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“Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.”

Alvin Toffler

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“I love technology and doubly love people; it’s the connection that’s out of whack.”

Jaron Lanier

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“The great growling engine of change – technology.”

Alvin Toffler

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The so-called paradox is that with increasing technology use we are not seeing a corresponding productivity increase. The entire discussion gets even a little wackier in that many of the so-called paradox analysts keep comparing it to electricity. Anyway. Here is my cent and a half on this topic.

First. I sometimes think we get confused in this discussion where we confuse technology growth with productivity growth. By that we seem to continuously seek to find some link, or intertwined relationship, when maybe it is best for us to evaluate productivity, as productivity, and technology, as technology. That doesn’t mean we probably shouldn’t seek some correlations, but not treat the entire relationship as causal. Personally, and I am not a systems analyst nor an economist, I would seek out what Donella Meadows called ‘leverage points’, kind of the times and places in which the factors aligned, and see what correlations occurred and what dynamics existed that may have permitted the leverage point to emerge. What that means is maybe increased productivity is contextual and time-constrained; not structural. Ponder that.

Second. Technology can gain its own momentum. Technology begets technology and mastering one technology gives rise to not only new technologies, but new technology wants and needs (basically a technology can create a future market within people’s minds as they wonder “why can’t?” and someone creates to say “you can”). I would suggest if you think about technology that way then technology becomes less of ‘the enemy’ or some adversary, but rather an extension of people’s thinking of progress. What that means is maybe technology doesn’t increase productivity, until it does.

Which leads me to speed.

I am not talking about speed as in how fast we can go, but rather speed in terms of our expectations. We are a hasty, impatient, species. It only got worse in the industrial age which was driven by the clock. Our speed became measured and, as a consequence, we began measuring our expectations. Everything lost its natural set of rhythms and patterns and assumed a measured rhythm and pattern. This isn’t to suggest things do not have rhythms and patterns, just that through the clock we have crammed the natural into the unnatural (side note: I imagine this is why we are so often disappointed because the things rhythm/pattern never exactly matches the unnatural rhythm/patterns so nothing is ever nice and tidy). In addition, once we had clocks, we constructed a structural rhythm and a pattern from which we could leverage productivity across all aspects of business, life and society. Once again, I would note this is possibly the most likely reason we are constantly disappointed because the natural never exactly fits into the unnatural boxes. All that said. Technology has a speed of its own. It just goes whether we go or not. That doesn’t mean a shitload of capitalist business people aren’t attempting to actually make money off of our unnaturally constructed speed world (through productivity), but technological progress really doesn’t give a shit about our constructed desires, it simply is and in its own way reflects its own ‘mechanical-natural’ speed, pace, rhythm and pattern. I imagine my real point in this section is that part of the technology productivity paradox is found in this asynchronistic time/speed relationship between technology speed and people speed.

“What I am against—and without a minute’s hesitation or apology—is our slovenly willingness to allow machines and the idea of the machine to prescribe the terms and conditions of the lives of creatures, which we have allowed increasingly for the last two centuries, and are still allowing, at an incalculable cost to other creatures and to ourselves. If we state the problem that way, then we can see that the way to correct our error, and so deliver ourselves from our own destructiveness, is to quit using our technological capability as the reference point and standard of our economic life. We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work.”

Wendell Berry, Life Is A Miracle: An essay against modern superstition (2000)

Which leads me to the long tail of success.

What I mean by that is a version of people’s inordinate focus on immediate results. In other words, if someone doesn’t see immediate success, they deem it a failure. Headline after headline and ‘expert’ after expert will do everything they can to tear down an investment in the present as a poor investment because it’s not showing immediate returns. Shit. I have no clue how any government can get anything done under this smothering attack mode. This is a problem because there are a boatload of recent studies highlighting that often productivity success is only attained on complimentary technology innovations and not on the foundational innovation, i.e., the long tail of success. Anyway. You can parse out technology into some fairly well defined “useful versus less-than-useful’ contributions to productivity (work and life), but in doing so you ignore the dynamics of the system it is inserting itself into. Technological change does not happen in a vacuum, in fact, technology and society are inextricably bound together. Shit. Productivity does not happen in a vacuum. People shape technology and how technology shapes people and, yet, productivity continues to be measured in inflation, GDP, output, profits and ‘growth.’ Once again, the ‘system’ typically seeks causal relationships and I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that in a dynamic complex system, i.e., the economy, system behavior is a reflection of the whole working together and not any one individual part. So maybe I could argue that technology IS driving productivity because it is a part of the whole that is creating success. Ok. Maybe not; but maybe. Oh. And that long tail thing. I think its absurd to not acknowledge that technology hasn’t made more people, more productive, outside the traditional office construct. We have more profitable healthy small businesses and free-lance/self-employed businesses than ever – all/many fundamentally supported and grounded in technology. Just because a large business cannot prove a productivity increase causation from technology, I don’t think we cannot argue that technology has enhanced productivity. In fact. I would argue technology has been a more effective productivity enhancer with small businesses than big businesses which is most likely an indictment against how larger businesses just cannot get shit done then a technology/productivity paradox.

