Open Organizations: Reworking Our Approach to Leadership, Connection and Social Change

[Lorraine Kirk]

I’m a cultural anthropologist. A group of us have been reading two books which, together, have pretty much blown the tops off our old paradigms. These books have changed me forever -- wrenched open my mind -- and let me understand so much more about the rapid changes we're seeing, and wanting to produce, in the world today.

BOOK (1) The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations (Brafman and Beckstrom 2006) www.starfishandspider.com (I recommend reading this first)

BOOK (2) Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
(Margaret Wheatley) www.margaretwheatley.com/books.html

These two books produce a stunning rework of our whole approach to leadership.
Once we get into them deeply enough to understand them, we stand shocked.

There is a major shift happening all over the world. Walls are coming down. Boundaries are disappearing – between countries; religions; cultures; races; management and workers; the religious and the non-religious; men and women; conservatives and liberals – the list goes on and on. There is very good reason for this. Let's take a closer look:

BOOK (1) The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. A glance at its back cover gives us a sense that there is more here that we should know:

IF YOU CUT OFF A SPIDER'S HEAD, it dies; but if you cut off a starfish's leg, it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world.

What's the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women's rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? How could winning a Supreme Court case be the biggest mistake MGM could have made?

Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom have discovered some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The, Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders and reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Inuit to the U.S. government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success.
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"One of the 10 Best Business Books of the Year." —Amazon.com Editor's Pick

A compelling and important book." —Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman, eBay Inc.

"The Starfish and the Spider, like Blink, The Tipping Point, and The Wisdom of Crowds before it, showed me a provocative new way to look at the world and at business. It's also fun to read!"
—Robin Wolaner, author of Naked in the Boardroom

'A must-read. Starfish are changing the face of business and society. This page-turner is provocative and compelling." —David Martin, CEO, Young Presidents' Organization

"An engaging, thoughtful, and imaginative guide for the next wave of entrepreneurs—and current ones who don't want to be left behind—as business becomes increasingly decentralized."
—The Miami Heraid (one of their top ten business books of the year)

'A fantastic read. Constantly weaving stories and connections. You'll never see the world the same way again."
—Nicholas J. Nicholas, Jr., former co-CEO, Time Warner Inc.

Visit www.starfishandspider.com
To arrange a speaking engagement for Rod A. Beckstrom, please contact the Penguin Speakers Bureau at
[e-mail]
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BOOK (2) Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World . (Margaret Wheatley) www.margaretwheatley.com/books.html

I think the best way to convey the power of Wheatley’s paradigm shifts is with a list of some meaty quotes and fragments from her book. The following vignette may hopefully motivate you to read the books.

I’ve organized these by chapter. [Square brackets are my remarks.]

Quotes from:
Leadership and the New Science:
Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
Margaret J. Wheatley

Prologue p ix

[Waitley draws on]…quantum physics, self-organizing systems, and chaos theory. p xii


Introduction:
Searching For A Simpler Way To Lead Organizations p 3

You think because you understand one you must understand two, because one and one makes two. But you must understand and. p 10

…relationship is the key determiner of everything. Subatomic particles come into form and are observed only as they are in relationship to something else. They do not exist as independent “things.” p 11

…connections between what were previously thought to be separate entities are the fundamental ingredient of all creation. p 11

…any open system has the capacity to respond to change and disorder by reorganizing itself at a higher level of organization. Disorder becomes a critical player, an ally that can provoke a system to self-organize into new forms of being. p 12

…order and chaos. These two forces are…two states that contain the other

… order and form are created not by complex controls, but by the presence of a few guiding formulas or principles repeating back on themselves through the exercise of individual freedom. p 13

In motivation theory, attentions is shifting from the use of external rewards to an appreciation for the intrinsic motivators that give us great energy. We are refocusing on the deep longings we have for community, meaning, dignity, purpose, and love in our organizational lives. We are beginning to look at the strong emotions of being human, rather than segmenting ourselves by believing that love doesn’t belong at work, or that feelings are irrelevant in the organization. There are many attempts to leave behind the view that predominated in the twentieth century, when we believed that organizations could succeed by confining workers to narrow roles and asking only for very partial contributions. As we let go of the machine model of organizations, and workers as replaceable cogs in the machinery of production, we begin to see ourselves in much richer dimensions, to appreciate our wholeness, and, hopefully, to design organizations that honor and make use of the great gift of who we humans are. p 14

