An Ecology of Transformative Action - Helene_Finidori-libre

8/10/2019 An Ecology of Transformative Action - Helene_Finidori-libre

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Helene Finidori focuses on sys-temic perspectives and tools fortransformative action, mainlyinterested in connecting dotsand building bridges between

people, cultures, disciplines,organizations, transitionary

stages. Co-founder and coordi-nator of the Commons Abun-

dance Network, she teaches Man-agement and Leadership of Change in

the International Program of Staffordshire University.Born in Canada and raised in France, Helene lived in manycountries including Sweden, the US, Indonesia, Australia, andshe currently lives in Spain.After studying entrepreneurship at HEC in Paris she specializedin small and medium enterprise and created a niche specialityat the intersection of strategy, branding and organizationaldevelopment. She worked in the waste management and con-sumer product industry, for business-to-business marketingconsultancies, as an independent consultant specializing ininnovation, IT and prospective, as well as in education andsocial development. From brand positioning, culture andstrategy she moved to organizational change and cross-cul-tural collaboration and now focuses on social change, net-works and movements.

VERY DAY NEW VOIC ES SP EAK U P AG AINST TH E

toxicity of an economy based on credit-fuelled growth that benefits mostly banksand speculators, depleting finite resources

and destroying much of the social fabric and theplanet in the process. Some call it suicide.

The paradox is that the logic we find ourselves intells us that the system can only survive and thrivewith more of the same: a perpetual machine based

on an extract, exploit, deplete model, mindless ofits impossibility and accelerated spiralling sideeffects that make problems worse.

M O S T T R A V E L L E D R O U T E S

Our institutions are systemically dysfunctionalbecause of a propensity to travel and consolidatethe most travelled and visible routes in terms oforganization (hierarchies), business processes (bestpractices and winning models), communications(network effect), which are at the same time accu-mulative of power and robustness, and fragile because

they nurture monoculture and mass behaviour bydesign, accumulating risk as well.

Hierarchical structures are conceived for branch-ing out and consolidating exchanges along path-ways that solidify with time and size, as scale andactivity of each node empowers the higher eche-lons, accumulating resources and power. Capitaland power have been steadily concentrating infewer hands since the beginning of the Seventies.This systematization and concentration bolster

overexploitation, dominant positions and bureau-cratic paralysis in a self-reinforcing process.

The fact that banks and global corporations,with the suppression of most limits on activitiesand concentration, have become too big to failand to jail is an illustration. Dominant positionsenable them to secure and reinforce their rightsand power over potential new entrants and sover-eign rules globally. Global corporations have thepower for example to sue nation states to enforcetheir right to exploit natural resources under multi-lateral trade agreements (such as Canadian gold mineagainst El Salvador under CAFTA agreement), andbanks have the power to oppose restrictions (with theUK treasury suing the EU on Bankers bonus caps).Intellectual property rights are expanded by attemptsto monetize increasing parts of the commons and pub-lic domain, such as water, the genome or seeds, soft-ware, which are forced and over-enforced on emergingbusinesses or countries. Intellectual property is also usedto block the development of technologies susceptible todisrupt business models. Cases of patent non-use for lit-igation purpose or technology suppression such StanleyMeyers water fuel cell abound. Innovation is stifled inthe process, and the status quo based on extraction, cap-

ture and toxic outcomes is maintained.Communication follows a comparable pattern. Its poten-tial massiveness and the speed at which it can scale, gainmomentum and trigger reactions, applied to cultures ofpeer reviewed expertise and reputation networks, wherethe largest network or the most famous and showcasedattract ever more members or audience, encourages theconvergence of behaviours towards the same most rec-ognized and travelled routes. As a result these routesremain the most travelled ones, pulling behavioursinto more normalization and sameness, and intodeceit when accumulated capital serves the protec-tion of special interests.

