adrienne maree brown outlines the principles of emergent strategy, drawing from the Earthseed verses in Octavia Butler’s Parables series, as well as other sources as diverse as Bruce Lee, Lao Tzu, and Rihanna:

Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.)

Change is constant. (Be like water.)

There is always enough time for the right work.

There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.

Never a failure, always a lesson.

Trust the people. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy.)

Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass—build the resilience by building the relationships.

Less prep, more presence.

What you pay attention to grows.

brown, Emergent Strategy, page 41

That brown draws these principles from so many different sources pretty much guarantees that they aren’t revolutionary; but I find myself returning back to the collection often, and thinking about what it means to commit not to any one of them, but to them all.