VO LUME 9, NUMBER 3–4

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

Re a d e r s w r i t e

Organizational Learning andthe IFC’S Mission Impossible
Peter Senge

F E AT U R E ARTIC L E S

Global Action Networks:
An Organizational Innovation
Steve Waddell

Tribal Leadership: An
Interview with David C. Logan
and John King
George Hall

Learning and Performing
through Hastily Formed
Networks
George RothThe Defining Featuresof a Megacommunity

Chris Kelly, Mark Gerencser,
Fernando Napolitano,
Reginald Van Lee
Book ExcerptS

The Tao of Sustainability
John Ehrenfeld

istockphoto.com

Published by The Society for Organizational Learningreflections.solonline.org
ISSN 1524-1734

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 3 – 4-

p ubl i she r ’ s N o t e 9 . 3 – 4W

hen I met Charlie
Kiefer and Peter Senge
in 1982, they captured
my attention with their assertion that despite technologicalinnovations that would dazzle
time travelers from previous
millennia, if our ancestors visC. Sherry Immediatoited today they would find that
relatively little had changed in the organizational forms(and human conduct!) dominating the private and public sectors. The premise that new structures and behavior were essential in our changing world was my call tojoin Peter and Charlie in their fledgling Innovation Associates consultancy. Although I left Innovation Associates
in 1996, this issue of Reflections reminds me that I havenot gone too far – we’re all “innovation associates” in
exploring what lies beyond the corporation, particularly
in what might generically be referred to as “action networks.” In this issue, we feature a range of work spanning sectors and continents in the interest of both
local goals and global challenges.
Beyond organizational learning, the subject of societal learning intrigues author Steve Waddell. In “Global
Action Networks: An Organizational Innovation,” hereports on his action research. Global Action Networks,
or GANs, may be critical players in a newly emerging
global governance system. Formed to address the increasing number of complex issues that cross geographic,
functional, and sectoral boundaries, these supra-networks
bring together a broad range of stakeholders from civilsociety, business, and government to creatively address“wicked problems” at local and global levels. In this article, Waddell uses a wealth of examples as he lays out
the stages of GANs’ development, and addresses thekinds of challenges they must face and overcome ifthey are to reach their full – and powerful – potential.
One hypothesis about how we come together is that
we form and are attracted to tribes. In looking at theexperience of successful businesses, Tribal Leadershipreflections.solonline.org

authors David Logan and John King draw from several
decades of experience to examine successful corporate
culture and conclude that tribes – the groups thatnaturally form within the company – are the secret tolasting success. In an interview with veteran contributor
George Hall, Logan and King discuss the evolution oftribal culture from undermining to history-making, andthe role of leadership in developing such cultures.
Beginning in 2007, SoL organizational members engaged in a multi-year research project focused on thetemporary systems that form to deal with crises andopportunities. In “Learning and Performing throughHastily Formed Networks” SoL researcher George Rothreports findings of this work on behalf of the group by
answering the following: What creates, sustains, andtransforms individuals and organizations into effective
networks? (See Reflections 7.1 for background on
hastily formed networks.)
In investigating the work outside of SoL on the question of cross-sector collaboration, I have been very impressed with the action research of Chris Kelly, Mark
Gerencser, Fernando Napolitano, and Reginald Van Lee.
As they see it, it takes a “megacommunity” to address
the “wicked problems” we face. Such problems cannot
be solved by government, business, or civil society
alone, and the engagement of all three sectors is a characteristic of their most successful cases. In “The Defining
Features of a Megacommunity” they describe how leaders of many organizations must work together toward
common goals, without any one of them being in control of the whole system. A megacommunity initiative
combines focused conversation, deliberate development of leadership capabilities, and results-oriented
action in an open-ended network of leaders frommultiple organizations.
The final feature of this issue is a book excerpt from
Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming Our Consumer Culture by SoL researcher John
Ehrenfeld. While we have covered the issue of sustain-

p ubl i she r ’ s n o t e | i mme d i at oability in many issues of Reflections, this piece has two
unique aspects. First, Ehrenfeld’s work itself is inspiredby his experience in the SoL community. He has shared
his developing ideas in prior issues of Reflections, andhe writes an introduction to the book excerpt whichtells that story. Second, the “tao of sustainability” weshare in this issue speaks to the theoretical and practical importance of “recovering our senses” dimmed by
the forces of modernity. In his discourse, Ehrenfeld illustrates how we can truly move from viewing sustainability as a problem in need of a solution, to a possibility
calling for creation.
In Readers Write, Peter Senge contributes his observations of the IFC journey (Reflections 9.1) shared by
Dorothy Berry, Yolanda Hegni and Marilyn Darling. 		
He notes the striking absence of traditional heroes inthe story, and the centrality of a dialogic approach tochange. The power of conversation to identify criticalquestions can create new possibilities for the organization to realize its mission as effective agents for
reducing poverty in the world.
This issue marks the final chapter of Volume 9 ofReflections, and the conclusion of five years of service
as editor from Nina Kruschwitz. Nina’s contributions

to putting the work of the SoL community into print
began with the Fifth Discipline fieldbook series andcontinued with Presence, Learning for Sustainability, 		
the revised edition of The Fifth Discipline, Theory U,
Profit for Life, and most recently, The Necessary Revolution (which she coauthored) – all accomplished while
also editing Reflections. Many of us fail to attend to the“capturing and disseminating” parts of the learning
cycle, so getting this work into the field has been very
important to SoL’s mission. I am especially grateful forthe positive experience Nina created for Reflections
authors as well as readers as we shifted from a print
publication to an e-journal featuring work from aroundthe world. Nina, thank you for providing a great foundation for SoL’s next steps.
Finally, remember that one of SoL’s principles is 		that learning is social. In the spirit of this issue, we
encourage you to share Reflections articles with yourcolleagues, particularly as a catalyst for conversation.
With affection,

Publisher

iii

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reflections.solonline.org

readers write

Organizational Learningand the IFC’S Mission Impossible
Pe t e r S enge
Leadership offers a powerful thread for understanding the rich tapestry of forcesthat shape all journeys of deep organizational change, and yet it is far too often
misunderstood. I really liked “Organizational Learning and the IFC’s Mission Impossible [Reflections 9.1], both because it tells an important story of change in a very
complex public-sector organization, and because it helps people see the diversityof leadership involved, and especially because it entirely omits the one characterPeter Senge

who, by more traditional accounts, would be hailed as “the leader.”Over ten years ago, Dorothy Hamachi Berry became Vice President of Human Resources atthe World Bank and soon became interested in the organizational learning work and how it
might help in evolving the culture of the Bank. She, like many others, felt that the Bank wasout of touch with the realities of poverty and development, and far less effective in its
mission than it might be.
Most of the key people were in Washington, including so-called “country managers.” The Bank’s standard model of development centered on investments in large infrastructure projects like dams, which
often failed to address the deeper blocks to development, such as the absence of conditions that foster
entrepreneurialism and self-reinforcing wealth generation. While the focus was exclusively on economic
indicators, many of the countries in question suffered from underinvestment in institutions that generate social capital (like public education and effective legal systems) and deteriorating natural capital.
Although the diversity of countries represented in the Bank’s staff was impressive, in another sense thestaff was remarkably homogenous: most attended the same elite Western graduate schools and over
2,000 out of an approximate 10,000 person staff had Ph.D.s in Economics.
After a few years at the Bank, she shifted to the same position at the International Finance Corporation(IFC) at the time when Peter Woicke left J.P. Morgan to become as the IFC’s new CEO head in 1999, a
position he held through 2005. Dorothy sensed that there might be a distinct window of opportunity
at the IFC for real change.
As I was reading, I kept wondering when Peter’s part in the story would come. It never did. Then I
thought, this is the greatest possible compliment that could be paid to his contribution. If asked, hewould surely say that the story should be told as it is, from many different points of view, giving a feelingfor the many different leadership voices. Although by any measure Peter is a strong top leadership per-r e a d e r s W r i t e | sengesonality, he would say that to understand thechange process at IFC you must look beyond
the traditional “top-down” model. And he would
surely agree that the key to what was accomplished was how the passion and imaginationof people was ignited and aligned. This passion
had always there, it just had not been tapped.
The story told in “The IFC’s Mission Impossible”
focuses on an approach to change that could only
be called “dialogic.” This process fosters deep conversations at many levels that engage many people around questions that they truly care about:
What is keeping us from being as effective agentsin reducing poverty as we might be? What aspectsof our culture and management practices get in
our way? When are we at are best, and what seems
to happen to enable this to occur? How am I, andhow are we – those on the management teamfor example – part of the problem?
The story focuses on how a new spirit and 		
shared vision developed through leaders far fromtraditional centers of corporate power in the Bank
group, and from functional domains as diverse
as mining and advisory services. It shows how
top management eschewed the trappings of a“change program,” knowing that this would only
elicit push back from professionals’ natural prideand desire for autonomy. And it describes howeach region and part of the IFC had to develop
their own unique embodiment of the culturalchange needed throughout.

The IFC at the end of the millenieum was caught
in the same traps as its parent World Bank, as wellas many counterpart post World-War II “multilateral”
institutions. They were arrogant. They were used
to “clients” coming to them. They were isolated
from the on-the-ground realities of struggling
people and institutions in the developing world.
They were highly political in the sense that internal struggles for power often trumped the overall
mission to serve and promote lasting change thatsignificantly reduces systemic causes of poverty.
Today, while still far from their destination, the
IFC managers seem reliably set on their journey.
The corporation has shifted to being far moreclient centered, far better at connecting to thereal needs of real people and far better at addressing these needs. They have developed a morecollaborative culture that balances autonomy withbuilding shared knowledge and collective capability. They have pioneered “The Equator Principles”
guidelines for sustainable development that havebecome a model for the entire banking systemworldwide. And, they have continued and arguably moved still more boldly on this journey despite a change from one strong top executive toanother with a very different style, the sort ofchange that all too often disrupts or even derails
real change processes.
For me, this article represented a silent hand for
all those genuine leaders at the top who knowthat to lead is to serve and, as Lao Tzu said long
ago, know that their ultimate mark is that “thepeople will say ‘we did it ourselves.’”v

fe at u r e | Wa d d ell

fe a t u r e 9 . 3 – 4

Global Action Networks:
An Organizational Innovation
B y S t eve Wa d d ell
GANs, or Global Action Networks, are a leading innovation for scaling impact to address issues of common
good. GANs are a specific type of innovation that contrasts starkly with traditional approaches to global
challenges and opportunities that focused upon national and intergovernmental organizations. Over the
past few decades, as the pace of globalization has increased and environmental issues have grown, the limitsof the nation-state have become increasingly apparent. This article introduces the five strategic qualities of
GANS, the stages these networks typically move through, and includes examples of successful initiatives
the author has been involved with.1

A

new type of “global system” is bubbling up all around us in response to
the inability of traditional strategies to address critical global challenges.
Rather than the government-led strategy of the post World War II
world that endured into the 1980s, or the business-led strategy that
accompanied the triumph of capitalism and the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the civilsociety-led strategy promoted by community and global activists, this is a multisectoral strategy referred to as “Global Action Networks” (GANs). The resources
Steve Waddell
and competencies of all the sectors are combined to overcome weaknesses of
each, assemble the resources needed, and produce innovation. These GANs are
giving a new meaning to the word “network,” and their success depends upon our ability to create the
new knowledge, their capacity, and the necessary resource systems.
The GANs are forming around all critical global issues. They include Transparency International taking
on corruption; the Forest Stewardship Council addressing forest sustainability; the Youth Employment
Systems (YES); the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis; the Microcredit Summit Campaign; the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict; and the Global Water Partnership.
Today there are about four to five dozen GANs in relatively advanced stages of development, andmany others are being developed.
The networks are diverse in issue and structure, but they share five strategic elements. Their strategy is:
1. Global and multi-level (across and beyond the local, national, regional and international levels ofgovernance);
2. Interdisciplinary action-learning with reflective action (to produce synergies between knowledge
development and practice);
3. Cross sectoral, with inter-organizational networks (linking international agencies, governments,
businesses, civil society organizations and other actors while still utilizing hierarchies or markets
as appropriate);1

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The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

G

RI organizes multi-stakeholder processes to develop
the Guidelines for sustainability reporting with respect
to economic, social, and environmental performance,
for use by all organizations. GRI has five main structural components: a Board of Directors (16 members), Stakeholder Council(60 members), Technical Advisory Committee (nine members),
Secretariat (30 staff), and Organizational Stakeholders (currently
500). There are five stakeholder groups represented on the first
three governance components: business (41%), civil society
advocacy organizations (14%), labor (0%), and intermediaryorganizations (academic, research, and professional organizations) (44%). Organizational Stakeholders (OS) members comprise organizations of any type, size, and location, and are themembership component of GRI.
GRI has a budget of approximately 3-4 million Euros and astaff of about 30. It develops reporting frameworks’ sophistication through multi-stakeholder processes. This includes developing more comprehensive supplements for specific industries aswell as further developing the overall framework. It educatespeople about the framework, promotes its use, and maintains
a database of reporters. Over 1000 organizations—including
many of the largest multi-nationals—are listed in GRI’s databaseas known reporters, and GRI is constantly being made awareof other organizations that have used the Guidelines.

4. Systemic (transformational) change generating through a range of non-violent, boundary-crossing and diversity-embracing activities(agenda setting, knowledge generation, capacity building, resource mobilization, conflict
resolution, education, certification, etc.);
5. Public good producing in areas of global
sustainability and security.
Applying all these strategies means GAN participants include organizations like the United Nations,
World Bank and other governmental organizations
traditionally associated with global governance;
the World Economic Forum, International Business
Leaders Forum, the World Business Council for
Sustainable Development and other “peak” business organizations and their members; the World

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Social Forum, CIVICUS and other global and local
non-governmental organizations. In effect, these
networks are creating a sort of new “global membrane” for sense-making, norm-creating and actiontaking with regards to complex global issues.

The Development Challenge
GANs’ success will be tied to the ability to respondto four dimensions of complexity:• Social: incorporating the three key organizational sectors of business, government andcivil society;• Spatial: involving actors that are local, regionaland global;• Temporal: creating actions to produce desired
results that are separated by long periodsof time;• Dynamic: reflecting that participants in theissue system are taking actions that impact
others in the system in hard-to-predict ways.
Realizing GANs’ unique potential to addresscritical global issues requires identifying anddeveloping the strategies, structures and governance systems that will take GANs through a scaleof development that is similar to traditional organizations, such as the creation and develpmentof the contemporary welfare state, multi-national
business corporation and global NGO.
We have passed through early stage knowledge,
tool and methodology development focusedupon concepts such as “partnership” and “collaboration.” However, understanding the GAN network
development challenge requires appreciating thatthey really operate at four levels: organizational,
partnership, network and system. GANs are organizations in that they are legal entities that must
operate within the laws of a nation where they
are constituted (a problematic proposition for agenerator of global public goods). From this perspective they have the trappings of traditionalorganizations, almost always being incorporated
as a non-governmental organization (non-profit).
Therefore, at this level the challenge of strategy
development appears relatively traditional, involving a Board, a staff leader with some title such asfe at u r e | wa d d ell“executive director,” and staff members organizedby some hierarchy and combination of geography,
stakeholder and task.
However, GANs’ core work is carried out throughpartnerships. The concept of partnership as usedhere involves agreement about a defined set ofactions that each party will complete in a specificgeography or relationship to accomplish a relatively narrowly defined task – this often equates
to people’s use of the term “multi-stakeholder
partnership.” For example, organizations working
with the Global Water Partnership agree upon aset of actions to build “integrated water resource
management” capacity in a specific country.
In the Global Reporting Initiative, a set of organizations agree to work together to develop a framework for measuring organizational environmenteconomic-social impact in a specific industry, say
the financial industry. The GANs provide a defined
space where participants can coordinate theiractions to realize their partnership goals (andsupport independent goals). In these partnerships the GANs typically act as a convener ofstakeholder organizations operating in a GAN’sparticular issue domain – corruption, water, forests, youth, poverty. One of the intricacies is thatwhen a GAN is most successful, these stakeholder
organizations perceive themselves as “owners”
of the GAN (sometimes reflected in formal 		membership structures).