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 “We find the true person only through group organization. The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they are released by group life. Thus, the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.”

Marly Parker Follett, The New State

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“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

Roy Arama

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Which leads me to say here is where it gets weird and unpredictable.

Two things are converging at the same time:

• Implementation lag. That’s the technical term for “it takes time to master tools.”
• Factory construction. That’s code for “non-human productivity”.

History has shown technology eventually transforms how we live and work, but it can take some time, i.e., implementation lag.

Businesses have to be reorganized and adopt these technologies in an effective way, and other complementary technologies have to be created to exploit the breakthroughs. This can be seen by comparing labour productivity in two different time periods. The one runs from 1870 to 1940, and it is the era of portable power, from its invention, implementation and diffusion. The other one runs from 1970 and onwards and refers to the era of information technology (IT). Labour productivity during the portable power era shared remarkably similar patterns with the IT era. In both eras, there was an initial period of roughly a quarter-century of relatively slow productivity growth. Then both eras saw decade-long accelerations in productivity growth, spanning 1915 to 1924 in the portable power era and 1995 to 2004 more recently.

The second is a bit of a wildcard in that it will drive productivity, just maybe not human productivity (or maybe not structural, just transactional). Simplistically, people discussing the impact of technology seem to like to focus on employment; or unemployment. A bit more complex, or complicated, is how technology gets implemented on a wide scale. Because this requires businesses working out the details across a variety of new plants/manufacturing/offices and the people needed to support this new approach to how the business constrict of doing business is constructed. In other words, productivity increases may be linked to technology; at some point in the future. But. Yeah. Its gonna be weird and unpredictable.

In the end.

Technology is going to grow here and there. Period. Productivity will grow here and there. Period. Technology and productivity will most likely grow together, in some places here and there, and will not in some places here and there. Period. But that isn’t a paradox. Ponder.

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“There’s nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.”

Thornton Wilder

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Well. There are a couple of things to think about with this quote.

–      What we think is not always what everyone thinks

This sounds basic. But, boy oh boy, we forget this – all the frickin’ time. In fact not only do we forget it we actually do so while remembering it.

Huh? What do I mean?

Well, c’mon, how often have you sat there and said ‘no one has been thru what I have been thru and can understand this’ or ‘no one understands how I think’ and, yet, when we look around and assess what people are doing <and thinking> we sit back and go ‘whew, I bet they’re thinking this …’

It’s kind of crazy.

It’s kind of hypocritical.

Suffice it to say whether you think you are normal or think you are abnormal what is happening inside your head is very often different than what is happening in the outside world. In other words … it is very very likely what you think is not what everyone thinks.

Next.

–      We should listen more

In business, in personal life, does not matter; we should just listen <without preconceived filters> more often.

I am fairly sure that it was Henry Miller who said “the street howls with the truth.”

Smart man.

Listen to the howls.

So let me share some observations for business.

I am an avid trend watcher, people watcher and behavior studier. I listen by watching. People give you massive cues <clues?> as to what they are thinking and why they do the things they do. You just have to listen to the music of their Life and find the beat of their individual drum. I say that because far <far> too many business people say “we need to do consumer research and hear what people say.”

Well.

You may.

But you may not have to.

In fact. Even if you do the research, if you are not a good listener, every dollar you spend on that research is wasted.

Regardless. Listening isn’t just with your ears, it is also with your nose and eyes and all your feelings.

People’s lives talk.

You may not understand the language immediately, but if you listen closely … really closely … you will understand.

Why is it so hard? Why do you have to listen so closely?

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“I do not think I’m easy to define. I have a wandering mind.

And I’m not anything that you think I am. “

Syd Barrett

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People are not easy to define. Most people are difficult to ‘slot.’

Yup.

Sorry about that.

I feel especially sorry for the people who think they are good at assessing people. The majority of them are, well, not. At best they are simply good judges of their own bias.

Anyway. We desperately WANT to slot and segment and cluster people because it makes it easier for us. But as soon as you do you stop listening. Yeah. That bias filter thing again.

Shit.

All I really know is that we need to listen more. There is nothing better for you than eavesdropping on the world on occasion. Ponder.

“When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you aren’t saying ‘no’ to yourself.”

Paulo Coelho

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This is ‘not about saying ‘Yes” when you really should say ‘No’.

Nor is this about saying ‘No’ when you really mean to say ‘Yes”.

Heck.

This isn’t even about compromising. This is simply about saying ‘Yes” and ‘No’ and the fact it has seemed to have mysteriously disappeared in today’s business <if not in many of Life’s every day conversations>. To be clear. Haven’t you noticed how often a portion of a business discussion is succinctly brought to a close with a nice definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response, yet, somehow that part of the discussion is somehow not concluded?

For some reason even if you do actually deign to take the simplicity high road and answer with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, well, the other person just keeps on talking. Or maybe if they want to show they have actually been listening they may say something like “are you sure?” or “wouldn’t you like me to explain?” or some other attempt to continue that particular discussion. And if you are in a group? Oh my. Forget it. You may as well keep the yes or the no in your pocket.

