The future is not this, nor that

As you read this, there are organizations, leaders, and teams enacting radical innovations to the culture of their work communities.

These social artisans are paving the way for adaptations in every industry and sector of society.

These adaptations include experiments is radical inclusion, rapid iteration, decentralized decision-making, new forms of reciprocity, ecological design, soul-centered leadership, and spirit-centered visioning. Their rituals of work are ancient and deeply human. Their ceremonies of birth, development, death, and renewal are rooted deeply in the more than human world.

The cultures of these groups are, by nature, threatening to current ways of working together. They are not working with incremental change, but with revolution of thought and collective action. They are real and present danger to the assumptions and identifications we have (mostly unconsciously) about work and organizing.

They are not progressive or conservative; old paradigm or new paradigm; right or left; black or white. They resist easy solutions and categories.

As in a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, they are the imaginal cells that are quietly waiting for the cultural, social, and economic “immune systems” of the current reality to slowly give way.

While most of us trod along poking tiny holes in the fabric of our assumptions about the world when the world demands it, they are tearing holes and crawling out of an expired cocoon.

Eventually, these innovators will lead the world.

They operate at the frontier, confronting the wild terrain of psyche and power to pave new way and reawakened old ways. They live and work among us.