January 21, 2021

Reflecting

(Acting)

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941)

Insanity can be defined as repeating the same process over and over again expecting different results. Think about a time when you found yourself struggling or stuck in a rut trying to respond to a design brief, becoming increasingly frustrated and discouraged. No one likes to be there. It busts our confidence, weakens our resolve, and tempts us to collapse in apathy or overwhelm. We might try a variety of different approaches to achieve our objective, coming at it from different angles, trying different techniques, taking the advice of this or that expert or friend. We may persist with our efforts for hours or even years, even though the results are meager or nonexistent, always looking for that new angle that’s going to be the one. Then one day, without even trying, like a bolt from the blue, it hits us — that creative problem we’ve been trying so hard to solve is suddenly reframed in such a striking way that it will never look the same. Things fall into place. We’ve just experienced a shift from a behavioral to a strategic approach to challenge.

The present moment is the only moment we will ever have. We’ve heard this many times and yet if it’s so important, why is it so hard to get there? The process of learning to relax our habits of mind and to let go of our mechanical responses and behaviors in that state of relaxed, open availability called “beginner’s mind” can be elusive. Living in the present is a state of heightened awareness. In the space of awareness, we tend to notice our reflexive patterns and habits of mind and action. In such a state we have the capacity to lean into life with joy and spontaneity while also observing. But why do we want to be here now? And if we’re not here now, then where are we?

We’re probably suffering. Because consciousness is an emergent space of pure potential, being present is a necessary condition for experiencing the pleasure of full participation in life. When we experience this kind of separation, we feel isolated or cut off from the world. The tendency toward dualisms that separate self from world, consciousness from body, subject from object is a deep collective habit, a way we enact our humanity, usually described as a legacy of the Western Enlightenment. While it’s one thing to cognize mind-body dualism and its consequences, it’s quite another thing to dance with these fragmented ways of Being in daily life. Designing agency rests on embodied, enworlded cognition. Who we are being, and how we are being, has decisive influence upon not just what we think and do, but what we deem thinkable and doable.

Because this is such a profound and pervasive quandary of human being, there are innumerable paths and methods describing countless frameworks for cultivating present awareness, turning up the volume and enhancing the contrast in order to Be Here Now. One can retreat to silent meditation for stilling the body and quieting the mind. Our perhaps you prefer yoga, walking or martial arts as a way of bringing mind and body into sync. Still other approaches make no special preparations are rituals, preferring instead to embed lifelong practices of the cultivation of conscious awareness within the ordinary flotsam and jetsam of daily experience. Of these such methods, one of the most influential is Action Inquiry, a disposition toward constant moment-to-moment awareness in action as the basis of lifelong learning and development. Building on various models of action research (Argyris, Heron, Lewin, Cooperider, Friere, Varela) Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership, the influential book by Bill Torbert and Associates, heightens awareness of the fact that we are always in action and we are always in inquiry— whether we are conscious of this fact or not. The organic cycles of empirical discovery, reflection, behavior modification and action that constitute a living dialogue with our world are experienced as one seamless flow. Action Inquiry articulates the component movements in this flow in order to give us tools to become more present and engaged. In giving us a model that is simple, yet by no means easy, Action Inquiry equips us for a lifetime of self empowered adaptive learning forming basis from which we can co-learn, and co-create.

Organizational development pioneer Chris Argyris, studied design in the context of the organization. In particular he wanted to understand how individuals and collectives volitionally intend (design) their actions in response to environmental conditions and in order to achieve certain results, and how these results in turn influence subsequent intentions and actions (designs). Argyris developed an action research method called Action Science, that classifies these adaptive learning cycles as single-loop and double-loop learning. Single-loop learning, as illustrated in the example above, is limited to behavioral adaptations and incremental fixes and improvements. Double-loop learning is a higher order learning cycle involving strategic or theoretical reframes and adaptations. Torbert and Associates then built on this research in their book Action Inquiry, adding a third type of adaptive learning cycle — triple-loop learning, a higher order learning cycle involving adaptations to one’s core purpose or very identity. As an active practice that becomes a way of being, Action Inquiry can be the basis of a lifelong awareness practice in single- (tactical), double- (strategic), and triple-loop (ontological) learning modes. Through regular practice, the training wheels of the Action Inquiry model give way to a fluid disposition toward whatever is arising. It develops the capacity to live in the present moment, to enhance curiosity, to expand awareness, and to relax habitual behaviors, forming the basis of lifelong learning. This book, Design Being is an invitation to Action Inquiry. By attending to the conscious mode of Being, each gloss/meditation invites adaptive learning at the levels of behavior, thought and identity. A triple-loop learning in design would concern not just how, but who, what and why we are being as design.

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