POSSIBILITY SPACE

Possibility Space is the place where all your ideas live before you bring them into your conscious mind.  It’s real in the same way as your life is real: it is created in language. See it as a metaphor for Google or Facebook. We use it to make sense of our experiences, settle differences, find solutions, share common feelings, etc. It can place boundaries on a search of our mind and constraints on how we perceive our world.

Models and Metaphors

We can only sense some of what is “out there”. It has to make sense to us and that depends on the  mental model we generate from it “in here”. We  perceive and interpret reality to construct a model of our understanding of it.  The model works for us or constrains us,  and we then refine it as a new distinction that creates another possibility. These distinctions can be created through conversation.

Our nervous system is programmed to look for sameness, difference and learn to compare our observations with what we already know.  It’s the learning that creates the distinctions. Reinforcing feedback loops can ritualise old patterns of thought or action and no learning takes place because a clear. distinction cannot be found. 

Single and Double Loop Learning

For example, in single-loop learning you observe and choose an action using the same thinking and so get the same result. You are just learning what you already know. In double-loop learning you apply a different set of values or beliefs to the problem where you reframe your thoughts from which new distinctions produce new actions  from which a different (hopefully better) result can emerge. 

To learn new things, assessing differences is critically important. Double-loop learning is a skill where to change the result one has to change the way something is observed. The observer has to consider new possibilities drawn fro the ‘possibility space’ that is their mind, consciousness and thought. Creativity comes from considering the unknown, a new way of combining what you already know is novel ways.

When we talk about thinking “outside the box” we are entering Possibility Space, where we can use language to get ideas for new actions that will bring forth a new reality. Offers, requests, promises and declarations expand Possibility Space and make change happen.

“Every human act takes place in language.” Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela

Conversations are how we use language to design new Possibility Spaces. The mind helps us make sense of our experiences and generate new thoughts before we even become conscious of them.

They can appear in any number of possible states, but only some are make enough sense to be significant. What we not depends on the observer that we are. We are looking for differences where that difference is significant from which we can make distinctions.

For example, we choose words because we want to make a distinction. We consider an alternative viewpoint, yet limit our choice to those that fit a context or value that really matters because it is useful to us. The exchange of things or thoughts relies on valuing one thing or idea over. another. 

They emerge as insights that combine previous experiences or can be stimulated by the thoughts of others in conversation, stories and metaphors. We look to others, because of our desire for new knowledge or a different  “way of being”. It makes us different observers and capable of offering unique insights that others are blind to.