Models & concepts
The working vocabulary.
CURRENT uses a small number of terms consistently. Each is defined here, with the sections of the book where it does most of its work.
The Current
Repeated behaviour, hardened into direction.
Prologue — Heraclitus and Panta RheiCurrent — ComplexityThe Ground That MovesCurrent — A Practical Orientation
Stay · Sense · Shape
CURRENT's central practice: stay present, sense what is unfolding, shape the next move.
Stay
The discipline of resisting premature reaction sufficiently to remain present to what is actually happening.
Sense
The practice of reading patterns, relationships, tensions, signals and movement before collapsing them into a convenient explanation.
Shape
Acting into the situation through deliberate but revisable intervention.
Orientation Points
Whoever people turn to when uncertainty rises.
Orientation Map
A living picture of how an organisation actually functions.
Resonance
How behaviour travels — by observation, not instruction.
What Moves Beneath NoticeRelationships, Co-currents and CountercurrentsSense
Upstream
What arrives at a person that they did not author.
Downstream
What the person passes on as the conditions others now work inside.
The Self
The passage in which upstream conditions are processed.
Flow Through Self
A model of how organisational conditions pass through a person: Upstream → The Self → Downstream.