How to Read the Wood: What My Attic Taught Me About Emergent Learning
Written by: Ashley Dresser, The Convive Collective
There is a particular kind of spaciousness that comes with standing inside a centuries-old European attic after everything has been cleared out, but it is fleeting. My imagination is quickly stifled by the deep sense of responsibility I feel to protect the layers of labor carried out long before my time, and the worry that I am in over my head.
What will it take to bring this space up to fire code (and- if the need should arise- to make peace with the ghost of the doorman)?
Whose knowledge and perspective do I need before making decisions? How do you honor what already exists while still making room for something new?
Luckily, I have started this attic remodel project around the same time that I enrolled in the Emergent Learning cohort, and in one of life’s lovely intersections of work and play, I am starting to notice how the same principles we are exploring in conversations about organizational learning are quietly reshaping the way I approach the attic.
Here are three reflections that have surfaced from interleaving what I am learning from the Emergent Learning community with what the attic seems determined to teach me.
Slowing down to make space
I want a simple and efficient attic flip, but the building has another rhythm. Hidden wiring, warped floorboards, mysterious wall panels - each discovery forces me to slow down, listen, and ask more thoughtful questions about what’s actually possible.
In the Emergent Learning community, we use practices like EL Tables, Before and After Action Reviews, and Action Hypotheses to slow thinking down and make it visible: unpacking assumptions, reflecting collectively on lived experiences, and creating space to understand our resources, perspectives, and expectations before rushing toward solutions. I am reminded that the space does not clear itself. It takes intentional individual and collective reflection, curiosity, and conversation, and a willingness to stay open to more than one possible outcome. We must make the time, and then take our time.
Finding a way of being in the work
More times than I can count, I’ve fought with a stubborn nail or wall fixture that refuses to budge, only to come back the next day and remove it effortlessly on the first try. At first, this feels baffling. Is this the ghost of the doorman messing with me? Pardon me Sir, I come in peace! But then, I slowly shift into a learning mindset and I, too, soften and let go.
Sometimes the conditions are simply not ready yet. Other times, the hammer that worked on the first nail is useless on the next one. Try another tool, or wait and come back later. Pressure builds silently in organizations, relationships, and apparently, old attics- until suddenly movement becomes possible. Or not.
One of the hardest things to accept in systems change and organizational learning is that no single community, framework, or toolkit is ever going to hand us the answer. This will never be a cookie-cutter build. Instead, we are slowly developing a different way of knowing, a way of reading the wood. In Emergent Learning, they describe this as “a way of being in the work.” In the attic, I’m a long way away from this level of mastery, so for now, I just keep my handyman (aka Dad) on speed dial.
Fixing the fuzzy language
I’ve saved the most exhausting part of the attic remodel for last: I’m doing it all in my second language, outside my area of technical expertise, I am a woman asking for help from a group of male carpenters at least ten years my senior, and the building inspector, the historical society, and the residents downstairs all must also be consulted and informed along the way.
“Holding expertise in equal measure” is a key Emergent Learning principle, and thankfully, it’s something that my rag-tag group of stakeholders is doing fairly well. Technical knowledge, lived experience, and even intuition work together to inform our decisions. We’re committed to fixing “fuzzy language” — the vague assumptions, eyeballed measurements, and confusing 5-minute voice notes from Magdalena in 2B that block our ability to move forward. (What do you mean when you say this wall is “probably fine”?)
Organizations taking on systems change efforts face many of the same challenges: distributed expertise, uneven power dynamics, communication barriers, and fundamentally different ways of understanding the work. Collective learning depends on people being willing to sit in the messy middle longer than what feels comfortable, trusting that sharper questions may move a group forward faster than quick, confident answers.
From the attic to philanthropy front of house
The attic remodel project has made one thing painfully clear to me: learning organizations are built through friction- disagreement, translation, experimentation, and the willingness to roll up your sleeves and get the job done even when the process feels a little chaotic.
At Convive, we are obsessed with the question: What will it take to create a true learning philanthropy? Not a philanthropy that simply funds learning, but one that consistently listens to the system by practicing learning across power dynamics, sectors, and different ways of knowing. That is why communities like Emergent Learning matter so deeply. Their work feels deeply aligned with what we are trying to practice at Convive as a learning partner: helping philanthropies move beyond performative learning and toward the harder work of building cultures, structures, and relationships that are capable of adapting in real time.
We believe learning cultures and systems are not created through perfect consensus or polished strategies, but through people willing to stay curious, clarify meaning together, and keep listening to the system as its many paths forward emerge. Thankfully, old buildings are patient teachers.
Note: Having the time, flexibility, resources, and psychological permission to connect lived experience back to work is itself a condition for deeper learning, and something we actively try to “walk our talk” on at Convive. I’m grateful for the opportunity to join the Emergent Learning cohort, for the flexible schedule that allows me to listen to my attic, and for a work culture that values reflection, meaning-making, and the neuroscience behind putting our learnings into our own words.