29 Saturday Mar 2014
If democracy should eventually fail, it will be by popular vote!
No totalitarian or fundamentalist regime has the means to challenge the military might that results from the wealth generated by free enterprise. What crazed ego-maniacal self-proclaimed leaders opposed to freedom and free enterprise might be unable to do, advanced societies might still achieve on their own.
02 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted in business, capitalism, democracy, future, human capital, innovation, Investment, science, society, technology
Tags
capital, Clay Christensen, Cosmos, economic growth, Facebook, Innovation, Investment, Kardashev's scale, Knowledge, Prosperity, social networking, Unknowns, Zuckerberg
I’ve often wondered whether social networking companies like Facebook qualify as innovations driving sustainable economic growth, i.e. fueling human prosperity.
As more of the world’s discretionary capital (equity, venture, etc.) is sunk into social technologies we should I think explore the link between virtual technologies facilitating human connectivity (i.e. social media) and vibrant economies conducent to democratic political systems, invention and human prosperity.
05 Sunday Jan 2014
Posted in democracy, future, human capital, society
Tags
2014, causality, creativity, Credo, democracy, Frank Lloyd Wright, If-then, Mediocrity, Progress, Society, Steve Jobs
From Ivy League scholars to country presidents, mediocrity permeates society’s highest echelons. Indeed, we remain defenseless against it in the 21st century. We are hard at work battling world financial crises, poverty and social inequality even as we produce mediocre leaders who proliferate populist, symptomatic, efficient but not effective “solutions” to these and other pressing issues. Democracy itself, the most advanced social construct to date, is no match for mediocrity. I propose keeping mediocrity in check is a much more effective way to go about our world’s progress. We would first need to understand how it evades society’s filters.
03 Thursday Oct 2013
So we’ve all been assisting to the political circus in D.C. over the last few days. Which prompted me to write a brief piece about how I think politics works. My hope is that shedding some light on the dynamics governing the politician-electorate relationship can help raise the bar for the political construct which seems to have sunk quite low as of late.
11 Tuesday Jun 2013
Posted in complexity, Crisis, democracy, future, society
Tags
causality, Cause and Effect, Charles Handy, complexity, David Hurst, democracy, Ecology, future, Mechanistic, Mindset, Resilience, Robustness, Society, Thinking
Thesis: there is I believe a meta-societal, global shift from robustness to resilience (see this for an intuitive illustration of the difference). This is fueled by an underlying transition from a mechanistic (Industrial Revolution) to a complex-adaptive (Conceptual Economy) worldview. We have managed to design robust systems (economy, air traffic, healthcare, energy), but not resilient. Robust systems are great for quasi-stable environments, but the price for not having resilience in highly dynamic, networked environments is staggering: $12 trillion for the 2008 financial crisis, and counting. Unless we learn how to design resilient systems, likely through the application of complexity principles, democracy itself may be at risk.
05 Wednesday Jun 2013
Posted in business, capitalism, complexity, consulting, democracy, future, human capital, innovation, knowledge, management, philosophy, problem solving, society, taxonomy, technology
Tags
Big Data, business, Categorization, causality, Cause and Effect, complexity, creativity, Cynefin, Daniel Pink, Dave Snowden, Drucker, Drucker Forum, Emergence, future, Imagination, Innovation, Knowledge, management, Methods, models, Motivation, Peter Checkland, Resilience, Revolution, Roger Martin, Russell Ackoff, Safety, Sense Making, Social Systems, Society
If one were to cut a global cross-section through social classes, nationalities, ethnicities, ages, professions, genders, and so forth, very few commonalities would emerge. And yet, there is I propose just such a common thread: a shared causality mindset, a globally predominant belief in the supremacy of cause and effect.
Since it is people who run our institutions, this belief continues to shape our modern society and even influence to a large extent the technological outcrops of our knowledge economy. From business strategy to macroeconomic models, and from political debates to Big Data, causality is pervasive and its implications profound.
23 Wednesday Jan 2013
Posted in capitalism, democracy, future, innovation, society, taxonomy
Tags
Ackoff, Capitalism, Christensen, Davos, Drucker, effectiveness, Innovation, management, Martin, Responsibility, Thought Leader
Many of the sessions at Davos 2013 contain “innovation” in the title. Two of the top names in management and innovation are present as well: Clayton Christensen and Roger Martin. Unfortunately, the fact they speak with separate voices about the same underlying phenomena is not helping their cause, which holds more potential for true transformation of the world economy than many of the purely economic insights of the typical Davos crowd:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/21/business/opinion-clayton-christensen/index.html
http://www.rogerlmartin.com/wp-content/themes/rm2009/pdfs/strategy_issue23_thinkingbydesign.pdf
Peter Drucker and Russell Ackoff have 20-30 years ago explained the fundamentals behind the phenomena observed by both Christensen and Martin: in essence effectiveness trumps efficiency. Christensen and Martin thus have a great responsibility, that of acknowledging each other so as to not fragment the legacy of Drucker and Ackoff’s schools of thought; in today’s environment the urgency is such that we can’t afford recreating the Tower of Babel experiment. But even if they and others like them (Dave Snowden, David Hurst, Fredmund Malik, etc.) were to speak with one voice, the real decision makers at Davos will have little clue as to what these two guys are talking about. That is because one can only fully absorb something one can relate to personal experience. Decision makers cannot be taught, even if they had the humility to listen (relevant Ackoff quote: “We don’t recognize that teaching is a major obstruction to learning […] Who in the classroom learns the most…. the teacher. See the classroom is upside down.”).
