Reflections 23 May

On my Mind

I've been thinking about fabric this week, about how our different individual identities and capabilities weave together to create something beautiful and generative with an identity all of its own.

I find metaphor helps. It may not be clinically accurate, and that's the power of it. Metaphor leaves openings and makes connections that the certainty of precision can often exclude.

Weaving

When we create fabric, the warp is held longitudinally in tension, and the weft is then woven through it horizontally. Together, warp and weft combine function with form. Our societies and organisations are similar, with the warp being the institutions, expertise, legal structures that provide the tension, and the weft, or, as it called in North America, the fill, holds them together and creates the pattern and identity. If I may stretch the metaphor further, the warp provides the body and the weft the soul.

On that basis, we have warped organisations. We put all our attention into institutions …