Jan 8 (edited) • General
A short reflection on the pulse check we ran here.
Seven votes. Four orientations. Zero right or wrong answers.
Here is how the group distributed itself:
Two people start with the self. One person starts with the story. One person starts with the performance. Three people start with the situation.
That alone already tells us something important: Not about quality but about focus.
What became very visible in the comments is that people are not arguing about what matters. They are revealing where their attention naturally goes first when they think about development, growth, or change.
- Those who start with the self look inward first. Identity, traits, consciousness, roles, meaning. The assumption here is that understanding who I am precedes any sustainable change. Systems come after clarity.
- Those who start with the story look at how meaning is constructed. How performance and self get interpreted, narrated, justified, and sold to others and to oneself. Change begins by reshaping the narrative that holds everything together.
- Those who start with performance focus on output, standards, practice, and improvement. What must get better? What can be trained? What excellence actually looks like in behavior, not in intention.
- And those who start with the situation look at context. Constraints. Feedback loops. Resources. Pressure. Roles. Real-life conditions. The belief here is that behavior is shaped less by intention and more by the environment people are placed into.
I (for example) voted for the situation. Not because the self is not important. Not because story or performance is secondary. But, from my POV in practice, context decides what is even possible to do and how humans are 'framed'.
, my community co-founder (and whose work I really admire), would start with performance. That difference is not a conflict. For you, as a community member, it actually is an asset.
Because motivation design, engagement design, UX, learning design, and leadership design all quietly answer this question first, whether consciously or not: Where do you start?
If you start with the self, you design reflection, identity work, autonomy, and inner alignment. If you start with the story, you design framing, language, meaning, and narrative coherence. If you start with performance, you design practice, feedback, standards, progression.If you start with the situation, you design constraints, cues, systems, and environments.
None of these is wrong. But each one leads to very different solutions.
And this is exactly why this community matters.
Not because we agree. But because we see the same problem from different angles, we can challenge each other’s blind spots before those blind spots become dogma.
If you are willing, share where you personally start and why. Share what you are currently working on or struggling with. Share where your designs feel stuck or misaligned.
This space only works if we bring the real questions, not just the polished answers.
This is for the thriving ones.
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A short reflection on the pulse check we ran here.
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