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“The solution to all problems no matter the scale ultimately requires human creativity.”

Chase Jarvis

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I have been writing, positively, about additive manufacturing (AM or 3D Printing) since maybe 2011. It was one of those manufacturing ideas of which the benefits were easily recognized and the barriers to its adoption also easily recognized. It’s the latter that I speak of today.

Traditionally speaking, AM adoption rates tend to lean into the most obvious aspect – capital expenditures. Manufacturing invests a significant % of monies resources into structural capital. I have the scars of this discussion having worked with biofuels and factory retooling discussions. Hard machinery and the resources surrounding them to maintain and use are massive sunk costs which tend to have some nice ROIs already attached to them. But I would argue that the success of any structural adoption, of anything, revolves around the one thing that also dictates any meaningful adoption – people. Yeah. Money, and sunk costs, is the backpack the humans of an organization carry around with them wherever they go. But. I use that metaphor purposefully because it is always people who decide where that backpack travels. I would also argue additive manufacturing will inevitably face the same issue that automation is facing – people. Any manufacturing retooling discussions have a tipping point in that smaller %’s are ‘needed innovations within the structure’ leading to ‘needed structural innovations’ in a larger business transformation. The former almost always only effects a smaller % of people (employees) while the latter makes everyone in every role start assessing skills, responsibilities, ‘time usage’ and a variety of labor-based evaluation machinations.

And while I am fairly sure most of these discussions happen in some slickish conference rooms with huge spreadsheets, HR people and overpaid consultants, inevitably the bulk of those involved are the people, skilled and who have given and created value for the existing business, who are wondering – what happens to me? What will my job be? What will I do? They read “jobs eliminated” and the heinous “reskill” (“I mean, why me? Why would I reskill when I have skills and many of the skills I have, have never been maximized anyway?”).

** note: I hate ‘reskill.’ 5, 50, 500, 5000 employees. Instead of saying “don’t worry, we have a reskilling plan for you” we should sit down with each and say “how can we best use your skills to help us be successful moving forward?” one discussion is labor, the other is potential. People rise to potential and do labor. I would be remiss if I also didn’t point out that the former is constraint driven, reductive in its potential in other words, while the latter is emergent driven, expansive in its potential in other words.

Which leads me to this thought.

AM adoption means a business is being transformed, but I would encourage everyone to think this is not transformation by technology or automation, but instead think of these things as simply liberators of time and minds of, well, people.

Of course, a percentage of jobs will be replaced by automation. It would be absurd to not acknowledge that factories, and some businesses, will go running to automation in their attempt to efficiently, consistently, produce things 24/7. Entire industries will stare at balance sheets trying to assess what is the automation efficacy bottom line for manufacturing and doing business. A select few of idiots in the service industry will also do the same. I will not put a number on that and, regardless of the number, people affected are harmed financially. But I believe the larger number effected will actually be within the 4 walls of businesses themselves. It was Mike Walsh who first made me think of it this way, but let’s assume 80% of a large segment of workers will have automation assume 20% of their current responsibilities (%’s are used simply to make the point not to be taken literally). Now. Of course, business will immediately seek to consolidate employees, based on ‘hours worked’ to attempt to lower people costs and efficiently get an ROI from a traditional 40-hour week. Far too many will do this and while in the short term (maybe even a generation) they will do fine because once again they squeezed out costs and squeezed output from ‘less.’ It is a race to the efficacy bottom and simply squeezes out whatever paste is left in the tube rather than seeing if they can redesign the tube to hold more paste.

** note: this is reductionism at its worst. I will state the obvious; the danger of reductionism is it rarely tells us about construction. And businesses, while they may not word it this way, view automation as a way to ‘reduce’ – people, unevenness, human error, costs. The future of business will not be found in reductionism, but rather construction.

And while that last paragraph was about automation, I believe AM solidly slots itself into the same discussion. Far too often we see it as simply ‘manufacturing transformation’ of which the people who serve that manufacturing are simply seen as serving the machines. That is a simplistic road to ruin. The active energy in any business is not technology, or machines, its people. Technology can activate energy, or amplify, energy, but generally speaking, at best it is passive energy if not just sustaining energy (when designed well). But my point with AM is that there is an opportunity for it to activate energy (freeing up people) and amplifying energy (maximizing the people energy being generated from automation).

I have no idea whether businesses within additive manufacturing say the following or not, but they should: the future of additive manufacturing depends on the future of people in business. This ‘people’ includes not just the supposed designated thinkers or ‘leaders’, but rather everyone – all employees. Look. Social behavior and human imagination are inescapable. You either ignore the importance of human connectivity or optimize the interactions people do have. And while business is only becoming more complex and dynamic, machines and their supporting technology (machine learning, algorithms, AI in general) are only becoming more complex and dynamic, I would argue this is where simplicity plays a role because human interactions are actually the simplest relationship within complex systems.

Yes. It is a causal, linear, issue in business (and linear moments are gold mines for a business).

The future of additive manufacturing business is found within a contradiction – automated symmetrical and asymmetrical conceptual and perceptual. Pragmatism and possibilities. It will be, simultaneously, the maximization of automation-based manufacturing and the unautomated human curiosity to explore. This continuous learning and curiosity is important because complexity, and complex dynamic systems, always have an inherent degree of randomness as well as emergent qualities. And, yes, this even includes additive manufacturing.

I would argue, and will, that Additive Manufacturing, any automation, in the end, is about freedom and the future of work will not be defined by those who optimize automation, but rather by those who optimize freedom the people in the organization have gained (assuming the business doesn’t use automation as an excuse to “downsize”, i.e., embrace reductionism).

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“The future is not just about inventing disruptive technology; it is about reimagining human experiences.”

Mike Walsh

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As a last thought on ‘freeing up’ people.

Additive versus subtractive.

I actually believe the way to position additive manufacturing in the global market view is grounded in its engineering truth – additive. I will not argue that existing subtractive manufacturing is actually subtractive in business nature, however, I will argue that additive manufacturing is actually additive to business nature. It is additive to progress, people, possibilities, environment, etc. In other words, by adding additive manufacturing to industry it is additive to making the world, and people, better, and, I imagine, eliminates some of the subtractive parts of manufacturing which have been constraints to making things better. That’s what I would center my messaging around.

To be clear. This could be misused to pursue some grander “Purpose” type initiative (it shouldn’t) or even be broken down into Cause and social responsibility components, like environmentally responsible (it shouldn’t), because additive is, well, additive. Progress is progress and better is better. While I am sure someone will suggest details matter, I would argue the definition is where additive manufacturing will benefit the most. And you know what? People will benefit the most. Well. What more could anyone ask for?

Ponder.

Toffler in 1980 about an alternative currency

” … should remind us that when we seek to bring something new to a culture, one must adapt the idea to the culture.

It doesn’t work the other way.”

Clotaire Rapaille

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So. Last week I was on a podcast talking about bitcoin. I am fairly sure that podcast will never be aired. While invited on to talk because I talk about value all the time, they were unspoken bitcoin evangelists and I am a bitcoin skeptic. Needless to say, they didn’t exactly like the way the discussion veered nor did they like the questions I asked of them (or maybe they felt uncomfortable with their own answers).

Let me say upfront:

• • I am a cryptocurrency believer. I think digital currency is inevitable.

  • I am a blockchain ‘hoper.’ I think blockchain has massive potential.

  • I am a bitcoin skeptic.

It is the last, the skepticism, which I will explain today.

I’ll do so in three sections – gamification, value creation vs wealth creation and Value.

Gamification.

At its core Bitcoin (and all existing digital currencies) are an output of the gamification of finance. Conceptually, a bitcoin is no different than the tokens my 89-year-old mother earns when she plays some game on her Kindle which can eventually gain enough ‘value’ she can leave Australia and get to another country to play the game. Sure. There has always been some version of gamification in finance, arbitrage, hedge funds, ‘shorting’, etc., but all that gamification has not been a product in itself. All that gamification has been a reflection of ‘gaming of existing value.’ Bitcoin is a game in & of itself. The value is generated from the game and in the game. It is an attempt to create something from nothing. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, as I did in the podcast, that while today’s financial market is not tied to Gold, the value was established BASED on gold. At some point, when base value was established within the market, currencies ‘unpegged’ from a tangible asset to let the market drive the value derivatives. Which led me to point out to them that currencies are now pegged to millions of market transactions which, if digital currencies want to become a global currency, will dictate the value of any future currency (see full explanation under ‘Value’ below).

Anyway. I would note that basing value, or grounding value, from nothing but some smart game is a dubious way to create a resilient system.

Getting Bitcoin evangelists to accept this, let alone think about this, is next to impossible.

Which leads me to.

Value creation versus wealth creation.

Bitcoin is a fabulous tool for wealth creation (as long as its value maintains some significant level and it has some growth potential). At the moment it has no value creation. What I mean by that is it has no labor, it makes nothing tangible, it is created from nothing tangible, and, excepting some few cases, cannot be transacted INTO something of value (Tesla is attempting to change that formula). It is currently solely wealth creation and mainly speculative wealth creation (wealth invested to create wealth). Value creation is grounded in labor, or work, in creating some value to the marketplace. Or, as Mariana Mazzucato would suggest, something that contributes to a GDP and something that does not (Bitcoin does not). this is an important discussion because Bitcoin evangelists talk about becoming THE global currency and what they are today is light years away from what they say they want to be.

