How do we integrate ourselves, our organisations and our professions, in the face of global change and flux?

What is the most fertile relationship between character, culture
and collective purpose in a connected age?

These Core Ideas provide some answers to these questions. They guide our practice with everyone from major companies and public administrations, to private clients and individuals. (See the Reimagining Social Work page for their most recent and clear articulation).
 

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We each live in a world of our own narratives. Narratives that have formed out of our personal life experience; narratives that we have adopted from the innumerable strands of culture we are part of. We imagine that we can identify an authentic personal story, but how can we distinguish that from the shared, generic stories that have become part of our thinking: myself as a 21C woman, myself as a social worker, myself as the third child in a family of five for example? How much of our thinking is ours alone? And how much is the product of social constructs of all kinds - a collective mind - absorbed from the news media, films and books, comics and lyrics?

New Integrity implies a constantly developing awareness of the narratives that shape our thoughts and actions and are kept on the hard disk of our consciousness. Learning to observe our own thinking allows us to better monitor the flow of information on and off that hard disk, take stock and to varying degrees, manage its presence.

Just like a hard disk, consciousness also describes our unique capacity for handling and processing information. An underdeveloped consciousness can only hold simple information which is badly stored. On the other hand, a well developed consciousness is a great resource, able to manage the most complex data, making it easily accessible for creative thinking.

Most often the factor of consciousness is overlooked or taken for granted in assessment of functionality, either in jobs or in society at large. How much can I take on when confronted with pain or complexity? Can my consciousness, defined and shaped by my history, process the literally mind-blowing new realities of today and tomorrow to form coherent new narratives? Do I have the flexibility and imagination to make way for change or - even better - be the creator myself?

New Integrity Consultancy is aimed at to enhancing consciousness through -

• developing both cultural and news media intelligence
• identifying governing narratives of all kinds from personal to social
• teaching narrative construction to make better stories

In a world where we are forced to be less certain about our intellectual and conceptual truths - indeed, the more we know, the more we just have to admit we don't know - neither of these forms of knowledge can entirely hold sway. Scientist Brian Goodwin, founding member of the International Futures Forum and senior lecturer at Schumacher College has come to the conclusion that science itself has to admit both ways of knowing - he calls it the Fear and Love Loops.

Fear and Love are our most fundamental motivations: while the first provokes a need to control, the second prompts participation and embracing. Both are valuable in different circumstances - fear underpins survival, love prompts empathy - and are equally vital components of evolution. Yet historically (at least since the European Enlightenment) they have been competitors - mirroring the dualities of objectivity v subjectivity, rational inquiry v emotional identification, abstraction v feeling and emotion.

Using Brian's IFF model, New Integrity consultancy deliberately approaches all situations with both forms of inquiry - what are the facts and hard evidence as well as how does it feel - and begins to create a loop to connect them. Examples from the care professions would describe the movement between a) keeping a non-attached distance from a care user and b) using all one's skills of empathy and compassion to intuit the reality of the subject's life. Instead of calling for only one kind of evidence, the Fear and Love Loops admits many different kinds of information which together compose the best picture of reality. When one kind of knowledge - giving rise to one set of actions - hits a brick wall and offers no way to change, the Loop shows us a way out towards very different store of knowledge, offering quite different ideas for action. In this way, intractable situations become tractable.

Drawing a Fear and Love Loop model of any situation, organisation or group, allows us to gather the maximum input of information and show a flexible, fluid approach to developmental management and problem solving.

What is the effect of heavily formalised days, stated objectives strictly adhered to and no outlets for initiative? What is the effect of zero options, alienated labour and unmovable authority? What happens when every factor of a workers life is pre-set, all the terms and conditions are agreed, the bosses go out and to lunch and no real engagement is possible? Shut down. The worker 'goes to sleep' and the organisation - whether high profit corporation or idealistic NGO - heads for the slippery slope.

For blood and ideas to flow, there needs to be engagement - of the head, the heart, the body: there needs to be Play. Not trivial, diverting play, but serious play of boundaries, play of meaning, playing God, playing with ideas, playing to win, play of the day, power play. With play as the dominant ethos, each person in the team has a chance to make his mark: in a really playful team every one has a chance to score a goal. Play is the move from a finite game of success and failure to the infinite game of re-inventing the self, the product, the market and ultimately, the world we live in.

New Integrity Director Pat Kane, author of The Play Ethic (both website and book, published by Macmillan) outlines a radical new way to BE and ACT, whether in a hot-desking creative agency, a home-workers productive hub or a social worker's community of care. A play audit will take you through the seven rhetorics of play, looking at the 'play' between rules and unspoken codes of conduct, productivity goals and creative visions, accountability and fulfilment. Moving all participants from the narrow expectations of a workaday life, the Play Ethic opens up the infinite possibilities arising from full engagement of heart, body and soul.

When you think of East Enders, do you think of it as a soap opera about a community of chancers? Or do you think about it as a quasi-documentary spelling out the consequences of too much uncaring government? If you are inclined to think the first, you are likely to be a person who views life from the perspective of human capacity and their internal narratives. If the second, you are more keyed into collective, political structure and ethos.

Generally speaking, when trying to understand the success or failure of a project or organisation, we tend to focus on one of four perspectives:

• the person and his or her capacity to do her job
• the practice of that job itself
• the culture or the values that underpin that organisation or the individual's decisions
• the politics or policy.that permits and limits all the above

But excessive focus on any one of these perspectives leaves you with narrow choices: if it is the girl's fault, change the girl. If it is the wrong way of doing something, do it differently. However, if only one aspect changes of what is without exception, a four aspected reality, the likelihood of the same problem occurring again is large.

New Integrity uses the models of philosopher Ken Wilber to look at reality as made up of the four quadrants of perspective, each part playing an equally significant part in the whole and each complexly related. Within each of the quadrants, NI identifies lines of development for that part of the whole - possibilities of growth for the person, the way s/he does her job, new developments in the culture they operate in and more sophisticated and engaged policy to support all that.

Whether the participants are back room or front line, each will find the stretch from their habitual perspective into a full four quadrant approach will bring a sense of connectedness and agency they did not have before.

• CONSCIOUSNESS..
  Observing our own mind
• WAYS OF KNOWING.
  What counts as knowledge?
• ENGAGEMENT.
  Where do we find stamina, energy and enterprise?
• AGENCY.
  Acting always with the big picture in mind