it changes what is possible when people take the time to acknowledge they are whole selves in the room. i am learning an immense amount about this opening, getting present, and connecting in my somatics studies. In agenda development, look for places where you can open people to each other, and get their whole selves in the room. I am also playing with fleshing these principles out into practice. develop strategic bodies and minds to adapt intelligently as the horizon changes. – develop a strategic direction based on the horizon you can see. – passion is a more valuable force for action and accountability than obligation. – the connection between the individuals is what makes the whole group/community strong. – there is a conversation in the room that wants and needs to be had. the facilitator can be a gardener, or the sun, the water. trust is a seed that grows with attention and space. – lao tzu says ‘if you don’t trust the people, they become untrustworthy.’ the first principle is a positive flip of this statement – if you trust the people, they become trustworthy. Here are some of the principles i have identified in as clear a way as i can articulate them: and of course nature has always been on it. I don’t see this as creating something from scratch, but rather innovating from need – lots of people have been doing this for a long time, calling it a variety of things.

it feels like more and more of my communities are growing comfortable experimenting with, testing, and learning emergent strategies. Rather than laying out big strategic plans for work, the invitation of emergent strategy is to come together in community, build authentic relationships, and see what emerges from the conversations, connections, visions and needs. last year in a workshop at the allied media conference, we generated ideas with a working definition of emergent strategy as: intentional, fractal (the same at the largest scale as it is at the smallest scale, toxic, healthy, joyful, stressed, etc), strong because it is decentralized, adaptive, interdependent, and creating more possibilities. To reiterate from earlier posts, emergent strategy is strategy (a plan towards a goal) based in the science of emergence – the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. i am writing this to share the thinking, learning i am doing in my facilitation practice. i have been identifying tools and principles for practicing emergent strategy in groups for some time. i used emergent process to move us through the time together, and got great feedback. Just spent several days facilitating the BOLD gathering with a team of brilliant people.

Emergent strategy brown