For decades I worked in the area of what I coined as Inter-Cultural Unity development — bridge-building across lines of difference within teams, organizations, and communities. This work was intense! There was a high degree of skepticism of its capacity to be effective, folk who were categorized as "privileged" had no desire to be called out or to lose their power, and folks who were not identified that way just wanted to do the work, get their check and go home. ​​

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Facilitating this work at a large hospital system in Portland, I stumbled on an architecture that shifted the whole conversation. It was not just looking at each other as singular mono-typical beings, but recognizing the truth that we are all complex multi-dimensional beings with strengths and challenges, and things about us that open doors, and things that make it difficult to find the door, or feel a sense of belonging due to the broader structure of what ever cultural context we are in. What makes this even more complex is that access granted through those cultural identities shift based upon the context we are in. 

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During that process working with the C-Suite through middle managers in that hospital system, a rather diverse cultural group, I was able to design a simply pyramidic chart that was able to break down this idea allowing virtually all individuals in the room a window in to the places they felt privileged, and those where they felt marginalized. 

 

This chart was the genesis of the architecture of the game of Cohado® which did not emerge as a concept for several years after.