About This Book

470 PRACTICING ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT, 2ND EDITION
Senge (2003) suggests, “Realizing desired results in a global society requires
both learning and leadership, and above all it involves creating/imaging a vision
of the future, which also evokes the implicit difference from what currently
exists” (p. 1). With the vision of a global wisdom society and one world, our
practice of global OD should strive to co-create global wisdom organizations
that embrace the following:
• Holding a systemic perspective and always looking at the wholeness, the
interrelatedness, and the harmony and balance of living systems and
the universe. This includes nurturing the wholeness (health, integrity,
full wholesome life, spiritual/psychosocial development) of the organization
and all its stakeholders. The “self”—the individual—is a system;
for every “outside” there is an “interior,” and there are “outsides” and
“insides” for groups (the collective) and individuals (Owen, 2004;
Wilbur, 2000). A systemic perspective also encompasses twin citizenship
(Handy, 1994), the capacity to hold views of local and broader context
and take action in spite of seeming paradoxes.
• Operating out of a deep understanding of and respect for natural systems
and cycles, earth wisdom (WindEagle & RainbowHawk, 2003), human
needs, and future generations. As noted by Mitchell (1996), living systems
are self-organizing, intelligent, creative, learning, trial/error, interconnected,
participatory, interactive, and evolutionary. There are multiple
ways of knowing (means to wisdom and right action) (IONS, 2002), and
there must be an integration of linear and non-linear ways of operating.
Some say that we have all the wisdom of the universe within us.
• Trusting the dynamics of self-organizing and collective consciousness as
well as co-intelligence, the capacity to evoke creative responses and
initiatives that integrate the diverse gifts of all for the benefit of all (Atlee,
2003). This includes building an internal human and organizational
capacity to create structures that fit the moment and can evolve spontaneously.
In our everchanging/evolving world, learning, inquiry, and
openness are important, as are a sense of awe and wonder, curiosity, and
a deeper appreciation for all life and for each other and the universe.
• Applying our learnings from the new sciences. This encompasses creative
chaos, strange attractors, complexity, and quantum theory’s probabilities
of interconnections/relationships rather than probabilities of
“things” (Capra, 1996; Wheatley, 1999). We live in a quantum world.
• Being in the business of ethically serving society and earth in life-affirming
and sustainable ways, including being in harmony with natural ecological
and global environmental systems. There is stewardship of the whole. It
embraces operating with a portfolio of human capital knowing that the