AWN #WeekNotes w/c 19 June 2023
Living System Leadership with 4SD Foundation.
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (What’s needed, What’s ready? What can we do? What next?). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
This week's has one theme: Living System Leadership.
Living Systems Leadership
Step: 0/DETECTING and 4/DEVELOP. Theme: Transforming systems; Atelier Practice
I spent most of this week exploring one frontier of leadership, namely Living Systems Leadership, with the 4SD Foundation, which "enable people to navigate complex challenges by applying Living Systems Leadership so they are effective for equity, justice and regenerative futures in a complex, fast-changing world."
The Foundation was started by David Nabarro, a former UN diplomat in the food, health and sustainability spaces, and Florence Lasbennes, also formerly from the UN with a track record in food and nutrition in particular. (I interviewed David N for my podcast, ‘What can we do in this Powerful Times?’ here.
They talk about Living Systems Leadership as "offer[ing] a holistic way for those involved in sustainable development to work together when navigating complexity and negotiating contested issues. It helps groups to work for transformational change through including all groups of people as partners, acknowledging power asymmetries and encouraging exploration of embracing perspectives".
It is a leadership which treats all human situations as part of living systems, which means paying attention to complexity, emergence, sense-making, and context. Below I'll come back to my view on why this feels vague and wishy-washy.
Back in 2019 I had been introduced to 4SD by a mutual friend, Charlotte Dufour (Powerful Times interview here), and taken part in a 'living systems leadership' immersion -- 3 days exploring what that set of practices could mean for systems change. The immersion this week was a chance for past attendees to learn from efforts in the last 4 years.
A lot has happened. David was a special envoy for WHO on COVID (anyone in the UK will almost certainly have heard him being interviewed on TV or radio). 4SD also supported a series of national dialogues which fed into the UN Food Systems Summit in Sep 2021, the first cross-UN event on food in many decades.
Now, the immersion was designed to be a safe space, with a high level of confidentiality, so that people felt safe to share. So, there's a lot of detail which I can't share. Which is a shame, as it is in the specifics that the this domain goes from wishy-washy to practical and useful.
Having said that, there is still lots. Here are the headings the rest of this post is organised under.
Deeply impressive attempts to shift global systems.
The importance of caring in deed, word and thought.
New practice: 'accompanying'
Caring and accompanying as 'force multipliers'.
Sense-making: crafting stories which start where people are, and open up possibilities.
Who is the 'we', such that 'we contain multitudes'?
From hoarding scarce 'energy' to generating abundant 'energy'
Living in a predicament, not solving a problem.
So much adulting.
Progress but still early-stage tacit knowledge.
Living Systems Leadership: a maturing niche, and prospective 'scenius'.
Deeply impressive attempts to shift global systems.
The Food Systems Dialogues are really inspirational, in intent, design, and execution. Of course, they were not perfect. But, it is quite something to get 140+ countries to have dialogues, plus voluntary ones bringing the total to 1,685, with 110,000 people involved. which pushed a non-silo'ed approach to food into head of state speeches, government policy formation and multilateral collaborations.
My reflection is that the approach mirrors the way Figueres switched the climate negotiations. In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol agreed centrally a global target and allocations to governments, but without any enforcement mechanisms or accountability — or much national buy-in. Not surprisingly, it failed. The Paris Agreement in 2015 rested on Nationally Determined Contributions to a globally agreed goal, with a 5 year stock-taking and ratchet. Responsibility sits with the national governments. It’s record is hardly one of immediate success, but the possibility is still there.
The Food System national dialogues created national pathways that were the responsibility of the relevant governments. The dialoguing processes meant that drawing up those pathways was more likely to have wider groups, beyond the normal lobbyists, than before. All the time building new relationships within a country, and between countries. Plus raising the awareness of how feeding people well-enough to connected to, well, everything. Even if the national pathways do not get taken up (and some are/might), all those are strong outcomes.
There are case studies and doctorates to be written on this one intervention alone.
The importance of caring in deed, word and thought.
