...And What Lies Ahead...
Photo: http://digital-photography-school.com/24-beautiful-dawn-images/ "... Is there any realistic hope that a sufficient number of skilled system leaders will emerge in time to help us face our daunting systemic challenges?" *
-- Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton, John Kania
There is no hope at all and the system leaders won't emerge in time!!! Of course this answer is to be understood as a challenge to wholeheartedly engage in what lies ahead us to face the challenges.
My questions on System Leadership try to illuminate parts of the wider field of System Leadership. They arose out of meditations on "The Dawn of System Leadership". The 39 questions are clustered around important themes which are:
- System Leader Type(s)
- Integrated System Leader
- The "Now" and the "Should" of System Leaders / System Leadership
- An inquiry into illuminating the blind spots of current System Leadership / System Leaders
- Learning / Education
- Practice
Let us engage in one of the most important and pressing questions of mankind as above formulated by Senge, Hamilton and Kania. We are called to bring in our courage, hands, hearts and minds. There is hope and system leaders will emerge as soon as we hold that intention in the global community of change makers.
And now the questions are yours. What other questions and comments do you have?
With deep appreciation,
Jürgen
~ The Questions ~
A: System Leader Type(s)
A.1 What kind of system leader do we need on the group, organizational and mundo level or when working on all levels more or less at the same time?
A.2 When looking at Galtung’s faultlines[1] in the human construction Nature, Gender, Generation, Deviance (criminal, mental, somatic), Race, Class (military, economic, political, cultural), Nation-Culture-Ideology and State-Country-Territory are there different system leaders required to working on the fault lines at different systems levels?
B: Integrated System Leader
B.1 When looking at Galtung’s faultlines in the human construction Nature, Gender, Generation, Deviance (criminal, mental, somatic), Race, Class (military, economic, political, cultural), Nation-Culture-Ideology and State-Country-Territory what can be said about the scale of integration a system leader working on different systems levels should embody?
B.2 What is to say about a system leader’s own healing processes accomplished in terms of psycho-existential-somatic healing and against the background of Galtung’s faultlines?
B.3 What does it really mean to have the ability to see the larger system?
B.4 How much is a system leader capable of fostering reflection and more generative conversations in a daily life apart from training events?
B.5 How much trust can an integrated system leader reflect (because of his or her overall commitments and journey through difficulties, challenges, and gateways) - to inspire others in processes for shifting relationships and contexts?
B.6 What perceptional qualities should a system leader reflect with regard to individual and collective vulnerability?
B.7 Is there a foundation of ethical values hold and performed by system leaders necessary at the mundo level? If yes, which are indispensable?
C: The “Now” and the “Should” of system leaders / system leadership
C.1 What is the core group of system leaders at the mundo level currently and what might be a core group “constellation” in mid-terms in the sense how Senge, Hamilton and Kania see him or her?
C.2 What additional skills of system leaders are currently seen as emerging on the horizon beyond the ones Senge, Hamilton and Kania are speaking about?
C.3 What about bringing (growing) system leaders together in regular (online) meetings who have massive “testified” experience in employing models of change that weave together process, human development and outcome?
C.4 What about measuring all leadership and change methodologies according to their contribution to solving the most pressing problems and foster or discard methodologies accordingly?
D: An inquiry into illuminating the blind spots of current system leadership / system leaders
D.1 What are the (future potential) working methodologies / practices in terms of healing the collectives as new paradigms for bringing forth collective leadership?
D.2 What are the required methodologies and transformational processes at the mundo level in the 36 months?
D.3 What contexts (like climate change context) at different societal levels enable the best leverage points for shifting systems smoothly, non-violently now?
D.4 What else has to be said in addition to the system leadership introduction given by Senge, Hamilton and Kania in terms of Galtung’s deep culture[2] and its syndromes?
D.5 What is needed to enlighten the blind spot of the three core capabilities of system leadership in order to move from relatively unknown (or known only superficially) to a “living” matrix of indispensable core capabilities?
D.6 When reflection means thinking about our thinking the question arises what conceptions do we hold about thinking? Isn’t the verbalized “non-thinking”[3] process the point in inspiring resp. enabling individuals, groups or organizations? What do we hear from the field when we be before our thinking?
