Beyond Survival

A short course in Pioneering

in Response to the Present Crisis

Graham Leicester

International Futures Forum

B eyond Survival
A short course in Pioneering
in Response to the Present Crisis

Graham Leicester

International Futures Forum

Introduction
This feels like a moment of truth. For many years people have been
warning that we live in extraordinary times, a change of age not just
an age of change. My own organisation, International Futures Forum,
has been amongst them – quietly advocating the need for radically
different approaches to intractable problems in a world where we are
off our familiar charts.
My colleagues and I have worked in various parts of the world
with a wide variety of people up for the challenge of developing new
practice. It has been hugely rewarding and inspiring work. But thus
far it has sat on the fringes of the main event. Business as usual has
maintained its steady course, as powerful systems generally do.
Now things feel different. Talk of change is everywhere and so is
talk of meltdown and chaos. The Nobel economist Paul Krugman
recalls similar sentiments expressed by Keynes in the 1930s crash:
‘We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered
in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do
not understand.’ As Krugman says, ‘both statements are as true
now as they were then’. Maybe this is the turning point - when the
bankruptcy of conventional wisdom becomes clear?
It was certainly clear in a workshop we ran recently playing the IFF
World Game. We appointed a group of twelve ‘Presidents’ to form a
world government for the day. Their portfolios covered the critical
elements in the global system - including food, energy, climate, wealth,
trade, community, wellbeing etc. Each President was asked to do some
research and then report back on any potential crises or disruptive
tipping points in their area.
Each report back became more vivid. Presidents were outbidding
each other on the inevitable road to global catastrophe. The financial

3
crisis began to seem like the least of our worries. The fact we were
only playing a game is crucial at this point – it allows a space to be
more playful and creative in the face of challenge. Ordinarily we
would have become paralysed by fear

We are programmed at such moments to adopt one of three

responses. The first is defensive: we deny our confusion, reinforce
our certainty, stick ever more doggedly to what we know. We become
fundamentalists. A second response is even less rational and can
become destructive: we throw up our hands in despair, we admit
things are just too confusing and decide to remain lost. We eat drink
and make merry – because we cannot face up to the reality of what we
sense is going on in the world.
There is another possible response to challenging times. It is
about growth and transformation. We can acknowledge that we are
confused and that times are hard. But we don’t tune the confusion

4
out or deny it. Instead we find the courage to face it head on and the
determination to learn and grow our way through it. And when we
commit to that path it is astonishing how often we discover strengths
we did not think we had.
Learning means taking a wider view, and that can be scary. But
when we are able to do so it allows us to reperceive the way things are.
We begin to see the present financial crisis as just one more symptom
of a world we no longer understand and cannot control. As such it may
serve as a wake-up call to those who still think today’s problems can be
satisfactorily addressed with yesterday’s solutions.
This short pamphlet outlines in four lessons the elements of a
strategy for emerging from the current crisis stronger. The first step is
survival. The next is generating fresh insight. The third is maintaining
the will to act and to persevere. And finally I write about hope,
without which we cannot even start the journey.
Now is a time for many strategies. Some will batten down the
hatches and hope the storm will pass. Some will look to innovate their
way into new opportunities. But we also need some pioneers – who
have the vision to invest in the future rather than prop up the past,
and the confidence to translate that vision into action. What follows
is a short course in pioneering.

5
 Lesson One: Survival
I have lost count of the number of senior figures in recent weeks who
have told me they are not interested in new ideas just at the moment
thank you. Their first priority is survival.
Fair enough. They need to batten down the hatches, concentrate
on the short term, look after the staff, cut costs – keep their
organisations viable while planning for recovery.
They evidently don’t know much about survivors. Studies of
accidents, plane crashes, ship wrecks, people who get lost in the
wilderness etc show that those who decide to sit still and wait
for things to get better are far more likely to perish. Rule one for
survivors is ‘discard the hope of rescue’.
That is a challenging stance – which is why we don’t generally go
there. But think about the costs of waiting for rescue. It leaves you
as a victim in your own eyes. It relieves you of the need to make sense
of the condition you find yourself in. It clothes you in false comfort.
And ultimately, if things don’t improve, it leads to growing anxiety,
panic and finally resignation as it becomes clear the moment for
effective action has long gone and rescue is not on the way.
All a bit gloomy, I’m afraid. So if you are committed to survival in
these difficult times, don’t go about it that way.
What’s the alternative? Many survival schools (which are enjoying
boomtime business, incidentally, since the prophets of planetary doom
found their voices) use the acronym STOP: stop, think, observe,
plan… and then, crucially, act.
The first three are linked. They are about coming to terms with
new circumstances. We automatically resist this. It is something
about maintaining our emotional stability: we do not like to admit to

6
being confused. People who wander off the trail and get lost almost
never turn back. They press on, convincing themselves that they
are still on track and that they will come across a landmark on the
trail just around the next corner. This is called ‘bending the map’.
Survivors don’t make the mistake of imposing existing patterns on new
information.

