Walking the Edge

The team I work with had a fantastic workshop a couple of weeks ago with Margaret Wheatley. She was visiting the UK and whilst here she spent a day with us looking at how we build meaningful community. It was an inspiring day.

One phrase has lingered with me long after the workshop:

Edge Walkers

The words resonated with me the first time she used them. It was a beautiful articulation of the space I have been working myself into in recent years. Now – that sounds pretentious when I say it. But please trust me when I say that it is not meant in that way. It is just a description of the journey I have been following as I work out where I want to be in the work that I do to be of service.

In recent years I have found greater courage through the support of others around me:

• to push out to the boundaries
• to trust my intuition when I think that something is worth exploring
• to take things from other sectors or situations and try them out in the space I am in
• to take risks
• to challenge the status quo
• to rip down all the things that we do just because we have always done them

It was an emotional experience to hear someone whose writings I deeply respect, describing where I am and what I am doing in two simple words – Edge Walkers.

That was the first part of the message for me. The second part was equally important. She said that if we choose to walk the edge, we need to ensure that we have support. This is as important as the journey out to the edge. If we don’t build strong support we won’t last the journey.

This is something I have worked hard to build around me since the challenging days of the late 90s and early 00s when I was doing a part-time PhD and finding new ways to express what I was seeing around me. The mechanisms I built around me, which I wrote about here – have been the basis for what I have now. As a team, we have a strong core, and then we have beyond that a Faculty of Associates that ensures that we are supported as we venture out to the edge and look out beyond the boundaries of what we think is possible.

Who do you look to for this support? Who is there for you? Who watches your back whilst you look outwards to the unknown?