AN ECOLOGY OF TRANSFORMATIVE ACTIONA W A I T I N G T O B E D I S C O V E R E D

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Similarly, management recipes are over applied.Focus is on the rate of application of models ratherthan outcomes, loosing track of why they were usedin the first place and ignoring possible unintendedconsequence and the associated socialization of risksand costs. Winning management models or invest-

ment strategies that are taught as best practices in busi-ness schools around the world become the most trav-elled route also, systematized. This is how occasionalfinancial leverage (the use of debt to multiply gains)became permanent over-leverage that culminated in the2008 crisis, and how return on capital ratios invented toprioritize investments in post WWII periods of scarcecapital became the ultimate criterion for investment,encouraging short term wins through non productiveinvestments and speculative behaviours, and capitalizedfinancial returns.

Harvard Business School innovation management pro-

fessor Clayton Christensen notes that companies over-focus on convergent innovation such as efficiency aimedat optimizing productivity in what already exists, whichin the short run frees capital, increases margins andboosts financial market performance. In the long runhowever, efficiency alone when not accompanied bydisruptive innovation tends to draw markets intoprice based competition, leading to diminished prof-its, thus undermining the very activity it is meant tomake more efficient. Christensen deplores that somuch effort is dedicated to seeking above averagereturns on the financial markets to the detriment oflong-term investment in disruptive innovation, ina context where capital is particularly abundant.When corporations and investors massively operateon the basis of similar information and use similarmanagement models and investment decision cri-teria, it becomes increasingly difficult to make adifference other than by beating costs, throughrestructurings that are sometimes imposed byactivist investors, or by beating the clock, inother words, by getting there faster. A race epit-omized on the financial markets by high fre-quency trading, which is finally under criminalinvestigation.

In this context divergent or disruptive innova-tion struggles to develop into viable forms not tomention scale, and the multitude of sustainablealternatives that emerge at the margin has diffi-culties to make itself visible. Paradoxically peer-to-peer and many-to-many interactions that weremeant to liberate us from centralized power anddistribute innovation and opportunities are alsoaffected as the network effect tends to grow exist-ing networks rather than foster bridge-buildingbetween multiple networks, and multiple ad hocreassembling. The network effect works against the

long tail that internet was meant to provide accessto: the statistically insignificant possibilities underthe Pareto principle that are the less visible oraccessible because they dont constitute a criticalrecognized mass....

Facebook and Google contribute to normaliza-

tion and to preventing the long tail from beingfully visible as they tailor the display of user con-tent automatically to the users anticipatedexpectations based on their prior searches orbehaviours, reinforcing identities and what isalready known generating what is called confir-mation bias. And they keep the long tail forthemselves to monetize. They are the new win-ners of the game, using this systematization totheir advantage. Benefitting from the networkeffect that exponentially accelerates rates of sub-scription, they own the network, accumulating

members and user-generated information thatthey sell as market intelligence, and as a result theygenerate huge profits with little capital intensity.By owning the network they own the intelligenceof the crowd, which enables them better than any-one to anticipate trends and watch what emergesin the long tail. Their capital accumulation enablesthem to purchase new technology at unimaginableprices, as evidenced by the USD 19 billion purchaseby Facebook of Whatsapp the smartphone chatapplication with 55 employees, zero revenue and 500million seers and its purchase of Occulus a virtual reality

headset development not yet commercialized for twobillion dollars, in the face of its crowdfunders whohad proven the concept. Meanwhile, Google is activelyacquiring robotic companies and seeking breakthroughsin artificial intelligence. Will this intelligence turnagainst the majority of humans and serve the dominantfew, or will distributed collective intelligence prevail,and serve human development and thrivability? This isthe challenge at hand.

O V E R D O S E A N D O V E R S H O O T

Our technologies, models and innovations are currentlymostly dedicated to reinforce feedback loops that are self-multiplying and self-reinforcing. These feedback loops aresources of growth, expansion, and abundance. But themore they are at work, the more they drive the system intoone direction at faster paces the momentum and course ofwhich is extremely difficult to change, turning abundanceinto overexploitation, making the system easier to gameand unresponsive to signals of overshoot, unable toengage in self-correction or meaningful disruptiveinnovation, powerless in the face of systemic risk andinstantaneously breakable by glitches or black swans.Just as a medicine becomes a poison when overdosed,

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best practices and winning mechanisms can becometoxic if abused.

