Beyond Frameworks: Practices for the In Between

Prelude

This piece is an evolution of my capstone essay from the MA Creative Leadership program at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. I would not have found these nor so many other words without the generous mentorship of founding program director Diane Ragsdale, who passed away suddenly in January 2024. This piece, like my relationship with Diane, remains unfinished. Publishing it here for you to read is a meta practice of what I share throughout; it is an exploration of what might happen when we stumble between the known and unknown, and the metamorphosing beauty that awaits us there. Diane, I miss you every day. Thank you for everything.

Part 1 | Into the Spiral

A print hangs in my home. In white text on a black background, wrapped around the profiles of two people, it reads: The past is dead, the future unborn, be here now. In times of discomfort and disassociation, I have repeated this directive as if it were a prayer: Be here now, be here now. Be. Here. Now. 

Around the same time this piece of art first came into my life nearly ten years ago, I began my design career in earnest and became increasingly fascinated by the seemingly endless frameworks that governed it, each slightly different but most still following the same format: steps, phases, and milestones spread over lines, diamonds, funnels, maybe the occasional circle. More spells that promised to divine some sense of control, now cast over unwieldy professional projects.

In my life, I have struggled immensely with the overwhelm of the unknown, especially when navigating a present that is in between two more desired or bookended states. What do I do with the time between being accepted into graduate school and starting graduate school? How do I cope in the days between my grandmother’s catastrophic stroke and her funeral? How do I fill the gap between a diagnosis and a treatment plan? What do I do when a project brief is approved, the work in progress, and then the goals are ripped open again? As I faced these challenges over and over, I found that the spells I had so tightly clung to were wholly insufficient for navigating the complexity of transformational change, within myself and within my communities. 

I know I’m not alone in this. After countless conversations with friends, colleagues, and mentors, I believe now is the time to explore different ways of being, doing, and knowing if we are to realize our desired future together. If you, too, find yourself insufficiently resourced to navigate the interstitial spaces of our increasingly complex reality then I invite you to come along, to expand your practice, and see what might lie beyond frameworks, quietly in the in between. 

Part 2 | Limits of Linearity

A core text that I’ve employed again and again when trying to untangle complex concepts is Ideas, Arrangements, Effects by The Design Studio for Social Intervention. In a July 2020 Nonprofit Quarterly article, Lori Lobenstine, Kenneth Bailey, and Ayako Maruyama sum up their approach using a particularly apt example from education:

“Ideas are embedded within social arrangements, which in turn produce effects. One simple way to explain this premise is in the arrangement of chairs in a classroom. When we see chairs in straight rows facing forward, we believe the teacher is the head of the class and that knowledge flows in one direction—from the teacher to the students. In response to this, many workshop facilitators and adult-ed teachers rearrange the chairs into a circle, with the idea being that knowledge is distributed across the participants and could emerge from any place within the circle. The rows are one expression of ideas about how learning happens; the circle is another. The effects that rows or circles of chairs have on learning are important, but they are not the point here. The point is that the arrangement produces effects.”

Their example makes the case for how the arrangements of rows within a classroom produce effects grounded in particular ideas; the same is true for design frameworks. Like straight rows of desks, straight lines in a framework communicate underlying ideas and produce effects. Throughout this essay, I will use the shorthand of “straight lines” to mean any two dimensional, flowchart based framework that a practitioner or team is meant to follow, typically from a “concept” stage through a set of milestones to a “conclusion” or “launch.” Some of these frameworks take the shape of a circle or cycle to communicate iteration; for the basis of this essay, I am also referring to those frameworks because they are underpinned by similar ideas and can produce similar effects.

The arrangements of these frameworks are made up of blocks and arrows, neat and clean lines. Their linear nature suggests that successful projects move through a set of steps and phases, typically from left to right, punctuated by milestones that discern whether or not we’re on track. They fit neatly on a sheet of printer paper, encased in a graphic, held within a PowerPoint slide. 

These frameworks reflect the ideas of the largely white-dominant cultures and institutions that created them: time is linear (vs. multidimensional); there is one right way (vs. an emergent network of possibilities); context is universal (vs. relational). These frameworks–and their underlying ideas and worldviews–are what most practitioners situated within the global West are trained in, either formally or informally, and are most often where projects start. Teams choose a framework, embark on the prescribed process, and expect to land where the framework promises they will land: at their predetermined goal. However, in my experience, this is rarely the case.

