A little red book about source E-Book

Stefan Merckelbach

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 159

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Presented for the first time in book form, the source principles breathe energy, clarity and creativity into the development of every project. The source person is someone who gets an idea and then takes initiatives and risks to realize it. The source person's main task is clarifying what the next step in the development of the project should be. When she needs support, she invites other people to participate; they in turn become source of specific parts of the project. This is the way all our collectives are born. In life, people take on several source roles: the manager is invited to become the source of a team, the employee to be the source of her tasks, the musician to be the source of his performance, the sportswoman to be the source of her good condition. Wherever there's a project, there's a source. The source principles shine a light on the way we engage with our own initiatives. The clarity they offer boosts our dedication and our capacity to encourage those around us to embark on their own source itinerary. Source principles invite us to live out a more inspired management style, they stimulate our creative involvement, and they give new meaning to our professional and personal alliances.

Leseprobe

Contents

On the threshold

Beginner’s mind

Meeting source

1. Who’s a source?

2. The source person’s work

3. Recognizing yourself as source and living it out

Sharing source

4. Sources—global and specific

5. The source develops the collective

6. Seeing the source in each person

Transmitting source

7. When the time is ripe, pass it on

8. Transmitting source, step-by-step

9. Cast your bread upon the waters

Epilogue

Principles of love

Afterword by Peter John Koenig

Changing times

Vincent Delfosse

Images and words of source

Acknowledgements

Another source adventure

Resources

Source principles—first sightings in print

Reading notes

Trainings and consulting on source principles

Index

“The water is turbid from its source”

Persian proverb

“The poet can only create when the god is within him”

Epitaph of Norbert Moret, composer

“What counts, it dawned on me, is not only what leaders do and how they do it, but that ‘interior condition’, the inner place from which they operate.”

Otto Scharmer, Theory U

On the threshold

Beginner’s mind

CURIOUS about the title of “The Source Person” training day, on 25 September 2013 I innocently turned up, completely clueless as to just how much this experience would transform my professional life and my organization. Although only three participants were registered, Peter John Koenig, the moderator, surprised us by deciding to hold the day-long workshop anyway. A stroke of luck for us, as we got his full attention—just as he had ours. A long-time Swiss resident from London, his shock of white hair signalled that he was close to retirement age, but the energy in his bright eyes and his vivid presentation of the “source principles” made it abundantly clear that retiring was the farthest thing from his mind. Based on what I discovered that day I signed up for a longer program, a master class he organized the next year to transmit his findings. Since then the notion of source has become integral to the support and training we provide at Ordinata, a company I started in 2001. Our team is highly motivated to spread the source principles far and wide, beginning with every aspect of our own work. By now, it’s become unthinkable for us to work with a client and not delve into the question of source. Each new exploration validates and deepens our understanding of these principles. The little red book you hold in your hands (or follow on your screen) is the fruit of these experiences.

If you ask Peter Koenig where the source principles came from, he’ll say they are as old as the world. He didn’t invent them himself but just watched the ways other people grappled with the projects in their lives, and then exchanged views with them on the process. But as old as these principles may be, Peter Koenig is clearly the source of their uncovering: it was he who first developed the vocabulary that makes sense out of these patterns, the language you will encounter in these pages. Starting his research in the 1980’s, he spoke about it publicly from 2000 on, and in 2009 he began to give presentations on source principles in Quebec, Brussels and Berlin. At first he just wanted to exchange ideas and compare notes with others on best practices, but before long it became clear that their experiences were so similar to his own that the emerging patterns in fact could be seen as principles. These days his ongoing research on source is being amplified in an international network of contributors (www.workwithsource.com1), which I’m a member of.

As yet, not much has been written on the theme of source (see the very meagre Resources section at the end of this book). What you’ll read here is based on my own regular conversations with Peter Koenig about his work, and on years of provocative trainings, reflection days and follow-up exchanges with fellow master class participants. My Ordinata colleagues, who’ve made the source a central theme in their work, have been an indispensable fountain of source insights, as has my long-time collaboration with Martine Marenne on “participatory dynamics”. Personal interviews with Peter Koenig gave me direct access to the source of the source principles, and I’m deeply grateful to him for his availability, enduring kindness, and careful reading and revision of the manuscript.

Now that you know something about how this idea of source emerged, you’re probably eager to find out what it means. In the following pages, I invite you to explore the theme of source in three stages, and to follow the natural flow of discovering what source means and how its principles can be adopted. First we’ll try to understand what source is about so we can give it a warm welcome, then we’ll consider how to share it with other people, and finally in what way, when the time is right, to pass it on. But now let’s stop the preliminaries and start our voyage of discovery.

One last thing: why is this little book red? I’ll tell you all about it in the epilogue.

The asterisk (1) refers to an entry in the Resources section at the end of the book (153).

Part OneMEETING SOURCE

Chapter 1

Who’s a source?

