Clarity and alignment are the yin and yang of next steps.
Clarity is soft. We often find it through going inwards. We can’t see it, but we often know when it lands in us. We feel it in our belly, our chest, in the atmosphere. When a group finds shared clarity, we can see people’s bodies responding. We can’t force clarity; simply create the right conditions to let clarity arrive. And when it does, it's often only about the right next steps.
Once clarity lands, we can shift into creating alignment.
Alignment is as straight and pointed as an arrow. It's strong, directive, and energising. While clarity can involve messy (our projects and our communities might benefit from messy), there’s no messy in creating alignment. Creating alignment moves our attention outwards into noticing and responding to the effects of our decisions and actions, feedback loops and real-time information, and how structures and systems affect us as individuals and groups. It shifts us from enquiry and receiving into focused action.
Both of them are a gentle, constant dance with each other. Learning to feel into both, we can make space for what's truly alive to enter our organisations and projects.