In today’s technology-facilitated and boundaryless world, Emergent Learning takes place at the intersection of ongoing human experience and tacit knowledge, technology, collaboration, complex and novel challenges, and conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity. Holding space for emergent learning is one of the preconditions for creating thrivable and anti-fragile organizations that not only flourish but also become harbingers of possible futures and pluriversal worlds where many worlds coexist. Such organizations become microcosms of worlds we wish to inhabit; they become crucibles for experimenting into new ways of being, seeing, sensing, relating, and learning. They become containers and platforms for generative dialogues where collective wisdom leads the way.

By embracing the power of networks and social platforms along with the affordances of mobile and cloud, distributed and boundaryless organizations can become platforms for emergent learning. Today, technology has fallen prey to the hegemonic powers of colonialism; it is our responsibility to reclaim the powers of technology in the service of reconstituting and reimagining our civilizational trajectory. When fully realized and supported, technology-enabled emergent learning can transform organizations and communities, making them agile, adaptable, and resilient as well as responsive, imaginative, and evolutionary. Emergent learning is always contextual, collaborative, and goes beyond the norms of predetermined intended learning. It cuts across formal structures and siloes and connects the inherent tacit knowledge and the ongoing collective experience, building a shared awareness of moving toward a larger Purpose and Vision for all.

From Continuous Learning to Emergent Learning

Most organizations strive to nurture a culture of continuous learning, but it's crucial to distinguish this from emergent learning. Continuous learning, facilitated by technology, cooperation, and collaboration, promotes efficiency and the adoption of best practices. It keeps an organization effective at delivering business as usual, building core skills, and spreading best practices across the organization. However, it doesn't challenge existing paradigms and narratives or call for a shift in the underlying premises of an extractive economy predicated on neocolonialism. Nonetheless, as organizations struggle to exist in the face of planetary collapse, it is imperative for the foundational premises to not only shift but be replaced with life-affirming and regenerative practices, metaphors, and narratives. This shift is unlikely to happen without a deliberate cultivation of the capacities to learn from the future as it emerges. Emergent learning practices lay the foundations for designing regenerative organizations.

When faced with complexity and ambiguity, learning from the past or continuing to build on existing knowledge is futile. Emergent learning requires a different approach. It is about tapping into the as yet unknown and unsaid, sensing into what is wanting to be born, using collective sensemaking to manifest the “magic in the middle”. It is a bit like donning a different set of lenses and seeing the world very differently.

Enabling emergent learning requires organizations to shift from a mechanistic view to a living-systems view of organization design, and acknowledge our indelible interconnections and entangled lives.

Conditions for Emergent Learning

To nurture and support emergent learning in organizations, certain conditions and practices are essential:

Sensing and Sensemaking. In a complex, deeply connected, and constantly changing world, sensemaking is an important capacity. It is a combination of seeing the specifics as well as the larger picture, and connecting the dots to see the overarching patterns. Organizations that allow knowledge and wisdom to flow freely irrespective of positions and power, naturally create the conditions for sensemaking.

Today, organizations are poised to hand over decision-making to Artificial Intelligence. While this may increase efficiency (in the short term), those organizations wishing to become truly regenerative must also take note of the implications. Given that AI is trained on LLM that perpetuate biases and hegemonic patterns, can they really be trusted to make decisions that require not data but wisdom, not algorithms but myriad epistemologies and narratives, not speed but thoughtful implementations to halt the perpetuation of toxic patterns.

Therefore, outsourcing sensemaking to AI will likely be counterproductive for any organization wishing to transform and embark on the journey of regeneration.

In a pluriversal world, sensemaking is what keeps an organization alive and thriving. Collective sensemaking and radical imagination together have the power to design organizations from the ground up that can truly be in service of life, become communities of purpose, and offer meaningful work through which individuals realize their highest potentials. Even as organizations act as communities, they become prototypes for worlds we collectively co-create, inhabit, and bequeath.

Generative Dialogues. Organizations need to build the capacity to have such conversations where individuals and teams “hold space for something new to be born.” This requires completely shifting away from all preconceived ideas, old solutions, yesterday’s logic, and past patterns. Suspending everything we thought we knew. Only from a place of listening to each other, to the context, and to the wisdom flowing in the ecosystem with an open Mind, open Heart, and an open Will, can we learn what wants to emerge.

In these times of intense upheavals, fractures, and polarizations of societies and polities, this is an ability that organizations and individuals ignore at their peril. This is closely linked to sensing and sensemaking which occurs as an outcome of such conversations. Organizations need to create the culture and the facilitative leadership required for generative dialogues to take place.

Collaborating in Pluriversality. Unfortunately, human beings have an affinity for homophily — a fancy word for the human equivalent of “birds of a feather flock together”. This has become increasingly easier with ubiquitous technology and deliberate algorithmic manipulation toward echo chambers and polarizing factions. And this is also one of the biggest obstacles to emergent learning, sensemaking, and staying responsive, and resilient.

