I joined the Relationships Project for a discussion on Relational Readiness today (they’re developing a very interesting new model, I recommend checking it out), and the discussions brought a few elements together in my brain, about measuring relationships (a long standing interest of mine, as you may well know).
If we attempt to measure relationships directly it will inevitably ruin them, because Goodhart’s law.
Therefore we can measure 2 different but complementary things:
- the conditions that enable relationships to thrive (“It turns out, if you want to save a species, you don’t spend your time staring at the bird you want to save. You look at the things it relies on to live instead.”)
- the signs that relationships exist: things that wouldn’t be in existence if there weren’t relationships to underpin them (I’m thinking about making relationships visible and also about economist Katherine Trebeck‘s “girls on bikes” measure being an indicator of very many good things).
What 1. and 2. are I’m not sure yet but it is a step forward in my thinking compared to previously!
David Jay proposes gathering (do people come together of their own accord), support (do people help one another in their projects and personal lives), and creative action (do people imagine and execute actions which benefit the community). Todd Battistelli considers how well a community handles disagreement, by noticing (measuring?) the diversity of viewpoints and the amount of convergence. Those all feel quite big to me and like they could also do with a breakdown, or with a more accessible way in.
Naturally, I will ponder some more.
Photo by Sammy Wong on Unsplash