Andaman Forest, a Natural System. By Anna da Costa

By Anna da Costa

When it comes to making the world a better place, there is no dearth of ideas out there. Some believe in the power of markets to level playing fields and distribute dwindling resources. Some see our best hopes in technological innovation and smart systems. Others look to the potential of enterprise to transform the way society operates, with new business models and novel currencies. Some firmly believe we should go back to basics, using less and re-examining our values. And some believe that we need deep changes in the structure of our political and economic systems for any lasting impact.

Each of these solutions likely contains some truth and, when examined closely, are intimately connected. However, with limited time and resources, it is important to ask ourselves how to discriminate between these efforts in terms of their potency; how to achieve systems change.

One person who had a lot to say about this question was systems theorist and lead author of the book “Limits to Growth,” Donella Meadows.

In her beautiful essay from 1999, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, Meadows elucidates her thoughts in some depth. Distilled from a lifetime of research and reflection on systems theory, she outlines a series of twelve key pathways – what she calls “leverage points” – of increasing potency through which one can bring about changes in the way a system functions. [1]

Leverage points, says Meadows, are “places within a complex system…” – be it a company, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem, or even a galaxy for that matter – “…where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.” They are, therefore, of immense interest to anyone seeking to affect change within our interconnected ecological, social and economic systems.

In describing these pathways, not only does Meadows allude to the potential power of the meditative or open mind, but also to a host of other vital yet largely ignored approaches that are worthy of our consideration as we seek to affect deep change. So what, then, are these leverage points?

What are the Leverage Points?
Donella Meadows’ twelve leverage points can be divided into four loose groupings – physical, informational, social and conscious – as shown in the table and discussed, below. These groupings were not assigned by Meadows herself, but are my interpretations as a means of simplifying the theory and examining systems within the human realm of experience and influence.

• Physical Leverage

The first grouping encompasses all changes to the physical elements of a system. This could include changes to “system parameters,” in other words how much of something, like pollution, happens. It could also include changes to the size or properties of system’s physical reserves (stocks), for example water reservoirs, forests or energy stores. Finally, it could include multiple changes to a system’s physical structure, for example the way transport networks and buildings are designed, or the shape and flow of a power grid.

While all changes to a system ultimately materialize in its physical form, Meadows suggests that interventions focused primarily on physical changes are some of the least powerful ways to affect deep change. Yet, she proffers that a stunning 99 percent of our efforts towards social, environmental and economic system sustainability (or “change”) are spent working with these kinds of solutions. This alone, she cautions, does little more than “tinker with a broken system.”

So what then are the other pathways to change and why aren’t we using them more?

• Informational Leverage

Systems are both stabilized and destabilized by the ways that information flows through them, and it is this medium that characterizes the next group of leverage points. Through managing the relationships between positive and negative feedback loops, optimizing the speeds at which information flows and creating new loops to connect different system elements, the way a system works can be dramatically impacted.

One of the most obvious examples in our own lives is the way in which the Internet has dramatically affected how our world operates, including material flows, the way that businesses are structured and function, not to mention our behavioral patterns and social systems more broadly. This has all been made possible by creating new pathways via which information can flow, connecting elements that were never before connected or connecting elements more rapidly. The transition from telegrams, to letters, to emails, to text messages has had an immense impact on the way we interact with each other, has it not?

• Social Leverage

Yet beyond information flows, says Meadows, there are even more powerful ways to affect a system, and these – at least for human-influenced systems – belong to the realm of social dynamics. Amongst these leverage points lies the capacity to change both the rules and goals of a system: in other words, what a system seeks to achieve and how.

System rules, says Meadows, are typically derived from a system goal, which, if changed, can dramatically impact the informational and physical structures that lie beneath it. We might imagine the impact, to take an often-used example, of deciding to change the goal of our economy from the growth of GDP to an alternative metric such as Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index or some of the many others that are now emerging. Similarly, amongst so-called “social enterprises” we frequently see shifts in the primary goal from pure economic returns to social and/or environmental ones, with financial returns even being demoted to the status of a means rather than an end. Shifts in goal could also apply to modes of governance within a country or company, for example whether it is highly democratic and bottom-up or autocratic and top down.

• Conscious Leverage

Each of these shifts in goal holds tremendous potential to catalyze deep change within a system, and we could explore many more such examples. But finally, says Meadows, we must ask ourselves from where such changes first arise? According to her theory, there is another grouping of leverage points that creates the space for such shifts and, as such, has the potential to transform a system with the greatest power. It is our human capacity for consciousness.

Working at the Level of Consciousness
To facilitate such transformative change within a system, says Meadows, we need to be willing to challenge our very assumptions about the way things are, acknowledging our relative insignificance as human beings and evoking the capacity to look at the world through unknowing eyes. We need to nurture the capacity to remain unattached to the idea that any paradigm represents the complete truth and to recognize the “tremendous limitations of our worldview.”