In projects I’ve been part of–across various teams, organizations, and contexts–things rarely go the way the framework predicts. Relationships, goals, and resources shift dramatically. Timelines get stretched out due to decisions and circumstances beyond our control. Practitioners tend to internalize these frameworks, manage teams and projects within these frameworks, and we often assess ourselves and each other through case studies that are beholden to these frameworks. When a project doesn’t go according to plan, team members are left feeling frustrated, discouraged, and at fault. After nearly ten years of facing this struggle over and over again–on graphic and digital design projects, on change management projects, on strategic and organizational planning projects–and connecting with others who are facing similar challenges, I am convinced there must be a better way, especially given the frequency and disruption of these effects. 

The reality is that most people, communities, and organizations do not fit neatly into a linear framework. Straight lines don't leave a lot of room for experimentation, for resting within quieter moments, for moving in unforeseen directions, or for responding to emergent circumstances. I am interested in how we as practitioners carry ourselves in the liminal spaces between step 1 and step 2, when things aren’t always going well, when the project plan isn’t lining up with reality, and/or when our humanity conflicts with the neat and clean lines of a framework. 

I’m not proposing that we throw these frameworks out completely, just that they’re insufficient. We must acknowledge and embrace these liminal spaces that exist inside us, between us, and within our projects. Doing so is critical for generating the type of collaboration and self-assuredness that we’ll need to weather the path toward collective liberation. We can begin to do this by incorporating a set of practices that augment these frameworks into expanded arrangements that are more likely to lead to the types of effects we wish to create. 

Part 3 | An Invitation

Before I put forth a set of practices to create expanded arrangements, I want to clarify my intended audience and purpose. First, if you do not find resonance with what I’ve suggested so far–that frameworks are insufficient and practitioners need to incorporate new ways of being, doing, and knowing so that we can co-create effects more aligned with our shared vision of the future–that is okay. I trust that you are carrying yourself, your experiences, and your teams with integrity and employing the approaches that are complementary to your intended effects. However, if you share in my frustration and desire for a different approach, then you may fall into one or more of these roles and find the following practices helpful.

You’re a designer and creative problem solver. Some approaches, like Liberatory Design, equityXdesign, and Transition Design have begun to explore and establish mindsets and postures that designers engaging in complexity need to navigate these emergent states. The practices shared below are intended as additions to an ever growing toolbox of resiliency that will increase your ability to stay in the messy middle of complex projects without getting discouraged, sidetracked, or overly beholden to a single framework. 

You’re a futurist and experience the past, present, and future all at once. “Be here now” isn’t a useful directive to futurists because you understand that each of those words is a social construct beholden to a particular worldview. These are practices and resources that can create a bubble when the timeline is collapsing in on you. They are a life raft and a safety net that push back against the gravitational field at the bottom of the metaphysical ocean. They are portals and trap doors through the fabric of time.

You’re a creative leader and you sense possibilities that your predecessors, who are held within the conventional leadership paradigm, are closed off from. You operate squarely within your purpose and values and co-create imagined futures in partnership with your communities. The road less traveled is rocky. Creative leaders need a different set of resources for navigating change than conventional leaders. Business-as-usual playbooks do not apply here. These practices are helpful to return to when you need to create or tend space, build relationships, and chart through unknown realms.

Part 4 | Practices for the In Between

As beings in the world–of organizations, communities, networks–many interconnected realities are at play, but I conceive of three primary dimensions in this work:

1. Our internal environment; mindsets, beliefs, worldviews, bodies
2. Our external environment; organizations, communities, networks, landscape
3. The relationship between our internal and external environments

Generally, frameworks aim to govern only the practices of our external environments. But as designers, futurists, and creative leaders, we are complex beings tasked with navigating the emergent contexts of all these dimensions, simultaneously. This set of practices has helped me knit them together into a cohesive lens through which I now operate from, professionally and personally.

The following collection of practices is for you; activate what is helpful and leave the rest.

Fine tune your inner condition

Theory U was developed by Otto Scharmer in the early 2000s and offers an awareness-based method for changing systems. A linear framework in and of itself, some writers have critiqued it as an oversimplification of a deeply complex inner and outer transformational process, but I have found immense value in Scharmer’s concept of Presencing. In his book Theory U, Scharmer writes:

“Presencing, the blending of sensing and presence, means to connect from the Source of the highest future possibility and to bring it into the now. Presencing happens when our perception begins to happen from the source of our emerging future. The boundaries between three types of presence collapse: the presence of the past (current field), the presence of the future (the emerging field of the future), and the presence of one’s authentic Self. When this co-presence, or merging of the three types of presence, begins to resonate, we experience a profound shift, a change of the place from which we operate.”

