We believe individuals and organizations have the innate ability to self-organize and create systems that support their collective needs and goals. By fostering self-awareness, agency, and resilience patterns, we co-create a better world for clients, ourselves, and future generations.
As our world continues to rapidly change and become more uncertain, individuals are increasingly challenged to adapt to unpredictable circumstances. This has led to an increase in self-reports of overwhelm, disconnection, loss of control, lack of fulfillment, and burn-out. These experiences often lead people to feel like they are falling behind and/or not measuring up when they compare themselves with others. Over time, they can lose awareness of their own agency and become less flexible and more change-resistant
To navigate these challenges, it is crucial for organizations to cultivate the capacity to adapt in times of unprecedented change. Building this capacity requires creating conditions that encourage people to engage in interpersonal and systemic exchanges about the things that matter most. By doing so, organizations can create lasting transformations and support individuals in finding a greater sense of fulfillment and purpose in their work and lives.
We take a practical approach to our work, drawing on principles from diverse disciplines to form a comprehensive theory base. This consilient orientation is used in the way we work together, develop our materials, and facilitate.
We create learning spaces that enable people to make choices that are immediately helpful, while growing their capacity to handle increasingly complex and ambiguous situations in the future. As people practice thinking and acting in more complex ways, they can discover stability even in tumultuous environments. They are better able to show up as active agents at work and beyond.
Our aim is to create ripples of positive change for the individuals we work with, their organizations, and society as a whole. By fostering patterns of self-awareness, agency, and resilience, we believe that we can co-create a better world for clients, ourselves, and future generations.
Therefore, as choice architects, we carefully curate concepts and theories from our diverse range of disciplines to help people gain new perspectives and forge paths forward. The result is a greater ability to face and respond to whatever is happening, no matter how uncertain that may be.
We design learning that fosters vertical development —learning that goes beyond acquiring new knowledge or skills but that grows more sophisticated levels of cognitive and emotional complexity.
We provide learning opportunities that enable learners to simultaneously advance their cognitive and emotional development while creating their own maps of the relational terrain they need to navigate.
We encourage questions that nurture curiosity and open new channels for information.
We create conditions that support people to nurture their thinking innovation and recognize the value of more creative ways of perceiving and thinking.
We promote “perceptual reconstruction”, the practice of changing and expanding one’s understanding of self and one’s social environment to absorb new data and adapt well to new conditions.
We avoid “choice paradox” —the anxiety and indecision that can happen when people are faced with too many options or choices. This is achieved by having individuals conduct small experiments and evaluate their own results, enabling them to explore and select potential options for ongoing action that work for them.
We set conditions that support a deep-learning ecology, a form of learning that is generative, adaptable, innovative, and rooted in both independent and collaborative inquiry.
We leverage the differences between people and situations, rather than strive for alignment.
We recognize that things don’t necessarily follow predictable, straight lines of cause and effect (non-linearity), and we know how to work with that unpredictable uncertainty.
We understand that conditions are always changing, even in small ways, and we support people to adapt even in circumstances that are constantly in flux.
We are committed to a utilization-focused approach to program evaluation, so we strategically weave feedback loops through everything we do. To capture the depth and breadth of our participants’ experiences, we expand our feedback channels to go beyond traditional workshop evaluations. We use impact and reflection inquiries, as well as ripple effect surveys that reveal the far-reaching, and often invisible effects that our participants’ learning has on those around them.
Our findings consistently show transformation in the narratives of participants who report seeing more opportunities to actively influence the systems they live and work in, from wherever they are in the system. As perception of opportunities for agency increases, so does job satisfaction.
Our findings also show reductions in silo thinking, and in-group versus out-group attitudes. Our evaluation methods serve as a model for how feedback can be used to inform in-the-moment improvements, and guide future planning, decision-making, and investment.
And in-group versus out-group attitudes. Our evaluation methods serve as a model for how feedback can be used to inform in-the-moment improvements, and guide future planning, decision-making, and investment.
Of participants who report seeing more opportunities to actively influence the systems they live and work in, from wherever they are in the system. As perception of opportunities for agency increases, so does job satisfaction.
Nurturing Choicefulness is a vibrant network of collaborative experts who believe in the ongoing development of individuals and organizations. As we continue to evolve both individually and collaboratively, we expect our theory of change to evolve in tandem. Our theory of change serves as an integral component of the complex adaptive systems we are part of, so we expect it will continue to grow and develop along with us.
Our approach involves an ongoing, mutually beneficial exchange of growth and learning with each of our clients. We value client feedback and adapt our approach accordingly, just as our clients evolve their thinking and behavior based on the insights gained from working with us. This co-evolutionary process recognizes that change is a complex and nonlinear process that requires continuous dialogue, experimentation, and reflection.