“In the end,” she says, “power has less to do with leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly letting go.” She speaks about the most powerful and elusive pathway to change being the letting go of all preconceptions and of all assumptions about the way things are and why; resting in the humility of our situation as human beings, with our limited understanding of this universe in which we find ourselves; and creating the space to challenge every preconception and every paradigm we hold to be true about life and purpose.

This is what the Buddhists term “enlightenment,” says Meadows, and it is from this internal space of ‘un-knowing’ that the most powerful sources of system change can arise, unlocking the potential for new paradigms and system goals, rules and structures to emerge. This, according to Meadows, is the most rare, yet potentially most powerful, source of change.

In defining this series of pathways, I don’t think Meadows is suggesting that all of our current efforts – at whatever level – are meaningless, or that we should just detach ourselves from society and meditate. Rather, that without working with these higher leverage points, engaging our inner worlds in the process of change and facilitating higher transitions in our social, economic and political systems, our current efforts are at risk of being fairly impotent.

Facing Resistance from the System
If it is indeed the case that we need to make a greater effort working with some of the more powerful pathways to change, I ask myself, why do we spend so much time at the base of the hierarchy, “tinkering with” the least powerful leverage points?

Here’s the clincher. The more potent a pathway to change, the more resistance it will face from the current system. “That’s why societies often rub out truly enlightened beings,” says Meadows.

Challenging social, economic and political norms, uprooting the status quo, questioning the way things are, re-examining our core values and opening our minds is not easy. Living systems, of any nature, seek to perpetuate themselves and resist change. But what Meadows suggests is that if we can work more with these potent pathways to change, our efforts could hold promise of being deeply transformative.

Alongside Meadows
Meadows is by no means alone in her assertions that there is a crucial, yet oft ignored, relationship between our internal and external environment, that one affects the other.

She finds herself in the company of religious leaders and their accompanying texts, philosophers, poets, literary scholars and, indeed, an increasing number of development practitioners. It was Aldous Huxley who famously said, “I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.” Mahatma Gandhi encouraged us to “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” and the sacred Jewish Talmud reminds us that “We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

This January, an article highlighted Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh’s assertion that climate change could not be effectively addressed by humanity until we had better learned to weather our internal storms and through doing so, realized on a personal level the interconnectedness of all life.

Beyond Buddhist frames of reference, too, we need not look far to hear increasing talk of the importance of changing mindsets and challenging widely held assumptions about the way things are in our quest for sustainability. Jonathan Dawson, Head of Economics at Schumacher College argued in a recent article that “the creation myths and assumptions underlying classical economics are revealed to be shallow, erroneous and unhelpful,” instead stating that we need to adopt a wholly different paradigm for our economic system, modeled on the natural world.

In India’s teeming capital, New Delhi, I attended a recent sustainability summit during which countless speakers spoke of the need to transform systems through challenging mindsets, assumptions, goals and present-day structures. “We need to rewire the whole system; to get away from growth as we know it,” said writer and New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman. “We should be redefining GDP right now. My motto right now is ‘Break all the rules.’ We need to be radical. This is a systems problem. If you don’t have a systemic response, you have a hobby.”

Testing the Theory
I found Meadows’ theory fascinating not only for its firm acknowledgement of the importance of nurturing those inner qualities of humanity, perception, awareness and relationship that exist within us, but for the many interconnected leverage points it calls us to reflect upon and work with, too. Intrigued by these ideas, I wanted to test them.

To do so, I mapped her theory in a very basic way onto the business world, comparing a range of businesses that were actively seeking to affect positive social and environmental change in terms of their application of different leverage points, or their “leverage potential.” I also measured their “sustainability potential” using a framework based on ecological systems theory. [2]

Interestingly, those businesses with the greatest potential for long-term social and environmental sustainability also showed evidence for a greater presence of higher leverage strategies. They had business models, for example, with alternative primary goals, unconventional governance structures, innovative information platforms and/or flows and greater cross-sector collaboration. Though not by design, they all described themselves as “social enterprises” and were very directly experiencing an array of resistance from our current system; not least in the form of an economy that didn’t value the forms of capital they were creating.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that in describing the characteristics of social entrepreneurs in their book “The Power of Unreasonable People,” John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan include “insane ambition,” “ignoring the evidence,” “seeking profit in unprofitable pursuits” and “trying to measure the unmeasurable.” These entrepreneurs, like a new species, seem to be seeking to change the system from within, changing the paradigms by which the business instrument might be applied within society today. My research was experimental and highly qualitative, but what does it leave us to chew on?

Moving Inward, Moving Outward
Meadows’ ideas exist on multiple levels, with many implications and subtleties that are impossible to touch on, let alone explore in any depth here. But perhaps more than anything, they are a reminder of the importance of examining where the directive force for change is coming from and whether the solutions we develop are as deeply transformative as they could be.