So.

What has happened to ‘yes’ and ‘no’?

Where have they gone in business?

Why have they lost their power to end a discussion?

Look. We tend to overcomplicate things in business. We seem to bundle up yes or no things into some conglomeration of an extended decision tree — all of which we assume must be discussed in its totality.

That said. Life would be much easier if we simply looked at each ‘yes” or ‘no’ decision in a meeting or discussion as preparation for the next opportunity or decision in a continuum of decisions. Treat the moment as mutually exclusive instead of mutually inclusive. What that ultimately suggests is maybe we shouldn’t dwell in the moment and linger upon the righteousness of the particular one syllable statement when someone makes it.

I am not suggesting that it isn’t important to be thoughtful about your decisions, but maybe we could seek to avoid becoming a victim of paralysis by analysis and ongoing discussion, when it really is not necessary, more often.

Oh.

Speaking of the ‘not necessary’ thing. I sense part of the reason yes and no are disappearing is because we believe it is necessary to discuss everything.

That leads me to yes and no and something called ‘fast and frugal decision-making.’

Two guys wrote a book suggesting that asking, at most, three ‘Yes/No’ questions is a fast and frugal strategy for making a decision < “Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart” by Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter Todd and the ABC Research Group>.

And, in fact, they actually call this theory ‘fast and frugal heuristics.’ I will net it down for you <albeit I will probably mangle some of their really smart thinking and logic>:

–          Traditional decision making theory is unrealistic <irrational> for humans <our minds are just not capable of practically applying theory>,

–          We tend to overcomplicate because we have been trained to do so,

–          We tend to overcomplicate for fear of ‘wrong decision’ rather than delight of ‘right decision’,

–          Most decisions can be made within three naturally course correcting ‘yes or no’ decision making answers.

Well. Before I share my own thoughts

About fast & frugal decision making:

It is fast because it does not involve much computation, and it is frugal because it only searches for some of the available information. Its simplicity raises the suspicion that it might be highly inaccurate, compared to standard statistical classification methods that process and combine all available predictors. Yet it is actually more accurate than some rather complex statistical classification methods (Breiman et al., 1993). This suggests that fast and frugal decision making can be as accurate as strategies that use all available information and expensive computation forms. Fast and frugal heuristics for making decisions capture how real minds make decisions under constraints of limited time and knowledge. 

The premise is that much of human reasoning and decision making can be modeled by fast and frugal heuristics that make inferences with limited time and knowledge. These heuristics do not involve much computation, and do not compute probabilities and utilities. They are models of bounded rationality.

By the way. I really like that overall thought — ‘models of bounded rationality.’ Seems like we could use a shitload more of that in today’s workplace.

Ok. They also note <in a very candid and slightly funny way> decision making theory, when applied in practical circumstances, is actually irrational. Irrational in that the human mind actually cannot accommodate the mental gymnastics to meet the theoretical computations necessary to make ‘the most effective decision:’

The fascination with what is optimal in thought and behavior does reflect a certain sense of beauty and morality. Cognitive scientists, economists, and biologists have often chased after the same beautiful dreams by building elaborate models endowing organisms with unlimited abilities to know, memorize, and compute. These heavenly dreams, however, tend to evaporate when they encounter the physical and psychological realities of the waking world. Mere mortal humans cannot hope to live up to these dreams, and instead appear irrational and dysfunctional when measured against their fantastic standards.

In addition. Most decision making theory doesn’t incorporate any time constraints. In other words: ‘this is the theory, apply it, deadlines be damned, it takes the time it needs to apply it correctly.’

Well. That all sounds not very practical <the theory stuff>. And the fast & frugal sounds so simple it almost sounds not very practical.

Yet. I actually sense most of us with any amount of business experience instinctively agrees <mostly> with a fast & frugal decision making process albeit we may apply it in a variety of succinct ‘time frugal’ methods  which are most likely not as tight as the three yes/no idea.

So why the heck don’t we do it anymore if we instinctively think it is right?

Let me try this and I will use myself to explain. Two main reasons:

1.     We have taken theory literally.

Everyone in business these days has been steeped in training over the years to question everything. It doesn’t matter your seniority or experience, if you don’t agree, you question. Heck. Even if you agree you question.

Even worse? We treat every decision equally. I say that to be kind to those who simply cannot discern what may actually be worth discussing <or discerning the important from the unimportant> . Doesn’t matter what the reason is, we seem to discuss … every … single … decision. What that means is that even if you do decide to assess the discussion and say ‘yes’ … and that’s it <in your mind>, someone will question it or simply want to discuss it.

By the way. Collaboration exponentially exacerbates this issue. In a groupthink collaborative scenario there will ALWAYS be at least one person who will disagree, want to discuss, decline to move on <add in whatever ‘d’ word you would like to in this space> and it will all happen in the name of ‘positive collaboration.’ The net result? Negative progress <translation: no forward movement and often backwards movement>.

