There is no standing outside, ever, not even once

The idea that we can step outside and separate from experience is not restricted to Cartesianism. It also appears in claiming we can map the underlying conditions, constraints, and latent resources upon which a system/organisation/group operates.

The social draws on observant-dependent conditions

When in social interaction, we have constraints and affordances that do not depend on human observation, and although they can only become social through observation, it is safe to assume they are not there because of it. For such constraints, we can count on certain stability and coherence over time.

The challenge is that there is much more in social interaction than that.

In every situation, encounter, or event, there are constraints and affordances that are observant-dependent, i.e., they are a result of past interpretations and meaning-making, they are a result of sustaining agreements and challenged decisions.

They are past social constructions, some more stable than others. Unlike physical or biological constraints, it is not safe to assume their stability or coherence in the present. Instead, each local situation carries the possibility of re-interpretation, of both maintaining and shifting patterns held until now.

When we look at organisations, most of what is already unfolding in the here-and-now has to do with previous agreements, decisions and selections, constraints that are not physical or biological counterfactuals. A lot of what we can afford to do today is tied with interpretations, decisions, choices we made in the past.

That’s why observing those interpretations and decisions is a way to witness what is the current system/organisation. This does not negate the presence of pre-conceptions, but shows that they are distributed and show up in patterns of how decisions are made and what is valued when they happen.

The question is about distribution and power, of polyphony: many voices carrying their own stake with no merge to a single one. The encounter is one of pre-conceptions living alongside each other in the here-and-now, not someone stepping in with a borrowed teleological pre-conception from there-and-then.

What is already there when we start interacting is not one static picture we can form or a map we can read. It is more like joining a conversation mid-way, without being able to trace what happened before you arrived. Kenneth Burke captured this precisely: ‘Imagine that you enter a parlor…‘

As a practitioner, if arriving with a pre-defined map or direction from other contexts is unhelpful, so is the idea that one can map the field of potentiality in a system. Both moves presuppose a separation that does not exist: a practitioner standing apart from the system, looking at it from outside, able to read what is latent or possible. One imports a framework from there-and-then. The other claims to map those affordances as if they existed independently of the interpretations already at play. They do not. Mapping the substrate is the same move as importing a framework: both place the practitioner outside a system they are already part of.

Here, again, it is about distribution, participation, polyphony. The practitioner is one voice among many, carrying a specific role and mandate, both negotiated and evolving in relationship. The work of change has two dimensions. One is scaffolding: creating conditions, structures, and moments that make encounter possible. The other is re-interpretation: the shift in meaning that can happen when pre-conceptions meet and are not left undisturbed. Neither comes from the practitioner’s analysis or design. Both emerge from the process of ongoing relationship.