We are in the typical configuration described bySchumpeter three quarter of a century ago, predictingthe demise of capitalism from its own success, withmonopolies and giant corporations taking life out of the

capitalist process, oust-ing the small firms andexpropriating its own-ers, and thus destroyingor tilting creativedestruction by under-mining its sociologicalfoundation based on theentrepreneur.

For French economistThomas Piketty capital-ism is destroying itself

because capital accumu-lation became an end initself, reducing opportu-nities for entrepreneur-ship. For Piketty, the 20thcentury managed to dis-rupt accumulation ofwealth and power gapsbecause of wars and cri-sis. If we want to avoiddisruptions as catastroph-ic as we experienced inthe 20th century, the sys-temic reinforcing dynam-ics that accumulate riskat exponentially grow-ing paces, must be dis-rupted by real mean-ingful ongoing innova-tion in many domainsthat clearly contributesto humans and natures renewed thrivability. Aprospect that the overwhelming majority ofhumanity is looking forward to, but doesntquite know how to bring about, trapped in the

crazy mechanics of the system.

T H E W O R L D I S A

C O M P L E X L I V I N G S Y S T E M

Beyond these dysfunctionalities, in its fundamen-tals, the world is a complex adaptable systemmade of natural and human ecosystems that oper-ate optimally with principles that help it take careof itself, in a stable and non volatile state at theedge of chaos, that is where complexity lies,between order and total randomness or chaos.

The complex adaptive system is formed by a mul-tiplicity of parts or agents in partnership workingindividually as whole local systems, with theirown organizations and rules, and operating atvarious integrative levels and scales, formingemergent nested wholes. Individual wholes self-

organize and self-real-ize within their ownboundaries while beinginfluenced by each-others behaviours andby their changing envi-ronment, which theyinfluence in return.They cannot be totallycontrolled by exter-nal forces, only shapedand limited by them.

Patterns of behavioursemerge or arise ineach part out of amultiplicity of interac-tions between agentsadapting their responsesto each others behav-iours. Emergent behav-iours initially invisibleoften appear into sightall at once, what wecall tipping points.They are often theonly thing visiblefrom parts or wholesor phenomena thatmay be hidden fromsight, the unknownthat brews under thesurface. As the num-ber of interactions

and types of behaviours increase in number, behavioursand their consequences are increasingly complex andunpredictable.

Stability and integrity of a system are the result of con-

tinuous successions of adaptive cycles of exploitation,conservation, release, and reorganization which takeplace at multiple levels and scales following differentrhythms, which arise internally and are externally influ-enced, creating emergent dynamics.

The figure above illustrates the adaptive cycles of com-plex systems, or panarchy cycles. Cycles of exploitationand conservation result in accumulation, the conditionfor the systems efficiency and robustness. Cycles ofrelease and reorganization result in what Schumpetercalled creative destruction, the conditions for the sys-tems resilience and renewal. At the individual level

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this succession of cycles corresponds to life or cradle-to-cradle cycles. At the whole systems level, theprocess of creative destruction is what (re)generatesvariability, or the diversity needed for periodic reshuf-fling within levels to maintain adaptive capability andopportunity, and for reorganization across levels to

maintain integrity at the edge of chaos. The process asa whole can be related to Adam Smiths invisible hand atwork Both Adam Smith and Schumpeter were some-what precursors of complex adaptive systems theory!

In this context a sustainable system is one that has thecapacity to create, test and maintain adaptive capabilityas well as opportunity or potential for self-realization ofall its components, one that can ensure and maintainthe thrivability in time and the regenerative capacity ofthe parts and the whole.