…–invisible forces that occupy space and influence behavior. …vision and values act like fields, unseen but real forces that influence people’s behavior. p 15


Chapter 1:
Discovering an Orderly World p 17

It is time to take the world off our shoulders, to lay It gently down and look to it for an easier way. ….If not with us, then where are the sources of order to be found? p 19

…”dissipative structures”… p 20

If, as science has believed, entropy is the rule, then why does life flourish? p 21

…”order through fluctuation”…dynamics between chaos and creativity, between disruption and growth. p 22

…yin and yang…. Neither one is primary; both are absolutely necessary.

…a system is a set of processes that are made visible in temporary structures. p 23

…”roving leadership, the indispensable people in our lives who are there when we need them” Max De Pree

…leadership is best thought of as a behavior, not a role.

…confusing control with order…. p 24

“In life, the issue is not control, but dynamic connectedness” Jantsch

…I want to trust in this universe so much that I give up playing God. I want to stop struggling to hold things together. I want to experience such security that the concept of “allowing” – trusting that the appropriate forms will emerge–ceases to be scary. p 25


Chapter 2:
Newtonian Organizations in a Quantum Age p 27

Until recently we really believed that we could study the parts, no matter how many of them there were, to arrive at knowledge of the whole. p 29

We have drawn boundaries around the flow of experience, fragmenting whole networks of interaction into discrete steps. p 30

In a world of things, there are well-defined edges. p 30

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Niels Bohr p 32-33

“The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine” James Jeans in Capra p 33

I read that elementary particles were “bundles of potentiality.” I began to think of all of us this way, for surely we are as undefinable, unanalyzable, and bundled with potential as anything in the universe. p 35

…Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. We can measure the particle aspect, or the wave aspect–either location or movement–but we can never measure both at the same time…. p 36

Acting should precede planning, he said, because it is only when we act to implement something that we create the environment…. We create the environment through our own intentions. p 38

…in this modern world of constant flux, “predicting is less important than reacting” [and should not be]

If there is no objective reality out there, then the environment and our future remain uncreated until we engage with the present….Through engagement in the moment, we evoke our futures. p 38

The world is not an independently existing thing. It’s a complex, never still, always weaving tapestry.

The era of the rugged individual has been replaced by the era of the team player…. More and more relationships are in store for us, out there in the vast web of life. p 39

The illusory quality of these boundaries will continue to drive us crazy as long as we focus on trying to specify them in more detail, or to decipher clear lines of cause and effect between concepts that we treat as separate, but which aren’t. p 43

…paying more attention to things like pattern, direction, feel, and the internal rhythm of what’s happening.

…they co-create with their environment. p 46


Chapter 3:
Space Is Not Empty: Invisible Fields that Shape Behavior p 49

…think of a universe that more closely resembles an ocean, filled with interpenetrating influences and invisible forces that connect. …potentials for influence everywhere, whenever two energies meet: “The Newtonian picture of a world populated by many, many particles, each with an independent existence, has been replaced by the field picture of a world permeated with a few active media. p 52-3

In biology, Sheldrake ….morphic fields that influence the behavior of species…. Morphic fields are built up through the skills that accumulate as members of the same species learn something new. ….others of that same species will be able to learn that skill more easily. [hundredth monkey] The behavior collects in the morphic field, and when an individual’s energy combines with it, the field patterns the behavior of that individual. They don’t have to actually learn the skill; they pull it from the field. They learn through “morphic resonance,”….

….contemplate space differenty.

But who has seen cyberspace ? The invisible is more of an active player in our lives than ever before.

…“interpenetrating influences and invisible forces that connect.” p 53

…the ”anointed” in organizations, those high flyers who move quickly through the ranks, are given at least some of their wings through our desire to observe them as winners.


Chapter 4:
The Participative Nature of the Universe p 61

…what you see is what you get. p 62

When we choose to experiment for one aspect, we lose our ability to see any others. p 65

Participation, seriously done, is a way out from the uncertainties…. We need to include more and more eyes. p 66

…when data is recognized as a wave, rich in potential interpretations, and completely dependent on observers to evoke different meanings.

