“It all starts with one’s own change.” – NOS co-director and Academy for Systems Change Fellow Liliana Gutiérrez Mariscal
It would have been easy for the NOS staff to introduce systems learning tools as “experts,” just as they share their knowledge of marine biology as experts. But they quickly came to understand that doing so would backfire.
Turning the mirror back on oneself
“The first change to embrace, which is often painful, is to realize that it all starts with one’s own change,” says Gutiérrez, an Academy for Systems Change Fellow who has now succeeded Alejandro Robles as NOS’s co-director. “Otto Scharmer [developer of Theory U and co-founder of the Presencing Institute] says you need to ‘turn the mirror back on yourself.’”
A biologist educated in Mexico City and the U.S., Gutiérrez first came to NOS and La Paz in 2007, having worked in academic and government positions where the mirror faces external reality only. This meant taking some time to understand and to appreciate genuine reflection. “There’s a time when you’re first learning these tools and you look at them and practice them one or two times, when it can all feel very mental, even academic. Then, when the changes you want to see don’t happen as fast as you had imagined, frustration grows. So, people think you have to change the tool because it’s not working. But eventually, you discover that these tools, theories, and frameworks aren’t just for an external situation. They are inherently personal.”
But this reflective turn also invites a journey of connecting more deeply with the “external” reality of one’s organization and work. “The second stage starts with committing to one’s personal journey in the context of one’s work. I relate that personal transformation to what is happening in my organization, and then I reflect on myself. How am I behaving? How am I experiencing this? What are my emotions, feelings, and thoughts? It’s an exciting journey, a powerful transformational journey for oneself and one’s organization. We need to do this reflective work to produce more of a fair world. A more happy, more healthy, and more awareness-based world in the coastal communities of the Mexican northwest.
“The third stage in using all of these tools begins when one’s no longer focused on just the outside or the inside alone. For there is a possibility here that, whatever you do inside yourself or your organization can be reflected on the outside. It’s easy to forget this. [This is why] these tools needs to be practiced daily. It’s almost a kind of hypnosis, to reflect on oneself while using these tools.
The inner and the outer
“The hinge of systems change processes is this dialectical process of the inner and outer. This opens the gateway for learning from the heart, which is represented as a fractal in the dialogue circle, which in turn represents a network, which then in turn engages long-term large-scale change at a systems level. This, all together, constitutes our Theory of Change.
“The dialogue circle has a lot to do with this. At the beginning, there were a lot of suspicions and reactions from people who identified with more traditional formats for holding meetings. For a lot of people, when conflict arises, it’s more comfortable to say something like, ‘let’s fix this in a small group. Let’s some of us get together and decide on a course of action.’ Those few people invited to that first small group are typically those already handling the power in a system. Sometimes there’s a good reason for that. But it also invites so many obvious obstacles to deep change.
“The circle is a different way, a more democratic way, to share experiences amongst ourselves. It’s not just a presentation. When we engage the team through the circle, they are ready for the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly all to be given a voice. If we don’t acknowledge all of what’s going on, we’re talking about a world that doesn’t exist. Transforming the world is already hard enough. How can we transform it if we don’t acknowledge all of it?”
Expanding the dialogue circle
Over the years, NOS has come to use the dialogue circle configuration in increasingly varied ways, “as a way to experience diversity, and as a way to collectively share our enlarging vision” as Gutiérrez puts it. They have even become accustomed to bringing in visitors.
At a recent event focused on addressing the local fishing economy, a group of economists, including some very wealthy donors, came to NOS’s office and participated in a dialogue circle. “We use the circle more and more as a way to incorporate not only NOS and El Manglito personnel, but also key members of the larger community,” Gutiérrez says. “This is critical. Without those people present, none of our achievements could endure.”
Over the years, circle practices like check-ins have become foundational in collectively shifting the quality of the conversations that take place, as well as the quality of relationships and shared commitment that arises from them. “The feedback has been that people can feel the difference it creates in the space. At the beginning, they might be a bit uncomfortable when a weird moment arises. But over time, the quality of conversations that can take place in the circle steadily improves.”
Circles also become settings for regular practice with learning tools. Without regular places to practice, real capacity building is not possible. Just like in sports or the performing arts, people need practice fields or rehearsal spaces to really gain the benefits from learning tools that might otherwise just be introduced in workshops and then forgotten. “Within the circle space, we can employ the ladder of inference, the iceberg model, and the four-player model,” says Gutiérrez.
“For example, the later involves four roles one can play in any conversation: the proponent, the opponent, the follower, and the observer. We have learned that, to be transformative, the four roles must each be fulfilled, and fulfilled well. Most times, people tend to identify more with one of the four, like someone who always is proposing or advocating something, or another who is always observing, but we have found that when these roles change fluidly there is more potential to produce a transformative conversation. Sometimes in a conversation, you have to deliberately play a role you are not comfortable in, like me playing the opposer if that role is not present. This means shifting habits, which is difficult, but we need to do this so each of us experiences these different roles and together we can create balancing dynamics in the conversation that might otherwise be missing.”
Linking the circle with the external
One natural question that arises when people encounter statements like this is: “What does all of this have to do with action and results? Can’t all this attention on reflection and team dynamics become self-absorbed—a lot of talk for its own sake?” Gutiérrez has watched this risk play out and knows that it is real.
“If you’re not fully present, it can become a risky journey. You can end up in a very self-centered process. Something like that happened to NOS in the past 2-3 years. We produced beautiful things but whenever we become overly centered on ourselves or overly centered on NOS we got derailed. Personal reflection is not useful by itself. It has to be paired with what we are giving to the external [world].” For Gutiérrez, this evokes “the infinity shape that symbolizes inner and outer exchange….We have to take full responsibility for ourselves so that everything arising inside goes outside into our mission and our context.”
Harkening back to Robles’s initial insight into the shortcomings of rigid structures in fluid change contexts, Gutiérrez believes one key to building longer-term capacity for observing reality more and more accurately lies in practices like the dialogue circle to foster “individual and collective ability for suspending mental models.” She believes this is crucial “in order to observe and notice the changes within us and around us, to challenge our own sacred assumptions, and to take full responsibility for the change that is produced, for better or worse.” It is commonplace for organizations to aspire to continually learn and adjust to their shifting realities, but often the rhetoric vastly outweighs the results. For Gutiérrez, NOS is able to practice deep learning because of their ongoing work “to let go of some things that are not easy to let go of.” This letting go “needs to be produced within ourselves and within our context, and must be based on a harmony between inner and outer change.” She talks of “getting to a place” where letting go is more possible. This “particular place” she speaks of has deep meaning to her as a state of being “to inhabit.” She adds, “the ego disturbs that place. NOS disturbs that place. Over-identification to any one image disturbs that place. We must get rid of definitions and ideologies that try to control us. If we can find silence, we can go back to that place almost every day.
“We need to be able to be aware in this way, and to test that awareness every day. Just knowing this is possible is the first step to being more present in the mind and soul. It’s the first step to truly being committed to change and transformation. I am in full service of that mission, and I know the barriers that can prevent me from being in full service of that mission.”