The following post has been reblogged from our friends at Management Assistant Group. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
Robin Katcher, the new director of the Management Assistance Group, is a friend of the Institute’s and a leader among those of us who work to bring an understanding of networks and complexity to the work of social transformation. I found these reflections on the more personal aspects of working with complexity to be specially appropriate for the beginning of a new year.
Despite recession, currency crises, and tremors of financial instability, the pace of disruption is roaring ahead. The frictionless spread of information and the expansion of personal, corporate, and global networks have plenty of room to run. And here’s the conundrum: When businesspeople search for the right forecast–the road map and model that will define the next era–no credible long-term picture emerges. There is one certainty, however. The next decade or two will be defined more by fluidity than by any new, settled paradigm; if there is a pattern to all this, it is that there is no pattern. The most valuable insight is that we are, in a critical sense, in a time of chaos.
A group of us from IISC attending Facing Race, the Applied Research Center’s bi-annual conference. For me (and many others, judging by the #FacingRace Twitter stream), it was an energizing, affirming and enlightening experience. Over the next few days, we will offer details about what we heard and learned. I want to begin with a few big picture ideas.
Today we often use the word extraordinary to refer to something amazing, something great. The overwhelming re-election of the nation’s first Black President through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression is a truly extraordinary event.
Our paradigm is our lens on everything. It is how we make sense of reality. For example, a deterministic paradigm is a lens that makes you see everything in terms of cause and effect. It gives you a mechanistic lens with which to make sense of the world. Determinism can be a really useful perspective – one way of looking at things – but it becomes a problem if it is your paradigm – THE way in which you look at things.
“If it’s work we try to figure out how to do less, if it’s art we try to figure out how to do more.” Regular readers of our blog know that we are big fans of Seth Godin here at IISC. And if you’ve been to anything I’ve trained or facilitated you have probably heard me rail against the dominance of an obsolete industrial paradigm.
In this video, Godin asks “What is school for?” and he clearly points to all the industrial trappings that are badly limiting how we educate our young – even in “high performing” contexts. We are in the middle of a significant paradigm shift, and this is one of our most important questions.
Over the past several years, there has been a great deal of international focus on the notion of happiness. While there are many definitions of happiness, here is a composite of my favorites: “emotions experienced when in a state of well-being that range from contentment to intense joy.”
Ten years ago when I was going through a critical stage in my life, a friend asked me what I would consider to be my dream job. My answer was pretty simple. I wanted to lead an organization whose primary work was to design processes for complex collaborative efforts aiming at advancing social justice, equity and democracy. I wanted to do this in an organization where issues of power, privilege and race were central, not only to the work we did in the world but in how we engaged with each other to do that work.
I came up as an organizer. I approached that work by working hard to persuade others that change was possible. I then proceeded to illustrate the type of change that we could work on. It is important and dignified work.
But as I came to understand networks I found myself doing a lot less persuading. I’m not just seeking to build a critical mass. I’m seeking to make critical connections. Emergence bursts forth from these connections.
The following post is reblogged from Seth’s Blog. Short and simple , yet full of wisdom. We hope that it will enrich your life and much as it has ours.
Do the extra work not because you have to but because it’s a privilege.
I recently had the privilege of engaging in a public dialogue with Amy Edelstein, senior teacher of Evolutionary Enlightenment. We were brought together to talk about the relationship between active citizenship and active spirituality.
The very idea of citizenship emerges in the context of a trajectory, a movement from less freedom to more freedom. There is something aspirational in it, it is supposed to help us move towards an unfinished project – an ideal.
I’m into networks. It takes a significant shift in perspective to get into networks. We develop aptitudes and ways of being-with that allow us to contend with grater complexity.
I’m so into networks that I had the privilege of participating in a community of practice on networks and decentralized organizing. Networks thrive on trust and relationship and it was with this knowledge that we dove in. We became friends, we grew to love, appreciate and trust each other.
