In this episode, Katie talks with CRR Global co-founder Marita Fridjhon about boundaryless change. Across the conversation, they discuss:
Marita Fridjhon is a co-founder of CRR Global and mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of Relationship Systems work. She designs curriculum and operates training programs in Relationship Systems Work for coaches, executives and teams. She came to this work from an extensive background in Clinical Social Work, Community Development, Process Work, Family Systems Therapy, Business Consulting and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has an international mentor coaching practice of individuals, partnerships and teams. Her primary focus in coaching is on systemic change, leveraging diversity, creative communication, deep democracy in conflict management and the development of Learning Organizations.
For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
In this episode, Katie talks with CRR Global co-founder Marita Fridjhon about boundaryless change. Across the conversation, they discuss:
Marita Fridjhon is a co-founder of CRR Global and mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of Relationship Systems work. She designs curriculum and operates training programs in Relationship Systems Work for coaches, executives and teams. She came to this work from an extensive background in Clinical Social Work, Community Development, Process Work, Family Systems Therapy, Business Consulting and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has an international mentor coaching practice of individuals, partnerships and teams. Her primary focus in coaching is on systemic change, leveraging diversity, creative communication, deep democracy in conflict management and the development of Learning Organizations.
For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
Key
KC – Katie Churchman
MF - Marita Fridjhon
[Intro 00:00 – 00:06]
KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe relationship matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and in this episode CRR Global co-founder Marita Fridjhon is back on the show talking about boundaryless change. Across the conversation, we discuss: the difference between complicated and complex systems; our increasing awareness of boundaryless change; the challenges that arise when we try to remedy complex issues with simple solutions; the importance of boundaries and boundary-setting; and how to hold the complexity of boundaryless change whilst also honoring our need for boundaries. Marita Fridjhon is a co-founder of CRR Global and mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of Relationship Systems work. She designs curriculum and operates training programs in Relationship Systems Work for coaches, executives and teams. She came to this work from an extensive background in Clinical Social Work, Community Development, Process Work, Family Systems Therapy, Business Consulting and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has an international mentor coaching practice of individuals, partnerships and teams. Her primary focus in coaching is on systemic change, leveraging diversity, creative communication, deep democracy in conflict management and the development of Learning Organizations. So I bring you Marita Fridjhon talking about boundaryless change.
KC – Marita, welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast, delighted to have you on season five of the show.
MF – Thank you Katie. As always I look forward to, this time an even more complex conversation that anything we’ve done before.
KC – Yes, even the title feels quite complex.
MF – I know, I know!
KC – So, we’re going with boundaryless change and I wonder, what does that even mean to you? The idea of boundaryless change.
MF – Do we have two hours to talk? I think that part of what’s happening is that when we begin to look at the latest research around cooperate challenges and we used to talk about the speed of change but part of what we now are looking at is the different complexity of change and how change today is different from what it was a year ago. So, I think that there’s something about, in the research that shows up and in writing, people interested in this are talking about when we look from a leadership perspective, when we look at organizations, there is more of what it is now beginning to be known as boundaryless systems. I think it’s part of what we in our work, when we talk about interdependence, I think that there is a different awareness of interdependence between not only nest systems but systems that we, in the past, have thought of as boundaried because it’s within the coaching industry, or systems that we thought were boundaried because it is around gender. There’s more and more awareness of different interdependence between any system that feels that it is boundaried and its calling mission vision - it’s actually boundaryless because from a leadership perspective and from the employee and the worker and coaching perspective it is impacted in multitudes of ways that we could not and have not been able to focus on in the past. But with the evolution of change at the moment we are thrown into the deep end of where leaders really need to be able to look at systemic boundary listeners that, if when they think that there’s a boundary around the organization that they lead or the enterprise that they manage it is not boundaried, it is constantly impacted by other systems that also are boundaryless. That creates a lot of confusion and is a massive systemic change. Not that it wasn’t there before. But our own awareness, through AI and other evolutionary pieces, us as humanity, we have almost our sight, if we stand on the balcony, has improved. We can see further and with more complexity than we were able to see in the past and we’re almost forced to see that.
