It was not yet quite dawn, in a village in Zimbabwe. The villagers had been dancing and singing and drumming since dusk, welcoming and honoring those of us who had come to Zimbabwe to celebrate the thirtieth birthday and homecoming of Marianne Knuth, a native daughter and a co-founder of Pioneers of Change. I had lain under the stars for several hours, and had gotten up to look for the conversations I knew would be arising in the hours before dawn.

Standing outside a home built of straw, one man spoke of the needs of his village. Later, in a long conversation with a man who had been laid off from his position as a buyer for a manufacturing concern, we talked about international aid. With a sigh he explained to me, “Yes, we’ve received aid before. The foreigners come in and ask us what we need. We tell them. And they tell us we really need something else. They give us what they think we need. You know, it never really works because we don’t understand and sometimes don’t like what they are doing. They mean well, but it doesn’t help us.”

Much later that morning, the tribal chief was telling us that it would be 400 years before this village had the prosperity of villages in Europe. He said they could not help the village by themselves, and so we must give them help. And I wondered, what was really needed?

As we drove away, someone pointed out that more than a third of the people we’d partied with all night would die of AIDS.

How does change occur?  How do the people from one culture truly support those from another? What do you do if you are poor, and if a third of your village is dying? What do you do if you are rich (at least in global terms) and want to help create more sane and sustainable life on this small planet? These questions surface more readily in Africa because of the extreme poverty, but they are questions for all of us, as we work to create more sane lives for ourselves and for others.

I think of my conversations with members of the Chaordic Commons and Pioneers of Change about how to grow a global network of people and groups creatively evolving new concepts of organization. I ponder other conversations about what it means to have a surprisingly large number of people embracing the values of the “cultural creatives,” and still other conversations with the leaders of enterprises like Institute of Noetic Sciences, and FutureSearch—conversations about what is trying to be born in the world right now.

It is an amazing time, my friends; something powerful is loose in the world. It is the power of hope and possibility and of doing things in a different way. I think that the kind of organizational capacity we are working to unleash through the work of a number of different enterprises are important channels through which this new energy will flow.

 A New Picture of Social Change

I believe many people are operating from a new vision of how deep change can occur in the world. Ordinary people everywhere are leading the way, not a privileged elite. Many of us seem to believe that if we can find clarity about what we can do, and then do it, the world will become a better place for everyone. We’ve moved away from grand strategies and master plans that seek to define and control particular outcomes. Many of us have started to speak of finding our own right alignment with spirit. We seek to clarify our own highest intentions, and then to act from them. In doing so, we trust that a larger, life-sustaining pattern will develop over time and that the common good will be served.

In so many of the social change movements of the last century, a different sense was present.  Labor movements, women’s movements, peace movements, war, civil rights movements, environmental movements – many times they tended to have very particular goals and objectives and frequently those were pursued through some command and control hierarchy.  Certainly, there were networks and separate and individual actions, but typically there was a sense of a single, overall direction in each movement.

Communications technology and the Internet are key enablers of this new pattern. Western theoretical constructs – living systems, pattern language, open source software, integral psychology – offer partial explanations for what is going on.   Rituals, myths and traditions of indigenous cultures that exist closer to the earth may offer simpler explanations of why this approach to change makes sense. 

Whatever “it” is, it feels different—more intuitive, more spiritual, more deeply connected while staying highly decentralized. It reflects a concern for equity and sustainability, inclusivity and innovation, the individual and the community.

Connecting With Each Other

This new means of achieving social change relies on the power of connection. Actions taken separately in different communities and organizations around the world become part of a global movement when we link people working on related issues with each other. A major challenge in doing this work is discovering how to connect ourselves as one extensive learning community.

What wants to be connected?  In this age when so many feel called to work locally and to connect globally, what wants to be connected?  What are the stories to be shared?  The knowledge?  The skills?  What makes a difference and what is simply more distracting overload?

For example, Microsoft functions as a 40,000-member learning community. They’ve gone through several generations of their process for developing that community. In the current version, a “buzz” starts among people from different Microsoft campuses around the world. People start informally communicating with each other. At a critical, organic point the process moves from a buzz to a community, and some part of Microsoft gets budgetary approval for creating a position  of community leader.

