The Power to Act

by David Holt

Nowhere to hide

This is a conference on leadership. A couple of hundred people are sitting on blue cushions in front of a low stage where a man in a jacket and tie is sitting cross-legged. He is explaining the principles of meditation. He has a sense of humour. “There is no perfect meditation,” he says. “The experience is always different. We are observing ourselves. Just notice how you have trouble controlling your mind for even a few seconds. Then ask, who is in charge here?”

It’s a good lesson. Scientists have learned that the brains of long-term meditators are different. Their aging process is slowed. They relax more deeply and focus better. In our modern society, these two qualities seem to be in short supply.

This is the first morning of The Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership Summer Program, which has been held at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax for the past seven years. At the start of every conference, founder Michael Chender speaks of the urgency of finding new ways of leadership that can address climate change, wars, political crises, the changing rules of business, the breakdown in social structures, and on and on. “We want to wait until we understand the world better,” he suggests, “and until we are more prepared and have more resources. The problem is that the pace of change is speeding up. There is no more time to wait. The time to act is now.” He says this every year. Every year it is more relevant than the year before.

Sliding down the “U”

I chose the Solving Tough Problems module, led by Adam Kahane of Cambridge, Mass.–based Generon Consulting. Kahane is a Canadian physicist and economist who played an important role in the undoing of apartheid in South Africa. The module is called a “change lab.” It uses the theory “U-process” of change management that MIT’s Otto Scharmer introduced at the conference a few years back.

My group of about 20 includes an American Catholic priest working in Bolivia, an executive from Nokia in Finland, a former central banker from Belgium, a “dropout for his kids” from Quebec City, and a handful of people from Atlantic Canada, including a globe- trotting retired businessman and a Member of Parliament. We watch a slide show of Kahane leading a change lab in India. The issue is child poverty, still a huge problem there despite the enormous increase of wealth in recent decades.

In brief, the “U” is a three-step process designed to create new methods when the old ones no longer work. First comes “sensing”: sliding down the left side of the U, you let go of your old preconceptions about an issue as you immerse yourself in it from many new perspectives. Then comes “presencing” at the bottom of the U: retreating and reflecting on what you have learned. The final phase is “realizing”: as you start up the right side of the U, you try new approaches, create prototypes, and gradually build new systems to replace the old ones.

I remember Otto Scharmer saying that the best leaders begin this process intuitively before most people realize the system they are working in is starting to break down. Facilitator LeAnne Grillo uses Tiger Woods as an xample of the three-step U process: he sets up carefully, takes a final look at the target, then lets go as he swings freely and waits to discover the result.

The other facilitator is Arawana Hayashi, who teaches dance, movement, and meditation—a perfect complement to the right-brained Adam Kahane. Last year I had a chat with Hayashi on the related themes of succession and roject management, and how our society is not adept at either. “Every human activity has a cycle,” she told me, “and every phase of the cycle has a natural energy. The energy of a mature organization is different from that of a start-up, for example. Yet we are not very good at going through these transitions.”

Kahane defines three types of “tough problems”: dynamic ones, where cause and effect are far apart in space and time; social ones, with diverse human actors; and generative ones—new issues such as climate change that require a creative new solution. He speaks of fractals: these are mathematical patterns that repeat at different scales. Ferns, clumps of broccoli, the jagged coastline of Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, and cloud formations are all fractals, as are the molecular patterns formed by certain chemical reactions. Using this analogy one can look at a piece of a complex situation and see within it the structure of the whole.

Climate change

We are to learn about Theory U by using it in a case study: climate change in Atlantic Canada. The goal is to ractice the method while observing ourselves at the same time. Our judgments and actions depend so much on our own sense of identity and how we view the world. Kahane’s mantra: We can’t contribute to solving a problem if we can’t see our own role in it.

We set up with partners and engage in “dialogic interviews,” explaining our personal experience with climate change. For the listener, the goal is to shift to the other person’s point of view. “This is Otto Scharmer’s big idea,” says Kahane. My partner is a nurse and artist who lives on a large lake in Ontario. There is less snow than when she grew up, she says, and the lake is lower. More positively, she sees more eagles and luna moths than in her early years. She has decided to live a simpler life in nature and to buy local food.

We split into groups to go on “learning journeys” to sites around Halifax. My group visits the not-for-profit Ecology Action Centre (EAC) in its new location in a renovated building in the North End. We are told that after 35 years in existence, the EAC has risen to a new level of prominence in the last few years, with more stable funding and many more volunteers.