KC – Yeah. And I think sometimes fearful of that as well because it’s a lot more complex to deal with complex systems.
MF – And that’s one of the places that’s in our boundaryless world, there is fear, just like you’ve said, that then begins to try to create a boundary that then shows up as a conflict that cannot be managed between two systems that actually are not boundaried separately. And that is the change or the evolution of change, that kind of complexity.
KC – That’s such an important point Marita, and you said offline when we were talking about this, we were talking about the difference between complicated systems and complex systems, the idea that a complicated systems is a closed-loop system like a car engine and a complex system might be an issue within systemic equity in an organization, but actually you pointed to the fact that even the car engine isn’t really a closed system because what happens when the part you need is delayed because of the supply chain, and I think that opened my awareness to wow, even all of these supposedly closed systems are actually much more open than we realized.
MF – That’s a really good summary and I think that part of what we see is crises, world crises. Whether it is war, whether it is Covid, whether it is climate crisis, there are from the boundaryless system that is the larger whole of humanity and world, these bigger crises are what is forcing us to look at the disappearance of boundaries because the major crisis that we’re looking at, whether we’re thinking of Covid, whether we’re thinking of war, to go to your car engine example, what was boundaried in the past was that there was a business that could fix the car. It had a good relationship with the company that manufactured the parts. The company that manufactured the parts had a good relationship with shipping - boundary, not challenged. Now if something changes in one of those the entire system is impacted. Did it happen in the past? Yes, but it wasn’t forced to face it’s boundarylessness like it is now.
KC – Yeah, and I think we’re trying to solve a lot of challenges within complex systems in a way that would only work for a closed loop, complicated system.
MF – Correct.
KC – So, I had this example a client told me recently that their company gave every woman a pay rise and some of the women thought it was really ridiculous because they didn’t think all of the women deserved a pay rise but it was one of those examples of trying to solve a complex problem, gender equality in the workplace, with a complicated solution which actually does nothing at all, it just window dresses the issue.
MF – That’s the improved, increased vision that we’re forced to have that I think is part of what is such a deep and big challenge for leaders and for coaches because there is so much more that is not within my locus of control. Whether it’s the leader of a company, whether it is the government of a country, there’s a lot that we used to have locus of control over and it’s the loss of locus of control, I think, is what creates what we now talk about as boundaryless.
KC – Or do you think it’s the loss of a sense of locus of control, because as you said before, it’s not that it’s changed, it’s that we’re more aware.
MF – It’s our awareness of our locus of control and I think that’s the biggest adjustment that humanity is busy making at the moment, and in trying to make that adjustment there is much and many individuals that will become eliminated and there are structures that will disappear. AI plays into all of this as well because AI can help speed up the navigation of boundarylessness. Boundarylessness, that’s such a terrible word, but to be boundaryless.
KC – I like that. It should be a word.
MF – Well that’s the other thing - if we just think about language and how language had to shift to incorporate that which we need to navigate now. There’s a simple complexity to language before that was complex because it wasn’t ABCD because it was also ABCD in a different language, it looked different, it sounded different, whatever. But now there is a way in which the translation of that can happen faster than the average human mind may be able to interoperate or work with. So even humanity is becoming boundaryless.
KC – So Marita, I’m aware that even this conversation feels boundaryless and I don’t know if a 30-minute podcast is going to cover all of this. So, I guess my question is what do we do with this, this new awareness that systems are interdependent and they’re boundaryless, what do we do with this knowledge?
