Leading the Emergence
Leading the Emergence
Introducing Leading the Emergence
The Nebo Company is proud to present Episode One of the Leading the Emergence podcast, with host Kate Ebner, CEO of The Nebo Company. Leading the Emergence is designed for leaders who wish to be part of shaping the emerging future. Kate will invite perspectives from futurists, analysts, innovators and visionaries whose insights and methods can illuminate useful strategies for all.
Listen to Kate describe what it means to lead the emergence in the first episode, and be sure to subscribe anywhere you stream podcasts!
The Nebo Company presents Leading the Emergence with your host, Kate Ebner.
Izzy Martens:What does the future hold for us? How can I see and plan for the future when there are so many unknowns, these questions are at the heart of leading the emergence and exploration of how to see and understand the future coming out of the incredible challenges and hardships of 2020 I'm Izzy Martins of The Nebo Company. And I am excited to introduce you to today's podcast host Kate Ebner. Kate is the founding director of Georgetown university's Institute for transformational leadership and the CEO of The Nebo Company. We're a leadership coaching company that specializes in helping leaders envision the future and make it real. Before we get started, I'd like to tell you that we'll be offering new episodes regularly, and each episode will last no longer than 30 minutes. We want to make this easy to fit into your busy life. During the series, Kate will take you inside the thinking of futurists whose perspectives can help us navigate these unprecedented times. You'll learn how to read weak signals from the future and how to become a keen observer. And why is interpreter of what is emerging? So Kate is here with us and today we want to start by talking for a minute about the title of our podcast, leading the emergence. So Kate, so glad you're here. And what does leading the emergence mean?
Kate Ebner:Thank you, Izzy. I'm delighted to be here with you, and I'm glad you asked that question. Each word in the title is important. And I think the title has a little bit of a twist. How on earth can we lead something that's emerging? The title suggests that we can influence the emerging future, even though we can't see it very well, we don't actually have to wait for it passively and hope for the best, but there are things that we can do to shape and influence what's coming. And, you know, during this year 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has really obscured our view of the near future. Within a matter of days, if you recall back in, um, April companies were sending employees home and transforming rapidly into virtual workplaces, people began to meet and work remotely. And to an extent they never had even family gatherings where we organized into online events, education became virtual in a chaotic turn of events. That meant that parents and children were both relying on screens to stay connected and productive in the same household, doctors and therapists began using telemedicine. Restaurants became takeout were changed into outdoor eateries. The federal government opened its coffers as never before, maybe leading to new ways of investing in our society. Sustainability, you know, the pandemic has highlighted our strengths and weaknesses, not only the strengths and weaknesses of our society, but also of our organizations and our leadership teams. Coronavirus has hit us hard. It's hit vulnerable populations, hard causing us to look more closely at disparities that have existed for many, many, many, many decades in our living conditions, our economic gaps, access to quality of healthcare. We've slipped into an economic recession with record unemployment. That's expected to take some time to recover and social unrest as a result of George Floyd's death due to police brutality in Minnesota and other tragic deaths this year, I've highlighted the many risks faced by black and Brown Americans. The wildfires in the West and the extreme hurricane season have caused us to see that climate change isn't coming. It's already here. So, you know, Izzy, all of what I just said sounds pretty alarming even to my own ears as I'm describing it. But when we step back and we take it into account, it makes sense that we're feeling upset, confused, frightened, and a little disoriented. Now, people talk about getting back to normal. Others say that the old norms are a thing of the past. What then should we focus on? So my question and the question I really want to explore in this podcast is how can leaders lead and influence the future when we can't describe that future reliably, but we're going to find that together in the podcast series two conversations with guests who have unique and valuable ways of looking at the future.
Izzy Martens:Thanks, Kate. And absolutely it's been an incredible year of change and it brings me to the concept of emergence and that's the second part of our podcast title. So my next question for you is what is an emergence and even better? What's an emergent future.