We banish the ghosts of this ghostly universe by engaging in a different pattern of behavior–one in which more and more of us are included in the process of observing what is going on, and contributing to our unique interpretations to the organization. p 67

…a universe where relationships are primary. Nothing happens in the quantum world without something encountering something else. Nothing exists independent of its relationships. p 69

We need to see a person’s role as the place where energies meet to make something happen.

….where critical is the availability of places for the exchange of energy. p 72

Heisenberg describes the world of modern physics as one divided not “into different groups of objects but into different groups of connections.” What is distinguishable and important,…are the kinds of connections. p 72-3

Why would we avoid participation and worry only about its risks, when we need more and more eyes to be wise? p 73


Chapter 5:
Change, Stability, and Renewal: The Paradoxes of Self-organizing Systems p 75

Two types of feedback:

1-Negative or regulatory feedback helps keep a system on track.

2-…feedback loop–positive or amplifying feedback. …not to regulate, but to notice something new and amplify it… p 78

In these loops, information increases and disturbances grow. The system, unable to deal with so much new and intensifying information, is being asked to change.

System dynamics

…open systems use disequilibrium to avoid deterioration

[We have to] develop a new relationship with disorder.

…disequilibrium is the necessary condition for a system’s growth. ..dissipative structures …dissipate or give up their form in order to recreate themselves into new forms. p 80

[the new systems have] …simplified roles into minimal categories…knocked down walls and created workplaces where people, ideas, and information circulate freely. p 82

an open organization doesn’t look for information that makes it feel good, that verifies its past and validates its present. …well-defended organizations. In these, only information that confirms existing plans or leadership is let in.

…self-organizing system…. Its stability comes from a deepening center, a clarity about who it is, what it needs, what is required to survive in its environment. p 83

Because it partners with its environment, the sytem develps increasing autonomy from the environment. p 84

…boundaries not only create distinctions; they are also places for communication and exchange…. p 84-5

self-reference p 88

We dance along this path by maintaining a coherent identity and by honoring everybody’s need for self-determination. p 89

Stasis, balance, equilibrium, these are temporary states. What endures is process–dynamic, adaptive, creative. p 90


Chapter 6:
The Creative Energy of the Universe – Information p 93

What we were all suffering from, then and now, is a fundamental misperception of information: what it is, how it behaves, how to work with it. p 93

This strong focus on the “thingness” of information has kept us from contemplating its other dimensions; the content, character and behavior of information.

We expected information to be controllable, stable, and obedient. p 94

Life uses information to organize matter into form, resulting in the physical structures that we wee. The role of information is revealed in the word itself: in-formation.

…we confuse the system’s physical manifestation with the processes that give birth to it . Yet the real system, that which endures and evolves, is a set of processes. Information takes shape in different forms as a result of the processes.

…one we can’t see until it takes physical form.

If there is nothing new, or if the information merely confirms what already is, then the result will be death. Closed systems wind down and decay, victims of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The source of life is new information –novelty–ordered into new structures. We need to have information coursing through our systems, disturbing the peace, imbuing everything it touches with the possibility of new life. p 96

These new births require freedom; information must be free to circulate and find new partners.

We have no desire to let information roam about promiscuously, procreating where it will, creating chaos….chastity belts are a central management function. p 97

We have to create free access to [information], and become much more astute at noticing new information as it emerges.

An organism doesn’t even need a brain in order to be intelligent. Intelligence is a property that emerges when a certain level of organization is reached which enables the system to process information. p 98

We can begin to see that organizational intelligence is not something that resides in a few experts, specialists, leaders. Instead, it is a system-wide capacity directly related to how open the organization is to new and disconfirming information, and how effectively that information can be interpreted by anyone in the organization. p 99

…change its approach to information by changing its metaphors. Instead of the limiting thought that “information is power,” they began to think of information as “nourishment.”

Few things make us more frantic than increasing ambiguity. p 101

Our span of control pulls away from us elastically, and, suddenly, we are catapulted into unmanageability. Under such pressure, it’s no wonder that we want to shut out newness and hold on blindly to the few things that worked in the past.