Look. I won’t argue with all the decision making theory models. Smarter people than I have invested gobs of time and research thinking all that shit through. I will suggest in the business world, i.e., the practical world, we need to become better at not over thinking <or over questioning> and we need to become better at not treating each decision as equal to another <so possibly we need to be better at training how to discern the difference between decisions>.

Oh. That last thought.

That sounds simple and practical but we have actually been trained to do the opposite. This attitude would take a major shift in attitude. In other words — this would be very very hard to do.

2.       Skepticism

For some reason we have become quite skeptical in the work place. And by this I mean there seems to be an overall sense of ‘they aren’t really saying what they mean’ or in the questioning-everything environment maybe it is ‘what do they really mean by that?”

Well. If I was using a shitload of words I could possibly allow some skepticism, but this is about one syllable responses – yes … no. I frankly don’t see a lot of ambiguity or space to misconstrue what is actually being said. However. A respected friend made me think about this more as we discussed the topic.

Therefore rather than be hypothetical I will address this from my point of view on what everyone should know when I say yes or no:

–          I am not being lazy. I am perfectly aware that saying a simple yes or no will most likely be jarring in a discussion environment. Suffice it to say that if I have reached a point where I believe a yes or no is appropriate I fully understand the situation and the thinking behind whatever we are discussing. I have gathered enough information either prior to the discussion, within the discussion to that point or in my head from past experiences and knowledge to assess and decide.  Most likely I have decided that in the scheme of things our time would be better spent discussing another decision rather than this one.

In other words I have been anything but lazy. Oh. And even if I have not been lazy and I have misread the discussion up to this point I imagine everything can be course corrected as we move on or … I have forfeited my right to move it along that path.

–          I mean it. I promise. I mean it. You don’t have to explain anything else or question motives or discuss what has been agreed upon any more.

Accept it.

I mean it.

And let’s move on.

I imagine the few words of explanation I just shared will not resolve a global work place skepticism attitude but, what the heck, ‘one small step possibly begets one giant leap for workplace mankind.’

Anyway. Suffice it to say saying yes or no is good and we should be doing it more often in the work place.

I know that sounds so silly you may be wondering why I typed it, but sometimes the most simple things are overlooked.

Ok. A couple last thoughts.

This yes or no thing. You just have to have a clear sense of  objectives, commitments and priorities.  If you don’t have a handle on all that then a yes or no will not only truly be lazy thinking it may actually be a misguided response. That is what makes this tricky. And it’s often easier for everyone <and I mean everyone> to discuss things <so everyone can discuss, and re-discuss, the objectives, commitments and priorities — until your head explodes>.

Yeah. I know. All that ‘over-discussion’ sounds a little wacky in a semi chaotic time constrained business world, but I imagine discussion leads to being more well-liked <and some perception of ‘team player’ and such>.

But we all need to keep in mind. Each day in the workplace we are forced to examine millions of little decisions that inevitably make up what business is all about while we, ourselves, make something like 30,000 decisions in a day. This constant scrutiny of hundreds of possible outcomes for every decision you make will drive you nuts. And the constant discussion will use up more time than is useful.

In the end <here is what I believe>.

Business needs to be more diligent with regard to the importance of good decision-making.

While business is certainly ultimately the sum of the decisions made … it makes sense to recognize it is often not as difficult as we often make it. Each decision is not business altering nor life threatening. In fact … most are not. In addition … most decisions are just not that complicated or complex.

In fact <simplistically> I would argue all things basically come down to one basic decision between two choices – ‘Yes” or ‘No’. Ponder.

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“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.”

Rumi

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When I started on this piece I wasn’t sure if it was about self, life, dreams or maybe even starting a business. Then I realized, in some weird way, it was kind of about all. How? Think “connection.” Or maybe connecting with something in a multi-dimensional way <emotionally, physically, experientially> which not only grounds us to us <our self>, but has a commonality to ground us to other “us’es” as well as to, well, everything <hopes, dreams, aspirations>. To me this has two aspects: stars & nothingness.

I like the thought that maybe each of us is really a star <shining brightly for something good or hopeful within ourselves as well as possibly for someone else>.

I like the thought we spin out of nothingness as people, as careers, as thinkers and as doers, scattering to find our place in the expansiveness ahead.

I like the thought that maybe, because we really are stars, we seek them to find whatever secrets they could share about us.

I like the thought that stars can be seen by anyone, anywhere if you only look up on occasion.

I like the thought that stars connect people and thoughts and dreams and wishes and … well … anything hopeful.

I like the thought that while stars are about space they are actually more about managing space by circumventing distance to activate that which can exist between stars and people.

I like the thought that stars actually embrace the strongest business building concept thru actively engaging people in a physical way … an emotional way … and an experiential way. Stars engage us, connect with us, in a way that businesses and brands should attempt to emulate any authentic way they can <because I am not sure I can find any one person who dislikes stars>.

Regardless.

Whether we truly are stars spinning out nothingness or stars simply represent our sense of ‘nothingness-to-what-could be’ mindset, it is pretty amazing to think that anything spinning out of nothingness can inevitably create one of the greatest connections a person can ever have. Stars represent life moments stitching together all that we are and all that we want to be to form thoughts & attitudes which fuel behavior.

