Our Driving Paradigms

Paradigm #1: The four pillars of recovery

Normalizing the things we all need to be well.

We ascribe to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) four-pillars of recovery.  This is a simple concept.  Essentially, we believe that everyone needs to have these four pillars in place in order to be well.  When any of those are out of alignment, we’re less likely to be well.

The four pillars of recovery are: 

1) Community – Having relationships and social networks that provide support, friendship, love, and hope. People that we look forward to seeing, and that want to see us.

2) Purpose – Taking part in meaningful daily activities, such as a job, school, volunteerism, family caretaking, or creative endeavors. Things we’re excited to get out of bed to do.

3) Home – Having access to a stable and safe place to live, and the independence, income, and resources to participate in society.

4) Health – Overcoming or managing one’s disease(s) or symptoms – including abstinence if one has an addiction – and making informed, healthy choices that support physical and emotional well-being. 

Paradigm #2: The Invisible Problem

People don’t always know they need help.

After doing this work for over 20 years, we noticed a trend. Much of our effort, and the effort of other well-meaning organizations, focused on individuals who needed help, but didn’t have the resources to get it.  Meanwhile, we’d meet people who clearly needed support, but were not looking for it. Often, this was simply due to lack of awareness and stigma.  We call this issue the invisible problem, and we see it manifest repeatedly.

Once we noticed the pattern, we started to change our community outreach approaches, and program branding in order to make support accessible to more people who might not be looking for help, but who could clearly benefit from it. 

Paradigm #3: Technical vs. adaptive challenges

Delivering services doesn’t directly translate to solving system issues

We believe all challenges fall into one of two categories: technical challenges, or adaptive challenges.

Technical challenges are easily understood by someone with experience in the relevant field. The solution is also known, based on experience and expertise, and the main obstacle to completing these challenges tends to be time and money to get the job done. With technical challenges, you know if you’re doing a good job, you know who the stakeholders are, and you can train someone to solve the challenge.  These challenges could be a few steps, such as making a sandwich, or many steps, such as flying a plane. Both of those are challenges that can be readily solved, and you’ll know if you’re doing a good job.

Adaptive challenges are often hard to identify. They are often multifaceted and tied to dynamics that are not always clear, even to those deeply involved in the work. To make progress, you need to focus on learning The problem is often unknown or hard to identify; tied to deeper patterns or dynamics and requires learning because the obstacles are not always tangible. These obstacles include changing hearts and minds, building shared values, and creating trusting relationships.  With adaptive challenges, you’re not likely to ever “solve” the entire issue, but you can make clear progress.  You’re unlikely to convince everyone that any single solution is “right”, and people will disagree on the process and the drivers.  The most complicated issues we face are adaptive challenges. You can’t create a standard operating procedure or form to solve these challenges.

Understanding the difference between these two types of challenges allows us to differentiate between them and understand where we can solve a problem (the technical ones) and where we need to focus on learning and simply making progress (the adaptive ones).  Knowing the difference allows us to be bold in our actions and make real progress on difficult issues.