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ENGAGING EMERGENCE - TURNING UPHEAVAL INTO OPPORTUNITY

ENGAGING EMERGENCE - TURNING UPHEAVAL INTO OPPORTUNITY

BY PEGGY HOLMAN

What would it mean if we knew how
to successfully engage with the
unknown, the uncomfortable, the unprecedented
so that our organizations and
communities could thrive?
Many of our current cultural stories
seem to reinforce a belief that challenge
and conflict lead to collapsing
systems. Stories of breakdown are
everywhere—a struggling economy,
political polarization, declining high
school graduation rates.Yet even as
these systems falter, new beginnings are
all around us.The more we look for
stories of innovations launched and
challenges overcome, the more visible
they become.
When we allow ourselves to look
through this lens,we see that a renewal
is under way, a modern renaissance
fueled by the passion and commitment
of many who have dared to pursue a
dream. In communities, organizations,
industries, and other social systems, new
ways of living and working are flourishing.
For example,many consider journalism
to be an industry in decline. But
even as traditional forms of journalism
are dying—because they aren’t serving
us well—I see signs of rebirth every day.
Bold experiments are underway. Spot.us
uses “crowdfunding,” in which community
members pool money to support
investigative reporting.NewsTrust,
which rates the news for accuracy, fairness,
and other criteria, is drawing
increasing readership and participation
to its site. Similar innovations are arising
in other areas, ranging from healthcare
to politics.
Given these parallel dynamics of collapse
and rebirth, what can we do to help the
systems of which we are part move toward
productivity and resilience?

For more than 50 years, experiments
in organizations and communities
and across social systems have
shaped practices for “whole systems
change”—methods for engaging the
diverse people of a system in ways that
lead to unexpected breakthroughs. In
1992,MargaretWheatley’s groundbreaking
Leadership and the New Science
contributed to theory by connecting
our changing understanding of science
to human systems.As the current generation
of whole systems change practitioners
mix and match methods such
as Open Space Technology,TheWorld
Café, Future Search, and Appreciative
Inquiry, many of us have been seeking
a deeper understanding of the patterns
that make these practices work.
My quest to unlock the mystery of
what is involved in changing whole systems
began in the late 1980s. I thought
that understanding how change works
was key to creating a world that works
for all. I still do. I started noticing shifts
in how change occurs when using
whole systems change practices. See
“Traditional and Emerging Ideas About
Change” for examples.
Born from my own practice, my
interactions with friends and colleagues,
and my immersion in what
science has taught us about chaos,
complexity, and networks, I noticed a
pattern of change through the lens of
emergence—increasingly complex order
self-organizing out of disorder.What
follows describes that pattern, along
with questions, principles, and practices
for successfully engaging with
upheaval.
The Nature of Emergence
Emergence is nature’s way of changing.
We see it all the time in its cousin,
emergencies.What happens?
A disturbance interrupts ordinary
life. In addition to natural responses,
like grief or fear or anger, people differentiate—
take on different tasks. For
example, in an earthquake, while many
are immobilized, some care for the
injured, others look for food and water,
a few care for the animals. Someone
creates a “find your loved ones” site on
the Internet.A few blaze the trails and
others follow.They see what’s needed
and bring their unique gifts to the situation.
A new order begins to arise.
This pattern of change flows as
follows:
• Disruption breaks apart the status quo.
• The system differentiates, surfacing
innovations and distinctions among its
parts.
• As different parts interact, a new,
more complex coherence arises.
(See “A Pattern of Change.”)

In journalism, cracks began to appear in
the 1990s as newspaper readership
declined.This disruption was generally
correlated with the rise of the Internet.
Worse, advertisers, who provide a principle
source of revenue for journalism, started to
leave.When the economy came to the
precipice in 2008, the decline became an
avalanche (Johnny Ryan,Newspaper
circulation decline).
