Emergence describes how individual things come together to make something bigger than themselves. You can harness and guide the power of emergence to achieve greater goals. Together we’ll explore how and why emergence works. Then we’ll look at you can use emergence to create alignment with your customers, stakeholder, employers for better results for you and your organization.

1. Emergence and Leadership
Peter Stevens
linked.com/in/peterstev
Photo credits go here

2. You can create alignment
Flock of Birds-Thomas Wensing-Flickr-CC BY-SA 2.0

3. Let’s begin…
Stephen Coburn - Fotolia

4. What did we just do?
• Listen before you tell
• Ask clarifying questions
• Guide behavior

5. We envision a world where people live and
work according to things that really matter

6. RECOGNIZED AMBASSADORS AROUND THE WORLD
Our mission is to enable one million people
and companies to change their situation
for the better

7. Alignment is hard to achieve
Larry Myler, Forbes.com

8. Why would you choose work for the government?
You could earn more money in the private
sector, but you can do something for society,
and you can develop yourself in ways not
possible in private industry.
Image: Public Domain

9. One sentence guided federal workers for two generations
• "Let the public service be a proud
and lively career"
• Newly elected president John F.
Kennedy
• January 30, 1961
Image: Public Domain

10. How to harness emergence to create alignment
How to apply
emergence in
leadership
Three
examples of
emergence in
leadership
What is
emergence?

11. How to harness emergence to create alignment
What is
emergence?

12. Is a flock of birds a thing?

13. If you zoom in, all you see are individual birds

14. Is a team a thing?
image © Alison Bowden - Fotolia

15. Is a person just the sum of their parts?
Photo by JM Lova on Unsplash

16. Individual H atoms and O atoms interact to make water
source: wikipedia

17. That flock exhibits complex behavior,
that you can model with simple rules
• Separation
• avoid crowding neighbors
• Alignment
• steer towards average heading of
neighbors
• Cohesion
• steer towards average position of
neighbors

18. Emergence explains how individual things interact to form
complex “giants”

19. The Agile Manifesto is about emergence

20. How to harness emergence to create alignment
Three
examples of
emergence in
leadership
What is
emergence?

21. 1. How a party launched the space race
• Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin

22. Emergence does not require purpose to occur
• April 12, 1961 Yuri A. Gagarin
became the first human in space
• The Soviet Leadership celebrated
• President John F Kennedy asked
the US to commit, “before this
decade is out, to land a man on
the moon and bring him safely
back to earth.”
© 2020 Peter Stevens
Image: The launch of Vostok 1 at Baikonur © ESA

23. 2. How the Americans got to the moon [first]

24. How to create alignment
among 400,000 people
Every member of the Apollo
mission knew:
1. We are going to the moon
2. It’s not going to fail because of
me
3. If something goes wrong…
© 2020 Peter Stevens
Apollo 11 Ready for Launch

25. How to create alignment
among 400,000 people
Every member of the Apollo
mission knew:
1. We are going to the moon
2. It’s not going to fail because of
me
3. If something goes wrong,
remember item 1
© 2020 Peter Stevens
SpaceX Starship Prototype #10 on Ascent
Image courtesy Ron Frazier / Flickr SN10 CC-BY-2-0

26. Do you see any patterns here?
Goal Rules of Interaction

27. Flock of birds
Goal
(emergent)
Rules of Interaction
Separation
Alignment
Cohesion

28. Federal Employees
Goal
Let the public service be a proud
and lively career
Rules of Interaction
You could earn more money in the
private sector, but you can do
something for society, and you can
develop yourself in ways not
possible in private industry.

29. Moon Landing
Goal
We are going to the moon
Rules of Interaction
It’s not going to fail because of me

30. 3. How one sentence saved Apollo 13 but froze NASA

31. Gene Kranz never said “Failure is not an option”
• “…when bad things happened, we
just calmly laid out all the options,
and failure was not one of them.”

32. A ship is safer in the harbor…
... $20 Billion later…
Is that what ships are for?
Photo: Nasa.gov / Public domain

33. How to harness emergence to create alignment
How to apply
emergence in
leadership
Three
examples of
emergence in
leadership
What is
emergence?

34. True alignment requires a clarity of purpose and behaviors that
lead to the goal
Goal Rules of Interaction

35. The importance of vision & purpose is widely recognized
• Alzheimer's Association: “A world without Alzheimer's disease.”
• Microsoft (at its founding): “A computer on every desk and in every home.”
• LinkedIn: “Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.
• SpaceX: “…enabling people to live on other planets”
• Tesla: “…accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”
• Southwest: “To be the world's most loved, most efficient, and most profitable
airline.”
© 2020 Peter Stevens

36. How to create clarity of purpose
• Your stakeholders know the
answer
• They don’t realize it yet
• Ask them, listen to the answers
• Look for patterns to identify
consensus
• Get commitment on the
consensus

37. How to guide behavior
• Listen before you tell
• Ask clarifying questions
• How does this help us get to Mars?

38. What you need to remember
• Emergence is a fundamental
property of the universe
• Purpose + Emergence
=> achieve great things
• Listen before you tell
Ask clarifying questions
Guide behavior

39. Invitation to this afternoon’s workshop
Be Trustworthy:
Get Things Done
Be a Leader:
Build Alignment Around
What Really Matters
Be Effective:
Achieve long-term goals
Be a Catalyst:
Coach Others to
Solve Challenges
We are here
© 2021 Personal Agility Institute LLC

40. “Mr. What Really Matters” © 2020 Peter Stevens
Build the Right Relationship Between
Sourcing and Agile Development Companies
PETER B. STEVENS
A Practitioner’s Guide to Creating the Right Contract
TEN AGILE
CONTRACTS
Thank you / contact me 👉👉
www.Linkedin.com/in/peterstev