The renewed variability of the system is essential for thisprocess. Reducing variability and diversity and ignoring

the interactions between all the human and naturalparts as systems themselves that compose the wider sys-tem create conditions that can cause it to switch into adegraded state controlled by unfamiliar processes

L E V E R A G E P O I N T S

Where and how, then, to intervene?

Donella Meadows spent much time studying lever-age points, the places in complex adaptive systemswhere small shifts in one place can have verybroad effects. Meadows established a list of twelve

types of leverage points by level of interventionand order of effectiveness. At the highest level,the most effective points, but also the most dif-ficult to change are psychological and cultural,related to the worldview and paradigm fromwhich a system arises.

The goal of a system is the next most impor-tant leverage point from which all the othersderive, enabling the system to self-organizewithin its own boundaries. This includes thesystems rules, its accountability and correctionmechanisms, and the elements that help it go

through its adaptive cycles, such as the struc-ture of the information flows that enable self-correction, the gains obtained from drivingreinforcing feedback loops, and the strengthsof balancing feedback loops relative the impactsthey are trying to correct against, with the delaysof reaction to change, that all have an effect onand are in return shaped by the interactions with-in the system, what is accumulated, how thingsflow, and the actual stocks, buffers and parametersof the system such as infrastructures, resources,operative principles.

Meadows notes that leverage points are sometimescounterintuitive as the most obvious solutionsmay actually fail to produce the desired change.That is what we are observing here, stuck in anexploitative and conservative phase by a para-digm that focuses generally on driving gains

from reinforcing feedback loops epitomized bycredit based resource hungry growth and shortterm based capitalized revenue, with little focuson release and renewal, at least at the main-stream institutional level.

The over-reactivity of the economy to instan-taneous news or events combined with theslow rates of change of institutional structuresand practices that are passing thresholds orlimits, are indeed a recipe for collapse.

What was meant to accumulate opportunityfor the system as a whole to regenerate poten-

tial for its individual parts to thrive in econom-ic, social and natural terms has morphed intoopportunity for concentration and accumula-tion of power and capital reinforcing dominantpositions of the few and accumulating of risk forthe whole. The fact that most of the adaptivecycle panarchy graphs now have capital in abscissaas the purpose of the exploitation and conserva-tion phase (goal of the system) where it used to bepotential, is noteworthy.

Re-focusing the goal of the system from the accu-mulation of capital and other factors of production

to the abundance of commons as factors of opportu-nities and regeneration for the thrivability and renewalof the system could serve as a medium for accelerat-ing the adoption of practices that address social, envi-ronmental and economic dimensions in a sustainable,cohesive and interconnected manner.

P O W E R P O L I T I C S

What is our margin of manoeuvre for change?

This widening gap between the richer and the poorer ata global scale, the subsequent accumulation of power, the

visible effects of climate change, the volatility and specu-lative nature of the financial markets and unsustainableindustrial practices are starting to draw criticism from allcorners of the world and all strata of society. The successof Thomas Pikettys Capital in the 21st century thatexposes rising inequalities can attest it. The challenge isincreasingly recognized as one of political will andpower ascendency in political decision-making, includ-ing in the mainstream. Whether at the UN, the Worldeconomic forum, prominent economists, now start-ing in the media, more voices are denouncing theexcesses of a power elite that tilts the system to itsadvantage to continue and multiply the status quo,

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or who just benefits from the mechanical effects ofdynamics at play.

When looking at how the social coupling betweencorporate and human life forms and the economiccoupling between economy and environment can beachieved for our complex system to thrive, Jack Harich

argues that all the truths and solutions necessary tooperate these couplings already exist and are well knownbut that classical activism continuously fails to succeedbecause it deals poorly with the ultimate root cause ofchange resistance which is to be found in the effective-ness of political deceptiveness. Accumulated wealth pro-vides the leverage and the means to invest massively onsimplified or false memes that make more complexmemes difficult to convey and grasp, and keep it thatway. Memes that favour the status quo and the self-mul-tiplication and self-reinforcement of self-multiplyingself-reinforcing loops are the ones that win in a race to

