Confusion Is Normal at First

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From Bill Easum 

Just about everyone I talked with confesses that in the beginning of the shift from command and control to permission giving most everything is confusing since it has never been done that way before. people ask questions that no one would ask if they had never been in a command and control system. I have found that when I talk about how to transition into permission giving in non mainline groups, especially postmodern churches, they look at me like I'm in outer space. They do not see anything unusual about permission giving. it is the normal way of life, to live without a lot of structure. So tell your people it is okay to feel confused and have lots of questions. Just trust the system to work and new ways of accomplishing things will come to the surface because organic systems live to organize themselves and will do so if given free reign.

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The three principles that I believe most directly address the disorganized appearance of permission-giving are:

1) The Law of Devolution:  "A company may be at peak efficiency, but on the wrong mountain.  Nearby looms a higher peak.  To scale a higher peak means crossing a valley of less fitness first."

2) The Law of Churn:  "As networks have permeated our world, the economy has come to resemble an ecology of organisms, interlinked and co-evolving, constantly in flux, deeply entangled, ever expanding. ...no balance exists in nature; rather, as evolution proceeds, there is perpetual disruption as new species displace old...and as organisms and environments transform each other."

3) The Law of Inefficiencies:  "Each new invention creates a space from which several more inventions can be created.  And from each of those new innovations comes yet more spaces of opportunity.  There is more to be gained by creating new spaces than by maximizing the efficiencies of the old spaces."