Social Innovation is the next wave that pushes whole system design to new heights. It goes beyond sustainability by allowing technology, humanity, and environment to synchronously converge within an ecological world society that is more conscious, and more aware of our creative collective impact. It defines how our creations can better fit into a greater whole, thereby sustaining and evolving planetary systems (including ourselves), rather than unraveling and destroying it.
Social Innovation Review out of Stanford is writing some interesting perspectives on this critical subject. This article, called “Social Innovation From the Inside Out” holds some keys to understanding its potential, which is far beyond how it used today.
“… When it comes to innovation, social-purpose organizations face particularly daunting challenges. Social innovation isn’t just about providing new products and new services; it’s about changing the underlying beliefs and relationships that structure the world.”
More on the Role of Social Innovation and it’s Collective Impact from Vic’s blog:
Authentic Leadershipis for those who choose to ‘BE change’ as the way to ‘SEE change’
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Authenticity as Prerequisite for Leadership
Today’s growing global problems can not be solved using the same methods that created them in the first place. Thus, we must evolve our approaches toward innovation, including a new eye on leadership. This article addresses leadership from a very different perspective. How do we bring in new forms of technologies, build conscious business paradigms, support social issues, and formulate economies that create well being in our communities?
To create a better world for our children and our children’s children, we need to apply leadership in a new way. ‘Authentic Leadership’ addresses this need. Specifically, it reshapes our way of thinking and collaborating. It helps us to make more choices available to more people, and to make better decisions by using evolved forms of collaboration and individual empowerment. This kind of leadership is what is needed to help us build a sustainable vibrant world society.
Authenticity is the difference between leading and leadership
There is a difference between practicing formulated exercises to create personal change, and experiencing deep transformational change through self awareness. This is done by first empowering yourself as a leader based on your interests, capabilities, and passions, to realize your own unique authentic identity.
Once this is achieved, a shift in personal understanding of leadership will occur. With this shift, comes an evolution in the way you are able to help others realize their own power and their own sense of leadership. Thus, you become a catalyst for change rather than a director of change.
The primary role of an Authentic Leader is to follow change from behind, not direct it from from the front.
That’s right: I said ‘follow’. By following team members and watching for ways to enhance their own ‘yellow brick road’, you inject power into both the individual’s and the group’s journey – one individual at a time, including yourself.
Change carries greater purpose than satisfying our own self imposed ideals that others want to follow. This is not empowering and does not lead others toward their own authority. Realizing this is a big step toward becoming an authentic leader. To do this, the way leadership is viewed has to change:
Rather than placing your leadership in front of othersand ‘leading the charge’, you instead follow and keep a watchful eye for the opportunities to‘catalyze desired change’. This enables change – not through your direction, but by facilitating and empowering those who reveal guiding insights with a passion to act.
Choosing ‘director’ leadership or ‘follower’ leadership says much about how we will affect change.
Director-leadership reinforces old ways and helps to stabilize existing cultural norms, whereas follower-leadership establishes new pathways for culture systems to emerge. Both have their role in evolving a society. However, ‘follower’ lead approach focuses on creating the new by recognizing when old principles, rules, and behaviors don’t work anymore. Unlike ‘director’ leadership, ‘follower’ leadership allows effort to be on creating the new without putting energy on breaking down old norms that no longer serve us.
This actually is the only way real change happens, since killing off the people and systems that serve the old way does not in fact kill off the behavior of that old way. When you look at history, our revolutions, which arise to address needed change, have not really been effective. The same patterns have tended to repeat themselves over and over. To create real change, we must attend to the emerging new, not put energy into eliminating the old.
The ‘Bulls-Eye’ – An Old Metaphor for Leading and Succeeding
Have you seen how the target is so often used as a business metaphor? I do like this metaphor of the arrow hitting the bulls-eye, but for a different reason than you may think. What if, for the authentic leader, it is no longer appropriate to aim for the center of the target? What if your best shot is actually when the arrow lands in the furthest outer ring?
