Inquiry Intelligence

What is Inquiry Intelligence?

Inquiry intelligence asks key questions that reveal the meta-wisdom of the city:

• What is important to you?
• What’s working in your life, family, community, school, health system, city?
• What’s not working in your life, family, community, school, health system, city?
• What is your vision of the optimum in your life, family, community, school, health system, city?
• Where do your source your bio-psycho-cultural-social energy in the city?

So What?

For a truly vibrant city, each of the inquiries reveals a values system that must be healthy, in order for the whole city to be healthy. The eight value systems are represented in these themes:

1. Individual safety and survival
2. Bonding, family relationships, clan and tribal customs
3. Individual expressiveness, joy, personal power
4. Order, authority, rules, laws, bylaws, ordinances, infrastructure
5. Organization, efficiency, effectiveness, strategies, results
6. Community, diversity, acceptance of differences, equal rights
7. Whole systems thinking, ecological connections
8. Global worldviews, shared world emergence

The deficiencies and blocks identified in an inquiry indicate the barriers to the natural flow of resources to, within and through a healthy human hive. In our quest for city improvement, how can we overcome the causes of such blocks and recreate the vibrant health that sustain our city?

The practice of inquiry often leads us to frame the change we need to unlock the potential of our city. It leads us the answer to the question: Change from what to what?

The identity and resourcing questions reveal the city’s “Wise Leaders/Elders”, who hold the wisdom of its Inner Judges and Resource Allocators.

One of the most powerful outcomes of using such a values mapping inquiry process is that it creates a common language to interpret and talk about our human hives.

Now What?

Three simple rules for applying Integral City Inquiry Intelligences

1. Ask what’s working (and not) and co-generate a vision for the city’s contribution to the planet.
2. Create an integral city and community plan.
3. Implement and manage the city plan appropriately at all scales in the city.

Click here to listen to a podcast on this intelligence from the book Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences in the Human Hive.