Evolutionary Leadership: From Systemic Sustainability

to Integral Thrivability

Alexander LaszloTheLasz@me.com

ITBA Graduate Student Forum

!!

3 Key Frames Evolutionary Leadership

o Knowing how to choose among existing alternatives as well as how to create new ones

Systems Thinkingo Seeing things in terms of connected

relationships, patterns and processes and not just in terms of separate objects, structures, positions

Sustainability Strategyo Understanding the objectives of

sustainable business practice and knowing how to design for them

Follow the Leader

Six Competencies of The Evolutionary Leader

Personal evolution:Committing to expand and intensify our consciousness, engaging in lifelong learning, becoming a different observer, defining our role as evolutionary leaders

Systems thinking:Understanding patterns of change, our interconnectedness, and the leverage points to transform social systems

Design for sustainability:Applying sustainability principles and practices, creating solutions to economic, social, cultural and environmental problems, designing living institutions

Collaboration and innovation:Bringing people together, harvesting diversity, engaging in conversations that translate the vision into actions, creating evolutionary learning communities, innovating for the common good

Emotions and language: Becoming aware of the narratives, vocabularies and speech acts that we use to affect change. Facilitate effective communication to enable emotional intelligence

Syntony and flow:Developing a syntony sense — moving from walking the talk to dancing the path; embodying evolutionary consciousness.

Evolutionary Leadership Mindset - know-why

o Emergent Worldview• Visions of evolutionary leadership

o Systems and evolutionary thinking• Interdependencies of global dynamics

knowledge

Skillset - know-howo Collaborative skillso Strategic conversations for effective communication and actiono Sustainability principles and practices

practice

Heartset - care-whyo Learning from natureo Syntony Sense: creative and intentional aligning with the dynamic

harmony of our broader environment

awareness

What Do Leaders Do ? Leaders are people who normally declare possible

what other people do not

They declare a vision for a future, they generate the future, they mobilize others to create new realities

Leaders work on adaptive challenges not on technical problems

They think big and use a systemic and strategic vision

They inspire and promote learning, change, and evolution

Evolutionary leaders

Are stewards of people, organizations, communities and ecosystems,

Facilitate the emergence of life-affirming, future-oriented and opportunity-increasing realities.

Are competent in systems thinking, feeling and being

Focus on co-adaptive challenges (that require the creation of new knowledge) rather than on technical problems (that can be solves with existing knowledge)

Sustainability

Sustainable DevelopmentForms of development that satisfy the

needs of the present, while at the same time safeguarding the capacity of future generations to meet their own needs.

o From the Brundtland Report (convened by the UN in 1983 as part of the World Commission on the Environment and Development (WCED)) published as Our Common Future by Oxford University Press in 1987.

Sustainability is the possibility that human and other forms of life will flourish on the Earth forever. — John R. Ehrenfeld

Radical Sustainability

Systemic Sustainability A process of development (individual, corporate, or

societal) can be said to be socially and ecologically sustainable if it involves an adaptive strategy that ensures the evolutionary maintenance of an increasingly robust and supportive environment.

“What is consistent with nature is sustainable” – Janine Benyus, 1997

• Curating Systemic Sustainability involves the responsible stewardship and creative cultivation of resources — social, cultural, financial, and natural — to generate stakeholder value while contributing to the well-being of current and future generations of all beings.

What does Sustainability mean to you?

Sustainability is the role I play in sustaining and fostering the ability of [ ] (whom?) to be able to [ ] (have/do what?) for the next [ ] (how long?) as the result of my actions in the present.

The Funnel(The Natural Step)

Sustainability

Robert, K-H. 2000

Time

Increasing resource demand

Diminishing resources

Sustainable Demand

Available offerRegenerative Economy

Sustainable Society

Sustainability

Robert, K-H. 2000

Time

The Funnel

Laszlo © 2010

From Scarcity to Abundance

Current  reality

Planning

Scarcity Abundance

Problem  solving

Design  and  innovation

Evolving  Sustainable  System

12

3

The Sustainability Learning

Compliance - reactive stanceseeks to comply with regulatory standards

Beyond Compliance - anticipatory stance seeks cost avoidance strategies

2nd Stage

1st Stage

3rd Stage

4th Stage

Eco-Efficiency - proactive stanceestablishes profit centers

Sustainable Development - interactive stancemainstreams environmental goals

time

5th Stage Evolutionary Development - integrative stanceembodies and enacts conscious syntony

conserve

restore

regenerate

(co)create

SAU

BAU

Integrated Quadruple Bottom Line

Social

Financial

Environmental

S u s t a i n a b i l i t y

Cultural

Integrated Quadruple Top Line

socially desirable culturally acceptable psychologically nurturing economically sustainable technologically feasible operationally viable environmentally robust generationally sensitive capable of continuous learning

Sustainability CriteriaIntegrated Q

uadruple Bottom Line

SocialFinancial

Environmental

S u

s t a i n a b

i l i t y

Cultural

Evolutionary vision

It is no longer sufficient to be a smart organization, one that can scan the commercial environment, detect variations, and react accordingly. If we restrict ourselves to reacting to signals when it comes to human impact ... we may well end up focusing our organizational resources just on minimizing the pain of irreversible damage. Our business organizations need to become conscious of the evolutionary role business plays in the future of the planet and to take responsibility for that role.o Nattrass & Altomare — The Natural Step for Business:

Wealth, Ecology and the Evolutionary Corporation

Evolving Development

The new concept of development takes account not only of economic growth but also of all those parameters that reflect the quality of life, full enjoyment of creative capacity and observance of human rights, which the principal decision-makers should take into account so that development is not owned and dispensed by a few but is a common undertaking on an international, multilateral scale, with the human being as its centre, its sole agent and its beneficiary. All that is needed is a new look at the world, and different premises.o Federico Mayor — Summary Records from the 131st session of

the UNESCO Executive Board. Paris, 1990. Arts. 104-108, pp. 34-36.

