Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity. - Couverture souple

Holman, Peggy

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1605095214 ISBN 13 : 9781605095219

Editeur : Berrett-Koehler, 2010

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Book by Holman Peggy

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INTRODUCTION
FROM CHAOS TO COHERENCE

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what’s going to happen next.

—Gilda Radner,It’s Always Something

Change begins with disruption. Whether caused by something small—a broken promise—or large—a hurricane sweeping across a city—disturbance interrupts the status quo. We may find it positive: a promotion, losing weight, a new baby. We may experience it with dread: loss of a job, a contract, a life. No matter what the disruption, because it is disturbing, it can lead to change.

Disruption, disturbance, tension, upheaval, dissonance, chaos. These conditions stress us. They often challenge our ability to work together toward common goals. Some disruptions, like upheaval and chaos, are more extreme, but they all stimulate change. And though we usually relate to such situations negatively, one key shift to engaging emergence is developing a positive relationship with these sorts of stressors. In fact, disrupting compassionately is a particularly effective approach.

Most of us avoid tension and disturbances. We attempt to plan them away, control them, or destroy them. Perhaps we hold in our anger because we don’t want to cause a fuss. We feel a little more isolated as a result, but order is maintained. We learn to walk around these isolation zones, sometimes forgetting they exist. Yet they typically worsen with time. Alienation, rigidity, greed, intolerance, and inaction or violence grow. Such characteristics are present in many of our current crises.

What if tensions inspired curiosity? What if we knew how to express our anger, fear, or grief so that it contributed to something better? This introduction describes a fundamental pattern of change as a guide for working with disruption. It examines how disturbances surface useful differences that generate coherent order. It puts emergence in context with other forms of change to clarify when engaging emergence makes sense. It speaks to why engaging emergence matters. The introduction ends by naming benefits of engaging emergence.

A Pattern of Change

How does change happen? Whether it is human, cosmological, geological, or biological, some aspects of change are predictable. By understanding them, we are better equipped to work with them. Every system contains the following:

A DRIVE FOR COHERENCE—Relationship, unity, bonding, wholeness, coalescing—a coming together—convergence. Think of atoms forming molecules, people joining communities, or our longing to contribute to something larger than ourselves.

OCCASIONAL DISRUPTIONS—Interruptions to the status quo, unexpected actions—disturbance. Think of natural disasters, angry protesters, changes in work policies or laws.

A DRIVE FOR DIFFERENTIATION—Becoming separate, individual, distinct, unique—a breaking apart—divergence. Think of teenagers separating from parents to find their identity, a coworker striking off to freelance, or our longing to be accepted for who we are.

These forces are constantly interacting, mutually influencing each other. Nature plays out this pattern over and over. For example, a new species appears, disrupts the existing ecosystem, sorts out who survives and who goes extinct, and ultimately arrives at a new coherent state. The same dynamics play out in human systems. A case in point: writing this book has been a constant ebb and flow of disruption, differentiation, and coherence.

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The seeds of this book have been with me for years. The size of the second edition of The Change Handbook disturbed me. We were cataloging methodologies that were being created faster than we could document them. Something deeper was happening. Understanding that something mobilized me to write, hoping to see the different notions that surfaced. Eventually, the outline for the book you now hold coalesced. I was on a roll. I wrote to a schedule because the content was clear. Sometimes, my musings surfaced a useful distinction that found its way into the outline. The work was “steady as she goes.”

The first draft was flowing out of me when I tripped. I was starting to write Part 2. I had a headache. I couldn’t concentrate. Forcing my way through left me exhausted, the material uninspired. Then it hit me: I faced disruption! I remembered the pattern of change. Treating my frustration with compassion, I acknowledged the disturbance and experimented with differences until something cohered. I realized there was no Part 2. The book got simpler, and I got back to writing.

The resulting manuscript went to readers. I posted it on a blog. Feedback came from a variety of people, and I looked for distinctions and similarities among their responses. Themes coalesced. I planned my revisions, including adding stories and how-to tips; made an outline; and got to work. And the chapters got longer. Too long. The manuscript asserted itself and I was stuck. Worse, my editor found the organization confusing. This time, I got the message before the headache: welcome disturbance. I experimented with different strategies. What could I delete? Would breaking the material into more chapters eliminate the confusion? Could I use different visual presentations? As options differentiated themselves, I kept tuning in to what the manuscript itself was telling me. I listened for what wanted to emerge. With great editorial coaching, a breakthrough occurred: tell a nonlinear story in a linear way. And so I have.

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Mostly, the experience was a steady state of writing, reviewing, editing, and writing. Sometimes, distinctions led to incremental shifts—adding or removing a chapter. Occasionally, I threw up my hands when the manuscript’s organization blew apart. Ultimately, it coalesced into a new, more coherent order. Steady state, incremental shifts, emergence. Understanding these different ways in which change happens equips us to work more effectively with disruption.