But there is a way oft of the paralyzing fear that ambiguity engenders. It requires that we step back, refocus our attention on the system as a whole, and realize there are other processes at work. …the system is self-organizing to accomplish its work. p 102

The process of fractal creation suggests some ways organizations can work with the paradox that greater openness is the path to greater order. A fractal reveals its complex shape through continuous self-reference to a simple initial equation. Thus, the work of any team or organization needs to start with a clear sense of what they are trying to accomplish and how they want to behave together. I think of these agreements as the initial equations…. Once this clarity is established, people will use it as their lens to interpret information, surprises, experience. They will be able to figure out what and how to do their work. Their individual decisions will not look the same, and there is no need for conformity in their behavior. But over that, as their individual solutions are fed back into the system, as learning is shared, we can expect that an orderly pattern will emerge.

“An individual without information cannot take responsibility, but an individual who is given information cannot help but take responsibility” (Willett 1999) p 107

…the very substance that is required to reorder the universe–new information.

Jantsch, as a scientist, urges managers to a new role, that of “equilibrium busters.” No longer the caretakers of control, we become the grand disturbers. p 108

…we use such a small part of our mental capacity because of our insistence on linear thinking. p 109

Order is never imposed from the top down or from the outside in. Order emerges as elements of the system work together, discovering each other and together inventing new capacities.

…analysis into parts has no meaning…. p 111

The notion of permeable boundaries has sparked both fear and curiosity. ….Rather, we are engaging in a fundamentally new relationship with order, order that is identified in processes that manifest themselves only temporarily as structures. …. When this organizing energy is nourished by information,…. p 112


Chapter 7:
Chaos and the Strange Attractor of Meaning p 115

At the personal level, chaos has gone by many names, including “dark night of the soul” or “depression.” …profound loss of meaning–nothing makes sense in the way it did before…. …as it ends, we emerge changed, stronger in some ways, new. …growth always requires passage through the fearful realms of disintegration. p 119

“Chaos is order without predictability” (Cartwright) p 120

In a nonlinear world, very slight variances, things so small as to be indiscernible, can amplify into completely unexpected results. …feedback loops, repetition feeds the change back on itself, causing it to amplify and grow. ….In a nonlinear world, there is no relation between the strength of the cause and the consequence of the effect. p 120-1

…the old dream of science was a universe that was unaffected by slight changes:

“The basic idea of Western science is that you don’t have to take into account the falling of a leaf on some planet in another galaxy when you’re trying to account for the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table on earth….(Gleick)

But chaos theory has proved these assumptions false. p 122

Iteration launches a system on a journey that visits both chaos and order. [via the "strange attractor"]

Everywhere on this intricate fractal landscape, there is self-similarity. p 123

Fractals suggest the futility of searching for ever finer measures that concentrate on separate parts of the system. …. If we were to understand organizations in a similar way, what would constitute the shapes in motion of an organization?

…we are, after all, a pattern-recognizing species. p 125

The first step is to realize what we are looking for. A pattern has been defined rather succinctly as any behavior that occurs more than once. …stay away from the seduction of examining isolated factors or individual players. ….”Have we seen this before?” “What feels familiar here?” …. Shapes are not discerned from close range. …we are trying to see the world differently and there are many years of blindness to overcome.

Fractal complexity originates in its simplicity. p 126

Complex structures emerge over time from simple elements and rules, and autonomous interactions. p 127

…we are best controlled by concepts that invite our participation, not policies and procedures that curtail our contribution. p 131

Our greatest motivation in life, writes Victor Frankl in his stunning presentation of logotherapy, “is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning…” p 132

The call of meaning is unlike any other, and we would do well to spend more time together listening for the deep wells of purpose that nourish all of us. p 133


Chapter 8:
Change: The Capacity of Life p 137

[A geologist waiting for a hurricane to end so he can go into the disaster area was asked:] “What do you expect to find when you go out there? [Instead of disasters, he answered] “I expect…to find a new beach.” p 137

…until we stop treating organizations as machines p 138

We move from billiard balls banging into one another to effect change, to networks that change because of information they find meaningful. We stop dealing with mass and work with energy. p 139

The first great shift is this. A system is composed of parts but we cannot understand a system by looking only at its parts. …. No problem or behavior can be understood in isolation. We must account for dynamics operating in the whole system that are displaying themselves in these individual moments. … a chaotic system displayed itself in a strange attractor. p 139-40

Analysis narrows our field of awareness….

