Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

by Adrienne Maree Brown

Here you are, in the cycle between the past and the future, choosing to spend your miraculous time in the exploration of how humans, especially those seeking to grow liberation and justice, can learn from the world around us how to best collaborate, how to shape change.1

It is another way of speaking about the connective tissue of all that exists—the way, the Tao, the force, change, God/dess, life. Birds flocking, cells splitting, fungi whispering underground.

Emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.

There is always enough time for the right work.

This is actually an ancient practice, a recovery rather than a discovery.

We learn to be quiet, polite, indirect, and submissive, not to disturb the status quo.

learn that tests and deadlines are the reasons to take action. This puts those with good short-term memories and a positive response to pressure in leadership positions, leading to urgency-based thinking, regardless of the circumstance.