Which leads me to.

Value.

This is where the rubber hits the road in this entire discussion. What is the future of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin? As a global currency or as a speculative investment?

Bitcoin evangelists speak of it as a ‘global currency.’

I speak of the future of bitcoin, and cryptocurrency, as inextricably linked to its future relationship with value (which inevitably will circle back to the outcome the evangelists always espouse & desire). Currently the value is easy to see because it resides in the hands of investors. But that is speculative value. At some point for cryptocurrency to cross the Rubicon it must make its value appealing, and discernable, to the productive masses (the value creators as it were). It must go beyond Tesla and start being used in a way that its true market usable value can be discerned. Its pathway to becoming a currency is to actually act like a currency and not an investment.

I would note, oddly, this is both good & bad for Bitcoin people. Good in that it gains a more tangibly viewed value. Bad in that, in most likelihood, the market value will appear quite close to the gold standard driven market value. Yeah. This is where the rubber hits the road. The market, what people consume, has been established and millions of products & services have established their current value. And, unfortunately, the value has been established via euros, yuan, dollars, drachma, etc. Here is where that nasty marketplace comes into play. For Bitcoin to become a currency people will immediately associate it with $10,000, 1,000,000 rubles, 100,000 yuan. You get it. And it will not be an exact one-to-one negotiation (so its possible that a Bitcoin gets valued higher than a dollar value) but, in the end, the Bitcoin will get dragged kicking and screaming value-wise from the investment speculation market to the real market where people have to spend WHAT THEY HAVE EARNED. I imagine my main point to them was the market will establish the value, not them, if it is to become a global currency.

Look.

As I told them in the end. I do not have a crystal ball and many of the things Bitcoin advocates talk about are quite appealing. It is quite possible I am missing something, but I will also say that I hear a fairly naïve view of the transition from a speculative investment tool to a value exchange tool. That transition will not be a simple liminal space, but rather, more likely, a jarring event to the existing value of the Bitcoin. Why? Because the existing marketplace value, existing country currencies (fiat) and existing marketplaces values (prices) and existing mental values (people attitudes on what to pay) have a significant grip on Value.

This doesn’t mean that Bitcoin cannot become a ‘use case’ currency (global companies who transfer significant exchanges of wealth between each other and would like to avoid the financial systems), but the thought of Bitcoin as a ‘gold standard’ or THE global currency remains beyond my current grasp of what could be. And, yes, that could simply be a lack of imagination on my part but for the moment I’ll stick with what I do know a lot about – Value. And through the Value eyes Bitcoin has a tough gauntlet ahead of it especially the day the US, China, Euro, etc decide to establish a digital currency version of the tangible currency.

Lastly.

Here is why this discussion is important. If you are holding Bitcoin you will have to make a decision at some point. Is it a speculative generating asset or is it a value generating asset? And watch what Bitcoin does because at some point they will make that decision for you. It is at that point you decide – cash out or hold on. Ponder.

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“You’ve got to realize that influence is not influence. It’s simply someone’s idea going through my new mind.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat

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Thinker doers.

Doer thinkers.

Thinking.

Doing.

Somehow, someway, the world makes this an either/or discussion. You are either a thinker, or a doer. Yeah. The other word can get attached to it, but once someone has labeled you the main one, well, in a world where we have convinced everyone being great at one thing is the key to success, everyone will think of you as a thinker or a doer.

And this is where it all falls apart.

Pick your preferred formula, but in today’s eyes, without doing there is no real value. Thinking is for “those who must have time to not do.” Yeah. Doing, or what we do, is what defines us in the outside world. In turn, that means it also defines, at least in some significant way, our thoughts, our attitudes, our beliefs and, yes, even ourselves.

Now.

Before I tell everyone how much bullshit that is, let me let you in on the truth.

You may not like it, you may even debate it, but, in the end, you will be defined by doing – it could be smart, doing, stupid doing, mindless doing, mindful doing, pick your type of doing. But you are stuck with it.

Which leads me into my topic today – using thoughts versus doing, or, using thought. In other words, be smart, be thoughtful, and use it. I would argue your biggest value as a thinker, because conceptually it creates the biggest impact, is derived by actually using thought rather than just thinking thoughts. This is a nuanced version of doing, but its more like “insight to action” rather than some simplistic ‘doing.’

It is the cycle of value.   

Great thinking.

Great thoughts.

Great impact.

**  note. This means education, or feeding the mind, is a long-Term Multiplier in that it not only is the engine to great thought but is also the velocity TO the thought (which makes impact exponentially bigger & better). I’ve always thought the greatest long-term multiplier was qualified people permitted to do the right things (‘need versus want’ decision making), but in thinking community terms, information input honed through critical thinking (even better thru Hegelian dialectic). 

Which leads me to the Hegelian dialectic. There are a shitload of people thinking different thoughts with the intent to use them and it benefits us all if they crash together in a process (let’s call that “positive friction”) wherein progress of thought occurs through the exchange of ideas, i.e., Hegelian dialectic. That progress can happen in small steps and in big steps. That said. Ideas create large markets and large markets benefit everyone.

Now.

We often tie curiosity to thinking/learning, but we should also be doing so with ‘using thought.’

Being curious is awesome.  And gaining knowledge makes you a better person (not just smarter).

Uhm.  Is it all completely wasted if there is no action involved? Well. It depends. Cause and effect is a myth, but does your idea and thinking inspire another, and another, and the action occurs somewhere down the road (another idea or another time). Yes. Using thought is an inherently nonlinear activity. This becomes more important if you think about the fact thinking has layers in and of itself (yes, even thinking, and ideas, can be applied in pace layers ). So, if Kahneman is right and the truth is even if you live in the present and you have maybe 600,000 ‘moments’ in a day and even 600,000,000,000 (billion) in a typical lifetime you will never not only remember all you offered in thinking in each moment (although you may remember some more than others), but you will certainly never be able to translate some specific doing to some specific thinking (the majority of the time). Here is where it gets weird for thinking. In a world laser focused on doing, your ‘memory self’ will reflectively dive deeper into thinking moments that appear to have ‘doing aspects’ tied to the thinking EVEN IF THEY REPRESENT LOW LEVEL IMPACT THINKING. My point? The world squeezes thinkers, and their thinking, so we tend to overlook the thinking that scales out to a larger market because it must pass through multiples layers before it shifts into any significant doing phase. The thought, the thinking, is multiplicative in traction with others until it has a critical mass to be ‘done.’ Yeah. Even ‘thoughts’ are getting squeezed by short-termerism. And maybe that’s where thinkers are stuck in today’s world. Scale. That horrible word which twists anything meaningful into ‘grow it or it sucks.’

“A squeeze occurs when people have no choice but to do something, and do it right away, regardless of the costs.”

AntiFragile

Scale creates a ‘false squeeze.’ You almost get forced to scale, through doing, the thinking. This most likely occurs before the thinking has been forged well enough to withstand the scrutiny of growth. Alternatively, you can get squeezed into using a thought which doesn’t translate into optimal potential, but rather immediate proof.

Regardless.

Personally, I believe the highest value of individual meaningfulness is founded upon “using thought.”

We think.

We use.

But. That’s me.

And, if I am right, imagine having a resume that didn’t list all the things one has done, but rather all the interesting thoughts one has had. Ponder.

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“I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.”

Jorge Luis Borges

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I have been talking about complexity, and building emergent agility, into business for quite some time. Yeah. Maybe I didn’t use exactly the same words as all the complexity folk today, but there were a bunch of us talking about it. The original seed was Toffler’s 1985 The Adaptative Corporation. I believe he recognized the shift occurring in business from standardization, mass everything (manufacturing, strategy, communications, etc) and drew a line in the sand between simple/replicable & complexity/dynamic. Yeah. It was a fuzzy line to me, but it felt right. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, taken literally, was about production and work flow. Taken figuratively, as many of us did, was about agility in a dynamic environment. It’s true they weren’t speaking of Complexity Theory, but they were clearly talking about how to conduct business in a constantly changing dynamic marketplace. Mintzberg dumped his book, Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, in our laps in mid-1990’s drawing some clearer lines on emergent strategy in meeting the needs of a dynamic marketplace <i.e., thinking in a complex environment>. Once again. he didn’t invest a lot of energy on the idea of complexity <even though that’s what it is about>.  Toffler cranked out three more books which if you didn’t have your head up your ass clearly showcased a complex world where the way business traditionally being conducted was going to be screwed. Some of us paid attention and started tweaking from within businesses. Then around 2000. Cluetrain Manifesto (meta view) explained complexity in a way we all could understand. The New Marketing Manifesto (marketing view), while about marketing explained complexity in a way we would understand. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games (complexity humanized into behavior). Peter’s Thriving in Chaos (management view – albeit the only time he mentions complexity it is to encourage keeping things simple) explained complexity in a way any business could understand. And a little bit later, Rozenweig’s The Halo Effect, sealed the deal for us complexity embracers as well as The Culture Code by Rapaille nailed down some heuristic narrative making concepts to unlock understandable <Rapaille was a bit of a nutjob but his heuristic ‘codes’ are a fabulous narrative concept>. To us, complexity just was, not a theory, and while cause & effect <or linear relationships> did exist, we understood the consequences of those linear relationships were vectored.