For the authentic leader, viewing situations from a target’s periphery is more powerful than from its center. The edge is a place where you have to be more a part of the interactions with others. You are not at the center of the world for all to adore. The new leader has moved passed his own “me center” needs that satisfy personal ego. Instead respect is gained by risking at the edge. Risking being seen in in the vulnerability of one’s humanity as a person that makes mistakes and is flawed like we all are. The periphery of the target is not as safe as the center. It’s at this periphery, and not the center, where an authentic leader’s true power is realized.
In Leadership Ecology, you want to target the OUTER ring, not the center bulls-eye.
From the outer ring you have a very different perspective on leadership. By placing yourself in the outer ring, you are in the best position to move others into the center, not you. Aiming for this part of the target also challenges your own awareness, and thereby your authenticity as a person. And this is so important as a leader, because people can feel your truth. It is not as hidden as you may think. Most can tell when you are not really coming from your authentic self.
Mirror Mirror on the Wall …
Each of us sees ourselves best by reflecting off of others. In fact, I propose that it’s the ONLY way we can see our true authentic selves. That is, your ability to be truly who you are will become evident once you surround yourself with others who can empathize with your life path and compassionately share with you how they see you. This mirroring concept is core to good a leader’s ability to facilitate others along their path.
It is the authentic leader’s responsibility to be a reflection of you. It must be done in a nonjudgmental way, while at the same time being boldly-truthful – a mirror of ‘you’.
A mirrored message can not be recognized by you until someone actually reflects it back to you, and taking in reflected (mirrored) messages can be difficult. Often, what another says about you triggers the ego’s protection mechanisms. But allow them anyway. Permitting these reflections will help you see through your own forest of day-to-day trials. As you serve others in this way your own leadership qualities and abilities improve and becomes more meaningful. As a mirror, you generate and acknowledge your own insights with others. This process actually becomes a spiritual journey as you enter into your own personal labyrinth toward becoming more aware.
Creating an Ecology of Leadership
When we come to realize our own authentic identity, we move to a place of compassion and empathy for others. Rather than being in the front office, where too often isolated decisions are made, instead your influence radiates out in an attempt to partner with others. You no longer are a director overseeing subordinates, but instead see value in empowering others, helping to shape an empowered network of interactions. A ‘Leadership Ecology’ begins to form.
Evolving an ‘Ecology of Leadership’ is not done by placing yourself at the center of attention, or at the front of the room with everyone’s eyes pointed at you. Rather, it is done by positioning yourself to easily focus on others in the group, not them being focused on you. As we’ve discussed in the bulls-eye model, this comes from a place of guiding from the periphery, rather than directing from the center or the front office.
When a Leadership Ecology occurs, a web of relationships emerges revealing each person’s authentic leadership qualities through the transfer of their power to others. When done in a conscious way – a shared collaborative awakening happens.
Authentic Leadership is Collaborative?
Once you get comfortable with this new perspective, your actions and your direction of others, will come from a different place – an empathic place, which is the first step in empowering others to their own leadership. This is what ‘authentic leadership’ is all about. It’s this kind of leadership that empowers others into their own leadership. It marks the beginning your organization moving toward new forms of collaboration that create unexpected, even disruptive innovation that is built on a foundation of group empowerment – a collaborative leadership.
Each One’s Uniqueness Revealed
Each one of us is unique, and too often our one-of-a-kind identities do not reveal themselves through traditional coaching or mentoring methods. Leadership consulting and coaching process formulas only work to a point. How do we address that part of our personality that is not just about creating goals, strategies, and tasks to perform more efficiently? Our business-oriented activities too often cloak who we really are – our inner personal truths.
Our inner truths and beliefs are the real drivers behind all choices we make in our external life.
Once you reveal and own your inner truth, your true identity is revealed. Now the whole world will look different. Your choices and actions change as well. In your full authentic self, you become a more balanced self-realized leader of others. And it starts with the others reflections so that you can see inside yourself and then emanate true power; true leadership.
