Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

by Adrienne Maree Brown

“Biomimicry is basically taking a design challenge and then finding an ecosystem that has already solved that challenge, and literally trying to emulate what you learn. There are three types of biomimicry—one is copying form and shape, another is copying a process, like photosynthesis in a leaf, and the third is mimicking at an ecosystem’s level, like building a nature-inspired city.” —Janine Benyus

So many of our organizations working for social change are structured in ways that reflect the status quo. We have singular charismatic leaders, top down structures, money-driven programs, destructive methods of engaging conflict, unsustainable work cultures, and little to no impact on the issues at hand.

We have to create futures in which everyone doesn’t have to be the same kind of person. That’s the problem with most utopias for me: they are presented as mono value, a new greener more local monoculture where everyone gardens and plays the lute and no one travels… And I don’t want to go there!

One indicator that things are off is when impacted communities and people of color get involved and they are put in the role of “performing the action,” for example, having their photos taken, being spokespeople, or being asked to endorse or represent work they don’t get to lead, etc., while most of the background organizing is still dominated by the folks who aren’t impacted and won’t be around long term to sustain the campaign or to be held accountable.

I have been facilitating groups to shift from a culture of strategic planning to one of strategic intentions—what are our intentions, informed by our vision? What do we need to be and do to bring our vision to pass? How do we bring those intentions to life throughout every change, in every aspect of our work?

I know this has been true in my life of missed opportunities, heartbreak, organizational shifts, the deaths of loved ones who were miserably and terminally ill. The sooner I can look for the opportunity, the blessing, the more efficient I am in moving towards my vision. The energy it takes to resist and bemoan the change can instead fuel positive movement forward.

Adapting allows you to know and name current needs and capacity, to be in relationship in real time, as opposed to any cycle of wishing and/or resenting what others do or don’t give you.

If you are in a leadership position, make sure you have a circle of people who can tell you the truth, and to whom you can speak the truth. Bring others into shared leadership with you, and/or collaborate with other formations so you don’t get too enamored of your singular vision.

Transformation doesn’t happen in a linear way, at least not one we can always track. It happens in cycles, convergences, explosions. If we release the framework of failure, we can realize that we are in iterative cycles, and we can keep asking ourselves—how do I learn from this?

grief is the growing up of the heart that bursts boundaries like an old skin or a finished life.

grief is gratitude.

The crises are becoming clear even to those not being directly oppressed, or those directly organizing. And people are ready to stand up and dream of something different.

There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remember that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional work.

It is imperative to regenerate our curiosity, our genuine interest in different opinions, and in people we don’t know yet—can we see them as part of ourselves, and maintain curiosity, especially when we want to constrict and critique?

There are way too many people in critique mode who belong to no formation, who spend their lives writing volunteer think pieces in 140 character bursts of Internet.

After many dives I now think of “coral reef” as a verb, or a process, a way that ocean life creates home and beauty out of ships, cars, bikes, and other things never meant to live on the ocean floor.

Nothing in nature is disposable. Part of the resilience of nature is that nothing in nature is wasted. The earth swallows it all through mouths or soil or water. This is such a simple beautiful truth. Everything is food, fuel, compost, a home for some other creature.

Humans have made of ourselves a hierarchy of value in which some people are disposable—can fail at being human, can be killed as a punishment, can be collateral damage. Can be wasted. Or tortured. Or locked in a small box for their whole lives, given no hope of transformation, or a future in society.

What we put our attention on grows. We have been growing otherness, borders, separateness. And in all that division we have created layer upon layer of trauma and vengefulness, conditions for permanent war, practices that move us into a battle with the very planet we rely on for all life. The scale of division, conflict, racism, xenophobia, and hierarchical supremacy on our planet is overwhelming.

Transformative justice, in the context of emergent strategy, asks us to consider how to transform toxic energy, hurt, legitimate pain, and conflict into solutions. To get under the wrong, find a way to coexist, be energy moving towards life, together.

When the response to mistakes, failures, and misunderstandings is emotional, psychological, economic, and physical punishment, we breed a culture of fear, secrecy, and isolation.

Real time is slower than social-media time, where everything feels urgent. Real time often includes periods of silence, reflection, growth, space, self-forgiveness, processing with loved ones, rest, and responsibility.

I want us to do better. I want to feel like we are responsible for each other’s transformation. Not the transformation from vibrant flawed humans to bits of ash, but rather the transformation from broken people and communities to whole ones.

