From the Whidbey Institute

LEADERSHIP FOR THE NEW COMMONS

A Bioregional Leadership Initiative of the Whidbey Institute


The Challenge

We live in a time of dramatic change—a hinge point in history—and there is a critical need for a new practice of the art of leadership. In a world characterized by increased complexity, diversity, and moral ambiguity, we drift into polarization. Narrow, single-issue politics and role-based morality feed growing dysfunction, injustice, environmental deterioration, and the loss of community. We need leaders who can see things whole, who are committed to the common good, and who have both the moral courage and the skill to work on behalf of a more compassionate, just, sustainable, and prosperous future. Such leaders have a keen sense of our interdependence, a deep sense of worthy purpose, and the capacity and commitment to enhance the quality of our collective life.

A key competence of such leaders is the ability to see how their own sector relates to other sectors of society and to the natural world that together make up “the new commons.” This new, complex commons requires integral leadership—the capacity to integrate a depth of inner spiritual and ethical awareness with thoughtful, skillful, and creative action in the outer world, particularly in the face of radical uncertainty.

A hunger for this kind of leadership is showing up in every domain, and we are at a point where inadequately addressed and critical issues are starting to overtake our capacity to deal with them. There is a vital need for leaders who can recognize the interdependent features of emerging conditions, ask new questions, imagine alternative possibilities, and skillfully navigate within complex dynamics to enable organizations and the wider society to create more viable modes of working together on behalf of our common future.


A Creative and Distinctive Response

Leadership for the New Commonsis a response to the call for informed, morally courageous, effective leadership that is a match for the economic, ecological, and cultural conditions in which we now find ourselves—leadership with new skills and new animating myths—new ways of seeing and working. Such leadership is characterized by three distinctive capacities:

·Consciousness: A compelling awareness of interdependence and connectivity that is grounded in an understanding of the ecology of the natural environment (the more-than-human world). This complex interdependence requires a re-alignment of our cultural, social, political, and economic arrangements toward the development of a more hopeful future for all.

·Conscience: A spiritual and ethical awareness and commitment that arises from this consciousness of the interdependence of all life, embracing both suffering and wonder—the Mystery we all share. Such awareness is informed by historic faith traditions and by contemporary, emergent spiritual insight. It provides orientation, purpose, meaning, and depth—and is manifest in hope, reverence, compassion, imagination, courage, moral-ethical accountability, and the capacity to hold steady and stay the course.

·Competence: The confidence and skill to recognize and respond to the toughest problems—those that fall in the space between known problems and unknown solutions. Such challenges require bold action. And this action must embody anticipatory learning, skillful innovation, new patterns of thought and behavior, profound collaboration, resistance to false solutions, and the creation of new realities (often involving conflict, loss, and grief) on behalf of a positive future for all.

To these ends, Leadership for the New Commons recognizes “the commons” as a place, an aspiration, and a metaphor. “The commons” is the image that informs the “common good.” The commons (by whatever name) is the place where people gather and experience a shared life within a manageable frame: the crossroads of a village, the great plazas of European cities, a New England green, Main Street, the playground, the marketplace, or a cathedral, mosque, synagogue or temple. The commons is a place of celebration and memorial, commerce and communication, play and protest. Key elements that constitute the commons—water, food sources, air, government, language, a monetary system, ritual, art, etc. are ideally accessible to all, and thus the notion of the commons presses toward inclusion. But the commons is always imperfectly practiced—slaves were sold on the commons, Quakers and Jesuits were hanged on Boston Common, and hundreds were killed in Tianamen Square. Thus the commons is both a reality and an aspiration. The commons, as metaphor, does what good metaphors do—it conveys complex but interdependent realities.

Today we are all swept up into “a new global commons.” How we are all going to dwell together within this new commons is an urgent question at this critical turning in our history. In this new commons, the environmental challenge in which we now find ourselves is not merely one issue among many. It is a key, orienting issue that touches and potentially reorders everything else.