Stars are part of everyday lives and occupy critical space in a person’s grander Life story. They never dictate behavior, but instead inspire behavior. They do so by nudging us toward both emotional and transactional personal investments into ourselves inevitably shaping life patterns, creating behavior, and ultimately encouraging us to make personal identity statements about who we are.

Stars are the beginning, middle and end of Life. They represent life and how we live it.

They are the small cornerstones to our Life stories. Somehow they transcend the transactions we make with ourselves by resonating with something inside as well as outside the moment of ‘transaction’ with the star. And maybe most importantly? This multi-dimensional transaction we make with a star perpetuates a bond which unites, influences, inspires and scatters us out of nothingness toward, well, somethingness.

I imagine that means stars ultimately represent a connection with ‘what could, or can, be.” Stars help us answer the ultimate life question: “how do people fulfill their potential and figure out who they are and what they’re capable of?”  They seem to give people a nice simple focus point which doesn’t sit there and lecture or even offer any advice, simply a feeling of possibilities.

Shit. Maybe that is all ‘Bruce-babble.’ Maybe I am giving stars too much power and too much definition.

Here is what I know for sure. We should all look at stars every once in a while:

Some of us may find hope.

Some of us may find clarity.

Some of us may find ourselves shrinking before the immensity of Life.

Some of us may see possibilities.

And some of us may find that they take the moment and make a Life transaction.

But all of us WILL find something. If we look up at all that nothingness, we will see something. Ponder.

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“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.”

Veronica Roth, Divergent

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Personally, I think it’s a great time to be a brand or a business with a real spine. A business willing to take a stand and actually defend it. That doesn’t mean a business shouldn’t be cautious, or, well, pragmatic with regard to who and what they are and what they take a stand on. That said. I have been consistently unequivocal with regard to my belief on whether a business should wade into social issues. And, as I consistently say, I have Peter Drucker on my side.

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“These are strange times indeed. But, a brand must be true to who and what the brand is, or they are nothing but a disingenuous fabrication. And for a brand to deny its truth is the fastest path to extinction and irrelevance. That said, I don’t believe it’s wise for brands to flirt with controversy or fly false flags to curry favor in cultural moments in order to mask their true selves. But whether brand or human, honesty with one’s self is the only lasting bankable value.”

Don Perkins

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Which leads me to “be true to thineself”.

I actually don’t believe it is a tricky time for honesty, I think it’s a tricky time for clarity. If a business, or brand, is a bit lazy in their communication and stance, that laziness is ruthlessly penalized. Nuance is gaining importance and nuance demands a certain type of rigor (thought, actions, and words). It’s kind of like when a brand elevated a tertiary benefit to the forefront. Businesses are deciding whether they should elevate something that has been most likely lurking in the depths of who and what they are (at least the ones who don’t make shit up just to follow public sentiment). The lazy critics pound away on “but your primary benefit is x”, but the elevation is depth of values AND value creation. Oh. Yeah. Taking a stand is about value creation. that doesn’t mean everyone will see the value created, but not everyone has to (or should), only enough people with which your future value is secured. Lastly. There is the short term versus long term mentality. Everything, and I mean everything, gets skewered short term – and amplified, but business needs to get better at having a long(er) term view. Everything I just wrote demands a spine to navigate.

Which leads me to the difference between playing with identity positioning versus values positioning.

What I mean by that is with identity positioning I pick an object or topic, like standing for a rifle or patriotism at the core of what my business stands for. Neither of which are bad generally speaking. The majority of people who own a rifle are good people and the majority of Patriots are good people. The problem with those positionings is that you’re also stuck with the bad people who associate themselves with owning a rifle or Patriotism. The brand is forced to state “I do not support that” while accepting the fact they buy your shit. They have self selected in and your semi-vapid positioning gave them a tent to stand under. Your positioning has invited them in and ejecting them will make them mad.

Conversely, if I take a values positioning I create some coherence around that particular value. I force some people to make some choices beyond simply being something like an owner of a rifle or some ubiquitous patriot.

I take a stance on body appearance.

I take a stance on the importance of the environment.

I take a stance on minorities rights.

Those aren’t identity politics or positions, they are a reflection of things that you value and your values. It’s making a stand for something that you actually do believe in that is neither ubiquitous nor unequivocal. You make people select in on that ‘value’, characteristic, and make others decide they don’t. In doing so you inevitably fall into the intellectually lazy cultural debate that we all fell into in the All Lives Matter versus Black Lives Matter discussion. All lives Matters is ubiquitous. It is a relatively meaningless statement which provides a big tent for everybody to stand under say nothing meaningful and not have to be clear with regard to what they mean. Black Lives Matter was a choice. It didn’t mean that all lives didn’t matter just that black people face recognizable social issues, disparities faced by Black Americans, and it matters that we recognize them. It didn’t mean that all people don’t face some social issues just that black people face some systemic ones and ones that should be recognized by all people (particularly within the context of the moment). They made you choose and some people got angry they had to not choose to support black americans.

