Less so for me / us than for the people we aim to serve, who are shouldering long-haul engagement with systemic change in their corner of the world, community, organization,…. We deal with uncertainty, and sometimes we find ourselves for short periods in conflicted situations. But the people we work with are in those situations all the time.

In general, convening across differences, working with conversations and relationships, and nurturing the conditions for something to emerge from everyone’s participation is much harder than gathering a team and following a plan-and-execute process. It’s not only externally difficult, but it brings up personal difficulties: fear, self-criticism, sense of not being enough, judgments of others, impatience, uncertainty, and so on.

Here is what we heard when we did a round of interviews of people involved with participatory, emergent systemic change:
http://www.fitassociates.com/blog/listening-to-catalysts/