Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

by Adrienne Maree Brown

There are four universal tools—Trust the People, Principles, Protocols, and Consensus—that just feel foundational.

so let the goals be inspiring, uplifting what will inspire the most passionate conversation

Underscheduling the amount of time a conversation needs means that energy will start to build up as people look for a way to release their thoughts and ideas into the group.

In agenda development, look for places where you can open people up to each other, and get their whole selves in the room.

There is always enough time for the right work.

Good ideas become great movement growth strategies with the touch of passionate hands and work. Ideas that emerge from obligation tend to go stagnate waiting for water.

“What is the next most elegant step?”

Group Agreements

W.A.I.T.—Why Am I Talking?

Building, not selling—when you speak, converse, don’t pitch;

the people who will be doing the work agree on what is being done, why and how. This is the heart of efficiency—that there is nothing dragging or diverting the energy of the work.

If you are making the amendment, be clear in your self and in your words as to whether the amendment is a suggestion or a requirement without which you will not approve the proposal.

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There are lovely and quick tools for measuring levels of agreement—thumbs up or down, or letting the number of fingers you hold up correlate

I love the time-travel newspaper headline exercise for finding the common ideas that bring everyone together.

that there are parallel universes for everything we can imagine, or every choice we make. I

They fleshed out their five-generation vision

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Prioritize for what I call the “first domino” cluster, the thing that, if you achieve it, will begin to move the whole pattern.

And “a relaxed body is the most powerful body.”

Make it so that the relationships and formations you are in are places to practice liberation.

In past (romantic, familial, friend) relationships, what are the best ways we have handled conflict? And what are the worst? What emotions are we most comfortable with? Least comfortable

“How people are in the relationship is how they will be in the break-up.”

Once people come into awareness of which way their attention is flowing, they have increased agency.

“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.