Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

by Adrienne Maree Brown

Adaptation Example: How to Facilitate 250 Funders and Organizers56 For the better part of a year, plan a meeting for 110 funders of social and environmental justice. Two days before the meeting, learn that registration has boomed (or not been closed) and the number of participants has doubled. The new numbers are mostly movement partners—organizers, not funders. On Day 1, name these practices, gathered and/or developed over many months for this experiment, to the overflowing room: less prep, more presence low ego, high impact building alignment, not selling ideas relationship is the measure of our strength this will be as amazing as you are trust your own work and each other Have plenary sessions (plenary simply means that everyone is in one room) that inspire people and point towards the work that exemplifies the vision of the meeting. (Be amazed when speakers respect the amount of time they are given and deliver powerful messages in that container.) Have seven planned breakout “labs”—intimate self-guided spaces where participants can deepen relationships and strategy together by working through shared questions and content. To each lab, assign note takers who will feed the content back to the meeting organizers for weaving throughout the meeting. Have an expectation that rebels will create two or three more labs, no matter how much planning and thought goes into selecting the seven labs. Plan for groups of 10–15 people to struggle and deepen together in these labs. Be fl...