They encourage us to think outside the box, to think beyond the conventional paradigms to which we conform, to question our relationship to one another and the world around us and to question our ultimate goals far more deeply. Once we start seeing things in this way, it is difficult to stop. And indeed, it is encouraging to see a growing movement of people emerging across sectors and geographies who are taking up such approaches today.

The question, of course, is whether we are working at these levels enough, and the proposal is that we could be more effective by simultaneously seeking to develop that elusive yet powerful quality within ourselves that is consciousness.

For further, practical reading, see Meadows’ Tools for the Transition to Sustainability, originally published in 2004 in “Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update.”

—————–

Notes
[1] Systems exist at multiple interconnected levels from single cell to organism, from company to economy, from family to society and from atom to ecosystem to galaxy. Meadows herself defines a system as an “interconnected set of elements that [are] coherently organized in a way that achieves something.” Whether material or non-material, without each property – elements, relationships between the elements and a purpose or goal – a given grouping cannot be described as a system. Within a system are typically found one or more ‘stocks.’ These may be physical or virtual and their size and state are affected by both their inputs and outputs. There are a number of ways that a system’s dynamics can be changed, but all involve influencing the system properties described above. Understanding and working with these factors can result in deep-acting systems change on multiple levels.

[2] This work formed the basis of my Masters thesis. To assess the “sustainability potential” of a business, I created a framework with which to score them based upon ecological systems theory, which drew heavily on ideas found within industrial ecology. Essentially, the more properties businesses displayed that mimicked the principles found operating within natural resilient systems, the higher they scored.

By Agnieszka Rawa and Amalia Souza; photo by Clemens Kalischer (c) 2009

PLEASE NOTE: When using the course, please credit the Sustainability Leaders Network and let us know of your successes and lessons learned, in addition to where you are teaching and the approximate age and number of your students. Please do this via a comment at the bottom of this page or by writing to us: info [at] sustainabilityleadersnetwork [dot] org. This information is important to us for measuring project impact and making improvements.  Like nature, we are always evolving.

Please download the full curriculum and resources for free in the “Course materials” section, below.

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An open-source curriculum by Sustainability Leaders Network designed to strengthen and inform the biomimicry movement among educators and learners locally and around the world.

The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone. – Janine Benyus, leading biomimicry scholar

What is biomimicry?
Biomimicry is a growing discipline that studies nature’s systems and then imitates these designs and processes to sustainably solve current challenges. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example of biomimicry. Studying the intertwined complexities of a watershed to understand systems thinking is another. While biomimicry may be an emerging discipline in western culture, it is preceded by the practice of biomimicry embedded in many indigenous cultures.

Why teach biomimicry?
Using biomimicry, you can help expose your students to new ways of knowing and loving the natural world of their home. An overarching goal is to contribute to a shift in mindset – from seeing nature as something to exploit for short-term human benefit – to seeing nature as an invaluable teacher and model. This shift can help us understand how to regenerate natural resources, organize our societies, and live lightly on the Earth.

About this curriculum
This course offers an introduction to biomimicry and how to learn from nature. With an emphasis on getting outside and exploring the land around you, the biomimicry curriculum that we have designed, tested, and refined focuses on observing, appreciating and learning from nature and natural systems in your locality. Cognizant of the ways in which consumption and population growth have degraded our environment, we focus on positive solutions learned from nature and ways to take meaningful action.

I know all of the statistics of destruction, but I have chosen to come to this out of love, because I love this place. And I want to stay here. I want to stay home. – Janine Benyus

Course goals
Through this course, teachers and learners alike will:

1. Become knowledgeable and enthusiastic about biomimicry.
2. Get outside and strengthen relationships with the local environment.
3. Learn to better recognize, observe, and think creatively about processes and systems in nature.
4. Shift to see nature not as something to exploit, but as a teacher and model.
5. Collaborate with nature to devise and apply practical solutions to current challenges.

Course reading

• Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus
• Dancing with Systems by Donella Meadows
• Additional short articles, resources, and websites as assigned

Course outline

I. Introduction to Biomimicry and Systems

• Introduction to One Another and Biomimicry
• What is Biomimicry?
• What is a System?
• A Biomimicry Approach to Change

II. Innovation Inspired By Nature

• A Focus on Shelters
• Completing Shelters
• Example Field Trip to Luna Bleu Farm: A Focus on Food
• A Focus on Healing Ourselves
• Example Field Trip to the Living Machine Rest Stop: A Focus on Cleansing and Energy
• A Focus on Storing Knowledge
• A Focus on Conducting Business

III. Being a Biomimic: Designing and Acting to Change Systems

• Creating with Nature and Being a Biomimic

Course materials
The complete curriculum is provided here, including field trip examples and an outline of the general preparation needed to teach the course, in addition to slides and other handouts.