To maintain that level of awareness, however, is tricky. It requires

a recognition that our emotions condition our thinking. We are more
likely to believe what we feel than what we know. And when we are
in danger, or under pressure, or anxious, our emotions tend to crowd
out rational thought. That’s why fighter pilots have such intensive
training, so that the right thing to do becomes instinctive when the

7
body is suffused with fear. As one instructor says, ‘when you climb
inside the cockpit your IQ rolls back to that of an ape’.
That’s why it is important to slow down, to maintain the balance
between emotions and reason. And observe. Really observe. Don’t
just see what you expect to see, what you hope to see. Make sense of
your situation anew.
This is where new thinking comes in. The US author Malcolm
Gladwell writes pithily about the ability to perform under pressure:
‘choking [in sport] is a result of thinking too much. Panic is a result
of thinking too little’. So let’s try to think just enough. In a way that
acknowledges the new landscape around us since the financial crisis
hit and with an emotional quality that allows our understandable fear
and anxiety to express itself in creative impulse rather than blinkered
denial.
New thinking is a survival strategy. In fact it is the survival strategy.
Is anybody interested now?

Further reading: Laurence Gonzales: Deep Survival – who lives, who dies,
and why?

8
 Lesson Two: Insight
We sit in the eye of the financial crisis and a growing recession,
waiting for the upturn and the recovery to begin. The top three
priorities of most organisations are the same: survival, survival and
survival.
So we might as well do ‘survival’ properly. I wrote in the previous
chapter about the extensive research on the qualities of survivors –
how they react to danger, how they think and respond in a crisis, what
they do and how they pull through. There are clues here for what
constitutes intelligent behaviour at this time for any organisation.
The survival drama has three acts. Act One is the descent into
chaos. Act Two is confusion, commitment to survival and the
subsequent struggle. Act Three brings us, at last, to re-emergence into
safety.
The critical task at the entry to Act Two is to maintain the energy
and adrenalin that fear generates, but not to descend into panic.
Manage the anxiety, take a long hard look at the situation, recognise
that you are off the familiar map and generate the one thing that is
going to help you survive: fresh insight.
Most of us are not in life and death situations. But the task in the
current crisis is just the same. The sudden disruption in the financial
system is just one instance of fragility in global systems now so
complex and tightly coupled they are always running in failure mode.
We hope that the little failures don’t snowball – but things are bound
to collapse from time to time.
The important thing is how we respond. Most people are in denial:
carry on and hope for the best. Others commission extensive
research, analyse trends, develop future scenarios. But that too is of

9
no value if it simply feeds complacency in the present: ‘It’s OK, we did
the scenarios exercise and we’re future proofed’.
No you’re not. Because what we need to be prepared for is
unpredictable, disruptive change. That is what triggers a crisis. And
at that point it is your instincts that kick in – who you are, not what
you know. If
you have a
habit of relying
on plans and
numbers you
will cling on
to them more
tightly than
ever. But if you
are a survivor,
you will adapt
to the new
circumstance.
You will take
careful stock
of the new situation. What is this place? What opportunities does it
offer? What sense can I make that will allow me to take the first step
out of the crisis rather than just waiting for it to pass?
How can we do that? We can take a longer term perspective
– recognising that our sense of the future inevitably colours our
reading of the present. We can start to notice things we have
previously missed through inattention, prejudice or cultural habit.
Psychiatrists notice subtleties of behaviour that others miss, for
example. Naturalists notice entire ecologies on the underside of a leaf.
Recognising that we typically have a limited view and taking steps to

10
identify our blind spots and alternative ways of perceiving expands the
space in which fresh insight may emerge.
And insight is not inert. It is not ‘blue skies’ thinking. Insight
demands action. And that in turn will bring something new into the
world and provide the source for new scanning and fresh insight. Our
first steps will kick start a learning cycle. We cannot plan but we will
learn our way out of crisis.

