INTERCONNECTEDNESS: CLAIMING LEADERSHIP

Leading with Emergence

So many words are tossed around these days describing life and organizational change. “It’s a dynamic situation.” “It’s very organic.” “Things are self-organizing.” “We’re using an emergent design.”

I suppose it’s possible to take the use of these terms—all from the science of living systems—as an indication we’re changing our paradigm. But more frequently I see them as a veneer on old behaviors—we just sound cool using them.

What does it mean to say, “The situation is dynamic”? I think it means we have no idea what’s going to happen next and that’s just the way it is.

How often do you hear (or say), “It is what it is”? Does this indicate that we’re feeling peaceful or hopelessly resigned to our fate? I’ve been with people (mostly Buddhist teachers) who say, “As it is” and radiate peace; I feel they are present and available as they say this. But usually people who use this phrase say it with a shoulder shrug or gesture of helplessness. It’s become such a common phrase (and so annoying?) that the comedian Stephen Colbert joked, “Those who say, ‘It is what it is’ will be hit with ‘it’ but not told ‘what’ it was.”

The dynamics of living systems provide the means to foster good work and healthy relationships.

But we have to understand them beyond casually applied adjectives.

What does it mean to work with emergence, life’s true source of dynamic, organic, self-organizing change? I used to joke that calling something “an emergent process” was just a scientific term for “making it up as we go along,” or “flying by the seat of our pants.” (That’s a very strange phrase, isn’t it?) Working with emergence means we are fully engaged, carefully observing what’s going on as we do our work, learning from experience, applying those learnings, adapting, changing. In other words, behaving like everything else alive does.

Life is dynamic, changing frequently and surprisingly. But it’s not really a mystery. Life is lawful—there is a reliable logic to the laws of nature, cause and effect. Life’s surprises aren’t surprising—we just weren’t paying attention to the right things. We get blindsided, but life does not act blindly or randomly. It is possible to understand the multiple causes that were the source of our surprise. We simply need to engage our intelligence, open our perceptions, get past our close mindedness, and ask, What just happened? Why do we think it happened?

Systems emerge through the complexity of interactions among the participants, each of whom is choosing what to notice and how to respond. Those individual responses link together into patterns of behaviors that, at the human level, are best described as culture. Once the system emerges, downward causation is in effect, and the culture is the primary influence over individuals. Now it’s too late to change.

The critical action for leaders is to ensure that what gets set in motion at the start of an organizing effort is healthy. The “self” of self-organization is the critical variable.

What are the values, intentions, principles for behavior that describe who we want to be? Once established, are these common knowledge, known by all? As we work together, do we refer to our identity to make decisions? How do we respond when something goes wrong? Do we each feel accountable for maintaining the integrity of this identity?

You may notice that the questions I ask you to consider throughout this book have a similar focus. This is intentional. These questions lie at the epicenter of creating a healthy self-organizing group or organization. They bring us back to alert, open behaviors—the true sanity of any living system. A living system is a learning system.

If we are working well with emergence, these questions become part of our everyday perceptions. We don’t ask them occasionally or once a year at a retreat. We all have to become more observant, more open to differing perceptions, more open to new interpretations. However, only the leader is in the position to see the whole of the organization. No matter how willing people might be, everyone is overwhelmed and consumed with their own work. Sane leadership is developing the capacity to observe what’s going on in the whole system and then either reflect that back or bring people together to consider where we are now.

This is working with emergence. And self-organization. In a dynamic, organic way.

The Causes of Suffering

Many years ago,

the Dalai Lama asked a group of professionals

(including friends who told me this story)

“What is the cause of suffering?”

Everybody had an answer:

Poverty. Injustice. War. Alienation. Racism.

After listening to their answers,

he abruptly interrupted them.

No, he said,

the cause of suffering

is when good people

begin their work together

and then fail to notice

what is arising between them.