Swimming in the Sea of Conundrum

I’m just back from the Pathways to Power Symposium to #ShiftThePower in global development and philanthropy in London, hosted this week by the Global Fund for Community Foundations. There is a lot to process when 100+ people who want to change paradigms – either radically or in incremental, strategic moves – get in a room with each other for two days.

On a personal level, it was energizing and humbling at once. #ShiftThePower can and necessarily does mean different things to different people. Depending on how each of us maps to the systems and hierarchies of power that govern our lives, each of us is touching a different part of the elephant.

Graphic recording by: www.morethanminutes.co.uk

Is #ShiftThePower about decentralized decision-making? About addressing privilege and power imbalances rooted in racism and imperialism? Is it about upholding self-determination and recognizing lived experience as “expertise”? Is it about evolving charity to global solidarity? Is it about challenging notions of “small” and “at scale”? Is it about the release of romanticism about “doing good”? Is it about getting political and holding those in all hierarchies of power to account? Is it just time to get specific about which processes and practices could change status quo ways of working in the social good sector?

Or all of the above? Or, rather, below?

A #ShiftThePower Poem: Swimming in the Sea of Conundrum

co·nun·drum
noun
a confusing and difficult problem or question.
“one of the most difficult conundrums for ‘the experts‘”

***
There are answers,
aren’t there?
Don’t I have it?
Or shouldn’t I?
What if…this ephemeral life
is governed by
what cannot be
seen, SMART-objectified,
strategized, imagined?
What if we are all
developing
as long as we are reckoning
and questioning
and dreaming
together?
What if we advance
only with every truth spoken
and silence broken?
What if…we learn
we can’t do it
alone, and
stop trying to,
when ideas are only deemed
valid when they
come from those closest to
the issues, not the $.
What if the
answers
are found in
closest proximity
to where our hearts
have been broken?
What if
where it hurts
is where
“we” must live?

When I hold a vision of #ShiftThePower in my head, the change is enacted through money flows. I want to see money flowing like water in a cycle that supports all of life, pulled by gravity from the top of the mountains to the sea. Hierarchies and deeply flawed global and local institutions, systems, and narratives aren’t going away tomorrow, no matter how much those of us “building a new model” to make others obsolete would want to believe.

But if money flowed more like water in our sector, we would see more money from rich countries and rich people dispersed in more ways to more people than ever before. With the climate crisis upon us, what do we have to lose?

Whether your immediate aim is to shift the power, give it up, or demand it, the symposium reminded me once again that learning has to be a heartened, grounded affair, not just a heady one. The changes that will shift the power in transformative ways require us to access a deeper wisdom than any one smart, committed person or effective, innovative organization can achieve on its own. Using our emotional intelligence to embrace the mess and yet get clear on personal, organizational, and shared strategy and accountability is the only way to ensure #ShiftThePower is not just an idea or a hashtag. Our sector has seen too many trends come and go, creating a deep cynicism and lethargy among us. We owe it to ourselves not to make the same mistakes with this momentum now.

“Cynicism is a form of resistance, a walling off of the possibilities for transformation, a response to learned helplessness, a defense strategy…Scratch the surface of a cynic and you will find a wounded idealist.” ~Mary Pipher

Can #ShiftThePower be a lasting rallying cry for people working and fighting for not just for a paycheck, but for a more just and equitable future? Perhaps it depends on which part of the elephant you’re touching. But make no mistake, these are tattooed people with whom I’m glad to spend my time.