————

“Consent yourself to be an organ of your highest thought, and lo! suddenly you put all men in your debt, and are the fountain of an energy that goes pulsing on with waves of benefit to the borders of society, to the circumference of things.”

Emerson

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“Work, when its right, is a chance to collect the best sides of ourselves into something that is slightly more solid than the more fragile parts of our lives.”

Alain de Botton

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Let me tell you what’s on my mind as we head into 2023 and whether we, as people and a society, have any chance of “pulsing on with waves of benefit to the borders of society.”

Which leads me to say I worry the world is getting stupider on a daily basis.

Ok. Not really. I imagine we are actually getting smarter every day, yet, the overarching public narrative just seems stupider every day – I mean that on a macro and micro level. It sometimes feels like smartness is whispering and dumbness is shouting. All of this dumbing down seems to center around real feelings of uncertainty, lack of answers, a cacophony of opinions suffocating facts and a general tension, and conflict, between the reality of complexity and the desire for simplicity. The consequence of all that is while the world is complex and dynamic and confusingly interconnected, we have become convinced simplicity is the key to, well, everything. We wield “simplicity is elegance” like a dull axe in a world demanding a scalpel. The truth is almost all hope, and possibilities, resides in managing complexity (if not the complicated) while fear and misguided action (including non-risk taking) thrives on simplicity. Within the wretched hollow in between resides much of the current narrative, and thinking, conflict. At this rate we have zero, null, nothing, maybe even less-than-zero chance of contributing any meaningful benefit to society.

Which leads me to my hope for 2023.

We should have more hope and possibilities than we could ever imagine. The more complex, the more uncertain, the more opportunity to not only imagine, but hope that what we imagine may truly be, is actually possible. Yes. Increased connectivity and interdependence actually increases the likelihood that we can shape a future we desire. We should be striving to inject more hope and possibilities into life, lives and society. We should be stripping away the fear infringing upon the possibilities.

The answer to this challenge, at least to me, resides in some intellectual aspects, i.e., what is going on in within mindsets, how we think and how we approach these things. So let me share what I believe would help us moving forward in 2023 to improve upon our hope and possibilities.

• Issue one. over-simplification

Suffice it to say we have devolved into a society of sound bites, binaries, memes and over simplification.

In business it seems to be all about simplicity.

In everyday Life it is ‘summarize it for me’ or ‘it’s simple <insert some explanation here>.’

In leadership it is just, well, dumb. Say some dumb unnuanced shit about things that truly demand some smart thinking and nuance.

In the end I can’t figure out if should be pointing the finger at us or them.

• Them because they think we are not capable of understanding some form of complexity and therefore they only offer up simplified versions of what needs to be done.
• Us because we either <a> demand a sound bite under the guise of ‘we only have time for the headline’ or <b> we only latch on to the fragment of the whole which we convince ourselves summarizes the whole.

Pick your superficial poison because I will point the finger at all of us and them.

Here is a Truth everyone really knows <albeit hesitant to admit>. Most things are just not that simple. An effect can have multiple causes and a cause can have multiple effects. I say this despite the fact naturally we would like all the dominoes to line up one after another and when one falls the next naturally is impacted and falls. We like linear “if this, then that” stuff and in today’s world if it doesn’t equate to that we begin thinking someone is hiding something from us and we begin to get suspicious about everything. Add in that we have convinced ourselves that we need to start by doing one thing and just do that one thing well. All of that is not only absurd, but unhealthy for a working society.

Life and things don’t really work that way. Maybe in a controlled test environment, but, in real Life, events are typically bombarded from a variety of directions and while not all ’causes’ are created equal <some can impact more than others> most things are too complex to be simplified into ‘one thing’ and I can unequivocally state no solutions can be simplified into ‘one thing.’

• Over simplifying simply means ignoring complexities.
• Over simplifying simply means being consciously, or choicefully, ignorant.
• Over simplifying simply means trouble in the long run.

Heuristically this simplistic bullshit (often just some fortune cookie wisdom) eases you through the moment only to have to doubly (or exponentially) invest energy later on to deal with the mess you ignored in the past. Instead of dumbing things down to some simplistic sound bite we need to raise the level of general understanding & knowledge (sensemaking) to the level of complexity of the ideas & systems and <frankly> the world in which we live within. I mean, seriously, Life isn’t simple so what makes us think over simplifying will offer solutions?

Anyway. Factually, seconds of involvement <sound bites> versus minutes of involvement <deeper complex discussion> has a direct relationship to degrees of real knowledge,  i.e., seconds leads to shallow knowledge or let’s call it ‘less knowledgeable’ and minutes lead to something deeper. This suggests our love of oversimplification is a direct result of our ongoing belief there is not enough time to do everything we want to do. This is crazy. Nuts in fact. Oversimplification only gives us the appearance of effective time management and certainly doesn’t translate into effective progress. Why? Oversimplification under-assesses complexity, rarely demystifies uncertainty and is not particularly helpful in creating a foundation so that we can successfully rethink that which ‘is’ to find a path to “what we would like to be” (which is kind of a version of ‘future-proofing’ your Life).

Look. What I am suggesting is difficult, but it is certainly more effective in creating a better world. This means less ‘The Secret’ philosophy and more real thinking. Less positive attitude inspiration and more hard work behavior aspiration.

The fate of hope and possibilities lies in balance if we don’t invest in the hard work of ‘non over simplification’ because I can guarantee we will not solve any of the problems through simplicity.

“A game is a machine that can get into action only if the players consent to become puppets for a time.”

Marshall McLuhan

• Issue two. being intellectually insightful is about hard work.

Generally speaking, I don’t think people – including the younger generations – dislike working let alone hard work. Most people know work demands, well, working hard (at least occasionally). The issue we begin to run into is “doing the work” (rote, replication, doing what is asked) and “thinking through the work” (being smarter about what we do). Thinking and ideas are a dime a dozen, but good thinking & good ideas take hard work. I would suggest that good ideas cannot be decided by number of tweet votes in favor of.

Life and ideas is not American Idol or even some twitter poll. We are not all judges <and probably shouldn’t be on American Idol either>. Good ideas are rarely popular. In fact, as Howard Aiken said: “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If its original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” This really means that being intellectually insightful requires more than a surface ‘this is what I think’ tweet popular vote. If we really want to do what needs to be done to maximize hope and possibilities, we have to hunker down and work hard. Work hard in that we need to reassemble the present (knowledge) & rethink things by using all aspects including economic thought and philosophy and the past – all of which means dealing with ambiguity and contradiction. To be clear. I am not suggesting using what worked in the past. I am suggesting the future is yet to be designed and it will take all of our knowledge – past, present, possibilities/imagination – to create the future we desire.

And while you may balk at something like ‘intellectual insightfulness’ as too far reaching, suffice it to say, we just need to be smarter, less ignorant, more enlightened <open to additional thoughts> and more involved in the difficult and uncertain work of demystification of things and, well, just plain rethinking shit.

• Simply talking about world-changing ideas will not make the world change. Changing the world takes work, really really hard work.
• Simply having a positive attitude ain’t gonna work. Hard work will work. And in this case, I mean hard thinking.
• Simply ‘doing’ aint gonna cut it. We need to be smarter. And whether you think about thinking this way or not, it ain’t about staring off into space doing nothing, thinking is a blue collar job. It’s about work.

Issue three. innovation is not <just> technology.

Innovation is the lifeblood of not only business, but society & Life. It is the path to bettering lives. Period. Therefore, it demands we ‘consent to the highest thought.’ That said. For some reason we seem to be associating innovation with technology and just technology. Maybe worse we have begun thinking technology will solve everything <in some distant future>.

This type of thinking is lazy, not consenting to the highest thought.

This type of thinking leads us to possibly believe technology innovations will eventually solve all problems and maximize everyone’s Life as some point.

This type of thinking is called “technological determinism” and it is a very very dangerous path to walk on.

It’s a very dangerous idea because in reality if we focus just on technology as the solution, we may be preventing the real change we need and are certainly subjugating people, and human needs, to something – technology – that has no emotional investment in us as a human race.

Minds need to innovate too. Thinking and attitudes need to evolve and innovate.

New thought systems, economic systems and systems in which people live, eat and breath all need to evolve and, yes, that happens through innovation <whether technology is involved or not>.

Technology is simply a path that runs parallel to culture <or society> and each needs to be run at the same pace <or at least be run side by side on occasion>.