** note: the distinction between linear activity <a specific action creating a specific outcome> and linear consequences <which is a probability causal calculation> is an incredibly important one I believe complexity theorists overlook when dealing with business which is in the business of doing business, not theory>. linear activity exists, even in complexity, linear consequences are rare.

If you were paying attention, and felt like the existing business construct and way of working felt flawed, all these books and ideas were planting seeds in your mind.

Eventually we navigated complexity embracing a number of principles:

• • • Situational awareness: a SWOT established a benchmark but once completed most of us made it a rolling roadmap reflecting present status. It was straddling past, present & future while assessing resources available. This was the easiest part because a SWOT made even the most ‘stick with the 5-year plan’ people feel at least slightly comfortable with diverging from the plan.

    • Coherence over consistency: you encouraged some freer thinking, some continuous improvement <using
      

      

      …. Value Creation of Possibilities: Emergence over Predictive ….

      Goldratt always eased C-level concerns> and got people believing that sometimes better outcomes could be achieved with some adapting or agility. This one was more difficult because, even with Goldratt in our hip pockets, consistency is business’s heroin.

    • Context was everything: the only way to kill a best practice/formula response or activity was to deconstruct the context in which it would be successful – and point out the current context wasn’t applicable. This one was time consuming, energy sapping and unless you had some scenario planning skills was fraught with peril.

    • Probabilistic thinking: once you have even taken a half step into believing in complexity you know predicting anything is absurd. This is where you need a C-suite support system (or in the case of edge employees, managers) because in the good ole days not promising specific results against specific objectives was like committing Hari Kari. You needed someone else in the room to absorb some of the risk.

These were principles of which our successes resided on a wide continuum because the world we were working in, for the most part, wasn’t exactly in sync with what we were thinking. That didn’t mean we didn’t have some wins, just that to a ‘purist’ complexity person it may not look that way. We learned some hard lessons along the way.

• • You need generalists.

  • You need people who can think spatially (or conceptually).

  • You need creative thinkers (and they could be found in any department).

  • You need a CFO who ran a flexible balance sheet (you didn’t really need other budget-owner buy-in because in those days any budget owner always had money stored away in some rainy-day bucket if you had a good idea).

  • You need at least one C-suite person who liked pursuing emergent opportunities (& could understand emergent strategies in a timely fashion).

  • You need both emergent and predictable/replicable (the %’s can vary depending on organizational palate).

  • You need some restless people (adventurers or people in a ‘state of perpetual dissatisfaction’).

** note: I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out none of the books I listed nor all the lessons learned gave clarity on complexity immediately. Each, and all, were disparate puzzle pieces we slowly accumulated in our heads until at some point the puzzle itself became clear. The books, in particular, didn’t always make sense at the time, but they all resonated in a way that made us think “there is sense in this.”

In the good old days when you got this right you not only created a business constantly adapting, but you were surrounded by groups of curious, restless, thinking, people. I will suggest in those days that was the satisfaction because most likely, as you introduced complexity-like things into business in a business environment focused on replicable, simple & uncomplicated, you got things fed back to you like a co-worker said to me when I was at JWT – “you have your own way of doing things” <kind of a backhanded way to say they thought it was an unusual way to create positive results>. That said. When you got it right you not only created some good business stuff, but the people you worked with tended to take aspects of business complexity thinking wherever they went – and found success.

Anyway. I have watched people as they have come around to the Complexity side of the world watching as they toss aside the simplistic view of Occam’s’ Razor and Steve Jobs ‘simple mantra’. Heck. I went through the Complexity Rabbit Hole myself.

….. The Complexity Rabbit Hole ….

Business loves certainty and evenness and has embedded that type of thinking into everyone so the initial grasp of complexity is one of excitement and, well, some uncertainty. The crux of complexity is found in lack of predictability (oh my). This rubs up against a feeling of lack of control or a constant state of liminalness (oh my). The natural reaction to that is to find ways to control or find concrete solid things to create some construct<within complexity>. So, in the good ole days it was milestones and clear short-term objectives which then turned into sprints, scrum and Agile Manifesto tools. We would be naive to think that these weren’t methods we sought to control aspects of complexity. This journey all leads to a place in which you embrace complexity and emergence and realize that navigating complexity resides not in any framework or methodology or even some really good everyday management tools – it is in humans and how they think. Conducting business, strategy & tactics, against Emergence is an art and skill which I call ‘conceptual thinking’ <which is most likely a derivative of sensemaking and meaning making or critical thinking>. Conceptual thinking embraces complexity, acknowledges aspects of complexity theory (the ones that pertain most to the business of doing business) and suggests continuous learning. Going back to an earlier point, this is all valuable for the future success of a business in a dynamic marketplace, but much of it becomes moot if the business model itself doesn’t change from a traditional hierarchy or command/control-ish construct.

This is to suggest embracing complexity is an unfolding process which we all go through. I’d suggest it is finding a comfort level between infinite and finite or maybe risk and certainty. The depths of the complexity rabbit hole can almost make you feel like nothing you do can mean anything and, from a human perspective that not only seems meaningless in some ways, but also chafes against a natural desire of productivity (proof). Therein lies the rub. Complexity Theory doesn’t have to worry about ‘meaning’, business does.

Look.

I have written about complexity in business for over a decade (maybe two). And while, today, I talk about complexity, complexity theory and, specifically, business, I am not associated with the Santa Fe Institute (but have invested time reading their thoughts on complexity theory), not part of the Cynefin community (but have read about and follow several on twitter), nor am I a complexity expert. But I do understand business and I do understand complexity in a dynamic business environment. Some of my thoughts may not align with some traditional thinking, and parts may, but I will remind everyone, when discussing business and complexity, it is about doing the business of doing business within complexity wherein the business is the priority, not some Complexity Theory. In addition. I also remind everyone “perhaps because the field has attracted researchers from a wide diversity of home disciplines, there is no consensus as to how to define, measure, describe or interpret “complexity.” <Steve Maguire, The Interaction of Complexity and Management> Read on. Think. Disagree if you wish. But everything I will offer is grounded in the pragmatism that within complexity <world, industry, company, humans> business needs to do business in a way that optimizes the dynamics of complexity and minimizes confusion complexity discussions sometimes seem to create.

• • I believe complexity just is. Period. It is the system in which all businesses work within. All dynamics are simply the dynamics of systems – institutions, people, process, automation, technology, society, culture (inside & out of a business), community (inside & out of a business), global, etc. – interacting with each other.

  • I believe complexity is expansive in nature, not reductive. Therefore the objective of navigating complexity is always to unlock its potential, not ‘reduce complexity.’

  • I believe there are linear aspects within complexity and there are causal relationships. In fact, I have argued insights are often found within these ‘fractal’ connections , i.e., solving the fractal releases complexity potential.

  • I believe complications exist within complexity and not all complications are created equal. In fact, complications exist as the normal, either human created or natural creations of dynamics, consequence of complex system.

  • I believe being able to discern what is a human-made complication and what is a natural-system-made complication is often one of the most critical things in deciding what a business wants to do with a complication.

  • I believe there is a difference between complicated and complication. A process can be complicated and, yet, effective and even efficient. I believe a complication occurs when the ‘complicated’ becomes an issue to the effectiveness, or efficacy, of a system.

  • I believe not all complications need to be resolved.

  • I believe many systems work, in totality, quite effectively with complicated parts and even some complications.

  • I believe Chaos does not occur in 99.9% (I made up that % to make a point) of businesses and I do not believe it is helpful to suggest chaos as a feature, or a bug, of business.

  • I believe many successful businesses can edge close to chaos, I actually call it ‘the bedlam stage’, but it is simply patterns yet to be identified, but patterns nonetheless.

  • I believe, to quote The Santa Fe Institute “we are not ants nor are we bees”, to quote Dave Snowden (22:50 in this fabulous talk ) “industrialization at scale is a real problem in leadership and management”, to quote Alvin Toffler “the future belongs to the company who can de-standardize” and to quote me “the natural arc of business leadership bends toward evenness, predictability and replication.” I imagine I state this because I believe frameworks, quadrants, formula-thinking formats, will only be counterproductive to the natural dynamics of complexity (which are not nice & neat) because business, invariably, will take a framework and make it a process.

  • I believe complexity shouldn’t be discussed as a theory, but as a reality.

  • I believe complexity in business cannot be discussed without discussing business models.

** note: conceptual thinking, or sensemaking/meaning making, needs a malleable organizational structure or business model in order to maximize its effectiveness and, I would argue, make adoption of that thinking pervasive in an organization. I worked with P&G as Design Thinking was implemented and I watched as a business model, and institutional debt, constrained the possibilities.

That said.

