2007 Authentic Leadership Summer Program

Leadership in Networked, Emergent Systems: Practical Challenges and Opportunities with Thomas J. Hurley

How are we called to lead in the complex, dynamic, and distributed organizations and communities arising today? What qualities and capacities do leaders need to help liberate the collective potential in "chaordic" systems? What are the conditions that foster emergence of greater collective wisdom, creativity, or capacity in groups committed to transformative change?

These are the questions we will explore in this module. Drawing on examples from business, the nonprofit world, social entrepreneurship, community development, and multi-sector networks, we will explore the practical challenges and opportunities faced by leaders in networked, emergent systems. These include articulating clear, compelling purposes; developing core principles and infusing them at all levels of the network; designing "architectures of participation" that invite engagement and enable creative self-organization; fostering connections that support the emergence of higher-level capacities; and facilitating the types of guidance and governance that can nurture "coherence without control" at all levels of system. We will also explore what we are learning about how such organizations and communities form, grow, nourish, and renew themselves, and strategies that enable graceful transitions from one stage of development to another.

Our approach will be experiential, appreciative, and inquiry-oriented, with a focus on four fields of inquiry, learning, and action in which leaders must be fluent. These include:

• The inner field, the ground from which authentic leadership springs, where our emphasis will be on cultivating essential qualities of presence and discerning inner guidance.
• The relational field, where capacities for deep listening, dialogue, and nonviolent communication enable effective collaboration and co-creativity.
• The collective field, in which practices (such as the World Café) that foster collective intelligence and collective wisdom come into play.
• The systemic field, where our ability to sense or see the larger ecosystem of which our organization or community is one part becomes important.

As leaders of emergent networks today, we are increasingly called to be fluent in each of these fields. Our collaborative learning journey in this module will nourish each of us personally and grow our capacity to ensure the organizations and communities we serve contribute most powerfully to creating positive futures.

Thomas J. Hurley is currently guiding the global evolution of the World Café and serves as a senior advisor to leaders interested in new organizational forms. He was co-founder of the Chaordic Commons, a nonprofit consulting organization in which he partnered with VISA founder Dee Hock, and served for seventeen years with the Institute of Noetic Sciences as Director of Transformative Learning and Global Community Development. He is the author of numerous seminal papers, including "Changing Images 2000" and "Archetypal Practices for Collective Wisdom."

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