The Everydayness of Learning and Practice Partnerships

This is the second in a three-part series reflecting on Learning and Practice Partnerships at the School of System Change. The first explored the origins of this work. Here, I turn toward our approach and explore what these partnerships actually look and feel like in the everyday – the space between theory and practice.

Organizations come to us through many different gateways. They’re developing a collective understanding of what systems change is. Onboarding newcomers. Building a systems practice framework. Designing a new strategy. Shaping a learning approach. Undergoing governance transformation. We don’t always know what we are going to get.

Initial requests often sound like, "Can you give us the tool?" Tools and frameworks can be helpful concrete instruments that provide grounding and direction. While supporting people to navigate and responsibly choose methods is an important part of our role, Learning and Practice Partnerships focus us on the everydayness of systems work—how we think, act, relate, and show up through the ordinary moments of change in organizational life.

One that embraces the outer complexity of what they are trying to change, the inner complexity of those involved, and the relational ecology that makes it possible. We call these people Cultivators – individuals bringing systems change into their organizations and networks.

While those we work with are usually clear about their goals, there is a more subtle arriving orientation we’ve learned to pay attention to. We’ve come to notice recurring patterns that tend to show up as spectrums, offering a navigational guide that helps us meet people where they are and gently nudge them toward a partnering paradigm we find meaningful.

These orientations are rarely shared so explicitly, but they often look something like this. They are neither right nor wrong, but rather better or worse, with the space in between becoming the vector we move along, depending on context:

Whether these spectrums are named depends on the organizing culture and folks’ appetite and readiness. Some partnerships begin at one end and move along over time. Others stay put. And some Cultivators move between, maneuvering and creating quiet shifts without ever declaring them.

We don’t see these as problems to solve, but as spectrums to hold. Where people sit at any given moment shapes how we begin and move from there.

At the heart of both how we understand systems change and how we partner is a polarity between outcome and process. This interdependent pair is nothing new and is akin to the common polarity of doing and being.

At the School, we aim to work with our partners’ practice as the generative field in which they can be in a healthy relationship between outcome and process. What we center and attune to shape our direction of travel, and so purpose is often the first spectrum we orient to as we begin.

Systems change as outcome is the change we are working to contribute to in the world, when systems shift, reshape, and adopt new patterns and goals. We also see systems change as process - a continuous unfolding of collaboration and experimentation as we make our way through complexity. Both matter. Neither is enough on its own for systems change.

When we hold this polarity well, process keeps us close to the here and now, learning and adapting as we move, while outcome gives direction and momentum. But when we get stuck in process, we risk circling, getting caught in reflecting, and moving too slowly to keep folks in the game. When we privilege outcomes alone, we risk linear delivery, burnout, and the loss of a systems view.

Practice lives at the center, the capacity to move between these poles with intention and attention. It is about finding what is ours to be and do in the world, while cultivating the worldviews, skills, and habits needed to meet the moment. It is something we can develop incrementally over time, and an invitation to tend to how we understand and participate in the world, because that informs so much of how we decide, design, act, learn, and change.

Within any given partnership, change plays out across different layers concurrently. Change to us is fractal; what shifts at one layer ripples through the others, and the micro moments of practice contain and reflect the whole system we are seeking to interrupt, shift, and shape. So we attend to the I (our worldviews, skills, and habits), the We (how we are working together), and the World (the outer change we are contributing to). Knowing which layer needs care, and when, is itself part of the practice of discernment.

Accompaniment is the relational posture we bring to support people to inhabit and cultivate systemic practice. It means providing the right amount of structure to enable emergent ways of working, so people can be adaptive within their context. And it means creating an approach that encourages them to connect, learn, organize, and work in ways that are coherent with the change they are seeking.

Learning and Practice Partnerships can be uncomfortable, even for us. There’s no clear recipe, and we do whatever we can to resist inhabiting the assuring ‘expert’ consultant position. Yet partners often experience this as honest, alive, and real.

This begins with how we enter into partnership – sometimes as early as the proposal stage – through a form of social contracting that makes explicit our expectations, culture, and chosen ways of relating. This can feel edgy, especially where a partner’s outcomes feel urgent, but it gives us shared agreements to return to when things don’t go to plan. 

We invite shared ownership, clarify roles and accountabilities, and build in tight feedback loops to reflect on both what we’re doing and how we’re working. This becomes part of how we live and work with change, allowing us to adjust our aims as we go rather than evaluate them at the end. 

This often includes a co-initiation moment to set foundations, returning regularly to reflect on both the what and the how through retrospectives, and closing well by looking at what has changed, including what might be named as most significant change.

In this vein, inquiry is central to our work together – we aim to question, experiment, and reflect, building the capacity to probe, sense, and respond rather than offering fixed paths. In this, the partnership relationship becomes a space of co-learning, where we bring together and value our collective tapestry of experience and knowledge, while also attending to wholeness, recognizing that what we think and do cannot be separated from how we feel, how we relate, and how we are as a collective.

Bringing this together, three principles have emerged that guide our approach to Learning and Practice Partnerships:

With all this, Learning and Practice Partnerships often take a recognizable form that can resemble a fairly conventional approach. What makes them feel different is how they are held and how they unfold. They are less defined by fixed plans and more by feedback cycles that help determine the way forward, often with a sense of meandering held within enabling constraints that provide enough coherence without over-determining a path.

LPPs are both relationships and work that evolve together over time through shared agency and ongoing dialogue. The work is not done for partners, but with them, and increasingly by them, building the capacity to carry it forward. This requires a willingness to stay with ambiguity and to move without premature certainty, trusting that direction emerges through practice rather than prescription.

This piece has been an exploration of the everydayness of Learning and Practice Partnerships, how they are lived, practiced, and experienced over time.

We’ve found Learning and Practice Partnerships are not always easy. The work can be energizing and exhausting. At times, it can even feel lonely. There are moments of movement and moments of stillness, both being sources of aliveness. And yet, something keeps us here through a sense of rightness in the work itself, beyond grasping for results or avoiding let-downs or mistakes. Not because we know where it will always lead, but because of how we meet it together.

The next piece reflects on what this work has been setting in motion, following the ripples across partners, the School, and my own practice.