Microcredit Summit Campaign(The Campaign)In 1997 more than 2,900 people from 137 countries gatheredin Washington, DC and launched the Microcredit Summit
Campaign. After reaching its original 10-year goals, theMicrocredit Summit Campaign is now working to ensure that:• 175 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the womenof those families, are receiving credit for self-employment
and other financial and business services by the end of 2015.
• 100 million families rise above the US$1 a day thresholdby 2015.
	The Campaign is a project of Results Educational Fund –a 501(c)(3) organization headquartered in Washington, DC.
It has 15 Councils for all the various stakeholders (e.g.: microcredit practitioners, advocates, educational institutions, donor
agencies etc.). More than 6,300 institutions have joined oneof the Councils. The most important Council is the practitioners who actually deliver microcredit.
	In addition to the global and regional meetings, staff in
Asia and Africa travel country-by-country leading one-, three-,and five-day trainings. The basic building block of the Campaign is the Institutional Action Plan. Each Council Member
institution agrees to submit its Institutional Action Plan eachyear, reporting on the previous year and setting goals forcontributions that it intends to make toward the fulfillmentof the Summit’s goal in the coming years.
	The Campaign has a staff of seven (five in Washington,
DC and one each in Asia and Africa) and an annual budgetof about $1 million.

T a ble 1 Organizing Levels of GANs2

Organization

Partnership

Network

SystemNumber of Legally
Distinct Organizations

One

Small to Modest

Global Sum ofPartnerships

All stakeholders in
the issue domain

Organizing Structure

HierarchicalSpoke and wheel

Multi-hub

DiffuseOperating Logic

Administrating/Managing

Coordination

Coherence

DiverseSelf-Direction

Operating Focus

Organization

Task

Task Relationship

Dispersed

Participation

ClosedHighly controlled

Loosely controlled

Definitional

Hurricane Katrina aftermath3

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The power of these very specific task-focused
partnerships arises out of the connections thatform between them to create the GAN network
level. Taken as a whole, the partnerships represent
a complex network. At the network level, the
GANs’ operating focus is to ensure coherence between the collective whole of the partnerships. To
have influence upon an issue globally, such a large
number of organizations must be engaged inpartnership activity that a GAN cannot reasonably
aspire for “coordination”; rather, the drive is for “coherence” – movement collectively in a specific direction to address an issue. GANs identify highly
strategic partnership actions to influence an issue
domain to move in a certain direction. For example, the Global Water Partnership identified assuch an action the promotion of integrated water
resource management; the Forest StewardshipCouncil develops a system of certification of forests; the Microcredit Summit Campaign sets ag-

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gressive goals and gets organizations to report on
how they are addressing the goal. This requires
comfort with a great deal of ambiguity, as specificpartnerships will advance at different rates withrespect to the strategic action, specific initiatives
will start at different times, and of course being
global requires sensitivity to local conditions. Core
functions of the GAN in their issue domains are to:• Identify the strategic intervention from a global
perspective,• Support the convening spaces to form partnerships,• Speed advancement by facilitating the sharingof lessons about how to advance, and• Encourage partnerships to press on with determination by presenting examples of successful
partnerships.
Key indicators of a GAN’s success are (1) its network meaningfully engages a continually increasing number of organizations in its issue domain,

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)

A

group of timber users, traders and representatives of environmental and human-rights organizations met in
California in 1990 to discuss how they could combine their interests in improving forest conservation andreducing deforestation. Today FSC operates through a network of National Initiatives in more than 45
countries and has certified forests in more than 80 countries. FSC has a diverse membership of over 750 organizations from environmental and social groups, the timber trade and the forestry profession, indigenous people’sorganizations, community forestry groups and forest product certification organizations.
FSC membership and Board are divided into economic (business), social (indigenous and community development NGOs) and environmental (NGO) chambers, and each chamber is equitably balanced by North and South. The
Board is elected by and is accountable to the membership. As the highest decision-making body in FSC, the membership meets in general assembly every three years and votes on the direction of FSC.
FSC aims to re-create the production chain with respect to forest products to integrate responsible practices sothat forests are managed to meet the social, environmental and economic needs of present and future generations
through three types of activities:
It provides the framework for the development of policies and standards throughout the FSC network. To ensure
consistency, FSC accredits these national/sub-national standards.
	As part of its accreditation program, FSC accredits certification bodies for credible certification to its standards.
FSC provides the international framework to market and promote FSC with the support of the Regional Offices,
National Initiatives, certification bodies, certificate holders and supporting partners.
	To date, over 100 million hectares have been certified according to FSC standards while several thousandproducts are produced using FSC certified wood and carrying the FSC trademark.
In 2008 FSC had a budget of about $3 million and a staff of about 20.

fe at u r e | Wa d d ell(2) organizations that are not involved in its network are changing their actions in ways that integrate the network knowledge, standards and values,and (3) the movement of broad measurement indicators for the GANs in the desired direction. The
latter represents the “global issue system” that the
GAN is aiming to shift. It is not necessary for the
network to engage every organization in an issue
system, or even anything like a majority of organizations in an issue system (indeed, some posit
5–10% as being sufficient).3 The GAN aims tocreate a compelling vortex in the issue systemthat draws others into it. When a GAN is successful, organizations operating outside a GAN’s standards will be thought of as “illegitimate” by othersin the system, and denied opportunities necessary for organizational success.

Development Stages
To realize this type of role in addressing global
challenges, there appear to be four stages ofdevelopment for GANs.

Stage 1: Initiating
GANs may start with something like the five
strategic elements in mind, as new entities. Or,
an entity may slowly evolve into a GAN. In either
case, there are three types of initiating paths. Oneemphasizes a period of two to three years of consultation and mulling over by various stakeholders
in an issue. Three years of discussions among timber users, traders, and environmental and humanrights organizations preceded founding of theForest Stewardship Council (see box on page 4).
A second group of GANs arises out of the imagination of one or a couple of organizations or individuals. For example, the Youth Employment Systems
is the product of the Education Development Corporation and WWF and Unilever birthed the Marine
Stewardship Council. When one organization has
a leading founding role, the GAN often starts as a“project” or “program.” For example, the Microcredit
Summit Campaign is still legally a project of an
NGO called Results Education Fund, and the5

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T a ble 2 GAN – Development Stages and Activities4

Initiating•••

Visioning
Convening
Identifying
leadershipstakeholders

Problem/Solution
Definition

Infrastructure
Development

•
•

•

•

Defining the problem
Piloting a core physicaltechnology solution
Building initial centralized
network piloting structure••

Global Compact remains structurally attachedto the United Nations Secretary General’s office.
Transparency International, on the other hand,was very much the work of an individual, Peter
Eigen.5
The third path can occur when there is alreadya relatively well-developed “global space” for theparticipants. For example, global conferences on
the topic of water issues were organized from time
to time, which led to the realization that more formal and permanent organizational arrangements
would be valuable. This led to the formation of
the Global Water Partnership and the World
Water Council.
Both governments and NGOs are dominant initiators of GANs. Government is clearly dominant withhealth issues and when very large sums of money
are involved. NGOs are more dominant as founders with environmental and social concerns andwhen the need is to mobilize widespread grassroots action. Business and NGO/business-initiatedGANs have also been initiated in sustainable
development arenas.
At this stage, one critical challenge is to inspireparticipation of a sufficiently representative groupof organizational stakeholders with a sufficiently
broad range of views, so that it can be seen as“legitimate.” However, the size must also be sufficiently small that the new GAN does not become
overwhelmed with coordinating among the stakeholders. It helps, of course, if stakeholders are

Broadening applicationof the physical technology
solution
Deepening understandingof the problem and social
technology solutions
Increasing network
membership and decentralizing structure

Realizinghe Potential•••

Enhancinglegitimacy andvalue
Creating inter-GAN
connections
Creating global
action norms

already familiar with one another. The founding
group will tend to be small if stakeholders do nothave a history of working together (e.g., as with
the Marine Stewardship Council), and larger ifthey do, as with the Global Water Partnershipand World Water Council.
To attract diverse stakeholders, the initial definition of “the problem” must be broad enough toencompass a wide variety of views and yet narrow
enough to provide focus. At this stage, the initial
discussions can be likened to a focus group – thegoal is to identify the breadth of views about anissue and the initial definition of the stakeholders.
Another challenge at this stage is to avoid paralysis with questions about the permanent structureof the GAN, and to begin “doing things” together
to address the issue of concern. The way a GAN
is organized should arise out of the experiencesof how to do the work. However, people often
find the ambiguity of this approach difficult andwant to build a structure based on theories about
how it ought to be. Such theories can often leadto an overly complicated and burdensome structure that actually inhibits the way the work getsdone. This can be seen in some of the very elaborate stakeholder groupings and voting processes
in GANs.
A third initiating challenge is to mobilize theresources necessary to go through the expensive
and time-consuming process of consultations andcollective discussions. A founding stage requires
participation of very senior people from stake-fe at u r e | Wa d d ellholder organizations, and their time is a scarcecommodity. Developing a GAN cannot work as
simply an “add-on” to a full-time job. The GAN
must present a way for the participants to fulfill
their core responsibilities so participants’ organizations understand the importance of spendingtime on GAN development.
Typically, at this stage funding comes from foundations, donor agencies, and the founding organizations (which usually donate staff time and travel
costs). One key challenge is to ensure global andsectoral representation, which usually means providing funds for at least travel for NGOs in thesouthern hemisphere.
The sectors all face particular challenges at thisstage: governments have trouble accepting theneed to work as “peers” rather than being “incontrol”; business finds difficult the “muddlingthrough” without clear, identifiable outputs andtargets; and NGOs are challenged to accept theneed to experiment with developing the meaning of shared ideals rather than start with rigid
definitions of them.

Stage 2: Defining the “Problem”
and “Solution”
The issues that GANs are addressing are complex
global ones. Typically, individual founders thinkthey understand the problem, but initial discussions invariably disclose an unsuspected breadthof perspectives. The stakeholders forming the
GAN must have a shared understanding of eachother’s perspectives of the challenge – although
they do not have to agree with it. Developing thisshared understanding among a small core groupof diverse founders is a key developmental step –the understanding will continue to grow throughout the GANs’ life, but an initial shared understanding must be developed with founders.
This task of problem definition is wrapped up with“putting the issue on the global and local agendas.”
The process of developing a shared understanding involves raising the issue with organizations
around the world, creating a global discussion

about the topic and its relevance to diverse stakeholders. Transparency International had to firstmake “corruption” a discussable issue, rather than
one that people could not talk about.
A key implicit strategy in GANs’ founding is tocreate multi-stakeholder solutions. However, how
to structure the stakeholders’ working relationships (e.g., issues of board structure, relationships
between constituencies, ensuring global to local
integration) all take significant time to address.
During this stage, there is a relatively small founding group of stakeholders who lead the activity.
In most cases, stakeholders collectively explore

One critical challenge is toinspire participation of a sufficiently representative groupof organizational stakeholders
with a sufficiently broad rangeof views, so that it can be seen
as “legitimate.”
their diverse perspectives and design their organizational structure over a period of about five years.
This stage provides important lessons about
how to structure the GAN, drawn from doing thework together.
Another task is developing ideas about how
diverse stakeholders can work together to address
the problem. Usually this begins with a focus on aphysical technology solution – a solution that focuses on a definable process of learning, capacity
development, and measurement. This very often
means case studies, dissemination of a particulartechnological approach (e.g., microcredit to address poverty), and assessment-based processes.
These processes include construction of indices(Transparency International); measurement frameworks (Global Reporting Initiative); monitoring(Fair Labor Association, Social Accountability International); certification processes (Marine andForest Stewardship Councils); and financing

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 3 – 4

mechanisms (the large health GANs, such as the
Global Fund and the Global Alliances for Improved
Nutrition and for Vaccines and Immunization).
These physical technology solutions are largely
theoretical at the beginning of this stage. The theories are transformed into a series of experiments
and actions, to test how they can be applied. Thismeans finding pilot sites with organizations thatare willing to be involved in the development andcreating an initial network.
However, these physical technology solutions are
not the most innovative aspects of GANs. Moreinnovative is the global application and social/strategic technology behind GANs – the idea thatstakeholders in an issue, who are traditionally adversarial, should get together globally to develop
the solution to a critical common good issue.
At this stage, one challenge is to avoid jumping to
the “solution” too quickly and being impatientwith the dialogue necessary to really hear andcomprehend various viewpoints. This means, atthis stage, skilled facilitators who can work wellcross-culturally are particularly important. Too often people do not appreciate the challenges ofworking across sectors, languages, and ethnicities,
and hire support staff who are like them or who
only have experience in one sector.

Too often people do not appreciate the challenges of working
across sectors, languages, andethnicities, and hire support staff
who are like them or who only
have experience in one sector.
Another challenge is to have enough “mass” toactually get the key issue on the global stage. Participants may discover that they have included too
narrow a perspective about a problem to meaningfully engage the number of stakeholders necessary. They may end up being seen as an NGO
caucus or as a particularly narrow geographic group.

reflections.solonline.org

Also, a GAN at this stage can fail if it is dominatedby linear thinking and details. The process of problem definition is an iterative one that is wrapped
up with experiments about the definition of thesolution. Of course the GRI began with a broad
understanding that something was needed to harmonize and promote triple-bottom-line accounting globally, but the current concept of “guidelines”
only developed out of numerous discussions andtoday the definition continues to evolve. The
Global Water Partnership founders were interested
in integrated water resource management (IWRM)
as a “solution,” but the meaning of IWRM in diverse
settings and creating a shared meaning has havebeen a major part of GWP’s work.
Another danger at this stage is a desire to be“global” too quickly. People may be too action
oriented and become impatient with the needfor pilot site development to test and refine “solutions,” and become over-stretched geographically.
This over-stretch will sap resources because of thecost of travel and meetings, and because of thetime necessary for communications and holding
the network together.

Stage 3: Developing the Broader
Change Infrastructure
The average GAN is somewhere in this stage.
Some (e.g., Building Partnerships for Development in Water and Sanitation and the Ethical
Trading Initiative) are of an age that would suggest they should be in this stage, but they arestill working with an initial learning set of activities. They have not adopted the broad “systemorganizing” agenda that characterizes this stage,
and they may continue to be productive working at the earlier stage.
At Stage 3, solutions have been tested and thechallenge is scaling up. A report on the Global
Compact as it entered this stage pointed out thata substantial number of “national networks” hadarisen as an under-recognized resource, and one
focus in this new stage is to further develop the
network with more countries. For the GRI the key
unit is corporations rather than nations, and itfe at u r e | Wa d d ell

focuses very much on the number of corporations
using its framework.
However, there are two developments at thisstage that would not have been anticipated bymany GAN founders. One involves scaling up by
scaling out – broadening of the core solution in
ways that were not obvious to the founders. For
example, the Forest Stewardship Council is now
developing the concept of certified watersheds.
Transparency International became adept at supporting its national chapters to develop legal infrastructure, and has succeeded in institutionalizing its concerns with global organizations (e.g.,the OECD, which now has an anticorruption
convention).
The second development is the shift from a focus
on physical technical solutions to a social solution
focus. Typically, early GAN leaders come with physical science backgrounds (e.g., medical doctors
and forestry, labor, environmental science, andmeasurement specialists). At this third stage ofdevelopment, GANs must build their managerial,
network, and change development competencies.
The chores are not development of the technicalsolutions (although these continue to be refined),but seeing their use and application on a grandscale. This social technology orientation is a criticaland difficult shift for GANs. It means shifting focus
from refining assessment approaches and promoting “fixes” (e.g., microcredit and integrated water
resource management) to taking learning processes to a deeper level that can realize significant
systemic societal change. The challenges GANs arefacing are not simply about what we are doing in
the world; they are also about how we are in theworld as individuals, organizations, nations, andglobal society.
The networks must become more decentralized
if they are to reflect their empowerment missions
and maintain their agility. They must learn tocommunicate between the parts (e.g., national9

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 3 – 4chapters, participant organizations), rather thanhaving a centralized mindset of working throughthe global secretariat. GANs are leaders in movingfrom the twentieth century world, where organizations were the dominant unit (e.g., in the formof governments, corporations, and communitybased ones) to a world in which networks are
the key organizing logic.

