[This blog post is part of the P&I series where we share our personal and professional journeys and how they link to a re-thinking of P&I and its purpose. Read the previous and the next blog post of the series.]
It’s June 2020, the beginning of summer in Ireland and the US, winter is approaching in Argentina. We are now seven months into the process of rediscovering P&I… We did internal, personal reflections and collective ones. We reached out to our colleagues and friends. We found that it was now time to pause and crystalize what we saw emerging. To do this, we adapted a method called CRM (Current Reality Movie), by Theory U. The CRM is a process for collective sense-making after co-sensing activities. While 3D mapping gave us a high-level perspective from multiple angles, CRM would allow us to begin the process of defining more concrete patterns.
The idea was to sense into, embody and give voice to what was heard in the coaching circles, interviews and other relevant experiences without interpretation, judgment, or conceptual overlay. In this practice, it was important to present data that we heard or observed directly. At this part of the sense-making process, it is too early to add interpretations to what we heard. We needed to stay with the raw data. It proved difficult not to jump to conclusions! But we gave it a go.
As a team we organised the session around two main questions:
What patterns are we noticing?
What touched you?
This is what came out of the exercise:
We have a capacity to connect with others and generate enthusiasm, we want to have integral conversations (not just by ourselves), we want to co-create
Pay attention to those in “the margins” (as opposed to the usual suspects) and consider those who generate knowledge that is not necessarily research
Expand the concept of what knowledge counts: not only knowledge from the mind but also from the heart and the body
Work on the why so that the what and how can emerge more clearly
Integrate local work and international sharing, connect local and global
It was difficult to stay with these patterns and not jump to interpreting them and/or giving them shape. We had a lot to let rest with us and see what it meant. We finished the meeting with a bit of silence and wondering how all these insights would play out together to create the new P&I. We will tell you more about this in our next blog post, stay tuned!