• Learning from Nature: A Course in Biomimicry, Teacher’s Curriculum
• Day 1 Slides on Biomimicry
• Day 2 Biomimicry Taxonomy
• Day 2 Course Outline for Students
• Day 3 Slides on Systems Thinking
• Day 9 Living Machine Handout

Using our curriculum and providing feedback
Our curriculum is flexible in terms of content and order, encouraging adaptation to local surroundings and realities, and getting students outside as much as possible. With minor adjustments, it can be made appropriate for a learner of nearly any age, including teenagers, university students, and adults. Our pilot course was taught to 9th and 10th grade students at The Sharon Academy in Vermont. This curriculum may only be used for not-for-profit, educational purposes.

When using the course, please credit the Sustainability Leaders Network and let us know of your successes and lessons learned, in addition to where you are teaching and the approximate age and number of your students. Please do this via a comment at the bottom of this page or by writing to us: info [at] sustainabilityleadersnetwork [dot] org. This information is important to us for measuring project impact and making improvements.  Like nature, we are always evolving.

Acknowledgements and credits
A great deal of thanks is due to Janine Benyus, Dayna Baumeister, and the staff at Biomimicry 3.8 who have built a rich foundation from which courses like ours can grow. We are grateful to administrators and students at The Sharon Academy who supported and participated in our pilot teaching of this semester-long course. Their feedback was valuable in refining the curriculum that we share here.

We are also grateful to our donors the New England Environmental Education Association (NEEEA), who awarded us an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant, and the Wellborn Ecology Fund at the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation (NHCF). Please note: Although our curriculum was funded in part by the EPA, it may not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency and no official endorsement should be inferred.

Edie Farwell and Dominic Stucker designed the original curriculum, Edie taught the course at The Sharon Academy in autumn 2012, and Dominic Stucker and Alex Bauermeister further developed the course for publication.

Learn more on Genentech’s Sustainability page. And learn more about about green chemistry here.

Photo courtesy of Clemens Kalischer, © 2009

The BBC recently launched its new 10-episode series, the Power of Nature, highlighting the value of wilderness with stunning cinematography. Fellow Trista Patterson offers commentary in the episodes on the Himalayas, the Great Barrier Reef, the Antarctic Ocean, and Rivers in the Sky (the Amazon). View the first 4-minute clip, on the Himalayas.

From approximately minute 00:58 to 2:24, view the recording of the session here. The Guided Visioning starts around 1:18 and the short discussion on Systems Thinking Wisdom around 2:01. Note that a portion of the recording is silent while pairs are in break-out rooms.

Dominic introduced the Learning Spiral as a framework within which to situate the practice of visioning and design principle from systems thinking for local sustainability projects.  He led a guided visioning that asked participants to imagine their planned project was wildly successful, giving them an opportunity immediately afterwards to write down what they saw, what changes they had helped bring about in their own communities.  In pairs, participants then shared their visions and drafted 1-sentence descriptions, which were shared with the whole group.  Some examples include:

Young girls in my community meet their inner potential and believe in their ability to own personal visions.

A platform for farmers to join efforts and overcome their challenges.

People celebrate their differences, leverage them, and use them to create a peaceful global environment.

University students use free-thinking, humor, and energy to to design and create sustainable futures for Botswana and the world!

Men and women – who have engaged with global issues as young leaders – make responsible decisions as future professionals and take action toward creating a better world.

A strongly interconnected society pioneered by youth.

Young people are empowered and capable of making positive change in their communities.

After that, Dominic used the rubber band metaphor to emphasize both the importance of vision and systems analysis in changing current realities.  Instead of dropping our visions to the reality, we must identify leverage points for bringing the reality up to our visions.

To help identify such leverage points, Dominic highlighted some of the guidance that Donella Meadows offers in her article Dancing with Systems for navigating and changing complex systems.  In particular, he described and then asked participants how the following forms of guidance would apply to their own projects:

• Celebrate complexity
• Listen to the wisdom of the system
• Expand time horizons
• Expand thought horizons
• Expand the boundary of caring

Finally, returning to the Learning Spiral, Dominic emphasized the importance of humility in our work to change systems.  In the above article, a key piece of guidance is to “Stay humble. Stay a learner.” Donella Meadows writes:

Systems thinking has taught me to trust my intuition more and my figuring-out rationality less, to lean on both as much as I can, but still to be prepared for surprises. Working with systems, on the computer, in nature, among people, in organizations, constantly reminds me of how incomplete my mental models are, how complex the world is, and how much I don’t know. The thing to do, when you don’t know, is not to bluff and not to freeze, but to learn.

None of us, after all, have fully seen or experienced the world we envision for ourselves.  We have only seen glimpses.  As such, we must learn our way into sustainability together, embracing mistakes as an essential part of experimentation, creativity, and innovation.