At the human scale, in order to create a world that works for more people, for more life, we have to collaborate on the process of dreaming and visioning and implementing that world. We have to recognize that a multitude of realities have, do, and will exist.

The more people who cocreate the future, the more people whose concerns will be addressed from the foundational level in this world.

Meaningful collaboration both relies on and deepens relationship—the stronger the bond between the people or groups in collaboration, the more possibility you can hold. In beginning this work, notice who you feel drawn to, and where you find ease. And notice who challenges you, who makes the edges of your ideas grow or fortify. I find that my best work has happened during my most challenging collaborations, because there are actual differences that are converging and creating more space, ways forward that serve more than one worldview.

Africans leaping off of slaver ships were afrofuturists. Slave-era parents teaching their babies a foreign alphabet in the candlelit dirt were afrofuturists. Black women dissociating themselves through to tomorrow while being raped into motherhood were afrofuturists. Those who raised the children of violence, and those who chose not to, all were predicting the future and articulating their choices. Slaves who ran to freedom, and slaves who ran to their deaths, were afrofuturists. It is the emphasis on a tomorrow that centers the dignity of that seed, particularly in the face of extinction, that marks, for me, the afrofuturist.

We are touching the future, reaching out across boundaries and post-apocalyptic conditions to touch each other, to call each other out as family, as beloveds. “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”82 we are making ourselves vulnerable enough to be changed, which will of course change what Black existence means. Octavia Butler, who gave us that philosophical spirit poem “Earthseed” that I just quoted, is a bridge for many of us, between this world, and the narratives that pull us through to the next realm, or the parallel universe, or the future in which we are the protagonists.

Imagination is one of the spoils of colonization, which in many ways is claiming who gets to imagine the future for a given geography. Losing our imagination is a symptom of trauma. Reclaiming the right to dream the future, strengthening the muscle to imagine together as Black people, is a revolutionary decolonizing activity.

The future is not an escapist place to occupy. All of it is the inevitable result of what we do today, and the more we take it in our hands, imagine it as a place of justice and pleasure, the more the future knows we want it, and that we aren’t letting go.

Art is not neutral. It either upholds or disrupts the status quo, advancing or regressing justice. We are living now inside the imagination of people who thought economic disparity and environmental destruction were acceptable costs for their power. It is our right and responsibility to write ourselves into the future. All organizing is science fiction. If you are shaping the future, you are a futurist. And visionary fiction is a way to practice the future in our minds, alone and together.

Visionary fiction disrupts the hero narrative concept that one person (often one white man, often Matt Damon) alone has the skills to save the world.

Giving everyone room to say what they want to prioritize and discuss, and then synthesizing that set of topics as a group, grows the common tongue of the participants, and allows for genuine clarity to happen in the dance of organizing all of the desires into a manageable number of conversations.

The vision of an organization is the furthest it can see. It is looking into the future, dreaming together, predicting impact, flexing the imagination muscle, and saying aloud what we long for. I cannot overstate this—the more people who deeply share a vision, the more possible that vision becomes. Build the vision across your group.

Some groups get caught up in attending to the places where they aren’t aligned. What I have seen work best over the years is for groups to be aware of where they aren’t aligned, but to focus on and grow the areas of alignment.

Too many organizations suffer because they expect one person, or a core group, to stay in place forever. Some groups even lose their shape and focus trying to make everything work for one person, or a core group of people, instead of planning for succession and change.

What are our individual ways/practices of conflict? How did conflict happen in our families?

Don’t make assumptions. Don’t take things personally. Be impeccable with your word. Always do your best.

ruiz four agreements

We must learn to develop positions together, adapting to the changing conditions around us—sometimes this means we must relinquish our positions, to voice our feelings and thoughts, and hear and be influenced by, other people’s opinions and information.

Ideation is just the verb for coming up with ideas. We are socialized to come up with ideas in isolation and compete with them, to have the best idea and get rewarded for it. But if we want a world that works for more people, we have to get into the practice of ideating together, letting others as close as possible into the intimate space where ideas are born.

Practice saying “yes” to the ideas that come from others, growing the idea with yes after yes. When you are tempted to say “no,”a try asking “how?” instead. Often a “no” is a way of expressing a fear or worry that something can’t work. “How?” is a collaborative question, inviting the creation process to keep going, to come up with a way for the idea to grow to the next stage.