Action inquiry — a hard but rewarding path
Doing the work of action inquiry over the last 20 years has probably been one of the most valuable practices in my life, it brings me back to myself, grounds me and supports me to be in the journey of life. It has also had its challenges — but I would have it no other way.
At the School we are launching a publication that helps to introduce people to learning approach and some deeper framings of action inquiry as well as making explicit in the design and delivery of our programmes and partnerships and what we offer to our wider community.
Here I offer some of my reflections about taking this path, more as a personal journey under the work that one might see in the world, some of the rewards and the value I have found, which I hope you might discover if you choose to embark on the journey.
Blurred boundaries: As you start to really embed action inquiry into a way of living and being — the boundaries between what you might consider life, work, family, the world, start to blur — as if they were ever separate, only separate in the way we construct our realities. This therefore allows us to live much more in touch with the way the world works however it does mean you have to create your own boundaries and structures so you don’t get lost in the fuzziness. Creating my own rhythm of learning has supported me immensely, from a yearly cycle of intention setting to spaces for reflection, sense-making and writing. By weaving together my reflections on my personal journey with that of the work I do in the world, it helps process deeper questions, bring in personal stories to my teaching as well as support me in how I facilitate and lead.
Examples in practice include: working with the transition to being a mother and how I saw the interplay between the deeply inner psychological changes that were occurring and how the system around me was conditioning and holding me. The journey and life transitions of divorce, co-parenting, dating have been a process of exploring my deeper inner work of why I repeat patterns and how I wish to reconfigure them and a ground for experimenting with how we might relate differently, which I have woven with questions of leadership and power in the running of a network organisation. Whilst also cross-pollinating systems frameworks and tools I might use in my professional life to bring to some of these personal questions and approaches, like using the three horizons process as we were working out our new co-parenting approach through our separation.
Living with awareness can sometimes feel tiring and unforgiving, from noticing and acknowledging patterns in your life and how they affect you emotionally, not pushing them away but processing them. Noticing and paying attention to what is happening to our planet and the painful realities of society around us. “Good friends”, co-inquiries or people who are with you on this journey who can support this awareness, support your development and progress have been deeply important to this journey — as the learning cannot be done alone. Indeed, some of my closest and dearest friends are also co-inquirers and adventurers in this world, for the laughs, joy as well as the dilemmas and challenges as we face them.
Examples in practice: I have set up or been a part of a number of co-inquiry groups over the years that have supported this deeper reflection and work, from ones on Eros and power (exploring love and creativity), New Girls (supporting feminine leadership for systems change), Mirco-adventures (supporting us live more in life and through transitions), celebrating Sabbaths (the Celtic wheel of the year) in my garden; inviting in neighbours and community as part of my inquiry into the loneliness of our time, the grief we feel from losing our tribes in society and exploring my cultural history and wisdoms. As well as naming my creative partnership with Louise Armstrong, (rather than just a working relationship) where we weave multiple inquiries together and has helped give birth to things like our Writing retreats.
System immune response, resistance from the system**: Inviting people to open up to seeing and being in the world differently can feel uncomfortable and also challenging. When people experience you bringing something different to the world, it can create responses where people just want to stick with what they know, fall back to a way of acting and being that feels safe and known or people can show active resistance to what they are learning about themselves and the work — as it threatens all that they know. This can sometimes be expressed as critique or an undermining of what we are doing, and as such we have to be discerning with what is feedback that needs adapting to and what is from their own edges and resistances. It takes openness, curiosity but also tenacity, courage and resilience to keep going, not with the straight path, but with your own process of inquiry.
** term used by a “good friend” Rowan Conway.
This is why supporting the grappling with complexity through sustained learning environments is important work, so that people feel they can go through the chasm, rise to the challenge, do the unlearning that is all required.
Examples in practice: Exploring these undercurrents has given birth to co-inquiries and sometimes fortunate enough projects that have explored questions and areas of change; such as cultivating education systems change, what happens when organisations host systems change initiatives, fields of systems change practices, power, leadership, worldviews and narratives, constellating change, monitoring, evaluation and learning, investors and funders in change, looking at the micro dynamics as well as in the world. The repeating pattern in each of these is when new practices, coming from different worldviews hit the infertile ground of there contexts and we start to see what happens as we seek to shift the power dynamics and relationships required for change.
Brings meaning: Action inquiry has given me deep meaning in my life, and hopefully might for you. It has helped me tap into the questions and issues that matter to me and helped me with a structure, rhythm and way to explore and address them, from the personal issues I have faced to the work and world questions I care about. It has helped me make sense of what is going on in the world as well as giving me a way feel I am making some sort of contribution. It has helped me live beyond hope and fear. It has been a life-giving force, a way to live allowing me to be able to surf and navigate what life has in store for me. When I feel at sea, lost I turn back to my process of action inquiry, including those around me, to make the storm more manageable and to ride through it and keep going. This is why for me it is the meta-process to organise other processes.
Examples in practice: after my PhD I started to embed the learning process of action inquiry into my yearly rhythms, for example I have an extensive process of reviewing my year, through going over notes, reflections, images, work I have done to see how it has unfolded and what is emerging for the next cycle. I also have moments in the month, year where I reflect and review these and keep the questions and intentions alive as well as seeing writing mini and longer retreats as critical moments, either alone or together, for reflecting and writing.
Living change: Living in a world that is unknowable, that is complex and living in a time of disruption, discontinuity and decline, can make one feel overwhelmed, unclear which way to turn in the messiness of life. By finding your approach to learning and action inquiry can help you live the change, as something that only we can do, to do it with playfulness despite the seriousness of the challenges we are facing. If sometimes we feel like there is no home, or the home we are standing on is ever changing, then it gives us the ability to live on the path, the process rather than the outcome, the rhythm that keeps us putting one step ahead of the other.
Examples in practice: Living change has had different forms and ways over the years, from group inquiries and sessions but mainly it has been a creative life force and naming of this deeper, dare I say spiritual practice for me — indeed in 2025 one inquiry that is emerging is something about how these practices might also be a spiritual practice. How might I open to the next cycle of my life and welcome in the spiritual?
“Spiritual — the connection to something bigger than yourself”
We often don’t know how to respond to the enormity of the challenges of our time — although systems change as an extremely broad field of practices might offer methods and approaches to support change making, for me action inquiry is the process that holds it together and weaving a process of acting, being and learning as change.
Check-out our publication that explores working with and holding multiple levels of action inquiry, action inquiry as a learning cycle, loops of learning and inquiry and how we might embody action inquiry as a systemic and life long practice and way of being and becoming and how it informs our learning approach at the school
