Inside the Black Box

I realized that providing expertise is antithetical to cultivating agency, and I began seeking new ways to engage my client organizations. For example, I stopped offering organizational models and started emphasizing the use of living systems frameworks, which provide the structure for thinking but require participants to supply the content and do

In regenerative systems, relationships are the system. And your ability to tend to them — with honesty, skill, and care — is what allows real change to take root.

The pathless path is an alternative to the default path. It is an embrace of uncertainty and discomfort. It’s a call to adventure in a world that tells us to conform. For me, it’s also a gentle reminder to laugh when things feel out of control and trusting that an uncertain future is not a problem to be solved.

EXISTENTIAL OPENING The philosopher Andrew Taggart believes that crisis moments lead to “existential openings” that force us to grapple with the deepest questions about life.⁠10 He argues there are two typical ways this happens. One is the “way of loss,” when things that matter are taken from us, such as loved ones, our health, or a job. The other

The ultimate way you and I get lucky is if you have some success early in life, you get to find out early it doesn’t mean anything. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

Callard defines aspiration as the slow process of “trying on the values that we hope one day to possess.”⁠7 This is in contrast to an ambitious journey where we already know what we value.

This is why commitment comes after the adventure, because you have to see the world is bigger than you—that it can break you—in order for you to focus on doing some good in it.

History’s heroes know something the rest of us don’t: fear isn’t the enemy; inaction is. What we have to learn to do is lean into the things that hold us back, to move through the pain and push forward.

The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.