Leading From The Emerging Future

1. The Age of Disruption: Facing Global Challenges with New Awareness

"We have entered an Age of Disruption. Yet the possibility of profound personal, societal, and global renewal has never been more real. Now is our time."

Global challenges. We face unprecedented ecological, social, and spiritual-cultural divides. The ecological divide manifests in our overuse of Earth's resources, the social divide in extreme inequality, and the spiritual-cultural divide in rising rates of burnout and depression. These challenges are interconnected and cannot be solved in isolation.

New awareness needed. To address these challenges, we need to shift from ego-system awareness (caring about the well-being of oneself) to eco-system awareness (caring about the well-being of all, including oneself). This requires developing new capacities for sensing and actualizing emerging future possibilities.

Opportunity for renewal. While disruptive changes can be frightening, they also create openings for profound personal and societal renewal. By developing our capacity to sense and act from the whole system, we can turn moments of disruption into opportunities for innovation and positive transformation.

2. Shifting from Ego-System to Eco-System Economies

"The journey from ego-system to eco-system awareness, or from 'me' to 'we,' has three dimensions: (1) better relating to others; (2) better relating to the whole system; and (3) better relating to oneself."

Ego-system limitations. Current economic structures are largely based on ego-system awareness, focusing on maximizing individual or organizational self-interest. This leads to the tragedy of the commons, where shared resources are depleted due to lack of coordination and collective responsibility.

Eco-system potential. An eco-system economy, by contrast, is organized around:

• Openness and transparency
• Shared ownership and intentional cultivation of commons
• Coordination through awareness-based collective action
• Leadership that attends to the well-being of the whole system

Personal transformation. Shifting to eco-system awareness requires personal practices of:

• Opening the mind (suspending habitual judgments)
• Opening the heart (empathizing with others' perspectives)
• Opening the will (letting go of preconceptions and embracing the emerging future)

3. The Matrix of Economic Evolution: From 1.0 to 4.0

"The Matrix of Economic Evolution depicts a gameboard of economic evolution and offers 390,625 possibilities, but we reduce the intellectual discussion to just two of these options."

Evolution of economic structures:
1.0: State-centric (centralized control)
2.0: Free market (competition-driven)
3.0: Social market (stakeholder negotiation)
4.0: Co-creative eco-system (awareness-based collective action)

Key dimensions of evolution:

• Nature: From resource to cultivated commons
• Labor: From jobs to entrepreneurship and purpose
• Capital: From profit-maximization to intentional investing
• Technology: From control to empowerment
• Leadership: From hierarchical to distributed and collective
• Consumption: From uninformed to conscious and collaborative
• Coordination: From markets and hierarchy to awareness-based collective action
• Ownership: From exclusive to inclusive and commons-based

Integrative perspective. Rather than seeing these stages as mutually exclusive, the challenge is to develop the capacity to activate all four modes as needed, with increasing emphasis on 4.0 approaches to address complex global challenges.

4. Presencing: Learning from the Emerging Future

"The essence of leadership is about connecting, stepping into, and acting from the field of the future that wants to emerge."

Shifting the source of learning. Presencing combines "presence" and "sensing" to describe the capacity to sense and actualize emerging future possibilities. This contrasts with learning primarily from past experiences.

Core process of presencing:

1. Co-initiating: Build common intent and convene diverse stakeholders
2. Co-sensing: Observe, observe, observe; immerse in relevant contexts
3. Co-inspiring: Connect to sources of inspiration and will; retreat and reflect
4. Co-creating: Prototype strategic microcosms to explore the future by doing
5. Co-evolving: Grow innovation ecosystems by seeing and acting from the whole

Overcoming obstacles. The journey of presencing requires overcoming three voices of resistance:

• Voice of Judgment: Suspending habitual patterns of judgment
• Voice of Cynicism: Opening the heart to new possibilities
• Voice of Fear: Letting go of old identities and fear of the unknown

5. Transforming Institutions through Awareness-Based Collective Action

"The next revolution has to be an institutional one. A revolution that helps us to bend the beam of institutional attention all the way back to source—that is, to a place where the institutional system can see and renew itself."

