11/16-Interview: Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity

photo credit: craig neal

photo credit: craig neal


Thanks to all who joined us on the call last night!

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. -Vaclav Havel

Last night Peggy Holman, master change method chronicler and author of the new book, Engaging Emergence, was our VisionHolder conversationalist with Craig and the community. Here are some snippets from Peggy.

I choose to be curious about chaos and breakdown. It offers me the best chance of more than just surviving. As things fall apart, it creates the space for something good to happen. Chaos creates a diversity of opportunity for people.

Two hallmarks:

  • The notion that people care: people do care and want to make a difference
  • Welcoming disturbance: there is a shift, an acceptance, the knowing of your own fear.

We’re hospicing the old; midwifing the new. -Margaret Wheatley


Conversations that matter: Conversation that help us see ourselves in context. experience the "we", experience ourselves in the whole.
How do we take this to scale?

2 pieces of the puzzle:
macroscope: creating the tools and mechanisms (tech and internet will create the vehicles)
microscope: many of us doing this work, stretching ourselves, as often as possible. share our stories to inspire others.

-how do we bring people together in holistic way to create scale?
-visual metaphors: even though you might think a large corporate system is immovable, as soon as people can step away from the immediate focus to the larger context, something does shift.

When the structures of how things are becomes so bad for a sufficient portion of the population, it's time to look at the principles and ideas for what supports people. What evolves is more complex systems that can handle more diversity.

One of my major ah-hahs is: there is a deep human need to belong, and an unspoken cultural assumption is that to belong you must conform. Instead of conforming, consider:

  • take responsibility for what you love as an act of service.
  • pay attention to what you deeply love, and bring it forward. it may be disruptive, but in the higher order of complexity, our uniqueness, the larger whole emerges.

http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P17ee1365e5335e7e5da5fb9f08a17624YFh9R1REZmtx&buffer=5&shape=6&fc=FFFFFF&pc=666666&kc=009900&bc=CCCCCC&brand=1&player=ap26
 

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