“Because of the different rates of change of its components, a building is always tearing itself apart.”
Stewart Brand
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“The unapparent connection is more powerful than the apparent one.”
Heraclitus
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Is everything moving faster? Is change occurring at a mind-numbing pace? While it may feel this way, and at almost any conference someone will be espousing this, the non-hyperbolic evidence suggests different. Gravity is still gravity, a minute is still 60 seconds and actually meaningful innovation has slowed to a crawl (in innovation terms). But the feeling of faster, and having to move faster, remains.
That said. “Since 2016 the Earth started to accelerate.” Yeah. This is reported from the Lomonosov Moscow State University. So maybe its possible we just feel earth spinning that fraction of a second faster (note: doubt it). Beyond the earth, the acceleration of innovation we have experienced in recent years, although real, has not appeared to have increased productivity growth as much as the hype would suggest. Some people would call this issue ‘speed versus velocity.’ Regardless of what you call it, the business consequence of this is you can constantly feel at any given point we are stuck in the past (or the status quo) while discussing what’s next – all the while feeling like you are constantly missing out on something you are fairly confident everyone else gets and you don’t. There is a natural reason for this; reality is made of layers.
Which leads me to Stewart Brand and Pace Layering.
The idea is that there are multiple levels of pace in the world spanning from nature to fad/commerce speeds.
“The outer layers—fashion and commerce—move fastest while the inner layers of nature and culture move much more slowly. Because they’re all moving at different speeds, the system is better able to react to shocks. Some parts respond quickly to the shock allowing slower parts to ignore the shock and maintain their steady duties of system continuity.”
Stewart Brand
Circling back to the point on rate of innovation, pace layering can even be applied there because many people would argue speed of innovation has increased, yet, the majority of those ‘innovations’ have a short shelf life (source: Professor Bram Timmermans, co-editor of Industry and Innovation). So, innovations can exist on different pace layers too. What this means is when we talk about business, we are constantly trying to parse out what is on the outer fastest pace, the fads, fashion and hyped, and what is on the slowest pace – culture, people, and nature. In other words, discerning what is important and what is not. Generally speaking, business doesn’t handle this discussion well.
To be fair.
It’s quite possible in a complex world with so many dynamics your brain can quickly turn to fluff that we attempt to simplify things into the graspable.
It’s quite possible that’s why business is often discussed in 2-dimensional framing and ‘this or that’ decision-making.
It’s quite possible in doing so we over simplify and end up in some simplistic-summary-world or an oversimplification which appears useful, but is useless.
It’s quite possible we heighten “we must do this” as a technique to overcome an overwhelming sense of uncertainty.
That said. The reality is the world is not changing faster than ever, it just feels that way. Certainly, many things are fundamentally moving faster and its possible that all levels of pacing are moving slightly faster, but to suggest nature (biology) moves at the same speed as culture is nuts. BUT. It creates a sense that everything is not only moving faster, but things are moving too fast to grasp. It creates a sense we are living in a totally liminal space and, frankly, when we feel that way, we will hold on to whatever appears to be stable.
All of this gets compounded because, within all this complexity, people will inherently pick & choose what they want making “the more things change; the more things stay the same” a simplistic trope encouraging everyone to ignore purposeful change as a necessity because stability simply becomes not only a means to remain sane, but also because it is unclear what change is the change to do.
So what do we do?
Vision, tactics, coherence, and possibility plans. The reality is business, and in particular marketing, demands action now. Most actions bridge then and next absorbing aspects that worked then and embed brand value into the needs of the now with an acknowledgement of building future value. The trick is always to not get too caught up in the now, in other words, blinded by the outer layer of fads and cultural whims and short-termerism which sacrifice brand value creation. This demands some vision to navigate the layer noise.
I believe it useful to think of the layers in terms of technology and people. Why? The truth is technology almost always wants to work faster than most people want or can. Maybe worse is that technology engages people on a superficial level, which can create some activation, therefore neither embedding the full product value nor engaging in a substantive way.
Which leads us to “possibility plans.”
In general, a business is better when they have plans, but not all plans are created equal. Plans should be built to work toward something rather than working to do something. “Doing something” creates fragile businesses through ‘objective blindness’. Here is a counterintuitive thought, plans are good because broken plans represent disciplined opportunities, therefore, well made plans are more about possibilities than they are simple execution. Remember. The best laid plans always fall apart. Always. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plan. And even a plan for when the plan falls apart. And maybe even another thought on another plan. All those things involve change. And then of course there is the plan you hadn’t thought of that actually becomes the plan you actually do. Simplistically, all of those broken plans are about possibilities. Possibilities are change at its best.
The truth is the best business people don’t waste time stopping or slowing down to try and glue a plan back together again. They keep moving and make the best of what pieces are still within grasp. Maybe create some new pieces of the plan to replace some that broke off. They keep an eye on the vision or the goal and let some pieces catch up later if they can. Yeah. Success in navigating multiple levels of pace is you don’t stop to fret over broken plans, you simply seek out new possibilities (in fact often finding innovative fresh thinking on the move) and leave behind anything not key to achieving the goal (and that can be people and materials) always plucking out the possibilities that may exist on a different plane and different pace (but are pluckable at that time & place).
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** quick note on the feeling of not keeping up. Far too often in a world shouting at you that speed is the only thing that matters, people will grab onto things that are only going fast. This is a mistake. In fact, broken plans may actually reflect dispensing of pieces & parts that are going too fast. Your plans should reject ‘too speedy things’ – fads would be included in this – as being too asynchronistic for what the greater objective narrative is. I am not suggesting this is always the case – you can eject too slow, too burdensome components also – but simply maintaining something because it is ‘fast’ is absurd.
Possibility plans are not exactly linear, but evolving. This is true because of pace layering. The best plans interconnect the different paces cognitively, tactically and within the vision, i.e., coherence. The plan fits into the flow of business activity.
Navigating the pace of now and next, well done, captures possibilities.
Navigating the layers of a business’s pace, well done, captures present & future, now and next.
Navigating the pace of the organizational strategies, well done, captures what if’s, what nexts, what (and where) could be’s.
In the end navigating the pace of now and next effectively means your business is not tearing itself apart, but rather building it up. Ponder.