Episode 18: The Nature of Change
We have change agents, change-makers, turnaround specialists, and the field of change management, but do we understand what actually brings about change? Can we trust what worked in the past to work in the future?
Marti and Todd explore how leaders can become stewards of change without trying to control people and situations. Stewards of change move with negotiability, flow, passion, and compassion, understanding the timings that exist within the nature of change.
From the Edge: The Wonders of Slime Mold (Todd)
Conscious Rant: The Problem with our Worldview (Marti)
Timeline
0:57 Marti’s introduction
6:55 Change management — can change be managed?
8:00 Participating with change
10:51 Larger forces at work
13:33 The importance of negotiability
15:32 Being a change agent
19:02 The ego and change
20:34 Changing how we talk about change
21:40 Stewardship of change
24:31 The turnaround CEO
27:56 Moving beyond recipes for change
30:25 Importance of underlying principles
31:28 Technologies of consciousness
34:29 Visionary skills
35:46 Tracking and analysis
37:13 Cycles and timings
40:18 Re-imagining growth
43:17 The Wonders of Slime Mold (Todd)
48:39 The Problem with our Worldview (Marti)
Quotes
“Every aspect of the living universe is dependent on change for expression, for growth, for evolution—from the galaxies and all the planets and stars, to humans, to the tiniest forms of life and basic particles of the universe—without change, everything comes to a standstill, nothing has power.” — Marti Spiegelman
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change." — Albert Einstein
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“The realm of nature is the embodiment of change.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed.” — James Baldwin
“If we don't make relationship with greater forces, we end up afraid of them.” — Marti Spiegelman
“We would be better served if we resisted using change as a noun, and got in a habit of referring to it as a verb—a present tense verb. Then change doesn't become this event. It becomes ‘changing.’ I am, a part of the ‘changing.’” — Todd Hoskins
“We're designed to be stewards of this process of evolutionary change—this process of growth and evolution of life and consciousness—with our unique brains and our unique nervous system, our unique use of awareness.” — Marti Spiegelman
“We are conduits. We have a responsibility to steward what comes through us in service to life.” — Marti Spiegelman
“I dream of leaders who are stepping into new situations who are able to recognize, feel, sense, and acknowledge the uniqueness of the situation that they're stepping into with no biases towards what has worked in the past.” — Todd Hoskins
“This becomes a problem of human consciousness—we're only awakened at a level of outcome and we're not awake to the processes of change that produce the outcome.” — Marti Spiegelman
“If you experience the world in motion, you have a whole new dimension of information that you can apply that does not need a feasibility study.” — Marti Spiegelman
“For centuries we have viewed the world as a collection of objects. For the last 100 years we are finally starting to see the importance of relationships. The world is not just full of things. It is full of matter and energy interacting simultaneously, continually producing new contexts, new relationships, new phenomenon.” — Todd Hoskins
“For every definition there is often an exception. Our way of describing our world is being stretched to its limits by the confines of how we think and how we use language.” — Todd Hoskins
“Slime mold is attuned to its environment, constantly feeling out options, collecting data in real time, and ready to transform when the time is right. This is participating with change. This is change itself.” — Todd Hoskins
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” — Albert Einstein
“We have become over-accustomed to an ego-centric consciousness, a self-referential state that puts our own identity at the center of the universe, and from this central place we really can’t see very far.” — Marti Spiegelman
“We are not taking ourselves to that next level of consciousness where Einstein awaits us. To take this leap we would have to change our world view! We would have to give up the fixity, and stop moving the same pieces around our chess board looking for the next new, albeit finite, arrangement.” — Marti Spiegelman
“If we dare to move off our dime, to explore as participants in a conscious universe, to remember that the magic of being human lies in how we use awareness to connect to our infinite world, then we will finally discover the dimensions of consciousness where Einstein awaits us, eager to help us stop repeating ourselves and living within painful limits, and instead actually, finally, get some beautiful, innovative work done for the collective good.” — Marti Spiegelman
Links
Grand conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn