Find Your Margin

Practical Tools for Finding Where We Have Ethical Influence

Noticing the tug, a practical approach, finding your margin, and five actions for the moment you feel your values are at risk. Start wherever it’s useful to you.

The Tug
Understanding the Approach
Find Your Margin of Agency
The Shift Tool
The Ethical Tug

The ethical tug

What am I asking another human being to experience?

Before you begin, notice the gap between what these things are called and what they actually cost.

Did any of these land differently than you expected?

A Practical & Honest Approach

WHAT and How

The Shift Tool is built around five actions that can be applied to any project at any point when you feel your values are at risk and lines are being blurred. See, Shift, Choose, Create, and Reflect. Start by recognizing where your influence lies, then shift into what the actual human experience is. What action are you encouraging? Next, you choose. What aligns with your values, and what are the most humane decisions you can make? Then create and build with intention, and take time afterward to reflect.

This isn’t a platform that assumes you can always choose the humane option. It’s a tool for finding the margin of agency you still have, even when it’s small or feels non-existent. The Inside Shift has three domains where the shift can take place: the broader systems we work within, the specific job or role where that system becomes our reality, and ourselves. Meaning, if your margin of agency is zero and nothing external moves, you can still shift how you see things — an awareness that still counts.

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Margin of Agency

When you can’t choose the humane option

Keeping things honest and realistic, sometimes it feels like there is no room to act. If it feels like there is no choice, consider the options below.

What can I do with the agency I have?

1. Act

I have some room to act.
Use it, even if the change is small.

2. Reflect

I don’t have room to act right now.
Notice it. Document it. Let it inform what you do differently next time.

3. Connect

I can’t solve this alone.
Sometimes your margin of agency comes through other people. Find others who have faced similar conflicts. Create more room to act together.

In Practice

Impossible Deadline

Act. You don’t have enough time to do the work responsibly. What can you cut, flag, or push back on, even slightly?

Early Career, Real Risk

Reflect. You’re asked to do something that doesn’t feel right, but speaking up could have real consequences. If you can’t change the situation now, notice it, document it, and carry that knowledge forward.

Value or Moral Clash

Connect. You can’t walk away, and there is no clean choice. When your own margin is limited, remember that you are not the first person to face this conflict. Finding others who have navigated it can create more room to act.

The Shift

Ethical practice isn’t always about finding the right answer. Sometimes it’s about recognizing the margin you have and deciding what to do with it.

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The Shift Tool

Guiding Question

What am I asking another human being to experience because of what I’ve created?

This question is the foundation of every stage of the framework.

See

Recognize your influence before making creative decisions.

Questions

  • Who will experience this, and where do I have influence?
  • Why am I creating it, and what problem am I trying to solve?

Move beyond the artifact and consider the human experience.

 

Attention

What am I asking people to notice?
 

Understanding

What ideas, beliefs, or assumptions might I reinforce?
 

Emotion

How am I asking people to feel?
 

Behavior

What action am I encouraging?
 

Agency

Will this leave people with more agency or less?

Align your creative decisions with your intentions and values.

Questions

  • Does this align with my values, or am I creating value versus extracting it?
  • What tradeoffs am I making, and what’s the most humane option available?

Build with intention.

Create work that reflects the experience you want another human being to have.

Evaluate both the outcome and the experience you created.

Questions

  • Did this create the experience I intended?
  • What surprised me?
  • What unintended consequences emerged?
  • What will I do differently next time?
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