I’m sure you know what a traffic jam is!
I will propose that our willingness to endure gridlock is directly linked to the power of the corporate world in the next Chapter.
But a humble traffic jam is slightly different to gridlock. It is usually the result of a higher number of cars coming up to traffic lights than the number of cars that the lights will let through when green.
If we look at this from a need and resource point of view the need to get traffic through is greater than the resource which is the length of time the traffic light stays green. This causes more and more cars to back up behind; and therefore the jam.
This is analogous to difficult human problems like supporting families in distress, or child protection, or crime prevention or homelessness and similar, (or even the passport office, A+E departments, or post offices at Christmas) where people mostly encounter long waiting times as a result of there not being enough practitioners to deal with the number of people presenting.
That is to say, the need is always much greater than the resource.
This has been the case since I got involved in this kind of work – and I have no great confidence that resources will be increased significantly soon. Nor have I a lot of confidence that our country will change to the extent that major societal inequalities and similar problems that are causative factors in respect of the need will be eradicated in the foreseeable future.
Inclusion of people within the extended family, or community, goes some way to solve this age-old problem.
Because if we are in the community and of the community and we have a real stake in the solution, we will:
1. Hear a lot more of the real stories. (As was noted in the Research referred to in the Summary in the previous post people share a lot more with each other than they do with people in organisations).
2. Usually have very high motivation – and be (probably) around for a long time.
3. Be better placed to include very hurt people in decision making, hearing their uncensored views. While being empowering this is also very educational.
4. Allow people the time they need to process change. This is important. In my experience practitioners in organisations always seem to be in a hurry.
5. Be more likely to take responsibility for decision making in respect of our own and our children’s well-being, because the decision-making is within ourselves.
6. Almost always have a much higher tolerance of discomfort – and a finely honed intuitive sense of the difference between discomfort and danger.
7. Have intuitive knowledge of what will work in alleviating suffering in members of our extended families.
8. Be well placed to assist external practitioners in building relationships – so long as practitioners are open to this.
And – very importantly:
9. Enable the root foundations, described in a later Sub-Chapter, to flourish in our community. Particularly emergence (we are part of the process of growth), identity, (pride in achievement and all that is good about our community), integration (enabling our community to become whole), consciousness, (fostering self-awareness), and time, as I referred to in 4 above.
So it stands to reason that easily the best people to help in easing the traffic jam referred to above, even offering, perhaps, alternative routes for traffic, are the responsible and wise people within the Focus Group referred to earlier. (This will be covered in more depth in Section Five, Practical Applications).
But truly tapping into the strength and wisdom that resides in communities, and not only facilitating but encouraging genuine and wholehearted involvement seems to be very difficult for the Pillars. The attitude seems to be that they have problems, we have to fix them, and until they’re fixed to a standard that we decide they’re not welcome to work among us.
For me it simply means that we practitioners have to be willing to open our hearts, take a certain amount of risk and then manage that risk.
And the principal risk is, of course, sharing power.