The "Magic in the Middle" of Movement Models by George Pór

The current conversation about the models of the movement raises the question of what are some of the other frameworks that would be useful to integrate or, at least, feed into those conversations? Here are my top three candidates.

3. The six-pole model collective intelligence introduced in the "Cultivating the Global Knowledge Society," initiative by Pierre Lévy, here and there .

2. Evolutionary Guidance Systems theory of Bela Banathy:

- a presentation
- his book
- an application of his model

1. "Crafting a Social Technology of Freedom, an Intro to Theory U: Leading from the Emerging Future", by Otto Scharmer. Go to www.ottoscharmer.com -> Publications

All three are holistically grounded, systemic and having a great potential to enrich our work. Whether we will be able to fully benefit from them and discover their "magic in the middle" (a distinction developed by Finn Voldtofte), will depend on whether there will be enough of us understanding and appreciating the portent of one or more of these models, and capable to bring them into conversation and action.

My own intellectual evolution has been nourished by all three, but each of them represents many years of research and a dept that I couldn't do justice to if I was to portray their richness and usefulness by myself. If you are familiar with or interested in any of them, let's explore their unique contribution and inter-relatedness, the magic in the middle of Tom Atlee's and those models.

Of course, there are many other frameworks and distinctions relevant to our work too, such as the "network-centric movement," "learning expedition" or the "generative action" for large-scale social innovation, and many more. A principle that we may want to use in working with them, is how much they help to embody the core idea of servant, evolutionary leadership: sensing from and acting on the biggest context, individually and collectively, with the highest clarity and deepest compassion.

No doubt, the combined richness of the movement models "on the table" would defy any attempt to integrate them. We don't even need to try it. Their best use is sourcing and cross-fertilizing our generative conversations, and validating them in action, to improve both our theory and practice.