the bottom among politicians. We have seen this illus-trated with the recent further weakening of campaignfinance laws in the US where the first amendment hasbeen invoked to justify the right to massively fund can-didates and advertise including through negative andattack ads during election campaigns: Money andpropaganda as freedom of expression! It seems we areon the way to touching the bottom of this race, as thedeception is increasingly coming into sight. Move-ments such as Occupy Wall Street have succeeded inmaking some inroads because the movement hasfocused on bringing to awareness these systemicaspects and leverage points rather than piecemealdemands. And the demands for separating moneyand politics and limiting paid campaign commu-nication in the US is probably something thatcould start triggering virtuous loops by openingopportunities for more balancing policies andmainstream practices worldwide.

Concentrating innovation consciously on themechanisms of systemic change and leveragepoints, at all levels and scales and bringing allpotential change agents that sense the misdi-rection and fragility of the system on boardmay spur radical transformation.

A T T I T U D E S T O C H A N G E

Typical responses on how systemic change canoccur reflect the perspectives people have ontheir possible influence on the system and theforces at play. This is an area that deceptivememes can significantly affect.

On the optimistic laissez faire side, there is anindefectible trust in the genius of mankind andtechnology, helped by the invisible hand of themarket, to naturally take us out of the predicament

we are in while keeping us in control. This form ofevolutionary change is part continuous on itshuman development aspects and part disruptivewith technology breakthroughs. Without embed-ded balancing feedback loops, this would probablykeep us on the travelled and accumulative routes,

expanding possibilities for hubristic heroes bil-lionaires on a mission to preside over the sal-vation of the world. One can imagine that whenclimate change becomes reality, opportunitieswould arise for privately unilaterally deployedgeo-engineering solutions...

On the pessimistic resigned side there is a senseof doom and helplessness in face of the magni-tude of the catastrophes that can fall upon us,disempowered by the belief that it is too late,that humans are driven by the impulses of theirgenes and therefore not responsible for the

unforeseen consequences of their acts or that theyare cogs in a machine that crushes everything onits path. A mindset that actually serves the self-reinforcing patterns as it affects the capacity to actfor change and keeps reinforcing loops on theircurrent exponential trajectories towards self-fulfill-ing prophecies. This view expects total melt down.Radical change, where the glimpse of salvation ifany occurs once we hit a bottom, or earlier it ishoped, with a massive wake-up call around which torally. Here also, lets not assume that this would cause amore enlightened renewal. As Naomi Klein describedin the Shock Doctrine, catastrophes are often good

opportunities to secure more power. Chaos often is thestart for totalitarian responses.

The potential for continuous widespread disruptiveinnovation and radical change rests in the field ofchange agents or activists who are actively engagedand are taking things into their hands. The legions ofrealistic optimists of all types of backgrounds who per-ceive current dangers and the need for systemic change,even when they dont really know what needs to bedone and how they can get involved. These are the oneswho need to be inspired, empowered and enabled.They observe and are aware of where the world is goingand they have the capacity to apply changes on theground everyday.Active realistic optimists prefer not to assume that solu-tions will emerge on their own, neither do they considerthe perspective of a total breakdown as a negligibleremote probability. French philosopher Jean PierreDupuys enlightened doomsaying approach, suggeststhat holding the possibility of a catastrophe credibleenables us to become more proactive and to chose,among all options available, those that will in the endpush the catastrophe away or make it acceptable...

The challenge is to leverage agency and the capacityfor humans to engage and act wherever they may

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find themselves, in a way which can cohesively steerthe system in a new direction to avoid the worst.

W I C K E D P R O B L E M S

The large open discussions I moderated or attended, in

particular those gathering systems thinkers from vari-ous backgrounds, revealed it was easy to agree on thesystemic nature of the challenge, the acceleration, accu-mulation, interconnection of multiple threats, thereduction of the variety and the need to intervene atmultiple levels and scales, the urgency and the need forcoordination. When it came to coordination however, itwas much more difficult to reach consensual agreementson causes, priorities, values, not to mention roles andresponsibilities or courses of action. We could acknowl-edge the existence of a variety of responses, share severalexamples, and even proposals, but unless there was someform of homogeneity of practice or worldview in the

group, we were unable to construct a common coordi-nated response, design a common vision of what thefuture would look like or agree on a framework, evenone that would accommodate a variety of responses.

