Change is a black hole
I have been trying to promote change in the world as long as I remember. During the first 30 years of my life I got paid in physical beatings, social mobbing, psychological torture, moral judgement ... even jail when I was 17 for demonstrating against death penalty.
When I was 30 – that’s 35 years ago – I got paid my first fee as a consultant in change.
I have called myself a consultant all these years, but in retrospective I understand that I have always tried to use my consulting to channel the same pathos that compelled me to promote change in the world already in my youth.
During all these years I have tried to understand the nature of change and what we can do to make it happen. In frenzied hubris, believing I had understood it, I wrote a book with detailed instructions ...
But having seen what I have seen in these 30+ years of profession, I have concluded that change is like a black hole: we know what happens in its proximity, but don’t have a clue about what happens inside.
Moreover, I begin to believe that no-body (person, team, organization, ...) that goes into the black hole and comes back — not every-body comes back — can explain what happened in the transformation itself, except maybe in poetry and other art forms.
Nevertheless, there are #practices that anybody who wants to promote change in the world can do to approach the event horizon around the black hole with sanity.
I propose three:
A philosophical/spiritual practice that explains life at the fringes of the mystery of change, without ever attempting to explain the mystery itself.
A personal practice to intentionally approach, embrace and experience the mystery, without ever understanding it, ... and of jumping into it when the time is ripe.
A professional practice to support others (people, organizations, communities, ...) to be what they are and do what they do in the field that has the mystery of change at its center, ...
This will allow you to take the step into the unknowable and to stand by others when the time is ripe for them to jump.
If you persevere in these practices, you will eventually be able to promote change with more impact, less pain ... and maybe with some joy.
This is the first photo of a black hole ...
When I was 30 – that’s 35 years ago – I got paid my first fee as a consultant in change.
I have called myself a consultant all these years, but in retrospective I understand that I have always tried to use my consulting to channel the same pathos that compelled me to promote change in the world already in my youth.
During all these years I have tried to understand the nature of change and what we can do to make it happen. In frenzied hubris, believing I had understood it, I wrote a book with detailed instructions ...
But having seen what I have seen in these 30+ years of profession, I have concluded that change is like a black hole: we know what happens in its proximity, but don’t have a clue about what happens inside.
Moreover, I begin to believe that no-body (person, team, organization, ...) that goes into the black hole and comes back — not every-body comes back — can explain what happened in the transformation itself, except maybe in poetry and other art forms.
Nevertheless, there are #practices that anybody who wants to promote change in the world can do to approach the event horizon around the black hole with sanity.
I propose three:
A philosophical/spiritual practice that explains life at the fringes of the mystery of change, without ever attempting to explain the mystery itself.
A personal practice to intentionally approach, embrace and experience the mystery, without ever understanding it, ... and of jumping into it when the time is ripe.
A professional practice to support others (people, organizations, communities, ...) to be what they are and do what they do in the field that has the mystery of change at its center, ...
This will allow you to take the step into the unknowable and to stand by others when the time is ripe for them to jump.
If you persevere in these practices, you will eventually be able to promote change with more impact, less pain ... and maybe with some joy.
This is the first photo of a black hole ...