1. Update your understanding of how change happens.
2. Know you’re complicit, but that means you have power.
3. Learn enough to get involved, but don’t get stuck.
4. Imagine the world you actually want to bring about.
5. Start by dismantling the system within.
6. Identify your role in a system so you can subvert it.
7. Tap into communities, preferably in the real world.
8. Don’t let the bigness of it all burn you out.
9. Grieve what you can’t change, which will be a lot.
10. Go out and DO THE DAMN THING.

A Practical Guide to Systemic Change – YouTube

• Weavers: I see the through-lines of connectivity between people, places, organizations, ideas, and movements.
• Experimenters: I innovate, pioneer, and invent. I take risks and course-correct as needed.
• Frontline Responders: I address community crises by marshaling and organizing resources, networks, and messages.
• Visionaries: I imagine and generate our boldest possibilities, hopes and dreams, and remind us of our direction.
• Builders: I develop, organize, and implement ideas, practices, people, and resources in service of a collective vision.
• Caregivers: I nurture and nourish the people around me by creating and sustaining a community of care, joy, and connection.
• Disruptors: I take uncomfortable and risky actions to shake up the status quo, to raise awareness, and to build power.
• Healers: I recognize and tend to the generational and current traumas caused by oppressive systems, institutions, policies, and practices.
• Storytellers: I craft and share our community stories, cultures, experiences, histories, and possibilities through art, music, media, and movement.
• Guides: I teach, counsel, and advise, using my gifts of well-earned discernment and wisdom.

The Social Change Ecosystem Map (2020)

But emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies. Emergence is our inheritance as a part of this universe; it is how we change. Emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

all that you touch
you change
all that you change
changes you
the only lasting truth is change
god is change

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

All successful life is
Adaptable,
Opportunistic,
Tenacious,
Interconnected, and
Fecund.
Understand this.
Use it.
Shape God.

Octavia Butler (amb)

All successful life is (Fractal)

Adaptable, (Adaptive)

Opportunistic, (Nonlinear/Iterative)

Tenacious, (Resilient/Transformative Justice) Interconnected, and (Interdependent/Decentralized)

Fecund. (Creates More Possibilities)

Understand this. (Scholarship, Reflection)

Use it. (Practice/Experiment)

Shape God. (Intention)

Octavia Butler said, “civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.” She also said “all that you touch you change / all that you change, changes you.” We are constantly impacting and changing our civilization—each other, ourselves, intimates, strangers.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Octavia Butler said, “Belief initiates and guides action—Or it does nothing.” In her twelve novels and her short stories, she created case studies that teach how to lead inside of change, shaping change. I’ve been calling what I learn from her work emergent strategy. Based in the science of emergence, it’s relational, adaptive, fractal, interdependent, decentralized, transformative.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Intentional adaptation is the heart of emergent strategy. How we live and grow and stay purposeful in the face of constant change actually does determine both the quality of our lives, and the impact that we can have when we move into action together.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Collaborative Ideation

“I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.”

—Octavia Butler

Ideation is just the verb for coming up with ideas. We are socialized to come up with ideas in isolation and compete with them, to have the best idea and get rewarded for it. But if we want a world that works for more people, we have to get into the practice of ideating together, letting others as close as possible into the intimate space where ideas are born.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Emergence is a system that makes use of everything in the iterative process. It’s all data.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

I would call our work to change the world “science fictional behavior”—being concerned with the way our actions and beliefs now, today, will shape the future, tomorrow, the next generations.

We are excited by what we can create, we believe it is possible to create the next world.

We believe.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

The strategies that played out in Octavia’s books included adaptability and interdependence—often through the practice of repeated vulnerability.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Less talk, more action y'all, it's what the
children need
Less talk, more action y'all, big mood I have a
dream
(Big Mood)
Less talk, more action y'all, no matter where
you from
Less talk about improvement,
We are the motivation,
We are the movement

Go to work
Go to work
Giddy up
Go to work

It's time for us as a people to mobilize,
organize, plot, plan and strategize
No matter what your race, creed, color, or
religion
It's not enough
To say we're gonna change
It's not enough
We need real changes
It's not enough
To say we're gonna change
It's not enough
We need real changes
Can you hear me
(Yes we can)
Can you feel me
(I Feel You Man)
Can you hear me
(Yes we can)
Can you feel me
(I Feel You Man)

—Go To Work by The Main Squeeze

So what do we do? 
So what do we do?
We’re all in this situation 
So what do we do?

If not you, then who?
If not now, then when?
(Who do you wanna be?)
If not you, then who?
If not you, then who?
(Who do you wanna be?)
If not you, then who? 
If not now, then when?
(Who do you wanna be?) 
If not you, then who?
I’ll say it again
Who do you wanna be? Who, who, do you want to be? 
Who, who, do you want to be? Who, who?
Do you want to be? Who, who? 
Do you wanna be?

Dream Wife – Who Do You Wanna Be?