about what I do

Change in practice

I support change efforts, especially around societal challenges such as climate, education, and health care. My work is rarely limited to organizational change itself: we address internal changes only when they are needed to create greater impact externally. I always work with those involved, not for them. I do not take over what they can do themselves and I strengthen their ability to handle more over time. That is why I prefer to work in contexts where people are willing and able to take responsibility for their own learning.

In practical terms, I stay involved in several such change efforts over multiple years. I also coach change agents on the job, but behind the scenes. I conduct research into extraordinary practices that offer much to learn from. And I am open to experiments: exploring how something might work, especially when something remarkable could grow from it. I look for a mix of these four kinds of work.

Wise counsel for practice
Increasingly, I also offer advice and reflection as an engaged outsider. Think of a standing role on a council or think tank, serving as an expert to a citizens’ assembly, or acting as a mentor in residence. Sometimes I fulfill a similar role in more fleeting contexts: as a guest at the table or as a speaker on stage. I see all these as risky roles, precisely because of their distance from practice and the fleetingness of a public stage. Before you know it, you may find yourself preaching what others should do or flattening complexity into an inspiring tale.

Wisdom, to me, lies less in what I know and more in puzzling along with some modesty: listening to and connecting with the experiences of those involved, helping them take a closer look, make sense of what we see, stretch their thinking, and explore possibilities. Preferably, I do this not alone, but with others who look on from different angles. Yet what those involved discover through inquiry in their own practice remains the most reliable; the choices to be made are theirs too. Wise counsel does not stand above practice or lead it; it supports practice while challenging it.