We had a whole morning where the 4SD staff walked us through the detail of the Food System Dialogues. A key part of what inspired me was the level of care shown for all the people involved. As with any attempt to shift a status quo, it was a stressful and political situation, for the staff members, for the national coordinators they were working with (who were running the in-country dialogues) and so on.
There were lots of ways in which the 4SD people gave care. For instance, the Friday morning team catch up was entirely reserved for how they were feeling (Mon-Thu being task-orientated). They held opt-in sessions for the national coordinators, which became spaces for a sense of community and safety (deeply important when some national coordinators having to to cope with the aftermaths of coups).
The case for care is at least twofold.
Ethical: it is morally right to care for others.
Strategic: feeling that others have you in mind is motivating.
But there is also just the fact that organisations often embody their founders, for good and ill. In this case, anyone who has met David and Flo will tell you that they care. Hardly a surprise that the process their organisation runs also embodies 'care for the other'.
New practice: 'accompanying'
Another part of embodying care was the practice of 'accompanying'. This was the 4SD name for supporting the dialogue convenors. Knowing what was going on for them, the last interaction, the next thing to do. Others might call that 'relationship management'. But that term fails to carry the richness of 'accompanying', which (in the way the 4SD folk said it) conveyed something more, something abouthelping the people being accompanied to do as well as they could, in their own terms, in their own situation.
The accompanying was underpinned by a contacts database (in Airtable, apparently). But more improtant than the technology was the intent.
Caring and accompanying as 'force multipliers'.
That said, there is a strategic imperative to both caring and accompanying. Through the stories I was struck by how both practices increased the capacity of the 4SD team:
Caring: increased their emotional resilience, and so were able to do more work.
Accompanying: the careful tracking in Airtable meant they could handle many more relationships (and hand them over as team members changed) than otherwise.
Sense-making: crafting stories which start where people are, and open up possibilities.
Anyone who heard one of David Nabarro's Today interviews, or took part in any of the huge number of Open Online Briefings, will know that he has a rare ability to convey complex material with direct simplicity.
My own experience is that he is one of the best I have ever come across at summarising the conversation in a room, even when it has been hours long, emotional, contradictory and seemingly arbitrary. He is able to make a number of points which make everyone feel heard, and as though we've had a coherent exchange which has landed in a sensible place.
This sense-making is a central practice to the 4SD approach. During the week I characterised it as crafting stories which resonate with:
where people are starting (and so meeting people where they are, not imposing on them where they should be); and
where people can be going together (as in, the sense made includes some sense of there are ways forward from here, that we are not at a deadend).
Now, I've always been a bit sniffy about a high reliance on 'narrative'. This despite the separate work of friends of mine (Ella Saltmarsh and Zoe Aren) on narratives for systems change or for as a leadership practice respectively. Plus, stories were a central feature of how tribes and cultures work, according to Gaia Vince's amazing Transcendence (which I read recently). So, it seems I need ot just get over myself, and accept that narratives are vital.
Who is the 'we', such that 'we contain multitudes'?
The group was only 20 people, but was, in some ways, more diverse than most groups that size that I meet with. There were people from Europe, North America, Africa and Asia; plus a good gender balance. You could argue that we all are part of a global professional class (or, more narrowly, a global 'UN/NGO/do-gooder' strata).
Early on there was a caution about using 'we'. Who is the 'we' that we are referring to? The people raising this point were calling out something I see a lot in sustainability professionals: speaking about a global 'we', as if everyone agrees with sustainability professionals on what is important.
This is core to Branko Milanovic's critique of Donut Economics here:
"In many instances, Kate writes in the first-person plural, as if the entire world had the same “objective”: so “we” have to make sure the economy does not exceed the natural bounds of the Earth’s “carrying capacity”, “we” have to keep inequality within the acceptable limits, “we” have an interest in a stable climate, “we” need the commons sector. But in most of the real world economics and politics, there is no “we” that includes 7.3 billion people. Different class and national interests are fighting each other."
Instead, the push from the group, in different ways, to allow for many groups. Each of us is part of many groups, and have many identities. We (the sustainability do-gooders) should not be assuming that we (all of humanity) agree on where to go next or how to get there.
