My
mind is racing. Today I experienced one of those rare and astonishing
instances of serendipity that make you wonder whether there is an
unknown force at work in the universe. Having just recapitulated my
personal, seemingly paradoxical credo in Tuesday's
post, and then drawn together a lot of the current thinking on
approaches to deal with complex situations and 'wicked problems' yesterday,
I stumbled today on a new book I have heard nothing about, despite the
fame of its four authors, Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joe Jaworski, and
Betty Sue Flowers (producer of the Joseph Conrad/Bill Moyers series Power of Myth), a book which bears directly on and opens new avenues to explore both of my latest essays. The book is called Presence, and since I picked it up ten hours ago I have not put it down.
The
book is hesitant, inconsistent, difficult to wade through and alive
with its authors' passion. It is a work of remarkable synthesis of a
myriad of ideas from religion, philosophy, science and business. Ken
Wilbur calls it "leading edge" and "an altogether important book". Its
pages contain references to the ideas of no fewer than two dozen of the
writers, philosophers, scientists and others I have discussed here on
How to Save the World.
The idea is clearly unfinished, and the
authors make no apology for the "much effort, confusion and ambiguity"
that remain, but feel that the unfinished journey that the four of them
have taken bears telling. Rather than an exposition, the book reads as
a chronology of meetings and conversations. What makes the book most
challenging is that the English language, at least, is inadequate to
capture many of the ideas and perceptions in the book, so the authors
cycle through one anecdote after another, using different words and
examples, in the hope that each reader will relate to at least one
explanation of each element in the model -- possibly a model for saving
the world -- illustrated above.
It is impossible for me to paraphrase their words, and I would urge you to pick up a copy and join the conversation.
Instead, I present some extracts that try to capture each of the
elements in the model, so that you can, hopefully, get enough of an
idea of what it's about to get you oriented in your reading. My
comments are in square brackets. After that, I summarize just one
practical example from the book where the model was used, more or less,
to extraordinary effect. Ready? Here we go:
Wholes and Parts:
For
Buckminster Fuller, "pattern integrity" is the whole of which each
[element of the living world] is a concrete manifestation. Biologist
Rupert Sheldrake calls the underlying organizing pattern the formative field
of the organism. "In self-organizing systems at all levels of
complexity", he says, "there is a wholeness that depends on a
characteristic organizing field of that system, its morphic
field...When a cell's morphic field deteriorates, its awareness of the
larger whole deteriorates. A cell that loses its social identity
reverts to blind undifferentiated cell division, which can ultimately
threaten the life of the larger organism. It is what we know as
cancer". [What an amazing analogy to what Lovelock calls the planetary
malady, the "plague of people", disconnected from Gaia and reproducing
"madly"!]
The part is a place for the presencing of the
whole...You have to cultivate a quality of perception that is striving
outwards, from the whole to the part, so you "see from the whole"...[In this model] you let the experience well up into something
appropriate. In a sense, there's no decision-making. What you do
becomes obvious. You 'feel out' what to do. You act out of an inner
feel, making sense as you go.
The core capacity needed to access the field of the future is presence
-- being fully conscious and aware in the present moment, listening,
being open beyond one's preconceptions and historical ways of 'making
sense'.
As long as our thinking is governed by industrial,
machine-age habit, we will continue to recreate institutions
[corporations, schools etc.] as they have been, despite their
disharmony with the larger world, and the need of all living systems to
evolve.
The Future of Humanity:
Jack Miles has written a article called Global Requiem,
speculating what would happen if we started to realize that humankind
might perish, an exploration of the unthinkable... Maybe if people
really believed we could be headed for extinction, we would do
collectively what many people do individually when they know they may
actually die -- we would suddenly see our lives and our world very
clearly. [This is precisely what I was talking about in my post Tuesday]
The Model Part 1: Sensing: Suspending & Redirecting:
Suspension
is removing ourselves from the habitual stream of thought [said
Varela]...As we become aware of our thoughts, they begin to have less
influence on what we see...We can consistently bring creativity into
our lives by paying attention
to it and building the capacity to suspend the judgements that arise in
our mind...Groups are naturally coercive -- they need shared norms and
ways of thinking and seeing to function effectively...And in moments of
real suspension people are more likely to feel unsettled than
empowered...[But] learning to see begins when we stop projecting our
habitual assumptions and start to see reality freshly. It continues
when we can see our connection to that reality more
clearly...Suspension if the first "gesture" of enhancing awareness, and
redirection, sensing the reality as it is being created, and sensing
our part in creating it, is the second...The shift of the living
process to the foreground of our awareness characterizes the essence of
redirection...The one brings the many out of itself, as Goethe
said...Redirection produces a direct understanding of the generative
process underlying present reality, "encountering the authentic whole",
as distinct from our abstract, conceptual understanding, which is "the
counterfeit whole".