Let me share my biggest issue with where I believe complexity discussions in business tends to struggle – infinite. Complexity becomes, well, complex when in theory. When everything is connected with everything, and, conceptually, nothing is causal (which, in practicality, is untrue in the doing of doing business), and consequences are found in probabilities not predictions, the whole seems infinite and infinite seems overwhelming (sometimes hopeless). The main consequence of this overwhelming and hopelessness is that simplistic models that define well enough to help make, not inform, a decision win (even if they do not explain truth). The next, almost as important consequence, is complexity increases the sense of pressure (to not only make a decision but that each decision carries a larger burden of consequences) so in order to appear (be) decisive most people will justify ‘right choice’ by selectively using data from dashboards. Going back to where I began, complexity just is. Its like living within a universe with some different gravities here and there, but, the important things remain the important things no matter where you go in the universe. Complexity shouldn’t increase stress, but rather offer freedom. And this is where I believe complexity folk need to get a grip. In a business world, to most business decisionmakers, possibilities are not infinite. In fact, they are clearly finite. Time, resources, information and people within any given situation represent a finite set of possibilities. Not infinite, finite. And within that finite sphere someone has to assess, most likely through some probabilistic thinking, what to do in that particular finite sphere. Within the business of doing business, pragmatically, people need to be doing shit not noodling some infinite set of complex dynamics.

I am at my core a pragmatic business person. I love theory because it stimulates thinking, but in the end, business is about taking action and doing things (hopefully productive things enhanced by the theory thinking). Complexity, complexity theory, complexity discussions, are really important discussions because accepting business is complex is the first step toward navigating complexity (rather than building simplistic  solutions and aiming for the wrong things). But discussing complexity always runs the risk of becoming a rabbit hole discussion in which it becomes impossible to make choices (because it is difficult to wrap your head around making sense of things). What I mean by that is if, within complexity, everything is connected with everything, and nothing is causal, consequences are found in probabilities not predictions, the whole not only becomes nebulous, but actually infinite. And while business people love talking about infinite possibilities, pragmatically (once again), infinite thinking does absolutely zero good to everyday business and decision-making. It is overwhelming and can often make decision-making seem like a hopeless effort therefore the default becomes ‘just check the task off the list’.

Once again, the truth is that in any given situation while the outlines may be vague, the choices are actually finite, not infinite.

I bludgeon all of you with all that repetitive thinking because the truth is that discussing complexity does not occur in a void, but rather needs to be discussed within a framework within which business, all people in the organization, can envision as a way of doing business – not just of how they are now doing business.

In other words, I believe most businesses recognize that decision-making needs to be dispersed within organizations more so than it currently is (this ‘dispersed’ is relative to its current status of distributed decision making). So, any discussion of complexity theory, in a practical sense, needs to keep an eye on the fact everything will be shifting out toward the edges of a business and many people who have never been expected to think conceptually, make many of these types of decisions or even ‘see’ the kinds of cues an emergent opportunity offers someone. I am certainly not suggesting things need to be ‘dumbed down’, but I am suggesting any theory needs a good dose of pragmatism.

Here is one thing I know for sure. Business has a nasty habit of turning the positive complex into the negative complicated. That is just what business does and if anything needs to be ‘transformed’, it would be that. I would suggest business will not be transformed by understanding complexity just as it is not really transformed by technology. Business will be, as it has been forever, transformed by people – people thinking clearly, conceptually and critically within situations they are placed. This isn’t to suggest part of developing a learning organization shouldn’t be learning some skills and beliefs which can enhance their success in navigating a dynamic business world, it is simply to suggest, in the end, success will be found in people working with people and people talking with people and people innovating with people.

Personally, I think we need to get this entire Complexity discussion right. Why? People spend about 1/3 of their lives working (or in a workplace). Businesses, generally speaking, spend 100% of their business either integrating with the world (gathering resources) or with people (exchanging the resources they have used). In other words, quoting Drucker, business, and its people, are in and of society. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out society, or humankind, is actually a complex dynamic marketplace of its own. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out most of Humankind does not have the structure/boundaries a business has. That last point is relevant because most people, in society, are also struggling to navigate complexity (most of whom had been taught in school some fairly causal things). I imagine my larger point is humankind benefits if the business word has its shit together on complexity learning. Probabilities, emergent strategies, complications versus complicated, agility, situational awareness, all are invaluable learnings for successfully navigating life – self, community, country & world. It’s quite possible I am being too dramatic in my view of the scope, but it’s possible I am not. So, for all the complexity people out there, what are the probabilities if we get this right? No predictions, just is the probability of positive effect on Humankind worth getting this right.

Maybe I say this because I bang on Cynefin, & I shouldn’t. They are simply a part of the puzzle we all need to solve. The truth is I am a ‘mutt thinker.’ When I speak of complexity in business, I don’t really have a single framework and I pluck out the aspects of Learning Organizations (which I tend to believe is the larger vision), Senge, Pflaeging/Hermann OpenSpace, Lisa Gill’s thinking on flat organizations, Leloux, Drucker, Goldratt, Stacy, Ackoff, Deming, Mary Parker Follett of course (my business guiding light), the military (who most likely embraced individual conceptual thinking earlier than most of us – simply out of survival), Jason Fox, Mintzberg, John Grant, even The Santa Fe Institute <their collection of essays, “Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight” is fabulous learning fodder>, and finally the two sources who sealed my meta view on this whole complexity thing – Cluetrain Manifesto and the person who planted the seed of complexity thought – Alvin Toffler.

Complexity is, well, complex. The one thing I believe all Complexity people can agree on is the importance of words and narratives. From Toffler to the present the constant theme has been stories, storytelling, metaphors, codes and the use of words. At some point, at least in the business sphere, I believe it would be helpful if there could be some common agreement on definitions, narratives and words. Why? Well. To go back to maybe my most important thought – business is in, and of, society. It behooves us to get that right because, in the end, while I am in the business of doing business, to think we can help the greater humankind think just a bit better every day, and maybe that helps society progress a little bit better every day, is a way I think we make a dent in the universe.

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Postscript: I, personally, believe the future of business – embracing complexity – is a future business model within which technology augments people in a way that facilitates constant learning and conceptual thinking  . i even have the draft of a book on this idea – combining complexity, people and technology. I, personally, believe any existing business could adopt a 100% emergent strategic outlook – people, left to their own emergent opportunities, will naturally build in the predictable/replicable parts out of some efficiency recognition.

That said. I could never have written The Adaptable Corporation, Cluetrain Manifesto, New Marketing Manifesto, Finite and Infinite Games as well as a slew of other books which have all fed my ‘mutt thinking.’ I highly recommend you read all of these books, as well as the newer book Agility (Tilman/Jacoby) which captures a lot of how I think, as well as any others I included in this piece. I would argue 99% of us will never have the answer, but 99% of us can find some answers in someone else’s thinking.

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“It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so, philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one.”

Morris Raphael Cohen

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“Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.”

Herbert Hoover

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Ok. I believe every business has an ambition. In fact. I believe every business has different ambitions all at the same time – money, morals, size, Purpose, etc, or simply have one focus ambition. That ambition can come in any size. It is theirs and they hope to attain it or aspire to reach it. That said. I am a pragmatic hope guy. I clearly love instilling hope as part of any business, or Life, vision, but don’t believe in any aspect of false hope. As I have written before while false hope is maybe slightly better than no hope at all, hope should be treated carefully.

To me.

All hope to me should be grounded in some sense of pragmatic and reality.

I, frankly, don’t understand when people suggest you cannot have both.

I, frankly, don’t understand when people suggest you cannot have both idealism and realism.

I, frankly, don’t understand when people suggest you shouldn’t have aspects of both hope & pragmatism, possibilities and pragmatism and idealism & realism.

We should want both AND demand both. It is reaching for the stars and reaching realistically. It is keeping your feet in the clouds and, yet, head on the ground.

But that’s how I think.

I think you can both be idealistic and realistic.

I think it is possible to offer a sense of a difficult/challenging path forward without creating a larger sense of ‘doom or Armageddon’ to create the sense of urgency which we often deem necessary in order to inspire real action.

And, inevitably, that is what this is all about.

How to inspire people not just to inspire but to take action?

How to inspire larger ideas and larger actions?

This is a tightrope all business people walk.

The difficulty on this tight rope is that there will always be people debating, and criticizing, while you walk on this tight rope. They will argue whether the ambition is big enough. They will argue whether the ambition isn’t small enough. They will argue we need more radical change. They will argue we need less radical change. Shit. They will argue we need no change moving forward, but rather reverse some of the changes made.

And you know what?

Some of that, in all of that, is right. Some of the past is awful and some of the decisions we will make for the future, and in the future, will be awful. Conversely, some of all of that will, well, not be awful.

To suggest that there are easy answers or that the steps forward are clear and simple is stupid. Stupid & foolish.

Just to be clear. Within the “Idealism and Realism” debate can be found in the constructive decision which any leader tries to find their own course in leading. We debate all of this shit in our own heads and then we debate it in conference rooms and boardrooms every week.

We are responsible for past decisions and, yet, try to unburden ourselves so that we can make progress.

Simplistically, just because I <maybe> made an awful decision in the past doesn’t mean I will make an awful decision in the future.

Simplistically, just because I maybe offer a hopeful idealistic decision for the future doesn’t mean it is a realistic decision for now.

Simplistically, just because I try and slow everybody down on some idealistic discussion shouldn’t suggest I am any more ‘canny or wise’ than everybody else let alone the person who offers the idealistic hope that people may gravitate toward — it just suggests that maybe I am trying to balance it all with reality <and maybe incorporate the fact that, pragmatically, I would like to incorporate some possibilities for people today & tomorrow>.

