Reflections
by George Pór.
All masterplans failed me. Fortunately, and unavoidably. When I was a pre-teen, my mom’s master plan for me was that I should become a doctor or a lawyer. When I was a teenager, my masterplan for the world was summed up by the chorus of my favourite song of those years, “The Internationale unites the human race.” […]
by Dave Pendle.
Introduction
This article is my first full public exploration of the ‘Art and Practice of Generative Leadership’. I have written elsewhere on Medium regarding the notion of Leadership as Practice. In this article I outline an evocative synthesis, for those individuals who recognise that most mainstream recognitions and constructions of leadership are deeply flawed. That the ecosystemic crises that humanity currently faces, necessitate the activation of the highest leadership potentials of individuals, collectives as well as systems, to navigate a way through the emerging epoch of disruption.[…]
by George Pór.
Yesterday afternoon, I started a 1-person Liberation Front. The liberation is from the oppressive urgency of responding immediately to the multitude of towering tasks of connecting dots in a “collective wisdom” ecosystem. The 1 person is me, who wants to embody the same harmony, joyous flow, and cat-like relaxed alertness in his life as what he is striving to contribute to in the life of others.[…]
by George Pór.
Do you remember when Mafé Rabino passionately argued, in the first session of the Organisational Shift segment of our Expedition, for creating a Discovery Team focused on the question of how to generate resources (that’s not only money) for one’s project, even if she will be alone in that team?[…]
by George Pór.
Now that the current segment of the Protopia Learning Expedition is winding down and the Organizational Shift has not yet started, I was wondering what could be a valuable gift that I can leave the graduates of the Personal and Interpersonal Shift segments with. […]
by George Pór.
I was born and raised in Hungary. I had a very authoritarian father who claimed to be a Communist, when Communism was the state religion in Hungary, after the 2nd World War.
In my teenage years, he taught me to deeply appreciate the inspiring stories of heroes in the international workers movement, and the beautiful ideas of the Communist Manifesto.
Studying the Manifesto led me to discover the sharp contrast of its beautiful ideas and the ugly, oppressive reality of the so-called “socialism” in Hungary. So, I started standing up against the hypocrisy of my father and of the state’s ruling elite.” […]
by George Pór.
Whether you’re lonely or in a relationship (or lonely in a relationship), nurturing a friendship can be your ticket to a richer, more fulfilling life.
You don’t need to be a conscious evolutionary agent (although it helps a little bit) to appreciate the gifts of a special kind of relationship, the developmental friendship. It’s that kind, in which we do not only accept each other as we are but also, deeply care for and support realizing each other’s fuller potential ” […]
by George Pór.
The “wood bud moment” of human organizing is when the meme of a generative & transformative initiative jumps from one mind to another, where it is absorbed by a fertile terrain.
I think of an initiative as generative when it generates more collective energy than it consumes. The initiative is transformative when the information in its DNA instructs all of its off-springs, over the subsequent generations, to guide the evolution of their consciousness to the next plateau. […]
by George Pór.
Leadership has a bad name due to all the hierarchical, oppressive practices associated with it. But there’s also “evolutionary leadership,” As I wrote in a blog in 2004, “evolutionary leadership is about the practice of looking at and thinking from the biggest context with the greatest clarity, AND acting to meet the needs of all parts for the good of the whole.” […]
by Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D. We are in a profound moment for our species. The evolutionary challenge many of us have been talking about has now kicked into high gear and we are entering what anthropologists and systems theorists call the liminal phase. This moment is the chrysalis phase, the stage where the caterpillar turns to liquid inside the cocoon but the butterfly has yet to begin to […]
By Mark Allan Kaplan|April 18th, 2020|Categories: Capability Development, Co-evolution, Meaning Making, Sensemaking, Vertical Development|
by Mark Allan Kaplan I believe, like many of us here at Campus Co-Evolve, that in any future world we seek to create we need to rethink our educational system from the ground up in terms of a developmental and evolutionary perspective, as opposed to a job training and enculturation perspective. This new system should be life-long and not limited to the so-called formative years, since we have solid evidence […]
By Anna Betz|April 18th, 2020|Categories: Capability Development, Postcapitalism, Vertical Development|
“Stages of development:” foe or friend? Listening to people “frustrated with developmental stages,” I’ve just realized: Only when the energy of the Green wave carries itself to its peak, only then will start the Teal wave emerging and growing the next stage of human consciousness into a society-shaping force. Early- and middle-Green are threatened by the perceived hierarchical tendency in “stages of development.” Early-stage Teal can be trapped […]
The Challenge of this Gateway Decade Prompted by the membership requirements of the Rally Point Alpha group on Facebook, I’ve just re-read Jordan Hall’s brilliant “Situational Assessment 2017 — the Trump Edition.” Supported by my experience of the years passed since its publication, I think of it as timelier than ever. If you haven’t yet read it, I suggest do it now. A minor benefit of doing so will be that […]
