On Change, pt 1

ALC Network Starter Kit addendum

There’s a section in the ALC Network Starter Kit called “Season Change and Maintenance,” which was added even though the guide was for teams just getting started for two main reasons. First, those of us working on the document realized that setting expectations and prompting folks to think long-term from the onset could ease a lot of struggles for them further down the road. It’s hard enough to meet certain kinds of change as a community leader; it’s even harder to do so when we’re surprised to find ourselves in that position. Second, feedback on the early versions of the Starter Kit taught us that there were families, seasoned facilitators, and various project advisors working with ALCs who used the guide to check their decision-making against as they faced new and evolving challenges in their ALC work. Adding this section, and a few others, hopefully expanded the amount of reference material they had to work with. Hopefully.

In recording audio versions of each chapter from the 2021 edition now, in 2024, there are plenty of adjustments – and typo fixes! – that I notice myself wanting to make. Mostly I resist. There will always be a benefit to taking a few months to produce a completely updated version of the Starter Kit. There’s a list of sections I would love to add, based on what we’ve been learning over the past few years. But rewriting the whole thing is a big project and three years after the last rewrite still feels a little too soon.

That said, in recording the section on change and maintenance, which feels particularly important from the current covid-ai-election-hurricane-etc. moment in the US and in the so-many-established-ALCs-evolving-themselves moment in the network, I was dissatisfied with it. It includes some solid content from various contributors, but it doesn’t touch on the aspects of change and maintenance work that I’m called on to perform or discuss most often. And that’s content that I want other projects to have.

So. Consider this to be not an update but an addendum. When I do consulting for organizations and coaching for individuals, here are some of the key things I mention that I would also put in the next version of the Starter Kit:

The only lasting truth is change. 

– Octavia Butler

Change! It’s coming for us, it’s coming regardless of us, it’s what brought us here, and here we are together in it. So now what?

In talking to project teams about their relationships with change, I often hear resistance and fear. There’s often denial that things are already changing, grasping for ways to maintain the illusion of certainty. Maybe it’s the overculture of the moment. Maybe we’re insecure, afraid of what’s coming and that we won’t be able to meet it well. Maybe it’s that changes are little deaths and acknowledging death is scary. Maybe humans just generally like comfort and control. Whatever the reasons, life keeps moving anyway. To whatever extent we can, we influence, prepare for, witness, and respond to constant changes in and around us. It can feel, sometimes, overwhelming.

Barry Lopez tells a story in Arctic Dreams about learning that icebergs sometimes roll and flip in the water, suddenly and dramatically disturbing everything around them before settling down again. This, to him, seems like it would be an exceptional event and a crisis for those impacted. A terrifying change. Something to be dreaded. But then he discovers the local guide he’s listening to doesn’t share this perspective. Yes, a rolling iceberg brings upheaval. And to know the place is to understand that they just do that sometimes. Occasional upheaval is an anticipated, prepared for, and collectively acknowledged part of life, not a disruption from outside of it. 

Mutual learning happens in the entropy; we need the confusion to release the new. 

– Nora Bateson

This perspective offers peace and spaciousness, but it demands learning to be at peace in uncertainty. When the times between upheavals are dedicated to lamenting what was and dreading what could be coming, there isn’t much energy left available for wonder and play. Without wonder and play, we lose access to hope and creativity we could otherwise be nurturing among individuals and collectives, losing also then the fruits that follow when hopeful and creative people can be self-expressed. Learning to expect cycles with change and also rest in the in-between times, accepting that at some unknown point in the future things will always spark, shudder, and then settle once again, helps us stay engaged and adaptable as we meet whatever futures unfold around us. With this more open and relaxed attention, we can learn to recognize rhythms and phases. We can notice the transformations that accompany each new iteration of a cycle. We can practice a kind of alchemy, creating rituals to help us make meaning of our lives and our relationships. There is, in murkiness and upheaval, exquisite possibility waiting for those of us who move through with acceptance rather than resistance.

If I never contradict myself then I’m either not thinking or I’m conciliating positions and, therefore, not growing.

There has to be a contradiction. 

– Nikki Giovanni