If human beings are going to be able to meet this challenge and imagine citizenship within a global/planetary commons, it is vitally important for people to have an experience of a micro-commons. This requires reclaiming a meaningful sense of the integrity of place within the more-than-human-world and an active belonging within a shared ecological-social-political-economic-spiritual frame. This initiative, therefore, is framed by the boundaries of a place, the Cascadia bioregion—specifically the largest Coastal Temperate Rainforest on the planet—west of the Cascade Mountain Range to the Pacific Coast and extending from British Columbia to Northern California. This bioregion is punctuated by three major cities: Vancouver, B.C., Seattle, WA, and Portland, OR. Thus Leadership for the New Commons is grounded in a bioregional imagination, an understanding of the ecology, culture, and the integrity of a particular place, woven inextricably throughout all sectors of the commons: health, education, business, government, religion, science and technology, the arts, philanthropy, social services, sports and entertainment, and media. A bioregional vision yields new capacities and approaches—it gives juice to the imagination and practice of leadership.

A Leadership Formation Program

The centerpiece of this initiative isa bioregional leadership formation program to prepare key leaders across major sectors to hold an informed awareness of the interdependent whole of the ecological, social, commercial, and political fabric of our common life, and to act skillfully to enable communities, organizations, and their region as a whole to work on behalf of the common good—both within their bioregion and on behalf of the wider global commons.

This leadership formation initiative has two facets:

1)Cohorts of 20-25 participants will work together in a well-crafted, challenging learning process over a period of 18 months, meeting regularly both at the Whidbey Institute and at other locations across the bioregion. Throughout, participants will integrate theory with practical engagement in their ongoing spheres of endeavor, developing and testing new insight and skills. Each member of the cohort will simultaneously work directly with a significant number of others to disseminate new ways of thinking and acting. This feature of the initiative is being designed and carried out in collaboration with a growing network of concerned and engaged individuals and organizations.

2)The curriculum includes modular events (one and two-day retreats/conferences) and large-scale events open to the public, consultations, and circles of collaboration and participation that make the animating essence and essential principles of this work accessible to a wider public.

Participants for the cohort part of the initiative will be drawn from across sectors, will represent gender, ethnic, and geographical diversity, and will include three career phases (early, mid, and established—emphasis on early and mid-career). They will be selected on the basis of their potential for effective and long-term commitment to the practice of leadership that serves the commons as a whole, whatever their particular location, sector, or organization. After people have completed their particular cohort experience, they will remain related to the initiative to encourage further learning, effective collaboration, and the ongoing practice of inspired, strong and influential leadership, thus forming a catalytic matrix for regional transformation over time.

This initiative is designed be replicated in other regions, and throughout its development people from other regions have been and will be involved.

We are making a ten-year commitment to this initiative.

Aspiration

Alan Durning has written: “The Pacific Northwest is a ‘test case.’ If this place on earth—the greenest part of the richest society in history—can’t reconcile people and nature, it probably can’t be done.” The aspiration of this initiative is that the Cascadia Bioregion will meet this test and will serve as a model for the wider global commons. In ten to fifteen years, leaders of the Cascadia bioregion will be articulating the perspective of the commons in decision-making, and contributing to a distinctive emergence of a collective bioregional capacity for imaginative and positive ways of living. A functioning group of these leaders will meet regularly to work with and coordinate the interdependencies in a committed practice of bioregional citizenship. Case studies and other materials will also be developed to amplify the influence of this initiative.


Building the Work

In Phase I of this initiative, we have developed Powers of Leadership, a seasonal retreat cycle of four retreats per year, for groups of 15-26. Now in its fifth year, it serves as a testing ground and has been broadly effective for professionals from across sectors and a wide range of organizations and communities—both within and beyond the Cascadia bioregion.

Also in Phase I, a Core Design Team has been formed to design the bioregional leadership formation program, to convene consultations, and to anchor the initiative as a whole.

Phase IIwill see three primary realms of activity:

1.Design of the bioregional leadership formation program. A feature of this design work is the convening of five invitational consultations, Imagine Cascadia, to inform key features of the fellows program. The first of these, for example, was “Imagine Cascadia: Bioregion as Place, Pressures, and Possibility.” The forth, in April, 2005, is titled: Toward A New Economic Imagination.

2.Launch of the fifth and sixth Powers of Leadership seasonal retreat cycles as continued testing ground (October, 2004, and October, 2005).

