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 contentedly when Fish One asks Fish Two, “How’s the water?”  This simple question leaves Fish Two momentarily stunned.  In a state of confusion Fish Two asks, “What's water?” 

We laugh because the exchange between Fish One and Fish Two is silly.  They must know what water is.  The fish swim in water all day.  But maybe we laugh also because the exchange rings familiar to us.  The joke reminds us that we work and develop in environments that have become so familiar to us that we hardly notice them.  Our community culture, our government culture, our corporation 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.  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 delivered by a 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 systems mindsets, tools, and processes in preparation to design the systems that benefit our communities.