Expand Perspective
Design or create space where questioning pre-held assumptions and meeting new ways of seeing ourselves and the systems around us can occur.
Thinking · Version 0.2
The ideas underneath how I work
Four ideas I keep coming back to. Three feel settled enough to build on, and one is still emerging.
Practitioner-informed · Continuing to evolve
Core thinking
01 Systems thinking
We are situated within systems.
1 · Start with one person
It starts with you: the beliefs you hold, how you see things, the stories you tell yourself, and the way you act.
2 · We belong to many systems at once
Family, friends, teams and organizations, communities: each one a circle we are part of, all held within a wider society.
3 · The circles do not stay the same
A new job can pull one closer. A move abroad can stretch another. Some circles grow, some shrink, some fade, depending on where life takes us and where we put our attention.
4 · And they look different for each of us
Someone sitting in the same team may belong to a very different set of circles. That is why the same situation can feel so different from person to person.
5 · Influence runs both ways
Our beliefs, perceptions, stories, and behaviors are shaped by what is around us. And in the same way, we shape the people and systems around us.
So when we say we are working on ourselves, our team, or our organization, understanding the influence we have on one another is where things begin. It is why I look at the whole system, not only at the individual in front of me.
02 Action and active non-action
Slowing down is also a way of acting.
There are times when the most useful move is to step back, rather than staying active just because the environment pushes us to.
Slowing down is not the opposite of action. It is what keeps the next action intentional rather than automatic.
03 Most change isn't visible
Some of what changes is visible. Most of it isn't.
I use two words, tentatively, for the visible and the invisible: external and internal becoming. Internal becoming is often a lonely journey, and it carries real weight.
External becoming
A new role, title, country, company, or family. What other people can see and name.
Internal becoming
Renegotiating identity, perspective, agency, and meaning. Not always transformation: it can be adaptation, continuity, resistance, or integration.
The work I offer keeps it at the center: a steady place to sort through what is changing and decide what to carry forward.
04 What helps people keep going Emerging hypothesis
What conditions make growth more likely?
To support growth and change, there seem to be some conditions that make growing more likely, especially growth that involves internal becoming (see card 3). My hypothesis is the following four:
Find Fellow Travelers
Design or create space that fosters relationships and communities that reduce isolation and make uncertainty feel normal.
Create Sustaining Systems
Incorporate practices, rhythms, and structures that carry the hidden work between formal learning moments.
Strengthen Agency
Feel excited to make intentional choices and experiment amid uncertainty, take a step forward, and find a way to keep oneself accountable, while recognizing, as the designer of the conditions, that context has influence on how individual agency manifests.
Questions I am exploring +
- Are these the right conditions, or are we missing something?
- How do the conditions interact and reinforce one another?
- Which experiences best cultivate each condition?
- How might AI support the hidden work between interventions?
- How might this framework evolve across cultures and contexts?
- How can organizations design intentionally for this kind of growth?
More on the framework +
Designing for the system
None of this happens in a vacuum. Structures, power, resources, culture, and relationships all shape what is actually possible for a person, which is why designing for conditions means designing for the system, not only for the individual.
Where AI can help
AI tools can make this work more powerful when designed in with intention, carrying some of the load so our attention goes to what only humans can, and perhaps should, do.
What it draws on
Work by Mezirow; Black & Warhurst; Ibarra, Wittman & Smith; Baxter Magolda; Greer & Minnis; and Hihara and colleagues.
Where it is being tested
I am presenting this as a poster at the AHRD Asia Chapter Japan conference, 2026 (Designing Developmental Experiences for Internal Becoming: An Emerging Practitioner Framework for Human Resource Development). Still evolving: practitioner-led thinking, tested in practice.