 2) working across internal team boundaries, 3) working across a formal organisational boundary, and 4) nurturing a culture to support self-organisation.
Working as a team
We have learnt that people are able to experience ongoing relationships of learning between roles, where people value different perspectives as opportunities, and work together as a team, while still appreciating the value of role boundaries in defining the scope of responsibilities.
In our example, people in different roles sometimes suggest and try out new practices together. A young volunteer was concerned the group was throwing away a lot of sugar. Reusing unused sugar from the bowls breaks hygiene regulations. She and another volunteer realised they could dramatically reduce the waste, without breaking the law, by putting out only a small amount, as long as someone kept an eye on the levels. This is now the practice. Similar kinds of small but practical learning have led, after two years, to efficient ways of working suited to the specific context and volunteers’ personal preferences.
Some volunteers, in some roles, prefer predefined ways of working which do not change in response to others, perhaps because this provides a sense of control, efficiency, safety and/or identity. Where this is the case, members of the group have realised that sensitivity is needed to encourage learning. If the need for safety is paramount, or if there is a history of conflict, one way to enable such learning can be to imagine a ‘safe house’: a place where both people can leave their roles behind and talk about their different perspectives.
Working across boundaries between internal teams
We have learnt that the vitality of relationships can be nurtured between internal teams, while still using agreed procedural interactions when useful for efficiency.
In our example, the kitchen and the front of house teams both need to know what diners have ordered. In week 2, front of house panicked when the kitchen team moved the hand-written orders from the serving hatch into the kitchen. In week 3, the teams put in place a formal procedure by creating two copies of each order using carbon paper. Two years on, people now coordinate in practice by talking to one another, as a more relaxed atmosphere has developed. The paper records act only as reminders.
Building in predictable procedures between teams can be a way of dealing with what is commonly called the ‘silo problem’ in many organisations. Our example demonstrates what can be achieved when both teams focus on being more flexible with one another. It is then possible to work in ways that honour the vitality of the relationship, only using formulaic solutions across boundaries to support this where necessary.
Working across a formal organisational boundary
A formal organisational boundary is also a relationship and, therefore, an opportunity for learning.
In our example, the distinction between volunteers and diners could easily look and feel like an organisational boundary. But volunteers dine and diners volunteer and, each Saturday, a volunteer plays the role of host, responsible for welcoming everyone and introducing people to one another. These practices have spread into a general friendliness, creating a sense of overall community which is generally felt more deeply than any role-based distinctions between people.
Nurturing a culture to support self-organisation
We have learnt that embracing boundaries as opportunities for learning can help when nurturing self-organising teams.
In our example, some volunteers are particularly motivated to ensure that people are free to exchange roles and to come and go over time. This peer-based working extends to the aspiration that no role should have the right to arbitrarily exercise ‘power over’ any other.
Even one volunteer being overtly critical or behaving disrespectfully can affect the enjoyment and motivation of others. The group has found it must acknowledge and address discomfort as it arises, being sensitive to changing personal context and individuals’ differing assumptions and motivations.
Challenges are ongoing, particularly in the face of the recurring question: ‘this may be working, but who’s actually in charge?’ There is also an inevitable tension between experimentation and the need to deliver meals safely in 90 minutes. Nevertheless, although it requires continual vigilance, the group is achieving a good balance between efficiency and nurturing the social interactions that support inclusion.
So what?
How might these lessons translate to your experience of teamwork in research, or in any other roles in life?
How relevant is our experience that when you focus on being human together, you are more likely to notice that every boundary is an impoverished view of a rich relationship of mutual learning? And that our ability to learn together, and to change, are destroyed by pre-scripted procedural roles and interactions?
How have you combined teamwork with the social process of learning? How might you find the time, care and persistence to nurture a culture of curiosity and courage to ‘dance’ together? What difference might that make?
