What does it take to convene in the second horizon, to scaffold possibility-space(s), collaborate 'generatively' (Brenda Zimmerman), and activate longer horizon foresight work, pulling the future nearer?
In the meanwhile space, between the grounded and textured right-now reality of horizon one, and the distant abstractions of preferred, or perhaps properly frightening third horizons, is a large fuzzy space, the second horizon, inhabited by an odd crowd of actions yet to happen, ghosts of actions past, fictions and hallucinations.
The reality of making the meanwhile space and time of the second horizon work for you is fragile. There is the pull backwards towards optimizing rather than pushing for disruptive transformation. Socalled data-led decision-making has little play in it for doing things that you do not yet know how to do. But this fragility is also because leading through the meanwhile spaces is not the kind of heroic, charismatic work that organizations are inclined to prize. It is the invisible, painstaking effort to break open, and then hold open, welcoming spaces, just firm enough that they stabilize collaboration, but sufficiently fuzzy at the edge to stay open to a bit of buffeting by the elements.
This presentation will explore ways of inhabiting, influencing, and orchestrating change in the meanwhile times and spaces of the second horizon - between past and present, between projects, between places, between people.
The character of the second horizon is refracted through the lens of four illustrations which explore different aspects of 'liminal leadership'. (Nora Bateson).