Photo by Suzy Hazelwood
Urgency doesn’t live in a vacuum. It’s shaped by the cultural, systemic, and narrative waters we swim in—whether we know it or not. Many of us, especially in mission- driven organizations, are swimming in waters that carry conflicting currents.
Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects offers a helpful framework to name and navigate these currents through what she called the three stories of our time. These stories are not linear steps or mutually exclusive categories—they’re overlapping patterns of meaning that can shape how we experience stress, urgency, burnout, and possibility.
Each story frames not only what’s happening in the world, but what leadership looks and feels like. And while most leaders don’t live in just one story, knowing which one is most present in a moment can offer insight into how urgency is arising—and what kind of leadership it calls for.
This part of the series is offered in honor of Macy’s life and legacy—and as an invitation to discern which story (or stories) might be shaping your pace, your stress, and your capacity to lead.
Story #1: Business as Usual
This story says: the world is mostly fine, the system is working, progress equals economic growth, and any discomfort can be handled through personal adjustment. We just need to be more efficient, more innovative, more strategic.
In this story, urgency often feels like performance pressure: deadlines, metrics, fundraising goals, growth targets. Busyness is valorized. Exhaustion is normalized.
Leadership in this story tends to emphasize control, efficiency, and optimization. Leaders are expected to produce outcomes with limited resources while minimizing disruption. Adaptability may be encouraged, but only if it supports continued growth and productivity.
Team or organizational goals in this story often sound like: “Scale faster,” “Do more with less,” or “Meet measures of success at all costs.”
Urgency shows up as:
- “We can’t afford to slow down.”
- “If we pause, we’ll fall behind.”
- “More is better. Faster is best.”
Story #2: The Great Unraveling
This story recognizes collapse. It sees climate breakdown, racial injustice, burnout culture, political polarization—not as glitches, but as features of a system that is failing. It reveals the consequences of Business as Usual and demands we bear witness to what’s no longer working.
Here, urgency takes on a desperate edge. Leaders feel called to respond to real crises but are often overwhelmed, under-resourced, and pulled in too many directions. There’s a grief-laced fatigue that clings to everything. Anger, disgust and dismay burn like a wildfire.
Leadership in this story may feel like triage—constantly trying to hold together systems that are cracking apart. Leaders might become hyper-responsible or paralyzed by the magnitude of what’s wrong, unsure how to navigate the enormity of the collapse.
Team or organizational goals might focus on mitigation, survival, or response: “Fight to return what was,” “Stop the bleed,” or “Adapt to the crisis in front of us.”
Urgency sounds like:
- “If we don’t act now, everything will fall apart.”
- “It’s all on us.”
- “This is too big, and I’m too small.”
Story #3: The Great Turning
This is the story of transition—from industrial growth society to life-sustaining culture. It doesn’t deny collapse, but it doesn’t stop there. It asks: What is being born as something else dies? It points toward regeneration, interdependence, and systemic healing.
Urgency here doesn’t disappear, but it shifts. It becomes attuned. Relational. Regenerative. It’s less about sprinting to fix and more about responding with care and coherence.
Leadership in this story is rooted in listening, collaboration, and trust-building. It asks leaders to cultivate presence, navigate paradox, and stay connected to purpose without being consumed by urgency.
Team or organizational goals often reflect values-aligned transformation: “Deepen trust,” “Co-create compassionate, sustainable systems,” or “Align pace with purpose.”
Urgency feels like:
- “What is mine to do, in this moment?”
- “What is life asking of us now?”
- “How can I move at the pace of trust?”
Why This Matters for Leaders
Most leaders are shaped by more than one story. You might be leading a team rooted in the Great Turning, while your board is anchored in Business as Usual. Or you might personally resonate with the Turning, while your nervous system is stuck in Unraveling.
Understanding these stories gives leaders the ability to name the emotional and energetic undercurrents at play—in themselves, their teams, and their systems. It helps disentangle where urgency is arising from: is it coming from true alignment, panic, or performance conditioning?
When leaders develop the capacity to recognize the story behind the urgency, they are less likely to unconsciously perpetuate harm or burnout and more able to intervene meaningfully—creating space for wiser, slower, more life-affirming choices.
Knowing the story you’re living in helps you:
- Discern the type of urgency you’re experiencing
- Offer compassion when urgency is contagious
- Stay rooted in your deeper why
- Align your leadership practices with the kind of future you want to co-create.
It also helps you listen to burnout in a different way. Burnout isn’t just a physiological state—it’s a narrative signal. Its tone and symptoms shift depending on the story we’re immersed in:
- In Business as Usual: Burnout sounds like depletion disguised as determination. “I just need to be more efficient.” “If I work smarter, I won’t feel this tired.” There’s shame around rest and pride in endurance.
- In the Great Unraveling: Burnout sounds like existential overwhelm. “There’s no way out.” “Nothing I do is enough.” It often carries grief, futility, and a sense of drowning in complexity.
- In the Great Turning: Burnout sounds like spiritual misalignment. “Something has to shift in how we’re being—not just what we’re doing.” The exhaustion here isn’t just physical—it’s relational. It asks us to slow down, reweave connection, and lead from integration.
Take a breath. Consider:
- Which story feels most familiar to you right now?
- Which story is your organization in? Are different parts of your organization in different stories?
- How does that shape the urgency you feel—and how you respond to it?
This isn’t about diagnosing or judging. It’s about increasing our capacity to see the water we’re swimming in—so we can choose how we move through it.
Let urgency become an opening. Not a force that drives you, but a frequency that invites attunement.