Edges of my Practice

I’ve nearly completed the manuscript for a short new book called ‘The Unreconciled Self – A Planetary Philosophy ’, and over the last couple of weeks have started sketching out ideas for the cover, and to set the style for the illustrations. I’m aiming for something informed by the art of architectural blueprints, botanical illustration, and landscape photography.

I am hoping (time allowing) that Sae will be able to collaborate with me on the images (the illustrations in ‘Engines of Engagement : a curious book about Generative AI’ were just such a collaboration , and I loved the process and results!).

The work itself lies at the very edge of my practice. It’s not a topic I am known for, and not one for which I profess any particular expertise. The work considers whether we have somehow become detached from aspects of our humanity , and what this has cost us. It uses ideas of texture, movement , and identity to consider how we have isolated ourselves from our natural environment, and have lost part of our ‘selves’ as a result. And it proposes a philosophy of reconnection.

Even as I write that, I find myself wondering whether or why anyone would want to read it. I’m very comfortable with my work being broad, ranging from the Learning Science book, and projects on complexity, through to ‘The Humble Leader ’, and how we lead at the intersection of systems. I’ve written about the Apollo missions (leadership), the High Line in New York (change as a Social Movement), and buying a typewriter in Singapore (specialism and Community). But this work pushes the boundary a little further.

Hence, when I share this work, it will be intentionally imperfect . Shared as a stepping stone in my own thinking, not a picture of something concrete and certain .

I am comfortable in general in this space: all of my work is held in the practice of #WorkingOutLoud , and it iterative and evolutionary, evidence based, but also with a speculative lens. But on the whole, I am confident in what I say, and feel grounded within my practice.

But in this space, I am drawing on my beliefs and intuition more so than any research or fact. I am informed by the broad spectrum of my education and experience, but I am painting a picture, or writing a poem, that goes beyond that.

I can actually sense this in my writing, as I felt something not dissimilar when writing ‘The Humble Leader’. Both books have in common that they are short, and that they were written in a single frantic few days, where I found the flow around the narrative. And both have in common that those few days of flow comes at the end of years of reflective practice. The ideas did not come out of nowhere, but the story is emergent.

I found the writing of The Humble Leader to be an unusual experience, in that the language is poetic, and in some ways does not feel like mine. I mean, it sounds like my voice, but it uses a flow and tempo that I do not think I could replicate. I said at the time that if I was asked to write an additional chapter, I do not think I could do it. Or at least, not in the same language.

This new work, whilst more complex, feels similar. But not the same.

I described The Humble Leader as ‘fragile’ work, and I believe that to be true. It’s important work, but held gently, and without certainty. This new work though is not simply fragile. It’s what comes before. It’s fractured and fragmentary. I think I have managed to find a relatively gentle execution, but I cannot pretend it is coherent, which is troubling.

I have a lot of books on my shelves: indeed, I am writing this by the fire (autumn is here) with shelves of thousands looking down upon me. But amongst them (or those of them that I have read), there are probably half a dozen that I found to be purgatory to read, but which nonetheless taught me something important. And I worry that I may have created a book like that. One that is hard to read. But we will see.

I’m sharing it with a few more people: perhaps they will smooth off the edges, bounce it back to be reworked, or consign it to oblivion! I am ok to operate at the edge of my practice, but I do not wish to waste peoples time as I do so.