Ep. 92 Miki Kashtan and Emma Quayle from NGL on the capacity lens as a path to reinvent ourselves and our organisations
Feb 1, 2024
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Miki and Emma from NGL discuss reinventing organizations through the capacity lens, moving from coercion to tenderness. They explore topics like fairness, leadership in a bossless environment, and avoiding burnout. The episode offers valuable insights for those facing societal challenges.
The capacity lens enables organizations to shift power dynamics by recognizing and utilizing individual and collective capacities.
Starting with current capacity limits and focusing on strengths can help organizations avoid overwhelm and build resilience.
Deep dives
Capacity Lens: Uncovering Realistic Paths for Organizational Change
The capacity lens provides a practical approach for organizations aiming to shift traditional power dynamics by realistically assessing where they are and what's possible. By acknowledging individual and collective capacities, organizations can avoid burnout, address power dynamics, and make conscious decisions about roles, resources, and leadership.
Embracing Baby Steps in Organizational Transformation
The podcast emphasizes the importance of starting with where you are and acknowledging your current capacity limits when embarking on organizational transformations. By focusing on manageable steps and recognizing individual and collective capacities, organizations can avoid overwhelming challenges and build resilience through gradual progress.
Viewing Capacity Limits as Information to Foster Organizational Growth
The capacity lens encourages organizations to see capacity limits not as deficiencies but as valuable information for decision-making. By reframing limitations as sources of insight and focusing on strengths, organizations can make conscious choices, honor diverse capabilities, and enhance collective resilience.
Creating Collaborative Spaces within Traditional Organizations
In traditional organizations, individuals can leverage their sphere of influence to introduce collaborative practices and foster resilience. By cultivating strong relational skills, promoting shared purposes, and implementing robust feedback mechanisms, individuals can Navigate organizational constraints and drive positive change within their spheres of influence.
Miki is the seed founder and Emma a founding member of the Nonviolent Global Liberation community (NGL), which runs entirely as a gift economy. They and NGL as a whole are knee-deep in visionary experimentation about what it would take to realign humanity with life through online and community living experiments.
Even without bosses we can still struggle to embody new ways of being together because of our internalised systems of patriarchal conditioning and capitalist thinking. The capacity lens gives us a way to examine this and make more conscious choices together. As Miki puts it, “Everyone who gets into it falls in love with it, because it moves us from rigidity to flexibility, from predictability to emergence, from coercion to willingness, from judgement to tenderness. Who wouldn't want that?”
An incredibly valuable episode if you are wrestling with topics like fairness, how to distribute tasks and roles, leadership in a bossless environment, how to avoid burnout or how to deal with overwhelm in the face of huge societal challenges.