Entering the Labyrinth of Authentic Leadership
Entering the labyrinth of authentic leadership can rarely be done without having others involved in your awakening process. It also can not be done by merely understanding the concept. To really grok its value, and to see authentic transformation, this kind of work must be experienced in the day to day trials of your life. You must actually walk through the labyrinth of your own making, not just think about it. This often starts with a coach or mentor – someone who can support you as you move toward the root of personal insight. Insights that will include valuable tools for using on the job. Such as, becoming more clear about situational problems, the ability to recognize employee character behaviors, understanding resulting decisions that they make, and how to help each other evolve into the creation of collaborative solutions.
Realizing our authentic self is the true power source of all good leaders … Once obtained, they give it away freely.
You will also become skilled at both offering and receiving acknowledgment – from a place that goes beyond selfish ego. These are all unique and personal experiences to you and you alone. As you to awaken to a more authentic self, a personal transformational change will emerge from within you that affects not just you, but those around you as well.
A New Understanding of Leadership – Listen Up!
We are moving into a new understanding leadership and management that are no longer only about reaching targeted goals and objectives. Sure these are important, but they are less significant than the need for ‘authentic leadership’.
To understand what it means to be a leader today, we must be retaught and move away from traditional methods. You will not find absolute formulas or rigid processes for building on prescribed objectives.
Although sometimes useful, authentic practices tend to stay away from prescribed rational formulas and instead rely on a blending of your own and others intuitive instincts. The greatest challenge is learning to use your instinctual senses to listen deeply into yourself, as well as into others. Do not make your primary motive for listening to direct what you hear another say and direct them toward action. No. Instead listening is done guide through reflection, helping another to see their own aha’s. This is ‘empowerment’, which is the primary measure for how well authentic leaders are applying themselves.
Reevaluating Your Expectations
This is the first step toward becoming an evolved leader – an authentic leader, is to reevaluate your expectations. What are your true objectives and plans, based on your hidden personal motives? This can not be done alone. But done in a safe, nonjudgmental container, groups can work and learn together how to realize a deeper sense of self. By supporting each other, we reveal things that bring profound insight to who you are and how you perceive the world. Beyond that, your ability to support your team, family, or organization becomes more trusting and more meaningful. This is true leadership. Expectations in your role as leader have changed. Now you are moving toward an ‘authentic leadership’.
Imagine Leading and Being Lead in an Authentic Way
What would it mean for your team’s productivity and success if you acted as their mentor or coach, rather than as their manager or director? What if you shifted your ‘I’m in charge’ thinking, to enabling their charge?
What would happen if you shift your motivation from being an ‘authoritative director’ to being an ‘authentic leader’?
Start aiming at the outer ring of the target instead of the center, and watch what happens.
Written By Vic Desotelle VicDesotelle.com EMAIL VIC
A deeper Learning conversation has emerged that we believe will help designers of companies, technologies, and communities, to develop new forms of offerings that are more appropriate for a conscious global culture. These conversations are the result of a new framework for organizing ourselves, where our activities now relate to what we call a Regenerative Commerce system. One that provides a balance of Equitable, Ecological, and Economical products and services to our global communities – otherwise known as the triple bottom line. Just as sustainability is defined in many different ways, these so-called 3E’s are also described and used in many different ways:
Ecology for example, is often used as another word for ‘environment’ when actually the word means interdependency of systems. It’s really an activity; a verb or adjective and not a noun. Even the related word “environment” is seen as a thing separate from the human condition rather than intimately apart of who we are. Its definition actually means: The complex of social and cultural conditions affecting the “nature” of individuals and their communities, both human and non-human.
Similarly, Equity is often categorized with the idea of justice and human rights. This may be true, but when the word is studied a bit further, it actually relates to our notion of ‘choices’. The word equity means the ability for a community to offer diverse choices to its stakeholders and community members. It depends on those members having the know-how and ability to accept the responsibility of making healthier choices from a broader framework of understanding and questioning. Choices that can sustain, not only the individuals doing the choosing, but also enhance the well-being of the greater community.