 

I will suggest, no, I will tell you the harsh truth getting good shit done within ANY size ambition is hard.

Getting shit done means balancing overreach and under reach.

Balancing possibilities and pragmatism.

Balancing idealism and realism.

Balancing the practical and the hope.

Balancing what people think they want and what they need.

Balancing the majority and the minority. Balancing what is good for one and good for all.

Anything less than that is oversimplification.

Oh. Shit. And then there is context. One can never lose sight of context.

You have to balance the idea, the hopefulness of ‘what could be’, against pragmatically where you have been <what has happened if not what has just happened> as well as where you are.

It is incredibly simplistic to suggest any past decision should be compared to a decision you will make. Just as it would be incredibly simplistic to judge a business leader if they were to take over a large company which was truly heading into a shithole versus a company which had some problems but was, in general, businesswise healthy.

Every transition has its own singular issues. Every situation has its own singular issues. Every business has its own singular issues. And, let’s be clear, every one of those situations has singular problems.

We should all recognize that in the overall life cycle of business problems and opportunities, practical and possibilities, hope & despair, heroes & villains, will appear in different forms – all with the intent to either further our ambitions or steal our ambitions.

This is not cynical, this is … uhm … reality

Whoever becomes a business leader is going to deal with navigating pragmatism and idealism mostly by assessing the problems, or obstacles, to your ambition.

Harping on whatever those problems doesn’t really get you anywhere.

They are what they are.

I could also argue that arguing over idealistic ideas and vision without admitting some pragmatism and practicality doesn’t really get you anywhere. It is not a binary discussion nor are pragmatism and possibilities, idealism and practical, are mutually exclusive.

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“Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.”

John Galsworthy

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Look. We all hate cynicism, but far too often we confuse it with pragmatism and practicality. I would also suggest we all get tired of pragmatism because, well, far too often it sounds small.

But I would also point out that we all not only get tired, but absolutely unequivocally hate, false hope and unrealized idealism. “Large” unrealized equals zero, nothing, nada. People don’t like a zero, nothing, nada no matter how large the zero, nothing, nada is.

Neither option, looked upon in isolation, is attractive or likeable.

And you know what? A good leader knows all of this. And they do their best to walk the tight rope. They sit down and assess what you have, assess what they could have, assess resources, money, whatever, and figures out, pragmatically, how to get going doing the business of doing business – that desires to attain that ambition.

They may not always get it right and they may not always get done whatever is needed to get done to alleviate the problems, or all the problems, that exist in the here and now. But I would point out that, realistically, you can never alleviate all problems and that problems exist, contextually, no matter if an idealist or a realist, a pragmatist or a ‘possibilities driven’ leader, a hope or a practical leader steps in. The only constant is that problems existed to be addressed, exist to address and will exist to address all to eventually be solved ONLY if both idealism & pragmatism and possibilities & the practical are embraced.

Not accepting that as a business truth is foolish.

Not accepting that as a business truth is, in fact, lazy thinking.

Any business ambition demands both idealism and pragmatism. The idealism is the spark of possibilities and imagination while the pragmatism stops you from simply being a ‘dreamer’ or wasting resources tilting at windmills.

Maybe, just maybe, we should be sitting back and thinking about how you can both be idealistic and realistic.

In the end.

I hate almost all binaries but choosing between pragmatism and idealism is the most distasteful to me.

Every business deserves both idealism & realism, possibilities & pragmatism and grander hopes of individual significance. Every business deserves to think, and believe, it can matter – in its family, neighborhood, community, city, state, country or global. Whatever their ‘mattering ambition’ is they deserve the intrinsic motivation found in that ambition – while grounded in some pragmatism.

Once again, let me say, maybe, just maybe, we should stop embracing just idealism or just realism and see that optimizing the combination is the path to optimizing the future. And while I typically dislike optimizing (it often feels like compromising) maybe, just maybe, in this case, we should all go into the optimizing business.

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“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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I believe there are a number of things we do not discuss well with regard to business, and specifically, change in business: pacing of a business and change & its relationship to paces.

Now. It’s quite possible in a complex world with so many dynamics your brain can quickly turn to fluff that we attempt to simply things into the graspable. It’s quite possible that why business, and business change, is often discussed in 2-dimensional framing, networks and phases. It’s also quite possible in doing so we over simplify and end up in some simplistic “meme summary” world or an oversimplification which appears useful, but is useless.

The reality is every organization has a ‘pace’ (usually captured in a description like ‘vibe’ or ’energy’). It is, in essence, what we feel as a generalization. What we fail to acknowledge as we do so is that this ‘vibe’ is a complex mix of pace dynamics – individuals, cliques, teams, tribes, departments, etc. even a Porsche engine has slow moving, even solid, pieces in combination with pieces moving at rates almost invisible to the eye. Organizations are systems and systems have parts and parts move at different paces so that the totality works efficiently & effectively.

About Layers of Pace (as a concept)

Pacing is difficult to understand in an organization. It is difficult because of how, conceptually, layered the problem of pacing is and, yes, it is a problem. It is a problem because no layer remains in ‘neutral’ nor is it neutral in its motivation nor its impact. This doesn’t mean we need to simplify, but instead try and understand. 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

Pace Layers are not just internal

I don’t believe it takes a stretch of imagination to see how the layers relate to an individual business. That said.  Let me flip Brand’s thought – the slower parts ignore desired change and remain steady unless you can affect the nature of things. This is true with regard to businesses as well as change in general. Most ‘change initiatives’ focus on internal dynamics (objectives the business has for itself to interact with the external world) and more often than not ignore the dynamics WITH the external context when implemented. Simplistically it is an additional friction point which creates either positive friction (added value in interactions with external environment) or negative friction (questions of value to the external environment). While I am certainly not suggesting all complexity needs to be built into organizational change (the infiniteness of that challenge seems counterproductive to a specific change goal), I will suggest that we have a tendency, in focusing on reshaping behavior/attitudes internally to address things from a behavioral aspect almost in a linear cause & effect relationship. In doing so it ignores the pacing of everything else.

Yes. We need to acknowledge the external world (driven by technology) has an impact on the individual business (internally on employees and company identity). It was Toffler who first publicly noted this relationship, in different words, in 1985’s The Adaptive Corporation. His point, at that time, was technology was creating sociological and cultural changes which would force businesses into an ‘identity crisis.’ True then, true now. The one thing I believe we can all agree on is the internet has increased the speed of culture.

That is the outward facing pace and the one most likely to create an imprint on everyone’s perceptions – which affect reality beliefs. Certainly, many things are fundamentally moving faster and its possible that all levels of pacing are moving 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 that 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 had no practical consequences.

** note: this is an interesting discussion with Simon DeDeo, who studies cultural evolution through data, on a recent podcast.

While the specifics of our current speed and cultural outputs may be different, people have been grappling with how to think about this kind of change for a long time. But here is my point.

If you want effective change in a business, you need to map out all the paces. All the levels, and attempt to have the pace be comfortable enough that everyone feels at least some sort of sync. Nature (let’s call it infrastructure of the business) needs to change ALONG with people and culture and society (or the market). I’d argue personal change, on an individual level, is exactly the same. You can lead structural change with legal (governing) decisions and even some commerce (buying) decisions, but if you get too far out of whack either the gyre flies off the centre (Yeats, Second Coming) either you fall into disarray or the change just seems to become unattainable or undesirable.

But here is some good news. While plans will break, they will most likely break in one of 2 ways:

• • • On a single pace level:

You try and do something inconsistent with the pace of the specific group you are attempting to elicit change within. The best way I can describe this is the C-level meeting in which someone says in an irritated voice “why isn’t this happening faster.” In disregarding the pace, someone more ‘wise’ establishes what is perceived to be a ‘reasonable timeframe’ and objectives & milestones are established to force a pace. Its like asking Clydesdales to be greyhounds or Formula One cars to be dump trucks. Easily fixed, if acknowledged.

• • • Levels of pacing get too far out of whack

You try and even out the change. I am not suggesting it be completely even, just even it out. In doing so you create what I call “layer dissonance”, in other words, unevenness.  Yeah. Unevenness, in general, is not considered a positive in a business and even less so with any organizational change (note: unevenness is actually a net-positive for a business as it is a reflection of agility to meet emerging opportunities). In fact. Extreme unevenness, in change management, often looks like it is not working to a C-level audience and, in fact, extreme unevenness, if associated with layer dissonance, will most likely lead to failure. Easily fixed, if acknowledged.

I will note the most common way to implement organizational change plans is either through staged phases or managed change. Through my eyes they are all ‘construct’ methodologies to manage pace. While constructs can be good, they can also constrict desired behavior and even attitudes. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out here that we need to acknowledge institutional debt , not an individual’s aversion to change, is most likely the biggest impediment to change. That ‘debt’ creates a structural gravity and change needs to defy in order to be successful. You either change gravity or discard some of the weight/debt in order to accommodate additional weight.

The managed change is almost a subconscious acknowledgement of pace layering. It seems like a way to have everyone aligned (if but for a moment). I’d note that Pflaeging/Hermann OpenSpace Beta and maybe “working out loud’ (Stepper) kind of builds in pacing into their organizational initiatives.

