A Practical Guide to Systemic Change – YouTube
- Update your understanding of how change happens.
- Know you’re complicit, but that means you have power.
- Learn enough to get involved, but don’t get stuck.
- Imagine the world you actually want to bring about.
- Start by dismantling the system within.
- Identify your role in a system so you can subvert it.
- Tap into communities, preferably in the real world.
- Don’t let the bigness of it all burn you out.
- Grieve what you can’t change, which will be a lot.
- Go out and DO THE DAMN THING.
…engage with the epistemic disruptions that are necessary if we are to change the world.
Keynote: A Critical Reflection on Our Struggle for a More Just and Loving World – Dr. Antonia Darder – YouTube
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.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
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
When we speak of systemic change, we need to be fractal. Fractals—a way to speak of the patterns we see—move from the micro to macro level. The same spirals on sea shells can be found in the shape of galaxies. We must create patterns that cycle upwards. We are microsystems.
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
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
emergent strategy
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
strategy for building complex patterns and systems of change through relatively small interactions
The Social Change Ecosystem Map (2020)
- 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.
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
When the movement becomes part of the patriarchal system we swore to tear down, the left cuts down the left while the right upholds the crown 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?
