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HOME >> Find Your Interests
Useful "Meta" Patterns to Notice
You may find the following partial list of "meta" patterns useful to notice in your personal, organizational, and public lives. Perhaps you will consider the roles they play in your interests. Understanding why such patterns show up and designing methods to work with them - as compared to against them (or ignoring them) - is among the qualities that characterize all of ARINA's projects and educational programs.
In all social settings, decisions are being made all the time. They may be made unilaterally, may be covert or implicit, after public debate, in the "back room," or by consensus or some other process. Decisions are often divisive or result in unforeseen consequences. The discernible patterns of decision-making are related to the "voices" below (a crucial connection to understand).
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People working with social change processes, whether public or private, may want to learn which decision styles are "natural fits" with voices below, and why they are "mis-fits" for others.
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They may want to learn how to decide what kind of issue or situation needs which kind of decision-making style, and why.
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And they certainly may want to find out how all those voices impact decisions.
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ARINA has two learning opportunities (which we can bring you in the form of in-person workshops) that treat this critically important subject.
In the cultures of families, communities, societies, workplaces, organizations, legislatures, and international bodies there are "undiscussables." People working anywhere with individual and social change processes may want to understand what this pattern is about in themselves and others, and how it impacts and defeats efforts that do not address it. ARINA has two learning modules (which we can bring you in the form of in-person workshops) that treat this important subject.
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Integral Foundations for Individual and Social Change Agents
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Introduction to The Universal Tango of Developmental Processes tm
If you have been a trainer or participant in workshops, you may have noticed a pattern like this (which occurs in many other settings, too).
~ some participants don't "get it" (whatever the subject is)
~ some participants think they "get it" but there are clues they do not
~ some participants "get it" and may be quite excited at the discoveries without quite getting to the question of how to use them
~ some participants "get it" and may be thoughtfully exploring how they can put the to use
~ some participants leave dissatisfied because they already "had it" and had come hoping for something new
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Trainers might want to learn how to design workshops tailored to meet all participants where they are, so events are more useful to them and they come back for more..
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Tentative participants might want to learn how to detect if a workshop will meet their needs in advance of spending time and money.
Whether in a town hall meeting, international politics, a workplace, a faith community, a family, there are certain types of voices we can notice. (For example, in the U.S. two-party political system and in organized religions the labels "liberal" and "conservative" are often used to categorize two voices.) Depending on how diverse a social setting is, we may hear more or fewer voices similar to the following when issues arise.
~ a stance of desperation that may be inaudible
~ a conviction "those like us" must unite and "stick together" to preserve something vital to "us"
~ an attitude that wants to even the score because it's a win-or-lose world
~ a commitment to unwavering convictions about what is "right"
~ logical convictions that are something like this: "If point A gets to point B like this, then of course Point B will get us to point C like that;" where solutions are obvious and discussion is pointless unless it is strategically useful.
~ convictions and explorations that come to conclusions in a more indirect or complicated way, often using concrete-sounding terms when they refer to systems of concern rather than concrete "things" of concern, and there doesn't seem to be a straight-line logic like "if__, then __." It can be hard to hear where this voice's "bottom line" is on an issue.
~ understanding and valuing the full spectrum of all the foregoing experiences and convictions because a greater common good can be met only by doing so.
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People working anywhere with social change processes may want to learn how to listen for these distinct patterns and understand why the pattern exists and how it develops so their efforts are more effective.
Visioning plays an important role in the lives of individuals, organizations, communities, and at other social scales. Visions deal with what we want to see in the future. They do not articulate how to realize them. Many times, people move directly from a vision to task groups to implement it, as if implementing a vision was a "normal" project. Many times, efforts fizzle as energy and investment dissipate. This pattern repeats over and over in many settings. Why?
If visions portray a desired future, then there are long-term processes involved in getting from "here" to "there." Social systems at every scale change slowly. There are universal processes that must be gone through for such deep change to come about. Most people are unaware of those processes. Further, whether an individual or a group of any kind, the vision's "stakeholders" (usually everyone) must buy into it deeply enough to grapple with the competing tensions and priorities that go hand in hand with individual and social change toward a desired future. In most cases, people assume "stakeholders" will buy into good ideas. The reasons why they do not are related to those universal processes that must be gone through for such deep change to come about. We must understand social change better if we want to bring it about.
When these realities go unnoticed or unaddressed, efforts languish. The individual and social change of implementing a vision is more complex than concrete tasks like buying things. Thus, visioning at any scale should be followed by a well-designed integral approach that reveals the competing tensions and priorities that will sabotage the vision later if they are not grappled with early on. For individuals, integral coaching is a recommendation. For scales above the individual, a combination of ARINA's Paradigmatic Integration tm or FreshAir with scenario planning could fill this gap with the social knowledge and investments to follow visioning realistically, systemically, and fruitfully. No one wants their visions to die of abandonment.
SWOT analyses rest on assumptions that do not reflect the complex realities and systemic interconnections of operating in dynamic real life. Those assumption reflect a mindset that "we" are somehow in a separate orbit from the rest of the world. This leads to us vs. them thinking, where opportunities for us are juxtaposed with threats from them or "its." It ignores how or when we may represent threats to others, and how to factor that in.
Another mindset they reflect is that things are far more static and unchanging than is really so. This leads to listing strengths and weakness as if they are fixed in stone, rather than reflecting processes of interacting with the environment, ebbing and rising in diverse circumstances that should be explored and understood.
The SWOT mindset does not explore assumptions or worldviews about why something is perceived as an opportunity or threat, strength or weakness. It takes comfort in listing one-dimensional perceptions of static conditions and basing plans on them. Such lists can never substitute for solid, well-explored reasoning that accounts for systemic surroundings and impacts. These characteristics - and there are others - are leftovers from the mechanistic paradigm.
We don't abandon familiar ways of doing things overnight. SWOT analyses can be augmented and deepened with an integral approach that helps planners explore perceptions and assumptions, while developing the reasoning about conditions, interactions, and shared environments. A sustainable future will include moving toward revising traditional SWOT patterns to include the capacities for integral planning and analyses.
What other "meta" patterns have you encountered that we should add here?
Please know your specific suggestion and questions will help us aim specific material to your interests when you tell us about them. Please write to us.
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