Why Participation Changes What Becomes Available to Know
Through participation, assumptions can sometimes help shape the reality we later interpret.
We often imagine knowledge as something that can be acquired from a distance.
Observe carefully.
Gather information.
Analyze what is present.
Reach a conclusion.
Sometimes that works remarkably well.
But some things cannot be known in quite the same way from the outside.
Participation can change what becomes available to know.
Observation and Participation Are Not the Same
Imagine watching someone ride a bicycle.
You can observe balance.
You can study steering.
You can measure speed, angle, force, and motion.
You can learn a great deal.
But none of that is identical to riding the bicycle.
The moment you participate, another kind of information becomes available.
You feel the continuous adjustments.
You discover how balance changes with movement.
You recognize relationships that may have been difficult to notice from the outside.
The bicycle did not change.
Your relationship to it did.
Some Information Exists Only in Relationship
Consider a conversation.
You can observe two people speaking.
You can record their words.
You can study their expressions.
You can analyze what happened afterward.
But if you become one of the participants, the situation changes.
Your words affect the other person.
Their response affects you.
Your next response changes what happens next.
Information emerges through the relationship itself.
Some of what becomes knowable did not exist in quite the same form before participation occurred.
Participation Can Produce Information
This is an important distinction.
Participation does not merely give us access to information that was already waiting somewhere to be collected.
Sometimes participation helps produce the conditions from which new information emerges.
Ask a question and a conversation changes.
Touch an object and its resistance becomes available.
Enter an unfamiliar environment and relationships that were theoretical become experiential.
Try something and reality responds.
The response becomes information.
Participation has changed what can now be recognized.
You Cannot Learn Everything About Water From the Shore
A person can study water without entering it.
Its chemistry can be analyzed.
Its temperature measured.
Its currents modeled.
Its depth calculated.
All of that knowledge is real.
But enter the water and something else becomes available.
Buoyancy is no longer merely a principle.
Current becomes a relationship.
Temperature becomes experience.
Movement changes what the water does in relation to you.
Participation has not invalidated observation.
It has opened another route to knowing.
Participation Changes the Observer Too
There is another consequence that is easy to miss.
When we participate, we are not always the same observer afterward.
Experience changes what we can recognize.
The first time we encounter something, much of its structure may be invisible.
After participating repeatedly, distinctions begin to appear.
A musician hears differences that once sounded identical.
A craftsperson feels differences that cannot easily be described.
A parent recognizes signals that might mean little to someone else.
An experienced leader notices changes in a room that might never appear in a report.
Participation develops relationship.
Relationship changes recognition.
Knowing About Is Different From Knowing Through
We often use the word know for very different relationships.
We can know about something.
We can know how to do something.
We can know someone.
We can know through repeated experience.
These are not necessarily interchangeable.
A person can know a great deal about leadership without ever leading.
A person can study trust without trusting.
A person can understand the mechanics of conversation without developing a relationship.
The information may be accurate.
But participation can make additional relationships available that description alone cannot provide.
Participation Creates Feedback
One reason participation matters is feedback.
When we act within a system, the system responds.
We adjust.
It responds again.
That continuing exchange creates information.
Walking works this way.
Conversation works this way.
Learning works this way.
Leadership works this way.
Relationships work this way.
We do not calculate every adjustment in advance.
We participate, receive feedback, recognize what changed, and respond again.
Knowing develops inside the exchange.
This Is Different From Taking Reality by Force
Participation does not mean passivity.
Nor does it mean refusing to influence what happens.
Participation means remaining in relationship with what happens as we act.
There is a difference between imposing an expected outcome and observing how reality responds to our involvement.
In one case, feedback may be treated primarily as an obstacle.
In the other, feedback is information.
The distinction can be subtle.
But it changes what becomes available to learn.
Goals Can Sometimes Interfere With Participation
A goal can provide useful direction.
But a goal can also narrow attention.
If we become completely identified with a desired outcome, information that does not support that outcome may become easier to dismiss.
Reality continues providing feedback.
We simply stop treating some of it as relevant.
The goal has become interference.
This does not mean goals are undesirable.
It means our relationship with a goal can affect what remains available to recognize.
This broader relationship is explored in How Interference Changes What We Are Able to See.
Assumptions Can Determine How We Participate
Participation is never entirely separate from expectation.
If we enter a conversation expecting conflict, we may participate differently.
If we assume someone cannot be trusted, we may withhold information.
They respond to that withholding.
Their response may then appear to confirm the original assumption.
What began as an expectation has entered the relationship and helped produce the evidence used to support it.
This is one reason hidden assumptions matter.
They do not merely shape how we interpret reality.
Through participation, they can sometimes help shape the reality we later interpret.
This relationship is explored further in How Hidden Assumptions Shape What We Perceive.
Participation, Relationship, and Trust
Relationship develops through participation.
And as relationship develops, something else may become possible.
Trust.
Trust does not require certainty.
It can emerge from repeated interaction.
We participate.
Something responds.
We participate again.
Patterns become recognizable.
Expectations become better calibrated.
We begin to know what can be relied upon and what cannot.
That trust can create access to information that was unavailable when the relationship was new.
Participation in Leadership
Organizations can be observed through reports.
Revenue.
Costs.
Turnover.
Productivity.
Surveys.
Performance measures.
These can reveal important structures.
But an organization is also a network of relationships.
A leader who participates differently may discover information that no report could have produced.
Ask a different question and people may reveal something different.
Listen without immediately correcting and a conversation may continue further.
Change an incentive and previously hidden behavior may become visible.
The organization has not simply been observed.
A different relationship with it has created different access.
The Executive Insights collection and Executive Field Notes explore these structures in leadership, decision-making, and organizational life.
Participation Expands the Field of Possibility
Participation also changes decisions.
Before acting, we may imagine several possible outcomes.
After acting, reality responds.
New possibilities become visible.
Some disappear.
Others emerge that could not have been predicted beforehand.
This is why exploration can be so valuable.
We do not always need to know the final answer before beginning.
Sometimes a small participation produces the information required for the next decision.
This relationship between possibility and decision is explored in Why More Possibilities Can Lead to Better Decisions.
Participation and Freedom
If participation creates relationship, and relationship creates access to additional information, then participation can increase navigability.
We have more feedback.
More distinctions become recognizable.
More possibilities become available.
We can move differently because we can see differently.
Freedom, in this sense, does not require complete control over the environment.
It can emerge through an increasingly navigable relationship with what is present.
The Freedom Series approaches this question through brief observations designed to make hidden structures and assumptions easier to recognize.
A Different Question About Knowing
When we do not know something, the natural response is often:
What information do I need?
That remains an important question.
But there is another:
What would become available to know if I participated differently?
Perhaps the answer is nothing.
Perhaps observation is sufficient.
But sometimes the missing information is not waiting to be discovered from a distance.
It becomes available only when a relationship begins.
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