In this historic moment, we live caught in a worldview that no longer works and a new one that seems too bizarre to contemplate.
Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic WorldNothing changes until you upset what is, until you show people that where they are, the status quo, isn’t working. People build a comfort zone, an illusion, so they don’t have to change. They distort facts, lie, and ignore the facts—anything but change from where they are. The leader must upset the equilibrium; that is, create (and what appears to be) chaos. The new leader speaks and acts into the existing order, upsetting what is and creating chaos. This forces the “system†to reorder to a higher ordered system. This doesn’t make sense from our older leadership models; yet there is a new and higher order that emerges from the disorder. The leader is not doing this just for the sake of creating chaos. Rather, the leader is drawing the followers to a new Place.When the Good News of the Gospel is alive in any person, whatever their kind of work may be, they become an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He or she becomes interesting to other people. They disturb, upset, enlighten, and open ways for better understanding.In the new paradigm, once the vision is put down (and continues to be put down), the leader then focuses energy not so much in planning, putting down programs, building structures, and evaluating; but rather the leader focuses on building relationships (networks, linkages, dynamic connectedness), and then the leader releases. There is no control. The result appears to the leader (and even the followers) as non-deterministic; but it really does have a pattern. Trying to control will distort the pattern.(c) 2009 Carl Townsend, Beyond Illusion: Leading from Reality
