January 21, 2021

Responding

(Predicting)

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Charles Darwin

“It is the sensing of the inherent sacrality and significance of being and beings that graces (and greases) our attunement to where and how we are called to act in any given moment.” Michael Schwartz

If I were to ask, “do you want to contribute to the design of structural transformations that will support the emergence of a just and flourishing society?” do you physically feel the “uh huh” or “unh uh” in your sacrum? In your solar plexus? In your first chakra or root center? Do you get that embodied felt sense of yes, or no? In the Human Design system (a typology of differentiation) this bodily response belongs to the Generator type - (the majority of human beings) - who are evolutionarily wired to respond moment-by-moment in word, thought and deed. Sensing from the sacral center, our response to the moment is palpable and therefore with time and practice it can become trustable. This earned self-knowledge and self-trust is what in Human Design is called sacral authority. Sacral authority is a bodily felt sense - a yes or no - of moment-to-moment individual choice-making. Sacral authority immediately discerns whether to move toward or away from. Great designers know this fundamentally responsive stance inside out. As a perception-in-action process (Tschimmel) designing actually cultivates embodied presence, embodied or tacit knowing, and the responsivity from which we, as designers, say “yes” to the signals and cues all around us. Our yes is only meaningful if it’s freely chosen. Saying yes does not mean being agreeable to everything. Nor does it mean papering over difficulty with a happy face. Saying yes is an active stance in favor of possibility and in a spirit of inquiry. This active stance must be embodied because our body is the becoming by which values arise and are enacted. From this embodied stance we have access to trans-rational mind, access to the intuition or “gut instinct” as well as the heart-mind, the seat of consciously embodied compassion. Do you say yes? And if so, under what conditions? What situations inspire your availability to serve, and your commitment? The world presents us with so much pain. There is much to say no to. Yet it’s important to remain capable of generating our own yes. Saying yes and, gives fledgling ideas a chance to incubate and be tested. For designers creating within the contingent contexts of complex problems such as climate change, and environmental and resource crises, it’s about a stance that is capable of saying yes life, moment to moment. Being available. Being for things rather than against things. Being proactive rather than reactive. Allowing novelty to emerge rather than resisting what is. In The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters, author Peter Block unpacks the stance that says “yes” to work and life in ways that are really relevant to designing. He explains how being overly focused on the means of achieving a goal (the how) can keep us stuck in limiting patterns. He advocates opening up personal and collective choice in the workplace by shifting our focus to what we value (the why). <Improvising - Planning> Dynamic steering is a practice for cultivation of the real time embodied presence from which designers can confidently respond yes, no, or maybe to the important choice points that we face throughout our day. Suitable to today’s workplaces, dynamic steering along with other similar approaches to agile business practices, is replacing linear planning models and command-and-control management practices because it foregrounds the inevitability of change over prediction or planning. Dynamic steering is foundational to Holacracy a social technology for organizational self-governance. In a dynamically steered organization, decisions are dynamic and provisional and subject to the emergence of better decisions. If a response serves the flourishing of the system, it is healthy (in that instance). If a response meets the anticipated needs of the future it is healthy (in that instance). The premise is that a dynamic stance toward solving problems and making decisions allows us the benefit of responding to up-to-the-minute information in constantly changing contexts of mutuality. Dynamic steering means making the most responsible choices, based on contextual and somatic intelligence, at the “last responsible moment” meaning no sooner than necessary.

Dynamic steering is a 21st-century managerial partner to design thinking because it aligns administrative and logistical practices with the dynamically iterative nature of design thinking methodologies that demand revisiting a situation in continuous adapting and revising. Dynamic steering is a biomimicry approach in being based on cooperations between holons that co-constitute a system that is never static, never complete. In privileging the best decision at the “last responsible moment”, dynamic steering provides designers with the ability to pivot, to be iterative and agile, not just with design prototyping but in all ways, behaviorally interpersonally, organizationally. Whether on the individual or collective level, dynamic steering is an act of steering consciousness. Emphasizing the inherent power of our responsive capacity to choose, dynamic steering brings conscious responsivity to the potential yes or no of the present moment. Who coined the term dynamic steering? Citation?

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