As we gear up for an upcoming Laddership Circle, I was reflecting on some of my experiences when I participated in a circle few years ago.

One of the biggest learnings was how the circle challenged me to engage personal values-driven experiments in my life.

I used to walk to work. One week, our circle was invited to notice things that you don't normally notice. As I was walking to work, I saw an elderly woman who was walking with her walking stick. She was a little stuck on a step in one part of the sidewalk, unable to move forward. I noticed this, and there automatically arose in me a desire to help her with the step. So I went and helped her up the step, which turned into helping her walk across the street, and then into helping her walk to the hospital.



Then I realized, why is this woman walking to the hospital?! Though here in Costa Rica, we have a great health care system, I realized that if you're sick, there's no infrastructure in place to help take you to the hospital or doctor's center if you need it. At the time, I was working in government, and that one moment in my day gave me an insight into an essential issue of public service. If I just pay attention to the small elements of what people need in the moment, it offers interesting insights into the kinds of systems and innovations for a better world that we need to build together.

In another experiment, I used to lead a unit in government that's in charge of the innovation policy for the country of Costa Rica. While the topic sounds very transformational, the reality of our office culture was just like anywhere else, you could say. As part of the Laddership Circle, I ended up engaging two experiments in our office. One was putting a pot of money in the center of the office and said "This is for anyone to use or give to anyone else." The other was that I decided to give strawberries to one of my teammates, and said, "If you feel so moved, you're welcome to pay it forward in some way to someone else."

The experiments were similar -- all in the spirit of tapping into a spirit of giving -- but the results were starkly different. The money experiment created so many concerns. :) People worried, "Someone's going to steal it; we can't put it out in the open. Let's put it in a safe place." Things like that. It went nowhere. In the end, the money ended up being hidden in an office drawer, and when we moved to another office, I remembered, "Oh yeah, this is the money from that experiment!" It just sat there the whole time collecting dust.



On the flip side, the gift of strawberries created a chain reaction, where the colleague I gave them to, in turn gave something to another guy, who gifted something to another colleague, and it circled around. It was a really clear example of how viewing wealth in multiple forms of capital can create a totally different dynamic.

So these were two examples of building my faith in the process of focusing on small acts, right in front of me; and in the power of changing myself to change the world.