Action Inquiries

Action Inquiries are collective explorations where we deepen understanding, sense into emerging questions, and discover new ways of acting. The insights and knowledge generated are then shared back into the OD for Life community, contributing to the ongoing learning of the wider system.

They take place in Action Inquiry processes with length, style, membership, and focus shaped by the group itself. OD4L activators help initiate and guide these circles, inviting community members and, when appropriate, others to join the process and co-create the learning together.

Any ODFL gardener can spark a new action enquiry, or enquire about joining a current one.

Why Action Inquiries?

Within OD4L, we hold a core intent to invite and encourage life to be held at the center of organizations and organizing, so these can have a transformative impact on life's thriving. We do this through shared inquiry, often exploring themes and questions at the challenging edges of our practices, with the intention of using the core skills of our OD work in ways that are healing and generative for ourselves, the people and organizations we support, and the larger systems we are part of.

As a community, we gather to deepen our understanding and co-create new knowledge and practices. In our Action Inquiries, we intentionally create spaces where multiple ways of knowing are welcomed and held with dignity, engaging intellectual and ethical rigor, embodied awareness, collective human insight, and the wisdom of the more-than-human world. We understand knowing as entering into relationship and being transformed in the process.

Therefore, Action Inquiries offer an explorative, open-ended process, in the sense that there are no fixed or pre-defined outcomes and/or deliverables that can not be transformed through the process itself. They are relational spaces where we learn together, sense into emerging questions, and discover new ways of understanding, relating, and acting. Action Inquiries support us to cultivate learning that is alive, interconnected, and transformative. Transformative learning goes beyond acquiring additional knowledge or skills. It involves a deeper shift in how we understand ourselves, our roles, and our relationships with others and the wider world. It is not only about expanding what we know or do, but evolving how we know, practice, and engage with life.

In this spirit, Action Inquiries are one way we consciously cultivate transformative learning for ourselves, for the community, and for the wider system. By sharing the insights, practices, and knowledge that emerge, we contribute to the ongoing evolution of the field and the systems we are part of.

Exploring, Learning, and Weaving Our Knowledge

In order to explore, learn, and weave our knowledge, we have developed a framework that enables systematic reflection, documentation, and insight harvesting so that Action Inquiries can nourish not only ODFL’s evolution but also be shared back into the wider conversations of the larger systems we are part of.

The Transformative Learning Framework, as a supporting structure, is currently a work in progress but is intended to help guide the harvesting and documentation of our insights.

The following questions are intended to help derive inputs during the Action Inquiry process for the ODFL Transformative Learning Book:

What we’re paying attention to	Key Questions	Related to living systems design principles
How was the inquiry relevant to our own interests and context and/or How did it bring in diverse or new perspectives for me?	What did I learn for my own work and life? How am I changed by this inquiry? Which perspectives were woven in?	Parts, diversity, gifts & contributions
How do we relate to ourselves, each other, and to the (more-than-human) world around us during the process of inquiring together?	How did our actions, interactions, structures, and systems embody OD for Life as an emerging practice? How did values of caretaking, transparency, reciprocity, trust, and generosity come alive in practice? In what ways did we experiment with new forms of organizing and relating that center aliveness? How did the inquiry challenge or deepen our collective capacity for stewardship and co-creation of OD for Life as a practice? What new practices, stories, or principles emerged that contribute to OD for Life as a living movement?	Relationship, interactions, process
What have we discovered about the OD for life-related topic we are investigating?	What did we discover or confirm about the subject? What new pathways for action or intervention became visible? What knowledge artefacts (principles, stories, methods, maniflexo elements) did this generate? What implications for wider systems or stakeholders can we see?	Wholeness, cohesion, purpose
What have we noticed about how transformative learning happens and how it transforms individuals, communities, and systems?	What supported or hindered deep reflection, dialogue, and experimentation? What shifts in perspective, assumptions, or behaviors occurred? What tensions or paradoxes emerged? How might this inform future cycles of action inquiry?	Life, potential, continual emergence & transformation

Action Inquiry Resources

Our Action Inquiries PDF guide.

For current ODFL Gardeners: this space on MN houses our Action Inquiries resources, including a link to a mural board where you can see an overview, and some documentation of, all current and past Action Inquiries, as well as who is, or has been, participating in them. You’ll also find that many Action Inquiries have their own space within Mighty Networks where they coordinate and store information, recordings, protocols, etc.

Action Inquiry FAQs

Do I need to ask for permission to start an Action Inquiry?

No, but you are obliged to transparently communicate about the Action Inquiry: when it starts, who its members are, what the focus is, when it completes. And:

1. Action Inquiry Circle leaders meet on a quarterly basis to harvest learnings across inquiries, share updates, and explore fruitful collaboration between enquiries. When you start an Action Inquiry, we strongly encourage you to join these calls.

2. Action Inquiry Circle leaders update the Action Inquiries Overview mural board (linked in Mighty Networks → Action Inquiry space → Overview post) on an ongoing basis to make sure your Action Inquiry is visible to fellow gardeners.

You are strongly encouraged to read the Action Inquiry Guide (see PDF above or link on MN) before you start and to educate yourself about Appreciative Inquiry as a method. You can then still choose to deviate from it as a method of course, but we do think it is important to know about it first.

How and when does a new Action Inquiry get born within OD for Life?

Often, Action Inquiries are born out of some questions that arise for different members during our in-person gatherings or community calls. And sometimes, it's just a single interaction or a single impulse or resource, or even another action inquiry circle, that ignites the desire to start a new one!

How / where do I document my insights?

Starting in May 2026, we will open a public document where the learnings from our gatherings and Action Inquiry will be shared. These insights will be shared in a similar format as this Gardeners’ Guidebook, making them accessible for the wider community.