But, circling back to brands, even ubiquitous positioning falls into the same trap that cultural identity positionings do. For example, Coca Cola is a ubiquitous brand with a ubiquitous positioning: happiness. Nothing wrong with it in fact one could argue that spreading happiness is a good thing. Ok, maybe not through sugar drinks, but that’s a different issue for a different time. Anyway. Within a ubiquitous happiness positioning Coca Cola is forced to accept the fact that Neo Nazis drink Coca Cola at their annual conventions and gatherings and the Uighur prison guards in China sip Coca Cola at their job. Therefore, Coke has to say we do not support Neo Nazis, we do not support what is happening to the Uighurs in China, but Neo Nazis and Uighur prison camp guards deserve their moments of happiness (aside: “and we will not remove the distribution to them”). That’s kind of the position they’re stuck in.

And maybe that is my larger point.

We can argue about whether America is divided or fragmented or broken until we are blue in the face. We can even argue whether brands taking a stand divides, fragments or breaks. But. The truth is that at some point, maybe in the mid-2010’s, a shitload of people began realizing they needed to be clearer about what they believed in, and didn’t believe in. And, as I think we can all agree on, that can be an uncomfortable discussion. But it can be an incredibly important discussion if you think long term about addressing submerged issues which are like barnacles on the bottom of progress, productivity and some sensemaking coherence. I think it’s an incredibly important discussion if you are thinking about the long term progress, productivity and sensemaking (how people make sense of you as a business & brand) as a business. I think its crazy to think businesses and brands can ignore this AND not pay some price in the future. being ubiquitous or straddling the fence (which saying nothing is) may be palatable short term, my guess is that they are simply putting off the payment due.

That said.

I think it is a great time to be a business and a brand with a spine. In a world of flux, where most people are confused by a range of issues, if your business can stand up, and stand out, you simultaneously become a target and a hunter. You are hunting the future – customers, users, employees and potential in general. I say hunt. Ponder.

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“Human rights’ are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in…A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A final note on the (current) elephant in the room: Bud Light. I worry the wrong lessons are being learned and it makes businesses increasingly cautious to do what they believe is the right thing to do.

First. The core audience false narrative. All the non-brand/marketing people (those who have never worked in it) keep talking about “product switching” and “never coming back.” What a bunch of baloney. As the experienced brand people know the majority of any brand’s sales are not ‘loyal’ users but rather light users who purchase now and then. Bud Light “loyal” drinkers are still “loyal” drinkers (whatever that may actually be because how does one be loyal to a tasteless beer). Lots of lower purchase people bought something else. If I were a betting man, once this brouhaha is over, they will go back to buying Bud Light on occasion.

Second. Sales declines are year over year. Yeah. decline is bad and 25% year over year is really bad. But, as any sane business person would tell you, chasing short term bad, or good, news is silly. What’s gonna matter is a year from now. See my first point to tell you why. But the larger issue is that we, in America, have a short term problem. We see everything through immediate & now bifocals assuming that what is in the present is representative of the future. That’s nuts. That’s not healthy.

Third. The real issue has nothing to do with sending a transgender influencer one case of personalized beers. The real issue is what Bud Light did when it did become public. They got wishy washy. They lost their spine. All they had to do was say “yeah, transgenders drink Bud Light, if it bugs you, don’t drink Bud Light with a transgender.” Instead they actually believed a majority of people were outraged (a majority were not) and then tried to appeal to the raucous transgender fear mongering group. That didn’t please anyone. The loud anti-transgender hardcore smallish group said “too late”, the majority who couldn’t believe it was a brouhaha wasn’t pleased that Bud Light didn’t stand up for what they did. And Bud Light, generally speaking, kept sending out messages that not only did they stand for nothing but they tripled down on a ubiquitous positioning (simply reminding a shitload of people they weren’t quite sure why they had been buying Bud Light all along). So while the numbers may have slipped with the anti-transgender crowd sliding over to another horrible bland light beer, it wouldn’t have been as bad as also losing the crowd who was fine with transgenders drinking the same beer as they shifted to another horrible bland light beer. I imagine my point is if Bud Light had a spine, they wouldn’t be having the trouble they are currently having.

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“If you want to give God a good laugh, start telling him about your plans.”

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“The notion that we can’t do our jobs unless there are perfect conditions.

Objectives, target audience, key message, budget, timings, etc.

I mean yes, sure, we need those conditions to exist to do our thing well…

… but often they come in bits, due to the vagaries of organisational complexity.

Which means we’re always working in the context(s) of what we have right now.

And, by association, strategies can – and must – change given new information.

I know in theory we should get all the information beforehand, sure.

But in practice, flexing as we go is how 90% of the job actually tends to flow.”

Rob Estreitinho

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“It is optionality that makes things work and grow.”

Nassim Taleb

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Polycentric and quantum theory are different things, but today I mash them together to offer some thoughts on business.  To be clear, Polycentric theory and Quantum theory belong to distinct fields and have their own specific applications and implications.

