Why Collective Transitions?
Core Assumptions Behind our Work
(Published on Medium by Luea Ritter November 4, 2019)
Collective Transitions is bringing the tools of the subtle and nature-based wisdom traditions into the world of systemic change, social innovation, and business. As an action research and learning hub, we are refining and developing new methods for groups, networks and facilitators to navigate societal shifts, both as individuals and collectives. We offer a space where groups can focus on the how of social transformation work, rather than only the who, what, or why.
We launched in October 2019.
When people started to ask us about what we do and why, we noticed that we were giving different answers, depending on the context. So as part of our launch, it felt important to make a list of the fundamental assumptions that guide our work, to make these more transparent to our potential clients and collaborators, but also to ourselves.
Our beliefs, values and assumptions are often kept in the realm of the unconscious and subconscious. At Collective Transitions, we support the process of bringing these assumptions into the realm of the conscious. We’ve noticed that this process helps people and teams feel a greater sense of freedom, flexibility, alignment and spaciousness within their activities.
In an effort to “walk our talk,” we made the following list of reasons that Collective Transitions exists and assumptions on which our work is based. These are the sparks that ignite our fire, gleaned from years of experience in the international field of societal transformation. We invite you to dive into the deeper motivation for this work:
We (by and large) are not fully using our collective potential and intelligence.
Too often we act out of a sense of numbness and urgency versus awareness and right timing.
There is a need to re-establish a shared sense of responsibility for all life.
The social change sector is undergoing a shaky moment, meeting the limits of its tools and methods to hold the complexity and intensity it encounters. It is as if this field is upgrading its own operating system.
We sometimes use sophisticated techniques to pretend that we have switched to new patterns, but old trauma-informed patterns are often hiding beneath.
We cannot permit ourselves to be inattentive, wishy-washy, sloppy or fuzzy.
Using our minds only has long failed us. It is time to activate and combine our many ways of knowing.
There is underestimated power in working with intention.
Our collective body requires us to train our collective muscles.
It’s time for a new form of leadership — conscious, shared and coherent.
It’s time to use our ability to read consciously between the lines, and trace the interrelated connections.
We are inter-relational beings that only when in true and recognized relationship can flourish into our unique contributions.
It’s time to remember how to learn in an iterative and cyclical way.
Focusing on only one point in a system makes the whole fragile.
This work requires a fine balance between pressure, structure and movement.
Intuitive knowing needs to be actively invited, otherwise it stays dormant and unused.
It’s time to allow a shared body of wisdom — across contexts, sectors, geographies, and beliefs — to arise (again).
It’s time to invite the intangible to our side (again).
It’s time to be honest with ourselves and each other as we refine the HOW we do WHAT we do.
It’s time to — and there is great urgency — let go and transform our unhealthy, deeply ingrained and institutionalized social patterns.
We shall take the time to get the essential questions right.
We shall scale deep, rather than scale up.
We shall restore relationships and reconnect with nature, place, and people.
We shall heal history and get wise to our cultural inheritance.
We shall develop our collective capacities and practices for navigating complexity.
We shall create spaces for cross-sector collaboration and learning.
Building collective capacity for presencing allows us to sense into the next gentle steps and tap into the power of emergence.
It’s time. Shall we?