Beyond the Organization

We have a funny relationship with our organizations. We tend to forget that we built them. We tend to forget that without us they are abstractions, little more than a piece of paper in a government office. We tend to forget that we are alive and that they are not, they are tools, ways to structure how we work together so that we can do what we want to do, but better. I often talk of this situation of being a lot like “The Matrix,” the humans built the computers to serve them but instead they ended up mostly dead, in a fake world, giving up their energy to keep the computers alive.

Ok – so organizations themselves are not bad, in fact, they can be very useful, but we have to make them serve us. We not only have to change how our organizations work, we have to change how we relate to them. We must change them as WE grow, the point is not for the organization to grow, grow, grow – the point is for us to grow. Today we are stuck with terribly outdated organizational paradigms, it’s the information age, and yet we still organize ourselves in antiquated industrial structures that constrain our passion and limit our potential.

It is time that we transcend our organizational constraints – especially in the social sector, where our purpose is not profit but creating a new world. We can no longer afford to come around meeting tables and play organizational poker with one another. We can no longer afford to allow our organizational affiliations to get in the way of our doing work together. The social sector is full of good people, passionately committed people, brilliant-strategic-idealists, but we too often fail to catalyze the magic in our hearts – our core resource – because we can only relate to another through some sort of organizational identity.

There is a lot more to be said about this, a lot more to explore and discover together, and I hope that this space can become a part of our collective effort. But for now, here is the invitation – find out who is sitting across the table, not who they work for. Find out how they got into the work, what is their story – not just their ideology, find out what they are looking for, what they love and what they have always wanted to do but have not yet been able to do, because maybe, just maybe, they might want the same thing as you.

Dream

Gurumayi showed up in my dreams last night! Receiving a teaching this way is a most auspicious event – my heart still sings with gratitude. I can count the times that I have been blessed in this way, and it is a sweetness that I often long for. I will spare the details, some of which were purely comedic – the Guru has a sense of humor! But I do want to briefly share the essence of what I was taught by my beloved.

She walked with me through a beautiful gateway to a courtyard and we kneeled by a fountain of spring water. With her guidance I put my arm in the fountain and started to drag out old leaves. Those leaves that come down with the Fall, and become old through the Winter, the more leaves I cleared out, the more spring water burst forth. I got really into the process and she gently smiled and said – “this is also what you do inside” – and my heart was filled with joy.

We had an intimate exchange, she allowed me to hold the top of her hand against my forehead as I bowed in gratitude, and the immensity of love overcame all of my being – this is the Grace that I still feel as I write these words for me and for you.

My contemplation of this experience has only just begun, but one thing that is already clear is how organic the whole process is. The leaves are not bad, they are just a season that has passed, and they must be cleared away for us to have a pure heart.

With you, in love and gratitude,

Gibrán

Here is the Breakthrough

Anish Kapoor successfully challenges our notions of time and space within the realm of our own experience, not as abstraction. Those of us who work in the field of organizational development can significantly heighten our impact by following his example and honing our own ability to invite people into alternative experiences of time and space.

What Kapoor refers to as “mythological time” can also be understood as the archetypal realm – human history reveals itself through this realm. The epic nature of a historical moment in which expansive evolutionary possibility is coupled with the threat of mass extinction demands that we step into mythological time. Kapoor achieves this imperative by stepping into the pioneer-artist archetype, successfully expanding the realm of the possible, bringing it to the surface and making it visible.

Those of us concerned with social transformation do well by engaging this artistic quest and concerning ourselves with what it means to create alternative space and reinvent notions of time. A radical shift in perspective – an alternative time/space experience – has become an increasingly important aspect of a sociopolitical project that is again concerning itself with what is spiritual.

Kapoor demonstrates his understanding of an inner world that we are able to intuit but not always communicate and much less make manifest. His success bodes well for those of us who are intentionally aiming to manifest a breakthrough. Those of us who bring people together and host spaces that are meant to expand the generative freedom of a collective have a lot to celebrate in Anish Kapoor – he has proven that it is possible.

Decentralizing Systems

Many of us exploring the relationship between network theory and emergence are still finding ourselves baffled by questions of planning and implementation. The command and control model, solidly grounded in Newtonian physics and the industrial age, also tends to feed our more personal fantasies of power, agency and order at a grand scale. The laws of emergence seem to point toward smaller spaces where crtical connections are made and relationships of trust are fostered in more intimate settings. The process calls for a letting-go that still feels anathema to a movement that exists in perpetual crisis mode.

But there is such a being as the agent of change. Powerful decentralized networks move in the world having been launched or inspired by someone’s passion – someones sense of purpose and intention – someone’s ability to articulate a resonant vision. So while I continue to trust the laws of emergence, and commit to investing myself in the quality of micro-interactions that bring any given system to life, I am also intrigued by the possibility of intentionally fostering decentralized systems of purpose as a way to build movement for social transformation.

In The Starfish and the Spider, Brafman and Beckstrom refer to the five legs of a decentralized organization, they list:

1. Circles

2. The Catalyst

3. Ideology

4. The Preexisting Network

5. The Champion

Looking at these five legs, it seems possible to me that given:

a. the right rallying call

b. the right convener and

c. a facilitated process that places the right level of emphasis on building relationships of trust

A dedicated group of people could set out to catalyze a decentralized movement for social change. Grounded in actual experience, one can start to imagine a set of group processes and concrete “desired outcomes” to foment the sort of collaborative effort that would sustain these conditions. This is the work that I’m doing.

More to follow!

Thirty Three

Christ – You are my Mantra
Your Passion, My Sadhana
Welcome
You Great Wise
And Divine Lord

Om Bright Light
Behind my eyes
I am your servant
Gurudev
Welcome

Song of all my songs
Breath of all my
Days
You pauseless pause
Game of Love

Welcome
My Eternal Play
Om Divine Bliss
Om Eternal Play
Om Gurudeva, Om Gurudev

The Gathering

There really is a shift in the field! I am just now returning from helping to facilitate the leadership retreat of “The Gathering for Justice” and it might just be the closest I’ve come to witnessing the birthing process of movement. These heroic human beings have invested the last few years in trust building, in ritual making and in learning to love one another. They certainly have a lot of work to do, a lot to clarify, processes to define, more grappling with “the what” of the thing – but they are aware of this, and they’re ready to stick out.

I write to share my inspiration (and yes, it certainly helped that the retreat was in Miami!) as well as to ask that if any of you know of “capacity building” resources that would be interested in supporting this work, please let me know. This crew is working on a shoestring and I would really love for us at the Interaction Institute for Social Change to find a way to serve them with our organizational development expertise.

Finally, I am also sending a couple of links that might not have anything to do with “The Gathering” but yet have everything to do with it and with what so many of us are doing. One is a very brief video that I am hoping will show how resonant our work is with this global awakening and the other is a powerful speech by our friend Van Jones that I think goes a long way to help us re-frame our approach to work in the social change sector.

I am wishing you a thousand blessings while sending you a whole lot of love from a heart that has been blown away by Grace.

Hasta la Democracia,

Gibrán

http://www.globalonenessproject.org/video/Global-Oneness-Project-Trailer/1

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/12/25/miracles/

http://www.thegatheringforjustice.org