By George Pór|February 29th, 2020|Categories: Collective Intelligence, Collective Will, Distributed Cognition,
Meaning Making, Sensemaking, Uncategorized|
The corporation that can live on for 100s or 1000s of years In a conversation on Facebook about Walkaway, one of my fave Doctorow novels, I’ve just read: “It would be quite difficult to make corporations immortal. Corporations exist while the value they are designed to generate is needed. If there’s not much more money to be made by giving that value (for various reasons), the money will go out of […]
By George Pór|February 29th, 2020|Categories: Longevity, Organization, Postcapitalism, Self Management,
I came back from Rome, last night, were I participated in the Warm Data Lab training led by Nora Bateson. It was one of those rare gamechanger events in my life, which questioned my ways of making sense and interacting with reality and gave me an opening to upgrade them. You will certainly hear from me about it later, but this story is about another highlight of my […]
“What kind of story brought you here? “
In mid-June this year, a group of people from different countries around the world gathered in a place called Hawkwood College in the UK. This group of people share a common vision, and they are also the first batch of students in the Four Rivers Course at Campus Co-Evolve. They call themselves r.evolutionary change-makers , let’s call themselves “change-makers “. […]
The wisdom of the ancient ones Our story started way back. The first people of all continents inhabited their natural surroundings with the mixed emotions of gratitude for the nourishment and trepidation about the coming thunderstorm. Nature was a formidable friend and foe. When man-made or natural dangers threatened their habitat, the circle of elders gathered around the campfire in the center of the village, listened, spoke, and […]
Cohort One of the Campus’ Four Rivers course has just had an unforgettable, 5-day residential session to complete its study of the A-B-C-D “rivers” of Awareness, Behaviour, Community Building, and Designing with Complexity. It was unforgettable because imprints of the human touch never fade. You may hear more about that later. We sure had a wonderfully heart-warming and mind-expanding time together but that’s not why I’m writing now. It’s about […]
Mid-July 2019 event in London & Brighton – details to be announced soon I cannot forget the last words of a beloved friend of mine before his death. “The only thing I regret in my life that I didn’t start listening to my body sooner.” To honour our friendship and his legacy, I took those words as a teaching device for my inner development. That was 13 years ago. The […]
On my twitter feed I recently stumbled across a link mentioning a conversation between two of my favorite transformational leaders, Thomas Hübl and Otto Scharmer. I stopped what I was about to do and for 45 minutes let myself become absorbed by their enquiries, questions, insights and challenges. It was time truly well spent. I still feel touched and inspired on many levels by their co-exploration. I hope this conversation […]
When we opened the 4R course, we focused our attention on the rivers themselves that occupy the ring of the 4R mandala* on the left, snuggling into each other around the centrepiece, the being/becoming symbol. Now, after the first teaching session dedicated to the River of Awareness, it is a good time for a reflective meditation practice to see what it may reveal. Why not do it with me, in […]
Now that the Cohort 1 of the Campus has embarked on its learning journey, I felt it’s time to revisit what motivates us: prototyping a structure and culture for the holistic and experiential education of transformative leaders, who are passionate about increasing their effectiveness with orders of magnitude. Prototyping a culture is “simple” because it takes “only” to intently listen and respond to the life-giving forces present in the social field […]
One of the members of Cohort 1 of the Four Rivers course asked, what is the meaning of “Tealing with it”? A member of our Enabling Circle replied, I would recommend reading one of George’s articles on Enlivening Edge entitled: OVERWHELMED? JUST TEAL WITH IT. Then I added this little story: If you don’t have time to read the whole article that Szilvia referenced, please note that the expression “Teal with it!” is […]
An updated version of a column by George Pór published originally in the Enlivening Edge magazineI’ve been living divided and yearning for wholeness. Far too long. Parts of me argue with other parts, jostling to accommodate roles with different priorities. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not seeking a utopian nirvana of absolute peace and plenty. I am burning inside, fuelled by all-consuming attraction to a particular possibility – the possibility […]
One of the world’s management gurus, Gary Hamel, asked at last year’s Peter Drucker Forum: “How did we become so inured to the inhumanity of our organizations?” “How is it OK that a scant 13% of employees around the world are emotionally engaged in their work?” “How is it OK that only 12% of employees in Europe say they’re always consulted before objectives are set for their work?” “How is […]
My wife brought me a cup of hot chocolate without sugar in it. Even without sugar, it’s such a heart-warming comfort drink! Each morning, when that happens, I sip on it slowly as to let the taste of cocoa linger in my mouth after each sip. It was early morning, and I was sitting in my writing den, busy with envisioning Campus Co-Evolve and its forthcoming first program, Four Rivers: […]