Reference:
Duck, R. and Searles, J. (2021). Designing freedom together. Organization Development Review, 53, 5: 32-40. (Available online in open access through: https://www.academia.edu/70156929/Designing_Freedom_Together)
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution or the work on which the contribution is based. (For i2Insights policy on artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)
Biography: Roger Duck PhD works mostly as a consultant through his own business, Mapsar Limited, drawing on systemic ideas to help people learn together and take effective action. His work focuses on creating conditions for learning and change in organisations, and the wider systems in which they operate. He is active in networks exploring systemic practice and participatory learning for transformative innovation. He is based near Manchester, UK.
Biography: Jane Searles BSc is a systemic architect. Her work addresses whole systems, which have customers or citizens at their heart, and focusses on people and effective teamwork (and enabling technology where useful). She is now retired and is applying her experience as a community activist in her local area, and as such has been deeply involved throughout the local community meals initiative, which is now in its third year. This experience, especially moments of heightened emotion and learning, is drawn on for examples for this i2Insights contribution. She is based in Fife, Scotland, UK.
Thank you Roger and Jane for such a thoughtful piece of writing. Many sentences and phrases throughout demand to be savoured and re-read. To ‘work in ways that honour the vitality of the relationship’, ‘to nurture a culture of curiosity’, and valuing ‘different perspectives as opportunities’ are important phrases which resonate heavily with my research, reading and work experience. I’ve tried to work at the interfaces of ‘accepted boundaries’ (which have always puzzled me) and treated them instead as spaces for creative, fruitful differences to emerge.
This excellent guide touches on something very profound on our shared journey to establish better ways of thinking and working together as actively caring human beings, rather than as passive rule-followers who simply ‘give up’ with encountered false boundaries. What you describe echoes across individual learning, team learning, organisational and inter-organisational learning and community-grounded learning.
The tone and ambition of this short piece of writing is truly astonishing. Its rich fabric of ideas and shared thinking begins with subtlety and practicality to touch upon the approaches required to help achieve inclusive, adaptive social learning through individual, team and community-based research. Somehow, I feel that it picks up and moves on from where my own research left off, in ways I can barely describe. No doubt many others will find your piece thought-provoking too, in a good way.
For me, it highlights the importance of patience, and of being constantly both attentive and reflective. Overall, it answers the need to feel a sense of human belonging via consciously adopting an approach of shared responsibility, which isn’t at all easy! Thinking in particular of your second question, this context seems to create a fertile environment in which mutual learning can flourish through a focus on evolving relationships, rather than shrivel through imposed structural isolation.
This form of mutual learning and empowerment doesn’t mean that everyone sits (or should sit) ‘on the same page’, but perhaps is simply willing to be more adaptive in their own thinking and thus affect the flexibility of the group endeavour?
Thank you for this wonderful contribution to the literacy of self-and team-perception! Fine grained observations as the one’s you share encourage to observe/reflect own behaviour in collaborative situations more in detail. Thank you also for highlighting the act of drawing a distinction when creating boundaries. It is the verb ‘drawing’ that I experience helpful as an entry point to learn how to stretch, transcend, transform or dissolve boundaries together.
Reading your blog-post I was reminded of Paulo Freire’s notion of the human being as a „limit-being“ (referring to the existential constitution of humans) that — challenged by „limit-situations“ — may perform „limit-acts“ which, in Freire’s experience (and language), can contribute to become more human (which seem to be very much the case in your community kitchen).
“Your skin doesn’t separate you from the world; it’s a bridge through which the external world flows into you, and you flow into it.” Alan Watts
I love this piece – it makes me think of the above, but also provides a ‘stand’ for what Barry Oshry (perhaps confusingly) calls ‘robust systems’ – with the distinction:
In Dominance systems, the Other is evaluated, feared, defended against, controlled.
In Robust systems, the Other is studied, welcomed, valued, utilized.
Your characterisation of a boundary opens up this possibility beautifully!
Thank you for your enthusiastic support and considered comments, as always, Benjamin!