20 Thursday Dec 2012
Is there a reason bureaucracies seem to always expand? Is there a reason why a committee that was set up to resolve a problem often time gets of life of its own and outlives the problem? Is there an organizational equivalent to the second law of thermodynamics in physics that says that the entropy or disorder of a system always tends to grow? What are the equivalent mechanics that fuel bureaucratic expansion?
I present in this blog entry a generic bureaucratic growth scenario that is inspired by real experiences. The scenario is organized in a number of steps and most steps are conceptually reinforced by the words of a few individuals who are held in high regard by society.
(Step 1) The bureaucracy’s leadership defines a grand and worthy-sounding vision that needs to be pursued.
Because the leaders don’t have a complete and clear understanding of all the implications of the vision they propose, there is usually some degree of ambiguity associated with an otherwise worthy-sounding pursuit. A sound vision requires a deep understanding of the context. And a prerequisite to understanding in complicated domains requires clear organization of the complete knowledge in that domain, or an ontology. But there are many bureaucracies which operate without an awareness of the total knowledge they are supposed to possess and manage. And there are many leaders within those bureaucracies who do not possess the understanding required. An applicable quote from Profession John Gero is: “ontologies provide a domain with a structure for the knowledge in that domain. Domains without ontologies are constantly inventing new terms for existing knowledge and find it difficult to develop foundations on which others can build.”
Nevertheless, even with an ambiguous or incomplete vision…
(Step 2) Planning the work to achieve the vision begins.
Because the true implications of the ambiguity and incompleteness of the vision are not thought-through, there is usually a disconnect between the vision and the time and budget allotted. This increases the pressure on executing the vision, decreasing the opportunity to question the context, the validity of the vision. Because the subordinates are judged by checking off the vision or goal, they concentrate on just that. In a strive for efficiency (get the product out, meet the deadline so we can check off the box) effectiveness (i.e. context) becomes skewed. An applicable quote from Peter Drucker is “efficiency is a matter of doing things right; effectiveness is a matter of doing the right things.” But doing the “right things” takes enough up-front thinking, and it also takes pushing back on a vision or goal that doesn’t make sense.
But it’s already too late for that…
(Step 3) The initiative/project/product gets a life of its own.
This happens because it starts being tracked in the operational systems of the bureaucracy. These are however by definition not designed to be sensitive to context. That is because context takes thinking, and it cannot be easily measured with simple metrics: there is no such thing as a kilogram of context. The chance for someone noticing a fault with the initial vision diminishes at this point exponentially. That is because these context-blind operational systems have a direct impact on the employee’s performance, and they don’t measure context and validity. So arguing that the work doesn’t make sense, can only get one in trouble, since “doesn’t make sense” is not something that operational systems track.
And so, Drucker’s “doing the right things” turns decisively into “doing things right”, or else!
(Step 4): The vision cannot be wrong!
The initiative/project/product is clearly out of tune with the initial vision. The results are just not conclusive and the output isn’t useful. But it has since acquired a life of its own, and even if its ineffectiveness is obvious, no one dares to take the blame for fear of punishment. The disconnect eventually becomes apparent to the leadership, but even the executives who initiated the vision don’t have the political courage or power to declare the vision erroneous. Doing so would mean taking the blame for X millions/billions spent in vain. And so, attempts are made to fix the initiative/project/product from within rather than scrapping it altogether, acknowledging the financial loss, and re-examining the initial premises. The same thinking and methods that created the problem are used to attempt to correct it, which is a futile exercise. Albert Einstein has a powerful insight for this type of situation: “we can’t solve problems with the same type of thinking that was used to create them”.
(Step 5): Fear and stubbornness are good companions.
Stubbornly refusing to acknowledge blame and scrap the project, the organization continues to try to do the wrong thing righter. But Russell Ackoff rightly cautions against this approach: “most large social systems are pursuing objectives other than the ones they proclaim, and the ones they pursue are wrong. They try to do the wrong thing righter, and this makes what they do wronger. It is much better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right, because when errors are corrected, it makes doing the wrong thing wronger but the right thing righter”.