MF – I think some of the work we do, you and I are obviously doing at the moment because there’s the boundary that says you are the podcast host, and I am the guest. It’s boundaryless because what we are talking about has such complexity that unless you can join in the complexity and also have the voice… like earlier, the description between complex and complicated, it’s a boundaryless conversation. Although there are supposed roles, who’s to interviewer and who’s the host? And that piece we already have been navigating as humanity if we are systems inspired. I think the question now is what needs to happen when more and more of that awareness is happening between enterprises, between different sectors in business. How do we work with that? And I think it’s a particular challenge for leaders and I think the place where we need to look is what is it that we as leaders or as coaches or as consultants, what is the awareness that we need to develop within ourselves, off or with this so that we can be able to sit with our teams, with our client teams, with the people that we mentor or consult with and help them create awareness of what is boundaryless? Because that is how humanity can begin to, as a larger system itself, begin to improve its own vision. But if you and I sit and we just look at the small pieces, my awareness of boundaryless has improved and has increased in the preparation for our conversation. Something has shifted in you as a result of this conversation. These are the questions, these are the conversations that we need to be able to initiate more and more, because if we don’t and if a leader’s not aware then they really are stuck if they don’t know about these situations, there will be a defensiveness. There will be I can’t manage it, I’m a failure, I’m going to just shut that down. I’m not going to talk to that. And that’s all of what we see when we look at different crises in different arenas.
KC – Yeah, well it almost makes me think of how the toxins show up in response to change, and sometimes when we’re aware of a change being boundaryless we turn away. I can’t deal with climate change; I don’t know what to deal with that, so I won’t. Equally I notice that some people try to control it and pin it down and make it more of a complicated problem because that gives them a sense of locus of control, but it actually doesn’t change the issue underneath at all, it doesn’t deal with the systemic issue. So, I guess, how can we hold more of this flexibility and this dance that we’re having today in this conversation that is very much boundaryless?
MF – I think curiosity is one of the best antidotes. I think there needs to be the constant curiosity about when you and I talk about this problem, or when I sit with another leader and we are in this conversation - what are the questions, what are the curiosities that I can bring to this conversation that is asking questions about what is it that we are not aware that is impacting us that we need to be aware of? What are the other systems that we never had to focus on before? We’ve always been interdependent but there’s never been a challenge in our interdependence – now there’s a challenge. How do we create awareness and grow the awareness of that? How do we begin to help those capacities that all of us can work with that? I think I mentioned to you that I’m busy with case studies in situations where this is happening, there is this one example of a dam in California that was threated in 2017, there was fear that it would break. Now, if I was to be the coach then we’d talk more about that but if I was to be leader of the people who are managing the dam, there are people, there are systems that as a leader managing the dam that I’m regularly in conversation with. There’s the engineering team, there’s the people that… you could begin to fill in what all of those are. But when the crisis hits it depends on so much beyond what was known as the regular chains of command and influence. So, when we began to look at this as a case study we found that, artificial intelligence helped with a lot of this, but we found that there are at least 15 different, not individual players but enterprise of enterprise size, systems that are interdependent with what is happening in the crisis that never talk to one another. So, whether it is you talk about the dam people and then you talk about government and you talk about the nature people, they are not in constant conversation but when the crisis hits there is a little bit of paranoia that it’s gonna be my fault or fear and then the toxin that you’re talking about, and then I’m not talking to you. So, this breakdown in conversations that cannot hold the boundaryless nature of the crisis. Now, the question then is what is it that I as a leader need to do to create more of this awareness in the team that I have locus of control over? Where else do we need to look? The complexity is we already are doing some of that, but how do we navigate and that’s not a one man or a one-woman job. How do we navigate the crisis between these different systems and communication? Would I just say, ‘well, the government is not doing its job’, or the government say, ‘you should have talked to us before’. You could see how it’s easy to go into blame and into the isolation of something that cannot be isolated.
KC – Yeah, and they’re so zoomed in then on their opinions and their ideas and I think this really needs a zooming out because, when I think about even a really simple idea, say you’re arguing with you partner, and how often we’re very zoomed in on our own opinion that we can’t zoom out and actually see the complexities within that argument because we’re stuck on our way or the highway, it makes me think that maybe third entity is such a useful space for us here in this boundaryless because it holds more than we can hold as individuals.