D.7 How can budding system leaders be helped in going through their gateways while not destroying their courage, commitment, trust, resolve and determination along their paths?
D.8 What is the correlation between one’s own health commitment / achievement and the core healing a system leader should embody?
D.9 How much is known about the way leaders, groups, communities, and collectives of any kind (incl. change maker communities) bestow structural, cultural violence [4] and suffering (illnesses) on (potential) system leaders at a soul level?
D.10 To work effectively as a system leader at the mundo level contexts does it require first to be well integrated / healed as an individual?
D.11 Otto Scharmer and Katrin Käufer speak about three openings which are opening the mind, opening the heart and opening the will. I understand this as ongoing life process and not as a training event. I would suggest additionally a fourth dimension which is open the body mind complex as a Whole meaning incarnating fully. This means in following Graf Duerckheim the body mind complex has permeability, penetrability or conductivity at all system levels. What is known about this conductivity with regard to being in resonance with the mundo level?
D.12 What is the key question / commitment for system leaders or what was the key question / commitment for system leaders in taking and crossing most challenging gateways in their lives?
D.13 How much does a certain grasp of how the Tao works contribute to discerning “direction” in counter-intuitively behaving non-linear systems?
D.14 To what extent can our body-mind-wisdom [soul-heart-mind-connection) contribute to distinguishing the short-term from the long-term effects of an intervention?
D.15 How much has a system leader overcome his or her cultural immune system?
D.16 The work of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) might be partially an example of a system map on climate change when looking at their working collaboration and major reports. How can this example serve as a helper for other system leadership contexts or as a paradigm to bring (future) system leaders together?
D.17 What does it mean that a growing number of people are trying to adopt a systemic orientation? Is it meant as only thinking orientation or meant as a breakthrough into the world of form and non-form which is beyond the subject-object-split of our consciousness? Is this systemic orientation reflected in daily doing or work?
D.18 What are the values (German: Werte) of system leadership / system leaders with regard to current values and what isn’t seen as leadership values for the emerging future?
D.19 What does systems leadership mean under different socio-political-cultural settings?
D.20 How can a shared common intention be established and held among system leaders, among the current global change maker community with regard to the most pressing problems in the mundo context?
E: Learning / Education
E.1 What are the criteria for learning how potential system leaders go on in their personal development processes?
E.2 What educational background resp. experiential background are supportive to contributing to bring forth collective leadership?
E.3 What new learning and education settings are seen on the horizon?
F: Practice
F.1 How can a commitment, a profound commitment to contributing to the health of the whole over centuries be sustained, what kind of practices are required by (potential) system leaders?
F.2 Is a system leader willing to let die his or her previously held assumptions resp. convictions about system leader(s)(hip) which turned to be out “non-working “ or having less impact?
F.3 What is the daily practice of system leadership / of a system leader in order to avoid a fall-back into old patterns of thinking, old patterns of individual and collective acting?
Remarks of the author:
This paper is considered as an outcome of a meditation on questions about system leadership and system leaders. The author was inspired by the “The Dawn of System Leadership” by Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton, & John Kania.
The author is aware about the fact that he by nature can only have an incomplete overview on the themes, practices and insights already available in the global change maker community.
The author assumes that several questions written down in this paper are already part of the evolving global change maker community.
The order in this meditation does not necessarily reflect priorities of concern.
The author is grateful for the information, observations and insights given by Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton, & John Kania in “The Dawn of System Leadership”.
*This is the article, published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review
http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_dawn_of_system_leadership
[1] Conflict transformation by Peaceful means by Johan Galtung
https://www.transcend.org/pctrcluj2004/TRANSCEND_manual.pdf, date: 2015/01/09
[2] Conflict transformation by Peaceful means by Johan Galtung
https://www.transcend.org/pctrcluj2004/TRANSCEND_manual.pdf
[3] http://wwzc.org/dharma-text/thinking-about-not-thinking, date: 12.01.2015
[4] Conflict transformation by Peaceful means by Johan Galtung
https://www.transcend.org/pctrcluj2004/TRANSCEND_manual.pdf
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