Possibility Plans

Which leads me to what I call “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.

I have been very clear I have a dubious relationship with objective planning and milestones and specific targets. Its dubious because I tend to believe, in general, they create fragile businesses through ‘objective blindness’  and it creates a finite mindset (trains behavior/attitude to need a milestone in order to be successful). That said. I like planning and plans. Let me explain.

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“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley, / An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain / For promis’d joy!”

“To a Mouse” Robert Burns

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Plans are good because broken plans represent disciplined opportunities, therefore, well made plans are more about possibilities than they are simple execution.

The best laid plan of mice and men always fall apart. Well. I don’t know about mice’s plans, but people’s sure do. Always. Now. 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.

So. Some of the best business people don’t waste time stopping or slowing down to try and glue the 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. Keep an eye on the vision or the goal. And let some pieces catch up to you later if they can.

In other words, ‘don’t fear the broken plan.’ You just cannot live in fear of the unknown. You make your plans, take the necessary precautions, train people, assign responsibilities, prepare your mind for the action, prepare for the fact you may not know the actual form all the action will take, and then go.

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).

Look. I love plans. I love a well thought out plan. But I absolutely expect the best well thought out plan to not reach the finish line looking exactly the same way it did when we started.

Yes. Something will go really right that you want to take advantage of that breaks off something else that was a lower priority or breaks off because it simply cannot keep pace.

** note: about keep pace. 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, counterintuitively in a world screaming for faster, broken plans may actually reflect dispensing of pieces & parts that are going too fast. So 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.

Look. yes, sometimes something goes astronomically wrong and you have to replan while moving.

Let’s call this the breakdown and repackaging. The plan is all in pieces. Knowledge is untied from the foundation. The selection, flow, and discussion of knowledge have all moved from quasi-controlled spaces (at the point of creation or filtering) out of your control space (note: control is mostly illusionary, yet, you do control decisions and resources applied). What this means is that you end up taking the small pieces you can grasp (and are valuable to you and your vision), mix them up and create fresh understandings within the organization and without the organization. Yeah. You are plucking from any and all paces of layers to attack possibilities. I would suggest by doing so you are not only creating an effective executional plan, but also tapping into what some organizational behavior studies call “shared understandings” or maybe differently said it is when people absorb similar patterns or when people create shared patterns.

** note: In almost everything I have described above a leader has “lost” some control and passed it along to the organization or group. This is more than “trusting the organization or your people.” This is a personal understanding of “self.” It takes some inner strength to watch “your plan” devolve and morph into something different (sometimes better but almost always better understood by the organization).

 This is the art & science of possibilities plan in that one understands how to manage, or oversee, the breakdown and repackaging so that in the end it shifts from being “management’s plan” and it becomes the “organization’s plan.” Tricky. But doable.

So. The reality is the best plans are not exactly linear but evolving. This is true because, well, of pace layering. The best plans interconnect the different paces within an organization and outside the organization. Once again, I believe this is also true of an individual – interconnect inner self and outer self and culture & society.

Theis means you have to accept the fact a plan is always happening though progress and does not often follow a neatly developed plan. The plan will break. People will break. You need to work with the energy and pacing and shape it.

This leads me to an awesome chart from Peter Senge who has a model called “The Dance of Change Tree” (he is an engineer forced to manage organizational change so I think he provides a really neat perspective).

Reinforcing loops are represented by the visible parts of the tree and include new business processes, networking, business results and personal results. These drive change process The roots of the tree are the factors that can hold your change process back. These limiting factors show up at the beginning of the change process (no resources, inconsistent leadership behaviors), in the middle (fear and anxiety, resentment, lack of measurement) and ultimately when trying to establish sustainability (lack of linkage to business plans/vision, unclear roles). But it shows the plan will break because of human nature. I would argue that this tree of change is just another version of Pace Layering. But it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that pieces & parts work at different paces and the only way a plan can succeed, and have the resilience to work, it needs to accommodate pacing and loop back upon itself to gather yup pieces working at different paces.

This is true of organizations, people, projects, etc.

The truth is most plans, most thinking, are linear in nature while nature, and the world, is non linear in nature. A key component of complexity is layers of pacing and if we are honest with ourselves, we not only do not plan for it, but rarely even acknowledge it.

That’s it.

The pace of an organization is tricky to assess, but important to recognize when desire any type of change – behaviors or attitudes.

Inertia can look like speed.

Speed can look like velocity.

And status quo actually has motion within it.

All of which suggests pacing is an issue one cannot ignore.

Lastly. I assume most competent organizational experts can design effective change constructs, therefore one can assume broken plans are mostly a function of asynchronous pacing. Yet, broken plans also represent possibilities. I imagine my greater point is that change really isn’t as difficult as we make it out to be and that timing, pacing, is actually harder than we make it out to be. Ponder.

** Author’s note: while this has to do with organizational change one could argue the basic concept is applicable to individual change. Ponder.

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“If you’re dealing with pressure that means you’re good enough for people to expect something out of you.”

Andy Roddick

<retired US tennis player, 1 grand slam, 3-21 against Federer>

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So.  I tend to believe everyone knows there is a relationship between pressure and expectations. For the most part I think we view those expectations in a negative way <assuming you are the one feeling the pressure>. Yeah. Pressure can make you feel squeezed. That’s why it is called “pressure.” But, generally speaking, pressure is not an internally generated function, it is an externally given function – people expect something of you, life expects something of you, the situation expects something of you, and on and on and on. You get it.

But let’s flip the thought from “they do it because they are jerks” to “they do it because they think you are good enough.” Well. Pressure looks a bit different, doesn’t it? no longer is it “am I good enough” it becomes more “I am good enough if I can get my shit together <or keep my shit together>.

And maybe that is where dealing with pressure resides – that nuanced battle in the mind. Attitude.

Maybe that attitude just gives you that extra little bit of grit & no quit that permits your ‘good enough’ to get enough traction within the situation and get you over the hump.

Well.

Let’s be clear.

Grit & no quit does not mean winning or success in terms of achievement or actual tangible outcomes. Shit. Just ask Andy Roddick. 3-21 against Roger Federer. Multiple times in grand slam finals and semi finals – and one grand slam title. Or the fact he never quit going back out day after day during the French Open <just as an example> regardless of the pressure to win and consistently dying a slow death on the terre battue.

He found the gap between “you are good enough to win” and “my game is incredibly ill-suited to win here” and year in and year out tried to figure out how to win the stupid tournament simply because of his no quit kind of bad ass attitude.

He didn’t shirk pressure.

He didn’t shirk the limelight.

He took the cost of pressure not as a burden, but the price one paid when people felt like he was good enough.

Look. This piece isn’t about tennis or even about Andy Roddick, it is about understanding there is a responsibility that comes along with talent. It’s about understanding your own talent and in that understanding know that people also see it and also will expect something. It’s about being okay with all that.

People can sit around and quibble over what talent is or is not. people can quibble over what is good enough and what is not. but it is difficult to quibble with pressure. It just is. And in its existence resides a little, or sometimes big & glaring, spotlight on an understanding, or a belief, that people expect things of you. It is within that spotlight one should be able to see ‘good enough’ instead of ‘am I good enough’ and understand the talent exists to do whatever needs to be done. And in that situation, and in that time, it is quite possible you are uniquely qualified to do whatever it is that needs to be done.

Yeah.

Go ahead and quibble with me about talent, good enough, not all pressure is created equal and even whether pressure is intrinsic or extrinsic, but if you do so you are simply dancing on the head of a pin.  

Having talent is a gift. And I would argue everyone has a ‘gift’ in this sense. So. Stop looking at it as a burden. Yeah. Sure. With talent certainly comes some not so great aspects but, c’mon, whatever talent you have means you are in the game for god’s sake.

A lot of people would kill for the talent you may have (and I don’t care if it’s C-level talent or simply a talent for putting things together in your garage).

Quit whining.

Quit bitching.

Quit shirking the responsibilities that come along with whatever your gift or talent is.

Sure.

There may be someone out there with more talent.

But.

So what.

That doesn’t diminish your talent. And it certainly won’t diminish the pressures associated with what you can do and what people expect you to keep striving for.

But, in the end, pressure is no more, or no less, than simply a reflection of the fact you must be good at something for people to want to put pressure on you. Ponder.

===

“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.”

Robert H. Schuller

===

Well. Happy Easter <if you celebrate it> tomorrow.

By no stretch of the imagination am I religious, however, I think it is silly to simply regard religion & religious believers as ‘followers of fantasy. Faith, in and of itself, is a strong complex concept. Inevitably a strong faith is grounded in two things – faith in oneself and faith in some external beliefs <be they something specific , like God or Allah, or something less tangible, like morals & an ethical compass – all of which can also be intertwined>. I say the two things because just faith in oneself is … well … narcissistic, and, just faith in something external … well … most likely absolves you of any self will or individual thought.

Anyway.

My apologies to my religious friends because I tend to believe I am going to bastardize the true concept of Easter to make a couple of points.

If you want to be successful in business, you learn very quickly the balance between confidence & humility as well as understand its affect on uniting & dividing.

