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Letter from the Editor – Kindred’s Solstice 2026 Issue
Below is the Letter from the Editor for the Solstice Issue 2026. Read the Kindred Solstice Issue here.
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Otto Scharmer, MIT professor and creator of Theory U, argues that the traditional, static view of a “system” is an illusion—a “blind spot”. Instead, he believes that what we call a system is actually a constantly evolving “coalition of stakeholders” or a “social field” that is made possible by its participants. While I have studied Scharmer’s work in his complex and scholarly Theory U Lab, I found his core insight of awareness-based systems change echoed in many myths, fairy tales, and children’s stories.
Think of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, clutching Toto, standing with her brave companions as a blustery, disembodied head wreathed in fire and smoke bellows his refusal to help them. It’s Toto, with his love for Dorothy and wise instinct, who pulls back the curtain and exposes the ordinary man pulling the levers to create the illusion of an all-knowing, all-powerful wizard.
Like the wizard’s fiery head, systems based on the Dominant Worldview appear intimidating, impersonal, vast, and separate from us. It sets the rules, demands compliance or impossible tasks, and maintains authority through fear, mystique, and the belief that only it can confer legitimacy or solutions.
Until the disruptors show up. The disruptor is often not the most powerful actor but the one least captured by the illusion. In Theory U, the capacity to break the trance is possible through sensing and presencing: moving below the surface to see what is really happening. In the Wizard of Oz, the disruptor is Toto.
Scharmer’s illumination of our “blind spot” isn’t a denial that patterns and structures exist, but that they are maintained by ongoing, witting or unwitting participation. The coalition of stakeholders, the social field, is a living pattern of relationships (kinship), attention, stories, power dynamics, and habits — continuously enacted by the people inside it. There is no separate “system” to petition from outside; there are only coalitions of stakeholders whose quality of relating and seeing either reproduces the old patterns and stories or allows new ones, like Nested Kinship, to emerge.
In the end of the children’s story, we are told the power to overcome evil and return home was always possible… once Dorothy and her companions realize they are the coalition of stakeholders. And their shared quest, their complementary gifts, their willingness to keep going together — that was the real operating system.
And now that you know the truth about “systems”, as the light returns on this Solstice Day, I invite you to set aside time to explore our stories of coalition stakeholder envisioning and building below. I know it’s a lot. We’ve been busy. And inspired (you will be too).
Please join us in celebrating the first official graduating cohort of Nesting Ambassadors this month. We proudly recognize and honor their brave disruptor instincts and hearts for humanity. (You will meet them soon in the Nesting Ambassador Global Directory.)
You are invited to join us for this fall’s Nesting Ambassador Program. Together, we’re finding our way home.. Together, we’re finding our way home.
Warmly,
Lisa Reagan
Kindred, Editor
Kindred World, Founder