3.The development of both collegial networks and curricular material. This takes place, in part, through the convening of consultation/conferences described above as well as other events, including major public events in Seattle and elsewhere, such as public lecture by Vandana Shiva, July, 2004; public lecture by Janine Benyus, May 2005; and (tentative) Religion, War, and the Media with Chris Hedges and Charles Kimball, July, 2005, Town Hall, Seattle.

Phase IIIwill begin with the launch of Leadership for the New Commons: A Bioregional Leadership Formation Program (Fall, 2006) and will proceed for ten years as described above.

Circles of Colleagueship

Leadership for the New Commonsis necessarily a collegial practice—dependent upon relationships with partners and allies—embedded in networks of interdependence both chosen and given. Thus the infrastructure of this initiative must manifest a rich and multi-layered constellation of colleagues and organizations, sharing differing perspectives, common commitments, and the willingness to learn and work “on an edge.” It is intended that this constellation will grow across time with an organic integrity that is fully aligned with the deep commitments and purposes of the initiative.

Leadership for the New Commons invites and welcomes the participation, collaboration, and support of individuals, foundations, and other agencies that share its purposes and vision.

Colleagues at Large include:

Peter Block, author, speaker, and partner in Designed Learning. His most recent book is The Answer to How Is Yes.
Ronald Heifetz, co-founder, Center for Public Leadership, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. His most recent book is Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading.
Robert Kegan, professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Among his writings, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.


This paper is a statement of work in progress.
Your comments are invited and welcome.



THE WHIDBEY INSTITUTE
P.O. Box 57, Clinton WA 98236
Ph: 360/341-1884 / Fx: 360/341-1899
info@whidbeyinstitute.org
www.whidbeyinstitute.org





Biographical Profiles - Core Design Team

Larry Daloz—associate director, Whidbey Institute. He completed his doctoral work in educational planning at Harvard University, served as the first dean of Vermont Community College, and is widely respected in adult education and development. He is the double-award winning author of Mentor: Guiding the Journey of Adult Learners, and co-author of Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World. He teaches also in the doctoral program in adult education at Columbia’s Teacher’s College in New York.

Craig Fleck—founding partner, Demeter Matrix Alliance. His specialty is in long-term client relationships with major companies, providing coaching and education to guide leaders and organizations through change. He has been consulting and coaching with GE Capital for twelve years, and he is working with Sun Microsystems, designing their world wide change effectiveness program. He works internationally in Europe and in Asia-Pacific. He also consults to health care, education, and other non-profit organizations.

Diana Gale—distinguished practitioner and Director of Executive Education at the Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington. She has over 25 years in government service, including 20 as a department director at the City of Seattle. Most recently she was the director of Seattle Public Utilities. Her doctorate is in urban planning. She has received several regional and national awards for outstanding civic leadership.

Sharon Parks—associate director of the Whidbey Institute and director, Leadership for the New Commons. Formerly, she served in faculty and research positions in leadership and ethics in the schools of Divinity, Business, and Government at Harvard University. Among her publications are Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith and Can Leadership Be Taught? (Harvard Business School Press, forthcoming). She is a co-author of Can Ethics Be Taught? Perspectives, Challenges, and Approaches at Harvard Business School. She speaks and consults nationally.

Roger Taylor—principal, Roger Taylor and Associates. Roger has twenty-five years of experience in providing consulting, executive coaching, and training to corporations, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations—“leading with integrity for a change.” He usually works with executive leadership teams, both behind the scenes and in live work situations with real results at stake. He links leadership activity to strategic organizational coordination, helping leaders to act with nerve and understanding to ensure success and innovation.

Carol Yamada—formerly senior manager of leadership curriculum with the Boeing Leadership Center, currently on sabbatical. Carol works in the areas of a new leadership re-imagination, an integral business model, and conscious aging. A “visionary with practical feet,” Carol puts voice to what matters, creates containers for authentic engagement, and facilitates transformational change. She holds an MBA and an Executive Leadership Certificate from Seattle University.

THE WHIDBEY INSTITUTE
P.O. Box 57, Clinton WA 98236
Ph: 360/341-1884 / Fx: 360/341-1899
info@whidbeyinstitute.org
www.whidbeyinstitute.org
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