Engaging Emergence

Turning Upheaval into Opportunity
Winner of the 2011 Nautilus Gold Award for Conscious Business/ Leadership

Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 2010
Buy from the publisher

What does it take to face disruptions and invite others to join you to realize new possibilities? If you are seeking effective principles and practices for working with change and the unexpected, then you’ve come to the right place! With so many organizations, communities, and fields of endeavor facing unprecedented change, it helps to have some support for finding a promising pathway through change. Some notions to consider: Emergence – through which order arises from chaos as the existing order is disrupted, differences appear, and a new coherence coalesces. By engaging emergence, you can help yourself and your organization or community to successfully face disruption and emerge stronger than ever. Practices for engaging – Step up by taking responsibility for what you love as an act of service. Prepare to embrace mystery, choose possibility, and follow life-energy. Host others by clarifying intentions, welcoming disturbance, and inviting diversity. Engage by inquiring appreciatively, opening, and reflecting. Then do it again! Principles for engaging – Welcome disturbance, pioneer, encourage random encounters, seek meaning, and simplify. Questions to consider: How do we disrupt coherence compassionately? How do we engage disruptions creatively? How do we renew coherence wisely? Along with principles, practices and questions, real-word stories help you work with compassion, creativity, and wisdom through the entire arc of change. From disruption to coherence, you’ll learn what to notice, what to explore, what to try, and what mindset opens new possibilities. This work can be challenging but also tremendously rewarding. It enables new and unlikely partnerships and develops breakthrough projects. You become part of a process that transforms the culture itself.

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What others are saying:

“Very useful in giving structure and form to ways of dealing with the unpredictable and volatile way the world comes at us. A powerful antidote to the change management illusion that the future can be driven, engineered, managed, and drilled.” —Peter Block, author of Community

“A dance manual for how to move gracefully with the disruption, uncertainty, and mystery that are part of life’s rhythms, how to welcome interruption and discontinuity as opportunities for creativity, community, and greater capacity.” —Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science

“Provides practical advice for orchestrating conflict and moving through discomfort to reach a new coherence.” —Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, cofounders of Cambridge Leadership Associates and coauthors of Leadership on the Line and The Practice of Adaptive Leadership