Chaos comes in many forms, from failing companies to a failing economy, from failing health to a failing health care system. Increasing numbers of leaders and change agents face complex challenges and don’t know how to solve them.

Engaging Emergence outlines how we can optimize the conditions for "emergence," which is nature’s way of creating complex order from disorder. The changes we experience seem disorderly because we can’t discern meaningful patterns; we only see unpredictable interactions among diverse agents in a given context. But order is accessible, like potential energy, waiting for diverse people facing intractable challenges to uncover and implement ideas that none could have predicted or accomplished on their own. Understanding the phenomenon of emergence can help leaders to gracefully and successfully cope with change and emerge stronger and more purposeful.

Holman gives a useful theory a practical twist. The book is designed is to walk people through useful ways of thinking about upheaval, the potential it contains as a source of emergent change, why understanding emergence is so critical now, what emergence means, and how to engage it productively. Holman provides practical insights into working with change at any scale within oneself, with others in small groups, organizations, communities, or whole systems, such as education, health care, journalism, and politics. Engaging Emergence is filled with stories of collapse and renewal; for visual learners, a handful of images clarify interconnections among elements of theory and practice.

Our survival in an increasingly unpredictable world is at stake, and working consciously with emergence is a promising pathway to doing something about it. Emergence can’t be forced but it can be fostered. This book attempts to show leaders how.