With the ability for anyone to publish
made possible through increasingly
sophisticated online tools, the assumptions
about what journalism is and how it is
done are in flux.A myriad of experiments
are testing those assumptions—
the relationship between journalist and
audience, the economic model, even the
purpose of journalism itself.These experiments
shed light on what to conserve
from traditional journalism that still
serves us well and what to embrace that
wasn’t possible before. Journalism is
differentiating into its elemental nature,
helping us understand new ways in which
news and information is created, distributed,
and digested.
While a new coherence has not yet
arisen and likely won’t for a while, we do
have clues.We know it is more of a conversation
than a lecture. It still is about making
sense of our complex world so that we
can make wise individual and collective
decisions.And it calls for a broad-based
digital literacy movement, similar to the literacy
movement sparked by the coming of
age of newspapers that served the formation
of democracy in the U.S.
People often speak of a magical
quality to emergence, in part, because
we can’t predetermine specific outcomes.
Emergence can’t be manufactured.
It often arises by drawing from
individual and collective intuition—
instinctive and unconscious knowing or
sensing without deduction, reasoning,
or using rational processes. It can be
fueled by strong emotions—excitement,
longing, anger, fear, grief.And it
rarely follows a logical, orderly path. It
feels much more like a leap of faith.
Emergence is always happening. If
we don’t work with it, it will work us
over. In human systems, it often shows
itself when strong emotions are ignored
or suppressed for too long.While
emergence is natural, we don’t always
experience it as positive. Erupting volcanoes,
crashing meteorites, and wars
have brought emergent change.Yet
even wars can leave exciting offspring
of novel, higher-order systems.The
League of Nations and United Nations
were unprecedented social innovations
from their respective world wars. New
species or cultures fill the void left by
those made extinct.
Emergence seems disorderly
because we can’t discern meaningful
patterns, just unpredictable interactions
that make no sense. But order is accessible
when diverse people facing
intractable challenges uncover and
implement ideas that none could have
predicted or accomplished on their
own. Emergence can’t be forced. It can,
however, be fostered.
Why Does Engaging
Emergence Matter?
Emergence 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 face our seemingly
intractable challenges by coalescing into
a vibrant, inclusive society characterized
by creative interactions among diverse
people. 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.
Benefits of Engaging
Emergence
Although specific outcomes from
emergence are unpredictable, by engaging
with it some benefits are foreseeable.
To illustrate these benefits, I draw
from JournalismThat Matters, an initiative
that convenes conversations
among the diverse people who are
shaping the emerging news and information
ecosystem.
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 the support of mentors,
collaborators, and fans, we act.
At an early JournalismThat Matters
gathering, a recent college graduate 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, having received
multiple awards.
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 teamed with a young digital journalist.
They created a multimedia website for
a story based on a two-year investigation.
Not only did the community embrace the
story, but the veteran is pursuing additional
interactive projects.And the digital
journalist is learning how to do investigative
reporting.
Breakthrough projects surface.
Experiments are inspired by interactions
among diverse people.
The Poynter Institute, an educational
institution serving the mainstream media,
was seeking new directions because its traditional
constituency was shrinking.
Because Poynter served as a cohost for a
JTM gathering, a number of staff members
participated in the event.They listened
broadly and deeply to the diverse
people present.An idea emerged that
builds on who they are and takes them
into new territory: supporting the training
needs of entrepreneurial journalists.
Community is strengthened. We
discover kindred spirits among a
diverse mix of strangers. Lasting connections
form, and a sense of relationship
grows.We realize that we share an
intention—a purpose or calling guided
by some deeper source of wisdom.
Knowing that our work serves not just
ourselves but a larger whole increases
our confidence to act.
As a community blogger who attended a
JTM conference put it,“I’m no longer
alone. I’ve discovered people asking similar
questions, aspiring to a similar future
for journalism. Now I have friends I can
bounce ideas off of, knowing we share a
common cause.”
The culture begins to change.
With time and continued interaction, a
new narrative of who we are takes
shape.