A truth is that technology outpacing society simply exacerbates the flaws and limits of the slower runner. If a problem is endemic to a system, then we run the risk that technology simply amplifies the problems. Technology and culture are entangled. Technology and people are entangled.

Technologies may enable new ways of doing things (not just doing but thinking) and this effects culture. I would suggest we flip that equation and say if we want to maximize technological innovation, we should innovate cultural/society structure and seek to augment it, to maximize its potential, through technological innovation.

At the moment it seems like we respond to technology rather than proactively drive technology.

Technology has certainly dramatically improved the overall quality of life. The paradox is that the system we have now may make amazing new technology possible, but at same time is creating such cultural conflict that maximizing technology toward a societal ‘what could be’ seems impossible.

We need to innovate the systems in which technology exists: economically, culturally, and philosophically. We need to intellectually innovate as a human race.

“Their most hopeful vision of the future is centred around compassion not convenience, emotional not artificial intelligence. The path towards this vision seems to require little technical innovation; it demands simply that people care about people – an idea so laughably naïve, yet so radically transformative.”

Kai

So. 2023.

Businesswoman changing reality of drought to spring season

Look. Hope and possibilities abound in today’s world, but they are rarely just given; they need to be earned and they demand consenting to our highest level of thought.

We need to begin rebelling against simplistic binaries and embrace the complex and nuanced truths that will move us forward. We cannot afford to be lazy thinkers. For in this type of laziness lurks ignorance and it is ignorance we should fear — not any ideological argument or technological innovation which inserts itself into our daily lives. And maybe that would be my hope of a cultural resolution for the new year: consent to avoid lazy thinking. For somewhere within that maybe we begin to create the fountain of energy that pulses on with waves of benefit to the borders of society. Ponder.

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“Consent yourself to be an organ of your highest thought, and lo! suddenly you put all men in your debt, and are the fountain of an energy that goes pulsing on with waves of benefit to the borders of society, to the circumference of things.”

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“Aim above morality.

Be not simply good, be good for something. “

Henry David Thoreau

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Well. Its New Year’s Eve and I thought I would take a minute and discuss happiness. Generally speaking, I am an optimist (maybe really a skeptical optimist), believe we should do more utopian thinking and believe, for the most part, humans are kind and like to coexist in a healthy collaborative way.

Which leads me to say If I read one more “how to be happy” article to guide someone into the New Year I am gonna not only be unhappy, but pretty grumpy.

First. I have a feeling that anyone who has to be told how to be happy is unlikely ever to actually be happy.

Second. I am fairly sure happiness is not a task; it is an outcome of actions not an action in and of itself.

Anyway. I would suggest the perfect formula for just about anything good in life, and business, is when you can inextricably tie strategy to tactics and tactics to strategy within a healthy mindset. Basically, if you can embed your strategy into each and every task or action that means everything you do is contributing to the objective you aspire to and provide some tangible substance to your mindset.

The problem with most new year resolutions or ‘things to do’ lists are (a) the objective is so frickin’ big that it makes the success probability % so low it’s depressing to even think about <after the initial elation of ‘thinking big’> (b) the tactics are so pedantic and uninspiring <declutter your Life, call a friend, make time for yourself, etc.> it diminishes the bigness goals, dreams & objectives could, and should, be.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that if you go into all of this with a positive, hopeful, mindset both A & B deflate optimism and inflate pessimism bit by bit.

Which leads me to where Thoreau offers us the perfect New Year’s resolution.

• The objective is to aim above morality.
• The strategy is to be the best you can be <all the time>.
• The tactic, the task, is doing the right thing <all the time>.

These are real actions someone can take. No ‘steps to success’, but rather simply steps which embrace and embody your objective AND mindset.

Look.

If you are aspiring to be happy or happier then you surely should, maybe even need, to ask yourself some very serious questions about your Life and what steps you are taking each and every day.

Once again, not milestones, but actual behavioral type steps.

But maybe even more importantly is to better understand WHY we are taking the steps. In other words, reflect upon your mindset and how it fits into not just a ‘better you’, but a ‘better us world.’ I imagine I suggest this because it is the mindset that will keep you going on those days that things aren’t going so well. And, I promise you, not all days will go well.

Oddly, I think of something Nixon said in one of his speeches in 1970 as I think about HOW we should meet the challenges of a new year.

He said that the United States could no longer “conceive all the plans, design all the programs, execute all the decisions, and undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world”.

He noted that other nations had to do more too.

He also noted that we needed to “discipline our occasional impetuosity.”

You just cannot conceive all plans, design all the programs and undertake all the actions and be successful. Unfortunately, its not that simple. Not only is it not possible for the ‘self’ in that many things are dependent upon context and environment and others, but it certainly isn’t possible as a ‘grand strategy’, i.e., the world in totality.

That said. Life offers us a very difficult assignment, but rarely a unique one. In carrying out our assignments we will do some things well, others not so well, and, well, others just badly. In addition, we sometimes encounter some occasional impetuosity <which requires discipline>.

And even if you do get some things right, later on in Life, years after this year passes, with the perspective that time affords, both the calamity of the bad and the praise we drown ourselves in for the things done well will inevitably seem obviously excessive and extreme.

I can guarantee in the next year we will all sometimes be brilliant, sometimes be foolish, sometimes be lucky and sometimes be terribly unlucky.

But all of the things I just typed are things. Tactics implemented in everyday Life which will be successful & unsuccessful in and of itself.

Which brings me back to suggest if we were to aim above morality within each tactic we will be successful.

SONY DSC

I would also suggest to aim above morality means you set aside the societal norms of measurement of success & failure. Maybe even set aside measurement at all. This means you no longer hesitate with prejudice, ignorance, selfishness or any societal pressure placed upon you. You, all alone, take actions with the objective to aim above morality. And in taking actions with this objective in mind we are capable of our best each & every moment. We become a powerful force for what is good & right.

And I also imagine you become a powerful force with regard to your own health & wellbeing.

All I know is that once I saw Thoreau’s quote I knew what I would be doing in 2023 – aiming above morality in all that I do. Generally speaking, this seems like a good objective. And, to end where I began, I imagine happiness can be found within this particular objective and more likely to be found if you, well, pursue happiness as an objective. Ponder.

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“In spite of the prejudice, ignorance, selfishness and all the other impediments that drag us downwards, there are billions of people who want a better, brighter life for themselves and their descendants – who want to be free from fear and want.

When combined with the foresight and ingenuity we’re capable of in our best moments, this is a powerful force for good that congenital pessimists are far too hasty to dismiss.”

Adam Lee

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“The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for a free and independent life.”

Claude Bernard

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“The accumulation of machines transforms the economy.”

Jean Marchal

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Losing access to water for 3 ½ days because of a burst pipe reminds you of how dependent one’s life is to many structural things of what we may call “the machine of life”. It also is a harsh reminder of the fragility of the everyday structure of life. Yeah. I have clearly understood that everything is connected with everything and is kind of banal to suggest everything is reciprocally dependent, but when it becomes reality it makes you reflect a bit more about the dependence of ‘things,’. You ponder just a bit more that everything is a piece, of a piece, and consequently, when one piece slips everything is modified and can actually threaten the whole structure and activities.

It was Marx who stated the more we advance into the new world, the more is economic life dependent on technical development. Life has almost become dependent upon the machines of life; kind of an insane skunkworks of progress. This gets exacerbated with the uncomfortable truth that as we, humans, derive our lives through increasing independence (skills associated with our economic progress) that farther our skills, focus and understanding draw AWAY from the machines of life. Our lives have become almost completely independent of the machines which, cruelly, are the origins of our independence. Yeah. Our own power and success and growth has no direct relationship with use of the machines. In an odd way machines offer the structural value from which we leverage our ‘transactional value’, but as we pursue our Life’s transactions, we have devalued the structure in place – until the structure is gone or broken. It is at that point that many of us, useless participants in the fixing or running of the structural machine, realize our value creation is threatened or modified and we are dependent upon (a) the machines and (b) the managers of the machines. Our relation with the machines of the world comes into a harsh light of reality and, well, its not pretty.

Everyday social and economic applications are made possible by technology, which is part of the machine structure, as well as the machine infrastructure in totality which makes life chug along. The machine is the most important unspectacular aspect of all of human’s activities including, but not exclusively, productive activity.