(Step 6): Outside intervention!
An outside intervention is eventually necessary, and this usually takes the incarnation of a new committee. New procedures and processes are set up to prevent this “type” of problem from occurring in the future. The new procedures and processes themselves get a life of their own and have to be maintained which means new job roles or at the very least new job responsibilities are added, and the bureaucracy expands.
(Step 7 and 1) A new bold vision is defined…
And the rest is…déjà-vu!
12 Wednesday Dec 2012
Posted in business, capitalism, democracy, design thinking, future, philosophy, society
Tags
compassion, competitiveness, convergence, creativity, democracy, future, futurism, ideology, philosophy, politics
Over two and a half millennia ago, the Greek philosophers gave us the “dialectical” method of constructive argument. In the 21st century democracy is faced with significant challenges, and moving forward may require searching for solutions from the wisdom of democracy’s inventors.
The dialectic method is a form of reasoning based on dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (anti-theses). The dialectical method of dialogue is unique and different from rhetoric and debate in that it aims to converge the opposite points of view and form a new and superior point of view from the synthesis of the initial arguments. This transcendence is possible by searching for commonalities between the two opposing points of view when considered in the larger context or whole of which they are both part. The transcendence of thesis and antithesis into synthesis represents a qualitative improvement of the argument, bringing both participants closer to understanding the whole of reality as an evolving process. Ancient history not applicable to the problems of today’s highly technologized and interconnected world, right? Not necessarily.
Fast forward to the 21st century: Roger Martin, #6 on the top fifty management thinkers of 2011 (http://www.thinkers50.com/biographies/95) is the creative force behind two of the most valued management models: integrative thinking and design thinking. Roger Martin defines integrative thinking as: “the ability to constructively face the tensions of opposing models, and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generating a creative solution of the tensions in the form of a new model that contains elements of the individual models, but is superiors to each” (http://rogerlmartin.com/devotions/integrative-thinking/). Sound familiar? Roger Martin’s concept was actually developed by interviewing some of the world’s top business leaders and entrepreneurs. Apparently these “integrative thinkers” go about solving problems differently than “conditional thinkers”; and step 4 of the figure below has an uncanny resemblance to the dialectical method.
And so, without the benefit of modern technology or access to a study group, Socrates said pretty much the same thing more than 2500 years ago. And as we look to the challenges faced by democracy in the 21st century, we may have to take Socrates and his fellow Greek philosophers seriously.
But what is the main challenge of our century’s advanced democracies? A lot of the challenges can actually be related to one dominant culprit: complexity. Small start-ups are good sources for inspiration when it comes to agility, but past a critical mass agility gives way to complexity as a bureaucracy grows in size. And advanced democracies are experiencing the “complexity” by-product of progress to a growing degree (see the 2008 financial crisis and other systemic events). And so, in the current construct of democratic progress, agility and complexity seem to be mutually exclusive. So much so that the left and right political ideologies of the leading modern democracy, the USA, are aligned to the agility thesis and complexity antithesis. On one hand, the left ideology is advocating for a top-down, bureaucratic approach to tackling complexity. The right by contrast is advocating for a agile bottom-up, government free approach to tackling complexity. In true agreement with the dialectical method, the future of democracy may well need a transcendence of those two viewpoints into a synthesis that would bring together agility and bureaucracy: the innovative, agile government.
But there are more subtle ideological differences between the left and right political parties. There are so to speak, emotional and behavioral differences in how the individual is perceived. The left ideology emphasizes a compassionate view of the individual, and sharing opportunity with the less fortunate, those that are somehow left outside the system with all its benefits. At the same time, the right ideology emphasizes the competitive human side that is by definition not in alignment with compassion. Are these ideologies, apparently opposed, actually facets of the same human construct when regarded from a more holistic perspective? Are human beings both compassionate and competitive? For a successful society that both makes progress and takes care of its less fortunate, are these attributes not required simultaneously? And if so, is there a model that could reconcile these so that democracy itself has a future? Is the distant future of democracy predicated upon the disappearance of the left and right ideologies?
Roger Martin’s second area of interest, Design Thinking, may provide the solution to an ideology-free democratic construct. Design Thinking, closely related to Integrative Thinking, can be described as a style of thinking that is generally associated with the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context. A Design Thinking approach to political ideology could bring the two dominant ideologies closer together, by demonstrating a shared concern for the individual’s well being, both in terms of the basic need for individualism (competitiveness) and inclusiveness (compassion). Creativity, which is a key component of Design Thinking, represents that uniquely human trait that could lead the way to a future world where competitiveness and compassion are symbiotic and simultaneously harmonious: that is, there is no need to alternate between the two every four years.
