[Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Question

[R Williams]

Doris,
 
I don't think Jack and I ever specified an issue as such from Wheatley's book.  As I recall, he mentioned that he was reading it and I reported that I had read it and we agreed we should talk about it sometime, which we never did.  I frankly found the book a little depressing at first until toward the end where she talks about hope, which conjured up images of "the hope beyond hope" that Joe talked about, and Kazantzakis' "hope as the greatest temptation."  When I looked back at the whole book through those last couple of chapters I could see that she, in her own words, was affirming the goodness and possibility in the world as it is, something all of us stated and lived by years ago in our "all is good..." articulation of the Word.
 
I have read, I think, almost everything Wheatley has written.  Her first book, Leadership and the New Science, was first published in the early 90s, from which she received much acclaim.  She has since updated it twice.  She is, as far as I know, one of the first to apply systems thinking and the way natural processes work to organizations and communities.  One of her main theses is that hierarchical, top-down, command and control techniques no longer work and that our businesses, communities, etc. must organize, or she might say "self-organize," in the way nature is organized, in webs of interrelatedness, etc.  She has used that understanding with her consulting clients, one of which has been, surprisingly, the U.S. Army, which may be what prompted her "warrior" imagery.
 
My favorite of all her books is one she co-authored with Deborah Frieze called Walk Out Walk On. They wrote it just before The Long Walk Home. In this they tell the stories of seven communities, not all geographic, from around the world which are "living the future now."  One of their theses here is, "Whatever the question, community is the answer."  If you were so inclined to read another of her books, this is the one I would recommend.  Short of taking on a book, go to www.margaretwheatley.com/writing.html where you will find a whole list of shorter articles from which to pick and choose.
 
The ICA-USA's Accelerate 77 program draws from a process articulated in Walk Out Walk On.  Wheatley and Frieze posit that everything that needs to happen in local community is already underway and there's no need to spend time initiating anything new.  What is needed is to (their 4-step process) identify, connect, nurture and expand what is already going on.  (ICA called step 4 "accelerate.")  By so doing, the isolated efforts emerge into networks of relationships which evolve into communities of practice, and these communities of practice, over time, change the world.  These concepts are echoed in different ways by Paul Hawken (Blessed Unrest) and Peter Senge (The Necessary Revolution) to mention two.  A group of  local colleagues and I are using similar assumptions and approaches in promoting grassroots sustainability here in McKinney.
 
It's been interesting to watch Wheatley's evolution over the years, from something of an "applied" scientist to a poet and woman of a depth of spirit that has led her to see meaning and possibility in life and the world as it is.  This is exhibited in her discussion of emergence in The Long Walk Home.  Most of her later books have a lot of poetry and photography in them, as did this one.  She reminds me somewhat of Loren Eiseley.
 
Thanks for prompting this conversation.  Best to you and Charles.
 
Randy

"The sustainability revolution is nothing less than a rethinking and remaking of our role in the natural world."
                                                                                                                                              -David Orr
 

________________________________
 From: Doris Hahn <dshahn31 at gmail.com>
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>; Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> 
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:21 AM
Subject: [Dialogue] Question
  

After I read the little dialogue in which Randy and Jack suggested that Meg Wheatley's book would address the issue, I did a really uncharacteristic thing (at about 9:30 p.m.). I immediately went to Amazon and ordered the book. Now that I have read (and appreciate) it, I want to remember what the issue was to which the book was the answer. Can you refresh my memory--only on this one issue--I won't ask you to do a sweeping job on my memory.

I do think Meg Wheatley does a good job, and I certainly believe her answers may be helpful, though I think the spirit work we did is far more sweeping and with more depth. What she has that we didn't is today's world with current issues. Actually, I never did like the "warrior" image, because it is so masculine. However, it now carries a lot of other baggage for me, including the personal (hate, anger, etc) along with the outward destructiveness of war. Maybe this is good archive work if we haven't already done it. In any case, it is a current conversation worth having. Of course, we used war images all the time, but surely there are other current ones that could be motivating.

What would we drag out of our corporate memory or current innovation that could lead the way in today's world?

Doris Hahn

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