At the beginning of the session, participants indicated that they “always, often, sometimes, or rarely” use visioning and systems thinking in the conceptualization and design of their projects.  By the end of the session, 100% of participants reported that they will “always or often” use both visioning and systems thinking for future projects.

Unsolicited feedback from participants at the end of the session included:

Thanks, Dominic! Inspiring!

Gave me a way to rethink my project. Love the meditation part!

Very interesting and useful.

Inspiring and motivating!

Great session!

Sustainability Leader Network offers similar visioning and systems sessions as a service to individuals and organizations.  Learn more on our Services page.

Coffee farming family, Central America. From video “After the Harvest,” produced by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.

Today, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times featured an article by Fellow Mike Dupee, Vice President for Corporate Social Responsibility at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, in the Dot Earth section of the paper: “A Coffee Seller Seeks to Cut Hunger Among Coffee Growers.” It turns out that Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is not only trying to ensure food security among farming families in its supply chain, it is also the single biggest purchaser of fair trade coffee in the world.

The article features this video “After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffee Lands,” produced by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters:

Learn more at After the Harvest.

Participants in the Art of Hosting training, south Minneapolis

Fellow Jerry Nagel, Co-Founder of the Meadowlark Institute, reflects that:

Since my experience of co-learning and co-creation during my time as a Fellow at Cobb Hill, much has happened. Deep learning journeys into work and life. I have become a Global Steward in the Art of Hosting Community and in the past two years have co-hosted 22 trainings in several countries. Below is a blog post by Kathy Jourdain, a member of our hosting team, about a recent Art of Hosting event we co-convened in diverse and conflicted south Minneapolis. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. We will co-host a similar event with 100 immigrants and refugees in November.

I offer a deep bow of gratitude to my Dana Meadows Fellows’ gift of learning leadership development and personal growth together, and to all of you in my cohort and the entire Fellows Network for your gifts into the world.

The Field Beyond Difference by Kathy Jourdain
Republished with permission.

Informal introduction: I want to share an experience from the field in Minnesota where Jerry Nagel has been shifting the shape of community and work by building the Art of Hosting in partnership with key funders and other instigators. I had the privilege of being there last week with an amazingly cross-cultural group of leaders who care deeply about their communities.  They want to discover the common ground of hope and collective action that will grow their capacity to influence their communities in intentional ways. It was awe-inspiring to say the least and brought many of our 14-member hosting team to tears more than once. A few reflections are below. If you aren’t aware of what’s been happening in Minnesota, check out the Meadowlark Institute, InCommons or look for videos on Vimeo. Jerry, Meadowlark and strategic partners are breaking new ground.

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I will meet you there.
- Rumi

Rumi’s words, with a slight variation, encapsulate the experience of an amazingly culturally and age diverse group of participants, apprentices and hosts who gathered September 11-14, 2012 in the middle of the Phillips Community of South Minneapolis where all of us discovered there is a field beyond difference and we are willing to meet each other there.

There was a tremble in our fourteen member hosting team as we prepared to welcome over seventy Somalis, Native Americans, African Americans, Anglo Americans, Latinos, people from Liberia, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Columbia and more, together with two translators: one for Somali and one for Spanish. We were not sure how many would come, how many would stay or how many would come back the next day.

This Art of Hosting training, supported by the Bush Foundation’s InCommons in partnership with the Meadowlark Institute, was called by Amina Saleh a co-founder of the Native American Somali Friendship Committee, in the hopes that bridges could be formed across the multiplicity of cultures that have come to reside in the Phillips residential area of South Minneapolis. The original residents of this community were primarily African Americans, Native Americans and Anglo Americans. In the 1990s immigrants and refugees began moving into the area in search of affordable housing. Over the years, the cultures clashed, tensions rose and violence across the cultures, particularly between the Native Americans and Somali communities, occurred.

Amina found herself at an Art of Hosting training in March 2012 and became curious about what might be possible if a training was hosted right in the middle of her community, in the community centre, where the children congregate after school. Well, we found out!

We started with a beautiful Lakota sage ceremony offered by Lemoine Lapointe from our hosting team, to open the space, to cleanse ourselves, open our minds and, even more so, our hearts. An offering from one of the cultures present in the room, inviting others to also offer in a right moment or opportunity.

Each one of us was then invited to bring our voices into the circle by responding to: my name is…, I live…, I’m from…, my ancestors are from… and I speak …. languages. As we listened, we became aware, beyond the diversity of skin colour already visible in the room, of the richness and multiplicity of cultures and languages represented in the space, the richness that showed up sometimes in a single individual as well as in our field. It took our breath away and opened our curiosity.

The purpose that emerged for the four day training was: Hosting meaningful conversations as a way of giving life, (1) inviting in our full selves and each other, (2) sharing language and frameworks, (3) staying in it – together and (4) building “whole” community. The phrases in the purpose statement framed each of our four days; scheduled to begin around 9:00 with a hard stop at 3:00, because this is when the children arrived in the community centre we were in and when some of the single moms in attendance also needed to be home to greet their children.

