Power + Love

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Adam Kahane talk about his new book – Power and Love.  The talk and the book both helped shed light on aspects of leadership and social change that to some extent have not been explicit in our work.  I wouldn’t say we weren’t conscious of them already, but his depth of research and experience helped solidify our understanding and articulate the important interplay between power and love.

Kahane uses definitions of power and love from theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich:

Tillich defines power as “the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.”  So power in this sense is the drive to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow.  He defines love as “the drive towards the unity of the separated.”  So love in this sense is the drive to reconnect and make whole that which has become or appears fragmented. (Power and Love, p. 2)

Central to the book is the idea that these conceptualizations of power and love both have two sides – a generative side and a degenerative side.  He looks to Martin Luther King, Jr. (whose doctoral studies focused on Tillich’s work): “Power without love is reckless and abusive,” King said, “and love without power is sentimental and anemic.” (Power and Love, p. 8). 

The point is we cannot choose power or love, we must choose both – generative love must come with power and generative power must come with love. 

The implications for sustainability work - for creating positive social change - are many and far-reaching.  Too often elements of the movement are dominated by degenerative power (e.g. obstructive regulation or heavy-handed guilt tactics), and probably more often, by degenerative love (e.g. “save the whales,” “think of the children,” “why can’t we all just get along?!?”).

We’ve always tried to avoid both in our work, and for me, that is at the heart of why Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) is such a compelling approach.  It recognizes the complex current reality - with entrenched power structures led by dominate corporations and rich nations - and works to evolve it in ways that create a sustainable future as smoothly as possible.  It recognizes the power of our institutions, as well as the love necessary to foster cooperation, alignment and movement towards a sustainable future.  It employs a rigorous, scientific framework for what sustainability means, in conjunction with the tenants of organizational learning necessary to engage the leadership of all types of people needed to create a sustainable society.

The suite of examples from Kahane’s work with Shell, Generon, Reos, and SoL on projects all over the world - Peace and Reconciliation in South Africa, climate change in Canada, political stability in the Philippines, child nutrition in India, national visioning in Israel, and the Sustainable Food Lab across many countries - illustrate how complex challenges cannot be “solved” with any sort of prescription.  The ultimate of these challenges - the sustainability challenge - which embodies each of these and many more, is of course no exception. 

That is why SSD uses a principle-based definition of sustainability.  There is no roadmap or path to sustainability - the system is too complex with too many variables for us to know exactly what a sustainable future will look like. But we do understand enough about our system - humanity living the biosphere - to know what a sustainability society must be in principle; sort of a “true north” towards which we know we need to head before it is too late to avoid wholesale collapse of ecosystems and social systems.  In this sense, we don’t have a map, but we have a compass that can and must guide us in all of our personal and professional decisions.  In doing so, we create a sustainable future step by step.

Kahane credits fellow Reos Partner Jeff Barnum in pointing out that “creating something new in the world… requires us, not to plan it all out from the beginning, but rather to step forward, to act, to reflect on the results of our action, and then to take our next step”  (Power and Love, p. 136).  He also quotes peace activist Ana Teresa Bernal, with whom he worked in Columbia, and who said: “It’s like that poem of Antonio Machado: ‘Walker, there is no path.  The path is made by walking’” (Power and Love, p. 140).

I agree this is the only way to effectively lead in complex systems, and would add that having a compass for the “true north” of sustainability - not prescriptive specifics, but generic principles - is necessary for providing sufficient context and orientation for walking that path in as strategic and effective a way as possible. 

Stay going.

BTH is WorldChanging

A much appreciated colleague and friend, Andrew Outhwaite recently published on WorldChanging some reflections from Hallbarhet - the Australian (and affiliated regional events) sustainability conference / MSLS reunion. The piece focuses on social technologies for moving us more effectively towards sustainability. The importance of community and more effective ways of communicating and working together are central to effective sustainable development. (As Tony Cortese likes to say, "communication in sustainability work is like location in real estate. Communication, communication, communication." Andrew is excellent at studying, understanding, and practicing these tool, techniques and technologies. A quote from the WorldChanging piece:

We are now a global village whether we like it or not, with no enemy except the momentum of our unsustainable culture and the forces of nature we have unleashed. Though individuals need to act strategically, authentically and boldly, acting in isolation is not enough to survive and realise our evolutionary potential. A shift in focus from individual heroes to mass collaborative leadership and action is required, and that shift will challenge our attachment to our primary identities as independent, autonomous actors.

It seems more important than ever to remember that sustainability is not the characteristic of one individual, organisation or nation; rather, it is the result of the whole system. The ultimate challenge for leaders in this space is to push the edges of what we can and must do together, as a community.

