PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Since the publication of the first edition of Synchronicity, I’ve been searching for the principles that lie at the heart of the phenomenon I described there—the capacity we have to sense and actualize emerging futures and to shape the future instead of simply responding to the forces at large. What is the source of our capacity to access the wisdom for action we need in the moment? How can we learn to enable that capacity, individually and collectively?

The answers to these questions were slowly revealed to me over a fifteen-year period. Because I feel adequate now to be explicit about what I’ve learned, I’ve added important material to this second edition, including four principles that lie at the heart of participating in the unfolding of the universe.

In the process of this search, I gave serious consideration to the Western scientific-materialistic worldview—our underlying belief system, which has prevailed in the West for over two hundred years. I believe that this belief system is no longer adequate for the issues our society is facing; that a historic shift is now occurring; and that a more comprehensive worldview is emerging. Institutions can play a leading role in enabling this emerging worldview.

At the time of writing the first edition, the most admired institutions were led by what Robert Greenleaf described as “servant leaders.” Scott Peck has referred to these as “Stage III” leaders. But I believe that a more advanced generation of institutions must be led by what I call “Stage IV” leaders. Stage IV leaders embody the characteristics and values of servant leaders but have matured to a more comprehensive and subtle level of development. They exhibit a capacity for extraordinary functioning and performance. At the heart of this kind of performance is a capacity for accessing tacit knowing that can be used for breakthrough thinking, strategy formation, and innovation, including envisioning and creating the kind of institution or society we desire.

Stage IV leaders believe that there is an underlying intelligence within the universe that is capable of guiding us and preparing us for the futures we must create. They combine their cognitive understanding of the world around them with a strong personal sense of possibility—the possibility of actualizing hidden potentials lying dormant in the universe, a view that carries with it the power to change the world as we know it.

Institutions led by this quality of leadership, from line leaders to the very top, will, in my view, flourish in the decades to come. Because of their success, these institutions will become living examples of what is possible in the face of accelerating complexity and high turbulence. Operating from this new worldview, these living examples can play a major role in shifting the prevailing belief system.

I hope that this second edition will serve your own path toward higher stages of growth and development—and that it will also serve the leadership of your institution and of society as a whole.

Joseph Jaworski
Stowe, Vermont
November 2010