And this is not surprising, because the economic,social, environmental and political mess we are in is anintricacy of interconnected wicked problems, as Ack-hoff, Rittell and others have described them. Thecharacteristics of wicked problems among others arethat they cannot be formulated in a definitive waybecause there are many different perspectives of asame problem and different narratives to explain

them. There are multiple points of intervention asproblems can be symptoms of other problems.There are no right or wrong, true or false solu-tions. Solutions may be contradictory and involvetrade-offs. There is no history or proven practiceand expert knowledge to refer to, data is uncer-tain and often missing, and the best informationnecessary to understand the problems is distrib-uted in the contexts affected by the problem.

Angles of approach and solutions are multipleamong change agents and activists. The diversityof people, backgrounds, cultures, disciplines,information acquisition modes and cognitiveprocessing preferences, psychologies, worldviewsinfluence the point of entry into an issue, thedirection of the process involved, the type ofoutcome sought out, and the level of interven-tion. What people say needs to change or thetypes of change they are engaged in amount to awhole universe of possibilities!

Bellow is an illustration of how various paradigmsand main engagement and action logics that drivechange can be expressed in relation to the commonsas archetype, and the types of innovation that arisefor each of them.

These engagement and action logics clusters areinspired from Susanne Cook Greuters leadershipdevelopment framework and from Barrett Brownswork on communicating with many worldviews.They reflect the affective, cognitive and behaviouraldimensions of what motivates peoples engagement

and action choices, and therefore are descriptive ofperspectives and preferences, and modus operandiand not prescriptive. There is no better actionlogic than another, or no need for people to evolvefrom one to another. All are real and present asparticipatory collectives that each function withtheir own logic, organization and unity.

E N G A G E M E N T L O G I C S ~ F A C I N G P A G E

N I C H E S A N D C L U S T E R S

Change agents driven by their own engage-ment and action logics, linked to the paradigmout of which they would like the new system toarise, gather around the social objects they areattracted to, the leverage points they seek to actupon for effective results, which determine prior-ities and the pathways envisioned.

These social objects are the nodes around whichemerging social movements converge and com-mon visions and praxis are shaped, forming clus-ters of cooperating specialized agents. That is wheremeaning is created and shared through languages

that help us understand each other, where conversa-tions and repeated interactions are initiated, andfrom where new territories are explored.

The action frameworks that are built or shaped frompractice to serve movements and communities providea context for co-individuation: the processes by whichidentities of individual and collective change agents areformed, transformed, and differentiated in relation toeach other and to the forces that hold people togetherand fuel their capacity to act and react to signals incohesive and effective ways. Clusters grow and bound-aries expand with the arrival of new agents driven by

similar engagement or action logics that create newopportunities for interaction and adaptation, allowingfor agents to co-evolve and for a system to innovatelocally, this is what makes diversity so important.

At the same time however, as these frameworks createnatural boundaries around clusters of cooperation orniches of action they become exclusive of alternativeframeworks. This hinders relational dynamics and ourcapacity to collaborate across groups outside of ourdomains of action. As all niches have different opin-ions about the challenges the world is facing and theways to address them, each tries to convince others

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that they hold the best solutions and method-ologies, trying to funnel all the other solutionsthrough their perspective.

Our territory of action as a whole is actually com-posed of islands that do not share the logic, themotivators and the narrative

U N I T Y I N D I V E R S I T Y ?

As change agents, most of us acknowledge thecritical need for systemic change and for collective

intelligence and action, but we are facing a paradox.What seems to make us effective agents focusing onour respective domains of engagement and action isspecifically what prevents us from uniting and beingeffective as a whole. There is a tension between thetranscendent structures that coordinated action seemsto require and the immanent distributed nature ofagency. This structure versus agency debate is one ofthe greatest challenges for systemic change.