1. Polycentric Theory: Polycentric theory is a framework in political science and economics that emphasizes the existence of multiple centers of power and decision-making within a system. It suggests that authority and governance should be dispersed among various levels and institutions rather than concentrated in a single entity. Polycentric systems often promote local autonomy and decentralized decision-making.
2. Quantum Theory: Quantum theory, also known as quantum mechanics, is a branch of physics that deals with the behavior of matter and energy at the microscopic scale. It provides a mathematical framework to understand the fundamental nature of particles and their interactions, incorporating concepts such as superposition, uncertainty, and wave-particle duality.

So let me share some similarities:

1. Non-linearity: Both theories challenge traditional linear approaches. Polycentric theory acknowledges the complex and nonlinear nature of decision-making, highlighting the interactions between multiple centers of power. Similarly, quantum theory describes the probabilistic behavior of particles emphasizing nonlinearity.
2. Emergence and Interconnectedness: Both theories recognize the importance of emergent activity and interconnected systems. Polycentric theory suggests that complex systems generate emergent properties like self-organization and adaptive behavior. Quantum theory highlights entanglement where entangled system is one where the individual particles behave as an inseparable whole.
3. Contextual and Relational Perspectives: Both theories consider the significance of context and relationships. Polycentric theory emphasizes the importance of local knowledge, cultural norms, and social relationships in decision-making. Quantum theory acknowledges that observations and measurements are context-dependent, and the behavior of particles is influenced by their interactions with the surrounding environment.

To summarize, duality, uncertainty, and entanglement are characteristics of polycentric theory, quantum theory, and business.

Which leads me to say that there is always a moment when you look around and all you see is, well, uncertainty or it feels like chaos or it feels impossible to discern any order in what is happening around you. Most of us then sit back and try and take a moment to try and think clearly because, generally speaking, the brain is programmed to find patterns and we get a bit desperate when mired in a world in which everything appears random. It is an unending struggle to bring some order to chaos – real and perceived. More often than not while preferring a pattern we find a point on which to focus. This is kind of our innate understanding of ‘polycentricity.’ Polycentric means in any given moment there is a center. Organizationally this will naturally occur, even within a hierarchy, as long as the ‘walls’ are permeable. I would argue it happens whether you want it or not (in suboptimal ways as people circumvent the system in the attempt to get shit done) and will happen in an optimal way if it is actually encouraged.

The idea of polycentric is important because centers can easily look after ‘order’ AND disorder pretty well and if the center is contextual (flows to the need/opportunity) that means freedom, agility & creativity follow it. Yeah. I just said Business is fluid (even organizationally). I believe people rarely think about business as a flow system even though we all agree that it is a permanently evolving entity, but a business is a flow of realities, many operating in dualities, with evolving centers of gravity to leverage. Regardless, the allure of quantum is the idea there are multiple histories and multiple ‘realities’ all existing simultaneously.  Ponder that for a bit with regard to business. This means history is being written situation by situation and decision by decision. That your existence resides on multiple planes, and dimensions, and you are simply vectoring, not guiding. And maybe that’s the larger point – vector versus guide. You accept your business has multiple histories, not just one, and its legacy is shaped not created.

Which leads me to confusing chaos with catastrophe.

I don’t believe business actually endures chaos (as defined by complexity theory). There can be disorder, but within the confines, construct, of a business the gyre can widen but not fall apart. Unless there is a catastrophe or catastrophic event.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Yeats

Quantum, or complexity, speaking, what does chaos look like? The trajectory wanders around forever in state space. It can never close or cross itself on one plane, yet, across planes (spiraling) its trajectory can. It remains within a confined space (constrained by its own entropy/energy) and is constantly pivoting on new points (never replicated). Kind of polycentric at all times AND continuously moving through different realities, i.e., possibilities. Its trapped yet disorderly. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this idea is quite similar to Donella Meadows leverage points. In this case they are pivot points for polycentric behavior. Some people may associate these with people (influencers in an organization). I will not. I believe they are simply pivot points made up of people interacting with systems within a specific context. This means disorganized behavior in a given situation, is not chaotic. It is simply interacting elements not in alignment toward some stated purpose, but buried within it is order (usually tied to some unstated objective, i.e., a polycentric state). Technically speaking this means the specific motion and trajectory of the activity is unpredictable in detail, yet, it always stays coherent to the attractor (some objective/vision) and always moves through the same subset of states. That narrowness of activity accounts for the order hidden in chaos and explains why its essence never changes. We may not be able to explain where the order comes from, at least in an analytical sense, but the order exists nonetheless. If you are good in business, you can feel the pulse within chaos; you just cannot see it. To the everyday schmuck it is a state of disorder. To the scientist it resides in the space between order and disorder. Technically it only appears random, looks erratic and unstable yet it contains patterns. The good news for a business is order typically resides within a confined space and is governed by a fairly rigid set of ‘rules’ <it can only act in certain ways> so it can be manageable, or at least stuff can get done, in some sense. This is most likely true because unlike scientific theory, business tends to have, and create, some boundaries and constraints. So, while there may be the appearance of disorder, and oscillation- waves – occurring in endless loops inevitably there is some sense of equilibrium and, hence, some coherence.

Which leads me to make a note of the role technology plays in a quantum business.

