I’ve been in the process of a lot of movement recently and it has caused me to reflect on the role of our intentions and the forms life takes. I’ve found in most work projects that our goals and the concrete ways these goals are expressed are often confused. It seems that most often we end up spending inordinate amounts of energy on the forms and lose track of the intentions or goals or core ideas that drive the project or our lives. Here are two potent examples.
An example of this form and content dance is an ecological community restoration project. We have had a diverse group of ’stakeholders’ working together for the past seven years to lead a ‘green street meets main street’ project. No one knew it would take this long and there have been many times where people have gotten worn down and wondered if we would ever get this built and if so what would this look like. I’ve found one of my primary roles on this project has been to keep this very diverse group strongly connected to our core intentions around creating both a ‘green’ street and ‘main’ street. The trick is we don’t know exactly what this looks like or the forms it can take. But what we have been able to do is explore all sorts of possibilities and come back to our core intention and see if it fits, if the possible forms are congruent with the shared vision we have.
This is a delicate dance as we need both the intentions/values/visions and the forms/structures/shapes that give our goals expression. But, remembering and being true to our core and allowing forms to evolve is great accomplishment. I’m reminded again of my favorite principle around strategic planning, create a plan and hold it lightly.
Reflection: Think of a challenge you are working with and notice where you may be getting sidetracked by over emphasis on what things should look like? Then you can notice how coming back to your core intentions and goals as the foundation can help you reimagine future possibilities