This reminds me that I need to finish reading Escobar's Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. (My question in reading it: how might we move from a global economics system dominated by neoliberalism to have a patchwork quilt of different political economies?)
From hoarding scarce 'energy' to generating abundant 'energy'
Most of the time, when involved in creating change, I think in terms of scarcity. Especially how people have limited time, bandwidth, motivation, interest, room for manoeuvre, resources and so on. So, I realise I could describe myself as trying to manage that scarce energy, to move it from the normal activities where the energy is currently tied up, over into the new activities needed to shift the patterning.
A claim from 4SD about the Food System Dialogues was that these unlocked more 'energy' in those who took part. And because there was more energy, there was more that could be done. I found the prospect of that exciting: how could I design and run processes which unlocked more energy (and increased the overal capacity in the system), rather than just trying to move where the energy was being used up?
Living in a predicament, not solving a problem.
One of the features of a living systems approach is to accept that our situation is complex, rather than merely complicated. Through the days we developed a hosrthand for that, using Chris Martenson's problem vs predicament distinction:
"The distinction boils down to this: problems have solutions; predicaments have outcomes. A solution to a problem fixes it, returning all to its original condition. Once a suitable solution can be found and made to work, a problem can be solved. A predicament, by contrast, has no solution."
Instead, we need to adapt with, evolve with, live with a predicament. Lots to unpack here (see also Dougald Hine's At Work in the Ruins, which is where I picked up this distinction.)
Holding competing views, and dealing with bad faith.
A feature of the livings systems leadership is to hold a space for competing views. The Food Systems Dialogues attempted to be as inclusive as possible. I understand this, especially as it was a feed into a UN process.
But, I wonder about the broader applicability. Surely, there are players who are known to have acted in bad faith in the past. Surely, it is reasonable to assume they would only get involved to undermine? Surely, you might exclude, or (better) only invite into a dialogic process when a lot of ground work has been laid?
So much adulting.
Through the three days we had a code word: adulting ("an informal term to describe behavior that is seen as responsible and grown-up"). We all felt that we had to do so much adulting, all the time. We are suprised and dismayed to find ourselves as the adults in the room (unlike many of the formal leaders, who do not act in responsible or grown up ways).
Progress but still early-stage tacit knowledge.
A few of us reflected how much this immersion differed from the first ones, back in 2019. In my memory, the content was much more abstract, as in "living systems means X, Y and Z, and so we now much behave like that". In the intervening years, 4SD has had many experiences. So, now the content is much more "when we were doing A,B and C, we were trying to put into practice X, Y and Z from a living systems view".
We had moved from untested theories to stories. There were attempts to get to rules of thumb, but those all felt rather forced to me.
All this reminded me of how tacit knowledge develops (see here for a great summary). In short, you need cycles of experience and sense-making in order to codify. In early stages, as we are now with Living Systems Leadership, it is not yet possible to codify as rules, or even as rules of thumb. More in terms of stories that instruct, and embodied in people who convey through their actions.
Living Systems Leadership: a maturing niche, and prospective 'scenius'.
All of which points to seeing Living Systems leadership as a maturing niche, still outside the mainstream but getting ever-more ready for when the struggles there mean that there are windows of opportunity for change.
As is often the case, such a niche relies on a small number of people, often with a figurehead, who speak to each other in a special way which is different from the norm (because they are trying to do things which are not the current norm). So, it can look wishy-washy, like an ivory tower -- or like a cult. But that's a feature of developing as a niche, outside the mainstream.
The next stage is to keep developing. On the final day we spoke about that in terms of a community. But I wonder if Brian Eno's notion of a 'scenius' might be more useful. “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.” Eno's experiences were of the 1970s music scene which gave us Roxy Music, Bowie and so on.
According to Kevin Kelly's summary, "individuals immersed in a productive scenius will blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like genius. Your like-minded peers, and the entire environment inspire you." Also, such a community is nurtured by several factors: mutual appreciation; rapid exchange of tools and techniques; network effects of success; and a local tolerance for the novelties.
WHAT NEXT?
For me, participation in 4SD's community and trying to bring a living systems leadership approach into what I am doing.