When GANs start emphasizing
social organizing and change
technologies, and connecting anddeveloping the strategies andcompetencies in this field, they
have significantly broadened
their problem definition andconcept of solutions.
With this comes the challenge of being both
local and global – “glocal.” A number of innovations are emerging to avoid traditional hierarchies
with either the local or global “in charge.” “Participation” at this stage becomes emphasized rather
than formal “membership.” Most of the GANs areto a remarkable extent self-organizing and give
real meaning to the concept of “subsidiarity.”
Stakeholder groups and regional/national units(e.g., chapters, country coordinating mechanisms,
regional partnerships) are almost always selfgoverning, with minimal accountability structures upward.
At this stage, when GANs start emphasizing
social organizing and change technologies,6 andconnecting and developing the strategies andcompetencies in this field, they have significantly
broadened their problem definition and conceptof solutions. One clear challenge at this stage is tocategorically develop the needed social technology skills. Founders, being focused on a physicalscience solution, can become overly fixated onrefinement of the particular tool (e.g., an assessment methodology). They may forget that thereflections.solonline.org

goal is not a super-accurate methodology, but realchange. Usually, being physical learners, founders
are uncomfortable with such social technologies
as social network analysis, deep change processes,
network dynamics, and systems of accountability.
A new skill set needs to be developed, and thismeans a comparative loss of status for those who
thrive with physical science.
Perhaps the most obvious challenge at this stage
is managing stakeholder groups that are at different stages of development. With the oldest participating organizations, the GAN must generate
activity that is shifting into the social change emphasis, while at the same time the GAN must bringin new participants who will focus on the physicalscience activity. The mix will become increasingly
complex as the GAN continues to expand.
By this time the initial funders are often tiring ofproviding support, and one key challenge at thisstage is for a GAN to develop an economic modelof sustainability. So far, there is no easy solution
to this challenge, but the answer lies undoubtedly
in two directions. One is to creatively integrate thetraditional donation-funding of civil society, profitbased funding of business, and taxation-based
funding of government. The other is to push thesefunding strategies into new directions. For example, this year for the first time 12 national governments agreed to place a fee on international travelto support international development.
At this stage the founders may have trouble
letting go. As the network grows substantiallyin scale, the old familiar ways of working with arelatively small group must change in favor of
more institutionalized and formal accountability
and transparency processes. Otherwise, the GAN
will be seen as a “clique,” others will find entry
difficult, and the GAN will be unable to attract
new participants.

Stage 4: Realizing the Potential
Because they are a new type of organization, noneof the GANs has reached its full potential. And asa group, they have barely begun to interact, sofe at u r e | Wa d d elltheir collective impact on the global scene has
not yet been felt. However, a few of the GANs appear to be moving into a more advanced developmental Stage 4. The following description is basedon the hypothesis that GANs do continue to develop and grow – and, of course, many reasons
they may not are outlined as challenges to thisstage of development.
Fifteen years from now, a much stronger sense of
global citizenship will likely be shared worldwide,
as a complement to our particular ethnic, linguistic, and national identities. When people look backat the rise of global citizenship, GANs will likely
have played an important role. They are stimulating actions that reflect global and local concerns,
and thereby becoming critical globalizing andintegrating agents of diverse viewpoints and resources. We will shift from an international organizing framework to a much more global one.
One image of the future of a GAN is as a global
membrane that will attract organizations aroundthe world that are working on a particular issue.
Reluctant participants find legitimacy demands
and resource access obliges them to work within
systems structured by GANs. A forest company, forexample, may not participate directly in the Forest
Stewardship Council, but it will find itself working
with a market and regulatory framework that areheavily influenced by the FSC. Within this model,
with regard to particular issues, GANs will berobust global systems of accountability, knowledge development and sharing, and governance,
offering open and easy access to others. They
will be sensing and guiding mechanisms for
identifying emergent opportunities and challenges regarding their issues, and for developing responses.
GANs-as-global-membranes will support resource
transfers, production of public goods and services,
co-creation of rules to address global inequities,
wealth development, and effective governance.
Creating “alignment” within their issue system is a
key task – they will be negotiators, arbitrators, andchange agents skilled at smoothing the connections between diverse interests of their particularissue system. They have the ability to do this without requiring homogenization because they areagents that support diversity within globalization
with an emphasis on subsidiarity. GANs are known
for providing a trust and reputation network thatfacilitates the flow of knowledge and resources
with low transaction costs.
We will undoubtedly have many more GANs in
specialized issue areas, as globalization heightens
concerns about security, inequity and poverty,
and mounting environmental pressures increase
the demand for globally coherent and large-scaleaction. The era in which nation-states were seen as
solely responsible for issues of peace and security,for example, will likely be bypassed by strategies
to bring together stakeholders to collaboratively
address tensions, as can be seen with the recent
founding of the Global Partnership for Preventionof Armed Conflict. Disaster relief systems that arearising in response to increasing climate variation
will be increasingly integrated into systems with
dense ties between all actors, in contrast with thetraditional response systems of government andtheir contractual relationships with NGOs. In thefield of international finance, new collaborative
mechanisms will build on recent activities (e.g.,
the Equator Principles).

We will undoubtedly have many
more GANs in specialized issue
areas as globalization heightens
concerns about security, inequity,and poverty, and mounting environmental pressures increase
the demand for globally coherent
and large-scale action.
GANs will be weaving new global issue systemsof accountability. As diverse actors work collaboratively in a GAN, they increase their interdependence and understanding of the global whole.
Traditional hierarchical organizations operating

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reflections.solonline.org

locally and globally will find participation in GANs
a highly compelling strategy for realizing their individual objectives. However, although they willfind great rewards from participating from theinside, they will also find participation requires
increased sharing of information, transparency,
and accommodation of diverse goals.

will be local to local – people working on an issue
in a community or organization on one part of theplanet will easily connect with people elsewherein the network. There will be similarly robust connections at regional and global levels. All will befacilitated by a network logic that will ease flows
of information, resource exchanges, and action
between the levels.

Today’s GANs are still struggling to be “global.”
The challenge has many dimensions – geographic,
cultural, “glocal,” linguistic, and contextual issuesof the problem they are addressing. When they aresuccessful, they will reflect Friedman’s hypothesisthat “the world is flat”7 with fluid connections between the various nodes. The connections will be
particularly robust in four different ways. One isinterpersonal – people will find the networks richsources of personal relationships where traditional
connections will be less driven by hierarchy (which
will continue to exist within organizations) thanby shared interests. A second level of connections

As a group, GANs will have developed many interGAN contacts that build on ones of today (e.g.,
between the GRI and Global Compact). Youth Employment Systems and WCN (World Conservation
Union) will find shared interests in developing
youth employment initiatives with an environmental orientation. The Marine Stewardship Council and the Microcredit Summit will find sharedinterests in developing sustainable livelihoods forsmall fishers. The one-on-one exchanges will befacilitated by the fact that the GANs have a common organizing logic and value set. These will

fe at u r e | Wa d d ellhelp many GANs work together more ambitiously
at the regional and global levels. What at one time
were numerous unassociated networks will increasingly become collective global governanceforums in which the global social contract will bein ongoing development and implementation. It
will function not as a set of distinct directives fromthe top down, but as a fluid system addressing
problems and opportunities.
Gradually, the myriad certification processes andvoluntary regulations will become a collaboratively developed system with a few clear principles
and easily accessed interpretations that reflect
environmental, social, and economic concerns.
With increased alignment among stakeholders
within an issue system, GANs will be dealing withthe challenge of alignment between issue systems
and distribution of resources.
As a group,15 years from now, GANs could wellbe the critical mechanisms for addressing global
governance gaps of participation, ethics, communications, and implementation. Today, the Forest
Stewardship Council is the closest we have to theWorld Ministry of Forests; the Global Water Partnership and World Water Councils have a similarrole with water. Collectively, the large-scale health
GANs may be seen functioning with the World
Health Organization and governments as key
stakeholders rather than controllers. Stakeholders
in an issue system will know how to easily participate directly in the appropriate GAN.
By collectively interacting, GANs will also learnmuch more quickly from a broader range of experience. By working together, they will much morecost-effectively develop the new knowledge
and innovations needed for their development.
And by having an identity as a community, they
will develop and make legitimate their uniquepotential.

Conclusion
Whether GANs will successfully develop theirpotential as leading structures in a new global
governance architecture is still an open question.

They may become epiphenomenal to a reinvigorated set of intergovernmental institutions, suchas the United Nations and those of Bretton Woods.
GANs may prove incapable of engaging a sufficient number of stakeholders in a sufficient number of issue areas for them to become a criticalglobal organizing logic. GANs may simply become
another set of global bureaucracies and talk shops.
Individually, they may never develop the type of
impact-measuring systems that provide the needed
types of feedback. They may simply become accountable to elites, rather than to citizens globally.
Already we see danger signs that some GANs arechasing out the “movement”and “deep change”
parts of their missions and activities because it iseasier to flow with the status quo, maintaining
sustained antagonism involves pain and theirchange competency is insufficient.
However, the norms that are giving birth to
GANs are also part of a much broader set of global
trends. The collaborative governance model they
represent is one that is increasingly active at the
sub-national level as well, mainly because they are
more effective than many traditional state-driven
solutions.8 Perhaps the strongest driver of GANs’
development is that they hold the promise ofbeing critical for sustainable development andhuman security. GANs may not become the dominant global player, but neither are they likely to
be insignificant.
Realizing GANs’ potential represents a substantial
challenge. However, underestimating the capacity
for dramatic change in global governance would
be a mistake. The transformation from empires toa nation-state global system only occurred withthe end of the British Empire after World War II andthe more recent break up of the Soviet one. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, four-fifths of
the world’s population lived under monarchs or
empires; as late as 1950, 70 percent of the world
lived under non-democratic rule. Today nationstates are considered the norm and democratic
regimes have become much more pervasive.9
We know our current global action structures are

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not producing the outcomes we want. War is still
too common, poverty too widespread, inequity
too great, environmental destruction too common, climate change too threatening. Dissatisfaction with the status quo, visions for how we canreflections.solonline.org

create a much better world and growing understandings and capacities to realize human potential are, more than anything else, the enabling
environment of GANs. n

E ndnotes
1	This article draws heavily from:•Waddell, S., A. White, et al. (2006). The Future of Global Action Networks: The Challenges and Potential.
A Report to USAID – GDA. Boston, MA USA, Global Action Network Net:
http://www.gan-net.net/publications_reports/.

•

Waddell, S. and S. Khagram (2007). Multi-stakeholder global networks: emerging systems for the global
common good. Partnerships, Governance And Sustainable Development: Reflections on Theory and Practice.
P. Glasbergen, F. Biermann and A. P. J. Mol. Cheltenham Glos, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing: 261-287.

2 Expanded from a table presented in: Waddell, S. and S. Khagram (2007). Multi-stakeholder global networks:
emerging systems for the global common good. Partnerships, Governance And Sustainable Development: Reflections on Theory and Practice. P. Glasbergen, F. Biermann and A. P. J. Mol. Cheltenham Glos, UK, Edward Elgar
Publishing: 261-287.
3 Gladwell, M. (2002). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston, MA, USA, Little, Brown
and Company.
4	Waddell, Steven. 2006. “Multi-Stakeholder Global Networks: Emerging systems for the global common good,”in Partnerships for Sustainable Development: The Challenge of connecting private and public responsibilities.
Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
5 Eigen, P. (2003). The Web of Corruption: How a Global Movement Fights Graft. Frankfurt/Main, Germany, Campus
Verlag GmbH.
6	Waddell, S. (2005). Societal Learning and Change: How Governments, Business and Civil Society are Creating
Solutions to Complex Multi-Stakeholder Problems. Sheffield, UK, Greenleaf Publishing.
7 Friedman, T. L. (2005). The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York, NY, USA, Farrar,
Straus and Giroux.
8 Zadek, S. (2005). The Logic of Collaborative Governance: Corporate Responsibility, Accountability & the Social
Contract. Cambridge, MA, USA, Center for Business and Government - Harvard University; and AccountAbility.
9	Khagram, S. (2006). “Possible Future Architectures of Global Governance: A Transnational Perspective/		
Prospective.” Global Governance 12: 97-117.

a b o u t t he a u t h o r
Steve Waddell develops large systems change and global networks through research, consulting,teaching and writing through his work as founding Executive Director of Global Action Network
Net (GAN-Net), Steward of iScale, and Associate of the Institute for Strategic Clarity. The change andnetwork issues are as varied as global finance, youth employment, mass atrocities, and information
communications technology for development. He has authored numerous publications, including
a book entitled Societal Learning and Change: Innovation with Multi-Stakeholder Strategies. Steve
has a Ph.D. in sociology and a Masters in Business Administration. swaddell@strategic-clarity.com

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fe a t u r e 9 . 3 – 4

Tribal Leadership

An Interview with David C. Logan and John KingG e o r ge H a ll
In Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization (Collins Business, 2008),
authors David Logan and John King draw from several decades of consulting experience to examine thewinning corporate culture at Amgen, Intel, American Express, Prudential and other leading companies. Whatmakes these companies so successful? Tribes – the groups that naturally form within the company – are thesecret to lasting success. It’s a fact of life, say the authors: birds flock, fish school, and people “tribe.” Theauthors learned that what separates average tribes from those that excel is culture. Tribal culture exists instages, evolving from undermining to history-making. The book contains a wealth of interventions to growand sustain a winning tribal culture. In this interview, the authors address several intriguing questions:•

How can leaders use tribes to maximize productivity and profit?

•

Why do great leaders often fail in a new environment?

•

Why do average leaders seem better than they really are?

•Why do great strategies fail more often than they succeed?

George Hall: What is a “tribe,” and why is the notion of a tribe so central toyour thinking?
George HallDavid Logan: A tribe is a group of between 20 and 150 people in which you
either know everyone or you know of everyone in that group. People tribe sonaturally that we often don’t see the phenomenon at work – it’s like water toa fish; it’s largely invisible.
George Hall: What do you mean by “tribal leadership”?
David Logan: A tribal leader is someone who is actively upgrading the culture
within the tribes to which they belong. For that to make sense, we have to backup a few steps. The big insight in the book is that while everyone tribes, not alltribes are the same. What makes the difference is culture. In our research of over
24,000 people over eight years, we found that all tribes have one of five types ofculture. These go from everything you don’t want (stage one) to everything you
do want (stage five). And by calling these ”stages,” we’re saying that tribes movefrom one stage to the next, and they can’t skip stages. At Stage One, people form
criminal clusters, such as gangs and prisons, where the theme is “life sucks,” andpeople act out in despairingly hostile ways. Only about two percent of employedJohn King
tribes are at stage one. Stage Two, the dominant culture in 25 percent of workplace tribes where people say, in effect, “my life sucks,” exhibit behavior of apathetic victims. At Stage
Three, which is the dominant culture in almost half of U.S. workplace tribes, the theme is “I’m great.” ThisDavid Logan

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personally competitive cultural stage produces
only limited innovation and almost no collaboration. Stage Four represents 22 percent of tribal
cultures, and there the theme is “we’re great.”Stage Four is the zone of Tribal Leadership where
the leader upgrades the tribe as the tribe embraces
the leader. Stage Four is the beginning of highPeople in our study who were
exceptional tribal leaders
described a sudden, compelling,
and often personal awarenessthat they had been manipulating
people and didn’t want to do 		that anymore.
performance. The theme of Stage five, the cultureof two percent of the workforce tribes, is that “lifeis great” and people focus on realizing potential
by making history. Teams at Stage Five have produced remarkable innovations, leading their industries and the economy. So to answer your original question, tribal leadership is: (1) figuring out
what cultures run your tribes, and (2) moving thetribes to the next stage, and then the next.
George Hall: Who is your favorite tribal leader?
Why?
David Logan: Without a doubt, my favorite tribal
leader is George Washington. Washington was amember of three tribes: (1) the Continental Congress, (2) the Militia or military leaders, and (3) the
Virginia landowners. In every case, if you examine
how he thought, you can see how he consistently
looked for core values. He heard “Independence,”“Freedom,” and “Equality.” So, when he finally did
speak, although he was not the most intelligent of
the group, nor the most well read, he was someone to whom people listened. Why? Washington
was someone who actively upgraded the cultureof the tribes to which he belonged. When hespoke, people said, “That person speaks for me.”As a result, the tribes became aware of their own

reflections.solonline.org

existence. They went from being a collection ofpeople to a group that said, “We’re taking on thischarge together.” The colonists went from State
Two to Stage Three to Stage Four, all the way up
to Stage Five because of Washington’s leadership.
George Hall: How does someone become atribal leader?
David Logan: You learn and use the simple setof techniques to move a tribe from one stage tothe next. But there is something deeper. Peoplein our study who were exceptional tribal leaders
described a sudden, compelling, and often personal awareness that they had been manipulating
people and didn’t want to do that anymore. There
were two universal themes that ran through allthese experiences: (1) there was a new self-awareness and (2) there was a bit of a sting to it. The
awareness helped them see what had previously
been a blind spot, about their personal behavior:
they credited that moment with making them
the leader that they were. This same epiphany,however, also made them humble.
George Hall: You mentioned tribal strategy inyour book. How does that work?
David Logan: Tribal strategy has a dual purpose:it gives the tribe something to work on that’s important. It also is a key to moving a group from
Stage Three to Four. In tribal strategy, the leader
says, “the first thing we have to do is figure out ourvalues.” So the group reads off the corporate values. OK, those are the corporate values, but what
do WE value? The leader starts a discussion about
the tribe’s values. After a discussion of the tribe’svalues, you walk them through our strategy model(see Figure 1). Tribal strategy is a series of three
discussions in which the tribal leader starts tolearn where the group wants to go. The first is,“what do we want?” The resulting answer is “outcomes.” The second is “what do we have?” Thetribe’s answers constitute “assets.” The third is “whatwill we do?” and the answer gives the group its
behaviors.

