Sensing the Water

John Kania, Mark Kramer, and Peter Senge opened their important framework for systems change with a joke.  It’s a joke we’ve heard before about two fish swimming along cheerfully when one fish asks the other fish, “How’s the water?”  This simple question leaves the other fish momentarily stunned.  In a state of confusion the other fish asks, “What water?” 

We laugh because the fish's exchange is silly.  But maybe we laugh also because the exchange rings true to us. It’s familiar.  The joke reminds us that we work and develop in environments that have become so familiar to us that we hardly notice them.  Our university culture, our library culture, our technology firm culture, our public school culture, our government culture, our early childhood education culture, our social services culture, our business culture – wherever we work, the culture is so routine for us, so familiar, that we often fail to notice it.  Until we bump into it, that is.  We don't notice the water we swim in until we bump into it.  Until it starts to give us unexpected results, sometimes very undesirable results.

Many of us are working together in spaces where people are bumping into the water they swim in, bumping into the cultures of their organizations and the larger systems in which their organizations are embedded.  We want change.  We want improvements.  And, we suspect that improvement will not come from the outside like an avenging hero.  Improvement is something that we will create together with tools we already use and new tools that will help us to build new understandings.   

Sensing the Water is a collection of short essays that explore mindsets, tools, and processes that help us to design the systems that benefit our communities.