When JournalismThat Matters began, we
hoped to discover new possibilities for a
struggling field so that it could better serve
democracy.As mainstream media, particularly
newspapers, began failing, the work
became more vital.We see an old story of
journalism dying and provide a place for it
to be mourned.We also see the glimmers
of a new and vital story being born. In it,
journalism is a conversation rather than a
lecture. Stories inspire rather than discourage
their audience. JournalismThat Matters
has become a vibrant and open
conversational space where innovations
emerge. New language, such as news
ecosystem—the information exchange
among the public, government, and institutions
that can inform, inspire, engage,
and activate—makes it easier to understand
what’s changing. People say,“I
didn’t know I could be effective without a
big organization behind me. Now I do.”
These experiences show that
working with emergence can create
great initiatives, the energy to act, a
sense of community, and a greater view
of the whole—a collectively intelligent
system at work.
As more people engage emergence,
something fundamental changes about
who we are, what we are doing, how
we are with each other, and perhaps
what it all means. In the process, we
tear apart familiar and comfortable
notions about how change works.We
bring together unlikely bedfellows and
re-imagine and re-create the organizations,
communities, and social systems
that serve us well.
Three Questions for Engaging
Emergence
Three questions can help us think
about how to work with change:
• How do we disrupt coherence
compassionately?
• How do we engage disruption
creatively?
• How do we renew coherence wisely?
Like all appreciative questions, these
direct our attention toward possibilities
and open us to exploration.They are
posed as questions rather than statements
to remind us that when the terrain
is uncertain, focus and fluidity both
support us to be nimble in our response.
You can use them as you might an
affirmation. Just as affirmations help us
attend to what we wish to create, these
questions help us adapt to the specifics
of our situation.We can connect our
circumstances with the flow of change
by prefacing each question with,“In this
situation…”
These questions create temporary
shelter for us to consider the challenges
of a changing system.They help us
experience and offer compassion in disruption,
engage creatively with difference,
and support both personal and
collective renewal while potentially wise
responses coalesce.
If you are familiar with Zen
Buddhism, think of the questions as
koans—paradoxical riddles or anecdotes
that have no solution.They may—if
you seek to understand them in an
intuitive way and work with them in
your life—provide flashes of insight
into what’s going on and how to
engage it.
Principles for Engaging
Emergence
A principle is a fundamental assumption
that guides further understanding or
action. Principles help us make order out
of chaos.They describe the landscape,
enabling us to discern useful characteristics
so that we can make useful choices.
Principles support us in designing our
initiatives, organizing our work and ourselves,
determining what to do and how
best to do it. For example, a commonly
cited medical principle is “first, do no
harm.”This fundamental understanding
guides life-and-death decisions without
prescribing a specific approach.
I derived the principles for engaging
emergence listed below by connecting
my understanding of whole systems
change processes with what science tells
us about the dynamics of emergence
(see “Principles for Engaging Emergence”).
In short, scientists frequently
cite four dynamics of emergence:
• No one is in charge. No conductor
is orchestrating orderly activity
(ecosystems, economic systems, activity
in a city).
• Simple rules engender complex
behavior. Randomness becomes
coherent as individuals, each following
a few basic principles or assumptions,
interact with their neighbors (birds
flock; traffic flows).
• Feedback. Systems grow and selfregulate
as the output from one
interaction influences the next interaction.
(We talk to a neighbor, who
talks to a neighbor, and suddenly
everyone in town knows a story.)
• Clustering. As we interact, feeding
back to each other, like attracts like,
bonding around a shared characteristic.
(Small groups of women meeting in
living rooms grow into the women’s
movement.)
So if emergence occurs through these
dynamics, what are the implications for
how we engage with it?
These five principles are my answer to
this question:
• Welcome disturbance. Disruption
indicates that the normal behavior of a
system has been interrupted. If we
ignore the disturbance, chances are
conditions will get worse. If we get
curious about it, the disruption could
lead to breakthroughs.
• Pioneer! Break habits by doing
something different. Prepare and jump
into the mystery, working with the
feedback that comes.
• Encourage random encounters.