fe at u r e | H a ll

Along the way, tribal leaders ask the group three“test questions”:• Are assets sufficient for the outcomes?
• Are there enough assets for the behaviors?
• Will behavior accomplish outcomes?
To seamlessly maintain the positive change, ourresearch indicates that it takes a team meeting forabout half a day every 90 days. The tribe is working more closely together now – a “Stage Four”
culture has probably developed.
George Hall: In your book you comment, “Thejourney through the stages is literally not one you
can make alone. Your tribe will either help you or
prevent your forward movement. In fact, you canmove forward only by bringing others with you.”
Are tribes more influential than individuals, nomatter how smart or talented they are?
David Logan: Yes. If you look at the writings ofpsychologist Abraham Maslow, you’ll see that people self-actualize alone. If someone takes Maslow’s
hermit route, they become enlightened alone. Thisapproach to enlightenment has become the defacto standard all over the world. In contrast to
Maslow, what we are talking about is culture. You
cannot have a culture of one. It doesn’t make any
sense. To move through a stage theory of enlightenment, you must move through them with otherpeople. If you are going through this growth process as a single person, for example, say from
Stage Three to Four to Five, you will be unable todevelop yourself through all the stages. It’s justnot going to happen. In order to develop yourself,
you are going to have to pull other people up as
well. You are going to have to start forming partnerships and implementing strategies together.
It’s impossible to operate on these more collaborative, more advanced levels alone.
John King: I would also add that fundamental
to the concept of Stage Four in an organizationis the idea of stable effective partnerships. From
our experience over several decades of consulting
work, nobody actually gets over the “hump” toFigure 1 Tribal Strategy Model

Text Question #1:
Assests sufficientfor the Outcomes?

Text Question #3:
Will Behaviors
accomplish
Outcomes?

Outcomes

Core Values
Noble Cause

Assests

Behaviors

Text Question #2: Enough Assests for Behaviors?

Stage Four by themselves and nobody is actuallyin there by themselves. When we do see people
who are individuals who are Stage Four types,
they are not stable unless they have at least twoother people around them who are also Stage
Four. The members of this triad, all Stage Four,act to stabilize each others’ development.
David Logan: I’ll give you a very specific example.
Imagine, for example, that there is a newly married couple. The husband and wife have a “family”
culture, because you can have a culture of two.
Let’s say they take the view of, “It’s us against theworld.” Nobody else understands their relationship; no one appreciates them; no one else matters, and “we’re in it for us.” As soon as this couple
encounters any kind of marital conflict, for example, her friends are going to say to her and his
friends are going to say to him, “Well, we couldn’t
wait for this relationship to end.” The chances ofthat relationship surviving are actually quite small.
In other words, it is really not a partnership until
other people get involved. Again, by definition,
you can’t move through developmental stages
and grow alone.

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John King: Yes, that’s exactly right, Dave. A dyador partnership of two, without something elsearound it to stabilize it, is inherently unstable. You
definitely need a third, stabilizing element. Thiselement, however, doesn’t have to be a person per
se. It could be an inspiring project that two people
are engaged in. Either way, the dyad, just like any
object in space, for example, needs three anchor
points to be stable.
George Hall: Most professional models of selfactualization are based on Maslow’s work. Thesemodels describe stages you move through as you
develop yourself. They have not been updated
meaningfully since the 1950s. Your work updates
and expands Maslow by placing development ina broader, group context. Learning and development no longer have to be defined by or limited
to Maslow’s hermit route.
John King: You are right. It is interesting to notethat the systems-based thinking we encourage in
our work is starting to arise naturally in the culturein the Net generation, the kids who are 19, 20 or
so. This generation thinks in terms of systems,
tribes, teams. It is a very natural expression forthem. They are doing it on the web. They don’tknow that they are doing it, just as we didn’t know
we were doing command and control. We didn’tknow we were doing Stage One, Stage Two, Stage
Three and that there was a ceiling to what wewere doing. We paid lip service to the “we” conversation, but when push came to shove, it was “me,”it was “you.” We didn’t really know; that was justthe way it was. My 18-year-old granddaughter,for example, has 167 people in her MySpace net.
They are all players in her life. She has an experience of her “self”: I’m good at what I do and I am
who I am.” She also has an experience of her tribe– her relationships are very interdependent withall the people around her.
George Hall: Does the process of training influence tribal culture?

reflections.solonline.org

David Logan: Yes. The training process frequently
produces a Stage Three culture, which often impedes further development – a vicious circle ofsorts. You can graduate from high school andcollege, and get all the way through a doctorate,
for example, and still be focused at a Stage Threelevel. Stage Three is about individual accomplishment. What holds us back as we move throughthe stages, then, is the Stage Three tribal culture
created by decades of training methods. If you
look around at many so-called leadership books,
you will find that most of them tell you to master
Stage Three. You go to a bookstore, and look up

It is interesting to note that 		the systems-based thinking weencourage in our work is starting
to arise naturally in the culture in
the Net generation, the kids whoare 19, 20 or so. This generation
thinks in terms of systems, tribes,
teams. It is a very natural expression for them.
most books on “leadership”, they are either Stage
Five, which nobody really understands, or whatpasses for leadership (time management, how to
set goals), which has nothing to do with leadership.
George Hall: A tribal leader has an unmistakable
toughness, a tenacity of spirit. They try to improvetheir group, from cultural stage to cultural stage,and invest the required time – months to years –to really do this. I’m imagining the tribal leader asa sort of culture Hero, a sort of Rocky Balboa, or
someone of Rambo size proportions. Do you agree?
David Logan: No. Your examples of tribal leaders– Rocky and Rambo – are actually examples ofanti-tribal leaders. They are people who are doing
it for themselves. Rambo is supposed to be doing
it for other people, but it’s really the Rambo show.

fe at u r e | H a ll

It’s the Rocky Balboa show. You know, leadershipcan be boring. If you look at what a lot of tribal
leaders do in practice, and we have, it’s not sexy,it’s not L.A. Law, Boston Legal, and it’s not an exciting reality show. Instead, good tribal leadership is
not dramatic but it is dramatically effective. When
you take a model of the Stage Three hero, like a
Rambo, you are really taking a look at a life that isevents-driven, but there is very little process. On
the other hand, if you take a look at the Stage Fourhero, a Mother Teresa, a Martin Luther King, Jr.,

while there may be drama around them because
they are doing heroic things, it isn’t about Martin
Luther King. We tend to idolize Martin LutherKing, but Martin Luther King to himself was justanother soldier in the battle. He would say, “I’mjust a cheerleader for possibilities.” Stage Fourleaders are engaged in the process where there
are events, but it isn’t about event, event, event.
It is about the process and the collaborative
way we work together. n

a b o u t t he a u t h o r s
Interviewer George Hall runs the Amtrak Leadership Institute and teaches in the College ofBusiness Administration at the University of Phoenix. He is the ASTD Links “In Practice” Field Editor
for Management Development. Georgechall@comcast.net
Dave Logan is co-founder and senior partner of CultureSync, a management consulting firm
specializing in cultural change, strategy, and negotiation. Currently, he teaches leadership andnegotiation in the University of Southern California’s Executive MBA (ranked fifth in the world),
and is on faculty at the Center for Medical Excellence in Portland and the International Center for
Leadership In Finance (ICLIF) in Kuala Lumpur, endowed by the former prime minister of Malaysia.
He has written two books in addition to Tribal Leadership and is currently at work on a 2009 release
recently selected for the “Warren Bennis” line of books at Wiley. His work has also been published innumerous academic and professional journals, including a 2006 “agenda” in MIT-Sloan Management
Review. logan@culturesync.net
John King is a founding partner and president of CultureSync LLC, a consulting firm that focuseson leadership, strategy, cultural change and executive coaching. John is part of the leadershipdevelopment team at Sierra Health Foundation and is on faculty at Collier’s University, CB Richard
Ellis University, and The California Leadership Institute. John is also a frequent guest lecturer inthe Marshall School of Business and the School of Public Policy, Planning, and Development at
the University of Southern California. king@culturesync.net

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fe a t u r e 9 . 3 – 4

Learning and Performing throughHastily Formed Networks
G e o r ge R ot hContributors: Carol Gorelick, Jeff Clanon, Sue Higgins, Tracy Huston, Jason Schulist, Jean Tully,
Greg Clark, Shelia Covert-Weiss, Peter Walker, Bob Wiebe, and Fred Krawchuk…We heard a terrible crash – a sound no one ever wants to hear while flying –and then the engines wound down to a screeching halt. Ten seconds later, there wasa strong smell of jet fuel. I knew we would be landing and thought the pilot would
take us down no doubt to Newark Airport… Next thing we heard was “Brace for
impact!”… We began to descend rapidly and it started to sink in. This is the lastflight. I’m going to die today…
George RothIt was a violent hit – the water flew up over my window – but we bobbed up andwere all amazed that we remained intact. There was some panic – people jumping
over seats and running towards the doors, but we soon got everyone straightened out and calmed down.
There were a lot of people that took leadership roles in little ways. Those sitting at the doors over the wing
did a fantastic job; they were opened in a New York second! Everyone worked together – teamed up andin groups to figure out how to help each other.
I exited on the starboard side of the plane, three or four rows behind my seat through a door over the wing
and was, I believe, the 10th or 12th person out. I took my seat cushion as a flotation device and once outside
saw I was the only one who did; none of us remembered to take the yellow inflatable life vests from under
the seat.
We were standing in six to eight inches of water and it was freezing. There were two women on the wing,
one of whom slipped off into the water. Another passenger and I pulled her back on and had her kneel
down to keep from falling off again. By that point we were totally soaked and absolutely frozen from theicy wind…
As more ferries arrived, we were able to get people up on the boats a few at a time. The fellow in front of me
fell off the ladder and into the water. When we got him back on the ladder he could not move his legs to climb.
I couldn’t help him from my position so I climbed up the ladder to the ferry deck where the first mate and I
hoisted the Jacob’s ladder with him on it; when he got close enough we grabbed his trouser belt and hauled
him on deck. We were all safely off the wing.1

fe at u r e | r o t hIf you have spent much time in New York
airports, you have probably had some exchanges or experiences with airline staff andpassengers that were less than cordial, perhaps even uncooperative. As this email excerpt,
written by passenger Gerry McNamara, illustrates,when U.S. Air flight 1549 ditched into the Hudson
River on January 15, 2009, that changed. Passengers
and flight crew, together with ferryboat operatorsand professional rescue personnel, collectively
created a hastily formed network to care for eachother and save every life. There was a spontaneous
cooperation and a sharing of responsibilities andresources to fulfill a higher goal.

Dr. Peter Denning at the Naval Postgraduate
School coined the term “hastily formed networks,”
or “HFNs,” in October 2004. He and his colleagues
examined responses to crises that involved military, civilian government, and non-governmentorganizations.2 All of these crises required leveraging distributed resources and guiding collective
action immediately, without waiting for direction
from central authorities. “Hastily formed” implies
an unexpected and cataclysmic event – such as aterrorist attack, a large power failure or a natural
disaster – that requires a rapid response and an
unprecedented level of coordination. Crises result
when preparation is not possible or is inadequate,
no one organization has the ability or resources toact independently, and conditions are so dire thaturgent response is essential. “Networks” refers to
the formal and informal networks of people andorganizations that respond to those crises, which
may or may not have existed, or worked together,
before the event.
In November 2005, a group of SoL organizational
members became interested in network responses
to crises.3 Although organizations typically rely
on formal structures and defined decision-making
processes to coordinate activities, these officers
wondered whether HFN insights could be applied
to urgent and unpredictable circumstances affecting their own organizations. Together with SoL
staff, the group decided to develop, test, andrefine ideas about what leads to effective HFNbehaviors by undertaking a number of individual
learning projects. In June, 2006, after several
discussions and meetings, they formed a team,

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engaged a researcher, and initiated the Hastily
Formed Network project, whose guiding question
was “What creates, sustains, and transforms individuals and organizations into effective networks?”
This article describes the team’s work and findings.

Each of the following four sections begins with
one of these four key questions. In each section,
findings are illustrated by describing one of thelearning projects and providing insights on this
aspect of effective HFNs.

Through a series of learning projects, the teamfound that four conditions were necessary for
effective HFNs:
1. pre-conditioning participants’ beliefs that they
could both contribute and subscribe to common overarching goals
2. mobilizing action by behaving predictably,
communicating conditions, convening people
and holding them accountable to their commitments
3. relying on minimal structure, perhaps only
a virtual communication space, to assess
progress and report on conditions, and4. leading openly by providing direction, clarifying how decisions are made, sharing power,
and enabling action by other people.

Q uestion O N E :These findings are based on a methodology thatenables insights and lessons to be developed andtested across an ongoing set of learning projects.
Four of the learning projects are summarized inthis article to illustrate the HFN findings. (See Table
1 on page 33 for a complete list.) Not all efforts
to initiate learning projects were successful. The
issues associated with carrying out learning projects in SoL, which is a networked, membershipbased organization, provided insights regarding
challenges inherent in operating as a network,
and were considered part of the data by the team.
Project team members also shared personal experiences of their involvement in HFNs.4 The teamdrew upon studies of studied crisis situations, aswell as social networks, organizational networks,
and organizational relationship literature.5 The
group also tested the concepts it was learning
about effective network behaviors at SoL meetings and at conference workshops. These audiences worked with the team to develop HFN concepts further by sharing their own experiences,and helping to frame better questions.

What preconditioning is helpful for
effective network action?
Defining Preconditioning
A condition for an effective network is an ability
to communicate, which requires three elements:
1) the physical systems that provide a communication medium, 2) the individuals and organizations
that act together, and 3) developing and agreeing
upon interaction rules. Preconditioning implies
that a priori efforts can enable more effective crisis
responses through networks. These efforts include
training, simulations, pre-positioning of equipment,
testing technical systems and creating standards
for interoperability, and developing inter-organizational relationships. One of the SoL HFN learning projects, conducted by people from the Naval
Postgraduate School, developed technical standards for information and communications technology to support civil-military communications.
They created educational materials that teachthese guidelines based on disaster relief scenarios
from Hurricane Katrina.6

Southeast Asia Pre-crisis Communities
Learning Project
The Southeast Asia Pre-crisis Communities learning project provides additional insights into HFN
preconditions. Initiated by U.S. Army representative Colonel Fred Krawchuk, the project created across-sector conversation space by bringing people from a small geographic region together inmulti-day, facilitated meetings. It sought to improve relationships among organizations under
the assumption that having these relationships inplace would contribute to better coordination in acrisis. These organizations included U.S. government, foreign government, and non-government
agencies responsible for science and technology(providing imaging, mapping, modeling and simulation services), humanitarian relief (responding tofe at u r e | r o t hPreconditioning Findings
The Southeast Asia Pre-Crisis Communities projectfocused on preconditioning, but what was foundthere was also evident in the other networks theteam studied. Some of the preconditions necessary for networks to work effectively are obvious:
people must be willing to come together, andmust share a sense of urgency. Other preconditions
are less intuitive. Effective networks are comprisedof people who believe that they have something
to contribute, who are willing to subscribe to an
overarching goal, and who are ready to apply theirown knowledge, skills, and resources to improve
the situation. These people’s attitudes allow themto supersede the responsibilities of their organizational roles or the constraints of their job descriptions. At the same time, when people are willing

Stability created byprosperity, peace & wellness

ering from Cr
Recov
isis

The participants found that averting a crisis orconflict might also be possible if organizations
from different sectors (public, private, governmental) worked together. Figure 1 shows the relationship between states of crisis and stability in a
global setting. This diagram was drawn after teammembers reflecting on these pre-crisis meetings
developed the insight that improving the response
to a crisis and avoiding crisis could both be addressed by creating the conditions that would enable effective HFNs. The ability to move from crisis
to stability requires multiple agencies working
together, and the ability to avert a crisis, or war,might be possible if agencies worked together
before a crisis. Creating a capability to activate
HFNs could be useful in both crisis response
and crisis avoidance.