The machines, and the mechanization of life, are maybe not only the enablers of existence, but I imagine one could argue every advancement in the machine structure is existence itself – at least in most modern societies. Everything the machine structure touches transforms the humans and the human world. Machines and the machine structure have become a social necessity. but they also structure labor and has economic repercussions. The water flowing into every home and every apartment and every business is, well, planned, therefore, its lack of flow has become unplanned. Human freedom to pursue wealth and their lives really has no existence except to the degree that we are subject to the degree that machine conditions permit the means to be discovered. Which leads me back that ‘unplanned’ thought. To neglect the machine context of humanity is to live in a dreamworld, yet, we do so – all the time. Freedom is a condition of the machines. Yeah. Me. The guy who talks about humancentric and humans driving progress just said that. It is a bit humbling to be reminded that while many of us espouse that humans are at the center of all progress, that humans are often not the dominant variable in that progress and the reality is much of or existence can exist only in relation to not only other people, but the machine infrastructure. And maybe that is my point today. Water, computers, the internet, electricity … they provide us certain degrees of freedom to pursue many of the things in life. Let’s call them “the condition for a free and independent life.”  When they get modified, even maybe in some smallish ways, everything else gets modified – even us, even daily life. Ponder.

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“It is pure utopian abstraction to say that nothing prevents the existence of individual needs. On the contrary, human nature does.”

Jacque Ellul

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“If today industrial civilization seems to us something less than Utopian—if it appears, in fact, to be oppressive, dreary, ecologically precarious, war-prone, and psychologically repressive—we need to

understand why.”

Alvin Toffler, third wave, 1980

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Today I will argue that an increasingly complex dynamic world is a good argument for revisiting Utopian thinking. Complexity, and its close cousin uncertainty, tend to encourage some rational, more conservative, thinking. In other words, you will hear “we need to be pragmatic” a shitload more often the more dynamic and complex a business environment may be. But here is the truth. Connectivity and interdependence have possibly made things a bit more complex, yet, it has also opened up opportunities to, well, possibilities. The interdependence, from a pragmatic view, makes almost any utopian thinking somewhere within several degrees of a grasp. Yes. I just said Utopian thinking and pragmatism together (wrap your head around that contradiction). Personally, I believe Utopian thinking is an underrated aspect of humanity – a hopeful belief for not just better, but some best version of something.  And I say that as a clearly pragmatic person. And when I bring up Utopia, I remind everyone the word “utopia” means “no place” so utopias are not necessarily meant to design specific paths to a desired space, they are meant to show us what’s wrong with the present state and strive toward possibilities. Now. The danger of the possibilities of Utopia, of course, are the false choices found within spectacular abundance of possibilities found within an everchanging dynamic environment. But recognizing that danger shouldn’t translate into acceptance of limitations, but rather see limitations as dynamic themselves.

Which leads me to suggest any utopian thinking, even when grounded in reality, are utopian insofar as they ignore the perceived gravity of history and its struggles. What I mean by that is if you look a little too closely at history, the past appears to have an inevitable arc dotted with failures deemed inevitable (in hindsight). This taints future thinking in application. So, while utopian thinking, and Utopia, actually demands some pragmatism and certainly some real actions it also demands the ability to see new arcs, new patterns and new possibilities within new contexts (a failure in the past is a failure n a context and utopia is found within new contexts).

I say this not to suggest your Utopia fate is tied to the destiny designs of contexts, but rather that contexts are meant to be actively engaged. A “laissez faire” business is about as realistic as a “laissez faire” society; it’s a lazy idea which the strong or the lucky will exploit to establish unquestioned authority over others. Or, as Jaron Lanier suggests, “power will exploit flaws/gaps even in Utopia.”

 

“I await with patience a catastrophe that is slow in coming.”

Albert Camus

Prying apart dystopia.

One of the arguments for thinking about a Utopia is that you need to pry apart dystopia to get there. Pragmatically speaking the current system is made-up of three distinct parts that are connected: there is the machine of production, the distribution of that production to the people including transportation, and finally humans themselves. Today, distribution is not of the machine, but for the machine. This becomes important as more and more humans become part of the machine itself. What this means is that distribution, simultaneously, becomes in service to a machine-human world looping inextricably survival of both to both. Obviously, that doesn’t sound utopian even if it is not dystopian. As a consequence of this Borg-like system where humans gathered around machines was it actually forced humans to come to the machine – what I mean by this is an outcome was big cities. That continued to close the system thereby only emphasizing the dystopian features even while the machine encouraged everyone to think it was the path to Utopia. I could go on and on about other characteristics of what has become a dystopian, even if somewhat effective, world. here is where I circle back to the beginning of this segment – the three components. If we seek to not only envision, but create, a Utopia we must pry apart what appears to be inextricably linked and create a new world. Hopefully a better world.

Utopian thinking is all about hope.

It used to be science fiction was filled with Utopian adventures using the imagination to wonder of the possibilities for humankind. Now, even science fiction, has veered into the bitter, pessimistic, universe of dystopia. In many of these scenarios technology, instead of being portrayed as the engine of progress, increasingly appeared as an unstoppable force of destruction – of human freedom, human joy and human sense of meaning. These mental scenarios have bled into the psyche of society, and business, and has convinced a lot of people hoping is useless. In fact, today you can be trapped in between a futuristic world view of dystopian nature fed from an uncontrolled growth attitude and a present in which a number of loud voices are decrying growth (degrowth, Limits to Growth, etc.). it creates a sense everything is going wrong and the dystopian future, and catastrophe, is a fait accompli so why hope, let alone work, for something better.

And then there is work itself. Prior to the industrial revolution work wasn’t particularly great, but at least there was a sense of self extension, i.e., ‘I produced with my own hands’.  From there industrialization created the machine/human system leading to unemployment, to grinding monotony on the job, to overspecialization, to the indifferent, if not unempathetic, treatment of the individual, to low wages. All of which appear to be unresolvable within the framework of the current system. What I mean is that if those problems have remained for 200 years, under capitalist/socialist/communist constructs, there is cause to think they may be inherent in the mode of production. This breeds hopelessness and a sense of futility. I say all of that to circle back to the first sentence in this segment – this truly can all be resolved with imagination of possibilities. Yeah. Imagine Utopia. Yeah. It is as simple, and complex, as that.

“In order to create a smoothly running society, we need to both protect the here and now, and problem-solve and look effectively into the future. So it’s a good idea to have that in balance across society.”
Hannah Critchlow

Pragmatically addressing the possibilities within Utopia.

It really is this simple:

• What is your utopia? What is the utopia?
• What is keeping us from that utopia?
• What are the probabilities of these things changing?
• What could change each probability?
• What are your fears and hopes with regard to those probabilities?
• What can we do to impact our specific fears and hopes?

Where can you poke the world to increase the chances of creating the utopia you envision?

I like this “Time Machine” idea from Tom Kerwin, the creator of Pivot Triggers:

• Take a trip to the great future

  • Set the scene: “We get in a time machine. When the door opens, it’s <date> (whenever you’d see the results of your initiative) and it’s gone better than we ever dreamed! What’s it like?”

  • Ask people to write down what it’s like on stickies.

  • Together, cluster similarly themed descriptions and add a green sticky to summarize each cluster.

Or try this example. Maybe in some additive manufacturing conference room the largest obstacle, with a low probability of changing in the short and medium term, is sunk traditional machinery costs in manufacturing plants. Maybe they create a division that buys machines. It’s a not-for-profit division created solely to remove an obstacle, it becomes a business (and I imagine there is some accounting voodoo that comes along with purchasing depreciated machinery) and they go into business as a parts reseller, or use the metals for something, or lease the machines to smaller businesses, or whatever not-for-profit business model necessary to make their business utopia a bit closer, and feed a positive loop with purchases within the business world.

Anyway.

If the choice is between dystopian and utopian, we would be fools to not choose Utopia.

“There are only so many ways one can be told that the future is going to be dark. At some point, there has to be concrete imaginaries readily available for anyone who wishes to cancel the apocalypse.”

Joey Ayoub

As we move beyond the present and seek some future Utopia, we are doing more than shifting from one digital transformation to the next, but rather revolutionizing the space within which we exist – decision by decision, choice by choice and step by step. If our assumptions are even partially correct, individuals will vary more tomorrow than they do today, and business will vary more tomorrow than they do today. Why wouldn’t we seek to place individuals and businesses in a Utopia in that tomorrow if there was even a sliver of a chance?