The 3 Purposes of Evolutionary Development

Evolutionary Development

Seeks to:o Do more with lesso Increase quality of lifeo Create a sustainable economyo Protect the natural environmento Promote lifelong learning and innovationo Foster community — connections and

meaning

Evolutionary development is a call for integration, for applying what we already know, for innovating

with the future of the planet in mind, for reinventing what it means to be human

The 5+n Rs of Sustainable Product Stewardship

1. Reduce 2. Reuse 3. Reclaim4. Recycle 5. Refuse

n Redesign

0 Reframe

A Better Compass…

๏ As a society, we have to learn better how to learn – I call it social learning; it is the dynamism for change that could lead us to a new kind of society that will not destroy itself from its own excesses… for we must share a vision for a new society before we can realize it. Designing a better society and maintaining a good life require deep thought and sustained effort by all of us. Reasoning together is the only way we can bring it about.

• Lester W. Milbrath – Learning Our Way Out, 1989

Playing the Macro-Violin

To describe his Theory U, Otto Scharmer quotes the violinist Miha Pogacnik recounting the insight he gained during his first concert in Chartres:

• I felt that the cathedral almost kicked me out. ‘Get out with you!’ she said. For I was young and I tried to perform as I always did: by just playing my violin. But then I realized that in Chartres you actually cannot play your small violin, but you have to play the ‘macro violin’. The small violin is the instrument that is in your hands. The macro-violin is the whole cathedral that surrounds you. The cathedral of Chartres is built entirely according to musical principles. Playing the macro violin requires you to listen and to play from another place, from the periphery. You have to move your listening and playing from within to beyond yourself.

Conversation as Strategy

Conversation for relationship

Conversation for learning

Conversation for possibilities

Conversation for action

“First, be the change you want to see in the world” – Gandhi

“Before we can change the way we live, before we have saved the rainforest and the whales, we need to change ourselves. Humanity with all its different races is one. We and all other living things are nourished and sustained by the same earth. This is our salvation, this is our responsibility. How can we turn our back on Mother Earth?”

– Rema, a 14 year old girl from New Zealand

Be the systems you want to see in the world…

• Evolu'onary  Leadership  for  Systemic  Sustainability

A Systemic Process

Emergent Self-organizing Interdependent Synergetic Evolving

Sustainability is a journey, not a destination

Talking the Talk

Walking the Talk

Living the Walk

Dancing the Path

Evolutionary LeadershipQuotes

“Leadership” is a concept we often resist. It seems immodest, even self-aggrandizing, to think of ourselves as leaders. But if it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vocation, and it can be an evasion to insist that it is not. When we live in the close-knit ecosystem called community, everyone follows and everyone leads.

– Parker Palmer

The wise leader does not intervene unnecessarily. The leader's presence is felt, but often the group runs itself...The leader's personal state of consciousness creates a climate of openness...The leader who knows when to listen, when to act, and when to withdraw can work effectively with nearly anyone...To know how other people behave takes intelligence. To know myself takes wisdom... It puzzles people at first, to see how little the able leader actually does, and yet how much gets done... Run an honest, open group... It is more important to tell the simple, blunt truth than it is to say things that sound good.

– The DaoDeJing

Because of our obsession with how leaders behave and with the interactions of leaders and followers, we forget that in its essence, leadership is about learning how to shape the future... Leadership exists when people are no longer victims of circumstances but participate in creating new circumstances. Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding of the world. Ultimately leadership is about creating new realities.

– Adam Kahane, quoting Peter Senge in his introduction to Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski

The very highest leader is barely known by men. Then comes the leader they know and love. Then the leader they fear. Then the leader they despise. The leader who does not trust enough will not be

trusted. And so it is that a leader is best not when people obey and acclaim him, but if — when the work is done — the people say, 'we did it ourselves'.

– Laozi

The Work of Evolutionary Leaders

“The key challenge of this new century — for social scientists, natural scientists, and everyone else — will be to build ecologically sustainable communities, designed in such a way that their technologies and social institutions — their material and social structures — do not interfere with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life.

The design principles of our future social institutions must be consistent with the principles of organization that nature has evolved to sustain the web of life.”

– Fritjof Capra The Hidden Connections

The most meaningful activity in which a human being can be engaged is one that is directly related to human evolution. This is true because human beings now play an active and critical role not only in the process of their own evolution but in the survival and evolution of all living beings.

Awareness of this places upon human beings a responsibility for their participation in and contribution to the process of evolution.

Acceptance and acknowledgement of this responsibility and creative engagement in the

process of metabiological evolution consciously would bring forth a new reality.

– Jonas Salk

The Need for Evolutionary Leadership

We undergo the evolution that we envision for ourselves.

» Theodore Roszak