The community leader has several responsibilities: developing and managing a knowledge website for the community, organizing virtual presentations on topics nominated by community participants, designing and hosting community summits that bring 60-100 coordinators/regional leaders/community representatives together two or three times a year.

Unit leaders or coordinators in different Microsoft offices locate a community representative and a data warehousing representative from their area who has interest and expertise in the subjects of any knowledge/learning community area that is of interest to the locale. These representatives are typically identified through a bottom-up process.

These representatives, working with the community leader, identify a rolling squad of “subject matter experts” who are responsible for “scrubbing,” prioritizing, and harvesting “gems” of knowledge from the community’s work.

One challenge those of us working for large scale change or social transformation face is figuring out how to build these same kinds of energetic connections! 

The Power of Good Conversation

Globally, we live in a time when many people want to help with the remaking of our world. They feel a call to exercise new leadership in their own lives, in their organizations, and in their communities. Many different efforts, such as the Chaordic Commons, From the Four Directions, Pioneers of Change, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences, keep attracting extraordinary, ordinary people who want to help. They also play a particular role in the “global mind change” that is occurring.

When we create a safe place for people to gather to talk about their work in the world, they develop greater courage, clarity, capacity, and commitment to lead. Inviting people into conversations can make a difference, when they are the deep conversations that circles or wisdom councils offer, or the rich intermixing in a World Café, or the exploration of a FutureSearch or Open Space. And when they are connected globally, these conversations not only support leaders, they also begin to enable broader and deeper social, political, economic, and spiritual change.

It's important to continue to organize, promote and connect conversations among leaders all around the planet, so we can begin to really "see" each other and continue to step into our work as leaders.

Capacity Building in Communities and Organizations.

Once people come together in conversations that help them clarify their own work as leaders, they often want to learn particular community- and organization-building skills.

They want access to the best practices and processes for helping organizations form and communities work. A rich mix of tools has been developed over the last twenty years: Wisdom Councils, Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, Open Space Technology, World Café, Asset-Based Community Development, Action Research, Cooperative Inquiry, Chaordic Design, and many variations on these themes. These tools have been developed by practitioners who have been looking for better ways of building community, developing more flexible and innovative organizations, and surfacing the best thinking of groups.

These tools all work to surface inner wisdom in the service of learning and action. They look for what is possible, not for what is wrong. They build from what exists towards a shifting vision of what might be. They are fluid and filled with learning.

Emerging leaders also want more conventional information about how to build organizations that can thrive. What are the critical steps in being a successful social entrepreneur? What does it take to make a new venture succeed? Where does one begin? What’s the best accounting software? What size organization requires an employee handbook? What are possible sources of start-up funding? How does one find the right friends and colleagues and partners and employees and board members? It is not necessary to find and answer these questions in isolation anymore. Much has been learned in these areas, and it needs to be organized to help us all find our way.

The Work Has Many Faces

People who are attracted to these large-scale change initiatives are developing the knowledge we all need to create communities, societies, and cultures that are socially just, ecologically integral, spiritually grounded, sustainable, and equitable.

Manish Jain does incredible work in India, helping people develop new ways to use their own resources to learn. Coumba Toure in Mali is learning how to end gender oppression in tribal societies. Tim Merry in Holland helps people use their bodies and movement to deepen their connection to and understanding of each other. Cire Kane in Senegal advances the understanding, practice, and development of creative and entrepreneurial leadership and social change for the benefit of Senegalese and African society. Francesca Firstwater in Spokane develops an initiative to give greater strength and visibility to Grandmother’s Voices.  These are real people with faces, names, and passion who are working on behalf of all of us, and they are only part of a long list.

Through their work they are generating knowledge about what works – and what doesn’t.  These folks see different things as important -- as worthy of attention.  And it is their attention which defines what it is important to know.

We need to surface this knowledge, make it more widely accessible, help those developing this knowledge build on each other’s work, and to share the stories and ideas and possibilities and knowing that is emerging.

One thing that has struck me is that many of us speak, these days, of “the work” that needs to be done.  Common themes, values and concerns bring people to “the work”.  Robert Theobald created one clear picture of the common ground just before his death with “Reworking Success”.  Duane Elgin examined similar themes later in “Promise Ahead”.  Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson in their book on “Cultural Creatives” define many of the attributes of an emerging integral culture.

