Checklist For Intervention
Diagnose systems: data collection. For example, Tong Yee asked FPC 2 participants to do a one word checkout to describe their feelings at the end of each day.
Create attention: the system fragments when the intervener doesn’t have everyone’s attention. E.g, just standing at the front and waiting for conversations to finish creates a choiceful attention in the system. Contrast this with how it is usually done (which feels quite violent).
Create containers: containers are linguistic and are also fiction.
Establish intention: an example from FPC 2: “I’d like you to get into your ALGs. In ALGs, I’d like you to talk about…”. There is also choice for participants to do other things in their ALGs, but this choice must be intentional.
Give space for resistance: when you don’t give space for resistance, you gain a lot of speed. For Singapore, going from third to first world in a generation came at a price1.
When there are multiple resistances being voiced, periodically reestablish the container. It will be hard trying to manage multiple resistances e.g when there’s not enough time.
An example from FPC 2: “Does anyone have any concerns at all?”, followed by taking a step back and sitting down to allow space for resistance.
Deliver the intervention
Manage Power
Maintain presence, Trust and resilience
The first 5 items are about setting the container.
These 8 things ultimately come back to use of self.
In Singaporean culture, there is often no space for resistance. By the time one enters the workforce, there is a lot of accumulated resistances that needs release.
However, it is extremely difficult for leaders that care to allow space for resistance e.g due to time constraints - “they may be able to give you 3 out of 24”.
Hence, there must be another space for resistance (especially in larger organizations), which does not exist in Singapore. This is a national cultural issue.
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