Peggy Holman, Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2010.
Referenced in: Leadership and New Science
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
This is one of a growing number of texts on Leadership and the New Science. As indicated in the Ministry Resource Guide on this subject, I recommend Holman as a first read to introduce the theory, followed by other texts as listed. Holman is an excellent primer on how the New Science addresses leadership. It is probably the least ethereal, most readable, and most practical text on the subject, particularly as it relates to facilitating organizational change. Start with the section in the back, “Summary of Key Ideas,” and go from there. Holman also co-authored the standard encyclopedic survey on methods of Large Group/Whole Systems planning methods, The Change Handbook.
From the Publisher
What’s Possible Now? Change is everywhere these days—at times it seems like barely controlled chaos. Yet within this turmoil are the seeds of a higher order. When a new system arises from the ashes of the old, science calls the process “emergence.” By engaging it, you can help yourself and your organization or community to successfully face disruption and emerge stronger than ever.
In this profound book, Peggy Holman offers principles, practices, and real-world stories to help you work with compassion, creativity, and wisdom through the entire arc of change—from disruption to coherence. You’ll learn what to notice, what to explore, what to try, and what mindset opens new possibilities. This work can be challenging but also tremendously rewarding. It enables new and unlikely partnerships and develops breakthrough projects. You become part of a process that transforms the culture itself.
Reviews
Very useful in giving structure and form to ways of dealing with the unpredictable and volatile way the world comes at us. A powerful antidote to the change management illusion that the future can be driven, engineered, managed, and drilled. – Peter Block, author of “Community”
A dance manual for how to move gracefully with the disruption, uncertainty, and mystery that are part of life’s rhythms, how to welcome interruption and discontinuity as opportunities for creativity, community, and greater capacity. – Margaret J. Wheatley, author of “Leadership and the New Science”
Provides practical advice for orchestrating conflict and moving through discomfort to reach a new coherence. – Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, cofounders of Cambridge Leadership Associates and coauthors of “Leadership on the Line” and “The Practice of Adaptive Leadership”
About the Author
Peggy Holman is a management and training consultant for business, non-profit, and governmental organizations. She is a co-founder and board member of the Open Space Institute, which supports learning and practices for self-organization in our social systems. She collaborated in creating “Journalism that Matters,” a network of conversations among journalists that is generating new roles and organizational forms for today’s emerging information-sharing, open source society. She also developed a theory of emergence in social systems that describes how diversity and dissonance can bring forth emergent insights, deep community, and coherent action. Peggy Holman is a co-author of the first and second editions of The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today’s Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems.
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