Figure 1 Possible Military Roles in Global Crisis and Stability

HFN

HFN

CRISIS

Instability created bypoverty, war & disease
Source: developed from flipchart drawn at HFN Project Clinic on Feb 6, 2007

Preconditioning
Effective HFNs were enabled by the following:
Action: Participants had a readiness and willingness to act,
they believed that they could contribute, acknowledged theirown needs, and subscribed to common overarching goals.
Theory: Individuals and organizations engage in networks
based on their own self esteem, trust of others, and mutual
respect.
Capacity-Building: Teaching and utilizing methods that affirm people from different backgrounds helps everyone torecognize and value diverse contributions.

to disclose what they do not know or cannot do,decisions can be made more rapidly, and resources
allocated more effectively.
The ideal precondition for an HFN is having a
pre-existing social network in place, so that people already have some degree of trust, and sharecommon values. Trust is built through personalg Crisis
Avertincrises and working with U.S. AID, Red Cross, andother humanitarian organizations), and education(providing methods and training for policing andmaintaining security). Across several related project efforts, facilitated meetings were organizedand held to bring people from multiple organizations together to talk about communicating with
one another and working together in crises. The
discussions in meetings largely focused on technical interoperability and assessing information
technology tools.

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connections or through more extended networks.
When trust and respect are in place, HFN teammembers who participated in HFNs, described
their experience as satisfying and meaningful, as
well as fun. Several people interviewed described
their personal HFN experiences as “a lifetime
highlight.”
Q uestion T wo :How is action mobilized throughout
a network?
Defining Mobilizing Action
Mobilizing collective action occurs when individuals act on behalf of the whole community. Effective
action through a network takes place when individuals’ goals and interests align, so that independent actions complement each other and produce
cumulative results. The Menlo Lab project illustrated how a network mobilizes action when thisalignment exists.

Menlo Lab Community Transformation
Learning Project
Tracy Huston, a representative from Nissan responsible for its global executive leadership development at the time of the HFN project, initiated the
Menlo Lab7 projects to provide real-world innovation grounds through which leaders from business, government, education, non-profits, andreflections.solonline.org

civic groups could co-create, test, and evolve practices needed to initiate and sustain collective action. Out of the shared intentions to address the
economic, social, and ecological conditions
needed to sustain our communities, Menlo Lab
organized experiential retreats where network
members co-evolved practices to integrate personal, relational, and structural dimensions ofchange. Using an “inside-out” change approach,8Menlo engaged cross-sector networks of community residents to surface the shared aspirations
that they wished to enact, and then to co-evolve
their visions and test concrete ideas through rapid
prototyping. These networks mobilized profoundinnovations in impoverished areas in California,
Michigan, New Mexico, and South Africa.
In Detroit, with funding from DTE Energy andCigna Healthcare, Menlo Lab organized community engagement events through which residents
and stakeholders developed visions for renewal
in some of the most blighted city neighborhoods.
In a “Dream Garden,” residents shared their hopes
for the future, and in a retreat held with leadersfrom all Menlo projects, a whole system pictureof the future was created: better ways of living
and learning, health, safety, sustenance, and connection. One innovation, surfaced by local urban
farmers, was prototyped with DTE employees tofe at u r e | R o t hcreate a breakthrough in local food production
and distribution. They developed an urban farming model as a way to create jobs and provide
food security in low-income communities. Thaturban farming model evolved, and was adapted
for Los Angeles Menlo Lab projects.
The Menlo Lab initiatives found that initial ideas
must be put into action quickly through rapid
prototyping, allowing learning to occur in low risk
environments and enabling new ideas to evolve.
This learning-in-action was uncomfortable formany people; groups often get stuck in planning
cycles that avoid action. In Detroit, when their
ongoing conversations failed to mobilize action,
Jason Schulist, a leader at DTE, pushed the group
into prototyping their urban farming idea by
promoting weekly sales of local produce to DTE
employees. While some leaders resisted the prototypes, those who embraced learning-in-action
significantly improved the local agribusinessmodel and strengthened the network’s capacity for collective action. Menlo’s strategy was to“follow the energy,” nurturing leaders who wish
to collaborate through action while holding space
for those who had yet to find the will to act. Their
belief was that as the network grows stronger,
it provides the support that makes it easier forothers to join in.

Mobilizing Action Findings
Mobilizing action requires a multi-stakeholder
engagement process, where people from all partsof the system “see” current conditions together,surface aspirations, and co-evolve their desired
pictures of the future. In Detroit, the diverse natureof the group allowed collective wisdom to generate innovations that otherwise would have been
overlooked. At the same time, the team encountered resistance on the part of some people tocollaborate, leaving gaps in expertise and resources
needed for the whole community vision to be enacted. This learning led to a more concentrated
effort up front in Los Angeles to not only “get thewhole system in the room,” but to get those who
were committed to working in a collaborative
HFN-like fashion, which allowed them to generate more results in less time.

Mobilizing Action
Enabling action, particularly in the face of adversity,
involved the following:
Action: Communicating to and engaging people by creating
clarity on conditions, surfacing aspirations, co-evolving vision,and testing Ideas through prototyping enabled collective
learning and action.
Theory: Networks of diverse stakeholders perform best when
they can together see current conditions, accept personal accountability, and act in the service of a larger shared purpose.
Capacity-building: Action results when people are given
opportunities to learn, act, and co-evolve ideas in ways thatrecognize, develop, and strengthen their will for change.

More subtle challenges for mobilizing collective
action had to do with sustaining the will for enacting change. Some people who initially stepped
into leadership roles were unwilling to hold accountability when projects moved into prototypes.
Some expected others to do it for them. Thesefindings applied to other HFN learning projects:
in order to act effectively, nurturing leaders not
only provide information, but also hold the space

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open for others to take on leadership roles. Thisapproach enables networks to be accountable forresults, yet lets people move independently andpredictably forward toward common goals.
Across the HFNs studied, when leaders relinquishedcontrol, they encouraged action by others andhelped to build or maintain relationships. Leaders
could enhance people’s actions by sharing theirsituational understanding as well as information
about expertise and resources. Communicating
status and available expertise and resources is afunction often performed by a central authority.
While some degree of central authority for collecting and sharing information is helpful in mobilizing
initial action, the team found that the centralization of information, decision-making, or expertiselater becomes an obstacle for networks in mobilizing continued action.

Q uestion T H R E E :What minimal organizational
structures are required?
Defining Minimizing Structures
The effectiveness of a network depends upon
individuals’ abilities to communicate, coordinate,
and influence each other. Influence takes placethrough open relationships. The premise of hastily
formed networks is that some minimal structure isnecessary to create coordinated action, and that
this structure can quickly be put in place for the
network to start to function. The Strong Angel III
simulation, which members of the HFN project
participated in, provided insights about creating
minimal structure.

Strong Angel III Learning Project
Strong Angel III was the third in a series of efforts
to test technologies that enable information flow

Figure 2 Strong Angel III Simulation: Working Flipchart of Behaviors Captured in Stock and Flow Diagram

Hot RF
environment

Get up andrunning

Tech shootout to make If everyone else would
my solution go away/interface right, myking
solution would scale

Understandingof presenting
problem
Here’s what I’m doing
because it is what I cameto do (ad hoc cooperation)

Experimentation
Letting go of outcome
as you know it
Holding on to functionality as
the situation requires (line ofsight, radio reachback, etc.)

Solutions thatworked locally andkind of worked
collectively
Comfortable identity
plus limited working
together

Sat/Comm
stomping onothersHolding ontofunctionality as thesituation requires(line-of-sight, radio,
reachback, etc.)

Fragile network
Letting go ofprone to failure—outcome as you
stopped demo in its tracks know it

Stoppedthe demos

Now, here’s what I’mgoing to do with everyonein the room
Asking: What are you
doing? What are you
capable of doing?

Defining thefunctionality

Adjustment, agreements,
understanding of real
problem being faced

fe at u r e | R o t hand enhance cooperation among civil and militaryorganizations in a disaster relief or humanitariancrises. The scenario simulated a lethal pandemic
coupled with a cyber-terrorist attack. It took placeon the Fire Training Academy grounds in San
Diego, California from August 21 to 26, 2006 andinvolved approximately 800 participants from
200 organizations.
Disaster creates conditions where people initially
focus on their own efforts, and do not look outward to help others. In this simulation, resources,
such as civilian and military medical staff, know
they will be called upon in an emergency. They
act according to plans, often to only find that their
response does not effectively address the situation. That is when they need to shift into a learning mode. They become a hastily formed networkas they collectively undertake experiments toimprove their combined responses.
Bob Wiebe, an organizational representative to
SoL from Boeing, and Dan Compton, a Boeing colleague, attended and observed Strong Angel III.
They created diagrams that mapped information
flows and feedback loops among participants.
They used their diagrams interactively, giving
the people they observed feedback to test theassumptions they used in developing the systems
diagram. One diagram (see Figure 2) depicts conditions in which people were able to create a communications network with limited capabilities. The
unstable communications reinforced the behaviors of some people who took increasingly moreauthoritarian and intractable positions.
		
Two days into the Strong Angel III simulation
there were few and limited communications
across networks. People focused on their own systems. They were unwilling to change the protocols
that enabled their systems to operate effectively,
which constrained network interoperations. An
aspect of this situation is found in the maxim, “youhave to give a little to get a little.” People had toaccept a limitation to their system for the network
as a whole to operate; they had to give up something without certainty of a return.

A pattern which was common across different
groups of people emerged: the initial “king” phase,as people started acting autonomously, then asecond coordinated exploration phase, when people asked each other what they wanted to accomplish and built working interfaces (that were veryfragile). The third or collaborative discovery phaseoccurred when people took what they learned
from creating on the fly to make small working
solutions that were linked up into a large-scale
working network in a way that no one had previously envisioned. The collaborative discovery
phase was enabled by the actions of “invisible” ornon-traditional leaders. These leaders did not rely
any one authority, but looked around at what wasdeveloping, asked questions that prompted new
thinking, and linked people who were doing
something effective together. The small working
solutions built momentum and the invisible leaders made it easy for others to join in and add tothe solution. These leaders were invisible because
they never sought recognition, and simply calledothers over to “look what we were able to create.”
In capturing, representing, and feeding backnetwork actions, Wiebe noticed three modes with

Minimizing Structure
Minimal structure for facilitating HFNs is based 		on the following:
Action: Less structure, particularly centralized structure,
is better for distributed action; need some “communication
space” share information, to create and model norms, toprovide clarity on intent, to assess reality, and to give feedback on conditions/performance.
Theory: A conversation space that serves network requirements also models, develops, and uses norms to illustrateand clarify intent, all of which model behavior and ultimately
determine performance.
Capacity-Building: The attitude and approach taken to
create structure, such as developing the “conversation space,”model acceptable behavior and thus have implications forthe network.

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distinct behavior patterns: 1) the aftermath of a
triggering event and formation of a network mode
(behavior patterns shift from normal to non-normal interactions); 2) acting in and sustaining the
network action mode (operating in a non-normal
state); and 3) dispersing and disbanding the network mode and returning to a normal mode(going from non-normal behaviors to a new normal mode, which may be different than initialnormal mode).9

Minimizing Structures Findings
Relationships are the minimal structure of HFNs;
they are essential to coordinating among people
and solving problems. It was clear in Strong Angel
III, and evident in the other networks studied,that although they tried, people could not impose
conditions on others. If you were to graph the relationship between individuals in a network, you
would create a drawing that looks like a spider’sweb. A spider’s web is made up of threads. You
can not push on a thread; if you try, it simply folds
and goes nowhere. It is the threads pulling on one
another that hold a web together. Networks, like aweb, are based on a structure that is different fromwhat is found in traditional organizations. The relationships in organizations are defined by reporting lines, where managers push decisions andactions through those reporting lines. A network
does not allow leaders to push their decisions
or actions through that web of relationships, as
they would in an organization’s reporting lines.

reflections.solonline.org

Given the importance of acting quickly, less structure is better than more structure in HFNs. HFNs
require a conversation space to share information,
enable decision-making, and communicate decisions. The conversation space enables assessmentof the current reality, attention to critical situations,clarity of the intent of the network, and feedback
on changes over time. Individuals’ conversation
space experience creates and reinforces network
norms. The norms manifested in the conversation
space influence the behaviors of people whose
actions are distributed across the network. Whencentral authorities attempt to specify behaviors,
they cannot push them through as they couldin an organization with reporting relationships,
and their efforts are largely ineffective.
In Strong Angel III and the other networks examined, someone had to emerge as a convener for a
network to function effectively. These conveners
brought people together, and did so by creating
conversation spaces and modeling behavior
norms. Often the convener has some expertise
related to the situation or authority because of hisor her position. The convener was effective not by
imposing his or her expertise or authority, but by
engaging all constituencies in working across organizational, functional, or cultural boundaries.
An organization has to create structures and processes before it can act effectively, while an HFN
acts before it creates or coheres its structures andprocesses. The structures and processes in anfe at u r e | R o t h

HFN evolve over time, and only the minimal set ofstructures and processes needed for a network
to function will start that evolution. After the HFN
has ameliorated the crisis conditions, structuresand processes become instituted because people
repeat what worked.
Q uestion f O U R :What leadership capabilities andcharacteristics are required?
Defining Distributed Leadership
Leadership is not only the act or instance of
guiding people; it also includes motivating otherpeople to lead. Taking action and establishing asystem that distributed leadership within a network was what leaders did in the successful HFNs
that were studied. Leadership was exemplified bydoing – by taking appropriate action while otherpeople often waited. Emergent networks do notappoint leaders, nor do crisis situations provide
the luxury of waiting for anointed leaders. Under
normal circumstances, a person’s reputation andcredibility enables people to follow and make him
or her leader. In a crisis situation, it was not whata person had done before that made him or her a
network leader, but what he or she did at the timethat inspired others to trust, respect, follow, andthereby make him or her a leader. Examples fromthe study of a humanitarian relief simulation
illustrate the distributing of leadership in thefunctioning of an effective network.

