A NEW WAY OF SEEING
If you want to truly understand something, try changing it.”
Kurt Lewin
Kurt Lewin
When I was a young man I would carry Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds of North America with me nearly everywhere I went, intent on identifying all the species of birds in Washington, D.C.
At first I was content to name a bird by homing in on its most prominent markings. As I became more proficient I developed an ear for its song, an eye for its habitat and a sensibility to its movements. With binoculars and field guide in hand, I got better and better at peeling back the mysteries in the world around me and what had been hidden all along in plain sight.
So it's been with my journey into the world of changemaking -- the set of activities that individuals and teams employ to improve their communities. And as I became more proficient myself, I began to peel back the hidden forces that inhibit and drive social change—forces that previously had been hiding in plain sight.
And that's brought me to my "big idea" -- and two personal accounts of how I arrived here:
At first I was content to name a bird by homing in on its most prominent markings. As I became more proficient I developed an ear for its song, an eye for its habitat and a sensibility to its movements. With binoculars and field guide in hand, I got better and better at peeling back the mysteries in the world around me and what had been hidden all along in plain sight.
So it's been with my journey into the world of changemaking -- the set of activities that individuals and teams employ to improve their communities. And as I became more proficient myself, I began to peel back the hidden forces that inhibit and drive social change—forces that previously had been hiding in plain sight.
And that's brought me to my "big idea" -- and two personal accounts of how I arrived here:
- First, my own"origin story" -- my introduction to systems thinking as a school principal.
- Then came my awakening to a physics of changemaking, which came to me early in my own retirement, when I encountered the writings of Kurt Lewin, the founding father of social psychology.