Further reading: Don Michael: On Learning To Plan and Planning To Learn

11
 Lesson Three: Perseverance
Up to now I have treated ‘survival’ broadly as a metaphor. But we
also know that the downturn will be truly testing. We will all be more
stressed, some will become depressed, suicides will rise. New thinking
and fresh insight are crucial for future prosperity. But so too will be
actions to look after ourselves, to maintain our energy to persevere,
and to care for the wounded.
Over-dramatic? I don’t think so. In the year following the 1929
market crash 23,000 Americans committed suicide, still the largest
figure in a single year. Not necessarily Wall St bankers (although
there were plenty of them) but farmers who lost their farms, ordinary
workers who lost their jobs, entrepreneurs who lost their businesses.
The same is already happening here. At the end of September the
Mail on Sunday graphically reported the death of Kirk Stephenson:
‘credit crunch banker leaps to his death in front of express train’. And
even the normally upbeat Luke Johnson, Chairman of Risk Capital
Partners, was clearly shaken in writing about an acquaintance hit hard
by the downturn: ‘His company was made bankrupt just a few weeks
ago. So now he sits at home in his leather armchair, hitting the vodka
by 11am, mired in boredom, self-pity and regret. His existence has
gone from one of frantic activity to complete emptiness – no money,
no confidence and no energy.’
We know this is a risk. The warning signals have been mounting
for decades. The World Health Organisation suggests that by 2020
depression will be second only to heart disease as a source of illness
and premature death in the world. Rising levels of divorce, family
breakdown, burnout, stress, drink and drug problems, domestic and
other violence, accidents at work, absenteeism, diagnosed depression,
mental illness and suicide – all have been steadily rising to global

12
epidemic proportions. We live in powerful times and we are not
coping well.
We effectively face a choice between awareness and growth or
denial and decline. Denial and decline occur when we stop learning –
responding to new challenges with the same old routines. When our
certainties are threatened we have a natural tendency to invest in them
even more heavily. In organisations this shows up as micro-managing
systems of accountability in order to regain control: stricter discipline
and closer oversight, more metrics, harder work. But in example after
example we see that the results of this turning of the screw simply
leading to increased pressure on organisations and individuals.
We must be able to rise above this instinctive neurotic defence. Ian
Mitroff ’s leading edge work on crisis management in organisations
confirms that lesson: ‘You can and will survive – even prosper – but if,
and only if, you are prepared emotionally, physically, intellectually, and
spiritually.’
Mitroff ’s ‘seven essential lessons for surviving disaster’ apply
equally to individuals, corporations, maybe even societies. The first is
‘right heart’ – emotional resilience. Another is ‘right soul’ – ‘effective
crisis management requires a special type of inner spiritual growth.
Nothing devastates the soul as much as a crisis.’ These are lessons
derived from over 25 years of experience. They point to the fact that
even complex organisations can do ‘inner work’ to build their capacity
and resilience.
With today’s moment in mind, IFF was commissioned by the World
Economic Forum back in 2004 to develop a set of resources to grow
inner strength in organisations, communities and individuals. Such
resources are badly needed now. Whether suffering the shock of being

13
let go, or the stress of being one of those left behind, inner resources
can both ease the pain of loss and maintain health and resilience in
the face of what comes next. The good news here is: we all have the
untold and usually untapped inner resource to manage this. Even
better news is that the best way to survive a crisis is to help somebody
else do the same.

Further reading: Ian Mitroff: Why Some Companies Emerge Stronger and
Better from a Crisis: seven essential lessons for surviving disaster

14
 Lesson Four: Hope
And finally comes the poet. So wrote Walter Brueggemann, the Old
Testament scholar, about what he called ‘the prophetic imagination’.
His contribution to the survival debate is less about technical skills
and more about inspiration and leadership. But without these there is
no point in surviving.
The role of the prophet is threefold. To warn about the dangers
and iniquities of the existing system. To paint a desirable vision of
the promised land. And to maintain energy and commitment in the
people during the 40 years in the wilderness it will take to make the
transition.
This is the role of imagination, and of hope.
But before I come over all Obama, let’s get technical. When
business as usual systems and practices begin to fail the task is to
innovate. Managers must keep the present system running while
the innovators get to work fashioning new offerings better suited
to the times. Clayton Christensen identifies the moment when the
new offerings become more successful than the legacy product as a
‘disruption’.
What Brueggemann adds to this model is a third horizon. The first
horizon is failing. The second is innovating. But if there is no vision
of a desirable third to which an innovation is heading, change is merely
opportunistic.
The third horizon makes a
distinction between ‘innovation’
that props up the old system and
innovation that paves the way
to a new, sustainable system fit

