I’m a hopeful guy. My clients and students like my optimistic approach to life.
I work with (mostly) hopeful people who do work that (hopefully) makes a difference.
We collectively trade in hope.
When I bring experience working with people, my lessons from psychology and the tools of evaluation, I’m bringing realism. Those three things have all steeled my approach toward what is possible and realistic.
Two Views of the Same Thing
Possibility is about stretching people’s capabilities beyond their current form into something greater (broader, deeper, kinder, and influential) than before.
Realism is recognizing that our possibilities have upper bounds. My job is to help those working with me reach that boundary.
Possibility is about understanding what resources — tools, knowledge, skills, motivation, enthusiasm — can be channelled toward a goal.
Realism is looking at how people have behaved in the past, their fears about the future, and their attitudes toward the present and framing expectations and interventions based on those.
Possibility involves creating and communicating a vision for where we want to go and ideas for how to get there.
Reality is establishing a detailed plan and the means for people to follow and remain attached to this plan, including an understanding that it will require adaptation, learning, and re-design as we go.
Possibility is knowing that we can collectively work together to shape a future we want and achieve things we’ve never before dreamt of doing.
Reality is knowing that many people will resist this and that much energy will be spent aligning people’s values, intentions, and energy. It also is about knowing that this is unlikely to be entirely successful.
Possibility allows us to see threats and opportunities and focus on them.
Reality recognizes that the forces drawing our attention in myriad directions are great, pervasive, and exercised through every screen we look at (including the one that you’re reading this on).
Possibility is in the richness of the available data sources to understand the roles we play in shaping things around us and creating a positive difference.
Reality knows many of these sources are incomplete, inappropriate, and increasingly low in quality and that much effort will be needed to make corrections. It also recognizes that people's trustworthiness is low with so many requests for people’s time and a long history of evaluators and researchers abusing, neglecting, or misusing that time or attention. This will continue to put data trustworthiness at risk.
Possibility is knowing we can shape reality and influence the futures we want.
Reality is knowing the same thing, only that such a future might not be what we need or will achieve. Or will we?
Thanks for reading.
Photo by Jasper van der Meij on Unsplash