People everywhere are hungry for innovations that hold the promise of unlocking a brighter future for our world. We want innovations that allow for the fuller expression of ourselves as whole persons. We want more humanity.
At Axiom News, we certainly see this promise in the narrative we’re still trying to discover more deeply; others seem to be catching hints of its possibilities as well.
People we’ve come to call friends are sharing their ideas about the worth of this work.
In 2012, we had people contact us from Belgium, Denmark, India, the U.S., Singapore, Australia, China and British Columbia. Media, organizational consultants, business leaders, government employees and funders were among them.
Our disruptively innovative business model no doubt accounts for some of the draw.
We also work from a paradigm that seems to have come into its time. Ideas we were pushing 10 years ago — to the tune of “you’re crazy” — are now hitting the mainstream.
But most compelling about this social innovation from my perspective is that it’s in large part about evoking more humanity, especially in organizations but also society as a whole — using the news.
It is this that leads me to believe this social innovation is here to stay, that it is a game-changer and will be a global phenomenon one day.
Yes, we have more to do to bring our work to full fruition, but if I consider the thinking and ways of being that shapes how we approach the journalism we do right now, we’re certainly on our way.
Humanity is defined as both the quality or condition of being human and the quality of being humane or benevolent. The implication could be that the more fully ourselves we are, the more we are humane and benevolent.
Some of the substantive differentiators in our work as journalists at Axiom News could be seen as ways to do both of those — evoke more human-ness and more humane-ness.
These differentiators include generative listening, generative inquiry and storytelling, co-creating, and meaning making and connecting within the paradigm we’ve chosen.
Paramount in this, I think, is our unspoken “every person is a genius” perspective. We want to listen to, inquire of, tell the stories of and make meaning around the 99-year-old long-term care resident, the person who has a severe intellectual disability and the front-line laundry worker just as much as the senior leadership. We want to join in connecting people’s gifts, possibilities they see and action they’re taking ownership over to others and a bigger context.
This is how we, and everyone else that continues to join us, can contribute to communities restoring themselves, organizations becoming workplaces and market forces that allow for a fuller expression of people’s humanity — and society as a whole being more elegant, more spiritual and yes, more kind.