The ACUPCC is a great example of the need for these kind of 'technology' - presidents have performed a great act of leadership by signing, and now are faced with the challenge of following-through - which will take ongoing, persistent, dedicated leadership to enable and empower their communities to incorporate sustainability principles into the educaitonal experience of all students, and transform their campuses into climate neutral role models for society. At Second Nature we get a lot of "how to" questions from all kinds of people on ACUPCC questions - they tend to be cloaked in technical questions - about solar power or energy efficiency - but they are really community questions - about how to engage with members of the facilities department, or work with business officiers to employ a 'true cost' economic analysis to investment decisions. It is the most exciting and challenging aspect of sustainability work and too often buried under the converstaions about technological performance and top-down policy decisions.

For more of Andrew's writing and work, see his Arising website.

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SoL Foundations for Leadership

Last week I attended the Society for Organizational Learning’s (SoL) Foundations for Leadership course. It was three days long, run by Peter Senge and Robert Hanig, and incredibly effective at promoting a lot of deep learning in a very short time.

The concepts of organizational learning are a core aspect of the MSLS program, and we worked with them a lot last year – they were essentially the backdrop for everything we did. Still, it was really helpful to spend three intensive days delving deep in the concepts with a new group of people and facilitated by the folks that developed and articulated the ideas.

What organizational learning is, exactly, can be difficult to put into words. Essentially it describes an ongoing process of profound change within an organization (business, school, NGO, government agency, etc.) Senge’s The Fifth Discipline is a central book in the field, exploring five disciplines of a learning organization: team learning, mental models, personal mastery, building shared vision, and systems thinking. These are interrelated concepts, each with a lot behind it. Most are to some extent self explanatory – mental models refer to the “deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and take action.” Systems thinking I’ve talked a lot before – it is “the fifth discipline” and also the basis of the framework for strategic sustainable development (SSD).

One of the basic tools in the field of systems thinking and systems dynamics are causal loop diagrams (CLDs). The field also identifies some common patterns, or archetypes, that often play out in various ways in different systems. These archetypes are quite intuitive, as they are common patterns we have experience with, and the CLDs help clarify these patterns, bring them before us so we can get a better sense of what’s happening.

Here are two basic archetypes – Shifting the Burden and Limits to Success – as well as an example of each:

Another central theme in the field of organizational learning, which is also an integral part of the framework for SSD, is the concept of building a shared vision amongst a group of people, giving an honest analysis of the current reality. The gap between the vision and the current reality results in a creative tension. This is the basis of backcasting and enabling a strategic approach to sustainable development.

In the 5^th Discipline, Senge points out that MLK Jr. once said: “Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind, so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths…so must we... create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism.” The same is true for creating a sustainable society, and navigating the enormous transformational change that is accompanying that creative effort.

The book and the program explore the two basic motivators for sparking change: aspiration and desperation. The latter is responsible for the phrase “no change without crisis” and in the context of sustainability it is a motivator we see a lot, when organizations hit the funnel walls. When Wal-Mart feels the pain of consumer boycotts, or when Greenpeace campaigns against PVCs, dumps old washing machines on Electrolux’s parking lot, companies are motivated to make some changes towards sustainability.

However, when the conditions that created the desperation are no longer there, when enough has been done to relieve the outside pressure, the change toward sustainability often subsides. This can lead to frustration within the organization and from outside groups, as well as to many books and papers on why sustainability efforts fizzle out.

When organizations are motivated by an aspiration, on the other hand, when they are pulled towards a compelling vision of a successful, healthy, sustainable future, they often have a better chance of sustaining their efforts, and making more dramatic progress towards eliminating their contributions to unsustainability. It’s usually only through a real aspiration to move towards sustainability can a company reap all of the benefits like greater employee attraction and retention, increased productivity, meaningful innovation, dramatic cost savings, etc.

Bob Willard’s concept of 5-stages of corporate development with regard to sustainability highlight this concept:

Put into the context of the funnel, this idea shows how as companies move up through the stages they can reduce risks associated with unsustainable behavior:

We’re getting excited to head down to Atlanta for the SoL Sustainability Forum, where we’ll keep the learning going as we meet with those pioneering the shift to a new way of doing business and using organizational learning concepts to move towards sustainability. Stay going.

The Five Disciplines

The concepts of organizational learning are central to taking a strategic approach to sustainability.  The 'five disciplines' described in Peter Senge's seminal work The Fifth Discipline provide much of the basis for the art and practice of organizational learning:


1. Personal Mastery: "a discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively."

2. Mental Models: "deeply engrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of imagines that influence how we understand the world and how we take action."

3. Building Shared Vision: "a practice of unearthing shared pictures of the future that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance."

4. Team Learning: "starts with 'dialogue,' the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine 'thinking together' … allowing the group to discover insights not attainable individually."

5. Systems Thinking: "a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has been developed over the past fifty years, to make the full patterns clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively" … "the discipline that fuses the disciplines, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice."


(All quotations are from The Fifth Discipline. For more on the five disciplines visit SoL, the Society for Organizational Learning.

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