Our first afternoon was a café. What is in your heart that brought you here today? What is in your heart for your community? What would you like to give life to here for your neighbourhood? Powerful, surprising questions, giving pause like unexpected questions do. Silence at the first café round while people let the question sink in, then decided how fully they wanted to bring themselves into the room, into the conversation, into the others also at their table. Cautiously, at first. What is in your heart? Not, why are you here? Not, what’s in you mind? What is in your heart? Are you willing to go there yourself, let alone speak it into the centre of the table?

By the third round there was a beautiful buzz in the room as people began to relax into the invitation to bring their full selves. In the harvest, one man offered, “Unlike Vegas where what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, what happens in this room should not stay in this room. We all need to take it back out into our communities.” This became a mantra for participants for our full time together.

People were ready and willing to offer their rituals, ceremonies and stories into our collective space. In addition to the opening sage ceremony, we experienced a Somali coffee ceremony, an Aztek ceremony and a Hmong ritual and an African American dramatic story telling: Sojourner Truth, in addition to Native American ceremony, song and round dance from the Dakota and Lakota cultures. We gifted each other with prayers and blessings.

Sometimes it was a bit uncomfortable with the varying perspectives and cultural norms around touch, song, dance and partaking in another culture’s ceremony; but only just in that moment before understanding blossomed and more ease entered with the witnessing of things precious. Graciousness, curiosity and respect filled the space and the conversations. Deepening our individual and collective listening skills invited us all to show up even more fully.

The realization that issues, concerns and passions arc across cultures invited people into bridge building. Education, children, community housing, racism, racial profiling, relationship with police, healing, well being. Learning to navigate the dominant culture and stand up, both for what is right and for rights of an individual no matter each person’s roots or ancestral history. Awareness of commonality in the diversity. People care about many of the same things even if their way of approaching them or their cultural norms may be different.

As we gathered in our check out team: Amina Saleh, Kadra Ahdi, Lemoine Lapointe, Molly Matheson Gruen, Susan Phillips, Bob-e Epps, Anne Gomez, Lori Lindgren Voit, Nou Ka Yang, Marcela Sotela, Jerry Nagel, Tuesday Ryan-Hart, Ginny Belden Charles and me, there were tears. Tears of hopes realized, connections made, community strengthened, deep sense of belonging.

Our work began in the hosting team itself on our prep day. It was the first time many of us had met in person as is common in these trainings. There was a great variety of experience and understanding of the Art of Hosting in the team, from lots to little to almost none, with people eager to deepen their skill, grow their capacity. The team quickly became strong and cohesive with each person stepping in, contributing, supporting as one fluid movement, offering what we each could, asking for what we needed. We formed community.

We became a field to welcome the larger field of community activists and organizers from across cultures who showed up. And came back. Day after day. For four days. They sensed something different. Became engaged in possibility in new ways. They made plans for next steps on very specific projects. Co-creating a new hope for the future. Giving life to community from a different place. Stepping into courage, transcending fear, reaching out, seeing the human face of diversity and knowing that shifting the shape of the communities they live in and touch is possible to ever greater degrees. Humbled, touched, delighted to be in this work that matters so deeply.

The Children in Nature Collaborative’s “Natural Learning Project” encourages unstructured play and opening of the senses to connect with the landscape and natural materials.

Fellow Mary Roscoe of the Children in Nature Collaborative is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and offers these reflections on leadership and network weaving. Through a personal case study, she offers an example of a group expanding their conception of leadership and, through the power of their networks, shifting from a perspective of scarcity of resources to abundance.

Leadership Purpose
As a participant in the Daily Leadership Practices Project, Robert Gass of the Social Transformation Project invited us to focus on a simple phrase that expresses our purpose, what we are about as a leader, our source of power.  I quickly found the phrase “awaken and expand perception, catalyze cultural shift.”

How we as leaders perceive the world and respond is intimately connected to our purpose and the daily challenges we encounter. In my work with partners in the San Francisco Bay Area Children in Nature Collaborative, I often see leaders arriving at our meetings weary and overwhelmed by their organizational lives and I reflect on the sustainability of leadership today – how much we have depleted our own human as well as natural resources.

A Case Study: Network Leadership and Governance
In my work, I coordinate a regional movement in the San Francisco Bay Area inspired by Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods. Louv’s book inspired a national movement powered by over a hundred self-organizing regional initiatives with the intention of restoring children’s relationship with nature as an essential part of their physical, mental, social and spiritual health. The heart of the matter is the recognition that the health of our children and the health of the planet are intertwined. For me, this resonates with my leadership purpose, to help bring about a cultural shift.