All you need to do is to change jobs once in your career and face a new organization and new community of employees as a stranger that you need to earn trust & confidence & respect  & ‘likeability’ <assuming that last one is important to you>.

You need to prove your competence and trustworthiness and ability to work within a team <or manage a team>, therefore, you must demonstrate dedication and commitment to hard work and some empathy toward the existing community of workers & working and the way things are done.

Trust precedes any change. And that includes progress & outcomes. Trust is typically slow to build and it seems like a ceaseless struggle especially if you truly are trustworthy and have the best intentions.

Now.

Humility can be a tricky word.

Tricky in that in some case it can connote some meekness or ‘lack of leadership skills.’ But it can also refer to a willingness to self assess, recognize self limitations, recognize gaps in knowledge, recognize that ideas can come from anywhere and anyone and an ability to recognize good advice.

Humility, when genuine and when tied to a good self esteem & confidence in one’s beliefs & skills, unites. It unites people to a way of doing things and a way of thinking about things. Most importantly, it doesn’t dictate specifics but rather establishes a framework for accepted protocol. If you are in a leader position assuming a new position in a new organization this is the true way to impact existing behavior & attitudes.

And you know what?

That is what Easter reminds me of.

We are all shaped by the cultures in which we were raised. And change is difficult. And, yet, change is our constant companion. The other constant companion we have is unrest somewhere in the world at any time. The world, heck, the universe, is never totally calm.

Far too often we bluster our way thru change and transition & unrest trying to convince everyone we not only know what the hell we are doing, but also we know where the hell we are going and that we know where the hell a ‘calm place’ resides.

** note: we don’t.

The fact we really don’t know what the hell we are doing or even where the hell a calm place is creates a general fear of failing or not being good enough <in the moment or in totality> which makes us say and do things we may not really want to say or do in our heart of hearts.

It is only being centered on humility which permits us to forge thru the change & transition ceaselessly and arrive out the other side not only better, but having made those around us better — and while there is no guarantee of ‘no unrest or turmoil’ we all end up a little better able to face it.

Humility permitted Jesus Christ to unite people behind an idea and a way of doing things and saying things.

And he did so by never standing at a podium and boasting about his beliefs, he didn’t do this by making non-believers the enemy or suggesting anyone should be shut out <in fact he welcomed non-believers to hear his message in the hope they would … well … believe>, he never sought endorsements, he never built an election headquarters, he never solicited an endorsement, he spent more time among the working people than anyone else and he explained ideas that were complex and simple at exactly the same time.

This Easter?

Almost 1/3^rd of the world’s population will gather somewhere to remember not only the person called Jesus, but ponder the words & thoughts.

Portions of the other 2/3^rd will look on and think “I don’t believe in this resurrection thing … but … I do wish I had some sense of what those people have and I like the hope aspect.”

That is the power of humility.

That is the power of building change not thru violence or bombastic rhetoric or even false promises, but rather thru words & thoughts of love, caring and hope.

Look. I get grumpy with the people who say that “today’s world demands you to shout to be heard & noticed.”

That’s bullshit.

A voice that has something meaningful to say will be heard whether it is whispered, written or done in sign language.

I would also suggest that “hope” need not be shouted for, even when whispered, it echoes throughout every corner of the world.

Hope unites any and all.

And I know I learned that from changing jobs.

People do not want for kings or people to simply tell them what to do or who to hate or even where to hide <or how to shut out ‘those driven to destroy us’>.

People want one who believes ‘people don’t want to destroy us … they just do not understand our way, our words and our beliefs’ all the while protecting us, all people, along the way.

People want one who protects my freedom and my rights.

People want one who doesn’t sacrifice morals under the guise of ‘it is good for us to do so’ or ‘we have to in order to be successful.’

People want one who believes in my dreams, defends my dreams and doesn’t permit my dreams to slip down the slope of mediocrity.

People want one who creates an environment for me to rise, stand or fall on my own merit all the while not blaming anyone, and not permitting me to blame anyone, should I fall and equally insure I have a fair chance to receive what is due me for my successes.

People want one who is inclusive not exclusive and one who unites and not divides.

I know I learned all that by assuming a leadership title in a new organization <and having to earn the leadership mantle to match the title>.

Maybe if I were more religious I wouldn’t have had to learn it that way.

Maybe that is part of what Easter does for me. It reminds me of great lessons and lessons learned in a variety of ways.

And maybe Easter also reminds me that Hope & Faith never truly dies.

Change, and big transitions, can often look like the death of something … and, yet, in the end … something new is never really born … something, more often than not, is simply reborn.

And maybe, just maybe, that is why we should let our Hopes and not our hurts define our future.

Ok.

Once again.

I apologize to my religious friends because I would be willing to bet I got a shitload wrong from a religion standpoint. But, in my defense, I think Easter made me think about some important things and share some thoughtful thoughts and I hope that is part of what God would hope for everyone.

This Easter just take a moment and think a bit. Even if you don’t believe in Christianity, just think.

“You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling than feeling yourself into action.”

Jerome Bruner, Psychologist

—————-

Achievement provides proof.

Proof provides affirmation.

Affirmation provides actualization.

Actualization provides emotion.

Emotion provides behavior motivation.

Behavior motivation is desire.

I don’t understand how when people talk about purpose or meaning they do not talk about doing.

I don’t understand how people talk about a world without work where people can do what they want.

I don’t understand how people don’t understand the value of doing and, specifically, work doing.

I don’t understand why people diminish doing (or, at minimum, constantly separate thinking/dreaming/desire and doing into some binary way of living life).

I do understand that because if most work, and work environments, are shit, people will want to talk about not doing shit (or diddleysquat) but in doing so misses the point.

The point? it may be a shitty working world, but people still love doing good shit. So maybe we should be seeking to create work, and working environments, in which people can actually do good shit.

** note: the definition of good shit is where what one does actually achieves what one desires

But let me discuss the relationship between doing and desire.

Let me begin with the unfortunate truth that the world relentlessly demands answers – the tangible. Without an answer, without a tangible thing to point to, far too many of us decide there was no value. Ok. Maybe we, as in ‘the self’, are hesitant to accept there is no value because the rest of the world relentlessly hammers away at our belief of value saying “if you cannot pinpoint what offered the value then it was just one of those ‘feel good’ non practical exercises (or ‘just a hobby’)”. Yet. Value is created in so many ways our heads will spin and the majority of the world is nonlinear, non-cause & effect, where causation & correlation is a slippery concept. Yeah. None of that last longish sentence doesn’t mean the world will be any less relentless in demanding you pinpoint value in everything you do. I think the connection between doing and desire and value is grounded in this Victor Frankl quote:

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

Look. The world will never stop demanding some fairly absurd things and the self will demand something else in the search for meaning. I’d suggest within that tension lies an uncomfortable, but fulfilling, existence.

This leads me to doing.

Doing is not just doing. What I mean by that is context, and desire, matters.

Moral responsibility of business and your role in it (doing things).

Community of doing.

Doing makes strategy meaningful.

Doing that aims to “make the world a little bit better.”

I bring up the multiple aspects to suggest there is a symbiotic relationship between tangible & intangible. The psychological and reality.

If I were cynical, I would suggest this is a halo effect in a formula world.

The ‘formula’ in the world suggests you need to choose a plan, or an objective, or a specific motivation. In fact. You get rewarded in life for what you do (this can be creation or simply action) based on how your plan has been framed.  In other words. You get encouraged to conduct life in a finite, linear, fashion. I would also suggest this means you inevitably get rewarded for your body of work not the work you do to create the ‘body.’ Yeah. You get defined by doing. Now. The halo effect is that it becomes a doom loop of belief, attitude and actions. You are encouraged to compartmentalize. Now. This can be rewarding. It certainly can meet a portion of your desire (completion), but it’s like using one desire muscle and ignoring all the other muscles.

This also means that your work life will become a reflection of the past and not the future and today will look quite similar to tomorrow. 2019 will look similar to 2018, 2022 to 2021. Yeah. A doom loop.

** note: Gapingvoid on predictability- Most people’s lives are highly predictable. And there’s a very good reason. Your brain is quite literally a “prediction machine” designed to keep you from situations and scenarios filled with uncertainty and possibility of failure. According to several psychologists, the foundation of all fears is the “unknown.” We want our lives to be predictable. We don’t want to deal with the intense emotions involved in doing something new and different. Trying something new and attempting to change your life will, without a doubt, cause anxiety. But according to the philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

“When the situation is obscure, attack.”

General Heinz Guderian

So how do you cross the space between doing and desire? Well. I hesitate to use the word uncertainty so I will instead use “obscure.” Doing is stepping into the obscure and making something happen. That, in its essence, is doing.  It creates what Kierkegaard called the “dizziness” of freedom – some anxiety coupled with some satisfaction. In other words. You design a less obscure world and situation by doing and that doing provides value in that it contributes to reasons why people work.

** note: in the 1980s where professors Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester distinguished the six main reasons why people work: play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia.

• • • • Play is when you are motivated by the work itself. You work because you enjoy it. A teacher at play enjoys the core activities of teaching — creating lesson plans, grading tests, or problem solving how to break through to each student. Play is our learning instinct, and it’s tied to curiosity, experimentation, and exploring challenging problems.