ASOURCE is a person who has taken an initiative and through that has become the source of something: we can call this a “source person”. We take initiatives all the time: deciding on a particular course of study, going after a certain job, starting up a business, planning a special dinner. I can initiate a friendship or partnership, change my housing situation, make holiday plans, decide to have a child. Or I might step forward to join a project sourced by someone else. But whatever the undertaking, every time I take an initiative, I am setting something in motion that has not yet been switched on. At that moment I become the source, or source person, of my initiative.

In the beginning, before that moment, there had been an idea, an intuition, an inspiration. I listened to these prompts before my initiative took on a definite shape, and brought them on board. As a source person, although I took the initiative in the first place, I didn’t in fact originate it: instead, the idea came to me, the intuition occurred, all of a sudden the inspiration arose. Ideas are gifts. It might look like it was my idea, my intuition, my inspiration—and in a way that’s true because I’m the one who made the gift my own. It definitely took form within me, and I’m also the one who expressed it and communicated it. But it’s not mine in the sense of belonging to me, it’s something I’ve received. The source person adopts an attitude of humility about his idea, being aware that he is its repository, not its owner. This is crucial and we will come back to it.

To be the source, or source person, I don’t have to generate the original idea myself—it can come from someone else. Some enormously creative individuals in this world come up with a new idea every minute, but they don’t automatically become a source until they take the initiative to launch the realisation of the idea. Even if the idea person himself doesn’t switch it on, he can inspire somebody else to run with the idea (this is another way to receive it) and initiate the enterprise. In this case it’s this later person, and not the idea’s originator, who is the source person.

The image of a spring bubbling up from the earth’s depths is relevant here—the water doesn’t spontaneously surge forth out of nothing, it comes from somewhere. Recognizing this principle is already a way of respecting it. When I take up an idea not actually fabricated by me (though it comes directly through me), and take the initiative to make it happen, make it concrete, make it exist in the world—even if I frequently rely on others to help me get it going—that’s when I cross the threshold to become source or source person. In other words, source designates a person who takes an initiative based on an idea he or she has taken on.

Luckily for the source person the idea (which is a gift in itself) comes with another reward: the energy needed to take the initiative. It’s as if the original idea’s line of communication—which Peter Koenig calls the “source channel”, also channels the rising sap needed to transform the idea into reality. This energy wells up from deep within the person, igniting his strengths and filling him with the capacity to take action, if he so decides by an act of his free will, to incorporate the idea, welcome the energy and set the process in motion.

There are basically two ways of being source or source person: taking an initiative for something completely new (in which case you’re the “global source” of the initiative) or joining up with someone else’s initiative (which makes you a “specific source” of the initiative). We’ll return to this in chapter 4, but for now the point is that in both situations— even though the idea was a gift—you are the source of your own presence within the initiative: your participation is an authentic expression of your freedom, your power to act, and your creativity.

Let’s take an example. Looking for a job, Jayden answers an ad and gets an interview. The company is the source of the ad, and Jayden is the source of the job application and of coming to the interview (nobody made him do it). The company’s recruiter is the source of a concrete job offer, while Jayden is the source of his response. If he accepts it, let’s hope he can quickly become the source of his new position—that is, be someone who listens to his intuition and takes initiatives to develop his job in line with the mission he’s accepted.

For Jayden, progressively becoming the source person of his new job would mean

to employ his power to act, doing so in line with the company’s overall frame of reference, to take full possession of the position’s responsibilities and scope of decision-making;

supported by his intuitions, to exercise his freedom and creativity to find new ways of developing his mandate—which gives rise to new initiatives;

to experience his source as a strong motivation or passion, until he’s convinced it’s time to pass on his source to someone else and invest his own passion elsewhere.

In the following chapters we’ll deepen our understanding of what it means to be the source or source person of your work, roles and functions; the scope of your responsibilities and relationships; your projects and what you own or have use of—with the aim of more fully living out your role as source person. But before we go any further, some clarifications. As Peter Koenig does, we will distinguish between source, source person, and source principles.

A source person takes an initiative based on an idea.

Source can be understood in one of two ways:

From the standpoint of the person doing the sourcing (the

subject

), source is synonymous with source person—the person who takes the initiative. The word “source” specifically expresses the role the person plays in relation to his initiative (this is Peter Koenig’s general use of the term).

From the standpoint of the thing being sourced (the

object

), source can also designate the heart of the initiative, the essence of that which the individual is the source person of—that is, the vision and values that constitute the deep core of his initiative (no matter whether it’s a function, a relationship, a home or a project). Source is, in a sense, the

source

of the source person. This vision and these values are transmitted by one source person to another by passing along the role of source—the way a baton in a relay race is passed along. Putting yourself in contact with this interior core, joining with it and staying connected with it throughout the implementation of the initiative, is exactly what Peter Koenig means by welcoming one’s source.