Kate Ebner:Great question. This is a question that can be answered a couple of different ways. I'm going to try two ways. The first is simply to give you the metaphor of navigating in the fog, right? And all of us have had the experience of being in a foggy situation where we can't see that the fog is like a, sort of like a pea soup all around us. We can't see beyond maybe our arm's length. So how do we, when we still have to move forward, even though we can't see, what do we do? We tend to actually begin to look for clues about the shapes that are behind that fog. We also access what we can see and we move very slowly and carefully forward. So this year has been like that. I think we've been navigating in a fog. We can't see the future very clearly, but as the pandemic to lift, we're going to be able to see better and bit by bit. We're going to have some interesting insights and foresights into what's coming. So the metaphor of navigating in the fog is useful to us when we think about emergence and I'd like you to just really picture, um, that experience of a fog lifting and slowly the landscape emerges again. What is it we're looking at? Um, the second way I'd like to answer the question is a little more scientific. So emergency is actually a scientific term it's used. It's also used in systems theory to describe an order arising out of chaos. The concept of emergence can be hard to grasp because it's not our usual way of thinking and talking when something new happens, it's hard at first to get language for it. We don't have the words, the metaphors, the examples to communicate about it. I remember back in the spring is when the pandemic started to happen. Um, we didn't have language for it. We have many more words and ideas and phrases to use now to describe the pandemic than we did back then. And the early language that started to emerge was, um, this is a time of uncertainty. This is unprecedented time. We heard that over and over again. Um, and that was really humanity, trying to find a way to talk about and describe something very, very new and unprecedented for us. So, uh, part of the emergence is the languaging of the change, um, emergence, disrupts, and it disturbs. And in fact that disruption and dissonance are part of the language. These are related ideas. Um, disruption interrupts our usual norms and it creates a kind of dissonance. If there's a conflict I've learned that often when there's a disruption, it also creates the conditions for very new and potentially very positive and exciting things to develop. Um, old patterns, no longer work. The life that existed before is disturbed. We may return to a semblance of that life, but we may not return to all of it. Um, so I think COVID-19 has been like that for us. It's disturbed our patterns, it's redirected our future and it's taken away things that we were counting on without even realizing that we were, um, I think this coherence being disrupted is creating the opportunity for an emergence and that emergence actually is full of possibility for a future. That's not like the past. Wow.
Izzy Martens:So it sounds like we are already connecting these ideas of an emergence with the present time. So what are a few examples of how the pandemic has created an emergence? Kate? I know we've talked about language, but what else are we seeing?
Kate Ebner:Yeah, I think that there's lots of interesting things happening, right? So when we think what's happened in education, for example, and the fact that so much of education has gone online and, um, I often work with universities and colleges, and I know there's been a great deal of interest, but also resistance to online learning in higher education. What we've seen is, um, a wholesale embracing of what can technology do for us in terms of making education, a valuable and high quality experience, even in a virtual environment and while it has its limitations. And I certainly think it's, it's certainly different in higher education than it is for, for young families trying to get four year olds to stay engaged with the computer during the day. What I do know is that it's also, we're starting to see creativity in how education is presented, new ideas emerging about what is possible in terms of how we educate, um, as we've become less attached to geographic graphic anchors like the college campus and students have actually gone home learning remotely. We begin to realize that, um, more people could access education if we didn't have the requirement and potentially the price tag of the expensive on campus experience. Does that mean colleges and universities as a campus will go away? I don't think so, but I think there could be new models of learning that are more affordable and more accessible for more people coming out of the innovation. That's that the technology that the, the requirement to use a technology based educational process has given us. So it's still happening. We don't yet have the answers, but we can see new possibilities, um, as a result of the experience that people are having. And it's hard. It's not like it's uneasy transition, but I think that there's, uh, been an incredible amount of creativity and innovation in that process. Yeah.
Izzy Martens:And we will have a lot more time during this series to dive deeper into some of these concepts, but Kate, it sounds like your aim is really to help us just read the future better to see what's coming and not be afraid to look at the signals that can tell us even now what our future might hold. So is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners about the podcast,
Kate Ebner:I guess, as you, what I'd like to really say is how excited I am about this podcast. I think I'll be learning along with everybody else. I'm planning to bring guests who can illuminate, um, the future and ways of thinking about the emergence that are going to hopefully be little, um, little lightning bolts for all of us as we continue to track with what's coming. Um, I'd like to also say that I think that even though there's a lot happening and it's an overwhelming and complex time, it doesn't have to all be, uh, negative and full of trepidation. I want to make sure that you can find ideas you can use in this podcast. And I believe that, um, that while we may feel overwhelmed quite often with the complexity and frankly the, the need in this time to just sustain our resilience and our perspective, I think the more we can see and identify new possibilities, the more we can influence and shape the future that's coming.
Izzy Martens:Absolutely. And as listeners walk away from today's episode, episode one and join us next time for episode two, is there anything we want to leave them with any questions they might ponder in the meantime? Okay.
Kate Ebner:Yeah. I mean, I think what I would like to ask you, um, as a listener is how has your work and your life been disrupted in 2020, and are there changes in your life that seem to point you toward a new way of doing things, whether it's at work or at home? I think just really reflecting on how you've been disrupted, but also maybe some of the innovation that you've experienced personally would be a great way to prepare.
Izzy Martens:Those are great questions, Kate. So it sounds like we all have an extraordinary opportunity to live through influence and even shape this emerging future. And we are excited to do it together. We will see you now
Narrator:Leading the Emergence is sponsored by the Nebo Company. If you would like to talk to me about how to support the leaders in your organization, please contact us at www.nebocompany.com. Thank you.