MF – That’s a great observation because I think that what we hold as the systemic third entity is boundaryless because it already has crossed so many boundaries, because within one systemic third entity of a team or an organization we’re already aware of the different third entities that’s part of that system, but within those systems, if you then begin to think about the different entities of the me that sits in this conversation and the you that sits in this conversation, it’s already not just two people - it’s a multitude. So boundarylessness has already been present but now we’re forced to see the ever-widening horizon of what we couldn’t see before and how to traverse that. One of the metaphors that I came up with the other day was that some of us, maybe the adventurers and the travelers, some of us may be in a podcast like this begin to look at the horizon of boundaryless that we’ve not seen before and be willing to go explore it and try to create communication between that was thought of as separate and boundaried and those that actually now begin to realize that there is no boundary in the impact. I think that some of us will be travelers and will be adventurers and go out there. Others of us will remain in what was the boundaried situation that I thought it was, but I can work with how to lift the gaze of my system, third entity, to begin to look further out, or as far as they can see. But I think again, this is how change has become ever more complex. It’s the motion, it’s the understanding of change that we now need to hugely, it’s not about the speed of it, it is about the increased complexity of it, and I don’t know if we can always go fast with that.
KC – And I guess to your point around some of us will be adventurers, I guess it depends on what topic because there’ll be certain ones where we’ll be really happy to break down the barriers and go beyond but there’ll be certain subjects that maybe we just can’t, we can’t see that horizon. And so how can we go to the third entity because it’s not the question that isn’t about how can we hold this, it’s about how can the third entity hold this.
MF – And I think that this is what we’re talking about being systems inspired. So, as a systems inspired leader, for example, there are certain topics, there are certain challenges that I can be the adventurer and get people to give me input and help navigate or be co-adventurous with me. There are certain topics that I need to be able to go to my team and go ‘I have no idea how to traverse this desert, I need help’. And somebody that’s familiar with deserts might ‘say oh I know what to do, I know where all the camels are, I know where the resources are’. That is, I think, what we are… we are more and more called to drop the boundary of perfection and own the boundaryless availability of this system being inspired to help navigate.
KC – I think that’s a much more refreshing place to look as a leader because suddenly it isn’t about… and my question before was how can we hold this as leaders, but actually that is limiting in itself, that’s limiting it to one person whereas the third entity has so much more wisdom for us and it’s separate and it’s a part of us at the same time.
MF – Yeah, some of the ways in which we hold just about every role in our lives, whether it is the role, the third entity of me and my partner. Whether it is me as a therapist, whether it is me as a leader. We do hold it boundaried and there are certain places where I can have more efficient or specialist input from a boundaried place. But even that, somebody else needs to fiddle and twiddle with. There’s that thing that Faith and I often talked about that is a Rubics cube when we design, and I can fiddle with it and I can get it to a place where I go I have no idea how to go further with that and I give it to her, and then she does it and then she gets stuck. That Rubics cube has always been a quantum one. No single system can solve it, it is only when we know the boundary of what we can do but then accept and feel it in the boundaryless notion of it, where somebody else needs to be able to pick it up.
KC – Yeah. And I guess then there’s something to be said then for recognizing the boundaries, even if they’re not necessarily real, recognizing the boundaries that we put up just to protect ourselves because I’m sure in some ways we need those boundaries just to navigate our lives.
MF – That’s absolutely right and I think that that’s the dance. It’s when to know where I need to be boundaried because I still don’t have enough sight and awareness to navigate that boundarylessness with that system. I still need glasses and the glasses are not good enough. So, I need to find somebody with eyesight for that. That’s systems inspired. And I think the other way that I’m becoming more and more aware of is from a quantum systems inspired perspective. When we begin to look at climate crisis, when we begin to look at pandemics like Covid, when we begin to look at wars, the stuff that in our lifetime we can see as bad and impacting us in a terrible way. In the quantum field, in the cosmic view, those I can begin to see as nature and quantum fields saying if you don’t get it we’re going to have to hit you with a flood that can break a dam or with a pandemic that will slow you down in order to speed up. From the systemic perspective these things happening in this moment, in this lifetime, in this life that is yours and mine – from the systemic view it’s a cosmic evolution, it’s something completely different.
KC – Yeah.
MF – It really takes us to a little bit different from some of what we used to see as science or astrology or whatever, those are the things that have always influenced and are boundaried in their own way but also boundaryless because there’s evolution that happens there too.
KC – Yeah. I’m amazed at how this conversation is very meta and it’s also very every day for me…
MF – On the street.