The fourth ‘E’ is Economy, which is also often used as a same-as replacement for the word money. However, it actually has nothing to do with money directly. The dictionary’s definition says it means ‘management of home or place’, where that place can be a colony, a forest, a company, a city, a nation, a planet, etc. Most important: It is NOT another word for finance or money!
Next is Values, which is the inter-relationship between these 3E’s. This is what makes up a measurable system for exchanging money. Money is merely the symbol for the actions of exchange that occur between people as a result of seeing the whole system’s inter-dependencies (ecology), system relationships (equity), and system management (economy). I like to use a dollar sign with three lines to help identify the difference between a single unsustainable system and a triple bottom line, which represents a regenerative commerce system that can sustain the evolution of the emerging global society.
Finally comes Decision-Making, which is really an outcome that occurs when the above five points are considered interdependently. Decisions are the choices that we make, and they occur every moment of our day. In organizations, I propose that there is a problem with the decision-making process because of an overly hierarchical structure (See concentrix management for a better system to make decisions.) Way too often, decisions end up getting made at the top of this management pyramid without folks really having a full encompassing perspective (i.e. multiple view points). Not only is there not enough requests for stakeholder insights, but the decision-making model that is used is too limiting to be able to take in an extended set of data. This data is what eventually ends up becoming a product or service that moves into the global social-environmental-economic system. For example, if we were using something like a six-point decision-making process as described here, do you think the tail pipe on an automobile would have gotten past the drawing board?
* Learning: A way of practice that “pre-forms” required changes in performance, resonant feedback loops from one to the other * Values: Expression of the essence of an organization; the DNA core underlying all activities and behavior, transparently effects all resulting missions, goals, strategies, and provisions, links from ‘mythology’ (inner) to “value proposition”(outer) * Economy: Management of place (not management of ‘money’) * Ecology: Inter-relationships of place (does not mean ‘environment’) * Equity: Choices made available within a place (does not mean ‘equality’) Place’: is relative to your conversation and focus. It can be an organization, a home, a city, a region, a nation, a planet * Economic Vitality-System Management: Defining and managing our regional economic structure so that balanced, healthier, wealthier communities can be realized within an emerging global market and society. * Ecological Stewardship-System Dependencies: Recognizing our interdependence on all life systems. Generating greater respect and care for our environments, their use, and our relationship with Earth’Âs life systems. * Social Equity-System Relationships: Realizing the benefit of different status and capabilities. Understanding how individual diversity and collective community coexists. Empowering people to responsibility through leadership that creates choices for individuals that allow for healthy, more whole communities to emerge. * Equitability: The development of a learning community of professionals committed to global transmutation – where development of a diverse set of choices (which inherently generate interest-based responsibilities) is seen as an essential ingredient for the larger system’s survival and vitality (i.e., chaordic innovation). * Economical: Development of a micro-system of participants choosing to manage themselves and their organization with a broader comprehension of its participation within a larger organism – planetary, cosmic. * Ecological: Design processes that flow with Nature’s (universal) emergent tendencies; where cyclic feed-forward and feed-back looping occurs in ways that create integration and inter-reliance on every other sub-system within a greater whole.
On Christmas, that day of the year which best reflects our ‘present’ state of being, I watched three films. Elysium, Consumed, and Obey, which you will find links to below. Being alone for this holiday, I couldn’t think of a better present to gift myself than to open up to the ‘present’ state of our humanity. Call me odd; maybe so. But I wish there were more like me who see the best gift under the tree, as the one that opens ourselves into becoming more ‘present’ to what is happening.
These films are certainly a stark awakening to presence, as they describe a collective truth about the world as it really is: A tragic state of being, shrouded in beautiful images and messages that cloak the fear we are feeling inside about today’s darker social and personal truths. Togther, the films create a tight interconnection about our true present state of being. These films are not easy to watch. Yet I believe they will fuel you with a sense of power for real change – if you can go deep into them. Because they do not just touch the surface about these matters, but instead reach deep into our psyches; that place where worlds are conceived and destroyed.