Remember, no one is in charge.More
accurately, we never know which
interactions will catalyze innovation.
Maximize interactions among diverse
agents, knowing unexpected encounters
will likely trigger a shift.
• Seek meaning. Meaning energizes
us.As we discover mutuality in what is
personally meaningful, we come
together. Like clusters with like. Shared
meaning draws us to common awareness
and action.When shared meaning
is central, we organize resilient, synergistic
networks that serve our individual
and collective needs.
• Simplify. Principles—simple rules—
equip us to work with complexity.
When principles break down and the
situation grows chaotic, what is essential?
What serves now? As answers coalesce,
we become a more diverse,
complex system around re-formed
principles at the heart of the matter.
These principles help us work with
the flow of emergence.Welcoming disturbance
encourages us to begin, knowing
all change starts with disruption.To
support differentiation, pioneering
guides us in thinking about what to do.
Encouraging random encounters
reminds us to consider who to involve.
Seeking meaning provides a thread of
coherence by helping us clarify why.
And simplifying helps coherence
emerge by guiding us to the how.
Practices for Engaging
Emergence
If principles help us sort through what
to do, practices guide us in how to do
something.A practice is a skill honed
through study and experimentation.
The practices for engaging emergence
are rooted in the skills of everyday
conversation (see “Practices for Engaging
Emergence”).As such, we all know
something about them.They are our
birthright.When issues are complex,
stakes are high, and emotions are right
below the surface, these practices help
us engage with each other.
Because working with emergence
has nothing A-to-B-to-C about it, no
one right way exists to use these practices.
They help us identify what to
notice, what to explore, what to try.
They are helpful hints for flying by the
seat of our pants.
Just as scales prepare a musician
and drills train an athlete, these practices
equip us for the challenging conversations,
the ones that involve disruption,
difference, and the unknown.
They are the conversational backbone
for improvisation, enabling us to stay in
the flow even if we don’t know the
specific path we’re taking. Honing
these conversational skills is a great way
to engage emergence.
I organize the practices into four
groups:
Prepare to Engage Emergence
• Embrace mystery, choose
possibility, and follow life-energy
to cultivate a composed state of mind,
alert to aliveness and potential.This
enables us to face whatever shows up
with equanimity or even delight.
Host Emergence
• Clarify intentions and welcome
people. These are skills of being a
good host. In exercising them, you create
a “container”—a hospitable space
for working with whatever arises.
These practices are the yin and yang of
hosting.One provides focus—clear
direction and purpose.The other
ensures fertile ground for relationships
and connection.
• Invite diversity to encourage people
to look beyond our habitual definitions
of who and what makes up a
innovation
by increasing the likelihood of
productive connections among people
with different beliefs and operating
assumptions. Inviting diversity is one of
the most time consuming, challenging,
and critical activities of engaging
emergence.
Engage
• Take responsibility for what you
love as an act of service. This practice
is a game-changing skill. It liberates
our hearts, minds, and spirits. It
calls us to notice what deeply matters
to us and to put our unique gifts to
use for ourselves, others, and the systems
in which we live and work.The
more this practice becomes our operating
norm, the more innovation, joy,
solidarity, generosity, and other qualities
of well-being appear.The capacities for
listening and connecting grow through
this practice.
• Stepping in to inquire appreciatively
is a second game-changing skill.
The questions we ask determine the
answers we uncover, shaping our experience,
actions, and outcomes.Typically,
the more positive the inquiry, the more
life-affirming the outcome.
• Open yourself to the unknown.
This practice is an act of faith.Once
open, we can’t go back. It may be the
most counter-cultural practice of
them all, requiring the courage to be
vulnerable.
• Reflect, name, and harvest—
these can be sacred acts.They call forth
that which previously didn’t exist.
The arts—music, movement, visual arts,
poetry, film—often enhance the
effectiveness and reach of these
practices.
Iterate: Do It Again . . . and Again
This practice reminds us of the neverending
nature of change. It takes time
and perseverance to make its mark.
