The Bridge: Connecting the Powers of Linear and Circular Thinking

Since the Industrial Age, most Western operating systems have become more mechanistic through linear thinking. This is seen in business structures, education, healthcare, and environmental management. Our human-centred, circular practices, continued intuitively in these areas, often invisibly, and more commonly in our personal relationships.

With inventions like social media with its ＂like＂ buttons and algorithms, the circular, and more psychological ways we approach the world, are finding a modern platform, but often in a disconnecting way. It’s concerning to see our psychological make-up is being gamed to increase marketing power and influence politics.

Never has there been a greater need to understand our linear and circular ways of knowing. With this bridge we can see the approach required for finding meaning on one side and making progress on the other.

The Bridge offers a model for viewing differing perspectives, like that of artists and scientists, along with insights into the importance of both. Likewise, Western and Indigenous cultural values may find their place within a latticework for holding each perspective on its own terms. Other benefits such as recognizing the optimal times for reciprocal as opposed to transactional agreements, the transition from conflict to shared problem solving, and service leadership rather than command-and-control leadership can all be enabled by this framework for linear and circular thinking.

The Bridge is an introduction to a tool for participating in linear and circular thinking. The examples are chosen for their clarity and ease of remembrance, which is why stories are highly favoured.

The Bridge inspires a pause while we choose the optimal mindset for moving forward. When we step back and see a bigger pattern, we are less reactive.

No person or organization is completely linear or circular. We are all bridging both every day, even if that process is unconscious. And, each person, community, and organization finds the combination of circular and linear thinking that feels right to them. With this model for two ways of knowing, we gain the potential to expand our comfort zones and shift our balance point in response to any situation. In essence, we become more dynamic.

The Bridge describes two forms of power, and two operating systems that provide insight and a simple tool for navigating linear and circular thinking.