Institutional inversion. Transforming institutions requires inverting traditional power structures:

• From centralized to distributed leadership
• From siloed to cross-boundary collaboration
• From ego-system to eco-system awareness

Examples of institutional transformation:

• Government: Participatory budgeting and direct citizen engagement (e.g., Bojonegoro, Indonesia)
• Healthcare: Patient-centered and community-integrated care (e.g., Denmark, Namibia)
• Education: Learner-centered and purpose-driven (e.g., Austria's educational reforms)
• Business: Stakeholder-oriented and mission-driven (e.g., Natura, BALLE)

Key principles for institutional renewal:

1. Create holding spaces for deep listening and collective reflection
2. Foster cross-sector collaboration and innovation
3. Develop collective leadership capacity at all levels
4. Integrate awareness practices into organizational routines
5. Align organizational purpose with societal well-being

6. The U Process: A Framework for Profound Innovation and Systems Change

"The U process extends what is the core work of science—namely, 'Let the data talk to you'—from the exterior realm (the third-person view) to the more subtle levels of human experience (the second-and first-person views)."

Five movements of the U:

1. Co-initiating: Build common intent
2. Co-sensing: Observe, observe, observe
3. Presencing: Connect to source
4. Co-creating: Prototype the new
5. Co-evolving: Embody the new in ecosystems

Key practices:

• Deep listening: Cultivate the capacity to listen beyond one's preconceptions
• Sensing journeys: Immerse in diverse contexts to see systems from new perspectives
• Stillness practices: Create space for inner knowing to emerge
• Prototyping: Explore the future by doing, creating microcosms of the new

Applications. The U process has been applied in diverse contexts:

• Business: Product innovation and organizational transformation
• Government: Policy development and citizen engagement
• Education: Curriculum design and learning approaches
• Healthcare: Patient-centered care and system redesign
• Civil society: Multi-stakeholder collaboration for social change

7. Building a Global Action Leadership School for Societal Transformation

"We want to build a holding space that (1) applies advanced scientific methods to (2) the transformation of societies to 4.0 while (3) shifting from an ego-system to an eco-system awareness both individually and collectively."

Vision for a new learning ecology:

1. Global classroom: Blending online and in-person learning
2. Deep dives: Immersive experiences in innovation hotspots
3. Awareness-based leadership technologies: Integrating mindfulness and systems thinking
4. Presencing coaching circles: Peer-based deep listening and reflection
5. Action learning: Real-world prototyping of solutions
6. Innovation hubs: Physical spaces for co-creation and experimentation
7. Individualized lifelong learning journeys: Personalized curricula aligned with evolving needs

Key principles:

• Integration of science, social transformation, and self-evolution
• Learning from the emerging future, not just the past
• Developing collective capacity for sensing and actualizing emerging possibilities
• Bridging theory and practice through real-world innovation projects

Potential impact. Such a learning ecology could accelerate the development of leaders capable of addressing complex global challenges from an eco-system awareness, catalyzing societal transformation at scale.

8. Closing the Feedback Loop: Towards an Intentional Eco-System Economy

"The essence of this amazing evolutionary journey in which we are all engaged? ... It's what you feel when talking to change-makers like Jon. It's what we experienced in Berlin, when, in Gail's words, we collectively embraced the shadow in order to function as a vehicle through which healing may come into the world."

Closing feedback loops across systems:

• Nature: Circular economy principles (cradle-to-cradle design)
• Labor: Connecting work with deeper purpose and societal needs
• Capital: Redirecting financial flows to serve ecological and social renewal
• Technology: Aligning innovation with real societal needs
• Leadership: Sensing and actualizing emerging future possibilities
• Consumption: Linking economic activity to genuine well-being
• Coordination: Awareness-based collective action (ABC)
• Ownership: Commons-based property rights for long-term stewardship

Emerging examples:

• Gross National Happiness (GNH) in Bhutan
• Sustainable Food Lab's multi-stakeholder collaborations
• Transformative banking initiatives (e.g., BRAC Bank, Triodos Bank)
• Place-based economic renewal (e.g., BALLE - Business Alliance for Local Living Economies)

Personal practices. Individuals can contribute by:

• Cultivating mindfulness and awareness practices
• Engaging in deep listening and dialogue across differences
• Prototyping small-scale innovations in their own contexts
• Connecting with others to amplify collective impact

The journey towards an intentional eco-system economy requires both systemic change and personal transformation, inviting each of us to become a vehicle for the future that wants to emerge.

Last updated: September 2, 2024