In the end, there are pessimists and optimists. There are cynics and idealists. There are believers and non-believers. There are heroes and cowards. There are truth tellers and liars. There are resistors and collaborators. They come in all shapes and sizes. But if we sincerely seek Utopia maybe, just maybe, we will find a space in which the Utopia for our business resides within a space which both the business and humans thrive.

Think about this when you ponder Utopian thinking. Not to get too wonky, but, try this: quantum business. There are multiple planes of reality, you just choose one. And maybe that is why seeking Utopia is more important, and possible, than ever. The more complexity, the more dynamism, the more interconnectedness, the more quantum features business portrays, the more likely Utopia is attainable if you are savvy, show some agility (in action and thinking) and not get stuck on a “plan.” Utopian thinking should be undergirded by Amara’s three laws of futures:

• (1) the future is not predetermined
• (2) the future is not predictable
• (3) the future outcomes can be influenced by our choices in the present

What I will say is that there is no hope for a Utopian outcome, nor hope for a safe transition to a decent space is possible until we address the need for institutional transformation. This is a big ask, is terrifying, is exhilarating, and is the way beyond both entropy and dystopia. The attitude of the future must be matched by a changed attitude for what the business of the future could be. Which leads me to end with James Carse: “Only that which can change can continue: this is the principle by which infinite players live.” We play to continue the play. That is the way to Utopia. Ponder.

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“Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward.”

Abraham Verghese

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“It’s the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.”

Barbara Kingsolver

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Thinking about what legacy you want to leave behind can make you start thinking a little bit about what you may want to stubbornly stand for and demand of Life and what you may decide to compromise with Life to insure you have something, i.e., some progress to show at the end. A significant part of this grand bargain we negotiate with Life is how we decide to compromise with those around us and those who affect the arc of our lives.

Ah.

That word “compromise.”

Therein lies maybe one of the most difficult topics of the current generation.

The topic is that the concept of compromise, meeting someone half way, giving something up and getting something back, is now a nebulous concept.

Why? Because I am not sure I know where the hell half way is.

And I tend to believe a shitload of people are standing with me, on one side or the other, not really sure where the hell half way is.

And if you cannot even see the middle ground how the hell can you figure out how to make a stand on it?

This gets compounded by a massive online communal world in which we all live side by side where even the marginalized people <real or perceived>, nutjobs & experts, now have a place to gather into likeminded groups and share as much a space as mainstream views. For good, or for bad, online any group of people can organize & mobilize & challenge the status quo … or pick & choose which status quo fits their view. The internet amplifies discourses critical of, well, any status quo you can think of.  And, as anyone could expect, all the critical discourse triggers a corresponding equal backlash from those who fear an uprooting of their beliefs <and the self identities that are inevitably attached to these beliefs>. Needless to say much of that backlash is a bit unhealthy and a lot unmoored to accepted reality.

It just becomes one huge mosh pit of criticism and cocooning of likeminded people.

Likeminded people – all who are angry.

Within all of this situation & anger civil discourse tends to be tossed in the trashheap. And maybe worse is the fact there is this ‘digging in’ aspect where we refuse to see any merit in other people’s opinions. Sadly, I can only conclude that we have lost the ability to converse, discuss, debate and have a dialogue with one another.

It seems obvious <at least to me>, but if we could figure out how to come together and compromise, that we could go a long way toward not only creating a better version of society in general, but it may give me, and all of us, at least a fighting chance with regard to where we make our own personal stand and where we compromise and how we attain the future that we contain.

As long as people cling to unbending attitudes & beliefs, the divides between us will not deepen, but will remain an unbridgeable divide.

I tend to believe most of us want better that that.

I tend to believe most of us would be willing to work to make this a better and more civil world to live in.

And if you do not embrace this thinking?

I would remind everyone that America is representative of a great compromise. The U.S. Constitution is possibly the greatest Compromise ever negotiated <it created a nation>.

But as a first step to bettering this entire situation we need to figure out how to better define Compromise.

Far too many loudmouthed people have ripped the meaning out of the word, twisted the value of the word making it seem valueless, and ultimately created an environment in which  we demonize the entire process of trying to reach compromise.

Compromise no longer means understanding your differences and working together toward a common goal, but now it seems to represent weakness, losing and not being strong enough to get what you want. This attitude and unwillingness to work together creates a dysfinctional society where the unwavering stance seems to be “don’t compromise, stick to your guns, don’t give in to the other side”.

Sigh.

Look.

I find it hard to believe that the majority of America is really that selfish and that stubborn. Sure. I know the people most passionate about any issue tend to be the ones less willing to compromise on them. And, yeah, I would guess most of us are fairly passionate about ourselves – what we decide to stand for … as well as what we will decide to sacrifice within compromise to attain some progress. But within this wacky world where no one seems to want to compromise anything on anything … well … shit … some of us are trying to think a little bit about what you may want to stubbornly stand for and demand of Life, and what you may decide to compromise with Life, to insure you have something – some progress to show at the end.

It seems like the situation we are in has arisen because we have permitted the stubborn voices of the radical marginalized <real and perceived> to drown out the pragmatic voices, the majority, of realistic positive compromise. If we want society to start working again we need to embrace compromise — and let it retain the positive definition which has served it well through time.

To end this I will go back to the beginning.

The “I” aspect.

I tend to believe all of us, with the intent of finding the best version of ourselves from which our ultimate legacy will be defined, will seek to find the balance of being stubborn and demand that Life bend to us and our principles and compromise where we make a grand bargain with Life in order to continue progressing.

Uhm.

If we believe this, then why wouldn’t we want this in Life and in business and in politics and in … well … everything.

There was a book that discussed this. In The Spirit of Compromise <Amy Gutsman and Dennis Thomson> they note that Americans support general compromise as an idea and like the idea of ‘other people’ working together to get stuff done <statistics support this in a variety of studies & polls>.

However. The authors then note that support for compromise breaks down when it addresses specific issues <Americans are much less likely to support a compromise on a specific issue>. What this means is that, as with most things in Life, we enthusiastically embrace the conceptual behavior and balk at the actual behavior.

I shared that to say compromise is complex and simple.

What I do know is that we contain our own future and building that future demands that we will have to make some compromises.  That is simple.

Making the specific choices is complex.

And while I am mostly interested in my own future and making my own compromise choices, I tend to believe we would all find the better version of ourself contained within if the society as a whole were more willing to refind the value in compromise. Yeah. I just suggested our best version is not an “I” thing but rather when we are part of the weave of societal fabric, i.e., “We” thing. Ponder.

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“The coming struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge; not just consumption. Power seekers’ will use this struggle to further their power ambitions. While mass media could have been seen as sweeping generalized manipulation of attitudes and beliefs, technology is using fragmentation to have those with power divide and conquer.”

Alvin Toffler, 1981

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It is too simplistic to suggest any society, or nation, is divided. The reality is that society, and communities, have become fragmented, each isolating into its own cocoon of mindsets, attitudes, beliefs and even performative metrics (proof). If we step back, this is a natural consequence of years of rhetoric and unhealthy narratives. What else would we do after years of businesses suggesting business was a war and the other businesses were out to get us and it was a battle of us versus them, kill or be killed. Or your church is telling you only you will go to heaven and everyone else is designated for hell (or heathens). Or some Cause suggests it is Armageddon if you do not agree with them and if you don’t you are part of the problem. Even issues like climate change, abortion and vaccinations have become battlegrounds of us versus them. And the politicians, well, they are an onslaught of ‘the other party is evil and will destroy this country” or “that country is evil and out to destroy us” or whatever us versus them derivative they can create. Each, individually, divides, and each contribute to fragmentation. There are two main consequences to all this which leads to the creation of smaller groupings, communities, of like minded people:

• –         The more dividing issues occur, the more complex the world seems and the more inept, or unable to contend with, any centralized center of power is, which leads to decentralization (of everything) which only compounds the sense of lack of coherence.
• –         From a whole cloth perspective this cacophony of dividing creates an overall sense that everything is out of control and the world is spiraling downwards into the depths of despair (this is the roots of cultural despair).

But then we get too technology.