There is no analytic language to describe what we are seeing at the quantum level…. The more specific the information, the less relevant it is.” (Hans-Peter Durr) p 140

…move past cognition into the realm of sensation.

“dwelling consciousness” (Heidegger) When we dwell with a group or problem, we move quietly into our senses, away from sharpened analytic skills. …to pick up impressions, to notice how something feels, to sit with a group or with a report and call upon my intuition. …look for images, words, patterns that surface…

…move from interrogation to receptivity, being open to what is occurring, allowing ourselves to be influenced by a whole that we cannot see. We can dwell with the phenomenon and feel how it makes itself know to us.

We inquire into the part as we hold the recognition that it is participating in a whole system. We hold our attention at two levels simultaneously. …. We can understand the whole by noting how it is influencing things at this local level. [ref also to Buddhist belief, law of dependent do-arising] (Thich Nhat Hanh) p 141-2

…relationship between the part and the whole, but not to confuse them as identical or interchangeable. This is a different exploration than looking at a system for its fractal patterns or holographic images; in that search, we would look at the part as a miniature version of the whole. Instead, here we look intently at the part in order to see the dynamics operating in the whole system. The part is not the whole, but it can lead us there.

Individual behaviors co-evolve as individuals interact with system dynamics. ….we have to use what is going on in the whole system to understand individual behavior, and we have to inquire into individual behavior to learn about the whole. p 142

Seeing the interplay between system dynamics and individuals is a dance of discovery that requires several iterations between the whole and its parts. We expand our vision to see the whole, then narrow our gaze to peer intently into individual moments. With each iteration, we see more of the whole, and gain new understandings about individual elements. We paint a portrait of the events or decisions, and search for great detail there also. We keep dancing between the two levels, bringing the sensitivities and information gleaned from one level to help us understand the other. If we hold awareness of the whole as we study the part, and understand the part in its relationship to the whole, profound new insights become available.

The critical task is to evoke our senses, not just our gray matter. We learn to dwell in multilevel phenomena simultaneously and let our senses lead us to new ways of comprehending. p 143

The second shift focuses us on the organizing dynamics of a living system. The organization of a living system bears no resemblance to organization charts. Life uses networks; we still rely on boxes. p 144

We choose what to notice; we relate to certain things and ignore others. Through these chosen relationships, we co–create our world. …contemplating spider webs….resiliency…slight pressure on one area jiggles the entire web.

…learn it directly from a spider. If a system is in trouble, it can be restored to health by connecting it to more of itself. …create stronger relationships. …. The system is capable of solving its own problems. …. If a system is suffering, this indicated that it lacks sufficient access to itself. It might be lacking information, it might have lost clarity about who it is, it might have troubled relationships, it might be ignoring those who have valuable insights.

In order to change, the system needs to learn more about itself from itself. The system needs processses to bring it together. …self-discovery… p 145

…develop greater self-knowledge in three critical areas.

…identity of the organization or community. Who are we: Who do we aspire to become? How shall we be together?

And people need to be connected to new information. What else do we need to know? Where is this new information to be found?

And people need to be able to reach past traditional boundaries and develop relationships with people anywhere in the system. Who else needs to be here to do this work with us? p 146

Any living thing will change only if it sees change as the means of preserving itself.

All life lives in the midst of an unending stream of data. …what to pay attention to… p 147

…we cannot stop life’s dynamic of self-reference or the human need for meaning. …. …all change results from a change in meaning. Meaning is created by the process of self-reference. We change only if we decide that the change is meaningful to who we are. Will it help us become who we want to be: or gain us more of what we think we need to preserve ourselves? p 147-8

…need to explore an issue sufficiently to decide whether new meaning is available and desirable. …helps them become more of who they are

…learn who they are, what self they are referencing. …. What issues and behaviors get their attention? What topics generate the most energy, positive and negative? …. In the process of doing actual work, the real identity of the group [or individual], not some fantasy image, always becomes visible. p 148

It doesn’t help to go off and talk about meaning or behaviors in the abstract. We need to be able to see what we are doing as we are doing it.

If we discover an issue whose significance we share with others, those others are transformed into colleagues. If we recognize a shared sense of injustice or a common dream, magical things happen to people. Past hurts and negative histories get left behind. ….the call of the problem sounds louder than past grievances or our fears of failure.