Cultures exist only as we bring them into
being moment by moment. As you continue the process of activating your
imagination and applying it in different situations, you start to sense
the organization's culture as a living phenomenon. The 'figure' and the
'ground' reverse, and you start to see yourself as part of this
process, an active agent in enacting the organizational culture.
Redirecting [is aided by techniques such as meditation]. Kabat-Zinn distinguishes two basic levels, concentration (focus, relaxation, paying attention) and mindfulness
(seeing beyond the surface of what's going on in your field of
awareness, making it possible to see connections that may not have been
visible before, simply coming out of the stillness). These levels
correspond closely to the distinction between suspension and
redirection. Simply seeing a situation as a "problem" has the effect of
allowing us to distance ourselves from it and blocks "observing
whatever arises as it actually is"..."In general, if you feel you've
got a problem to solve that is 'out there' and you don't necessarily
see or want to see any possible relationship between the 'you' who is
trying to solve the problem and what the problem actually is, you may
wind up not being able to see the problem accurately, in its fullness.
You may therefore unwillingly be contributing to maintaining the
undesired situation rather than allowing it to evolve and perhaps
dissolve". [A fascinating restatement of the paradox of Wicked Problems
I wrote about yesterday].
The problem-solving mindset can be adequate for solving technical problems, but it can be woefully inadequate for complex human
systems, where problems often arise from unquestioned assumptions and
deeply habitual ways of acting...You can't just analyze such systems
from the outside to get to the root causes of things -- you have to
feel them from within...There is an inner knowing that comes with
innovation, and we have to learn to see with the heart first, before we
can see from the whole. [It is helpful to use] nature as a guide.
Political, legal and economic approaches don't go deep enough. By
themselves they won't bring the penetrating changes in human culture
that we need for people to live in true harmony and balance with one
another and with the Earth... The next great opening of an ecological
worldview will have to be an internal one.
The Model Part 2: Presencing: Letting Go, Letting Come:
Presencing
is seeing from the deepest source and becoming a vehicle for that
source...It entails a capacity for surrendering control, surrendering
into commitment, "de-centredness"...You
reach a state of clarity about and connection to what is emerging...It
requires refraining from imposing pre-established frameworks or mental
models...The knowledge that emerges is primary knowing, arising from
interconnected wholes through direct presentation, rather than
analytical knowing, which arises from stored representation, with its artificial separation of subject (I) and object (it).
The
birth of the de-centered self can be profoundly disorienting, it is
transcendental and often involves a heightened sense of awareness and
connection. The analytical 'localized' self can find it fragile,
frightening and impossible to grasp...There is a sense of being present
to what is seeking to emerge, with intentionality. If you follow your
nature enough, if you follow your nature as it moves, if you follow so
far that you really let go, then you find that you're actually the
original being, the original way of being. The original being knows
things and acts, does things in its own [intuitive?] way. It actually
has a great intention to be itself, and it will do so if you just let
it.
The Model Part 3: Realizing: Crystallizing Intent, Iterative Prototyping/Experiments/Improvisation, Institutionalizing
Realizing
entails bringing something new into reality, but this action comes from
a source that's deeper than the rational mind. The magic comes from the
capacity to sense something new, collectively, and act instantaneously
in accordance with what that felt knowledge dictates...It requires not
imposing our will but rather "operating from the larger intention". It
entails acting in the world but not on the world, a co-creation between
the individual or collective and the larger world of which it is a part.
One
of the results of crystallizing intent, realizing the purpose of the
team's work with greater clarity, is synchronicity. Many people sense
and are drawn together around a new possibility that's unfolding, about
what wants to happen.
Whew!
Tough work, isn't it. I've been through it three times and I think I
understand most of it. It makes sense, but at a level I'm not (yet)
comfortable with. You need to read the whole book (and probably more)
to really understand the model.