In practice, attempts to organize a global response toa global challenge and unite across islands are often

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E N G A G E M E N T L O G I C S

G O I N G B A C K T O T H E S O U R C E A N D E S S E N T I A L S , A N D M O T H E R E A RT H

This manifests the cultural, mythical, sacred, spiritual dimensions of the commons and commoning. The commonslogic is expressed as replenishment, harmony, attunement, giving, communing with each other and nature, honouringall beings and life. Examples are found in the ancestral traditions of indigenous societies and movements inspiredfrom them, such as the Buen Vivir and Pachama traditions of Latin America, the spiritual teachings of the NativeAmericans and the Aboriginal Australians, traditional medicine and meditation practices. They usually intervene inconfrontation with modernism.

S E L F - P R O TE C T I N G L I V E L I H O O D S F I G H T I N G T H E S Y S T E M A S S U R V I V O R S O R H E R O E S

This manifests the empowering, enabling dimension and distributed nature of the commons. The commons logic isexpressed as generative of opportunity, autonomy and resilience. Examples are found in commons and peer-to-peeractivism, intellectual property activism, open source and open access movements, commons based peer productionand makers hackers movements, or new forms of co-working and entrepreneurship, relocalization, alternative cur-rencies. They usually intervene outside of and in opposition to institutional contexts.

C R E A T I NG L E G I T I M A C Y & S T E W A R D S H I P T H R O U G H G O V E R N A N C E & I N S T I T U T I O N S

This manifests the stewardship and governance dimensions of the commons. The commons logic is expressed asprotection of the commons through institutions, law &policy, ethics &governance, limits and boundaries. Exam-ples are found in conservation, human rights, justice &equity activism, right to access movements, global commonsactivism, or in polycentric or subsidiary forms of governance, commons governance forms, Pigowlian taxes, andopen government. They usually intervene at the global UN or national levels and in NGOs, political parties andunions contexts and may be under suspicion from the others as the concept of commons is easily co-optable.

S E E K I N G R A T I O N A L S O L U T I O N S & E F F I C I E N C I E S V I A N E W S T R A T E GI E S & M E C H A N I S M S

This manifests sciences, technologies and tools serving the commons. The commons logic is expressed throughmanagement and conservation/preservation technologies and models, new macro and micro economic models andpolicies, new organizational forms, governance and business models, integration of externalities, new indicators andmetrics. Examples are found in the conscious capitalism, circular regenerative economy approaches, clean technologiesand renewable energies. They usually intervene in the belly of the beast and may be under suspicion from the othersas the concept of commons is easily co-optable.

F O S T E R I N G E M O T I O N A L R E L A T I O N S H I P S B E T W E E N P E O P L E & W I T H N A T U R E

This manifests the commons as social practice and outcome, the loving, caring, sharing, participatory, inclusive, con-sensual dimension of the commons. The commons logic is expressed as community involvement, social responsibility,learning, collaborative practices, practices of wellbeing. Examples are found in new forms of local communities andcommunities of practice such as transition towns or eco-villages, community agriculture, new forms of consumption,the gift and sharing economy, community currencies. They usually intervene at the local community level.

U N D E R S TA N D I N G S Y S T E M S & C O M P L E X I T Y L I N K I N G T H E O R Y & P R A C T I C E

This manifests the systemic, dynamic and integrative aspects of the commons. The commons logic is embodied as asystem and process generative of opportunity and thrivability, interweaving contexts and development, and the cul-tural, natural and technological aspects. Examples are found in permaculture and bioregionalism, systems and designthinking and process methodology as well as capacity and leadership development, and in advanced dialoguemethodologies. They usually function transversally and integrate interventions at multiple levels and scales.

