Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what’s going to happen next.

—Gilda Radner,It’s Always Something

Change begins with disruption. Whether caused by something small—a broken promise—or large—a hurricane sweeping across a city—disturbance interrupts the status quo. We may find it positive: a promotion, losing weight, a new baby. We may experience it with dread: loss of a job, a contract, a life. No matter what the disruption, because it is disturbing, it can lead to change.

Disruption, disturbance, tension, upheaval, dissonance, chaos. These conditions stress us. They often challenge our ability to work together toward common goals. Some disruptions, like upheaval and chaos, are more extreme, but they all stimulate change. And though we usually relate to such situations negatively, one key shift to engaging emergence is developing a positive relationship with these sorts of stressors. In fact, disrupting compassionately is a particularly effective approach.

Most of us avoid tension and disturbances. We attempt to plan them away, control them, or destroy them. Perhaps we hold in our anger because we don’t want to cause a fuss. We feel a little more isolated as a result, but order is maintained. We learn to walk around these isolation zones, sometimes forgetting they exist. Yet they typically worsen with time. Alienation, rigidity, greed, intolerance, and inaction or violence grow. Such characteristics are present in many of our current crises.

What if tensions inspired curiosity? What if we knew how to express our anger, fear, or grief so that it contributed to something better? This introduction describes a fundamental pattern of change as a guide for working with disruption. It examines how disturbances surface useful differences that generate coherent order. It puts emergence in context with other forms of change to clarify when engaging emergence makes sense. It speaks to why engaging emergence matters. The introduction ends by naming benefits of engaging emergence.

A Pattern of Change

How does change happen? Whether it is human, cosmological, geological, or biological, some aspects of change are predictable. By understanding them, we are better equipped to work with them. Every system contains the following:

A DRIVE FOR COHERENCE—Relationship, unity, bonding, wholeness, coalescing—a coming together—convergence. Think of atoms forming molecules, people joining communities, or our longing to contribute to something larger than ourselves.

OCCASIONAL DISRUPTIONS—Interruptions to the status quo, unexpected actions—disturbance. Think of natural disasters, angry protesters, changes in work policies or laws.

A DRIVE FOR DIFFERENTIATION—Becoming separate, individual, distinct, unique—a breaking apart—divergence. Think of teenagers separating from parents to find their identity, a coworker striking off to freelance, or our longing to be accepted for who we are.

These forces are constantly interacting, mutually influencing each other. Nature plays out this pattern over and over. For example, a new species appears, disrupts the existing ecosystem, sorts out who survives and who goes extinct, and ultimately arrives at a new coherent state. The same dynamics play out in human systems. A case in point: writing this book has been a constant ebb and flow of disruption, differentiation, and coherence.

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The seeds of this book have been with me for years. The size of the second edition of The Change Handbook disturbed me. We were cataloging methodologies that were being created faster than we could document them. Something deeper was happening. Understanding that something mobilized me to write, hoping to see the different notions that surfaced. Eventually, the outline for the book you now hold coalesced. I was on a roll. I wrote to a schedule because the content was clear. Sometimes, my musings surfaced a useful distinction that found its way into the outline. The work was “steady as she goes.”

The first draft was flowing out of me when I tripped. I was starting to write Part 2. I had a headache. I couldn’t concentrate. Forcing my way through left me exhausted, the material uninspired. Then it hit me: I faced disruption! I remembered the pattern of change. Treating my frustration with compassion, I acknowledged the disturbance and experimented with differences until something cohered. I realized there was no Part 2. The book got simpler, and I got back to writing.

The resulting manuscript went to readers. I posted it on a blog. Feedback came from a variety of people, and I looked for distinctions and similarities among their responses. Themes coalesced. I planned my revisions, including adding stories and how-to tips; made an outline; and got to work. And the chapters got longer. Too long. The manuscript asserted itself and I was stuck. Worse, my editor found the organization confusing. This time, I got the message before the headache: welcome disturbance. I experimented with different strategies. What could I delete? Would breaking the material into more chapters eliminate the confusion? Could I use different visual presentations? As options differentiated themselves, I kept tuning in to what the manuscript itself was telling me. I listened for what wanted to emerge. With great editorial coaching, a breakthrough occurred: tell a nonlinear story in a linear way. And so I have.

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Mostly, the experience was a steady state of writing, reviewing, editing, and writing. Sometimes, distinctions led to incremental shifts—adding or removing a chapter. Occasionally, I threw up my hands when the manuscript’s organization blew apart. Ultimately, it coalesced into a new, more coherent order. Steady state, incremental shifts, emergence. Understanding these different ways in which change happens equips us to work more effectively with disruption.

Forms of Change

Though all change begins with disruption, not all change is emergent. This book focuses on emergent change because it is least understood and we need more effective ways of working with it. Knowing how emergence fits with other forms of change provides perspective on why we are experiencing more and stronger disruptions. It also helps us to understand when engaging emergence makes sense. Emergence will happen whether or not we choose to engage with it. We increase the likelihood of less destructive experiences and more desirable outcomes by working with it. I characterize change in three forms:

STEADY STATE—Disturbance is handled within the existing situation. A minor fix is made, or the disruption is ignored or suppressed. Business as usual continues. For example, a speeder gets a ticket for driving too fast.

INCREMENTAL SHIFTS—Disruptions interrupt the status quo. We distinguish what the disturbance brings to the system and integrate changes. For example, a constitution is amended.

EMERGENCE—Occasional upheaval results when principles that keep a system orderly break down. Chaos sparks experiments. Current assumptions are clarified, and new possibilities surface. Ultimately, something dies and a new coherence arises that contains aspects of the old and the new but isn’t either. For example, a revolution leads to a new form of governance.

Much of today’s angst comes from treating all disruptions as if they fit a steady state scenario or, at worst, could be managed through incremental shifts. Economic upheaval, failing schools, increasing terrorism—all indicate larger forces in play.

The Consequences of Not Engaging Emergence

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