The most compelling example of
the model in application was a study in Stuttgart, Germany of ways to
improve the intensive health care system, but which involved a
multidisciplinary exploratory team. They initially identified four
levels of increasingly profound relationship between doctors and
patients (my paraphrasing):
- Transactional -- the doctor prescribes a solution for the immediate problem
- Attitudinal -- the doctor instructs changes to the behaviours that gave rise to the problem
- Consultative -- the doctor and patient come to an understanding of the behaviours that gave rise to the problem
- Co-creative
-- the doctor and patient come to an understanding of the entire
'field' in which the behaviour that gave rise to the problem emerged,
and open new perspectives on the identity of the patient that operated
within that field, so that the patient and doctor can co-prescribe
actions that preclude the need for the problematic behaviour
The
group assessed that, for the most part, most existing relationships
between doctors and patients were level 1 or 2, while relationships of
level 3 or 4 would be more effective. But then an amazing thing
happened. the politicians on the team diagnosed their relationships
with their constituents in identically the same way. Then teachers
diagnosed their relationships with their students in identically the
same way. Then others did the same. Ultimately, farmers on the team
diagnosed their relationship with the land the same way. A history of
how these problems had emerged had been told, in reverse time order.
Suddenly there was a collective understanding that analogous
dysfunction underlay all of
the 'Wicked Problems' facing the team members in their respective
professions. There was a simultaneous 'letting go' of the
well-established excuses why things had to be done the way they were
done, an empathy among all the team members, and a willingness to 'let
come' other ways of dealing with these endemic situations. A number of
bold initiatives were proposed in one or another of these professions,
and taken up and amplified and refined by others by analogy in their
profession. An enormous creative energy galvanized the team, a
collective intention to 're-form' these situations in response to the
newly emerged understanding, and as a result, some amazing,
revolutionary, and wildly successful changes have been introduced in
Stuttgart in all of the participating disciplines. I wish I had been
there!
The Presence model corresponds amazingly well with Open
Space's Four Practices: Opening, Inviting, Holding/Making Room and
Acting/Realizing, and also with Snowden's Complexity Dealing Process:
Probe, Sense, Respond, both of which I have discussed in previous
articles. The fact that these have evolved independently and each has
powerful anecdotal and historical evidence of its value in dealing with
complex situations is very compelling, and exciting. We must hope that
their proponents connect and learn from each others' models, and
perhaps synthesize one with the best qualities of all three.
The authors refer to The Marblehead Letter,
an amazing joint statement by a group of large businesses and public
organizations, which indicates substantial enthusiasm for approaches
like the Presence model and concludes:
Complex
interdependent issues such as these are increasingly shaping the
context for strategy. Yet the pressures created by these very issues
tend to keep leaders in a continuous 'doing' mode, with little or no
time for reflection and real thinking. We believe that there is a
greater need than ever for leaders to meet and genuinely think together
-- the real meaning of dialogue. Only through creating such
opportunities can there be any hope of building the shared
understanding and coordinated innovative action that the world
desperately needs.
The final sections of the book, on
institutionalizing, leadership and application to science, are much
weaker than the rest of the book, and seem to have been rushed together
to give it a sense of completeness -- hopefully future editions of this
book with deal with these issues more thoroughly.
In contrast,
the Epilogue, which returns to the Future of Humanity theme and
introduces the lessons from Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael, is intriguing.
The authors note: "We do act as if evolution stopped with us, as if
'we're it', the whole purpose of nature's four billion year project on
planet Earth. It would probably shift things to realize that may not be
so. We may be just here to enable what comes next". Countering John
Gray's arguments I referred to Tuesday they suggest perhaps that the
other species need us not to steward the planet, but to rejoin them in
the co-evolution of the planet's future, that they long for our return
as much as we, in our saner moments, long to return to a life in
concert with nature and our fellow creatures. The final quote is from
environmental architect Bill McDonough (who I've also written about
here), saying "What will it take for us to become indigenous once again
-- not as we were, but as we might be?" Their answer: "I think if we
can find our place, we will find our purpose".
Something is
happening here, though I'm not quite sure yet what it is. But I have to
believe there is more to such remarkable coincidence and congruence of
thinking than serendipity. I'm not ready to buy into the hype of a
newly emerging collective human consciousness. But despite appearances,
I'm an optimist at heart, and there's much here to warm the spirit and
quicken the heart. Just maybe... |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
