Cultivating Change

Hanno Burmester is an interesting young German, a disappointed activist in the mainstream SDP before working at his own organisational consultancy for almost a decade, who has now produced a little book which argues that we need a “triple transformation” – in ourselves, in our organisations and in our social systems.

Nothing if not ambitious! But the scale of the global crises we face requires nothing less 

The book has an intriguing title - “Unlearn – a compass for radical transformation”. Whenever I’m enticed by a book’s title or marketing I resort to some annoying questions – for starters, does the author take the trouble in the Introduction to try to persuade me that the book deserves my precious time?

His answer is short and clear – few books deal with all three levels. Go into any bookshop and you will be directed to three different parts of the bookshop – self-help, business studies and politics/social change. 

A second question I pose involves the reader going to the back of the book to find the “further reading” which, ideally, should explain why the author has selected the various titles. I need this to give me a sense of the author’s view of the world. In this case, I was simply given a list of a dozen books – half of which I knew but the other half not. They are –      

Tomas Bjorkman The World We Create 2019

Fridjof Capra The systems view of life 2014

Lizabeth Cohen A Consumer’s Republic 2003

Andre Gorz Farewell to the Working Class 1980

Amitav Gosh The Great Derangement 2017

Robert Kegan In Over our Heads – the mental demands of modern life 1995

Naomi Klein This Changes Everything 2015

Frederic Laloux Reinventing Organisations 2016

Jonathan Rowson Spiritualise 2014

Otto Scharmer Theory U 2007

Roberto Unger Democracy Realised 2000 

I very much appreciated that the list puts the anglo-saxons firmly in our place!

You would have thought that, when an author is dealing with three intertwined issues of such magnitude, he would need three times the text to conduct the argument ie a book of about 750 pages. But this one comes in at 135 pages!!

Surely a lot has been sacrificed? 

But perhaps that just reveals my age! My generation was the rationalistic one – and expected things to be proven – by detailed argument. HB is more generous and..well…spiritual and rests more on appeal to values – and stories. He’s pretty strong on self-analysis and, in his comments on organisations, I can hear the voices of Frederic Laloux and David Graeber. His final section on social transformation, however, does perhaps rely too much on the collapse of will of communist regimes in 1989-92. 

His basic argument is that there is a “core self” which warns us when we are going against our nature and that we should listen to it. As individuals, organisation and societies we are too comfortable with the status quo and ignore the multiple signs of stress around us – be it depression, suicide, protest. His section on “things that hold us down” makes some good points.

And the point of his title is that we all – at whatever level – need to prepare properly for what is involved as we make the necessary adjustments to our values and behaviour 

But he doesn’t seem to recognise the strength of the effort which the corporate system is putting into the fight to maintain its privileges.

And – if this is a compass – then I would have wished him to attach a few more pointers and resources to help us on his journey. 

But I enjoyed the book – it is engaging and well-written/translated.

More importantly it made me think – and scribble notes to myself – always a tribute to a good read. For example I could see the link to older material such as Building the bridge as you walk on it (2004) by Robert Quinn about whom I have written several times here. And the triple transformation is also a theme which crops up in Robin Skynner and John Cleese’s Life – and how to survive it (1993) where a therapist and leading British comic 

have a Socratic dialogue about the initial stages of everyone’s development – as babies weaning ourselves from our mothers, learning about the wider environment and coping with our feelings. They then use this understanding of the principles of healthy (family) relationships to explore the preconditions for healthy organisations and societies 

But any reference to such texts would have made the text much longer – and the beauty of the book is its brevity!

Update; I'm remiss in forgetting to thank The Alternative website for alerting me to the book and they also have a feature on Tomas Bjorkman who is the first of the authors on Burmester’s short reading list