Technology, in and of itself, is nothing. Without people, without people generating content, it is a passive tool regenerating itself to its own purposes. Yet. Once humans become involved technology begins to amplify – amplify divides, fragments, communities and tribes. It is within the fragmentation aspect in which we begin to pause on the benefits of technology with regard to society. The fragmentation, the phrasing of ideas, ideologies, values, norms and actual ideological commitments just begin to blur the greater truths associated with each. Fragments get emphasized to strengthens pieces of views all the while blurring larger issues and societal coherence. The extension of technology into our lives has only seemed to accomplish the fact that people everywhere sensing their control over their lives slipping away as the world becomes increasingly complex. With that mindset/belief people begin discerning specific scenarios within which they can find meaning, self identification & success and then go about creating a subsystem, a likeminded community, where desired actions and direction are created, further intensified by a sense of their own survival within the larger system. There is a general feeling of remoteness from the centers of decision making so they create their own decisonmaking centers. These choices are supported by a feeling (which becomes a belief) that those in power don’t care what “people like me think” which only increases an increasing sense how little capacity individuals, alone, feel they have to shape events. Individuals recognize they cannot flex power to manipulate any meaningful levers of control, they end up groping around almost desperately for ways to bring back some order and sense to their lives, and inevitably smaller likeminded communities are forged. What ends up happening is that society becomes an interaction between these likeminded communities and their changing micro boundaries at a community level all trying to exist in a macro larger system attempting to shape boundaries and pull levers itself for the collective good. The consequence of this conflict/tension tends to make the likeminded communities only double down and increase close identification with those within that particular group. This means that society has become fragmented and not divided.

To state again, a major part of the issue is that people have come to believe that whole systems are simply too complex to meet their needs or serve their wants. So, they’ve sought to regain control by turning to subsystems, in likeminded communities, less complex relatable groups, in the hope that their interests can be better served and some control is regained over the distant impersonal forces that intrude upon their daily life. Simplistically, people have simply given up on the distant big structures of power striking a “big is threatening” and “small is effective/beautiful” pose. Technology has simply taken a gentle sloping trend rising towards skepticism and doubt, laced with some conspiracy theories, and exponentially made it a steep climb.

This has become a period of cultural despair and creation of likeminded communities is an active response to fight despair. I say that because this smaller group creation is an adaptive response to the problems of complexity; not an abandonment of responsibility. The creation of likeminded communities should not be equated with indifference nor is it an expression of apathy or cynicism. Development of smaller communities is simply a search for new structures around which to organize scenarios and which the individuals’ micro needs can have macro consequences. I highlight this to make two points:

• –         This is active participation in society, not a passive reaction. These people are not retreating, they are going on the offensive toward things they actively care about. This is important if we attempt to engage with a collective future in mind. As with any self-decentralization if we seek to regain some centralization or, at minimum, coherence, the fragmented communities must be solicited with sincerity, not disdain or a belief they are not ‘smart enough’ to know better.
• –         Technology feeds on active participation. This is more a warning than it is anything else. If a likeminded community ‘feels’ something, the internet will feed that feeling until it hardens into a belief. It will also actively feed other likeminded people into that community. Contrary to opinion, technology can create blindness and will actually encourage people to go blind.

Which leads me to proof in a complex world.

In order to have some legitimacy and just survive within the larger system the likeminded communities construct scenarios, assume responsibilities, and assign analytics to everything they are involved in. In other words, likeminded communities have their own analytics, they have their own narratives and, unfortunately, sometimes they have their own facts. In fact, the larger the macro societal crisis the more likely it will involve a shift at the subgroup level performance criteria that they will attach to their own legitimacy. This expanded use of metrics may dispose people to rethink what has long been taken for granted and decide to shape their own performance criteria themselves. I would be remiss I remiss if I didn’t point out that media plays a role in subgroup performance criteria development. For example, what Fox News cites is important can often become a community criteria. This criteria becomes a measurement for the larger system – even if the larger system may not have the same criteria. So, while the larger system may actually be quite effective in totality, if not the very specific issue at hand, the performance analytics are not aligned and the conflict only creates further dissonance between the groups and the system.

Technology is the ally and the enemy.

Information should be intrinsically beneficial to society and, yet a fragmented flow of information and communication results in increased knowledge AND fragmentation. Technology plays a role in where we go from here, but first, people need to think about the future they desire which, typically, rests on the most fundamental assumptions we make about reality. In the present competitive view of the world, we often think that the most capable are those who are the most competitive, and accordingly that competition creates and secures long-term viability. On a societal level, we have essentially adopted a zero-sum dynamic behind most of the things we do. This separates everything, and everyone, into a binary 0/1, yes/no, good/bad, this way/that way design world (software, algorithms, business individuals and even countries). This current design belief has only made the divide between winners and losers constantly grow and this polarization leads to radicalization (of ideas, opinions, behavior) and, well, society does not benefit. A fragmented society is not one that will effectively build a future good for the collective whole.

We do need technological advances, but our humanity and society must develop at the same speed as technology develops. As our technological ability to impact the world is radically scaling up, our human ethical choices as to how to implement that power must scale up accordingly.

The solution resides in being able to see clearly.

It may be difficult for a likeminded community, from all views within a healthy community, to recognize that humanity – even theirs – is lagging our technology. It may be difficult for a fragmented society, specifcally the smaller communities themselves, to see beyond their loose talk about obsolescence and the rot at the core of our society and institutions and business when the existence of that community may be grounded in some apocalyptic view about every systemic crisis. It would behoove each of these smaller communities to understand it stretches credibility to extend each individual systemic indictment to the entire structure of business, government, justice, and institutions. Every debatable action does not demand some mandate to destroy the entire system and every disappointment or concern about the larger system is not a mandate to shrink away to a smaller community mindset. We need some optimism, not just in humanity, but in the grander systems and institutions. Not blind faith, but optimism. I always recommend reading Rutger Bregman’s Humankind to remind everyone about humanity. I recommend for the ‘We’, those who seek to find solutions to what seems like a dysfunctional society, we need to recognize the difference between fragmentation and divided because the solutions are different for each. Divided is about building bridges and fragmentation is about building coherence. Ponder.

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“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions, but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to great titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society – the farmers, mechanics and laborers – who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors for themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.”

Andrew Jackson

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The future is always dependent upon the development of talent. I don’t care if this is business, philanthropy, education, science, humanities or simply society in total, if you want to be better tomorrow than you are today as a civilization, you need to cultivate talent. When society loses its ability to cultivate talent the implications filter across society and all its trappings. First and foremost, the worst consequence is missed potential. Researchers called this “the lost Einsteins” or the talented overlooked (typically found in minorities and poverty/less fortunate) and it costs countries multiplicative-level potential innovation and thinking.

This came to mind when someone tossed out the infamous “merit based” system for talent.

Simplistically, a merit based concept is the eugenics application of talent. A horrible idea. It sure sounds good, but it isn’t. Talent is not a race. It is a tricky concept, one which is not always a measurable thing and even when measured one could argue the highest scoring do not always offer the highest talent. Regardless of your belief, as a society we suck at cultivating talent. We tend to to give the mediocre wealthy disproportionate advantages from the non-mediocre less-than-wealthy. We tend to dismiss the importance of some foundational young age talent optimization stepping stones like daily nutrition, home security and positive support network as integral to future talent optimization. We tend to treat talent as a race meaning that when we assess ‘talent’ we always view those who are ‘ahead’ as the ones who have the most talent. Basically, we tend to not only not cultivate talent, but in some ways don’t even assess the talent well.

And maybe, while this is certainly a societal issue, the core issue is us – people.

What I mean by this is that I sometimes believe one of the hardest things you can learn in your career is that your best is not particularly special, i.e, your ‘talent’ may be a bit closer to average than you feel comfortable with. This is the realization, a Life fact, that your talent, in reality, is matched by a shitload of people. Learning that your best is relatively easily matched by a shitload of people. Basically not understanding that your own talent could have been matched by 1000’s of other people if it had been recognized and cultivated somewhere in the past. Whenever asked about this (because a bunch of people feel uncomfortable when I say this) I bring up the Janis Joplin documentary: Little Girl Blue.

“… at 27 i realized there are a lot of people with talent, the difference is ambition.”

Janis Joplin

Talent is talent.

Smarts are smarts.

And expertise is almost always relative.

At any given point in Life and your career you can look around you and if you are self-aware you will note you are rarely the most talented, rarely the smartest one in the room and rarely the only expert. You realize that even on your best day you may not actually be the best. I imagine that is a tough thing to get your head wrapped around. Okay. Let me say it is a tough thing to wrap your head around.