The Collaborative set up a Wild Zone in a park in Oakland, California primarily for inner city families and…

This year, a group of 12 leaders from our Bay Area network met as a planning group every 4-6 weeks to explore larger collective initiatives for restoring children’s relationship to nature as an essential part of their daily lives. In our meetings, I often recognized our lack of ability to consider “one more thing” – yet there were also moments with a rush of energy, generosity of spirit, and inspiration when we were present and deeply connected to our purpose. When I asked the regional leadership group’s members to list the other formal and informal networks they are part of, I found our group is connected to a total of over 120 networks – a dynamic picture of the potential power of the group.

A few months ago tension emerged in the group related to leadership and governance – what is the most effective governance structure for our regional grassroots movement? This came at an appropriate point in our meeting cycle – yet I found it challenging. Although we are a movement – we were clear about not wanting to start yet another organization – almost by default our reference points for governance were conventional leadership approaches and organizational thinking.

My official job title is “coordinator” of our regional children and nature movement and what I do closely fits the role of a network weaver. Yet several questions related to governance and executive leadership emerged as I prepared for the May meeting. I found myself both listening and balancing the questions related to conventional leadership and governance with my perception of our efforts as a powerful network and dynamic movement – an ecosystem. I thought about systems thinker and sustainability practitioner Donella Meadows’ references to the three elements important for healthy systems – resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy – that she discusses in her book Thinking in Systems: A Primer.

In an effort to gain perspective and prepare for our regional leadership meeting, I reached out to the Sustainability Leaders Network, of which I am a Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow. I contacted Edie Farwell and Dominic Stucker, with whom I have been sharing notes and resources on networks for the past few years, for guidance about the dilemma of governance. Dominic first reflected on the strengths of the Children in Nature Collaborative and encouraged me to ask myself some key questions about what would best serve the collaborative as a network:

• What is the purpose of governance and what structure would best serve that purpose?
• What kind of services or support do members expect?
• How can members feel a sense of belonging?
• How can members know that their contributions are valuable and desired?
• How can governance offer both added value of network membership and ensure that members feel/have ownership?

Dominic also sent the article “Global Action Networks: An Organizational Innovation” by Steve Waddell in the Society for Organizational Learning’s Reflections Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3-4. The article reflects on networks at the global level, and was helpful with its discussion of the collaborative governance model. Edie suggested that I look at the Monitor Institute and I read two articles related to their work:

• “Networking a City” by Marianne Hughes and Didi Goldenhar
• “Transformer: How to build a network to change a system” by Heather McLeod Grant

For my situation, “Transformer: How to build a network to change a system” was the most helpful article. It described a network of 125 nonprofits and funders focused on climate change that had a bold vision of cutting emissions by 80% in the upper Midwest of the US. Their first step was studying systems thinking for a year to determine key leverage points. They then developed independent groups to focus on those leverage points. Rather than developing a central staff, they had a coordinator, plus and one support staff person assigned to each independent group.

With the confidence gained from these resources and support from the Sustainability Leaders Network, I prepared for my regional leadership meeting by developing a bold proposal inspired by the Monitor Institute’s “Transformer” article.

…large palm fronds, branches, and natural materials were provided for unstructured family play.

Case Study Outcomes
The meeting was ultimately successful in surprising ways – it connected me to my own passion for the direction of my leadership and, through a question I asked the group, we uncovered each person’s passion, energy, and ideas. The question of governance was put aside with the confidence that we will discover what is most needed and relevant as we undertake two collective initiatives in the coming year. The conception of leadership shifted from a narrow to a broader and more diverse perspective.

I was able to plan a follow-up meeting based on my purpose of  “awakening and expanding perception, catalyzing cultural shift.”  I mapped the process of our group’s learning and decisions over the previous nine months with the picture of the collaborative as a network connected to 120 other networks. The group began to move from the perception of scarcity (related to the group’s energy and resources) to the picture of connections, generosity and abundance within the ecosystem of our network.

Next Steps
As a “network weaver” I often help partners by providing resources and connections that give confidence and direction for their next step in implementing a project or idea. In the above case study, the roles were reversed – I needed help, and I felt so grateful that the Sustainability Leaders Network responded quickly to my need for clarity and resources at time when I felt overwhelmed.

There are still plenty of questions. And now I have the opportunity to continue exploring these questions and sharing this work with a session (The Children and Nature Movement: A Network of Networks) that I am leading in October at a national conference in Oakland for the North American Association for Environmental Education.

Dominic has recently moved to California and that brings us as network weavers in closer proximity to continue to share our respective work and the amazing picture of the Sustainability Leaders Network, making connections around the world in the name of sustainability.

Resources
If you are interested in network weaving, here are some more resources that I find useful.  Feel free to add more in the comments section, below!