These ways of rethinking the nature of boundaries are so important. I (Roger) remember wondering when I was quite young “when I open my mouth and breathe in, where is the boundary of ‘me’?” We can learn so much from multiple perspectives.
We’ve written something in response to Anil Wali in the comments here about our attempt to speak to the primacy of relational process as a different way of seeing.
well all living things are basically bilaterally-open toruses, aren’t we? 🙂
For those interested, there is a particular systems methodology called (for rather obscure reasons) Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, or CHAT for short. CHAT was developed by Mike Cole and Yrjö Engestrom. Etienne Wenger later of Communities of Practice and Situated Learning fame, was also involved in the early days. CHAT is based on the idea that if systems approaches are intended to be opportunities for learning, then why not develop a systems methodology based on learning theories. In this case, it was based on Vygotsky’s ideas of learning as a social process. CHAT is a fascinating approach that has strongly influenced my practice, but in essence is based on the idea that an individual’s journey to fulfilling a need is mediated by the tools they use (including language), the rules of the community they are part of and the roles that they play in that community. How an individual learns how to fulfill that need is dependent on how they addresses and resolve the contractions within and between tool, rules, roles and needs. Now expand this into a work setting (ie a community of practice) where people are working on the same activity but fullfilling different needs, and you have a whole bunch more contradictions that need to be addressed, as this article so succinctly describes. CHAT is frequently used in high risk environments especially concerning health and safety issues, where contradictions abound. If anyone is interested to find out more, there is a description of CHAT in my book System Diagrams, along with the questions that CHAT addresses. The book is donationware (ie free but you can pay something if you wish) and can be downloaded from https://bobwilliams.gumroad.com
Apologies about the grammar. I pushed the wrong button on my computer and it sent out the raw version. For some reason I couldn’t edit the posted comment. The most significant auto-correct blooper is ‘contractions’. It should of course be contradictions.
Thank you Bob for your comments, and for the introduction to CHAT. Putting learning at the heart of systemic thinking and practice sounds eminently sensible.
As a fundamental part of an ongoing process of change, we are interested in the collective possibilities and creativity that can arise by doing things together and sharing thoughts with each other.
Nora Bateson has invented the word ‘symmathesy’ as a replacement for the word ‘system’ to emphasise the essence of (living) systems as processes of ‘learning together’. Nora talks about boundaries as ‘interfaces of mutual learning’ which means, for her, that people are learning together but not necessarily the same thing.
There are clearly some common threads through all of this and, no doubt, some contradictions!
Great article and impressive analysis to soften rigid boundaries into more malleable opportunities among diverse groups for multi-level intervention, camaraderie and efficiency to break down siloes and have a more efficient outcomes in a multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary dynamic interactions and engagement to yield a profound impactful product.
Excellent article demonstrating the challenges and opportunities faced when diverse local volunteers work together on a community project. The challenge is to engage, empower and encourage all volunteers to value and contribute their own ideas and actions to progress, sustain and improve the project, discussing with peers to put actions in place, rather than waiting for a “leader” to make key decisions. The local context, learning, persistence and personal relationships are key to success.
Thank you Aileen. I agree with all of that!
Your involvement with the highs and lows of the community meals initiative we are talking about here shines forth from your words!
I have learnt such a lot with and from you, especially about how to gently encourage peer relationships between people with very different backgrounds and outlooks.
Thank you! In a world of rigid boundaries and siloes, which most of us find ourselves in most of the time, we can always try to soften them into more malleable opportunities (nice phrasing!)
When we come to use these ideas in reality, we need to recognise this prevailing view.
One of us (Jane) started initially with the idea of writing about the practical actions that can be taken to overcome barriers. The other (Roger) started with the conviction that everyone intuitively understands that boundaries are the result of us noticing differences (and individuals) more than noticing relationships. This resulted in us both adopting a way of seeing (a ‘vision’) where we we deliberately address a constant state of ongoing and changing relationship, rather seeing the world as made up of ‘things’ and ‘boundaries’ between them.