This “profound shift” that Scharmer calls for can be incredibly illusive in our disconnected state of modernity, where everything moves rapidly toward a single point. My foremost recommendation is to find this shift in partnership with nature; reknitting the relationship with our natural world can go a long way toward repairing our torn fabrics of self. 

Try this: Find a quiet space in a park, in your backyard, in a forest, near the sea, at the end of a dirt road–whatever feels accessible to you–and slow way down, slower than you think your internal processes can go. Regulate your breath. Close your eyes if that feels safe, or find a patch of the sky or greenery to soft focus on. Listen to music that you find soothing or cathartic. If you feel like you need a bit more guidance, consider listening to one of Arawana Hayashi’s meditation practices. Stay in this natural space for a while and explore how it feels. You can note any reflections in a journal or continue to carry them with you via an embodied state. 

Nature is always there for us. Our inner condition is always there for us. Come back to this practice as needed and make it your own. Taking these quiet moments won’t solve all of our problems, but I hope that they’ll bring a bit more ease to you, as they’ve done for me.

Reframe a linear process as a network of possibilities.

Again, I want to be clear that employing a framework to bring direction to a project or change effort is a fine choice; linear frameworks have a place and they can be helpful tools to scaffold projects. But I’d encourage you to think of them more as intermittent sign posts through a hedge maze: helpful, but incomplete. When we expand our point of view from seeing only what’s directly in front of us to a birds eye or multidimensional view of the whole system, we navigate ourselves and others more authentically.

Try this: Bring to mind a past project or change effort, one where you used a linear framework. Print out the framework. Highlight the areas that went according to plan and those that didn’t. Annotate omnidirectionally describing what happened, noting any deviations from the linear process. Use as many pieces of paper as you need. Work in three or more dimensions. Notice patterns, seeming coincidences. Did any of these deviations lead to better outcomes than you might have achieved if you had continued with fidelity to the framework? Where else could you have explored further, and how might those deviations have improved this work? Do this alone or with others. Notice the shape of the network that forms. Hold the shape. If you are interested in exploring other annotation practices, I recommend checking out Kelvy Bird’s Generative and Systems Scribing approaches.

Another effect of linear frameworks is that we often move from one project to the next without taking the time to seriously consider what we might like to do differently to achieve different outcomes. This practice can help you do that and, over time, embody the expanded shapes you wish to carry.

Displace white dominant culture norms

As the Design Studio for Social Intervention asserts in their book Ideas Arrangements Effects, “rearranging the social [is] a practical and powerful way to create social change.” Just as we can expand the arrangements of the frameworks we use by reimagining linearity as a network of possibilities, we can also modify the arrangements of our social systems by changing how we interact, collaborate, and consider each other within our project teams, organizations, and communities.

Through decades of writing and research, Tema Okun has identified nine norms that are some of the characteristics of white supremacy culture, which “trains us all to internalize attitudes and behaviors that do not serve any of us.” He also offers antidotes to each of these norms, alternatives and options for other ways we might exist in the world and collaborate with each other. For practitioners who have been trained within predominantly white institutions, both educationally and professionally, upending the white dominant culture norms that are baked within that knowledge is critical. 

Try this: Read through The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture, noting the descriptions and the antidotes. Consider how these characteristics show up in your life. Were you trained within institutions and communities that furthered these characteristics, the antidotes, or a combination? How do these characteristics square with your identity and lived experiences? Where might you need to shift your intention and attention to more solidly displace white supremacy culture norms with their antidotes?

I have found that returning to these norms and their antidotes in times when I am unsure of which way to move, when I am unsure of how to carry myself, when I am unsure of how to rebuild a relationship with those who I care about is deeply meaningful, restorative, and actionable. Okun’s work reminds me that I always have the choice to live within my core values of agency and autonomy: I have choices to make, and the choices that I make matter–for the outcomes of my own life, the projects and communities I am part of, and the future I want us all to build together. I believe, quite firmly, that it will bring the same gifts to you.

Invite emergence

My sense is that emergence has become a bit of a buzzword lately, so omnipresent in some circles that it has all but lost its meaning. In this essay, I’m using emergence as a stand in for unexpected outcomes and opportunities that can only happen when we stop exerting control. Linear frameworks thrive on control. They demand that we fraction ourselves into and along those neat lines. And when we continue to walk along those straight, preordained paths without considering the abundant possibilities beyond them, we miss out. 