Elysium presented a story that is about our emerging world. It is about the separation between an elite few with plenty, and the remaining many who are poor, used as slaves to labor the resources needed for the elite’s idealized world. This is not an abstract sense of the present held by the insane. Nor is it science fiction anymore. No. There is too much growing discomfort around this subject for films like this to be taken lightly. It’s real. Watch this film, but be sure to watch the other two films along with it so you can go deeper into what it may mean.
Consumed presented a view on consumerism that points to something beyond mere materialism to something inside the human condition. It suggest we go deeper into what we think consumption really is, in order to transform it. To get away from consumerism being a conspiracy and more as a primary condition of the human mind. A fundamental part of our human nature. It points to the core of consumerism being our inability to accept our own death, and how the best way to avoid something we don’t want to deal with, is to project it outward from ourselves. We must move beyond pointed solutions such as ‘if everyone recycled we’d be fine’ kind of thinking, because it’s not enough and it not at the root of the problem of consumption. The subject ties other aspects of what make us a culture based in destructive consumption, such as marketing and its power to rule our minds by tapping into response mechanisms that address how we see ourselves. And in the process, we are loosing touch with our dependency on the environment that nourishes us. Ironically, to ‘consume’ by definition means to engulf and destroy. And so we then withdraw into ourselves, hiding from the very act that we are trying to avoid, pointing directly at the monster in the closet: Fear of our own death. Hence we are becoming – not citizens, but consumers, eating ourselves to death by trashing the environment for its resources and creating an ecological assault on the natural world. Our home. … This is not an easy pill to swallow, but we must. Watch it and tell me what comes up for you.
Obey presents the most difficult message.Suggesting a truth within that is very difficult for most of us to consider. It addresses a triad of issues including market psychology, mass productivity, and capital labor, reasoning that there is a growing gap between corporate capitalism and personal freedom. It reenforces the slave state that has been created in the name of more jobs, which has been used to build corporate growth, which feeds a distorted power, enticed by its ability to generate technical comfort. Yet more for an isolated elite few in control, while ‘we the people’ are being entrained to obey the rules of their game. It talks about how democratic decision making has been replaced by propaganda disguised with limbic stimulating messages that make us think we have social choice. Assuming we are free to debate issues, we are instead being over-ruled by a black government that is run by the corporate elites. The lie has become the truth and no one sees it, reinforced at the education level to brainwash the next generation into thinking that its enough to be positive and believe in miracles is how we can get everything we desire, falsifying one’s own values and beliefs in the name of a greater system. Interestingly he links this with being employed, where getting paid now does not free you but sucks us into corporate choice and rule. Those who resist their way will become apart of the underclass, pushed out by those who themselves want to eradicate the gap between the rich and the poor. In this twisted state of being, meaning has become distorted through incessant emotionally charged shows, news, and beauty images, creating a world where brand overrides ideology, where illusion becomes the truth, and the sane are seen as insane.
A Way Out? The ideas these films present are presentations on ‘separation’, ‘obedience’, and ‘consumerism”. By blending their perspectives, I believe we can build a yet unrealized power for creating real change. By taking in their messages – done with self question and scrutiny, new insight can appear within our minds that can begin to break down the trans-like state we are in, and wake up to the real world that we are creating. Taking this path is for all of us to follow now, not just a few. Be aware that as you enter this process, your power will first be observed as fear, giving you a desire to suppress the discomfort that it brings up. So do not do this alone. Start a community or small group to discuss what comes up. Be careful to step away from false optimism and have the courage to step into the fear as it arises. Allow that fear to help you and your group break down old beliefs and assumed perceptions, to alter your awareness. Raise the questions of “What is illusion?” and “What is reality?”, and feel into your ‘present’ sense of being as you go deeper into this process. Then – and only then, can we actually create the potential to move toward a world that works for all.