15
for changed times. Without a third horizon vision pulling us forward
there can be no such distinction and all innovation will inevitably draw
us backwards towards the past.
The philosopher Jonathan Lear tells the story of Plenty Coups,
chief of the Crow Indians at the end of the 19th century as his tribe
came under pressure from the white man to give up their way of life
and enter the reservation. It was a moment of cultural crisis. The
bottom dropped out of the Crow Indian world.
Plenty Coups described the transition many years later: ‘when the
buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they
could not lift them up again’. As one Crow woman put it: ‘I am trying
to live a life I do not understand’.
Some tribes gave in to despair and accepted the white man’s
superiority – throwing in their lot with ‘business as usual’. Resistance
was futile. Some – like Sitting Bull and the Sioux – chose to go down
fighting. To the bitter end, as it turned out. Their vision of the third
horizon was psychotic and destructive rather than aspirational.
Neither was successful in negotiating a cultural transition.
But Plenty Coups had a dream that although the buffalo would
vanish, provided they kept attuned to changing conditions the Crow
would come through to find a new way of living. Lear calls this ‘radical
hope’ – the hope for cultural rebirth, but without any predetermined
vision of what that rebirth will look like. In the event Crow youth
learned the white man’s law, negotiated favourable settlements,
maintained far more of their land than any other tribe and came to
reinvent notions of honour and courage in a world without warriors.
Lear writes: ‘There may be various forms of ethical criticism that
one might be tempted to level at this form of hopefulness: that it
was too complacent; that it didn’t face up to the evil that was being

16
inflicted on the Crow tribe. But it is beyond question that the hope
was a remarkable human accomplishment – in no small part because it
avoided despair’.
I regard this as a story for our times. As the skies turn dark and the
‘imminent collapse of civilisation’ literature grows, we too are in need
of inspiration if we are to avoid the predictable future. How else can
we interpret the swell of emotion around the world at the election of
Obama? Mario Cuomo said that we campaign in poetry but govern
in prose. Nobody denies that. But we do need both. Without the
poetry, the vision, we have no third horizon. And we have no hope.
The authentic voice in Obama’s poetry awakens that same authentic
voice in us.
Which brings me to the most vital part of the story of how we
might navigate our way through the present crisis ‘toward the hope of
a better day’. We need to find among us individuals and organisations
willing to connect their actions today to a vision that is more than a
patched up version of the past. These are the pioneers.
Where innovators and entrepreneurs are opportunistic, pioneers
are visionary. They display all the characteristics I have talked about
in these pages. They are not waiting to be rescued. They are aware
of the larger, shifting context for their actions. They are not afraid of
big thoughts and wide ambition. They have strong values that feed
their capacity to persevere through good times and bad. They provide
inspiration to others. They are the individuals who turn radical hope
into reality.

Further Reading: Jonathan Lear: Radical Hope – ethics in the face of cultural
devastation

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IFF Members

Martin Albrow Formerly Professor of Sociology, State University of New York, Stony
Brook, author ‘The Global Age: state and society beyond modernity’
Tony Beesley Conceptual artist and cartoonist
Max Boisot Adjunct professor of Asian Business and Comparative Management at
INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France, author ‘Knowledge Assets: securing
competitive advantage in the information economy’
Roberto Carneiro Former Education Minister, President of Grupo Forum, Portugal,
UNESCO International Commission on Education for the Twenty-
first Century
Napier Collyns Co-founder, Global Business Network (GBN), California
Brian Goodwin Schumacher College, Devon and Santa Fe Institute, author ‘How the
Leopard Changed its Spots: the evolution of complexity’
Bo Gyllenpalm President SITSERV AB, Sweden and faculty member Fielding
Graduate University, USA
Mike Hambly Business consultant, formerly Chief Executive, Digital Animations
Group, Glasgow
Margaret Hannah Deputy Director of Public Health, NHS Fife, Scotland
Pat Heneghan Director, ForthRoad Limited, Scotland
Rebecca Hodgson Researcher, International Futures Forum
Tony Hodgson Director, Decision Integrity limited, founder Metabridge AB
Robert Horn Visiting Scholar, Stanford University, author Visual Language: global
communication in the 21 st century

