Being Mycelium

It’s a morning in the near future.  You sit down at your computer and open it to see what’s been going on since yesterday.  A quick look at news headlines confirms that humanity’s on the same self-destructive path -  but at that moment you’re more aware of your own energy: steady and calm, grounded in purpose.  Your heart is open for whatever comes up, even delight.

This is not how current economic, political and technological systems are designed to make us feel.  If you are anxious and desperate, you’re in good company -  but it is also useful to realize how feelings often connect to what those systems teach us about who we are and how we fit into the world (for example, we’re useful based on how much we produce and consume).  As the structures and institutions around us crack apart, in moments where we feel it’s nearly impossible to have an impact on the big picture, there is so much we still can create at a smaller scale.  The cracks in the existing systems give opportunity to hold up and demonstrate more life-giving possibilities.  

I had the good fortune to sit down multiple times recently with Yodit Mesfin Johnson of Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW), a nonprofit capacity-building organization in Ann Arbor, and dig into those possibilities. NEW is uprooting traditional “power-over” practices inside the organization, investigating everything from interviewing to compensation policy, and experimenting with what cultivates “power-with” behavior instead. Our conversations resulted in a free learning series (blog posts and videos) on six topics: 

•  Trust - Trust - built on transparency and predictability - knits us together, and disconnected people are easier to control.   

  
  

• Sharing Power - Even when leaders want to share power, conditioned habits from people all over the organizational chart need to be uprooted for it to succeed.  

  
  

• Compliance - Our goal is not rampant individualism, but a voice in making and changing the rules.  We notice moments when we surrender our own agency and define other paths. 

  
  

• Fear - Patterns of white supremacy create fear both in our organizations and inside ourselves.  Releasing that fear frees energy and makes room for healthy expressions of power. 

  
  

• Narrative Strategy - Control of the story is as central to authoritarianism as control of individuals.  We take a look at ways not just to push back on one dominant story with another, but to allow many voices to tell their stories together.  

  
  

• Wholeness - Instead of an obligation to hide ourselves, we can create workplaces where we have the choice to reveal complex identities or emotions.  

So many people are feeling an urgent need to act, somehow.  This week, I heard Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (the author of Hospicing Modernity) compare the energy of pedestal agency (seeking control) and mycelium agency (watching for what's emerging, and facilitating good directions).  It's not nothing to take action at home. Organizations that facilitate emergence can be the stem cells of our best possible future.