T R A N S F O R M I N G S E L F & O T H E R S I N T E G R A T I N G T H E M A T E R I A L , S P I R I T U A L , S O C I E T A L

This manifests commons as enlivenment, at the interplay of awareness, thought, action, and effect. The commonslogic is expressed as experience of wholeness of existence through mind and spirit, deep sense making and awarenessof systems interactions and dynamic processes requiring personal transformation. Examples are found in integral andspiritual movements, developmental psychology, grounded in evolutionary psychology. They usually intervene fromthe deepest introspective level to the widest cosmologic level.


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the diversity of the system. It must not try to tran-scend and resolve differences, but it must preserveand add to them. The unifying principle would beunderlying, not overarching, and act an undertow fortransformative action.

Theres a universal aspect to what drives social move-

ments around the globe even if we cannot clearlytranslate it in comparable terms across practices andlanguages. Much of what these movements are cur-rently engaged in is dedicated in a form or another toprotecting the environment, people and resources fromenclosure, over-exploitation and abuse, and to generat-ing opportunity for thrivability in various forms.

Typically, activist interventions focus on the preventionof overshoot and collapse due to the current accumula-tive feedback loops that generate losses rather than gainsfor the system as a whole in multiple domains. There isalso significant activity and creativity on disruptive inno-

vation, oriented towards the release and renewal phasesof the adaptive cycles that enable the system to reorga-nize so that resources are regenerated and remain acces-sible and opportunities remain healthily distributedand renewed, as these successions of adaptive cyclescannot take place naturally on their own in the currentstate of things. This proceeds from BuckminsterFullers maxim that you never change things by fight-ing the existing reality. To change something, build anew model that makes the existing model obsolete.

As a whole, what drives movements for change con-nects to the commons as archetype a collectivelyinherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought,image, etc universally present in individualpsyches. Commons in their widest definitionsare embodied in the timeless (re)generative sys-tems that humanity shares to protect, care forand renew resources and opportunities for self-realization and thrivability. They encompass theobjects of care and factors of opportunity andlivelihood, the participatory processes andpractices that enable this caring, and the out-comes and common good that result fromthese practices, which become in turn objectsof care and factors of opportunity. In their

many shapes and manifestations, all need to beprotected, nurtured and renewed.

The commons logic is one of protection andaccumulation of factors of opportunity andrenewal for the regeneration of the system (versusconservation and accumulation of factors of pro-duction), mindful of limits and boundaries,which manifests itself as system goal in multipleforms and languages, through different action log-ics, understandings and symbolic representations.

The commons logic is versatile enough as underly-ing logic to guide action at various levels and scales,

and tangible enough in operational terms to beexpressed in the form of a pattern language andbuilding blocks that can help existing movementson the ground articulate their own understandingand representation and express converging systemgoals and leverage points accordingly. Such pat-

tern language can also serve as vetting system toassess the impact of social change initiatives andsustainability policies and practices and helpoperate inescapable trade-offs, so that peoplewithin mainstream institutions trying to instilother logics into the system can do so in moreconfidence that their efforts would not be neu-tralized or co-opted.

Each change agent or movement for changeholds a piece of the response to the wicked prob-lems we are confronted to. The commons logichas the potential to bring the pieces together,

aggregating disparate efforts, strategies and narra-tives on the ground as a scaffold for a new systemgoal and dominant paradigm to emerge and steerthe system in a new direction, with no prescriptiveor algorithmic orchestration.

If movements, change agents and innovationbased communities could describe the reality andthe phenomena they observe on the ground, andlearn to distinguish in the perspectives of otherswhat is different from their own, if they could dis-cover and travel within the landscape of transfor-mative action, and mutually recognize their coexis-

tence, the common ground and potential synergies,then they wouldnt need to bargain a middle groundor a synthesis. Just by acknowledging differences andby learning to discover what they dont know, naturalchannels would open up through which understand-ing can flow and things (including agreement) canhappen. The awareness that they would gain wouldresult in positive feedback loops reinforcing their ownaction and that of the whole towards a shift, providingforms of orientation that can help decision and action,and improve multi-stakeholder dialog and conflict reso-lution along the way.

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