When Passion Isn’t Enough

More than ten years ago, I was part of a group trying to build a regional food system in the Charlotte area. We cared deeply. We gathered often. And we got… nowhere.

For two years, we met and talked and dreamed, but we couldn’t move forward. Looking back, we were missing three things. We didn’t have the right people in the room. We didn’t share a clear sense of purpose. And we hadn’t agreed on how to work together. Passion alone wasn’t enough.

At the same time, I was in graduate school at Antioch University in Seattle. I was studying systems change while stumbling through it in real time. I needed a way to make sense of the chaos.

That’s when a pattern started to form for me:

• attend to People
• attend to Purpose
• attend to Process

I chose the word “attend” deliberately. To attend is to pay attention, to apply yourself, to be present, to be of service. It’s not a checklist. It’s a stance.

Those three words – People, Purpose, and Process – became my compass.

They helped me understand why our early food systems efforts had stalled. We hadn’t invited all the people who needed to be there. We had no shared sense of direction. And our process was shaky and inaccessible.

Once we began paying attention to those things, momentum started to shift.

Over the years, I’ve carried the 3Ps into many contexts: civic networks, organizational transformation, community resilience, and even my own personal life. They continue to help me notice what’s missing, name what’s invisible, and support groups to find their way.

But experience has also shown me that three Ps aren’t enough.

There’s a fourth: Presence.

Presence is the quality we bring to the work. It’s how we show up. It’s also the collective energy that arises when a group is fully engaged. Without presence, the other Ps can become mechanical. With it, they come alive.

So now I work with four Ps: People, Purpose, Process, and Presence.

This isn’t a formula to follow step by step. It’s a way of orienting in complexity. It helps me pay attention to what matters, adjust in real time, and create conditions where change can unfold.

This reflection is the first in a short series where I’ll share more about each P.

• People: who’s present and how they’re connected.
• Purpose: the intention we share and how it evolves.
• Process: how the work happens and how we adapt it.
• Presence: how we’re showing up, individually and together.

Each piece will braid together story and practice – lessons learned the hard way, and patterns I return to again and again.

My hope is that they shine a light on what often remains invisible in change work.

When we attend to people, purpose, process, and presence, we create the conditions for flow. Like a flock of birds in flight, it isn’t about rigid rules. It’s about just enough similarity and difference, alignment and freedom, for something larger than any one of us to move forward.