Elements of Emergent Strategy
“Grace often said that every crisis is an opportunity, which is amazing theoretically, and requires great emotional fortitude in practice, as well as the maturity to understand that the negative realization of that theory is “disaster capitalism.
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Emergent Strategy - Adrienne Maree Brown
“I dedicate this book to the memory of Grace Lee Boggs, who opened the door to emergence and pushed me through, who taught me to keep listening and learning and having conversations. She said, “Transform yourself to transform the world.” I dedicate this book also to the memory of Charity Hicks, who saw all the interconnected patterns as clear as day. She said, “Wage love.
Emergence emphasizes critical connections over critical mass, building authentic relationships, listening with all the senses of the body and the mind.
With our human gift of reasoning, we have tried to control or overcome the emergent processes that are our own nature, the processes of the planet we live on, and the universe we call home. The result is crisis at each scale we are aware of, from our deepest inner moral sensibilities to the collective scale of climate and planetary health and beyond, to our species in relation to space and time.
It is so important that we fight for the future, get into the game, get dirty, get experimental. How do we create and proliferate a compelling vision of economies and ecologies that center humans and the natural world over the accumulation of material?
We embody. We learn. We release the idea of failure, because it’s all data.
But first we imagine.
We are in an imagination battle.
Principles of Emergent Strategy
“In the study and practice of emergent strategy, there are core principles that have emerged and that guide me in learning and using this idea and method in the world. I gather them here with the expectation that they will grow.
Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.)
Change is constant. (Be like water).
There is always enough time for the right work.
There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.
Never a failure, always a lesson.
Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy).
Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass—build the resilience by building the relationships.
Less prep, more presence.
What you pay attention to grows
(Brown, “Emergent Strategies”, p.50)