With several bestsellers under his belt, Peter Block has long been appreciated for his innovative organizational consulting work. In his latest book, Community: The Structure of Belonging (Berrett-Koehler, 2008), Peter turns his attention to the reconciliation of fragmented communities through the powerful tools of civic engagement. He recently spoke with Leverage Points about his ongoing work in the public sphere.

It was possibilities, not problems that drew Peter Block to shift his focus from organizations to community and civic life. "What distinguishes the community work," he observes, "is that the people are really committed to something they care about." In 1990, shortly after Corazon Aquino was elected president of the Philippines and as the country struggled to restore democracy after years of martial law, Peter was called in to do a workshop with a group in the government and he discovered how committed people show up at workshops. In his corporate work in the United States, when he would break people into small groups, they'd say, "How long do we have? Can you please explain the assignment? What's for lunch?" "There's nothing wrong with that," Block says. "I've lived in it; I am part of it. But these folks in the Philippines were hungry to produce something important in their lives and in the lives of others. No sooner had they broken into small groups than they were off doing the work. They cared about learning. That awakened something in me."

A few years later, Peter was invited to speak at a conference on transforming local government. As he met and worked with this group of city managers, he developed a respect for them and their work. The technical aspects of their jobs were difficult enough-- holding cities together and keeping them on track operationally. But these managers also cared deeply about civic engagement and building community.

As a result of these interactions, for the last five years, Peter has given his time and energy to the question of how to build social capital. In his new book, Community: The Structure of Belonging (Berrett-Koehler, 2008), he suggests that our major challenge is to focus on what we can create, rather than what problems we can solve. He has stopped talking about what's wrong and how to fix it. Instead, he observes, "No future is created by simply solving problems. You have to tap into people's longing, imagination, and possibility, to organize around something larger."

An Invitation That Promises Something Different
From Block's perspective, most of the conversations that we're used to having in a corporate context center on the practical, definable, predictable aspects of life-- all of which are important, but tend to emphasize short- term results. "Nothing new gets created by better problem solving or by focusing on low-hanging fruit," he says. "No matter how sophisticated we are as a learning organization, if our conversations are limited to measurable outcomes, we are simply getting better at a system, not creating a new future."

On the contrary, in an essay in "The Boston Globe," he writes, "The larger meaning of the butterfly effect is not that we can readily track such connections, but that we can't." In fact, in developing his theory, Lorenz uncovered evidence that nature's fundamental randomness is at odds with the Newtonian idea of a wholly predictable universe. Dizikes adds, "It is probability, not certain cause and effect, that now dictates how scientists understand many systems, from subatomic particles to storms." A willingness to accept inherent limitations in our capacity to analyze and predict the workings of the world--and stay open to diverse possibilities--may be the most valuable lesson we take from Lorenz.