Forms of Change

Though all change begins with disruption, not all change is emergent. This book focuses on emergent change because it is least understood and we need more effective ways of working with it. Knowing how emergence fits with other forms of change provides perspective on why we are experiencing more and stronger disruptions. It also helps us to understand when engaging emergence makes sense. Emergence will happen whether or not we choose to engage with it. We increase the likelihood of less destructive experiences and more desirable outcomes by working with it. I characterize change in three forms:

STEADY STATE—Disturbance is handled within the existing situation. A minor fix is made, or the disruption is ignored or suppressed. Business as usual continues. For example, a speeder gets a ticket for driving too fast.

INCREMENTAL SHIFTS—Disruptions interrupt the status quo. We distinguish what the disturbance brings to the system and integrate changes. For example, a constitution is amended.

EMERGENCE—Occasional upheaval results when principles that keep a system orderly break down. Chaos sparks experiments. Current assumptions are clarified, and new possibilities surface. Ultimately, something dies and a new coherence arises that contains aspects of the old and the new but isn’t either. For example, a revolution leads to a new form of governance.

Much of today’s angst comes from treating all disruptions as if they fit a steady state scenario or, at worst, could be managed through incremental shifts. Economic upheaval, failing schools, increasing terrorism—all indicate larger forces in play.

The Consequences of Not Engaging Emergence

Most of our current strategies for handling disruptions work well to maintain a stable system or to manage incremental shifts. They are great for moving from where we are to a predetermined outcome. When the root causes of disturbance are more complex, often more emotionally charged, approaching them as if we were fixing a broken car can make the situation worse.

We maintain our sense of coherence by drawing boundaries, physical or psychological. We protect those inside our neighborhoods or organizations and keep “the other”—people we view as different from us—out. Fenced communities and security systems are growing around the world. Airplane travel and immigration are vastly more difficult because of the security we use to keep us safe.

Such methods are natural responses when our way of life seems threatened. They also isolate us. If someone holds a different view, we better not let him or her in. Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort chronicles how people in the United States have sorted themselves into homogeneous communities over the past three decades. We choose neighborhoods, churches, and news shows most compatible with our beliefs.1

Even if we doubt our “tribe’s” stand on an issue, many of us don’t voice it for fear of being ostracized. We hold it in and feel more alone as a result. The outcome: we isolate ourselves based on differences and retreat into a posture of defensive rigidity. In contrast, engaging emergence uses our differences to bring us together, opening us to creative involvement.

So, increasing numbers of us face complex challenges and don’t know how to solve them. Some of us feel stuck or overwhelmed by the accelerating urgency of the conflicts and challenges facing our organizations, communities, families, or even ourselves. Some of us have too many choices and neither the time nor the expertise to discern among them. Others of us see no choices at all. Familiar strategies lead to dead ends, leaving many seeking alternatives. Until we engage emergence, disruptions will continue erupting more and more destructively.

Consider an industry in upheaval: newspapers. Readership has been falling for decades. Even as newspaper executives acknowledge the radical shifts they need to make, they continue approaching change using the same old strategies. A 2008 article in Editor and Publisher, a time-honored industry journal, makes visible the tragic irony: while we may know we need to change, we don’t always know how to do it.

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“Turn and Face the Change—With Newspaper Industry in Crisis, ‘Everything’s on the Table,’ ” exhorted the article.2 It ends, “If this is a seminal crisis, then we have to do some seminal thinking. And it really does have to be radical.”

Yet the most innovative idea in the article was distinctly small bore: print less frequently. When the world economy faltered in 2009, the decline turned conundrum into catastrophe. About 15,000 newspaper people lost their jobs.3 More than 100 papers closed their doors, including the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News.4 The decline was predictable, yet virtually every newspaper is choosing extinction over experimentation. In perhaps the ultimate irony, Editor and Publisher closed its doors in December 2009.

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Newspaper executives are not alone in struggling with how to approach change. In Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life, Alan Deutschman quotes experts saying that the root cause of the health crisis hasn’t changed for decades.5 Yet the medical establishment can’t figure out what to do about it. Individuals also resist change when facing disruption. Deutschman cites research into change-or-die scenarios for patients facing bypass surgery and other diseases that can be mitigated by lifestyle changes. Even when we know we must change, 90 percent of us won’t alter our behavior to fit the new situation. We choose death over adaptation.6

The Other 10 Percent

In the spirit of turning upheaval into opportunity, what goes on in that 10 percent of cases where we choose adaptation? According to the researchers in Deutschman’s book, people find fellowship that inspires, reframe disaster as possibility, and keep practicing. Rather than making incremental shifts, changing a habit here and there, they engage emergence. They redefine the fundamental assumptions that guide their image of themselves and their actions. And they don’t do it alone.

In no particular order, the following table compares traditional thinking about change with ideas that support emergence. This list grew out of my work with emergent change processes. Understanding the differences can help us to make more informed choices about how we approach change.

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Changing Notions of Change

The next time you face disruption and don’t know how to approach it, look at the left side of the table. If it reminds you of what you would ordinarily do, look at the right-hand counterpart. Perhaps you will find some new insights for handling your situation. If taking the approach on the right seems like a lot of effort, consider the reasons for doing so.