…sense of what’s worthy of our shared attention. p 149

we move past the labels and notice another human being who wants to make some small contribution to something we care about.

Meaningful information lights up a network and moves through it like a windswept brushfire. Meaningless information, in contrast, smolders at the gates until somebody dumps cold water on it.

I’ve come to believe that “preaching to the choir” is exactly the right thing to do. If I can help those who already share certain beliefs and dreams sing their song a little clearer, a little more confidently, I know they will take that song back to their networks. I don’t have to touch everybody. …. We sing better when we know we’re not alone. p 151-2

…we have to participate with colleagues in discovering what’s important to us.

Self-reference and meaning never cease…. We need to find ways to get their attention; we need to discover what’s meaningful to them.

…we are working with energy, not matter. Energy behaves differently than matter. It fills the universe, possibly traveling many times faster than the speed of light. It moves through invisible media and connection.. meaning has many of the qualities of energy... it doesn’t exist in physical form anywhere. We make it up as we self-reference our way though life. Since it doesn’t exist in material form, it too is not subject to the laws that govern matter. Its behavior can’t be explained by Newtonian physics. p 152

Matter doesn’t matter.

If we succeed in generating energy in one area, then we can watch what our networks do with our work. Who lit up and took notice? Where have our ideas traveled to? ….organizations change as “I start anywhere and follow it everywhere.”

…there is one last essential shift in our thinking. Although we see change at the material level, it is caused by processes that are immaterial. We must look for these invisible processes rather than the things that they engender. …. –the processes that give rise to forms. …. We must look behind the things of organizations to work with the processes that gave them birth. p 153

…learning generally to live in a process world. It’s a completely new way to be. Life demands that I participate with things as they unfold, to expect to be surprised, to honor the mystery of it, and to see what emerges. …. It’s not easy to give up the role of master creator and move into the dance of life. p 153-4

…that we put ourselves in motion, that we learn to live with instability, chaos, change and surprise. …. We can mourn the erosion of our plans, or we can set out to discover something new.

…the art of Aikido…. …quicker to notice when he was off-balance, and faster at returning to center.

…First, we must know what “center” feels like. We must know who we are, our patterns of behavior, oru values, our intentions.

…give more attention to what is occurring right in front of us, right now. p 154

Being present in the moment doesn’t mean that we act without intention or flow directionless thought life without any plans. But we would do better to attend more carefully to the process by which we create our plans and intentions. p 155

Chapter 9:
The New Scientific Management p 157

[hundredth monkey idea here] p 157

Our zeitgeist…awareness that we participate in a world of exquisite interconnectedness. ….webs of interconnections weave the world together. p 158

Enormous focus went into creating time-motion studies and breaking work into discrete tasks that could be done by the most untrained workers. I still find this early literature frightening to read. Designers were so focused on engineering efficient solutions that they completely discounted the human beings who were doing the work. They didn’t just ignore them, as had been done more recently with contemporary reengineering efforts. They disdained them–their task was to design work that would not be disrupted by the expected stupidity of workers. p 159

[An organizational person/social scientists was describing values in a social network]: But I sat there aghast. There were their long strings of variables–separate descriptors interacting in precise, linear ways–and here was my brain, filled with my readings about nonlinearity, about chaos, about fuzzy particles that come into being as temporary relationships in the universal web. I was struck suddenly by the joke of it all. We social scientists strain for respectability, using the methodologies and thought patterns of seventeenth-century science, while the scientists, traveling away from us faster than the speed of light, are moving into a universe that calls for entirely new ways of understanding. Just when social scientists seem to have gotten the old math down, the scientists have left, plunging ahead into the vast “porridge of being” that describes a new reality. p 160

We are great weavers of tales, listening intently around the campfire to see which stories best capture our imagination and the experience of our lives. If we can look at ourselves truthfully in the light of this fire and stop being so serious about getting things “right”–as if there were still an objective reality out there–we can engage in life differently, more playfully. Lewis Thomas explains that he could tell something important was going on in an experimental lab by the laughter. Surprised by what nature has revealed, things at first always look startlingly funny. p 161-162

…participative management.