In their book Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown offers us a different way of viewing and being in the world. Instead of exerting control over, we can instead be moved by. Using a series of metaphors from the natural world, brown demonstrates the promise of reconnecting with the ways of the non-human: fractals, murmurations, flowing water. In this, she also offers a different definition of success than linear frameworks lead us to believe (i.e., we are successful when we move as seamlessly as possible from point A to B):

“At a collective level, this is the invitation to practice the world we wish to see in the current landscape. Yes, resist the onslaught of oppression, but measure our success not just by what we stop, but by how many of us feel, and can say: 

I am living a life I don’t regret

A life that will resonate with my ancestors,

And with as many generations forward as I can imagine.

I am attending to the crises of my time with my best self,

I am of communities that are doing our collective best

To honor our ancestors and all humans to come.

It’s lifework, with benefits. I regularly check in with my vision for our collective future and make adjustments on how I am living, what I am practicing, to be aligned with that future, to make it more possible.” 

Try this: Sit with the above passage from brown. When is the last time you checked in with your vision for a collective future, alone or with colleagues or a project team? How might that vision invite you to make adjustments to what you are practicing? Do your practices support your ability to attend to the crises of our time with your best self? How do you want to honor your ancestors, all humans to come, and our natural world?

Your answers to these questions are likely to change over time, so this practice works best–as do all of the others–when it becomes a habit. Emergence is as much about noticing why we shift as what is shifting, until together we reach our–as brown writes–collective best.

Embrace radical tenderness

The work to facilitate collective liberation is immensely challenging. For far too long, modernity has asked us to abandon each other in favor of tight timelines, design artifacts, and proof points. This is not the future I desire. When you feel yourself slipping back into the ego of it all, I invite you to embrace radical tenderness, a concept and collaborative text written by Dani d’Emilia and Vanessa Andreotti, based on the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) collective.

“In the work of the GTDF collective, we co-sense with Radical Tenderness in order to invite a political practice of healing and wellbeing grounded on metabolic entanglement: the fact that we are part of the living metabolism of the planet. As a nascent practice, radical tenderness attempts to move us away from the usual politics that is encouraged and rewarded within modernity/coloniality towards more maturity, sobriety, and accountability through decentering and disarming the ego, decluttering existence,  developing layered discernment and gradually disinvesting from modern/colonial harmful desires.”

Try this: The Co-Sensing with Radical Tenderness Card Deck is a shortcut toward groundedness, away from the ego. It’s an incisive and illuminating invitation to feel through the darkness, alone or with project teams. If you are someone who feels daunted by the limitations of journal prompts and lined pages, start with a few cards and see where they take you. Here are a few of my favorite prompts that I return to again and again, and that I recommend augmenting with the movement Practice, Don’t You Feel It Too?

Dance beyond the loop of identification and dis-identification, beyond what you like and what you don’t like.

Invoke and evoke a political practice of healing that is beyond what human intelligence can fathom.

Let go of the fear of ‘being less’, the pressure for ‘being more’ and the need for validation.

Recover exiled capacities, expand sensibilities and dis-immunize intimacies.

When you find that ego is a driving force in your decision making, when control feels like the only way forward, re-engaging with radical tenderness is an excellent way to reconsider the negotiations modernity has thrust upon us. 

Part 5 | An Open Invitation to the Chorus

These practices are recursive and reflexive. They build and fold and expand upon each other and upon us as practitioners. You can start at any point, though the point is that you start. In many ways, what I’m recommending is a return to–not an evolution into novelty. Let us return to ourselves and each other. Let us draw our own lines and our own shapes and inhabit the spaces within and between them. By doing so, I truly believe that we’ll catalyze new realms of resiliency, integration, and collective impact.

This is just a starting point and I am adding my voice to a robust conversation of fellow practitioners, researchers, and artists who desire to be in and create the world differently. I honor the knowledge and perspectives of those who have come before me and know that I have an incomplete view of the conversation to date. I humbly come to this work and conversation as someone who has been unenthused by the pathways presented to me and my collaborators by predominantly white, western institutions and endeavors to co-create new pathways.

My hope is that this chorus continues to expand and that more voices contribute to it. There are many practices and opportunities for further exploration that I didn’t cover and I welcome you to pick up the conversation wherever you wish. How do you seek the in between? In what ways do you navigate the interstices of your work? Wholeheartedly, I invite your conversation and collaboration.