What becomes possible between us

Dr Chrysavgi Sklaveniti

Nov 1

4 min read

How groups receive invitations to explore

The idea was met with silence. But this was not a silence that held attention.

The team was reviewing the next phase of an enterprise transformation. Delivery dates filled the screen. Different functions were working towards what was intended to feel like a more joined-up experience.

Someone paused over the process map.

“We may be creating a single point of entry, but behind it employees will still move between the same separate teams.”

The idea was still tentative. It may have needed clarification. There was a brief pause, a glance towards the implementation plan, and then someone returned the conversation to the timeline.

The meeting continued.

Nothing dramatic had happened. The idea had not been challenged or rejected. It had simply received no response.

Yet something had happened in the life of the group. An invitation to explore had passed through the meeting without becoming part of what the group could think together.

The concern had appeared in the space between functions and belonged fully to none of them. To follow it would have meant looking beyond delivery towards the experience the organisation was producing across its silos. It might also have unsettled decisions that already felt complete.

What might be missed when a concern sits outside the remit of those with most authority in the room?

In another meeting within the same transformation, the conversation unfolded differently.

The group was trying to understand why employee requests repeatedly stalled. Each team could describe what happened within its own part of the process. The difficulty appeared somewhere between them.

A colleague joining online said, “From the employee’s side, this is still one request. They do not know which part belongs to HR, IT or their manager.”

Someone around the table turned towards the screen.

“Where does the employee get stuck between our teams?”

The question allowed the thought to continue. People stopped explaining their own process and began tracing the employee’s movement through it. One person recognised a handover that was creating delay. Another noticed that the same information was being requested twice. Someone else could see where responsibility simply faded away.

No one had arrived with the complete answer. It developed as people connected what each could see from a different place in the organisation.

For a while, the silos remained present without deciding the boundaries of the conversation. Attention moved from who owned each step towards the shared experience their separate steps were creating.

Where does the work lose continuity because an organisational boundary has become the employee’s problem?

Elsewhere, the invitation arrived through disagreement.

The group was considering how much of the new experience should be standardised across the organisation. One person argued for a single global process. It would be easier to communicate, govern and scale. A colleague working closer to local teams paused.

“I see it differently. Can we stay with this for a moment? If everything is fixed centrally, some employees may have a simpler platform but a service that no longer fits their work.”

The conversation slowed. The disagreement touched authority as much as design. Who could decide what the experience should be? Whose knowledge carried weight? Was local variation a source of insight or an obstacle to implementation?

We stayed with the difference a little longer.

People began to separate what needed to feel coherent for every employee from what required local judgement. The original proposal did not survive unchanged. Nor was it dismissed. Through disagreement, it became more precise.

Conflict had not stopped exploration. It had brought competing realities into the same conversation. The group could now ask a different question: what needs to be shared, and where must difference remain possible for the transformation to work?

Three moments within the movement of one transformation. One invitation disappeared beneath the authority of the plan. Another travelled across organisational silos. A third developed through conflict.

What became possible did not belong to the ideas alone. It developed through the ways the groups received, questioned and continued them.

Receiving an invitation does not require agreement, nor does exploration ask that every possibility remain open. As people engage with what has been offered, an idea may gather meaning, change direction or lose its hold. A possibility can come to a close through exploration.

That is different from an invitation passing through the room without meeting a response. No question draws it out. No connection carries it further. It remains with the person who offered it and disappears before the group has had the chance to make anything of it together.

The relational in-between comes alive in these responses. A question turns people towards what was almost missed. A connection lets one person’s experience meet another’s. A different voice interrupts the ease of agreement and gives another possibility room to breathe.

As the invitation moves between people, it gathers meaning and changes shape. It may become something they can think with together, or it may reach a thoughtful close. Even when it is not carried forward, the group has made something of it together: a concern has been clarified, a difference has been encountered, or another way of understanding the situation has become available.

Amy Edmondson’s The Fearless Organization helps us understand the conditions that make speaking possible. My research on moments that connect explores what happens next: how responses differentiate, develop or close an invitation, and how shared inquiry and co-action may begin to form.

An invitation may enter through one person. What becomes possible takes shape between people.

What invitations to explore might be passing through our meetings without enough response?