Humanitarian Studies Initiative Refugee
Simulation Learning ProjectAs part of its year-long course of studies, the
Humanitarian Studies Initiative (HSI) sponsors
a three-day humanitarian relief simulation as acapstone event.10 In April 2007, the simulation of ahumanitarian crisis in Chad involving nearly eighty
people took place in a state park north of Boston.
The thirty student participants were individuallyassigned to specific roles in three fictional NGOs:WFP (World Food Programme), CRS (Catholic
Relief Services), and IMC (International Medical
Corps). These NGOs provide logistics for shipping
food and supplies, relief worker services, andmedical services, respectively. Each NGO needed

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Figure 3 Refugee Simulation map overlay on state forest grounds
C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

3
4

SUDAN

5
6
7
8

CHAD
AbecheWADI

Head Office
N’Djamena
Headquarters

Am Nabak

GueredaGoz
BeidaFarchana

Gaga

9
10
Touloum

11
12

Oure Cassoni

Refugee Camp Populations

Unpopulated Desert

to assess situations in five refugee camps andcreate reports for delivering services. A dozen
ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) students
from six Boston area universities played the rolesof Chadian military and rebel militia (their role playin this simulation gave these students credits intheir programs). University faculty and staff playedroles of head office staff, as well as other roles, suchas refugee camp directors, refugees, local NGO
staff, and sometimes rebels. The students staffing
the NGOs had to deliver reports, briefings, and,
finally, a service delivery plan, to the head office
staffs. The students in the three NGO teams were
each assigned to different roles in areas such as
logistics, medical, finance, security, and communications. Creating service delivery plans requireda variety of assessments. The urgent mission wasassessing the refugee situation, communicatingneeds, and creating plans to begin providing theneeded humanitarian aid.
The simulation required individuals and teams tocope with challenges in organizing and perform-

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 3 – 4Distributing of Leadership
Leadership in effective HFNs is based on the following
concepts:
Action: Leaders enable actions in others yet act when they
are able; they remain open to change and sense direction,communicate the reality of dire conditions, clarify decisionmaking processes, and are ready to relinquish or share power.
Theory: Effective network leaders are perceived as people
with authenticity, integrity, empathy, and compassion, andhave shown in the past that they will continue to behavethat way.
Capacity-Building: Leaders create conditions across organizations that identify and value leadership; they enable leadership behaviors in others by identifying, developing, andmentoring people to step forward as new leaders.

ing their duties while responding to the stress ofexternal distractions in an uncomfortable, dynamic,
and “dangerous” environment. Upon arrival into
the “country,” government inspectors treated aid
workers roughly; they searched their bags, andtook personal and valuable items. Following ashort briefing, students were sent to field locations.
Each NGO team had members living and working from one or more of the three relief camps:
Abeche, Goz Beida, and Guereda. Each NGO team
had to assess and monitor conditions at all five refugee camps: Am Nabak, Farchana, Gaga, Touloum,and Oure Cassini. These camps were all several
hundred yards to a half-mile apart (see Figure 3
for simulation map). Refugee populations and theirneeds are constantly changing, affected by thepolitical situation, government and rebel actions,as well as food, water, and health conditions.
Each NGO team needed to work through dividing
responsibilities, understanding roles definitions,and working out task assignments. To start, thepeople on each NGO team focused almost entirely
on internal team issues in working toward theirdeliverable goals. Meanwhile, the external environment changed rapidly. People were attacked

reflections.solonline.org

by rebels, kidnapped by police, forced to pay
bribes, had to respond to the theft of food andsupplies, and keep up with sudden shifts in refugee populations. Dealing with internal issues wasa deterrent to any alignment across the three NGO
teams. Many individuals and several NGO teams
were nearly completely overwhelmed. That stressrequired a few individuals to reach out and work
across teams to share tasks and resources. Thisnew mode of operating created a hastily formed
network, and based on the relationships amongindividuals across teams changed individual
behavior, team functioning, and overall crisis
response performance.

Distributing Leadership Findings
The Humanitarian Studies Initiative simulation
illustrated the importance of leaders encouraging
flexible linkages within and across teams in responding to overwhelming circumstances. The
simulation’s procedures were to assign people tospecific roles. NGO teams’ behaviors in following
those procedures varied greatly. The leaders of
two NGOs focused on clarifying members’ responsibilities, and when individuals failed to performtheir assigned tasks, the team leaders questioned
their commitment or competence, and in someinstances reassigned those people. One NGO teamleader focused on helping, and did so by asking
team members who had completed their tasks tohelp others. This flexibility created better performance within the team, higher morale, and thisteam’s members later took action to partner withindividuals on other NGO teams.
The most important leadership characteristic
observed in the HSI simulation – and seen in other
HFNs – was the distribution of leadership. Distributing leadership roles and responsibilities allowed
other people across the network to take appropriate autonomous action. The leader often emerged
as other people looked to that person in choosing
their own course of action. In HFNs, where timely
action is of the essence, leaders need to act quickly
and do so in ways that compels other people toact as well. These leaders establish conditions
where people do not wait for permission, but arefe at u r e | R o t hinspired to follow and act in the face of crisis anduncertainty. Effective network leaders provide
examples with their own behaviors: they bothstep up and push forward, or step back to let
others lead, depending upon the circumstances.
As leaders, these people had a high tolerance for
ambiguity, and were always willing to take insuggestions. They had a clear sense of personal
identity, did not panic in crisis, and provided acalming influence for others.
Effective leaders in the networks that were studied
did several things well: they emphasized effort,
reported progress, offered help, pointed out available resources, and celebrated accomplishments.
These leaders remained open and sensed the direction, communicated accurately and effectively
the reality and dire extent of conditions, clarified
decision-making processes, and relinquished control when appropriate. Most importantly, people
looked to these leaders because they were trusted:people describe these leaders as genuine, empathetic, caring, and capable. Our proposal is thatthe perception of a leader’s character determines
whether others in a network will follow.
conclusion :What creates, sustains, and transforms
individuals and organizations into
effective networks
The answers to this guiding question are notunique to hastily formed networks: effective
response to change – or crises – depends on therelationships, actions, structure and leadershipof a network. The management of industrial era
organizations places those people who are presumed to be the most experienced, best educated,and most knowledgeable at the top of hierarchies, and requires them to direct others in creating desired outcomes. This approach can work in
relatively stable conditions. But new technologicalcapabilities and global markets have produced
such dramatic changes that the only certainty
for the future is continued change. Despite thecertainty of future changes, many managers holdonto their past assumptions and depend upon

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centralized decision-making to operate theirorganizations. If it can be managed and directed
appropriately, a network, because its members act
autonomously and coordinate through their relationships, is an organizational form that is responsive to change.
The value of pre-conditioning, mobilizing action,
minimizing structure, and distributing leadershipare not unique to hastily formed networks. Most,
if not all, these concepts would be good management practices and lead to improved results in any
organizational context. But in traditional organizations, managers control resources and impose authority to achieve desired results. In hastily formed
networks, timely action is of the essence and people must share resources and coordinate spontaneously. Crises create unforgiving conditions
through which we can learn about effective actionthat could be applicable in all organizations. Crises
make it suddenly obvious that existing structuresand processes are inadequate, and that people
must forget or neglect them to enable new actions.
A crisis of great magnitude compels people to act,
and they often act in new and better ways.
The HFN Project investigated four questions
that found practices that, over time, enabled andimproved networks. First is preconditioning the
network. In each HFN, someone emerged as aconvener. A convener brings people together,and people come together based in part on theirperception of and relationship with the convener.
In getting people together, he or she creates aconversation space, and through that space, models norms for the network. An important part ofpreconditioning was the perceptions people hadreflections.solonline.org

and developed of the convener and one another.
Second is mobilizing action, or getting people
to work together and in new ways. The convener
was effective not by imposing his or her expertiseor position, or by claiming decision rights, but
by working across organizational or functionalboundaries to gather all constituencies together.
People had to trust a convener to follow him orher, and believe that their actions were in everyone’s best interests. Third is the minimal structurethat is required for an HFN to operate. An organization requires and creates structures and processes to act effectively, while an HFN acts before
it coheres structures and processes. The structure
in an HFN evolves over time. As that new action
produces benefits, what worked is repeated andbecomes instituted because it was effective.
Fourth is developing of modeling the requisite
leadership capabilities and characteristics. The
effective characteristics of leadership are thosethat convene and inspire people in a serviceover-self manner. People follow others withoutauthority when they identify with that leader,have confidence in his or her character, anddesire the behaviors that he or she models.
This article proposed and illustrated the four network conditions that were found to be effective in
HFN learning projects, member experiences, andthe development and testing of these ideas withmany colleagues. Following SoL’s Applied Learning
Process (see the Knowledge Reposity at solonline).
org, the HFN Project team looks forward to newquestions and concepts that other managers, researchers and consultants develop and test in theirown, whether hasty or slow, organizational settings.

a b o u t t he a u t h o r
George Roth (Principle Research Associate, MIT Sloan School of Management) leads the Enterprise
Change Research area of the Lean Advancement Initiative, a joint MIT Management and School ofEngineering program aimed at transforming aerospace companies and government. His current
focus is learning and change initiatives across multiple organizations, building upon his continuingresearch in organizational culture, leadership, learning, and change. He is a coauthor with Peter
Senge and others of The Dance of Change, and working on a new book on enterprise change.
groth@mit.edu

fe at u r e | R o t h

T a ble 1 Table of SoL Hastily Formed Network (HFN) learning projects

Learning
Project Name

Sponsor &Organization

Humanitarian
Relief PanelPeter Walker,
Tufts University
Feinstein
International
CenterHumanitarian aid is established and delivered through cooperating networks of nongovernment, government, and military organizations. The Feinstein Center uses research,education, and dialogue to develop and promote operational and policy responses to protect
and strengthen the livelihoods of people living in crisis-affected areas. A proposed learning
project was to assemble and engage humanitarian aid coordinators in a panel session topresent and reflect upon their experiences in different settings.
The Humanitarian Relief Panel did not move from a concept to a planning stage, in part because,
for this setting, there was too much discussion and it took too long between discussing andapplying ideas.

Storm Teams

Jason Schulist,
Susan Putrycus,
DTE Energy

When there are power outages, DTE Energy operates in a “storm” mode, dispatching fieldteams to restore service while administrative people staff call centers and managers direct
activities. Outages from storms are unpredictable events that occur, on average, seven times
annually. DTE was in the 3rd quartile in storm cost and restoration time. A learning project was
proposed to conceptualize storm teams as distributed, hastily formed networks. The project
proposed cycles of observing storm teams, applying improvements, and observing changes
in the next action.
Storm Teams did not proceed to become a learning project for multiple reasons: there were
14 changes already underway and the new leader opposed adding another initiative andrelinquishing control.

Southeast
Asia Pre-crisis,
Cross Sector
Communities*

Fred Krawchuk,Colonel, US
Army;
Sue Higgins,
Naval
Postgraduate
SchoolSections of southeast Asian countries are areas where Islamic movements have created
opportunities for terrorists’ recruitment, training, and action. A series of meetings were hosted
by US military organizations responsible for science & technology, humanitarian relief, andeducation. The organizations sought to work together in an applied research project to createa coherent network across public, private and non-profit sectors in a small, region in Southeast
Asia. The goal was to engage leaders from local government, non-government, and civilian
organizations to discuss possible problems as well as build relationships to improve decisionmaking and response in the event of crises.
Southeast Asia Pre-crisis, Cross Sector Communities is described to illustrate insights for thepreconditioning that are helpful for effective HFNs.

Constant
TsunamiResponse

Greg Clark &SheilaCovert-Weiss,
Ford

Reductions in white-collar employment created a 35% decrease in the information systems
department’s staffing. The consequences for remaining staff after layoffs was fewer people todo needed work, the loss of colleagues, and survivor’s anxiety. Responding to service requests
or carrying out projects required a more networked organizational form. Ford’s dramatic andunceasing changes were equated to a “constant Tsunami.” The pace and depth of changes weresuch that the IS department could not rely on either a formal reporting structure or its informal
network of personal contacts to provide needed services to users.
Constant Tsunami Response did not proceed to become a learning project. The situation was too
uncertain to plan events, and people favored supporting individuals through their crisis over alearning project response.

Menlo Lab*

Tracy Huston,
NissanJason Schulist,
DTE
Greg Clark &Sheila CovertWeiss, Ford

A multi-disciplinary, self-organizing network of innovation and leadership transformation
experts from corporate, education, non-profit, and government sectors that work with local
community leaders to address the relational and systemic causes of their ‘persisting crises’ ineducation, healthcare, crime, and poverty. These learning projects sought to engage leadersof local communities in Duarte, California and Detroit, Michigan, and branched out withconnections into other projects, organizations, and involvements.
Menlo Lab is described to illustrate insights for mobilizing action in effective HFNs.

Summary Description

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reflections.solonline.org

T a ble 1 Table of SoL Hastily Formed Network (HFN) learning projects (continued)

Learning
Project Name

Sponsor &Organization

HSI Refugee
Simulation*Peter Walker,
Tufts University
Feinstein
Center

The Humanitarian Studies Initiative (a joint program hosted by Harvard University, with MIT
and Tufts participation) holds a capstone event each year for its students involving faculty andvolunteers. The 2007 simulation involved a Chadian humanitarian crisis to which NGO teams
were to respond. These teams were in the field to collect data, assess the situation, provide aid,
and develop service delivery plans for their organizations. The simulation took place underadverse weather conditions – over three days in a state park outside of Boston on a cold andrainy April weekend. Participant observation was the basis for a report on the simulation thatwas used to draw insights and lessons for leader and participant behaviors that contributedor detracted from the effective functioning of the social networks that, in the face of thishumanitarian crisis, needed to be joined to meet task demands.
The HSI Refugee Simulation is describedin this article to illustrate insights for leaders and leadershipin effective HFNs.

StrongAngel III*

Bob Weibe,
BoeingStrong Angel III is the third in a series of efforts to demonstrate and test technologies andtechniques to enable information flow and enhance cooperation among civil and militaryorganizations in the event of a disaster or humanitarian crisis. It took place on the San Diego
Fire Training Academy grounds from August 21 to 26, 2006, and involved approximately 800
participants from more than 200 organizations. SoL HFN team participants from Boeing and
the Naval Postgraduate School attended and were active in this simulation, which involved
the scenario of a lethal pandemic coupled with a cyber-terrorist attack to provide an adverse
context designed to stimulate learning, sharing and experimentation.
The Strong Angel III is described in this article to illustrate insights for minimal structures required
for effective HFNs.

Virtual
Network
RFPs*

Jeff Clanon,
SoL

SoL is developing and responding to new opportunities. One of these opportunities isrequests from companies for consulting services. As a non-profit organization that advances
organizational learning, SoL has organizational, research, and consulting members, and only asmall permanent staff. SoL’s projects are done by volunteer members, with its staff organizing
and convening meetings, responding to member requests, managing some projects, but notwriting or responding to requests for proposals (RFPs). SoL staff participated in the HFN project
as a member, offering several examples of its consultant network self-organizing to respondto RFPs as learning projects.
Using interviews and historical documents volunteer researchers documented two Virtual Network
RFP learning projects; however, the time that elapsed and politics around what happened limited
the insights and use of these cases.

Social Action
Networks

Greg Clark& Sheila
Covert-Weiss,Ford

The Ford IT department investigated and used social network analysis and mapping methods
to develop a faster, decentralized approach for providing information systems services during
a period of dramatic downsizing and change within the department and company.
This learning project was just beginning as the overall HFN project ended its initial phase, but its
approach to engaging people to map social networks helped to create and reveal connections that
aided people in facing significant personal and corporate changes.

Singapore
Disaster
Response
Simulation

Lee Seok Wai,
Singapore
Police

HFN team members were invited to observe the Singapore Civil Defense Force’s Northstar VI,
a disaster-at-sea simulation requiring evacuation of 1,000 passengers from a Star Cruise shipthat involved the participation of 1,600 people, at 13 agencies, 40 Police, Coast Guard,
Maritime and Port Authority, and numerous ferry vessels, more than 30 ambulances, andSingapore’s Air Force.
A team member observed this simulation and reported on HFN behaviors, which were largely
absent due to the in a planned nature of the simulation in which agencies were coordinated aheadof time to demonstrate their individual competence and capabilities.

