This year Bloom is inviting us to play more at work! We’re launching a set of offerings, supporting teams and leaders to use play to be more co-creative, authentically connected, harness the power of co-intelligence, and foster ease with the unknown. And.. have fun! This article explores how the ancient pedagogies of play and sacred clowning are relevant to our current knowledge and understanding of transformation, and perhaps even necessary for navigating the complexities of our times.

This year we’ve been honored to support over a dozen courageous organizations moving through equity centered transformation, seeking to build more organizational health and cultures of belonging. Across the multiplicity of these organizational journeys, we are learning time and time again - that the quality of our relationships with ourselves, with one another and with the communities we serve is at the heart of the work.

We want to talk about conflict. We’ve been noticing a surge in clients reaching out for conflict mediation, conflict resolution, conflict training…It seems that conflict and opportunities to work through it in more generative ways, is everywhere.

Since May 2020, most of our clients have cited the murder of George Floyd as the watershed moment for addressing anti-Black racism in their work. Many wanted to do something immediately to show that they cared and to ensure that they were not perceived as indifferent towards anti-Black racism

I want to talk about our approach to equity-centered change in organizations, and how we, at Bloom, think about change. It feels important to add our perspective to the many ways of looking at organizational and social transformation, because our approach itself embodies the change we are seeking and supporting organizations in.

I believe that DEI initiatives in private and public institutions are not as effective because of weak theoretical foundations from which institutions conceptualize and implement DEI action plans. Before institutions announce their commitment to DEI and embark on easy to do and more surface layer engagement, things like unconscious bias webinars/workshops, there is a need for internal foundational work that builds collective clarity on critical elements of DEI work.