00 - Leaping into the future fluid
Welcoming all of you brilliant outliers, edge-walkers, non-conformers, heretics, misfits and queer Leaders into the work we do and what we have set up for 2024.
To all of you brilliant outliers, “edge-walkers”, non-conformers, heretics, misfits and queer Leaders! Thank you for being here with us!
We welcome you to our Edition Zero newsletter, where we are setting the scene of the work we do. From the very beginning we are inviting YOU to become part of our work as together WE ARE FUTURE FLUID. And like all good narratives, we are doing this in three acts...
1. Our guiding values for working at the edge…
“Being new at radical things is hard. If the definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, then being new at something is the epitome of vulnerability. Knowing that we have the strength to survive those moments and come out on the other side with new information, new ideas, new habits, new skills, that’s how we get braver with our lives and with our hearts.” (Brene Brown)
In our research leading to this ‘Edition Zero Newsletter’ we were thinking about guiding values and principles keeping us on track on building a radical new venture. Applying those three values in every step we are doing, in any conversation led, in any collaborations built and in any interaction with anyone of you! By being visible, speaking up and sharing early and often about our process, we aim to be and work AMORPHOUS, PLURAL and ATYPICAL ❤️
We are AMORPHOUS:
A term coming from Greek a ("without"), and morphé ("shape, form”), being amorphous symbolises the ability of not having a definite form, and adapting to unpredictable environments, structures and forms. In his research article “Fuzzy at the Edges - How amorphousness in organizational boundaries changes joining processes”, Vaugh Tan writes that “Membership in an amorphously- bounded group is a position-seeking, dynamic process and an entity’s position in relation to the group is constantly being negotiated and re-negotiated. Amorphously-bounded groups may have extensive predetermined rules for valid identities but will also have room for unfixed identities that can then be incorporated as valid identities.”
We are PLURAL:
In order to overcome the underlying hegemonic narrative based on separation, supremacy and endless economic growth we cannot aim for true regeneration unless it is a pluriversal one. A world of which Brigitte Baptiste, Ecologist and advocate of gender diversity, said to “Imagine a world where identity is fluid, experimentation and reinvention are celebrated, and individuality and self-expression are constantly evolving. In this future, humans and nature merge in a multi-species coexistence. This goes beyond challenging today’s overly simple definitions of gender and race. It explores how blurred and fluid identities could help us adapt to the challenges of the climate emergency.” (From the exhibition catalogue ‘Our Time on Earth’, first published by Barbican International Enterprises on the occasion of the exhibition, Our Time on Earth, at the Barbican Centre, London, 5 May - 29 Aug 2022.).
We are ATYPICAL:
The pioneers in living in new ways are still the human edge-walker, the artist, the shaman, the wayfinders, the odd ones, and the queer. “They challenge narratives about binaries and resist against being boxed and categorized. It's the fear of the unclear, the non-normative, the fear of change, the inability to keep up with change, and the fear of not knowing that lures us into boxed and binary thinking.”…”Ironically, it's exactly the non-binary, the unclarity, the instability, the change, the not-knowing that will become more prevalent in a future dealing with climate collapse.” (From ‘How to Escape Categorisation? Thinking and Being Non-binary’, in ‘Lets Become Fungal! Mycelium Teachings and the Arts’, Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodriguez, 2023).
Lets be kind to ourselves and others as we acknowledge our inner pull towards knowing, stability and certainty, while at the same time understanding that stability and certainty has never been the reality, just what we tell ourselves so that we might live more easily in this world.
2. Fluidity IS a Process
Anticipating futures has been a field forever (referring all the future studies surveys that exist). However, the role of fluidity as a process, and as a space, as a capability for individuals and organisations has not been well studied or utilised.
The world as we know it is experiencing ever-growing cycles of uncertainty, ambiguity and polarisation in our systems and organisations.
Through the current state of interwoven crises, we realise that we cannot anticipate all the future possibilities, but can assist companies to develop a fluid capability and fluid seeding spaces within their organisations now, so that new unanticipated shifts can be dealt with.
Our guiding question is how fluidity becomes an asset inside organisations, and how fluidity is manifested in physical spaces, in mindsets, in identities and inside the corporate and community spaces?
We believe that the current outliers, the edge-walkers, the non-conformers, heretics, misfits and the queer may be the exact prototype to thrive in uncertain and ambiguous futures.