EAC staffer Jenn Graham briefs us on her committee, whose mandate is to promote coastal management. Nova Scotia has few regulations to protect coastal habitat, and yet it has many agencies with overlapping mandates that affect the coast—sort of the worst of both worlds. “The government has no overview of the whole,” she says. “One of our roles is to help the different agencies communicate with each other.” She also told us about a videoconference on the issue of climate change that the EAC hosted at five sites around the province.

Board member Hudson Shotwell tells us that he was influenced by the film The End of Suburbia and the book The Long Emergency, on “peak oil.” Last summer one of the volunteers, Andrea Flowers of GPI Atlantic, traveled around the province showing Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth and hosting discussions on people’s personal experience with climate change. Then she gave a DVD and report she had made of the discussions to the Department of the Environment and Labour. “They were moved by what they saw,” says Shotwell, “by the people’s passion about their environment.”

On another front, Brendan Hailey, the coordinator of the energy committee, prepared a report that was well received by the provincial department. Despite this rapprochement, there is a long way to go. “We have some of the dirtiest coal-burning plants in North America,” says Shotwell. “The goal is to get Nova Scotia Power and the provincial department of environment to get more aggressive about reducing greenhouse gases.”

Delegate Thomas Moroz is with a private operating and grant-making foundation called Open Society Institute
in New York City. He and I conduct a “dialogic interview” with Jenn Graham, asking for her personal experience with climate change. She said this:

• Winters are milder, but there are more extremes of weather, and the coasts are eroding faster. Events like Hurricane Juan are more frequent. Is it our impact or is the system rebelling?

• Management of the coastal fisheries needs to be based on science, not just political responses to fishermen sking for more quota. We need to nourish the coastal habitat, not abuse it. Sometimes progress is so slow that I get impatient.

• On the positive side, these issues unite people, in the same way that the intersection of land and water brings people together.

• There is a lot of burnout and cynicism in the environmental movement. This creates distrust. With big issues like climate change, it is urgent to build processes and relationships.

• There is a shift taking place. People understand the issues and the risks much better today than five years ago. But I don’t see a shift in organizations making tough decisions quickly that will protect us in the future.

Back at the Institute, we debrief by asking ourselves some questions: What did we notice about ourselves during the visit? What stood out for us and why? What did we fail to notice? I noticed my response to the ambience created by the staff, who were so proud of their work and of their new facility, and yet it seemed a small oasis surrounded by business as usual. I noticed that the people at the EAC needed an outlet— they could have talked for days.

The next day we go outside by ourselves and reflect on where we are in the story. I wander around the campus, enjoying the trees and the views, and think of my life in Waverley, N.S., where I get to kayak and swim. Then we sit down in duos. “I live near New York City, and sometimes I think we are consuming our resources way too fast,” Hayashi tells me. “Maybe I will get a cabin in Nova Scotia, where the kids and I can stay.”

Kahane returns to the theory of the U. “Try to see the big pattern in the parts, the fractal view,” he says. “If you are not part of the problem, you can’t be part of the solution. Keep in mind that there are different ways of sensing, of immersing ourselves in the mess.” For the presencing part, he tells us that change comes from the inside out—it can’t be forced. He says that scenario planning is a tool for imagining how current reality might unfold. In South Africa, leaders took an extra step: If this is what is happening, they asked, what is required of us? (This is forbidden in the standard method used by international energy giant Shell and others.)

“In the change lab, you try to see how you are connected to the bigger system, how both need to change,” says Kahane. “The radical part of the change lab is not to see ourselves as outside the problem but to include ourselves in the story.” We stand in a circle and report on what we learned on our visits, trying to speak in the voices of the people we had interviewed.

Then we go outside by ourselves to ask, what is needed of me in the story? I walk past two statues, one unnamed but I suspect is Saint Francis of Assisi with his hands outstretched, the other of Christ on the cross, a symbol of the ultimate sacrifice. This reminds me that in Western culture we see ourselves as separate from nature—and yet we are part of it. Despite our intellect, we are still driven by instinct and genetic programming.

The following thought comes to me: I want to spend more time in nature. Like our culture as a whole, I feel as if my head, heart, and senses are disconnected. Nature is a place to reconnect. Simple conclusion: Take a canoe trip. I stand near the air conditioner on the roof. It is humming away, using energy so we can be comfortable in our classroom. We are certainly part of the problem. Nova Scotia has only a few hot days in summer; yet we are over air-conditioned.