It’s not that you truly want to be the most talented, the smartest or the most expert, most of us don’t really care, you just want to feel that at some point you are smart, talented and an expert at something.

Which leads me back to cultivating talent.

I would argue if someone cannot recognize their own talent is not that special, they will inevitably suck at cultivating talent. Why? Because you will only seek out the ones who have figured out how to run the ‘talent race’ well up to that point and attempt to capture them – no cultivate, just capture. Cultivating talent is not, and never has been, about just the best of the best. It has always been about maximizing each person’s potential (because everyone has some talent). Cultivating is not comparing the blooming flowers, but rather simply attempt to have all seeds bloom the best they can bloom and planting seeds of talent. Stewarding the transition from generation-to-generation transition is all about cultivating rather than capturing. We have a responsibility to the future to cultivate talent. Ponder.

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“… the economy cannot stop making us consume more and more, and to consume without respite is to change illusions at an accelerating pace which gradually dissolves the illusion of change. We find ourselves alone, unchanged, frozen in the empty space behind the waterfall of gadgets, family cars and paperbacks.”
Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life

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“Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume, the hellish cycle is complete.”
Raoul Vaneigem

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A boatload of people are asking themselves “what is the meaning of all this” these days. I believe we have always done so, sporadically, but now we appear to have an underlying ongoing questioning of everything. This creates an issue. That core issue is “meaning” or “personal meaning” or maybe “is what I am doing going to matter.” This can range from small individual actions, my vote, to massive esoteric thoughts, like a legacy. Suffice it to say meaning/mattering has become a societal issue.

I could argue this meaning issue is a consequence of a variety of things: increased globalization, cynicism of organized religion, consumerism, Taylorism, 24/7 internet and several things that have slowly stripped away some of the vestiges of meaning. The issue has become exacerbated by the fact we are now actively encouraging people to “find your Why.” In other words, we are asking people to stare into the void. By actively asking people there seem to be one of three outcomes; they discover no ‘Why,” they create some ‘Why”, or they actually do have some semblance of a “Why’. 2 out of 3 outcomes are horrible and the third outcome, I am guessing, is a fairly small percentage of people. So, while we have a real societal issue, we are actively encouraging people to pursue things that are most likely fool’s errands. The void will still exist and, well, its human to fill a void (by whatever means may be at hand). It almost becomes a battle between “I & the void.” And therein lies a bit of the issue at hand.

While voids are doomed to be filled, it seems like in today’s society a void, an increasing one, is occurring between individuals and collective good/action. This may be occurring because of extreme individualism which, consequently, has a cost to the collective (individuals owning and consuming shit only creates more bad shit; not just revenue/profit). But ultimately this individualism means that an individual has less meaning (less connectivity to the collective means less opportunity to assess impact) which feeds back into a consumption society in that the individuals consume more to fill that empty space of meaning. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out meaning, while having an infinite value, only truly demands few finite things to fulfill, while consumption is theoretically infinite and the void it attempts to fill is also infinite in that it can never truly offer the highest human value, therefore, people are falling farther and farther into the void.

To be clear. there is a relationship between the void in individual meaning and consumption. No. I do not have proof, research, or any data, but if I were a betting man, I would bet it was so. I would bet it were so because if you attempt to measure your contribution to society by what you have consumed, well, that is a bit wacky and a lot unhealthy. Contribution is a measure of the benefit you have given to society. Consumption is a measure of what you have taken from society. Meaning through consumption is a weird thought because in its emphasis on consumption it is more likely to create division (or divide) simply through the natural dispersion of that consumption and while I do believe some social unification is important, in this case the division is an emphasis on individualism measurement rather than collective measurement (as noted earlier the collective interaction is important to tapping into true meaning).

I am not anti-capitalism nor even anti-consumption/consumerism, but I am anti-void.

Which leads me to how businesses don’t really help this issue.

Simplistically, the consequences of a productivity-focused business world was increased consumption. This translated into actually BEING a customer or consumer was seen as the new success. We made consumption a measure of achievement and, as a consequence, created a society of envy and comparisons in which to be poor means having less than the average; even if the average is quite high and, ultimately, being seen as less than average. Yeah. Consumption has an ugly underbelly – the people who consume less. When society begins to split people by how much they consume, the ‘consumers’ see those who access safety nets as ‘exploiters’ who are simply not industrious enough to be able to consume. To be clear. This is not reality but rather perception and, in this case, this perception becomes a mental reality grounded in a general ignorance of reality. But that ignorance creates a void and, well, we know what happens with voids – they get filled. This warped version of meaning crafted a caste system of, uhm, meaning. A huge swath of business leaders misinterpreted Adam Smith to mean that if we each looked after our own interests some invisible hand would mysteriously arrange things out so that it all worked out for the best for all. We have propagated the rights of the individual and freedom of choice for all, but without restraints, without thought for our neighbors, and it has become license to do whatever you want to win at all costs and mere selfishness. We have forgotten that Smith wrote in a Theory of Moral Sentiments that a stable society was actually based on sympathy and a moral duty to have regard for your fellow human beings. The market is a mechanism for sorting the efficient from the inefficient, but it is not a substitute for responsibility or meaning.

Which leads me back to voids and consumption.

An absence of meaning, of any degree or dimension, creates a void. And I would argue a really personal void. The type of void that either keeps you up at night or just nudges away at you fairly persistently. This persistence almost demands you do something about it. and, sure, you can watch Tedtalks, read books, whatever, but at some point, you want something tangible to show some progress against this brain worm chewing away at you. And with businesses constantly saying “buy me to solve X”, well, you jump on the consumption train. After awhile you point out to people how well you have done jumping on the consumption train often enough that the little voice in your head nudging you about ‘meaning & mattering’ gets shouted down just often enough that while you know you have a ‘meaning crisis’, it is no longer a “crisis crisis” to you personally. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that a crisis is a crisis and all crisis demand a response at some point. And maybe that is my point. Maybe we should all, collectively, answer the crisis rather than constantly suggesting each person ‘find their why’ to only have them staring into some abyss. Maybe we should all see if we can address the void together. Ponder.

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“a manner of speaking becomes a manner of thinking”

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“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

Albert Einstein

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Being Erica:

“Change. Sometimes it sneaks up on you. Sometimes it hits you over the head. And sometimes you turn a corner, only to find you’re different in some small way, and the world doesn’t look quite like it used to. So, where do I go from here? No idea.”

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‘We call it a disaster, so nothing can go wrong.’”

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In the past week I told two people “change isn’t that hard” and, twice, received a fairly skeptical look. This is possibly one of the most consistent views I have that varies from the mainstream view. To be fair, maybe 12 years ago I was clearly in the change-is-hard camp. Since then, I have inched my way into the “(most) change really isn’t that hard” camp. Let me explain. Not all change is created equal (yet we far too often lump it all together), and, in fact, I would argue the majority of change is incredibly easy. Shit. I’d argue most of our change just happens and we ignore it (maybe because we don’t want to admit change is kind of naturally occurring). The difficulty is that we MAKE things hard so that it can seem like it is hard. The truth is, left to its own devices, change naturally occurs – individual, community, business, society. Change is almost like gravity. If that is true it would appear if change doesn’t happen, its because something, or someone, is fighting gravity – yeah, like people, us, humans. We are the change constraint.

Which leads me to “will” or having the will to change.

I bring this up because in business we often confuse ‘institutional will’ <the will of the business to adapt to a future state> and ‘individual will’ <the will of people to do the will of the institution>. This is a really important topic when we discuss whether change is hard or not, because in business the institution establishes the frame within which anything happens. They create a mindset and very very often create a very flawed plan of action neither of which tend to dictate how people morph to fit the institution rather than have the institution adapt to meet the shape of its employees. If an employee chafes, or even fights, against the will of the institution, the institution tends to tighten the screws down on behaviors and indoctrinate mindsets. This Institutional Will attitude toward employees matters because institutions inherently create systems of motivated blindness <where people follow orders motivated by what they see as for the good of the institution/business>. It creates some seemingly harmless behaviors which actually obscure key downward leveling aspects of the system. In other words, if you motivate to value the outcome too much than the process or the ‘how’ becomes of less value relevance. This matters, in reference to ‘change is hard’, because many times the institution is dictating the change/behavior it desires and ‘changing’ to meet something designed that isn’t natural to what one would do on their own is a hard thing to accept. But even if the institution isn’t dictating change it is often dictating desired behaviors (buttressed by incentives) which are also not natural to what any sane human being would do on their own – so even without change, current context is slightly painful at minimum.  Most everyone knows formal systems are the weakest links and informal systems the strongest <and most resilient to change>. Most of us also know if you disrupt the rhythm of the informal networks, destroy the informal systems and manage the ‘prediction-recollection’ mindset (intuition mental modeling frameworks), you can reshape the system as a reflection of what the people in the system see as their greatest potential. Read that least sentence and laugh if you want. I did. Its right but it would be naive to think anything over 10% of existing businesses think like that.

