Memo to Leaders: It¹s Time to Find a New Beach

This is the second review of a two-part series analyzing Margaret J. Wheatley's excellent and thought-provoking book, ‘Leadership and the New Science’ as part of my DMin (Global Missional Leadership) with George Fox University.

  The daily news is filled with powerful changes, and many of us feel buffeted by forces we cannot control… I listened one night to a radio interview with a geologist whose specialty was beaches and shorelines. The interview was being conducted as a huge hurricane was pounding the Outer Banks of the eastern United States… The interviewer asked: “What do you expect to find when you go out there?” Like the interviewer, I assumed he would present a litany of disasters – demolished homes, felled trees, eroded shoreline. But he surprised me. “I expect,” he said calmly, “to find a new beach.”

  Throughout her book, and indeed with this remarkable story, Wheatley continues to push the reader beyond the realm of accepting that we merely live in a rapidly changing world from a fatalistic position, and that somehow we must try and manage this by seeking some mystical balance that will bring peace, harmony and balance. Instead, she presents the perspective that says a life that is immune from chaos, disorder, disturbance and disequilibrium, does not allow us to be recipients of new information that has the potential to foster growth and new life, thereby leaving us empty and one step closer to death.

  Wheatley challenges our pursuit of balance where we largely seek to minimize change, claiming that equilibrium has become a prized goal in adult life. Why is this she asks? Is change so fearsome that we’ll do anything to avoid it? By pursuing such a state, it would appear that we have no energy to respond to change and no capacity to grow. How so, you might ask?  In classical thermodynamics, equilibrium is the end state in the evolution of closed systems, the point at which the system has exhausted all of its capacity for change, done its work, and dissipated its productive capacity into useless entropy [“Entropy” = A gradual decline into disorder] (p.76).

  There are many concepts that Wheatley explores in great depth as she takes us on a journey of discovery in relation to managing change and the potential growth that can come from processing new information and the new relationships that might result from them: Our reactions to change or lack of responsiveness, and the fact that there are many times where we have become so fixated on the one factor that is pressuring change or the factor that is itself under pressure to change, that we miss the whole. We don’t see a new beach. Instead, we expect to see in some self-fulfilling way a disastrous or unwanted result where we can see no benefit beyond the immediate chaos and confusion we currently find ourselves in.

  I love beaches! White sand, the peaceful lapping of waves, a crystal blue sky, a hot sun, interspersed with the rhythm of reading a gripping novel and cooling off with an invigorating swim. Is it always like this? No. I also enjoy hearing the sound of waves crashing onto the shore, the wind furiously whipping through the air and blowing the spray from the waves into the air, watching storm clouds develop and the bursts of thunder as it gets closer. But what is it that I really like? Is it the sand? The waves? The wind? No. It is none of these, but all of them. It is not the parts, but the whole.

  Whether we experience tragedy and chaos as a person or we find ourselves in a larger organizational context where change is occurring or imminent, it appears we can choose how we process change, what we want to learn as we change from one state to another, and sometimes even understand (but not always) why change is necessary. Human nature, Wheatley would argue, would also want to over analyze every component that has changed or changing, and totally miss seeing how they are each interconnected – the whole system. We move deeper into the details and farther away from learning how to comprehend the system in its wholeness.

There are many organizations and churches today in crisis. Not because they lack the resources or potential to change, but because they have become wearied by the energy it takes to preserve itself in that state, that they lack the ability and capacity to look beyond the storm to the new beach.

  As a leader I pray for vision to see more than I can with my eyes, and to hear more than I can with my ears. I pray that my heart will have the capacity to change and not be afraid of what it cannot yet feel. I pray that my mind will not be comfortable with merely acquiring information, but pursue wisdom that brings insight and understanding.

#dmingml