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Designing Pathfinding Outfitters for a new time

Writer's picture: John O'BrienJohn O'Brien

Updated: Sep 13, 2023

Forces strong enough to drive evolution continue to challenge our capacities to adapt. Pandemic uncertainties, unexpectedly powerful responses to police violence against Black people, massive (and currently deadlocked) government economic interventions, heightened visibility of the condition of essential workers, haunting reminders of climate change, all interact. Closer to our Work* the resilience of people with developmental disabilities and their allies have demonstrated the power of the collective self-advocacy voice, the integrity of committed support relationships, the irrelevance of congregation in special buildings, the unnecessary restrictiveness of filling every moment with system required programs, and the utility of technologies previously avoided.


The positive potential in this field of forces can be realized to the extent that we collectively let go of what needs to die and organize to support the emergence of what wants to be born with our help. Letting go meets powerful impulses to hold on. The politics of wearing masks exemplifies the cultural struggle to let go and let come: some mask from a desire to protect the whole community while others deride them and refuse –even with threats of violence– what they see as an unjust encroachment on individual liberty.

Theory U shows us the choices that confronts us over and over again as we adapt to our changing environment. 1) We can download, maintaining the routines that tame our fears and allow us to cope with the demands of disrupted days. 2) We can practice absencing, accumulating trauma by holding on to power and privilege and the structures and stories that justify exclusion and control. 3) We can practice presencing, serving evolution by creating from deeper levels of listening to the calls of highest purpose.


Our differing circumstances reveal multiple calls to serve what more is possible. Family responsibilities engage us. Responsibility for life giving support to people and families that depend on our organizations for assistance, support, and employment demands for our best possible response. Conserving worthwhile new patterns of relationship and practice emerging from disruption against the mindless bureaucratic urge to resuscitate what is properly dying asks for attention. Making stronger organizational and personal alliances with anti-racism and intersectional movements pulls us across boundaries. And our Work is not nearly done to further develop our own organizational capacities to co-create self-directed individualized supports and broaden the influence of those who benefit from our efforts on the systems that could extinguish them.


What would make Pathfinding Outfitters a worthwhile investment in this time?

These are some reasons we identified to invest time, attention, and money in the next phase of Pathfinding Outfitter’s emergence.

  • Adapting to the demands and possibilities of the times is both an outer journey of influencing the world and an inner journey of developing ourselves to meet its challenges. Our experience in the first series of calls has demonstrated that virtual connections can inform the outer journey and support the inner journey by offering protected time for reflection, structuring conversations, and bringing together small groups with common interests. Effective ways to meet on line have emerged and so has a website and a newsletter, The role and contributions of hosts has become more clear, as has the worth of coaching for those who want to make better use of available media.

  • A number of us see a benefit in composing an intergenerational learning community that encourages mutual support, sense making and reflection. In some organizations this could be an element in management development and succession planning.

  • A sense of trust in one another has grown along with an appreciation of the many gifts that participants have to exchange. We have experienced the initial possibilities of “villaging” across timezones.

  • Experience shows us that ideas and perspectives from outside the world of disability can be the seeds of important possibilities. Theory U, Cynefin, The Art of Hosting, ABCD, Search, Design Thinking, and Beloved Economics are just a few sources of thinking and practices that already inform prototypes.

  • Many of us can identify other people and other organizations who would benefit from participation.

  • At the same time that Pathfinding Outfitters is emerging both Virtual TSI 2020 and the Presencing Institute are testing new possibilities for online gathering and learning. As it develops, Virtual TSI 2020 will be a source of connections and learning opportunities that will benefit Pathfinders and bring them into contact with a world-wide circle of people committed to inclusion. The Presencing Institute offers opportunities for a deeper understanding of Theory U, Social Presencing Theatre, and cultural transformation in an even more expansive circle of concern.

Questions of boundaries

As the first core group of organizations invest in the emergence of Pathfinding Outfitters there are boundaries to set.


First, expanding current boundaries to include and effectively support the active participation of people with disabilities.


Second, determining the identity of those in the core group. We feel the powerful social and system forces that trap us in a mode of accommodation –pressures to compromise what we know is right and effective, water down powerful guiding ideas and practices, and focus on conformity to lowest-common-denominator rules and regulations. We know the importance of mutual support from those who share common values and purpose to achieve and maintain fidelity to the mode of social invention that meets the demands of our times.


Some of us devote attention to changing the systems that contain and constrain us. Advocacy, teaching agencies that congregate and segregate about offering individualized supports to ways inclusive possibilities, helping young people and families to exercise self-direction for community engagement, all are worthwhile activities.


There seem to be at least two impulses to balance in deciding on the boundaries for the first core group of Pathfinders.


Some of us who are active in system change identify a sense of common values and focusing at the edge of realizing those values as a distinctive and welcome feature of Pathfinding Outfitters. Being able to go deeper into reflection and action on supporting inclusion and freedom in the face of social devaluation and bureaucracy without having to persuade others less committed to social invention suggests a boundary drawn to include people from organizations actively invested in continual transformation. In this context common values and common understanding of the work do not imply a narrow set answers. The ways to inclusion are diverse and common values describe a space open to dialogue among multiple perspectives. The boundary excludes organizations that have not yet made up their mind to find ways to let go of or avoid congregation and segregation.


On the other hand, a desire to avoid leaving out those who might be influenced pulls toward including those with an interest in sharing Pathfinding Outfitters activities. And an interest in intersectionality could argue for including core members from outside the work of offering support to people with developmental disabilities. There is concern to avoid the danger of becoming too inward focused.



Thanks to Hanns Meissner for the distinction between the mode of accommodation and the mode of social invention, to Chris Liuzzo for “villaging” as a useful word.

* Work with a capital W denotes the way we answer the call to act from highest purpose.

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chrisliuzzo
chrisliuzzo
Aug 07, 2020

John, thanks for this. It was Jack P who used "villaging"as a verb. I simply reported out.

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