Everywhere I go, I meet people who are learning to lean in to the reality that most of our environments are just too complex to know completely. It doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything. It does mean that nobody can know everything.
My work, on the surface, is mostly process consulting and facilitation. That body of work grows from an acknowledgement that work and life are pretty involved and require us to go together. It’s an evolutionary step. And it’s one that contradicts so much of what many of us have been taught. Just like the gents in the cartoon above, we been taught to not say it out loud, and to mask “not knowing.”
Let’s face it. Not knowing, and the ability to own that as a step of vitality is essential these days. Relearning how we go together, without diminishing individual ability, yet contributing to sustainable, “go further” approaches only found in community (or team) — that’s the work of these days.
And beneath the surface of that, it’s just rather human to human adventure isn’t it. Sometimes I feel like I know a lot about that. Sometimes, even in knowing a lot, I can feel that I’m just beginning.
“Knowing” is a verb of continuous engagement. Not an item on the list to tick off. There’s the secret that many of us are trying to make not a secret.
