NSL Blog

What happens when organisations no longer fit reality

September 24, 2013

In my previous post on Scotland exploring a different reality, I wanted to share Tim Merry’s views on the need to create better systems more in tune wit the nature of humanity. Tim talks about meeting change with dignity. In No Straight Lines the core philosophy is we can do better and we need to deschool ourselves from a linear and mechanistic way of thinking and doing. Here is Tim expanding on his philosophy on systems change at a human scale.

Transcript of Tim’s thoughts

It’s an interesting time. My experience is that we’re in a period where one way of doing things and one dominant mindset and series of belief systems is dying. It’s dying because it no longer fits reality. It’s not dying because we want it to. It’s not dying because it’s bad. It’s not dying because it’s wrong. It’s dying because it no longer fits reality. The maps no longer describe the landscape, like I was saying earlier.

As a result, new innovations are beginning to take place. People are beginning to start walking out of this paradigm, this industrial mindset of command and control, this mechanistic world view. They’re walking out of it and walking on to create something new. It’s the great human experiment that we’re in right now. Those folks are walking out to create something new and when they become connected to each other – no one can do it alone, the time of the lone wolf is over – a new loop begins to be born. At its simplest that’s what it is. Walking out and walking on.

Why is hosting important now? Why is creating the conditions for conversations that matter for meaningful relationship important right now? It’s because that’s the work we need to do. We need to be connecting together the people who are walking out of the old system and walking on to build the new. Because that will amplify and accelerate the emergence of the new. So that’s the work. And within that there’s a stand I’m taking. There are different ways to respond to these times that we’re in. One is to become further entrenched in the old way of doing things. To become more fundamentalist, more isolationist, more controlling, more protective. And the other, which is what I stand for and have devoted my life to, is to step into relationship with each other in the face of it.

That’s the work. How do we do that? And how do we do that at increasing levels of scale? So how do we do that in our families, in our schools, in our communities? How do we do that between our communities? How do we do that across regions? How do we do that across continents? How do we do that globally? We’re being called to rebuild the fabric of human society. Right now. These generations that are alive right now get to influence its creation. Not control it, but participate in it. That’s exciting. And there’s a little piece of me that wonders if we’re going to weave it all together in time.

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