      • Purpose is when the direct outcome of the work fits your identity. You work because you value the work’s impact. For example, a teacher driven by purpose values or identifies with the goal of educating and empowering children.

      • Potential is when the outcome of the work benefits your identity. In other words, the work enhances your potential. For example, a teacher with potential may be doing his job because he eventually wants to become a principal.

They called the three listed above as motives, but I call them desires directly connected to work. Completing the halo effect thought, these improve performance to different degrees and improve ‘attained desire’ to different degrees. This happens because all performance is grounded in making the obscure more tangible – the nebulous turns concrete.

Conclusion

I read somewhere once that when you write down your dreams in vivid detail, you begin to engage both your conscious and subconscious minds. That writing down your dreams and visualizing them will create the engagement internally and externally more concrete. It’s kind of like visualizing doing and desire.

They also suggested that as you write down dreams you start thinking about what people may be part of those dreams (people who can help you ‘do’ the dream). People who can help your doing be better. I actually believe we don’t think about that enough when we speak of doing. Doing is too often discussed in an individualistic way but, as I noted earlier in this piece, the best doing makes the world a little better and ripples out into the community – your tribe, your department, your organization, your family, your neighborhood, your world.

Look. People are complex, their desires & wants are complex and the world they live within is not only complex, but demands some alternatively contradictory things of people. Maslow was never intended to be used as a ‘pyramid’ nor did he ever suggest a simplistic linear relationship between needs & desires, but he clearly pointed out that doing has a role in reaching desires (and the relationship between the two in creating meaning). I imagine my point in ending with Maslow is that at some point I wish we could just accept that people are an imperfect collection of ideas, attitudes, needs & desires and that coherence in Life is most likely attained not through success, but meaning. And that meaning, and coherence, is actually grounded in some version of doing. Ponder.

 

“Nowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on “teamwork” is bunkum – a conspiracy of the mediocre majority.”

 David Ogilvy

 

Here is where I begin: Collaboration and Consensus often generate a generalist idea, in other words, mediocrity. Now. There is clearly a difference (or distinction?) in-between collaboration and consensus, but for the purposes of today I throw them into the same bucket because, typically, that what business does. While collaboration, well done, can expand ideas, consensus, well done, constricts ideas. Consensusing (I made up that phrase) arcs toward appealing to the masses (and therefore the group in general), but lacks the distinctness and “edges” that could differentiate it.

Okay.

That said (before I start hearing the screams of anguish from everyone who advocates the power of collaboration). Hey. I am all for collaboration. I believe it uncovers well-rounded ideas and sometimes even creates that unique “wow” idea in discussion, but collaboration is like a bell curve. This is a reminder that collaboration has costs as well as benefits.

In the beginning, because collaboration doesn’t come naturally to specialists (and it shouldn’t because specialists are good at what they do because they are…well…specialized), you are at the bottom side of the bell curve. This time in the collaboration process is pretty nonproductive and there is (or should be) a lot of banging together of different disciplines and knowledge.

** note: this is a reflection of conflict and how people, in general, suck at navigating conflict particularly when associated with ideas. Conflict Well Done.

That’s okay.

I call this stage “positive friction.” Some pushing and shoving and jostling for ideas.

Somehow the collaborators involved learn to collaborate (typically there is some generalist who is better than others at figuring out how to not only get everyone to “play well together”, but also figure out what pieces of the puzzle are most interesting and useful and get them placed on the table to discuss). And ideas start flowing and being discussed and debated.

From that point the collaborators are moving on up (to use a Jefferson’s reference). You are aiming toward the top of the bell curve. And this is where the ‘bigger’ ideas <and sharper insights> arise.

The ideas that are awesome and distinct and, frankly, almost undoable (for a variety of reasons).

Unfortunately, that is when you start heading back down the bell curve.

This is also where a great generalist stops themselves (maybe not everyone else but themselves) and captures ideas into two groups:

1. 1. 1. The non-doable ideas because of truly functional reasons.

They were, and are, great ideas. Consistent with the vision of the company, ideas that could put the company on the map (or keep them ahead of everyone else). They just cannot operationally be done at this time. Maybe you don’t have the ingredient that can deliver the “wow” aspect. Or the factories are not capable of producing it. Or your service people just can’t do it. Interestingly, these are the types of ideas a company needs.

These are truly the innovation ideas that the company needs to assess and throw into a new products funnel or feasibility studies to see whether it is worth the investment to make the idea functionally “happenable” (not really a word but I liked typing it).

1. 1. 2. The non-doable ideas because of…well…politics or such.

They are “too hard to implement.”

“Betsy (some senior person) will hate the idea.”

“Well, it goes against policy.”

“<insert a book title here> says this is not the right way to be successful.”

Crap like that. These are the great ideas that are gonna die as you move down the “consensus” side of the bell curve.

To be clear. These are pragmatic self inflicted wounds in 2 ways:

• • • They are useful ideas, just useless within the systems/process/culture that exists
    • If you try and implement, these are like the wounds that never heal and often get infected

That’s why a good pragmatic generalist will set this type of ideas aside.

And then, sadly, many great ideas get killed off because of consensus. Now that the collaborators are moving down the bell curve this is when creativity typically gets crushed. If you don’t have that generalist (or a way to capture those great ideas), the group starts heading into Consensus Land (sometimes called the Bermuda Triangle of Ideas).

Look.

Consensus means “gray.” Or maybe I could just say that, during consensus, great ideas just keep getting filed down to a nub of an idea. Unless you have a truly unique leadership group (that have a meaningful system for agreeing to ‘wild & crazy’ ideas) as soon as the group gets involved you evolve/devolve to the middle.

It is easy to get to that place. Less objections and less obstacles to “getting it done.” Sounds good, but ‘getting it done’ more often than not is sacrificing some really good things to get it done.

This whole consensus thing gets even worse when it gets driven down into the middle management level.

So, let’s play this out.

Senior leaders in their infinite wisdom want to empower the “little people” (ok … the people less senior) so they put a group of them together and say “bring me ideas your group supports.”

Uh oh. The group.

The group who all want to be promoted.

The group who doesn’t want to look stupid.

The group which may be made up of people with different bosses who have different agendas.

The group that wants to look fiscally responsible.

The group is now in trouble <in other words, the Ideas are now in trouble>.

The group will not select a bright color. Gray, baby, gray. Or something very very neutral that blends into the background of anyone who may have to approve it. No sharp edges anyone can get stabbed with and something nice and soft and fluffy so everyone likes it.

Collaboration, well done, does have value. Often significant value. It takes ideas and enhances (tactically, strategically, functionally and pragmatically) to a point where survival of the idea is greater than its likelihood of death. In other words. Collaboration enhances implementation, not creation, of ideas.

So, go ahead and collaborate to your heart’s content. You will be creative. Just avoid the last “C” (consensus). And maybe you will end up with the innovation your company needs.

All of which leads me to:

 

Great companies need at least one unreasonable person.

 

Which leads me to say that companies are strewn with reasonable people.

This is important when you start talking about collaboration and, inevitably, consensus.

 

“We are a country of centrists.”

The West Wing

 

In general, large organizations are groups of centrists. Why? Companies are strewn with people whose main criterion is “making sense”. They bludgeon you with the reasonable “why does it make sense?” club every chance they get. They are the sensible people that keep companies from fiscal irresponsibility and, in general, keep the company out of the ditch. To them everything has to have a reason. It has to all make sense.

Working with the smartest of these people (and please don’t believe that because they are exceedingly reasonable they are not often brilliant business people) means you are constantly running an escalating gauntlet of objections when you suggest a seemingly unreasonable (or non-sensible) idea.

 

“I’ve learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.”

Leo Burnett

 

Each sensible objection begets another sensible objection. And it gets tiring (as well as the odds are in their favor they will ultimately get to the objection where you are forced to respond “because it feels like the right thing to do” … which is … uhm … the kiss of death to the idea). By the way, reasonable people get you coming and going. They will over-reasonabilize (I made up that word) the idea itself and then bring down the reasonable hammer onto the execution and nail it down one nail at a time.

Let’s be clear. If you always did what the reasonable people want you to do, you will maintain your speed (sometimes you may go a little faster and sometimes a little slower) and you will drive right down the middle of the racetrack.

Sure.

You will never hit a wall or run off the track. But at some point, someone will pass you (don’t worry … some of those guys have no clue what they are doing and will crash).

By the way, feel free and take some solace in the fact the crashers are probably a team strewn with unreasonable people who drive their reasonable few crazy. But. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that, unfortunately, some of those guys who pass you really do have their act together and most likely some unreasonable person figured out a way of getting people to endorse the ‘unlikely’ and while you keep waiting for them to crash, they simply keep going faster than you and, before you know it, they are so far ahead you cannot even see them.

To summarize. I believe in my heart of hearts the greatest ideas arise from individuals. And it takes a unique “individual” who is willing to share this idea and truly accept the grinding, helpful idea conflict and execution collaboration, it takes to take a diamond in the rough to the Hope diamond. I also think it takes some unique individuals who love the true art of diamond grinding (they have to be a little selfless). If you can get the collaborators collaborating and not trying to come up with a consensus idea, you have a fighting chance of getting “the diamond.” But, in general, collaboration and consensus kill the best ideas.