• ** note: i have always liked leveraging existing informal networks, and have even suggested in some cases in order to reshape an organization to maximize its potential you have to deconstruct (all the way over to ‘purposefully destroy’ on the spectrum) informal networks. Institutional informal networks are social, economic, functional, but no sane business desires an ongoing battle within an organization of conflicting informal networks so i posit that in some cases purposefully deconstructing some of the informal networks as the way to open the way for new and better informal networks. To end this thought. I sometimes believe we do not talk enough about ‘natural resistance’, or institutional gravity, when talking about change as an accelerated effort to fly.

Which leads me to changing the mindset.

We have convinced ourselves, and businesses, change is hard. The effect, and consequences, are we actually did make changing hard. To unravel the consequence, we need to unravel the belief.

To be clear. Institutions hate to change. People, as individuals, are more receptive. The former does so for a variety of reasons, but just watch as we move into ‘post-pandemic business mode’ and just watch how ‘the institution’ will come up with a variety of reasons, many of them which sound good, to suggest economic recovery would be better if we ‘went back’ to how things had been done pre-pandemic. They will hold on to the construct and grudgingly change some workings within said construct. But. Do not be fooled. This is institutionally driven more so than individually driven or even business driven. And, yes, I just created a hierarchy – institution within which a business conducts itself and individuals who work within a business, but are parts of the institution. As Drucker pointed out: “society is a conserving institution.”

But people, we, you and me, are different.

To be clear. Humans have some obstacles. I believe it was a French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, who developed a psychographic method to establish different socio-cultural groupings <I believe it is called the Sinus Milieu>.  Anyway. Basically, it is a model that challenges us to think about behavior, preferences and cultural practices. The main premise behind the model is called ‘the lock-in principle.’

The principle simply states that if we get used to something, we do not want to change our habits <or attitudes and beliefs> even if we are presented with something new or different that might be better. Simplistically it consistently shows <to a point that it is almost an unequivocal behavioral truth> that habit is stronger than the desire for improvement.

This thought partially explains that while 50somethings actually share the same desires as young people they are reluctant to let go of what they “know.” That said. We change every day. Mostly not in big ways, but we change. It may not be so easy to see if you sit down on a Sunday night and think “how did I change this week”, but it is easier to see if you look back a year. Business is the same. It changes every day. Why? Because business is made up of people. Yeah. We may try and suffocate the change thru processes, meetings, and protocols, but in-between all of that people are people and the business changes.

Which leads me to I believe we make 30,000 decisions a day (the average person).

Asking everyone to change so that all 30000 decisions change is silly if not absurd. And within that 30000 each of us, individually, will hold on to some of them with ragged claws. They are ‘our rituals.’ Our certainty. Our stability. And your will be different than mine and Gem’s will be different than Giles. But still there are thousands of decisions we can we can change. The trick is to match up the change with individual, herd (as Mark Earls the herdmeister would call it), the business itself, the customer and ultimately, the world/society. The change, big or small, syncs up to shift things slightly into the ‘better’ category. That’s kind of the holy grail of change impact.

I spent the bulk of my career in ad agency account management (although I worked in media, planning, business development, my best friends were in the creative department and was a COO – before I became a business consultant. I mention that because I would rummage around inside the business, operations and people, to seek out what made them tick, how they made money and who they wanted to be (versus who they were). The ideas and creative on the businesses I worked with could make the business feel uncomfortable on occasion not because they were wacky, but because parts of many of them showed a part of them, a better part, of who they wished they could be. Then it simply became a challenge of convincing them that this was the time, and the opportunity, to be it and, frankly, this better version of you (and the product/service you are selling) is what a customer prefers. I saw my job as finding the desired change and figuring out ways to amplify it either thru some initiative, creative, project or idea. I imagine this was my way of encouraging progress rather than achieving some milestone or objective (although I never articulated it that way then).

All that said. Change wasn’t hard.

Sure. I’ve presented hundreds of ideas and thoughts I was unequivocally sure were exactly what was needed and were right for them. Only to find in hindsight, they weren’t. That’s not to say they were 100% wrong or they were boneheaded ideas oblivious to reality, its just that somewhere within the idea was something that didn’t reflect the change they desired or didn’t reflect a fragment of who they wanted to be. And maybe they were wrong to focus on a fragment from stopping doing it, but maybe they were right that the part would affect the whole in ways they didn’t like. But my point is it wasn’t that people didn’t want to change or weren’t willing to change, that it just wasn’t the change that they wanted.

People will find exceptions to what I am saying, and some really good exceptions, but they are missing the forest for the trees.

Businesses change all the time. Maybe not as much, or as fast, as we want. People change all the time, maybe not as much, or as fast, as we want. But we change. And it isn’t really that hard.

People will push back that businesses are mired in status quo. And they may be right, and wrong. I will point out that status quo is not stagnant. Status quo is actually made up of movement. It could be circular doom loop movement or even some less-than-useful movement or the shitty power dynamics that all organizations have, but there is movement and, yes, there is change even within status quo.

People will push back by pointing out ‘being stuck in a rut’ or how businesses do the same things over and over again. and, yes, if you view business (and people also) as running through each day in layers of pacing, some layers do repeat over and over. And sometimes those pieces are really important – good and bad. But. At other levels, other pace layers as it were, brick by brick, day by day, a business is being rebuilt. Small incremental changes, over the course of months and years, amount to huge changes. Some changes are direct impacts, others are indirect, all affect the company – either culturally or even from a productivity stand point – increase inefficiency as well increase effective … depending on how the business manages this change. I imagine I could point out that not all ruts are created equal and not all status quo is bad.

People will push back by pointing out a version of Drucker’s thinking. He stated that society, community and family are all conserving institutions and that business should be organized for constant change (I would note to the consultants suggesting business culture should be ‘familial’ you are simply making change harder, but I digress) and point out that most businesses in today’s world actually act like conserving institutions.

I push back by pointing out that while people make 30000 decisions a day a business makes exponentially more and that conserving is relative and principles, well defined, can shift decisionmaking, in a tectonic way.

Which leads me to the pandemic (and some wishful thinking by some people about change).

It’s possible the pandemic will teach everyone a bunch of these things and there a bunch of people espousing ‘big changes’ because of the pandemic. I am not confident that will happen because, once again, the people are coming out of the woodwork to encourage belief in the wrong things. People will be sorely disappointed if we tell them about some ‘new normal’ (that will never appear as it is described). People will be sorely disappointed if we tell them to go back the way we had been doing things (because it will never appear exactly the same again).

Yeah. The truth is that all of us, within our own 30000 daily decisions, have changed a bit. We view some of those decisions just a bit differently. Many of us have even changed some decisions. Businesses have also. So when we making sweeping generalizations like ‘new normal’ we are missing the opportunity. Change has occurred, change will continue to occur, and the trick is to amplify the good change for the better.

“An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment.”

Peter Drucker

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In the end.

Change isn’t hard. We do it all the time. Business does it all the time. And you know what? Everyone actually wants to change. I do not know one person who does not want to be a bit better tomorrow than they were today. And maybe that is what I miss most about being in advertising. On a really good day I was part of something that helped people be better. It was always some grand things, more often it was a little thing – offered reliability, offered some comfort, offered added value in a miserable day. But. It was something. And it was something that encouraged change in a positive direction.

I would have argued with Drucker. I would have suggested everything is a conserving institution and also built for change. Its wheels within wheels. And the trick is to find what is worth conserving and what is most valuable changing. Because all of us conserve something, and most of those somethings are valuable, maybe even just for sanity sake. But all of us also change things. Shit. All I know is that change isn’t hard and I wish we would stop saying that.

When circumstances are right, unlikely people do extraordinary things. When the weight of the situation is behind them, the push of events and time tend to align and the extraordinary happens. Then it is just a matter of getting swept up in the events which, as a consequence, change the course of the world – immediate world rippling out to community, world and the future. Change, history, context, future all balance on what a human actually cares about. Yeah. Change is simply a byproduct of what we care about and, I imagine, how much we care about it. Ponder.