18
Kees van der Heijden Professor at Templeton College, Oxford, author ‘Scenarios: the art of
strategic conversation’
Adam Kahane Generon Consulting and Reos Partners, author of Solving Tough
Problems
Pat Kane Writer, theorist and musician, Glasgow, author The Play Ethic
Eamonn Kelly President, Global Business Network, California, author ‘Powerful
Times: rising to the challenge of our uncertain world’
Rajiv Kumar Director, Indian Council for Research in International Economic
Relations (ICRIER)
Graham Leicester Director, International Futures Forum, formerly HM Diplomatic
Service
David Lorimer Scientific and Medical Network, Scotland, editor ‘Thinking Beyond the
Brain: a wider science of consciousness’
Charles Lowe Consultant, Former head of e-government BT
Wendy Luhabe Chancellor, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, author
‘Defining Moments: experiences of black executives in South Africa’s
workplace’
Andrew Lyon Converger, International Futures Forum, formerly Deputy Director,
Forward Scotland
Arun Maira Boston Consulting Group, Delhi, India, author ‘Shaping the Future:
aspirational leadership in India and beyond’
Wolfgang Michalski WM International, formerly Director, OECD International Futures
Programme

19
Maureen O’Hara President Emerita, Saybrook Graduate School and Professor of
Psychology, National University, San Diego, California
Aftab Omer President, Institute of Imaginal Studies, California
Ian Page Former Research Manager / Futurist, HP Corporate Labs.
Nick Rengger Professor of Political Theory and International Relations, University
of St Andrews, author ‘International Relations, Political Theory and
the Problem of Order’
Vineeta Shanker Economist and researcher, faith and globalisation, World Faith
Development Dialogue
Bill Sharpe Independent researcher in science, technology and society
Jennifer Williams Director, Centre for Creative Communities, UK
Mark Woodhouse Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Georgia State University, USA,
author ‘Paradigm Wars: worldviews for a new age’

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Publishers
Triarchy Press is an independent publishing house that looks at
how organisations work and how to make them work better – both
internally and in relation to each other and their environment. We
present challenging perspectives on organisations in short and pithy,
but rigorously argued, books.
The name ‘Triarchy’ comes from our founder Gerard Fairtlough’s
theory that challenges the hegemony of hierarchy in organisations
and puts forward two alternative ways of organising power and
responsibility in order to get things done: heterarchy and responsible
autonomy. Our publications offer a number of different but related
approaches to organisational issues from the fields of systems thinking,
innovation, cultural theory, complexity and leadership studies.
Through our partnership with IFF we seek to continue the practices
of breaking with established norms and finding new ways of responding
to our surroundings: practices that are becoming increasingly
important as our natural, economic and social systems become more
volatile and unpredictable. These challenges require an attitude that
embraces the potential of change rather than retreating towards
familiarity and stagnation, and that gives the potential for intelligent
and innovative preparation for the future. IFF’s thinking and writing
is already taking significant steps towards this end and we welcome the
opportunity to work together with IFF on this and future publications.
Please tell us what you think about the ideas in this book. Join the
discussion at:
www.triarchypress.com/telluswhatyouthink

www.triarchypress.com
info@triarchypress.com
International Futures Forum
International Futures Forum (IFF) is a non-profit organisation
established to support a transformative response to complex and
confounding challenges and to restore the capacity for effective action
in today’s powerful times.
At the heart of IFF is a deeply informed inter-disciplinary and
international network of individuals from a range of backgrounds
covering a wide range of diverse perspectives, countries and
disciplines. The group meets as a learning community as often as
possible, including in plenary session. And it seeks to apply its learning
in practice.
IFF takes on complex, messy, seemingly intractable issues – notably
in the arenas of health, learning, governance and enterprise – where
paradox, ambiguity and complexity characterise the landscape, where
rapid change means yesterday’s solution no longer works, where
long term needs require a long term logic and where only genuine
innovation has any chance of success.

Authors
Graham Leicester is Director of International Futures Forum. He
is a former member of HM Diplomatic Service and has subsequently
developed a special interest and wide experience in the areas of
governance, innovation, education and the arts.

Tony Beesley is a conceptual artist and IFF’s resident cartoonist.

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