Everything begins somewhere.
With that first small, bold, committed step.
Five years ago, November 5th, a Thursday, about 160 people from my community came together for Big Blue Sky.
Big Blue Sky was the outcome of a thought I had some years before this. I did not want to be the person on the couch complaining about what was not working in the world, in my community, in my life.
But what to do?
I sat in that question for several years until the Source Idea for Big Blue Sky arrived one day in November 2014.
To hold an event that brought together multi stakeholders of my community to co-create a progressive future for our city.
The date, November 5th, was determined in January of 2015, and it was chosen because of one of my speaker’s availability. We only realised a few days out from the event that it was also a significant day on the historical calendar of the British government. Guy Fawkes Day. Remember, remember the 5th of November.
In May I met my co-founder, Lou for the first time. And from weird places, people arrived to lend their support. A very diverse and highly committed group of excellent people. No HR consultant would have taken this assortment of humans, all without event experience, and expected such alchemy.
For years I had convened people around a beautiful idea, and for years I had watched as our initiatives fell into human disfunction, what I call ‘a messy human heap.’ You might know the taste of this type of experience.
This time was different.
I knew we needed to create an enterprise architecture that set the scene for how the active creators of this event worked together. A code of conduct + a clear outline of decision making and conflict resolution + a threshold crossing exercise that made sovereign choice to be a part of this project a little more committed, than a simple ‘yes you are in.’
I wrote the Trust Manifesto, and we somehow managed to get it into the legal code of the Big Blue Sky Trust.
The event was brilliant. We learned a ton. We did it the next year. The incumbent boy’s group of ‘entrepreneurs’ decided we were worthy of discredit. I was not aware in my first public-facing role that when we rattle the cage of the business-as-usual club, they would be so callous in their attack, and rather than acknowledging that this was a sure sign we were onto something worthwhile, I took it so personally and retreated into a dark place.
The precession of this event….this is where the beautiful story is emerging.
It seeded Syntropic World. Now with graduates in 15 countries. A growing community of practice. Deep commitment from amazing people creating beautiful businesses that are rooted in syntropy.
It taught me to hold my nerve against the nay-sayers and mud throwers. To listen only to those who have sat in the arena with me, who are grounded in the same values of integrity, care, and an unwavering belief that we humans can create a world with a future. To listen to those who take the time to ask, understand, participate and tune out the rest.
It taught me to turn 90 degrees and focus on the more beautiful world we know is possible. To not spend time criticising the broken, or those with good hearts trying to re-arrange deck chairs on the Titanic. Or those who make choices based on the constraints of the system they live in, often without realising they are in the box of the very system they know needs to change.
It taught me about Steward Leadership, about holding the space for the brilliance of the Source Idea to become evident, for a team of amazing and diverse humans to bring their own individual brilliance to the project while working together as a community.
Syntropic World is only into its first year. We have decades of work ahead. What I know, as clearly as I know breathing, is that we, the people, the grassroots, is where change begins. There is nothing we cannot do when we co-ordinate in a space that enables synergy…human minds working together synergistically…
Everything begins somewhere. With that first small, bold, committed step. And an eye clearly fastened on the future we hold that dignifies all humanity, and our beautiful Earth.
Thank you for being a part of that.
*To learn more, join our Alumni Call with special guest Jeremy Lent.
*Sign up for the next Masterclass
*Listen to Christine speak on a panel at Cambridge University, Cambridge Zero event, November 11th
Photo taken November 6th 2020