KC – Yeah, I’ve thought about, for example, all the definitions in our lives, for example how we hold the idea of family. We’re gonna have a boundary for ourselves about what that means and obviously society has its own boundary that’s changing as we evolve and allow for certain things to come in, but even thinking about your own boundaries around certain concepts is really fascinating, and then being aware of how flexible or how tolerant or not you are to change, that’s just a really interesting place to look at this because it’s not that boundaries are wrong but sometimes they are holding us back.
MF – I love what you’re saying Katie because I also think that one of the awareness spaces that I’m gathering, and so much of this is also an essence, so I’m glad that we’re recording because I may not remember after this what we talked about, but one of the insights that I’m having at the moment is how, from the quantum field, from the cosmic field, from whatever you want to call it, I think a lot of the things that we call boundaries or identities, I think if we think of those as we’ve been supplied with those, almost as the language through which to understand what’s happening around us. Definitions provide us with a stepladder into understanding complexity. But once we begin to be able to speak that language this is beginning to show up. The word boundaryless, I don’t know that it exists, boundarylessness is a word that’s just weird but it is the beginning of language that can equip us to navigate it, to be in conversation about it. So, I think that there are things provided us that are the stepladder or the steppingstones to the next level of understanding, or the next level of metaview that we can then begin to lose some of the old words. We can then begin to form new definitions. That’s the next language or the next steppingstones.
KC – Even just holding that there are multiple versions of the same words.
MF – There you go! Language.
KC – Yes, like all voices are a voice of the system. It would be gorgeous to go into a workshop and find out what does family mean to them because you’d probably get 50 different definitions and all of them hold a piece of that truth, that collective truth about what family is and I think if we can hold that, both our truth and also the systemic boundarylessness, that’s quite a lovely place to start I think with this.
MF – I think so. And again, start with the language that’s closest to you. Identity the language that you cannot speak but who can make the translation for you? Or is it a language that you want to learn? So, I think it really is a continued journey of exploration and all of us have our different preferences what journeys look like. Somebody wants to sail in the open water, somebody wants to go hike the Appalachians - it’s different access points which is ultimately having us be boundaryless.
KC – I think you’re right, we needed more than 30 minutes for this conversation. But I’m going to put a boundary around it otherwise I think we’d go all day –
MF – I’m with you!
KC – And it’s definitely got me thinking about those boundaries in my life that are just there and I haven’t been aware of them yet, so thank you for stimulating that for me because I think it will open up quite a few insights in my life.
MF – Yeah, and again, I also invite you and anyone who listens, just go and Google a bit and Google around boundaryless because there’s a lot written about it at the minute and I do think it’s part of our evolution and we all need to find what is the easiest access place for us to begin to involve change in that way.
KC – And hold this in a way that works for us because otherwise it can feel scary and overwhelming, and I’m glad we spoke to that too!
MF – I know.
KC – Well, thank you Marita, I always love dancing in the metaview with you and I’ll speak to you very soon.
MF – Thank you Katie. Have a great day and be boundaryless and be where you need to know you need to have a boundary.
KC – I like that. You too Marita, take care.
[Music outro begins 28:43]
KC – Thank you to Marita for that thought provoking discussion around boundaryless change. It certainly felt like our conversation was boundaryless. Here are my key takeaways. There’s more awareness of the interdependence of systems. It’s not that those things weren’t there before, it’s that the evolution of change is causing us to become more aware of boundaryless systems. In a boundaryless world there is often fear that tries to create a boundary that doesn’t exist and that can create a conflict between two systems that are actually interdependent. When we become aware of boundaryless change it can seem like our locus of control diminishes. What can help is the third entity. The third entity connects to a metaview and a much greater awareness than we can hold within ourselves. An awareness that can hold the complexity of boundaryless change without needing to pin it down or fix it. When we become are of boundaries we can better embrace the boundaryless nature of systems and the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. How can you lean into another voice of the system with curiosity and openness without letting go of your own truth? For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. CRR Global’s unshakeable belief is that relationship matters, from humanity to nature to the larger whole.
[Music outro 30:32 – end]