==

“The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true.”

Holly Black

==

“The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves.

We live in denial of what we do, even what we think.

We do this because we’re afraid.” 

Richard Bach

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“People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.”

Joe Abercrombie

==

“ You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more. “

Morpheus

===

“Have you ever analyzed things to the degree where you can’t really remember the difference between what’s real and what you’ve created in your head?”

Edie Sedgwick

==

It is a crazy, sometimes scary, world out there at the moment. No, I am not talking about crime or inflation, I am talking about the fact there is a robust alternative universe in America these days; divorced from reality. In this alternative universe, well, let’s just say that it is the reverse of reality. Up is down, they are the victims and you are the enemy of good.

There are some commonalities within this alternative universe.

• Say a lie over and over assuming no one will notice it’s a lie.
• Say a denial over and over despite actual proof.
• Say you don’t remember even when shown over and over again you said it or did it.

This alternative universe is mostly thriving because of politicians. It is politicians, and the special interest groups funding them, that are crafting this odd alternative universe.

Which leads me to how words, or, maybe better said, the adoption of a word frames the alternative universe. It often begins with a truth (word) that is descriptive and actually pejorative to them (the ‘us’) and they actually wield against the ‘them.’ Maybe it’s simply ‘word appropriation’ wherein its’s a warped us versus them in a playground style of “its not me, its you” wherein while ‘us’ has actually done something labeled as ‘traitorous’ or ‘insurrection’ or ‘liar’ or ‘radical’, they simply begin applying that descriptor onto the people who originally used it. Its nuts. And it creates a mosh pit of some false equivalence (which is an alternative universe in and of itself). It may not be grounded in anything they just sling the word back so that in their alternative universe their citizens can say ‘its not us, its them’. Hijacking words is probably the ultimate alternative universe tactic.

Which leads me to I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that having a huge mouthpiece who specializes in word salad (Trump) helps in this rhetoric-confused world because within the word salad is always something to pluck out as worthy of this alternative universe. I would suggest to live in this universe you have to be Truth allergic, but it just takes a bit of suspension of belief to reside here.

Yeah. Trump is at the center of this universe.

Yeah. Two things happened that brought me back into the Trump/politics world.

The first is this Trump moment in a Piers Morgan interview:

This is laughable. He lies like breathing. He even lies about his lies. But somehow in this alternative universe Trump speaks “truth to power.”

The second is the likelihood Trump will regain his twitter account now that “free speech” Musk is running the twitter insane asylum. It is not difficult to envision Trump using Twitter as his toxic brain waste dump, creating the cray cray twitterverse which embodies the alternative universe. Not far behind I can easily envision returning to the television where a panel of journalists/news anchors simply laugh out loud over a preposterous trump tweet lie … and move on. Yeah. The alternative universe is so absurd and he has normalized lying to such an extent they don’t even bother to respond or comment — just laugh at the absurdity of it all.

And all the while, as they laugh and dismiss, the people in this alternative lap it up as truth (where everyone on TV laughing is lying).

• Black is white.
• Up is down.
• In is out.

In this alternative world Trump creates an alternate truth and somehow, we are actually letting it become real and, to some people, it is a real universe. This cannot be normalized nor can it be accepted. The Trump shit show has to be publicly reviewed as constant bullshit and not a viable reality.

Which leads me to the fact Trump is a pathological liar. Shit. Even the heinous Piers Morgan thinks so.

Let me be clear. Trump and his merry band of liars, are now taking the perception business to a whole new level of absurdity. Let us be very clear on some basic Truths:

• Alternative facts live only in an alternative universe.
• Perception is not reality.

As someone who has dabbled in marketing professionally, “perception is reality” truly galls me. It is an ugly lie. And it is even uglier because in an untrained, inexperienced mind, or a misguided lack of moral individual, it can be used to defraud people – unintentionally or intentionally.

Perception is perception.

Reality is reality.

And perception is reality only, and ONLY, if you permit it to be so.

The alternative universe can only last as long as this alternative universe can stave off the real universe. Just as alternative facts can only last as long as the real facts can get their shit together and get in the game. I would note that Trump’s alternative universe, while grounded in lies, is fertilized in aimless rambling about anything that happens to pop into his brain and is convenient for him to say at the time. He is not typically deliberate about his lying, he is simply authentically living in his own alternative universe and explaining that universe to us. The universe itself may be one bigly lie, but his explanations are truth about the universe TO that universe.

Trump is a rambling, bombastic, amoral narcissist. He’s never pretended to be anything else. What you see is what you get. His integrity resides solely on authentically communicating the big Lie <although … in his mind … in his universe … it is the big Truth>. Oddly this seems to mean, at least to a lot of everyday people, that an authentic liar has more integrity than a calculated communicator. He is genuine in that his perception is actually his reality <just ponder that scary thought for a moment>.

It is bizarre. Fucking bizarre. Trump and his merry band of liars use a variety of truth-blurring techniques <i call it “chaff”>. Their objective appears to not only be to control by creating doubts about what is real and what isn’t, but also to create an alternative universe in which whatever he does actually looks like it makes sense. They stave off reality with a formidable capability to manufacture stories wholesale for the alternative universe population, independent of reality. When forcefully challenged they can “build the wall” into existence via mass disinformation. Through narratives of ‘reality manufacturing’ they can maintain their universe and empower the cray cray to be crazy.

To be clear. Perception is not reality and trying to create a universe based on perceptions is a hollow world. but it gets difficult when a president, from day one to, well, ad finitum, to constantly be trying to convince us reality is not reality, perceptions are what he and his merry band of liars say are truth, alternative facts exist and there is some alternative universe that he, and they, can only see <but its good>.

This is nuts, scary, and dangerous. Trump was a historically dishonest presidential candidate, a historical dishonest president and his merry band of surrogates <liars> have displayed a persistent commitment to lying – needless lying or necessary lying. And it becomes even more dangerous because Trump and his cult play on what some people “feel.” Trump anchors his alternative universe on some warped perceptions, some attitudes, and therefore those who elect to follow will follow the pied piper <allegiance to him above all> and not to any ideology, values or principles <not even the US Constitution … because he becomes the sole arbiter of what the Constitution “means to say to us”>. Trump is not a normal phenomenon and his alternative universe of false perceptions and alternative facts should not be normalized by something as simplistic a “politicians have always lied” and “we can never trust the media” mostly because, at least in the case of Trump and this alternative universe, it’s a false equivalence (and alternative universes are not equivalent – one is real, one is not).

Look. Politics has always had a tenuous relationship with truth, but even in that environment there are limits. As Jonathan Last wrote in the conservative paper The Weekly Standard: “you can obfuscate, you can misrepresent, you can shade the truth to a ridiculous degree, or play dumb and pretend not to know things you absolutely do know. But you can’t peddle affirmative, provable falsehoods.”

Here is the surprising truth to add.

Journalism has always had a good relationship with truth, but even in that environment there have been missteps which create a false narrative that journalism, as a whole, is dishonest. The majority of journalists are not dishonest, every viable publication in existence has a standard of honesty and proof and, while they may tend to a more liberal skewed perspective, truth is truth and facts are facts and they treat both with reverence <because their existence relies on that>. I would note that the belief I just wrote does not exist in the Trump cult alternative universe; there, journalists are evil.

Which leads me to a world with a thriving alternative universe is not a place for cowards.

“Trust nobody?

That is the plight of fools and cowards.

You will slowly suffocate with every breath you take.

To trust is to live.”

Words matter. Definitions matter.

While the Trump cult claims the right/power to define “America” they do so while also claiming to be “strangers in their own land.” See how that works to empower an entire agenda? And how media reporting on disaffected rightwing Americans plays into those definitional assumptions? In this line of narrative, the default assumption in this alternative universe is “this is your America and everyone else is taking it away from you.” If we accept that, as a consequence we automatically are painted as unamerican or “hate America” simply by not agreeing with their definition or even their alternative universe (where their up is actually down). Our truth (reality) are lies to them; and their ‘truth’ is a lie to reality (and us). So, while TV people laugh, we should not. society cannot thrive living in alternative universes with alternative citizens YET with the same objective (a better America) and the same flag on their ID. With an entire universe of fools, it is not a place, and time, for cowards. Ponder.