One of our challenges is to learn to align our personal and institutional energies and egos behind our work and not in front of it. I think of our work as an aspen grove, which has a common root system. Each of our endeavors arises from the same root, but each has its own particularities. And in learning what we need to learn, leading where we are called, we are both nourished by and nourish the whole.

The Berkana Institute was formed a number of years ago by Meg Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Sciences. Berkana was the lead institution for From the Four Directions and is presently broadening its conception of itself to provide a wide new array of supports for leaders around the world.  Meg's work has been an inspiration to many.  Like our mutual friend, the late Robert Theobald, Meg helps people give voice to, and make meaning of the experiences of living in these turbulent times.

Chaordic Commons was formed to give birth and support to enterprises and networks that use chaordic concepts and principles as the basis for their organization. Tom Hurley, Coordinating Director of the Commons and its global enterprise, Terra Civitas, has spent more than 20 years helping people connect with the spirit of transformation.

Cultural Creatives is the result of the landmark work of Sherry Anderson and Paul Ray.  Paul and Sherry have studied populations in North America and Europe, and listed to their stories. Their conclusion is a lot more of us are ready to move to lives that are more sustainable, more spiritual, more balanced, and more in tune with the rest of the planet.

Engage! InterAct is a nonprofit in the Netherlands which helps people learn how to use art, drama and their bodies to engage their hearts and minds.  Working throughout Europe, as well as other parts of the world, Tim Merry and his colleagues help people change their minds.

From the Four Directions is a global initiative bringing leaders together in local conversation circles to help them develop clarity and courage about the leading they want to do, in their own lives, in their organizations, and their communities.

FutureSearch is a well-developed and well-documented process that allows groups and communities to envision the future they prefer and to articulate specific steps to move in the directions they desire.  Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff are pioneers in the field of group learning and work with a global network of people who help groups and communities see their own images of the future.

Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) was founded more than twenty-five years ago by astronaut Edgar Mitchell. It's been an important gathering point for people from all around the world concerned with the emergence of a new integral culture.  Wink Franklin, President of IONS and Chris Bache, Director of Transformative Learning, are dedicated to building communities of learners who work together to create a better world.

Interchange of Denmark is one of those exquisite points of creativity in the world. Toke Mueller and Monica Nissen are just wonderful, incredible folks.  They "pop-up" everywhere -- in World Cafe work, in Open Space, in Pioneers of Change, in From the Four Directions.

New Stories is the nonprofit corporation I started in 2000 to work locally and globally to facilitate the emergence of “the new story,” meaning the story that comes after industrial growth society when we learn how to live in harmony with each other, as a human species, and in harmony with this small planet.

Peer Spirit  has spent years studying and teaching the practice of circle and council. In my opinion, this form is crucial in the world today. It is one place and process through which we can deepen our capacity to truly listen to each other. The Peer Spirit circle process is used as the cornerstone of From the Four Directions.  Christina Baldwin, co-founder of Peer Spirit has incredible insight into the mystery of circle -- and its magic.

Pioneers of Change is a global network of young people committed to supporting each other in living lives that hold social justice and ecological integrity among the highest values.  Pioneers also serve as an excellent example of a global enterprise structured with chaordic principles.  Marianne Knuth, whose birthday took me to Zimbabwe, joins with Mille Bojer and Colleen Bowker to create one of the most inspiring networks I've found on the planet.

Shikshantar is the educational development organization founded by Manish Jain in India.  Using an asset-based development model, they are doing incredible work to explore and redefine learning in India.

Transformational Learning Community was one of the early places on the internet to think and learn about social transformation.  Robert Theobald and I started Transformational Learning Community in the early nineties as a place to gather people and resources together.  It now is an excellent repository of Robert's work.

World Café , developed by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, is a wonderfully effective process for bringing groups of people together in conversations that matter. Used recently for the 1,200-person annual meeting of IONS, the World Café allows large and small groups of people to move quickly to a level of deep intimacy and reflection with each other.

Bob Stilger is the President of New Stories. Before beginning New Stories in 2000, Bob spent twenty-five years as the founder and director of Northwest Regional Facilitators, a community development corporation.  He now builds learning communities, on the ground and on the internet, to help people create the new stories of their lives. He’s also finishing a doctoral degree in Learning and Change in Human Systems at California Institute of Integral Studies. He can be contacted at bob@newstories.org