Seeing More

After the long autumn of summer’s hanging on, refusing to accept the inevitability of fading warmth; suddenly winter is upon us. The wind tears at the few leaves left yellowing on their branch. Around the tops, snow can be seen blurring the edge between hill and heavens. The firewood piled high months ago, now gathers in wicker baskets for the hearth. All around is the bleakness of withering decay and yet silent dormancy. Hidden beneath, life lies waiting for the spring sun’s warm return. In the sap and the seed and its slow living. 

Every possibility lies quietly waiting, ready for its time. Waiting to be seen.

Have you ever wondered about the mechanism of seeing? Why it is that sometimes, somethings can be so obvious to some, yet completely invisible to others. Why things so valuable to some can be so quickly dismissed by others. Each of us, seemingly living in different worlds. Each bringing a different sense of reality into our own work and life. Then arguing about what’s to be done, while each resolutely looks out from different windows in different buildings in different places.

How can we learn to see together, more accurately and more deeply.

It surprises me that one of the great challenges for people today is how we develop our collective capacity, or faculty, to really see together. To see a collective reality that we can all agree. To see beneath - to what lies dormant or latent or invisible in our lives and our organisations. To see the hidden value, root causes and the latent potential. To see beyond the ephemeral ‘today’ and into our eternal and emerging ‘future’. To see through and with time. To see the movement in the living world. And, of course to see what we should do about it.

Often it is our very ‘seeing’ that is compromised.

It can be profound to realise just how poorly we see. Seeing only what we chose to see. Seeing always through the lens we chose – our own assumptions, filters, beliefs, identity and intentions. Seeing that is always shaped by what we bring to it and who we are being and where we see from. Also, perversely noticing not what is there, but what isn’t! Seeing more easily the absence of our well-intentioned but wishful thinking. We often see a lackof leadership, a lackof communication, a lackof constructive culture, a lackof engagement, a lackof ‘proper’ method, a lackof discipline and performance, etc. Talking with ourselves and with others about what’s notthere, rather than coming face-to-face with whatis there.

Seeing more clearly what ‘isn’t there’ can be a big problem!

Perhaps in less turbulent times, inadequacies in our ways of seeing were less problematic. We could get away with it - misunderstanding, misconstruing, ignoring - because the tide was, generally, coming in. Every boat rising with the tide. Now in many ways environmentally, socially, organisationally, economically and culturally - the tide seems on its way out. Our current ways of seeing are being exposed, left stranded on the drying sands of our times. With puzzling, unintended and destructive outcomes impacting the future of our organisations, society, even life. But do we ever stop to consider that it might be our way of seeing that is complicit in the many challenges we face as a humanity?

How can we develop our capacity to see more acutely and more wholly, in a rapidly changing world.

Seeing is always related to our own consciousness. The more conscious or mature we become, the more we notice, the more aware we become. Have you noticed, that you now notice things, that you wouldn’t have noticed 10 or 20 years ago. That your ways of seeing or noticing, have evolved and expanded over time. That you now see more, perhaps without even being aware of it, without even trying. What is the underlying mechanism for evolving our own seeing, I wonder?

We’re going to suggest that we can become more conscious of the evolution of our own seeing. And take a responsibility for evolving, developing and expanding our capacity to see. To do this we need to put aside our methods, our concepts, our prescriptions and our frameworks. The formula, the calculation. The time will come when they will be useful again. But for now, we can learn to create a little space to pay a little more attention, to our attention. That we can develop our patience for allowing an authentic meaning to emerge, to reveal itself – without rushing to make superficial or false meaning. So that we can see into and describe what is really there. We can develop a rigorous practice of wonder and reflection. Developing our capacity to see the facts, the patterns, the movements and the living forces that shape our thinking and behaviours in our organisations. Seeing the relationships between what lies at the surface. That subtly but powerfully shape our very being in this world. 

In these times of grinding reactive action. Of never stopping. Of never resolving our deeper dysfunctions. Of exhausting ourselves and our resources, while remaining resolutely exactly where we were, just worse off! It’s time to remember Martin Bunge's saying.

The more we see, the less we have to do and the more impact we can have.

Take some moments now, as we sit around our winter fires in the dark and stillness of our winter nights. To reflect on how we really see ourselves and our world. Set down our actions plans and incessant doing for a moment. Be present to what lies hidden beneath the surface of right here, right now. Wait for its insight to emerge. 

There really is less to do than we imagine.

Bernie & Kim