In the first part of our journey, we set out to map the fractious, fluid landscape of this world that we’re encountering. We have seen that all products, services, organizations, and persons perish, some more quickly than others. We have acknowledged that the prevailing punctuation of the innovation economy is the explosion: particularly those that drop mighty industries and organizations with a disruptive crash. But we have also learned that in a setting of constant upheaval a wise organization can not only survive, but also thrive—if we learn to act in harmony with that riotous energy. Opportunity and risk are two sides of the same coin. We have to learn to love both.

Strangely, it’s the “soft” stuff that is so integral to doing adaptive, innovative work. As we saw in Chapter 2, before you can form healthy, productive, mutually reinforcing relationships with colleagues or customers or anyone else, you must have that kind of relationship with yourself, which entails acknowledging what you do and don’t know, what you can and can’t feel, and where you have been and won’t go. We’ve also established the absolute necessity of recruiting others to our cause, for our ignorance can be corrected only by another’s experience. We’ve also realized the counterintuitive truth that since our enterprises are impermanent, we must plan for the long term.

Having formed this foundation, we move to the crucial middle third of our odyssey. Here the rubber of our so-called understanding will meet the road of our often un-understandable realities. In Chapter 5, we will examine how the handed-down methods of structuring an organization prevent it from doing its work—and how to fix that. In Chapter 6, we’ll examine how the handed-down methods of organizing people prevent them from doing their work—and how to fix that. Then, in Chapter 7, we will see what a leader can do to cultivate a flourishing culture of shared endeavor.

So let’s share this endeavor.