Find The Outside

In episode five, Tim and Tuesday unpack why they’ve declined invitations to grow bigger, choosing instead to make The Outside small, flexible, and connected.

• We are totally committed to building capacity within the communities and organizations we engage. We don’t want to build a dependency on ourselves for the people we’re serving.
• We create the conditions for people to get to work on stuff themselves.
• Bookmarking:
• Our deliberateness of working with managers of one.
• Something about this design, the structure of our business that forces a surrendering of control.
• That we work in the void, the space between things. The more rigid we become the less able we actually are to be responsive.
• Tim notes ‘managers of one’ with link to the book REWORK
• We’ve never got bigger, we’ve just got more connected… it’s allowed us to go to greater and greater scale in our work.
• In your working relationships, seek out ease. The work is hard enough.
• Our classic one-liner: We’re not going to do it for you. We’re going to do it with you.
• Letting go of control is not an abdication of responsibility.
• The Void—we are bringing together multiple stakeholders who are bringing people together.
• We need to be hyper flexible, anti-fragile
• Poem: Lemn Sissay, Listener: Architecture
• Song: Babba Maal & Mumford and Sons: There will be time

Subscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at [email protected].

Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.

Duration: 33:55

Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios

Theme music: Gary Blakemore

Episode cover image: source

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode four, Tim and Tuesday reflect on the mindset shift of seeing reality clearly—not just the future that we hope for—and the value of working with what is, right now.

• Tim shares a quote from the podcast Scroobious Pip: “You work with what you’ve got—not with what you hope for.”
• The gap between working with what is, versus what you hoped for can feel like miles.
• We don’t often talk about the capacity to be in heartbreak—a key element of resiliency.
• “Heartbreak is a part of life no one can avoid. But I have choices to make about how my heart breaks. Will it break apart into a thousand shards, and perhaps be thrown like a fragment grenade at the ostensible source of my pain? Or will it break open into greater capacity to hold my own and the world’s suffering and joy? If I shut my heart down and allow it to get brittle, heartbreak will shatter it, injuring me and those around me. But if keep my heart supple by “exercising” it—allowing my suffering and the suffering around me to stretch that spiritual muscle—heartbreak will open my heart, bringing me more peace and adding to the world’s vital store of compassion.” —Parker Palmer

• Heartbreak can manifest as fury as much as it can manifest as openness. It’s not difficult to imagine and feel both.
• What are the practices that enable us to deal with heartbreak when it emerges? Does it help to pick fury?
• How do we work with our own heartbreak and the heartbreak of others around us… and how do we enable that to be something we’re choosing?
• Where’s the space given for heartbreak? Not to stay there, but to allow it, and maybe move from a soft heart. What’s the loss? What’s the risk if we let this go? What’s the risk of not doing it?
• Poem: The Repairman by John Coldwell
• He said that he had patched it as best he could
• But he warned, eventually,
• The whole lot would have to come down.
• He tucked his ladder under his arm
• And pressed into my hand a splintered shard of sky.
• Song of the episode: Lemon by N.E.R.D. and Rhianna
• 
  

Subscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at [email protected].

Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.

Duration: 33:57

Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios

Theme music: Gary Blakemore

Episode cover image: source

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode three, we contemplate the nature of neutrality. Is it even possible - or desirable - to be neutral as a host or facilitator? What are our obligations towards the people in the room?

• Tim and Tuesday explore the presumption and delivery of neutrality as facilitators, and its connection to equity. Says Tim: “I will very specifically recommend to people to not take actions that increase the adversity between them. I will leverage my power every single day for something other than that.”
• The more chaotic and uncertain things become in the world, the more we need to turn to each other. If we’re going to be useful to one another, we need to let go of control—but we also need structure in order to move forward. How do we balance the two?
• On reimagining systems with equity at the centre: “Creating an arsenal that our grandchildren are going to be like ‘thank you’ for.” —Tim
• On how we show up as facilitators, especially when our voice is among those amplified over others up by current systems: “Our first inclination is to just disavow the privilege and then just say ‘use it for good.’ But using your privilege for change doesn’t mean you accept the status quo… it’s much more complex and nuanced than that. Also, leveraging doesn’t look the same in every situation.” —Tuesday
• On how collaborators can be in relationship with an awareness of neutrality and privilege, but carry on despite it: “(You and I) have a lack of fragility… an ability to go back and forth with one another without collapsing. There’s a lot in the lack of fragility.” —Tim
• Tuesday mentions Nariyyah Waheed’s Salt: “We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. It is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.”
• The song of the episode: I Got Cash by Brooklyn Funk Essentials

Subscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at [email protected].

Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.

Duration: 40:06

Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios

Theme music: Gary Blakemore

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode two, Tim and Tuesday recap the facilitation paths that led them towards their collaboration on equity, big systems change, and leadership.

1. First, Tim and Tuesday discuss where the work of systems change and equity began for each of them, and how has it shifted over the years. What would a typical project look like ten years ago, and for who was the typical client? How did they get paid to do this work? Wrapping up, Tim talks about the impact of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.
2. Next, Tim and Tuesday talk about the significance of who they are as a unit: Why ‘The Outside’? What does a typical project look like? At what point do people pick up the phone and call us to come in? How does work begin for us? How do we begin?
3. For our PRACTICES segment, we ask: what’s keeping you sane?
4. Each episode will have a song or poem of the week that feels integral to the work. This week, it’s a poem by Sarah La Rosa from her book Her Strange Angels:
5. The way to find a measure of solace in the place of unknowing
6. Of waiting
7. On the verge of deep waters
8. Is to remember that we are equipped with the ability to float
9. Water is out natural state
10. We had our beginnings in a sacred sea
11. And so returning to that vast ocean does not have to be scary and unknown
12. It could be more like going home.

Subscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at [email protected].

Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.

Duration: 45:45

Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios

Theme music: Gary Blakemore

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode one, Tim and Tuesday kick off with a lively conversation on what matters most as change makers push back — on broken systems, missing voices, and the status quo. 

First up, we introduce ourselves, talk about our work—who we are and what we do—who are these voices in your ears? Then, we raise the deeper questions we’ll dive into in the coming months: key building blocks and obstacles in the shared work of equity and systems change.

• THE POINT OF PODCASTING: This podcast is a pause to let what we’re learning settle in. Talking and thinking out-loud—inviting other people in—to capture and share insight. Tim riffs a spoken word poem about reflection being too important to leave to chance.
• THE ROOTS OF OUR WORK: What about how and where we came up in the world made us? Tim and Tuesday recap their origins in the world—class, education, geographies, cultures, careers, ethnicity—equity!—and how all this shapes who they are today (and how they work together).
• PARTICIPATORY LEADERSHIP: Participatory leadership as a driving force when we realized how much was missing from solutions. Understanding power, privilege, race, gender—pulling all these impacts together to change systems that might make the world better. It’s not just personal. It has to be bigger than us as individuals.
• RETHINKING PRIVILEGE: Let’s do a whole podcast about the word ‘privilege’—even though it’s so heavily used these days, we almost want to return to it, and rethink how it fundamentally informs our work.
• ALIGNING LIFE EXPERIENCE TO STRATEGY: How do we align our basis for processing the world—our strategic brain, which comes with all kinds of assumptions and patterns rooted in our life experience—with a new sort of bigger-picture strategy that has to get beyond the typical? How do we navigate our relationships across time to keep us moving on-strategy, while staying in-relationship with each other?
• INFLUENCING FACTORS ‘IN THE ROOM‘: Tim and Tuesday explore various positive and negative influencing factors in ‘running the room’ when they’re experimenting towards systems change: generosity, that just-enough mentality, privilege.
• WORK-LIFE BALANCE: The psychology and effect of work-family balance as our work scales up: how can we make sure that as our success grows—as we scale our work to the next level—how can we be sure we’re not exhausted by it to the point where we’ve not got enough for our families?
• BUILDING A CAN-DO VIBE: How can we acknowledge a persistently difficult reality while also uplifting the room?
• SEEING REALITY CLEARLY: What it means to bring a willingness to see reality into the room. Not just conceptual clarity, but also being clear on how much we don’t know. What’s the value of knowing how much we don’t know?
• WORKING TOWARDS A SOCIETY THAT SERVES ALL: Why does this principle somehow feel like ‘milk toast’, as Tuesday calls it? Important, but somehow bland. ‘Serves all’ becomes a blanket that can muffle clarity. Equity is not just addressing marginalization, but also building something that every person in the system, across power lines, actively benefits from. Not just ending lack of benefit but creating benefit. We’re radically committed to this idea, but we need to make sure that when we talk about it, it’s not a throwaway line.
• EPISODE 1 SONG: Damn, dis-moi by Christine and the Queens

Subscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at [email protected].

Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.

Duration: 40:26

Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios

Theme music: Gary Blakemore

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.