Finally, source principles refer to the phenomena that characterize both the activities of the source person (the subject who sets something in motion), and the implementation of the source itself (the deep core of the object which the initiative sets in motion). Over the course of his research, Peter Koenig observed some consistent patterns in the way people successfully exercise source, and certain pitfalls it would be better to avoid. As a whole, these patterns, along with observations on the source’s or source person’s function, are referred to here as “source principles”.

Now that the terms are clear, for the rest of this book I gladly leave out the quotation marks around source, source person, and source principles.

As the source principles will demonstrate, the source person is always a specific person: a “he” or a “she”. To reflect the fact that these principles do not privilege one gender over another, from chapter to chapter I’ll change the personal pronouns designating sources.

Chapter 2

The source person’s work

UNDERSTANDING what the words mean is an indispensable first step, but the real challenge is putting them into effect. All the more so for the source person, whose role is explicitly defined by taking an initiative that chiefly consists of setting actions in motion. Instead of standing paralysed in the face of her idea, the source person gets things going to make her initiative happen. She has something to accomplish—the ancient Greeks called this task an ergon, meaning an item of work, an action, a doing that flows into an output. It’s like a work of art by a poet or painter. For a source person, her ergon is both an implementation path (the work) and the work’s result (the output). But the source person’s work is more complex than a simple fabrication. Unlike mechanically following an instruction manual or putting an Ikea bed together, it requires setting a course, making adjustments according to the ups and downs of the experience, and continually aligning the implementation with the chosen course. As a result, the source person’s action is both very strong and very fragile. A formidable surge propels the source person to undertake, develop and complete her initiative, but the undertaking is also very delicate. It is constantly susceptible to being buffeted by unpredictable and unmanageable circumstances, and to being influenced by her own imperfections as a source person. To move her initiative forward, she learns not only to explore the power of her actions, but also to grapple with their inherent weaknesses, and to address her own shortcomings.

So what exactly does this work, this ergon, consist of? The source person’s three main tasks correlate with her three main roles:

1. To actualize the intuitions (ideas, vision) she receives, the source person initiates actions and undertakes risks. This is the role of source as entrepreneur.

2. The source person launches her initiative into the future—an arc that continues throughout its evolution. She does this by constantly clarifying, and then communicating, the next steps to be taken. This is the source’s role as guide.

3. The source person ensures that the project’s framework—its values and vision—is respected. This is the source’s role as guardian.

Let’s look at these three roles, and their corresponding tasks, a little more closely.

1. The source person as entrepreneur. As explained in the previous chapter, the source person is someone who takes an initiative based on an idea. Peter Koenig notes that throughout the life of an initiative, the source person continues to receive ideas, insights, inspirations, and the energy to make them happen. We may now add the dimension of risk-taking, which inevitably accompanies the initiative—itself more or less a dive into the unknown. At every source person’s core there lies a bold “fool”, whose faith in her initiative can overflow the limits of what’s reasonable. She seems to cloak herself with a certain naiveté, or as Mark Twain might have put it, she didn’t know it was impossible, that’s why she did it! Taking risks is crucial to her role as an entrepreneur: if she can’t take risks, she becomes an obstacle and handicaps her initiative.

Looking back over my twenty years as the source of Ordinata, it appears that risk, or lack of it, has correlated with periods of development and stagnation. Initiatives taken during the company’s development phases have been accompanied or even triggered by taking risks, while periods of stagnation have all been characterized by not doing so. Realizing this in hindsight has been a great help in resuming the risk taking when needed. Having lived through the interconnections between initiative, risk and development, I can say that a company’s greatest risk is... to stop taking risks. Lack of risk-taking will certainly hasten the enterprise’s decline, even where there are other contributing factors.

Risk is not a goal in itself, and has no inherent value as such, but by allowing the initiative to meander into unknown and untried realms, it does add value. An initiative is a beginning. It always leads to something new—if not in itself, at least for the person who launches it. Risk is the price of admission into what is new. In this sense, risk is more like an investment, and any entrepreneur knows that to earn something you must first invest. This explains why a cash-rich company can appear healthy when it’s actually in crisis: the company’s resources are being allowed to sleep instead of revving up for its future.

The source person’s risk is not only financial: she can also risk her reputation, for example, or a promotion, or even her job, just as she can risk the future of a relationship, or her health, or the very roof over her head. Taking a risk also expresses the source person’s trust in her initiative. It’s a testimonial to the project, and her confidence benefits all the other people who are working to achieve it. But above all, her trust in the project helps her muster the courage to take the next step.

As a source person trying to advance my initiative, I regularly ask myself, “Am I still risking enough for this project?”

2. The source person as guide. From the very first step of a new initiative springs a series of follow-up steps. As a guide, the source person’s role is to make sure her initiative doesn’t wither on the vine, but stays vital and develops to fruition. Let’s distinguish the first initiative, the gateway