In the articles herein below, the authors write about the global leadership challenges in the 21st Century, in the second, citing the recent State of the Union speech by President Obama of the United States.
From where I sit, I feel I am too small to write about the world, but maybe, just about South Africa, may just be the right focus. I am not for once, declaring our problems to be much bigger than those of the rest of the World, and neither am I saying we are the worst of humanity, in our ability as a nation, to deal with same. I would also like to say that these times that we live in, seemingly difficult to deal with, should not surprise us, as they were foretold many years ago.
We have enough tools in the name of analytics, for us to understand the cause and effect of most of our challenges, including the main one, in our context- widening, and ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor (exclusive economic model & architecture that has not changed much since 1981, when most of the exclusive laws were repealed), as well as incapacity of the Public Service to deliver to its citizens. All in all, it is both Public & Private Sector leadership, failing to lead in a manner that is best for the +46 million population of South Africa.
Leadership, for the sake of simplicity, I define as those who have access to either economic power, or political power, thereby giving them the levers to push and pull, to respond to environmental challenges. They unfortunately see themselves as separate from the status quo, as well as the trajectory our past, and future. Borrowing from Cohen & Wilber, verbatim, I say to the leadership as described:
Generating Transformative Change
Geoff Fitch, Terri O'Fallon, Venita Ramirez, and Ken Wilber
Transformation, as Ken Wilber often points out, is a mystery. Sure, we've done a pretty good job of measuring transformation and tracking all the various dimensions, vectors, and stages of human potential—but whenever someone inevitably asks "how do we get people to transform?", we are typically left scratching our heads. Which means that whenever we say something like "enlightenment is an accident, and practice makes you more accident-prone" we aren't trying to be clever or cryptic. More than anything, we are confessing our own humility in the face of one of life's most perplexing mysteries.
This is why whenever someone discovers a recipe for real and measurable transformation, we tend to take notice. As it happens, our friends at Pacific Integral seem to have done exactly that. Listen as Geoff, Terri, and Venita talk with Ken Wilber about Generating Transformative Change, a powerful and innovative approach to leadership training. The GTC program draws explicitly from the work of Ken Wilber, Susanne Cook-Greuter, and many other integral pioneers, and represents yet another exciting example of the integral project making a real impact upon the world, helping today's leaders rise to the challenges of the 21st century.
[+listen]
Being a Catalyst For Change
Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber
"This is our generation's Sputnik moment," President Obama said in last night's State of the Union Address, invoking something that we have all felt to one degree or another. To say that we live in extraordinary times is an understatement—the threats before us have never been more menacing, the opportunities never more thrilling, and the need for personal and collective evolution never more urgent. We seem to stand on the verge of a cultural, technological, and spiritual tipping point. Of course, which way it tips remains to be seen.
But this moment—this precious Sputnik moment—is not something that exists outside of you. In a nondual sense, you are this moment, you are this threat, you are this opportunity. You and the world are radically not-two, which means that this world, its suffering, and the many crises looming on the horizon, are things you need to take really freaking seriously. This is the moment when humanity takes its first steps into the next phase of its maturity, into an era much bigger than the Space Age—into an Integral Age of unprecedented wisdom, compassion, sophistication, and efficacy. But if you want it to happen, you need to make it happen, with every action, every gesture, and every breath.