Because our attention tends to get
caught in our routines, iteration is the
most elusive of the practices.
Together, these practices form a
system for acting, providing insight
into what our role is, how we support
others, and what we can do together.
What’s Possible Now?
Whenever we work with this pattern of
emergent change, a turning point
occurs as coherence arises.We experience
ourselves as part of something
larger. Perhaps our voice rises in harmony,
a sweet blend of each and all.Or
we overcome an obstacle because we
used our different skills and abilities to
accomplish something together that
none of us could have done alone.We
change through such experiences.The
principles and practices I’ve described
help us break through habits of separation
that keep us fragmented.Our personal
stories become a doorway into
the universal.
Joel de Rosnay, author of The Symbiotic
Man:A New Understanding of the
Organization of Life and aVision of the
Future (McGraw-Hill, 2000), introduced
a notion I find promising called the
macroscope. Just as microscopes help us to
see the infinitely small and telescopes
help us to see the infinitely far,macroscopes
help us to see the infinitely complex.
Rather than a single instrument,
they are a class of tools for sensing complex
interconnections among information,
ideas, people, and experiences.
Maps, stories, art,media, or some combination
could be used as macroscopic
tools that would help us to see ourselves
in a larger context. For example, consider
the brilliant use of technology in a
sports stadium.We are able to experience
the game from many angles.At a
glance, the scoreboard tells us the state
of play. Cameras zoom in so that we can
see the action not just on the field but
also in the audience.Television dramatically
extends the reach of the event.And
a history of statistics available online lets
both professional commentators and
ordinary people put the activities in perspective.
We can immerse ourselves in
the experience and understand it from
many perspectives. Imagine applying
such thoughtfulness to making the state
of the economy, education, or a war visible
to us all.
Both microscopes and telescopes
sparked tremendous innovation.
Macroscopes have such potential today.
As we appreciate our interconnectedness,
our sense of who is our community
expands.The conditions for
THE SYSTEMS THINKER® VOL . 2 1 , NO. 1 0 www. p e g a s u s c om. c om © 2 0 1 0 P 6 EGASUS COMMUNICATIONS
greater trust and courage emerge.We
act, knowing something about the collective
assumptions and intentions we
share.We become better equipped to
work with upheaval and change.
Let us put these notions to work
so that we fully engage with the nascent
renaissance that is underway.
Begin simply, wherever you are. I offer
three suggestions:
• Be compassionate disrupters, asking
possibility-oriented questions.
• Creatively engage, interacting with
people outside our comfort zone.
• Support wise renewal, telling stories
of upheaval turned to opportunity.
Peggy Holman has designed and hosted meetings
for diverse groups handling complex issues since
1992, including the National Institute of Corrections,
Microsoft, and the Associated Press Managing Editors.
In the second edition of The Change Handbook,
Peggy and co-authors Tom Devane and Steven Cady
profile 61 change methods, including Appreciative
Inquiry,Open Space Technology, and theWorld
Café. Her new book, Engaging Emergence:Turning
Upheaval into Opportunity (Berrett-Koehler, 2010),
dives beneath these change methods to make visible
deeper patterns, principles, and practices for change
that can guide us through turbulent times.
•
Here are some simple ways to engage
emergence:
Ask Possibility-Oriented
Questions. Be a champion for the
appreciative. Especially in unlikely places,
inquire into what is working, what is
possible given what is happening.
Interact with People Outside
Your Comfort Zone. Discover how
stimulating it is to experience difference.
In the process, you may develop some
unexpected partnerships for bringing
together diverse groups who care about
the same issues.
Seek More Nuanced Perspectives
That Help Us to See Ourselves in
Context. If you are faced with Aversus-
B choices, open up the
exploration. Seek out other points of
view. Discover the deeper meaning that
connects deeply felt needs.
Tell Stories of UpheavalTurned to
Opportunity. Help take to scale what
is possible when you engage emergence.
Share your experiences of working with
disruption. Explore using tools that offer
a macroscopic view to expand your
reach.