Why Does Engaging Emergence Matter?

Emergence—increasingly complex order self-organizing out of disorder—isn’t just a metaphor for what we are experiencing. Complexity increases as more diversity, connectivity, interdependence, or interactions become part of a system. The disruptive shifts occurring in our current systems are signs that these characteristics are on the rise.

Today’s unprecedented conditions could lead to chaos and collapse, but they also contain the seeds of renewal. We can choose to coalesce into a vibrant, inclusive society through creative interactions among diverse people facing seemingly intractable challenges. In many ways, this path is counterintuitive. It breaks with traditional thinking about change, including the ideas that it occurs top-down and that it follows an orderly plan, one step at a time.

We don’t control emergence. Nor can we fully predict how it arises. It can be violent, overwhelming. Yet we can engage it confident that unexpected and valuable breakthroughs can occur. Working with emergence involves some unfamiliar notions:

EMBRACING MYSTERY—Asking questions in addition to stating answers.

FOLLOWING LIFE ENERGY—Using our intuition in addition to making plans.

CHOOSING POSSIBILITY—Attending to our dreams and aspirations, not just our goals and objectives.

Change is always happening. When it is emergent change, it seriously disrupts what’s familiar. It behooves us to learn how to work with it creatively. Our survival in an increasingly unpredictable world is at stake. When change is treated as an opportunity, prospects for positive outcomes are all around us.

Emergent change processes have uncovered creative and productive ways to engage emergence. These methods have also surfaced some dependable outcomes from doing so.

Benefits of Engaging Emergence

Just because specific outcomes from emergence are unpredictable doesn’t make working with emergence impossible. We benefit from engaging emergence in these ways:

INDIVIDUALLY, WE ARE STRETCHED AND REFRESHED—We feel more courageous and inspired to pursue what matters to us. With a myriad of new ideas, and confident of mentors, supporters, and fans, we act.

At an early Journalism That Matters gathering, a young woman, recently out of college, arrived with the seed of an idea: putting a human face on international reporting for U.S. audiences. At the meeting, she found support for the idea. Deeply experienced people coached her and gave her entrée to their contacts. Today, the Common Language Project is thriving, with multiple awards (www.clpmag.org).

NEW AND UNLIKELY PARTNERSHIPS FORM—When we connect with people whom we don’t normally meet, sparks may fly. Creative conditions make room for our differences, fostering lively and productive interactions.

A reluctant veteran investigative reporter was tea...

Revue de presse :

“In Engaging Emergence Peggy Holman does the best job yet of showing us how managers and change agents can use the insights of complexity theory for planned, transformational change.  Highly readable and practical, Holman provides useful, concrete illustrations that make it easy to understand a difficult topic.”
—Gervase Bushe, Professor of Leadership and Organization Development, Segal Graduate School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada and author of Clear Leadership

Our times requite new levels of understanding. Courageous, creative, collaborative -- read emergent -- processes are key to getting there. Peggy Holman's new book helps us appreciate why such process are needed, how they work, and what it takes to get them to happen. It makes important contribution.
—Charles Johnston, MD, author of The Creative Imperative and Hope and the Future

“Emergence and its associated chaos are happening at an accelerating pace.  Ms. Holman offers practical perspectives for working with Emergence creatively as a source of opportunity.”
—James B. Shaffer, Chief Operating Officer and Dean, School of Business, University of Southern Maine

For those who feel battered by change and chaos, Peggy Holman's book is a tonic. The intelligent, optimistic and caring voice with which she facilitates complex, even contentious groups in transition permeates the pages. Engaging Emergence is at once pragmatic and palliative -- good for the mind and heart.
—Jill Geisler, Group Leader, Leadership and Management Programs, The Poynter Institute

Russell Ackoff wrote: „The only thing harder than starting something new, is stopping something old.  Peggy Holman's "Engaging Emergence" gives us hope that we can step beyond the irrelevant entrainment of the past, bring forward what is useful and effectively operate into the uncertain and unknown future. Recognizing that not all of us thrive on uncertainty and ambiguity, Peggy helps ground is in useful ideas to embrace and thrive into our futures. By giving language to the practice of engaging emergence, she also lifts us beyond a theoretical idea to a place of useful practice.
—Nancy White, author of Digital Habitats

“Engaging Emergence is a crucial guide for navigating transitional moments in social systems — from group upsets and business challenges to global financial meltdowns.  Holman brilliantly applies a 14-billion-year historical perspective in ways that give us the eyes to see opportunity amid chaos, the heart to trust the process, and the mental toolkit to effectively nurture evolutionary breakthroughs.”
—Connie Barlow, author of Evolution Extended

“This book is most relevant and will be of great service to change agents attempting to bring about complex transformative change – the type of change needed to successfully reinvent our world and the major task of humanity at this moment in time.  Thank you for stepping up to the challenge of grounding this elusive concept into an actual change strategy.” 
—David Gershon, president, Empowerment Institute and author of Social Change 2.0

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Berrett-Koehler
• Date d'édition: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1605095214
• ISBN 13: 9781605095219
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 192