Editorial by George Pór for Enlivening Edge Magazine
What is the gift that you/we are to the ability of next-stage organizations to thrive in complexity?
There are people who thrive on complexity, who enjoy collecting knowledge flowers from various human activities, disciplines, and cultures, and then arranging them into beautiful bouquets of meaning. They tend to be a growing segment of humanity, but in absolute numbers it’s still a tiny minority of the privileged. I am one of them. So are many of the young ones, too, because when they can find most of the information they need a few clicks away, who would enjoy sitting in boring classes?
The majority of older folks, who don’t have ingenious tools for discerning and making meaning out of complex patterns that drive actions affecting their lives, have their head spinning when they try to make sense of what is really happening in the world.
Then taking binary views of reality made of proven truths of a bygone century is way too tempting. It softens the pain caused by the clash between the accelerating diversity and variety triggered by the globalization and technological changes, on one hand, and a preservation-oriented value system, on the other hand. Hence we buy into “Making America Great Again.”
The morning of waking up to the Trump/Brexit era shocked me, like many others in the progressive camp, into awareness of my own blissful ignorance of just how much pain and anger there is among the underprivileged multitudes. As I said in a video the morning after the election, it’s time to act with compassion and courage. I meant also compassion for the disengaged majority of the workforce, who have to suspend their soul for making a living and someone else’s profit, 8 hours/day. I meant also the courage and stamina we need when working for not only reinventing organizations, but also for whole social sectors in which they are embedded.
It is timelier than ever to express the essence of Enlivening Edge, “Nourishing the conscious evolution of people, organizations, and social systems,” by what we publish and the various projects we are supporting. We can’t go as far as we can envision in that direction without a fuller engagement by you, our 1,500+ subscribers!
So, if these lines resonate in your heart, feel into the question borrowed from a recent EE Community Call: “What is the gift that you are to the world of next-stage organizations?” If you have any thought on that, and want to explore with us how EE can amplify your gift, contact us.
From the previous two months, you will find articles related to various aspects of the emergence of Teal ecosystems. For example, a seminal essay on an emerging model for connecting company, work, and community, in How to Work, Earn, and Live on Purpose and an interview about it in Decentralization in the New World of Work. My column deals with how a classic business process, the governance meeting, is transformed in a next-stage setting Ecstasy in a Governance Meeting.
Central to the exploration how individual, organizational and social reinvention relate to each other is this featured EE Magazine article, Weaving Perspectives, Part 2: The Response-ability of Living Systems. Another take on how Teal is emerging in the relational space is What Has Eros/Power Got to Do with Teal Organizing? Quite a Lot!
Since we’d like to see many of you not only reading but also writing for EE Magazine, I call your attention to a special treat, a column by EE’s own Writing Mentor, Writing with Ecosystem Awareness
Please note that we are increasing the already-broad geographic coverage of EE. For the first time in our history, you will find a report about a self-managing company from Japan. There are preparations for Japanese and Spanish editions of Enlivening Edge Magazine. If you write in any of those languages and want to help enlivening the edge around the world, drop a line, respectively, to Shiro Yoshihara (Japanese) or Karla Cordoba Brenes (Spanish).
That’s all for now. Enjoy the November Magazine Highlights and share it with others!
Such a wide variety of firm opinions in the public discourse, recently. Each one “knows” what happened and what it means for what “we” need to do next for “our” purposes. The interesting thing is the variety of historical contexts reflected in each person’s firm interpretations, even among those who are generally aligned on purposes!
So it’s possible to have a radically different interpretation of these recent events: exactly what happened, how to describe it, and what it means for humanity’s current trends–yet feel aligned with next actions and with the values leading to the kind of world we want to co-create, synergizing our differences rather than being split by them.
Those folks involved in the variously-named “movements” of next-stage consciousness for human organizational life, recognize one another by our shared passion and devotion to those values. I marvel at our valuing of the synergizing!
That’s my experience from reading your editorial, George!