Our world is pluriversal--an entangled web of myriad epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies. The 'universal' was an imperial-colonial project imposed on the rest of the planet. Organizations on the path of regeneration need to build capacities for collaboration in a pluriversal world. This means the ability to not only hold diverse worldviews but actively seek knowledge and wisdom beyond the dominant paradigms. It is about consciously bringing together different voices, diverse opinions, varied perspectives, and multicultural and pluriversal worldviews. This kind of collaboration lies at the intersection of diverse cosmologies, epistemologies, and ontologies.

It is about holding space for and welcoming paradoxes, embracing cognitive dissonance, discarding the notion of 'one solution,' and acknowledging that our world is an entanglement of narratives and cosmologies. It is about facilitative leadership that doesn’t get swayed by the loudest voice in the room or the majority opinion but actively seeks to invite the unseen, unheard, and unacknowledged voices.

Technology, if used sensitively and empathetically, can be a great bridge connecting diverse peoples across the globe of far-flung organizations. Platforms can support the building of communities of purpose; they can be deliberately designed to become prototypes and microcosms of the world we wish to inhabit and bequeath. Collaboration and co-creation are the prerequisites for reimagining futures that is life-affirming, inclusive, anti-fragile, and regenerative in the truest sense of the words.

Comfort with Uncertainty and Ambiguity. There’s no escaping from either as we stand on the brink of a polycrisis, and history is being rescripted in real time. We will never know everything, have all the information, or complete clarity regarding any decision we need to make. We just have to develop our capacity to hold space for ambiguity. This is where the ability to tap into an inner compass becomes important for individuals. Organizations with obsessive focus on the measurable miss out on deep insights that come from intuition, imagination, and profound inner wisdom. In times of intense and exponentially exacerbating change, the obvious and measurable delude us into focusing on the wrong problem. It is a combination of sensemaking, radical imagination, and inner knowing that guide us in the right direction.

The ability to thrive in ambiguity also comes with an element of play. Children are quintessential explorers of the unknown, making delightful discoveries as they flow with life. We lose this ability as we grow up and crave predictability, plans, and processes. However, if we can learn to let go off our fears — even for a short while — and listen deeply to the context and to each other, stay with the ambiguity and sense into it, gradually the next step will emerge from collective sensemaking. Communities and organizations deliberately developing capacities for collective sensemaking are also better equipped to stay in the liminal space.

We go off the rails when — in the face of uncertainty — we disregard all dis-confirming information, cling to what we already know, and act from old habits. This is why learning to tap into the emerging future is so crucial if we truly want to make a difference.

Systems Sensing. “You think that because you understand “one” that you must therefore understand “two” because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand “and.” ~Donella Meadows

While systems thinking is the oft used phrase, I prefer systems sensing. Sensing encompasses and transcends thinking; it taps into our intuition and imagination allowing for an embodied understanding of the system. Systems are not only the visible entities; they also include the invisible energies that permeate all systems. The implicit layer of vibrations and energies is what gives a system certain characteristics. We often say things like, 'that meeting felt very positive' or 'the organization had a really thriving energy'. These vibes come from a combination of the visible and the invisible. Systems Sensing is a skill that taps into both the realms. Internalizing and assimilating these two aspects are necessary to build our capacity.

Therefore, systems sensing requires us to shift from a reductionist worldview focused on dissecting and analyzing to a holistic one where we step back to see the web of connecting patterns and energies. This is a skill that is closely related to sensemaking. In fact, if an individual or a team develop the capacities of sensemaking and leaning into the emergent future, they are practicing systems sensing.

Reflective Practices. “Reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one’s actions so as to engage in a process of continuous learning.” ~Wikipedia

As individuals, most of us have some form of reflective practice — be it journaling, meditation, creative visualization, solitary walks in nature, or whatever works for us. At an organizational level, we often restrict reflective practices to “project retrospectives” and haven’t yet inculcated the deep practices of reflecting on the inner conditions as well. This would include not only looking back at past actions and what worked or didn’t but also taking a conscious look at emotions, quality of experiences, the relationships, and the overall energy flow. Collective reflective practices can be facilitated using processes like The Circle of Trust approach designed by Parker Palmer.

As groups or teams, especially in organizational context, we are focused on doing, on tasks, on goals, on deadline. All of these are external oriented and our inner world gets ignored. By focusing on what needs to be done, we ignore how it gets done. However, it is the 'how' which creates the movement of energy, the joy of moving toward a common purpose, the flow that comes when a team operates seamlessly. This kind of experience isn’t common.

When teams invest time in reflective practices together, they build a stronger sense of oneness, of shared awareness, and can confidently lean into the emerging future. They build the capacity to hold space for what is wanting to be manifested through them — a truly co-creative experience.

As organizations grapple with the Change of Era, fostering the conditions for emergent learning could be a way to thrive and be regenerative in the face of collapse. In fact, chaos becomes a partner in transformation. And organizations become wayfinders paving the way for pluriversal worlds and decolonial futures.

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