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Join us for this month’s chapter meeting, “Strategic Organizational Emergence (SOE): Five Pillars, Five Gears, and the Future-Proof Organization,” with Edward West from Halcyon NW.

Most transformations fail not from lack of vision but because linear, plan-driven change collides with a nonlinear world. Strategic Organizational Emergence (SOE) offers a different path: treating organizations as living systems and shaping the conditions from which the right future can emerge. This session introduces SOE's three core principles: symmetry, conservation, and disruption and its two-layer framework: five structural Pillars powered by five operating Gears, with Project & Portfolio Management as the gear that converts scattered effort into coordinated execution. Healthcare and cross-industry cases show how project leaders drive emergence toward full operating capacity.

Speaker Bio:

Edward D. West is a management consultant, educator, and organizational change executive specializing in transformation within complex health systems. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health, with teaching and consulting affiliations at Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Minnesota, and is the founder of Halcyon Northwest, a management consultancy. His forthcoming book, The Emergent Organization: Thriving Through Complexity, Change, and Innovation, introduces Strategic Organizational Emergence (SOE), a leadership philosophy and organizational design methodology for building adaptive, future-proof organizations.

What You Will Learn:

1. Explain why linear, blueprint-driven change models underperform in complex environments and how emergence reframes the leader's question from “How do we force change?” to “What is the minimum structure needed for change to emerge and take root?”
2. Describe the three core principles of SOE (symmetry, conservation, disruption) and its two-layer framework: five structural Pillars (Sensing, Innovating, Aligning, Managing, Scaling) and the five operating Gears that power them.
3. Position project and portfolio management within SOE as Third Gear, the discipline that powers the Aligning pillar and treat projects and portfolios as living expressions of strategy rather than fixed plans.
4. Apply SOE diagnostic tools (Portfolio Prioritization Matrix, Change Readiness Map, and Pillar-and-Gear Mapping Matrix) to identify where their organization's transformation cycle breaks down.