Summary Description* Five leaning projects are described in more depth to illustrate each of the four concepts developed in this article for the effective functioning of Hastily Formed Networks 		
(HFNs). Many other projects were discussed and these are included in this table because they received considerable attention, had characteristics of ideal, representative HFN
situations, were discussed at several meetings, and had one or more SoL companies and individuals involved in efforts to launch them.

fe at u r e | R o t h

E ndnotes
1 “From Park Avenue to the Hudson: A Flight 1549 Diary” by Gerard P. McNamara, Feb. 24, 2009, downloaded fromhttp://www.time.com on Feb. 26, 2009. Gerry McNamara, a partner at the executive recruiting firm Heidrick andStruggles. McNamara, a former U.S. Marine officer, wrote this account of his ordeal for the company’s internal
newsletter.
2 See Denning, P. J. (2006) “Hastily Formed Networks” Communications of the ACM, April/Vol. 49, No. 4, pages 15–20.
(This article was republished in Reflections Vol 7. No. 1.).
3	The Society for Organizational Learning (SoL, www.solonline.org) is a non-profit membership-owned organization that was founded in 1997 as an outgrowth of an MIT Sloan School of Management research Center for
Organizational Learning. SoL’s emphasis, the design of its events and meetings, and its members’ rationale for
their participation, is to further the knowledge and practice about learning organizations.
	Representatives from member organizations meet regularly and coordinate activities for their organization,
including training and attendance at SoL courses, and development of projects and other initiatives thatdevelop and test organizational learning concepts.
4	Personal experiences that people shared included getting help to a person having a heart attack, behavioral
changes in a company during an investment banking crisis, coming upon a traffic accident, and mobilizing
people around sustainability principles in a large corporation.
5	The significant disasters often discussed were US terrorists attacks on 9/11/2001, Boxing Day 2006 Asian Tsunami,
Hurricanes Katrina (August 28, 2004) and Rita (September 24, 2004), and the Kashmir Earthquake (October 8,2005). Discussions with people at the World Bank included their relief efforts, and use of a web site to coordinate
relief agencies, in the Kashmir Earthquake. Boeing people used examples from their Aircraft on the Ground (AOG)
teams. The industrial disaster and distributed response by Toyota’s suppliers to the February 1, 1997 Asian Seiki
Plant Fire was closely reviewed (see Nishiguchi, T. & A. Beaudet (1998): “Case Study: The Toyota Group and the
Aisin Fire,” Sloan Management Review, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 49-59. Another case study involved Textron Systems
Marine and Land Division Slidell, Louisiana plant’s Armored Security Vehicle factory recovery after Hurricane
Katrina using Six Sigma Project methods (see “Turning the Tide,” Business Week, Sept. 26, 2005; and “Making
The Elephant Dance: How Lewis Campbell took the sprawl out of Textron.” Business Week, May 1, 2006).
6 See http://faculty.nps.edu/dl/HFN and the June 2006 publication by Larry Wentz of the National Defense University,
An ICT Primer: Information and Communication Technologies for Civil-Military Coordination in Disaster Relief andStabilization and Reconstruction available from the US Government at http://www.stormingmedia.us.
7 	The name “Menlo Lab” was inspired by Thomas Edison’s famous Menlo Park laboratory, which supposedly
produced “the most concentrated outpouring of invention in history.” Menlo Lab sought to generate the social
innovations needed to address complex challenges of “persisting crises “ in education, health, crime, and poverty
in local communities. Out of these shared intentions, Menlo Lab quickly grew to a highly diverse, self-organizing
network of global and local leaders, among them SoL organizational members from Cigna Healthcare, DTE
Energy, Ford, and Nissan, as well as SoL consulting and research members.
8 Huston, T. Inside-Out, Cambridge, MA: SOL, 2007
9	Weibe created a following diagram to show phases of network behaviors in responding to crises. which canbe found in the Strong Angel III final report at http://faculty.nps.edu/dl/HFN/documents/Strong_Angel_III_
ExecCom_Report_SecDef_Nov_06.pdf
10	The Humanitarian Studies Institute is a joint program between The Harvard School of Public Health, The
Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This three-university initiative holds a weekly seminar series throughout theschool year and an annual three-day humanitarian relief simulation capstone event. The students range inage from mid-twenties to mid-fifties, and include many foreign nationals, some of whom have had humanitarian relief field experience. The students do not know each other very well, which makes for a realistic
scenario in terms of an international disaster relief operation.

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reflections.solonline.org

fe a t u r e 9 . 3 – 4

The Defining Featuresof a Megacommunity
Ch r i s Kelly, M a r k G e r en c se r ,F e r n a n d o N a p o l i ta n o, a n d Reg i n a l d Va n L ee
This article, written by four principals with Booz Allen Hamilton, can be considered a primer for creating
successful multipartite initiatives to solve critical problems that embrace the talents of government, 		business, and civil society.

Chris Kelly

T

Mark Gerencser

Fernando
Napolitano

Reginald Van Lee

oday, issues that significantly affect global and national security, economic well-being, and thehealth and safety of citizens around the world have become key challenges to decision makers
in the public sector, private sector, and civil society. These are large-scale issues of unprecedented
complexity: confronting global climate change, rebuilding urban infrastructure, combatingwater scarcity, preparing for pandemics, dealing with aging populations, preventing terrorist attack, andmaintaining quality of life in the face of globalization. At first glance, these problems seem intractable.
But in an era of expanding global networks and interdependence, they cannot be ignored.
Such problems cannot be solved by government, business, or civil society alone. It takes a megacommunity. Leaders of many organizations must work together toward common goals, without any one of them
being in control of the whole system. A megacommunity initiative therefore combines focused conversation, deliberate development of leadership capabilities, and results-oriented action in an open-ended
network of leaders from multiple organizations. During the last few years, conducting this kind of workin a variety of settings in Europe, North America, and Asia, we have identified five critical elements. Twoof them, three-sector engagement and an overlap of vital interests, can be thought of as preconditions.
If they can be found in the social soil of an area, then a megacommunity can grow there.
The other three elements, convergence, structure, and adaptability, are critical features of the megacommunity design. An initiative that takes them into account has a far greater chance of success thanan initiative that ignores them. These three features are not necessarily obvious; they require conscious
attention. That’s why it is so important to spell them out, as we do here.

fe at u r e | Kelly, G e r en c se r , N a p o l i ta n o, Va n L ee

Three-sector engagement
The megacommunity concept goes far beyond
such well-meaning single-sector approaches assustainable development or corporate social responsibility, both of which often represent an ongoing obligation or duty rather than a collective
movement toward a mutual aim. Unlike public–
private partnerships, which typically focus on relatively narrow purposes and tend toward limited
alliances (in other words, they operate only as
long as their formal agreements stay in effect),megacommunities take on much larger goals.
They are ongoing and mutable over time, andthey demand a highly engaged orientation fromthe leaders, and many of the members, of thevarious organizations involved.
Megacommunities are also different from public–
private partnerships. Traditionally, such partnerships are struck between governments (or intergovernmental organizations such as the U.N. or
NATO) and companies. Although public–private
partnerships work in certain circumscribed, contract-bound situations, their dual-sector nature
is a common limitation. They rarely develop thecapabilities needed, for example, to address thenew, seemingly boundless, and ever-evolving
issues of sustainable globalization.
Among other things, a megacommunity’s triplesector nature addresses the fact that civil society
is often left out of the public–private equation. As
shown by the case of Enel SpA described in “TheMegacommunity Manifesto” (by Mark Gerencser,
Fernando Napolitano, and Reginald Van Lee, s+b,
Summer 2006) – in which a large utility company
regained its legitimacy by engaging the citizensof the Veneto region of Italy – increased transparency and speed of information makes the civil society component ever more significant and vitalto success. It becomes a bigger, stronger player.
But that’s not the whole story. The three-sector
approach also provides leverage for retention of
local identity alongside creation of a viable middle
class and competitiveness on the global playing
field. It represents a movement in which contact

with the outside world, instead of draining jobs
and making a local system vulnerable, strengthens
the quality of life, economic vitality, and community health so important to our global future.
Examples of the three-sector approach in practicerange from planetwide systems, such as the community of corporations, governments, and NGOs
concerned with rain forest management and conservation, to local enterprise-related environments,
such as the Harlem Small Business Initiative (alsodescribed in “The Megacommunity Manifesto”).
The Harlem Initiative example begins to clarify
the specific benefits that each sector brings to
the table. Business – the private sector – brings
a resource base, an action agenda, depth in problem solving, and capital. Government – the public
sector – brings the rule of law, the promise oflong-term stability, sovereignty, a tax base, andnatural resources. The civil sector brings accountability, sensitivity to how the issues at play might
affect the individual and the environment, andcredibility in arenas where business and government fall short.

Read More about Megacommunities
Based on interviews with over 100 leaders from around theworld including Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Kenneth Chenault
and Richard Parsons, Megacommunities: How Leaders ofGovernment, Business and
Non-Profits Can Tackle Today’s
Global Challenges Together(Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
develops the ideas in thisarticle further. The Booz Allen
Strategy + Business website ishome to a range of work by
the same authors, as well as
articles related to the megacommunities theme.
For more information, visit
www.strategy-business.com

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Involvement in a megacommunity allows any
participating part of any sector to use the abilities,
the understanding, and even the prejudices of theother sectors. When these sectors work together,
there is the potential for a kind of “swarm intelligence” to emerge, one that allows community
members to generate innovative ideas, create
new energy around the topic, and identify different ways of approaching the issue. It also meansthat more participants are available to do whatneeds to be done.

Because technology has allowed
the instantaneous transfer ofmoney, images, and ideas aroundthe world, along with far higher
levels of human mobility thanin the past, “local” communities
are neither constrained nor
protected by age-old boundaries
of geography and demography.
At the same time, and on the most individuallevel, megacommunity participation keeps anyone from being shut out.

An overlap of vital interests
One of the surprising aspects of megacommunities is that, most likely, you are already part of one
without realizing it. In fact, you may be part of several. Although formal megacommunities are consciously developed, they usually grow out of thelatent megacommunities that surround us. Before
the involvement of the William J. Clinton Foundation, for example, Harlem’s small business environment was a latent megacommunity. Latent megacommunities almost always exist when the following features are present:

A shared issue
Members of a megacommunity do not necessarilyneed to have the same objectives, but they musthave a mutual concern, such as global warming or

reflections.solonline.org

the threat of terrorism; a mutual resource in theircare, such as oil, water, or the Amazon rain forest;
or a mutual aspiration, such as education, healthcare, or enhanced business interaction. Everything
starts with a shared issue – which is why we say
that, given a common mission or interrelated operations, all organizations are de facto members ofthe megacommunities in which they are engaged.
In fact, organizations cannot opt out of a megacommunity unless they change their mission. As
long as you are engaged in fighting AIDS in Africa
you are automatically part of that megacommunity, even if you don’t participate directly in it. You
will be drawn in through the network that connects all organizations engaged in that endeavor.

A shared sense of local impact
A megacommunity forms not only around a problem but also around those areas where the impact
is felt, and that impact can come from the insideor outside. Some examples, such as Enel in Venetoand the Harlem Initiative, are geographicallyspecific. But whereas the Harlem megacommunity
grew around a preexisting need in the community
at large, the Enel example demonstrates something
different about the geographic dynamic. When a
new business attempts to move into a new area,a latent megacommunity can be tapped for the
benefit of all the stakeholders in the region.
Shared geography is not always a prerequisite formegacommunity impact. Because technology has
allowed the instantaneous transfer of money, images, and ideas around the world, along with far
higher levels of human mobility than in the past,“local” communities are neither constrained nor
protected by age-old boundaries of geography
and demography. A vendor in a remote village in
Costa Rica or India is bound, through communication, trade, and an increasing number of common
interests, to an urban resident of Paris or HongKong. Although Enel’s effort in Veneto is a geographically specific case, Enel’s effort in generalcan be seen as part of a much larger latent megacommunity – one focused on worldwide energy
issues. Keeping this in mind, all latent megacommunities, no matter how global, can be perceived

fe at u r e | Kelly, G e r en c se r , N a p o l i ta n o, Va n L ee

as having formed around issues that are “local” orhave localized impact.
Together, shared issues and localized impact
naturally result in an overlap of vital interests. The
megacommunity approach seems to be the mostpowerful way to bring these interests into workable, sustainable alignment. But there is no guarantee that a megacommunity will be created.
Even when the latent potential is there, a few
more decisive features must be present.

Convergence
Before a formal megacommunity begins tocoalesce, there must be more than an overlap ofinterests. There must be a convergence of commitment toward mutual action. It is as if, like a stonepoised to roll down a hill, a latent megacommunity
must convert its potential energy into kinetic
motion.
This convergence may happen spontaneously, as
in the case of a natural disaster, when need suddenly intensifies. But most likely, convergence will
occur when each separate constituency affectedby an issue realizes that its progression has achieveda plateau; that is, when additional efforts do not
produce further improvement.
Whenever this convergence occurs, either spontaneously or through deliberate action, something
shifts in the community’s capabilities. Instead ofcontinuing to fight each other or to cede authority
to some governmental or quasi-governmental
body, leaders come together as equals to develop
a plan of action. One cannot participate in a megacommunity with the intent to disrupt or undermine the effort. The commitment toward mutual
action must be genuine or the megacommunity
will not work.
An individual organization may be able to jumpstart a megacommunity, but only when leadersof different organizations within the latent megacommunity consciously engage does a true megacommunity begin to take shape. In fact, as theHarlem Initiative shows, a latent megacommunity at first may not even contain all the members
it needs. At this stage, the need to reach out for
additional, different, and complementary support

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becomes evident. Although such factors as theInternet enable more convergence among thethree sectors, the sectors will not necessarily cometogether on an active megacommunity level of
their own accord. As a matter of fact, the inherent
purpose of each sector is often at odds with thatof the others, which precludes them from naturally coalescing. If active, complete megacommunities did spontaneously evolve, we would have
many more today than we do. Their scarcity is aclear indication that they do not form naturally.
They must be consciously made to converge.

Structure
For a megacommunity to operate effectively,
there needs to be an explicit formative stage.
There must be a set of protocols and organizing
principles that bring a degree of order: typically amore resilient, adaptable type of order than the
structure one would find in a conventional hierarchical arrangement, or even in a joint venture or
public–private partnership. There must be an
agreement to use these protocols based on somesense of joint mission. And these protocols mustallow for the best use of dynamic tension among
the sectors.

Megacommunities are dynamic.
They are open to new members
and entrants, continually poisedfor new activities, and deliberately open to change in theirobjectives and methods.
Complex issues naturally draw people into networks. As a result, the structure of a megacommunity – based as it is on overlapping issues – exhibits many properties of a network. The shift fromthe dual-sector public–private partnership to thetriple-sector nature of a megacommunity takes
us automatically into a networked environment.
Becoming part of a network is not only a natural
outcome of three-sector engagement, it’s alsoa welcome one, because the phenomenon ofreflections.solonline.org

high-performing networks is a guaranteed way
to truly galvanize productivity and get results.
The field of network studies has emerged in recent
years to analyze and explore the phenomenon.
A network, in organizational terms, is a set of connections among people allowing interactions andinfluences to flow among them over time. Network
analyses of megacommunities typically capture
the relationships among participants in terms of“nodes” and “connections.” These connections are
not legally binding contractual relationships, as
we would see in a service-level agreement witha service provider, or the kind of formal agreements that characterize public–private partnerships. Rather, these are relationships forged by
the overlap of vital interests and hardened by thecommitment toward mutual action. They are ascompelling and concrete as the issues on which
they are based.
As social scientists who have been examining
social networks over the past three decades showus, communities that acknowledge and tap into
differences are generally more successful thanthose that cling to homogeneity. The true valueof a community, and of a megacommunity, is its
diversity. Smaller, tighter networks are less usefulto their members than networks with many loose
connections – in this field referred to as “weak ties”– to individuals outside the main network. As theHarlem Initiative proved, the need to reach out for
additional, different, and complementary support
is essential, marking megacommunities, in network jargon, “scale-free” (that is, they can scale up
at will, and they’re unlimited). Typically, megacommunities will form “open” networks, with many
weak ties and social connections through which
members are more likely to introduce new ideas
and opportunities, as opposed to “closed” networks, with many redundant ties.
We believe that members of all three sectors must
develop a better understanding of network forces,in addition to market forces, as they design megacommunity initiatives. Networked operating models
continue to jump to the forefront as organizations

fe at u r e | Kelly, G e r en c se r , N a p o l i ta n o, Va n L eeseek to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Networks are being used to achieve radical newlevels of organizational integration and performance. Understood as a network, a megacommunity can achieve the same result for a group oforganizations.

conflict with each other and overflow each other’s
buffers, causing overall performance to go down,
an adaptive network management control capability kicks in and adjudicates the problem. This is
not some centralized decision-making system – itis a distributed capability operating as an integral
part of the network’s design. The concept of a

Adaptability
Consider, on the one hand, the static nature ofmany public–private partnerships. When conflicts
or new issues arise, such partnerships do not always allow for pathways along which the parties
can respond. Their highly focused engagement
has no dynamic dimension to it. The terms are set
as part of the partnership. They are locked down.
Megacommunities, on the other hand, are much
more dynamic. They are open to new members
and entrants, continually poised for new activities,
and deliberately open to change in their objectives and methods.
Over time, a healthy megacommunity becomes
more effective in its purpose. It develops an increasingly common language that is used by people from all three sectors who belong to it. Withsustained connections and continued interactions,participants in megacommunities develop bonds,
intellectual pathways, enhanced linguistic abilities, and even a higher capacity for critical thinking and problem solving around the set of vitalinterests that caused the megacommunity toform in the first place.
Another important aspect of a megacommunity’s
adaptability is the fact that when changes occur,
they do so without hierarchical decision making
and external intervention. The megacommunity
constantly evolves and learns, almost like a living
entity. But this evolution is not guided by commandand control. Instead, things happen through alignment, through the collective behavior of all members. The sum of those behaviors is the essenceof the megacommunity.
In an electronic network, for example, when information packets coursing through a computer

