The 5 ‘Breaths’ of Design

Over the years many hosts saw their work with different (larger scale) initiatives as a follow-up of different ‘breaths’, different phases of divergence and convergence. They became know as the Five Breaths. As we learn, in reflection on the work that we do, it is most likely that this pattern will gain more clarity in the months and years to come…

 

First breath: CALL

• Name the issue – calling the core question – birth of the callers.

• We noticed that there is always ‘a caller’, the person who holds deeply a question, a problem, a challenge. Sometimes there are a few callers. They will invite the host(s) to help them.

• Wise Action: Focus the chaos of holding the collective uncertainty and fear. Step into the center of the disturbance

• Don’t: Move too fast

• Question: What is really at stake here? What if some of us worked together to surface the real question and need that matters to the community?

• When the caller has reached the commitment to call the process, we go to the next phase.

Second breath: CLARIFY

 

• Creating the Ground: Callers and hosts create collective clarity of purpose and principles 1.0.

• Wise Action: Engagement

• Don’t: Make assumptions

• Question: How to get from need to purpose? What is our purpose? How to see and feed the group value?

• This phase goes to the next when the clarity emerges from the core.

Third breath: INVITE

 

• Giving Form and Structure: Design and invitation process

• Wise Action: Check in again and again to see if your design and invitation serve the purpose.

• Don’t: Try to do too much in your design (match it to the purpose).

• Question: How do we create an inspired invitation (process) that moves people to come? How do we let go of our expectations that certain people need to be there?

• This phase goes to the next when the design is made, the invitation process has brought a larger group of stakeholders, organisation has found a good space: time to meet!

Fourth breath: MEET

 

• Meeting – Conversation

• Our role is hosting the group, the purpose, and the questions.

• Don’t: Go alone.

• Question: How can I best serve as the instrument/container to allow the collective wisdom?

• When done the group of stakeholders find collective meaning and start to co-create.

Fifth breath: ACT

 

• Practice: Acting out the decided wise actions. Follow-up—Continued Learning and Leading from the Field

• Wise Action: Always come back to purpose.

• Don’t: Lose sight of the purpose or it won’t be embodied.

• Question: How do we sustain the self-organization?

• Here the seed of community gets born, and the results are a connectedness between the stakeholders and wiser actions.

• From here the next calling question arises…