Evolutionary Leadership for Building a Sustainable World World Future Society Annual Conference July

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Evolutionary Leadership for Building a
Sustainable WorldWorld Future Society Annual
Conference July 2003

• Manuel Manga
• Center for Evolutionary Leadership
• www.evolutionleader.com

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The Purpose of Evolutionary Leadership

• The purpose of evolutionary leadership is to
  conserve the biosphere, human beings, and our
  well being. Evolutionary leadership also
  facilitates a new worldview that integrates the
  biological, cognitive, emotional, and social
  dimensions of life as foundations for a conscious
  evolution toward a democratic, just, ecological,
  and sustainable world.

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The Challenges of the Twenty-first Century

• We live in a fragmented, reactive, unsustainable
  world.
  
• Most of our world problems are systemic in
  nature hunger, poverty, population growth,
  ecological destruction, global warming.
  
• We live in a patriarchal culture that has
  separated us from nature, does not support our
  well being, and fosters mistrust, competition,
  and alienation and privileges appropriation over
  nature and other human beings.
• Our life style and ecological footprint is
  unsustainable.
  
• Our economic systems are not sustainable and we
  are living beyond the limits. The earth is finite.

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Our Leadership Models are Insufficient to the
Global Challenges

• Our leaders are not systemic thinkers,
  evolutionary thinkers, or ecological thinkers.
  
• Our leaders share the same fragmented, reactive,
  events-driven mindset that hinders them in seeing
  wholes or systemic dynamics in our world.
  
• Our leaders are educated by the same institutions
  that keep the current social paradigm in place.
  They are the product of the current worldview or
  Cartesian legacy and they are the shapers of our
  world.
• Our leaders are focused on short term goals, the
  accumulation of power, and tribal thinking.

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The Crisis of Perception and Leadership

• A systemic view of our global problems and
  challenges

Social ecological conflict
Population growth
Poverty Hunger
Growth-oriented economic system
Civilization living beyond the limits
Leaders dont see systems
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The Resources and the Opportunities

• We have the scientific knowledge to solve our
  major world challenges.
  
• We have the technological know how to solve our
  major world challenges.
  
• We have biological, psychological, and
  sociological knowledge to educate and transform
  human beings.
  
• We have organizational knowledge to design
  institutions that could support the
  transformation toward a sustainable world.
  
• We have visions and cutting-edge thinkers who can
  provide guidance toward a sustainable world.

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What is missing ?

• The education and awareness among the majority of
  people that a cultural and social evolution needs
  to happen toward a sustainable world.
  
• The right kind of leadership to educate and
  mobilize people and to transform our institutions
  to make it happen.
  
• The right kind of alignment between leaders,
  people, and institutions working together toward
  a common future.

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Evolutionary Leadership as the Missing Element

• I claim that the leadership that is needed to
  make a conscious evolution toward a sustainable
  world is evolutionary leadership.
  
• Most leaders are focused on their own particular
  domain of concern, such as business or
  government, and mostly consider only immediate
  goals and issues. Most focus on the present and
  near future, while very few consider the future
  of humanity and our planet.
• In his book Beyond Leadership, Warren Bennis and
  his colleagues present a new model of leadership
  that takes responsibility for ethics, economy,
  and ecology.

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What is an Evolutionary Leader ?

• An Evolutionary Leader understands the process of
  evolution, comprehends our cosmic, biological,
  and human evolution, and uses this knowledge to
  anticipate and design the future.
• An Evolutionary Leader has a biological,
  ecological, and systemic worldview. S/he sees the
  hidden connections between the living systems,
  the human systems, and the impact of our
  technological and industrial systems on those
  natural and human systems.
• An Evolutionary Leader works toward the conscious
  evolution to a sustainable world.

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The Competencies of an Evolutionary Leader

• Evolutionary thinking. Knows cosmic , biological,
  and human evolution. Uses evolution to anticipate
  and design the future.
  
• Knowledge of the Biological Matrix of Human
  Existence (the biology of cognition and the
  biology of love) as the fundament for a
  constitutive ontology and the bringing forth of
  our human world.
• Systems thinking and scenario building as ways
  for seeing wholes, interrelationships, and hidden
  connections and has the capacity to develop the
  art of the long view and possible future
  scenarios.

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The Competencies of an Evolutionary Leader

• Language and transformational conversations. It
  is through language that we perceive our world
  and bring forth our human world. It is through
  conversations and emotions that we coordinate our
  actions and create our relationships and our
  world.
• Ecological Literacy and Principles of
  Sustainability. It is through this type of
  literacy and principle that we see our connection
  with larger natural systems and are able to
  design ecologically sustainable communities,
  technologies, and institutions.

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The Competencies of an Evolutionary leader

• Capacity to facilitate institutional and cultural
  evolution. Promotes the transformation of key
  social institutions toward sustainable
  institutions and fosters alignment between those
  institutions toward a sustainable future.
• Skills to mobilize people to the task of doing
  adaptive work that requires a change in values,
  beliefs, or behaviors. Leads people to work on
  the major adaptive challenges facing our
  societies and humanity.
• Ability to develop networks of leaders and future
  leaders, and build networks of institutions
  working for a sustainable future.

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The choice

• We have a choice now that we have become aware of
  our role as the dominant species on our planet,
  now that we have become aware of our human
  evolution and our history of impacting the
  biosphere and other human civilizations. Guns,
  Germs, and Steel showed us the last 14,000 years
  of human civilization and the impact of our
  worldview.
• We have a choice to continue to drift into the
  future, to continue on a collision course with
  our ecological systems, or to work on the
  adaptive challenges and opportunities of the 21st
  century.
• We have a choice to design and facilitate the
  emergence of a conscious evolution toward a
  sustainable world.

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The Work of Evolutionary Leaders

• Identifying the adaptive challenges of the 21st
  century.
  
• (Population, Poverty, Nuclear Weapons,
  Consumerism)
  
• Educating people toward changing their worldview
  to one that is based on biology, ecology,
  systems, and sustainability.
  
• Transforming our institutions so that they are
  designed and built according to principles of
  sustainability and that they support the building
  of a sustainable future.
• Facilitating a cultural evolution - a change in
  values, worldview, behaviors, and lifestyle that
  is consistent with an ecological and sustainable
  society.

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The Work of Evolutionary Leaders

• Mobilizing people to transform our organizations
  and institutions.
  
• Creating networks of leaders and organizations
  that support each other in the evolution toward a
  sustainable world.
  
• Facilitating people to embrace a planetary
  ethic.
  
• Changing the game from an unsustainable economic
  system, a culture of conspicuous consumption, a
  culture that glorifies material consumption as
  the road to happiness, to a value system based on
  quality, human dignity, learning, love, and
  ecological sustainability.

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The Work of Evolutionary Leaders

• The key challenge of this new century- for
  social scientists, natural scientists, and
  everyone else- will be to build ecologically
  sustainable communities, designed in such a way
  that their technologies and social
  institutions-their material and social
  structures- do not interfere with natures
  inherent ability to sustain life. The design
  principles of our future social institutions must
  be consistent with the principles of organization
  that nature has evolved to sustain the web of
  life.
• - Fritjof Capra The Hidden Connections

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A Process and Vision for a Sustainable World

• The work of evolutionary leaders

Culture-Society
Institutions
Worldview-Ontology
Quality of life, learning for life.
Sustainable communities. Eco-Economy. A planetar
y ethic
Designed and built on principles of
sustainability. Educate and support people to
live in an ecological and sustainable life style
Biology Ecology Systems Sustainability