As social scientists who have been
examining social networks overthe past three decades show us,
communities that acknowledge
and tap into differences are
generally more successful thanthose that cling to homogeneity.
The true value of a community,and of a megacommunity, is its
diversity.
megacommunity introduces a similar sort of network management control mechanism in humansystems, one that minimizes friction over time andimproves the entire network’s efficiency. With nocentral decision-making entity and no explicit
leader of the megacommunity, this represents the
only efficient and effective way to manage the
network. Although everyone within a megacommunity has influence, no sector or sector chief istruly in charge. One might call it a “control-freezone.”
An observer might reasonably wonder why a comfortable chief executive or head of a government
agency or NGO would be interested in operating
in a control-free zone in the first place. But transcending the need for central control is a common
situation in large, complex systems such as electrical power grids or environmental control systems.
In fact, the newest network structures represent a
shift from bounded networks, with central control,
to unbounded networks. Unbounded, or, as we’vetermed them, scale-free, networks are characterized by distributed administrative control without

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 3 – 4

central authority. They combine previously fragmented operations into more focused processes
open to many organizational participants.
This network feature is clearly mirrored in megacommunity operations – which is not to say thatmegacommunities thrive on chaos, with no clear
leadership. Indeed, in the initial stages, the megacommunity needs some person, group, or sector
to precipitate, align, and catalyze the latent energies being raised. This will generally take the formof an “initiator,” or group of initiators, doing something explicit to put the elements in place. But
those initiators must be prepared to cede thiscentral leadership role as the megacommunity
coalesces and grows, or they may be seen as coopting local or other interests. Of course, eachsector and organization involved continues tohave its own leadership in place, and within organizations there are leaders or groups assigned tofurthering and monitoring megacommunity interaction. Still, no one possesses the title of “megacommunity CEO.”reflections.solonline.org

Megacommunity Leadership
In the current operating environment, leaders –business executives as well as leaders in government and civil society – need to understand thesignificance of their participation in systems larger
than their own organizations. The megacommunity style of interdependence is more effective
than conventional hierarchical forms of leadership
precisely because it deliberately involves people
at many levels in many forms of collaborative leadership. To succeed and sustain the system, it is better to adopt the most inclusive approach possible,
and to specifically draw on the knowledge of theprivate, public, and civil sectors.
The recognition of the five megacommunity
dynamics in this article represents a new starting
point for mutual action on a local and global scale.
As leaders are drawn into megacommunities, they
will learn to raise new types of questions about
the problems confronting them, and they will gainprofoundly in their ability to successfully conceive
and implement new answers. n

a b o u t t he a u t h o r s
Chris Kelly is a vice president with Booz Allen in McLean, Va., focusing on policy and strategy forlaw enforcement, intelligence, and homeland security clients. He has a background in public–private
partnerships as well as social risk management and enterprise risk management.
kelly_chris@bah.com
Mark Gerencser is managing director, global government markets, with Booz Allen. Based in
McLean, Va., he serves government clients worldwide. He previously led the firm’s business in
information assurance and enterprise resilience. gerencser_mark@bah.com
Fernando Napolitano is a vice president with Booz Allen based in Rome and managing directorof the firm’s Italian office. He specializes in organizational and change leadership, and has worked
extensively in telecommunications, media, and aerospace. He is a board member of Enel SpA.
napolitano_fernando@bah.com
Reginald Van Lee is a senior vice president with Booz Allen Hamilton in New York. He co-leads
the firm’s engagements focused on the not-for-profit sector and has worked extensively with privateand public-sector clients on enterprise resilience, strategic transformation, and high-performanceorganizational design. van_lee_reggie@bah.com

b o o k e x c e r p t | E h r enfel d43

B o o k E x c e r p t 9 . 3–4

The Tao of Sustainability
IntroductionH

ere I am again. I don’t mean to be flip, but
only to look back to where my book, Sustainability by Design, took shape. Much of the coreof the book saw the first light of day in Reflections. The
first article, “Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously: Is
the Emergence of ‘Sustainable’ Practices Meaningful?”
appeared in 2000, and introduced the definition ofsustainability that still holds center stage. The words
in that early text still send a powerful image.
Sustainability is a possible way of living or being
in which individuals, firms, governments, and otherinstitutions act responsibly in taking care of the
future as if it belonged to them today, in equitably
sharing the ecological resources on which thesurvival of human and other species depends, andin assuring that all who live today and in the future
will be able to satisfy their needs and humanaspirations.

The second, “Searching for Sustainability: No Quick Fix,” camefour years later and exposed
the systems dynamics analysis
that led me to the argumentthat unsustainability is an unintended consequence of theJohn Ehrenfeld
culture of modernity. The same
analysis showed that mostso-called greening efforts are quick fixes with an unwanted effect – defocusing attention and resourcesaway from addressing the cultural roots of the problems. This article also contained an early version of
the strategic framework highlighted in the excerptthat follows.

Sustainability by
Design: A Subversive
Strategy for Transforming Our Consumer
CultureJohn R. Ehrenfeld,
New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2008

The core of the critique of the culture of modernity
that grounds Sustainability by Design is that, in thefour-century-long development of modern life with 		
all the wonderful gifts it has brought humankind,
three critical domains of understanding have become
dimmed or lost. These include our sense of what itmeans to be human, our sense of our place within andas a part of nature, and our sense of ethical responsibility. Any strategy presuming to create sustainability
must address and recover the lost consciousness in all
three domains. Flourishing, the property we want tosustain, can come forth only if all three domains arefunctioning properly.
Neither technological nor technocratic solutions willbring sustainability forth. These remedial frameworks
belong to the greening institutions focused on reducing unsustainability. Lest this comment be misunderstood, I want to be clear that such efforts are criticallyneeded. I believe that the key task ahead is to change
the deepest cultural structure while limiting global

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 3 – 4

damages to an extent that leaves enough of thesystem in place for the generations to come.
The readership of Reflections is largely a communitythat understands the challenge of changing culture
and actors’ behavior. One of the intellectual sources 		I draw heavily upon is Humberto Maturana, whose
writings have also appeared in Reflections. His theories
of consciousness and human development, which
are being reinforced by recent findings in cognitive
science, suggest that human behavior is fundamentally conservative. We accumulate learning from reflecting on experience and catalog that learning into
schemes that work successfully for our mundane,
everyday encounters with the world. If we are unconscious of the consequences of our individual andcollective actions, this model suggests that we will
persist in, that is, conserve, our ways of behaving.
Change requires, as a first step, making the actors
conscious of the problems they create along with asense of the underlying causes. The chapter that follows, “The Tao of Sustainability,” presents a simple
framework for guiding business and other institutionsin their efforts to create sustainability. It is little morethan a picture of the three domains I mentioned
earlier, and a reminder that unless all are addressed,
sustainability cannot come forth.
— John Ehrenfeld

reflections.solonline.org

Flourishing can occur only if we pay close attention to the three critical domains that the forcesof modernity have dimmed:• Our sense of ourselves as human beings: thehuman domain.
• Our sense of our place in the [natural] world:
the natural domain.
• Our sense of doing the right thing: the ethicaldomain.
These three domains form a set of overlapping
fields that underlie any activity designed to produce
sustainability (Figure 7).
Sustainability can emerge only if we address all threedomains simultaneously. Preserving nature will not
suffice if we lose our human distinctiveness in the process, and vice versa. And without taking responsibility
for our actions, attaining sustainability would be highly
improbable if not impossible. Sustainability is an
emergent property of a complex system; we canFigure 7 The Tao of Sustainability

EthicalExcerpt
Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our
sensory experience. All the conditions of modern
life – its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness– conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in
the light of the condition of our senses or capacities(rather than those of another age) that the taskof a critic must be assessed.
What is important now is to recover our senses. We
must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.
—Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation

Sustainability
NaturalHumanb o o k e x c e r p t | E h r enfel dobserve it only if all the relationships on which it
depends are functioning correctly.
The first two areas of concern are obvious components of flourishing. Sustainability has emerged inpublic discourse largely because ecological upsets
have become explicitly threatening, and this awareness has been followed by attention being paid tosubsequent effects on the social and economic spheres.
Many of the threats have come unexpectedly, often inspite of our efforts to avoid them. We will have to address the natural domain directly with new forms of
production and strong constraints over the consumptive patterns that now characterize all affluent andrapidly developing economies. Reducing consumption by some factor X, where X ranges from 4 to 50
depending on the writer’s calculus, is necessary inthe short run but cannot work forever and may evenfool us into thinking that we have our arms aroundthe “real” problem.
The second domain relates to the human dimensionof flourishing. For human beings, flourishing meansthat everyone on the planet must be free and able tolead dignified, authentic lives. Being free means morethan simply being able to make choices in the marketplace or even at the polling booth. It means that thesechoices must be unconstrained and domination-free.
The results of the choices should lead to authentic
satisfaction and the quenching of the momentary thirstfor whatever motivated the choice. My intention of presenting a framework for sustainability in this way is 		
to make the human dimension explicit. It is only indirectly and imperfectly captured in the everyday senseof sustainable development. Focusing on the humanis not the same as the emphasis on the “social” as expressed in the usual definition of sustainable development. Although taking care of nature is imperativeand has been the primary motivating force for action,

it is just as critical to include action toward the humandimension of sustainability. Sustainability is an existential problem, not an environmental or social one.
In fact, in the course of working on this book I havebecome all the more convinced of the primacy of
restoring the human dimension. I believe that wecannot and will not begin to take care of the world
until we become whole ourselves.
The third domain is not so apparent. In the UnitedStates and other modern democracies, we live undera rule of law. Ethical issues are important in almost 		
all aspects of daily life. Historians argue that the mostimportant legacies from the Greco-Roman roots ofour civilization are the moral and ethical teachingsfrom that past. What, then, is missing? One critical aspect related to this historical cultural sense of ethics is
responsibility, the idea of being accountable for one’s
actions, especially the act of avoiding harm knowingly.
Modern technological life has diminished the ability
to know the consequences of actions taken by individuals or by collective social entities, because those consequences are often displaced in time and space, andas such have made responsibility problematic. One
result is the emergence of unintended consequences,which have become a characteristic feature of modernity.1 If we do not take this domain into account in designing a new, sustainable world, our efforts are ultimately likely to exhibit the same kind of unforeseen
outcomes that diminish or negate our original intentions. Ethics is a human construction and, as such,belongs inherently within the human category. I have,
however, assigned it a domain of its own because
ethical responsibility is critical in creating sustainability. Ethics belongs to one of the three root domains 		
of care: taking care of others. The other areas in the
Tao are congruent with the other two domains:
taking care of self and nature.

45

46

r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 3 – 4[I]t becomes increasingly evident that neither
famine, nor earthquakes, nor microbes, nor cancer,
but man, is the greatest danger to man . . .
—Carl Jung, The Psychology of C. G. Jung
These three aspects of sustainability form a newframework for the redesign of tools, physical infrastructure, and social institutions that can restore ourconsciousness, thereby enabling us to continue ourdeliberate transformation of our way of living from 		
its unsustainable path to one that allows the vision 		of flourishing to bloom. Awakened consciousness
can increase the likelihood that our designs will
work the way we intend them to and also help us
identify the causes of our problems.
I use causes in the plural sense, following Aristotle’s
identification of four separate categories of cause.
One of Aristotle’s most famous writings connected(manmade) things and rationality – the way we understand objects.2 His analysis pointed to four categories(or causes). The first referred to that out of which thething was formed (the material cause), and the second
to its form, such as an urn or a bowl (formal cause).
The third spoke of the maker or the process by which
the thing came into being (efficient cause), and thelast told of the meaningful purpose or end to which
the thing was put – the sake of its existence (final
cause). These four elements of reason bestow meaning and were invoked as the ground on which objects
made sense, as distinct from the general backgroundof the world in which they appeared.
Our present mentality exposes only his “efficient cause,”that is, the one that connects a surface phenomenon(effect) to its proximate cause. Such causes are theessence of the reductionism of modern science andare the basis for the dominant forms of modern technology. In Aristotle’s terms, the causes related to sustainability may have more to do with the “final cause,”reflections.solonline.org

that is, the end toward which one acts or uses someform of technological artifact.
Our recent history is seasoned with events critical 		
to our consciousness of deep-seated problems thatthreaten our future – in other words, that lessen thepossibility that constitutes sustainability. The eventsof 9/11 are in part a sign of technology gone wrong.
The terrorist hijackers turned airplanes from a socially
positive final cause to one with a terrible goal. But
from the hijackers’ point of view the technology was
extremely “efficient.” Chernobyl, another such example, forced changes in the institutional structure of theSoviet Union. Climate change is another that has yet
to be seriously addressed and remains a powerful example of our collective blindness to the erosion of responsibility that technology can create. I am not making a Luddite argument against technology here; I am
only pointing out that its pervasive use has deepseated,pathological, humanistic, and naturalistic consequences.
Even as I have warned that reducing unsustainability
is not the same as creating sustainability, it still makes
great sense to remove the proximate causes of whatever is creating unsustainability but recognizing, atthe same time, that they are but quick fixes. In our culture attacking the symptoms is the underlying rationale for virtually all responses to the growing set ofsocietal problems, yet even here it is important to design the solutions to avoid doing even more damage.
Shopping, as President George W. Bush implored us todo after 9/11, does not seem to be the right way tofind flourishing in our selves, in our society, or in nature. In many cases we do know how to combat unsustainability but will not do so because of the resulting apparent threat to one’s turf or economic well-being. In the latter case, perhaps this is only because weuse the wrong measures. Some claim that gross domestic product (GDP) and other economic measures
no longer track flourishing and are instead a grossly
misleading signpost.3 There are no smiles in a unit ofb o o k e x c e r p t | E h r enfel dGDP, and more and more GDP does not seem to bring
forth signs of flourishing. In a recent study of “happiness,” determined by a combination of objective andsubjective data, the wealthiest countries making up
the G8 group fared very poorly, scoring way down 		
in the list.4
Fortunately, there is another road to sustainability.
But it comes in a very different conception of individual and social action. Our modern way of Being is
not only technological as a way of taking up with theworld but also is based on a particular assumption
about how humans behave. The prevailing view of
Homo economicus sees each of us as a computer witha set of preferences that always tell us what action totake so that we get the most out of the resources wehave and of the choices available to us at the moment.
The computer is programmed based on knowledge
coming from our past experience, including thetheories we have learned. This model of human behavior does not explain where our preferences comefrom; they just show up more or less shaped somehow by our inherent human nature.
This way of Being constantly fabricates the present
out of the past. The past has been captured in our
knowledge, which then is used by the computer in our
mind to determine what we will do in the present to
act to maximize our preferences. When we are unable
to do that because we lack something – say, enoughmoney to buy a Porsche – we say we have a problem
and go about solving that problem. If the problem
seems overly large, we may just abandon the projectand move on to something else. The key feature about
this mode of Being is that our present is constrainedby our past. The answer to every problem we face iscontained somewhere in the computer program in
our mind and in the data our senses input into it. We
take the world for granted, including our preferences.
Occasionally, we may suddenly become consciousthat acting to satisfy our needs and wants – anotherway of saying preferences – is not really satisfying. If
we care enough to fix the problem, we may go to
somebody else to add more knowledge to our computer. Gurus and consultants fit this mold. Or we may
go to a different kind of professional, like a doctor or
lawyer, and ask him or her for more direct help. Life ispredominately about solving problems. There is little
possibility in this way of life; computers always comeup with the same answer given the same set of inputs.
The alternative is to grab on to sustainability as possibility and begin to design a world that brings forth
flourishing into our everyday activities. The creative actof designing brings forth something from nothing. It
is how artists, writers, and musicians show their virtuosity. It underlies the practice of architects and industrial designers who leave us with inspiring, moving
artifacts. It makes great teachers and leaders like thoseI mentioned earlier. None of them bring their future
visions into being by following their present GPS systems. They have all learned to make metaphoricaljumps that allow them to transcend the limits of commonplace rationality. How they act is never “reasonable.”In the cases of people such as Gandhi, most would say
it is just the opposite; no rational human being would
attempt to fight against the realities of the world they
inhabited. Those who dare to turn off their cognitive
computers can discover creative powers to change theworld. Sustainability needs such men and women. n

E ndnotes
1 Giddens, A., The Consequences of Modernity. Standford,
CA: Standford University Press, 1984
2	Aristotle, Physics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999
3	Cobb, C., T. Halstead, and R. Rowe, “If the GDP is Up, Why
is America Down?, Atlantic Monthly (October 1995), 58-77”;
Easterlin, R. A., “Explaining Happiness,” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 100 (19): 11176-83, 2003
4 Marks, N., A. Simms, S. Thompson, and S. Abdallah. The
Happy Planet Index. London: New Economic Foundation,
2006.

47

Reflections
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Volume 9, Number 3–4

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