Hayashi tells us of the Eastern concept of “wang tong,” the “field of power” that is always there. You tap into it by
expressing your authentic presence, by having a sense of “agendalessness.” This is the essential paradox of life that Eastern traditions have come to understand: You obtain your goals and fulfill your destiny by letting go of your agenda.

Look at the sky

To “realize,” the final step, it is necessary to act, to experiment, to see what comes up. We break into little groups, use our hands to create “bricolages,” or collages, of small objects, and create little plays and dances to get out of our heads and bring our bodies into the story. Most people are way out of their comfort zone, but the improvisations happen quickly and are surprisingly effective.

“To create new ways of doing things,” says Hayashi, “you need to cut some of your old habits.” How? “Stop what you are doing every now and then. Get a sense of the big space you are in. Look up, look at the sky. See what isn’t there. Get a sense of what could be there— something new. Everything new is created from nothing, from empty space.” I sense the big issue that surfaced for me at the event last year: succession. Our society changes so fast, yet we are not good at succession—at passing on what we know and making the transition from one stage to another, in families, organizations, and society as a whole.

We can’t blame climate change on the previous generations who invented our industrial society. They did the best they could to create prosperity for their families. Now we are becoming the digital society, creating wealth with bits instead of atoms. Yet we are still polluting, and we can’t tell developing societies to skip this step unless we help them.

On the last day Kahane asks, “How can we take this work home?” I visit my father, who lives down the road. He is almost 90 and knows of the sacrifices of two world wars. “If climate change is truly a war, do what people did during the war,” he says. “Turn off the lights at night.” It would save a huge amount of energy. Such a bold clear thought, out of the blue sky—typical of my father.

Back in the module, we talk of how to get people to work together, starting with just conversation, and of the problem of dealing with experts, where we feel powerless and nothing happens. Or the other side: When we think we are experts ourselves, we are no longer open to other points of view.

Try some big experiments,” says Kahane. “They may not work out, but that’s OK. Fail at scale. You will learn. You can start small. Start with one-on- one conversations. That is where every- thing starts. Begin to act as soon as possible. That is when the real learning begins. The only way to understand a system is to try to change it.

Hayashi has the last word. “Making a difference is not based on skills,” she says. “It’s a matter of having an open mind, open heart, and open will. Suspend judgment. Realize that when we feel fear, we close down. We need to open up. There is always energy moving forward, even when it feels stuck. Find a way of moving forward that is personal to you.”

The name Shambhala derives from the local Shambhala Buddhist community. Some of the founders were from the Buddhist community, businesspeople who came up from Colorado in the 1980s. However, the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership Summer Program isn’t a Buddhist event; rather, it’s an international conference on leadership and change. It’s a grand experiment that brings together facilitators and delegates from the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors from around the globe— people who are all making their own experiments.

The first morning Mary Jane Lamond, a Celtic singer from Cape Breton, leads us in a traditional women’s milling song in Gaelic. Then there is a World Café, a semi-structured conversation where we move around from table to table. People from across the globe speak about their issues: drought in Australia; the new rules of business; poverty in rural areas, including Atlantic Canada; the 72-degree-Fahrenheit lifestyle, where you are so comfortable you don’t know what’s going on; the importance of critical connections as opposed to critical mass; the frivolous use of the new wealth in Ireland; how buying local food can connect you to your environment and, therefore, to yourself.

A sense of connection to the whole planet is a theme that won’t go away. One evening a few years ago, Peter Senge, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, spoke on pollution and climate change. This was before Al Gore’s crusade. Senge had slides with graphs of retreating glaciers and rising levels of greenhouse gases and temperatures. “There is nowhere to hide,” he said. “This is the first time in history that action on one part of the globe influences everywhere else.”— D.H.

© 2007 David Holt. Reprinted with permission from Progress magazine, October 2007.

David Holt is a writer and consultant on strategy and communications and Editor Emeritus of Progress magazine. He can be reached at dholt@hfx.eastlink.ca.

Adam Kahane and LeAnne Grillo will be co-leading a module, Solving Tough Problems in Practice, at the Authentic Leadership in Action Summer Institute, June 22-28, 2008, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. http://www.shambhalainstitute.org