Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity

265 Pages·2010·1.61 MB·English

by  Peggy Holman

More Praise for Engaging Emergence
“To change or not to change, that is not the question! In a complex and fast-
paced world, the only question is how to change creatively and successfully.
Peggy Holman unlocks this complex challenge with a set of fundamental prin-
ciples and practices. Follow them and your organization will fl ourish. Ignore
them and it will eventually shrivel.”
—Henri Lipmanowicz, Board Chair, Plexus Institute, and former President, Merck
“This book is simply brilliant. Peggy has done us all a great service—laying out
clearly and effectively how to navigate through the chaos of our times into the
emergent order that is the transformation we all seek and must deliver.”
—Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money and cofounder, The Pachamama
Alliance
“Not since The Fifth Discipline have I found a book on organizational learning
that combines such powerful insights and useful practices.”
—Tracy Robinson, Executive Director, Seattle Center Foundation
“Holman’s work makes the compelling case that helping employees and stake-
holders fi nd a sense of ownership and optimism about the changes that engulf
them is a key to successful transformations in any company or group. This
book should be in the library of every manager who would like to help employ-
ees and stakeholders develop better mechanisms for coping with, and being
optimistic about, change.”
—Chris Peck, Editor, Memphis Commercial Appeal
“Peggy Holman has tapped into a powerful evolutionary truth we can use today
in our lives, our work, our world: disturbance tells us something new needs
to surface. The more creatively we engage with disturbance, the more likely
it will gift us its fruits. This book tells us how to garden disturbances to yield
breakthroughs.”
—Tom Atlee, founder, Co-Intelligence Institute
“Holman steps onto the shaky ground of the 21st century, fi nds meaning, and
creates stability from our uncertainty. She builds our faith that coherence is out
there somewhere, waiting to be discovered. Prepare to leap!”
—Geoff Bellman, consultant and coauthor of Extraordinary Groups
“Thank you, Peggy, for disturbing us with this book. It is both provocative and
confi rming—providing a deeper understanding of today’s diffi cult problems
and pointing to simple ways of enabling people to discover their own life-giving
solutions.”
—Sandra Janoff, codirector, Future Search Network
“Peggy Holman is a theorist at the evolving edge of thought and application. She
puts clear language to the processes emerging around us in the fi eld of change.
We are grateful for her wide-ranging experience, networking, and wisdom.”
—Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, authors of The Circle Way
“Holman takes us on a journey into the heart of creativity at work. Her stories,
illustrations, and key concepts provide guidance about how to invite, fl ow with,
facilitate, and benefi t from emergent processes. Read it and enjoy what emerges!”
—Diana Whitney, PhD, coauthor of Appreciative Leadership and The Power of
Appreciative Inquiry
“In this insightful and timely book, Peggy Holman helps us understand the
deeper dynamics and principles at play in engaging emergence in constructive
ways—enabling unexpected insights and collective intelligence to arise in our
midst. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in new ways of working with
groups and organizations.”
—Juanita Brown, cofounder, The World Café
“If Margaret Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science opened our horizon
to the new realities of contemporary leadership—uncertainty and complex-
ity—this book turns these realities into practical approaches. I predict that for
a long time to come the standard reply to the question ‘But how can we deal
with such immense complexity?’ will be ‘Read Engaging Emergence. It has the
answers you are looking for.’ ”
—Holger Nauheimer, creator and host of the Change Management Toolbook community
“Peggy Holman’s gem of a guidebook for midwifi ng collective intelligence and
wise cocreativity is brilliant, timely, and well written. It is an indispensable
map for successfully navigating humanity’s rite of passage into maturity in the
21st century.”
—Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution, endorsed by six Nobel Prize winners
“In a time of exponential change, ‘change management’ is quaint at best and
probably doomed to fail. Our plans will be disrupted, our expectations turned
on their heads. If disturbance is going to be our dance partner from now on,
then the tools and principles in this book are the essential safety manual. They
also point the way to a thrilling existence.”
—Vicki Robin, coauthor of Your Money or Your Life
“The fi eld of emergence is emerging. It affects your life, your work, and the
world, and it’s been mostly invisible. Peggy’s book gives you the distinctions to
recognize it, the lived experience of it, and the practical levers to make it even
more powerful and useful. This is the defi nitive tool on this subject.”
—Martin Rutte, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Chicken Soup for the
Soul at Work and Board Chair, The Centre for Spirituality and the Workplace
ENGAGING
EMERGENCE
Also by the Author
The Change Handbook: The Defi nitive Resource on Today’s Best
Methods for Engaging Whole Systems, Second Edition, co-edited with
Tom Devane and Steven Cady, with more than 90 international con-
tributors (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007).
ENGAGING
EMERGENCE
Turning Upheaval
into Opportunity
P E G G Y H O L M A N
Engaging Emergence
Copyright © 2010 by Peggy Holman
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or trans-
mitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other elec-
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First Edition
Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-60509-521-9
PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-604-9
IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-605-6
2010-1
Interior design: Laura Lind Design
Illustrator: Steven Wright
Indexer: Katherine Stimson
Copyeditor: Elissa Rabellino
Proofreader: Annette Jarvie
Book producer: Linda Jupiter Productions
Cover design: Barbara Haines
To my parents, Marvin and Ethel Kessler:
my father, who said, “use your head”
and my mother, who added, “follow your
heart.”
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CO N T E N TS
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
INTRODUCTION: From Chaos to Coherence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
PART I. The Nature of Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1. What Is Emergence? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2. What’s the Catch? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
PART II. Practices for Engaging Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3. Step Up: Take Responsibility For What You Love . . . 47
4. Prepare: Foster an Attitude for Engaging . . . . . . . . . . 58
5. Host: Cultivate Conditions for Engaging . . . . . . . . . . 68
6. Step In: Practice Engaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7. Iterate: Do It Again . . . and Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
PART III. Principles for Engaging Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
8. Welcome Disturbance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
9. Pioneer! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
10. Encourage Random Encounters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
11. Seek Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
12. Simplify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
PART IV. Three Questions for Engaging Emergence . . . . . . . . 151
13. How Do We Disrupt Coherence
Compassionately?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
14. How Do We Engage Disruptions Creatively? . . . . . . 164
15. How Do We Renew Coherence Wisely? . . . . . . . . . . 171