Everywhere in the new sciences, in living systems theory, quantum physics, chaos and complexity theory, we observe life’s dependence on participation. p 163

New technology is purchased; new organization charts are drawn; new training classes are offered. But most basic human dynamics are completely ignored: our need to trust one another, our need for meaningful work, our desire to contribute and be thanked for that contribution, our need to participate in changes that affect us. p 164

I believe we have been kept apart by three primary Western cultural beliefs: individualism, competition, and a mechanistic world view. p 164-5

Here is a very partial list of new metaphors to describe leaders: gardeners, midwives, stewards, servants, missionaries, facilitators, conveners. …. No one can hope to lead any organization by standing outside or ignoring the web of relationships through which all work is accomplished. p 165

…information is organized by a second invisible element, meaning. If the universe organizes through these invisible forces, then we must contemplate new processes for working with them. Information and meaning-making do not obey the classical laws of physics that govern matter. As energetic forces, they move and act differently–they can travel with great speed anywhere in the universal web and appear suddenly as potent influences that surprise us.

We are moving irrevocably into new a relationship with the creative element of life. p 166

What is peculiar about this freedom [to self-determine] is that it results not in anarchy, but in global systems that support all members of the system. p 166-7

Self-reference …explains how life creates order without control, and stable identities that are open to change. p 168


Chapter 10:
The Real World p 169

We live in a world where order emerges out of chaos if people are free to make their own decisions based on shared meaning and values. …. People self-organize.

[When Katrina happened, the hierarchical bureaucracy was ineffective, slow, a disaster.]

We learn from Katrina that the only way to restore order out of chaos is to rely on people’s intelligence, love, and capacity to self-organize, to accomplish what they care about. p 177

Learning from terrorist groups:

What are the criteria we use to judge effective leaders? They include the abilities to communicate a powerful vision, to motivate people…. exceed plans, implement change. p 179

For humans, meaning is a “strange attractor” … coordinated behaviors without control. 183

Greater variety of [terrorist] attacks indicates local initiative p 184

The best strategy for immobilizing terrorist networks is not to kill their leaders, but to diffuse the sources of their anger, and not to incite them further. p 185

Einstein’s wonderful counsel that no problem is ever solved by the same thinking that created it defines what we must do. p 186


Epilogue:
Journeying to a New World p 189

But I find life much more interesting now, living with not knowing, trying to stay curious rather than certain. p 189

But even though I know the role of chaos, I still don’t like it. It’s terrifying when the world I so carefully held together dissolves. I don’t like feeling lost and emptied of meaning. I would prefer an easier path to transformation. But even as I experience their demands as unreasonable, I know I am in partnership with great creative forces. I know that chaos is a necessary place for me to dwell occasionally. So I have learned to sit with these dark moments–confused, overwhelmed, only faintly trusting that new insight will appear.

…no single person or school of thought has the answer… p 190-191

…you and I have to make it up as we go along… p 192

...but if an idea does not appear bizarre, he counseled, there is no hope for it. (Wilbur)

Every moment of this journey requires that we be comfortable with uncertainty and appreciative of chaos’ role. p 193

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MY COMMENT:

I’m really tickled by the visual trips I go on when I see the parallels between:

a. the numbers and points created with mathematics, moving from chaos via the "strange attractor" toward order and pattern over time, and

b. the values, feelings, intentions, purpose, meaning, thoughts and actions of people, moving with myriad other factors via the "strange attractor" to create patterns, change, evolution over time.

I'm actually seeing the numbers-and-points morph into meanings-and-purpose, while I watch both the above kinds of chaos/order processes dance simultaneously in my head.

[Jarett S]

Well, with no offense to you, I'm not going to read this whole post right now, but I do intend to follow up on those two books you mentioned.

From what I'm reading though, you're talking about something I'm very much into and that is what I'm starting to call non-linear transformative group processes. Jim Rough is a name to know and he has an article describing the triangle, square and the circle organizational structures. The triangle is the hierarchy. The square is the contract, the constitution. The circle is an on-going, ever evolving, unanimous process by which diverse perspectives can come together in creative ways. All individuality must be respected and yet these processes lead to unanimous group decisions because everyone is sharing their pieces of the puzzle and none can be left out.

Much too much to type here, but google wisdom councils, dynamic facilitation, world cafe, open process, Tom Atlee. Also, my podcast deals with this stuff in a few episodes, http://thenextstep.podomatic.com