Practices for Transitions in a Time Between Worlds

Authors: Multiple

Publication: Stanford Social Innovation Review Supplement

We hope this supplement touches your hearts, calls to your souls, and stretches your sense of what’s possible, but also what these times require of us: how we can bring more of ourselves into the world to answer calls for something different and new. We believe that this supplement also offers ideas that are deeply practical. There are practices to go away with, others to implement, initiatives to resource, and projects and programs to try.

Wicked Problems: Addressing the Crises of the 21st Century with Complex Systems Theory

Authors: Aishwarya Khanduja and Ines Hipolito

Wicked problems, such as climate change, systemic poverty, and healthcare inequalities, rep- resent the most pressing and intractable crises of the 21st Century. We propose a novel approach that leverages complex systems theory as a comprehensive framework for understanding and tack- ling these challenges.

Unearthing Beauty: Towards a Leadership of Devotion

Author: Laura Blakeman

Publication: Journal of Awareness Based Systems Change

Working with beauty, and with aesthetic processes more generally, may be a critical awareness practice that bridges the logical and the analogical mind and invites an attunement to something larger than the individual self that is at once transpersonal and ecologically grounded. Such an orientation, I argue, builds upon the principles and practices of complexity leadership to include a way of being that is both sensitive to beauty and attempts to create more of it in the world. I call this way of being a leadership of devotion… (image: Deborah Koff-Chapin)

Whispers From the Garden: Eldering and Social Change

Author: Cheryl Rose

Publication: Hollyhock Retreat Centre

I’ve spent decades supporting incredible, amazing leaders from all walks of life – almost all at least twenty to thirty years younger than me. Now, my attention turned towards my peers, those still passionate about wanting to contribute to a better world yet also heeding an inner intuition that called for changes to the focus and quality of their leadership. What would it mean to intentionally seed purposeful, new ways of knowing, being and doing at this point? What would it take to consciously, bravely say ‘yes’ to this inner calling to elderhood?

Ninja Training Meets Management Education

Author: Julian Norris

Publication: Journal of Management Education

In this paper I describe the integration of taijutsu, a martial art emerging from the Japanese ninja tradition, into an MBA complexity leadership course. I review the literature related to martial arts training in management education and discuss the pedagogical challenges of developing both the competencies and capacities required to lead in complexity. I introduce taijutsu and describe several training drills and a facilitation methodology intended to help students develop practical fluency with systems thinking and its implications for leadership and decision-making.

Duck Shit Tea, Yarning & the Magical Space In Between Things.

Authors: Melanie Goodchild and Tyson Yunkaporta

When Tyson wrote to say that he and his family were coming to Manitou Aki – the lands of the Anishinaabe, currently known as North America – the timing coincided with my writing retreat.

The only way I could swing it was to rent an Airbnb, go site-seeing by day and write by night. So, this first retreat is an experiment. What happens when we drink bowls of tea, yarn, and spend a week with my weapon-wielding rock star brother-in-law and his family in a shared Airbnb in the Falls? …

Centered at the Edges. Thoughts on reflective practice and system entrepreneurship.

Publication: Wolf Willow Press

Author: Cheryl Rose

System entrepreneurs courageously step right to the edges of what is now – and what could be. They need to be supported with time, learning and mentorship to embrace reflective practice so they’re able to do inner work for complex personal development – because this, ultimately, enhances our collective efforts to ensure the well-being of people, communities and our planet.

Conscious Closure: The Wild Life of Dying.

Speaker: Vanessa Reid

Platform: TEDx Toronto The Annex Women

For everything there is a season, and this includes our social innovations and collective endeavours. Vanessa Reid graciously takes us into a part of our work and life that we rarely talk about: How do we generatively and with awareness work with the cycles of living and dying, both personal and collective, to touch into the unique qualities of life activated in the time of dying?

Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada.

Author: Rodney Diverlus, Sandy Hudson, Syrus Marcus Ware

Publisher: University of Regina Press

Until We Are Free contains some of the very best writing on the hottest issues facing the Black community in Canada. It describes the latest developments in Canadian Black activism, organizing efforts through the use of social media, Black-Indigenous alliances, and more.

Learning As Social Innovation

Authors: Julian Norris and Laura Blakeman

Publication: Social Innovations Review

Learning drives social innovation. It is the desired outcome, the primary tool and the personal praxis shared by all social innovators. In this paper we describe a whole-person learning initiative that seeks to build social innovation competencies and capacities and we discuss the growing conversation between inner work and system change approaches.

Relational Systems Thinking.

Authors: Melanie Goodchild with Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Roronhiakewen (He Clears the Sky) Dan Longboat, Kahontakwas Diane Longboat, Rick Hill and Ka’nahsohon (A Feather Dipped in Paint) Kevin Deer.

Publication: Journal of Awareness Based Systems Change

We explore the notion of the need to decolonize systems thinking and awareness. Taking a specifically Indigenous approach to both knowledge creation and knowledge sharing, we look at awareness-based systems change via a Haudenosaunee (Mohawk) two-row visual code.

What It Takes to Lead Through an Era of Exponential Change.

Authors: Aneel Chima and Ron Gutman

Publication: Harvard Business Review

No, it isn’t just you — the pace of change has picked up. More than that, whereas we used to experience disruptions followed by periods of stability, change now is increasingly perpetual, pervasive, and exponential. To keep pace, leaders need to take a different approach than the “leader as hero” model — the solo, individualistic leader who inspires certainty in a deterministic way forward. The authors suggest a new approach, which they call Sapient Leadership, inspired by conversations held at Stanford in the spring of 2020.

Growing Still. Reflections on the Inner Work Dialogues.

Authors: Laura Blakeman, Saralyn Hodgkin and Cheryl Rose

Publication: Wolf Willow Press

The TLN emerged from the social innovation field towards the end of 2018 and regularly convened interested practitioners for a collective, nuanced exploration of how transformative change happens. Our intention was to deepen our understanding of the critical relationship between inner change in individuals and outer change in society.

Resources

“When we find our courage, live from our depths, trust our relationships, feel our gratitude for the hard things that have happened — then our actions… well, they are really something.”