If we look at biosystems, natural variation and shift is exactly how nature solves forward through biodiversity. Business should be no different!
Instead of seeing diversity and emergent oddities as something to tolerate at best or give some token nod to as part of DEI on the side, we ask how they can bring all of their beings to work, become fluent in multi-lens capabilities to flow, differentiate and integrate fluidity into the whole organisational space.
3. From Polycrisis to Poly-Opportunities to Poly Self
The polycrisis concept was first and briefly introduced by the French philosopher, sociologist, and complexity theorist Edgar Morin and co-author Anne Brigitte Kern in their end-1990’s book “Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for a New Millennium.” However it was brought to the limelight in Adam Tooze’ article “Welcome to the world of the polycrisis,” (Financial Times, 28 October 2022.), where he wrote that “A problem becomes a crisis when it challenges our ability to cope and thus threatens our identity. In the polycrisis the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts. At times one feels as if one is losing one’s sense of reality.”
Furthermore in the 2024 Annual Letter, Noubar Afeyan, Founder & CEO of the venture Capital firm Flagship Pioneering reflected on navigating the polycrisis, and in effect coining the term ‘Poly-Opportunities’. Here Noubar Afeyan argues that “…When these factors are not balanced or equal, we say the system is in a state of disequilibrium.”…”I see our current state of interwoven crises — or polycrisis — as a state of disequilibrium. While this state feels charged, chaotic, and uncomfortable, it indicates great potential — if properly harnessed — for change and transition. For “poly-opportunity.””
“The Polymorph self was an arcane alteration spell that allowed the caster to transform his body into another creature’s. The (spell)caster could polymorph into the shape of any creature in size from a wren to a hippopotamus, while his or her mind would stay unchanged. He or she would gain any movement and respiration abilities of the new body, like flight in bird shape, or swimming and breathing water in the body of a fish, but not special abilities like a poisonous bite when transformed into a viper. For the duration of the spell, shape could be changed multiple times. If the (spell)caster changed back to his or her own body before the spell ended, some wounds would be healed in the transformation.” (‘Advanced Dungeons & Dragons’, Player's Handbook 2nd edition, 1989)
We remember vividly our team meeting on that cold Friday afternoon two months ago. It is there where through serendipitously studying DnD polymorphal wizard spells, that we invented a radical, hopeful and capable framework to thrive in highly non-linear, uncertain and ambiguous futures.
We call it the POLY SELF.
Our concept of the POLY SELF is an extension of our conversations focused on “who are the edge-walkers?”. Where we are working to identify the mindsets, the qualities, and the capabilities of those edge-walkers who are living in this “new world”, who are the settlers and the thriving inhabitants of fluid POLY FUTURES. Implementing new POLY U processes, tools, capabilities of futures and change-making. A new radical pioneering system that is currently being co-developed and that is emerging from the state of “being in the ruins”, as we face the challenges of this polycrisis.
There is no future stability that we are hoping to transition to, the new state will call on us to shift our mindsets so that we can become comfortable in chaos, that we may thrive and be content and fulfilled in a space where change is constant.
Believing we all need POLY SELF capabilities of edge-walkers, that is, a fundamental innate ability to consistently transform self, within structures, societies, at work and in life, we systemically percolate fluid leadership to all of us. Rather than cutting ourselves to fit the space, we change the world in this way, leading from the fluid POLY SELVES.
What do you think of our first newsletter? What resonates the most with you?
Leave a comment below here on Substack or reply to this email.
In our upcoming next newsletter we will share some first concrete opportunities and offers how we like to connect and co-create with you. Will you join us?
With gratitude to our growing support structures: Yan Liu, Patrick Leenheers, James Munnelly, Samantha Yarwood, The Bio-Leadership Fellowship, THNK Amsterdam, IMMA Collective, Uncomfortable Conversations and all of you brilliant outliers and edge-walkers out there ❤️🌈🔥
Thank you for this really inspiring kickoff post! I will follow your journey with excitement and sympathy. I am reminded of a lengthy conversation with the German sociologist and elite researcher Michael Hartmann, who emphasises that the top elite is primarily constituted by similarity. https://www.youtube.com/live/HwnmjkfLgW4?si=Txt4L-gG-t-97YsV Your approach is the absolute antithesis of this and thus challenges existing power structures. This will certainly also play a role in your work with organisations. What is your stance on the subject of power or do you want to adopt one?