• Working Wikily by Diana Scearce, Gabriel Kasper, and Heather McLeod Grant in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2010.
• Transformer: How to build a network to change a system: A Case Study of the RE-AMP Energy Network by Heather McLeod Grant, the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, and the Monitor Institute, Fall 2010.
• Catalyzing Networks for Social Change: A Funder’s Guide by Diana Scearce, the Monitor Institute, and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, 2011.
• Network Effectiveness Diagnostic and Development Tool by Diana Scearce and the Monitor Institute, 2010.
• Network Weaving Blog with posts from a host of network weavers since 2006.
• Working Wikily Blog at the Monitor Institute, featuring these principle bloggers since 2007.
• Networking Action: Organizing for the 21^st Century blog by Steve Waddell since 2010.

Dominic Stucker and Johanna Bozuwa wrote an article highlighting Jay Mead‘s pioneering work in the “art of sustainability” for the Society for Organizational Learning‘s (SoL’s) Reflections Journal.  The abstract for the article “The Art of Sustainability: Creative Expression as a Tool for Social Change” summarizes:

The article is strongly based on the work that Jay has conducted with Fellows and includes commentaries by Andrea Athanas, Amba Jamir, and Newey Kraiwatnutsorn.  Download and read the article and commentaries here.  Or, with SoL membership, access the full journal.

Learn more about Jay’s work on his website.

Sustainability Leaders Network is pleased to share with you the following leadership workshops from our partner, the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL). Please click on the links below for more information or to download registration forms. See a short video of Peter Senge, Founding Chair of SoL, speaking about these programs.

Executive Champions’ Workshop, August 14-17, 2012, Stowe, VT, with Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer,
and Arawana Hiyashi
The Executive Champions’ Workshop (ECW) is a special setting for nurturing new thinking and relationships among executive and change leaders in today’s rapidly changing economic and social landscape. This workshop is offered exclusively to people at the top levels in their organizations and focuses this year on “Sustaining Systemic Innovation in a Time of Disruption.” Through a series of strategic dialogues on issues of most concern to participants, our intent is to tap the wisdom that resides, often below the surface, in our collective experience.

Foundations for Leadership Program, September 12-14, 2012, Bedford, MA, facilitated by Peter Senge and Beth Jandernoa; also offered March 19-21, 2013, Bedford, MA, facilitated by Peter Senge and Robert Hanig
In this program, based on The Fifth Discipline, participants will come away with a renewed understanding of how they can facilitate change, both within their organizations and in their personal lives. This program goes deeply into the domains of personal mastery, collaborative inquiry, and the systems perspective applied to sustaining profound change.

In particular, participants will learn to:

• Formulate a coherent picture of the results they most desire to create individually and collectively alongside a realistic assessment of the current state of their lives today.
• Understand how underlying systemic structures shape behavior and how to recognize and shift those structures.
• Expand their capacity to make strategic choices.
• Be more able to nurture mutual purpose and shared commitment.
• Explore underlying beliefs and assumptions and their impact on the capacity to lead.
• Balance and integrate intuition and rational understanding.
• Facilitate conversations that promote learning and collaboration.
• Operate from a deeper and more stable sense of purpose.

The session includes interactive lectures, paired and small-group exercises, a simulation game, large-group dialogue, and regular opportunities for personal reflection. Participants discover the profound connections between personal mastery and systems thinking, seeing that deep change in our social systems and in oneself are inseparable from each other.

Leading and Learning for Sustainability Program, November 7-9, 2012, Bedford, MA with Peter Senge, Joe Laur, and Darcy Winslow
This workshop is for those who are passionate about building more sustainable organizations, value chains, industries, and communities. Peter Senge and leading practitioners of sustainability and organizational change will guide participants in how to create flexible and robust networks of collaboration that will sustain innovation in times of financial stress and in the face of pressures to revert to established business models. It is a synthesis of core organizational learning disciplines—systems thinking, mental models and collaborative inquiry, personal mastery and building shared vision—and the practical know-how developed within the SoL Sustainability Consortium over the past decade, much of which is captured in the book, The Necessary Revolution. This workshop focuses on how these core learning disciplines build capabilities for Sustainability Leadership—seeing systems, collaborating across boundaries with ease, and shifting from reactive problem solving to creating new futures as well as how to understand the basic systems that shape the modern economy and practical insights into shifting these systems.

In this interactive workshop, participants have the opportunity to work on concrete challenges around social and environmental sustainability. In particular, we encourage cross-sector teams to attend, as the workshop provides a safe, human-centered space that allows for the kind of reflective, collective focus in which breakthrough results are achieved.

About the Society for Organizational Learning
SoL is a not-for-profit intentional learning community composed of organizations, individuals, and local communities around the world devoted to the interdependent development of people and their institutions in service of inspired performance and meaningful results. We offer programs and courses, consulting and coaching services and publish Reflections: The SoL Journal. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline and The Necessary Revolution, is Founding Chair of SoL.