Technology offers the velocity to advantages (even tiny ones). It also offers velocity to disadvantages and stupid shit (even tiny ones). I say that because technology increases fluidity and decreases fluidity, in other words, it can be the friend AND the enemy to coherence. So when we speak of fluidity and liquid we need to pay attention to the content. This gets tricky because far, far, too often we speak about the ‘next natural step for this system/business’, but fluidity is rarely about steps and more about evolution in motion. Therefore, words like “framework” or ‘navigation’ or ‘redirect’ become even more important. Even things like collective intelligence and collective wisdom and collective principled behavior become even more important. But, to circle back to quantum principles, order will exist but the sense of chaos only increases with technology. Yeah. It will both highlight leverage points, polycentric moments, and encourage multiple realities or expand asymmetrical perceptions and focus. The truth is polycentricity works better with some focus driven by technology and, yes, at exactly the same time that polycentricity is more difficult because of the increased ‘noise’ created by technology.

made.

Which leads me to end by suggesting I imagine part of what I am suggesting with polycentricity and quantum business is we have to go from this crazy, fragmented, multitasking life that we live to one where we pay more attention to connectedness and the whole. In doing so it will make any perceived chaos fleeting and navigating complexity is possible.

Well, this was fun, but let’s get serious. Most businesses have no interest in multiple centers of gravity or in multiple realities. Business wants to get shit done and they want a center of efficiency and effectiveness in one reality and that one reality which delivers against specific objectives. So what most businesses do is impose centers an attempt to impose a reality. They create steering committees, task forces, assign the specific group, and ask everyone to implement a process – typically a best practice. Simplistically they take a reductionist attitude toward everything that I wrote about polycentric and quantum business. And maybe that is my point. One of the largest issues the business faces today is its inclination toward reducing things rather than expanding things. Running businesses as if pragmatism outweighs any possibilities. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out polycentricity and quantum thinking are both grounded in multiple possibilities, as in, multiple realities are possible. Ponder.

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Fun fact about quantum particles to think about with regard to people:

“All quantum particles can be classified as either fermions or bosons. Fermions are territorial hermits. Which means you can ever occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. This accounts for the orderly way that electrons fill the orbital shells around atoms waiting their turn one at a time like polite people taking their seats in the same row of a theater. Fermion’s tendency to avoid one another ultimately yields the basic laws of chemistry, the structure of the periodic table, the rules for chemical bonding between atoms and the behavior of magnets. Bosons have the opposite kind of personality. They’re gregarious. No limit to how many can I occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. In fact they prefer crowds. The more populated a state, the more attractive it becomes to others.” (Steven Strogatz)

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“Even the sorts of things that haven’t changed are different. All sorts of tonalities – emotional, moral, personal – have somehow altered.”

Clifford Geertz

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“Think about it this way: We’re all sensitive to social hierarchies and to a desire for approval and esteem. So, we often fold to the social pressures of our environment. That’s not necessarily evil. I come into my job as a professor and I want to do well, I want the respect of my peers. There’s nothing wrong about that. But our desire to do well socially can have an ugly side. If you can earn respect by helping people, that’s great. If you can earn respect by physically dominating people with aggression and violence, that’s destructive. So, a lot depends on our social environment and whether it incentivizes good or bad behavior.”

Paul Bloom

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This is about the future of business (not the future of work). Significance. Significance may seem like an odd word to choose with regard to business. Significance is akin to meaning in its wider sense. The word mingles meaning and importance referring to the underlying ideas or implications that give to words, deeds, symbols, actions, or events of a special relevance. Significance may also be used in the specific sense suggesting a need to determine which of several possibilities is most relevant. (Hayakawa: Choose the Right Word).

I would also note that ‘significant’ also has multiple dimensions: consequential, grave, important, momentous, serious, and vital (Hayakawa).  So, I purposefully chose significance to stress that this is something meaningful, something that shouldn’t be overlooked, and actually has considerable impact on succeeding events and actions. The truth is that business is not simply about the business of capitalism or markets or even free trade, in other words, business is not an exclusively economic and its impact is not exclusively economic. Business’s relationship with the world, and society, is a bit deeper and more complex wherein its behaviors and attitudes impact culture and the way we think about things. The reality is that businesses have as much, if not more, power than most governments to not only to create value, but also to channel value signals, principled behavior signals and ‘what is fairness’ signals into society. And therein lies the discussion about significance.

Which leads me to say in the present many, far too many, business people will suggest the purpose of business is to generate a profit and they are beholden to stakeholders. Their significance is framed in that fashion. Don’t be fooled that there is a lot of talk about “purpose,” ESG and a responsibility beyond simple profit, because push comes to shove, they will shove back on the greater responsibilities and argue that the small responsibility (profit) is actually the biggest. Okay. To be fair. They have a number of numbers they will argue is representative of their significance: share price, size of company, monthly reports, #’s of customers and, well, choose your biggest number. Sadly, the public, and society, goes along with this and celebrates the big numbers as things of significance. To those people I say “Otto Neurath.” Yeah. He’s the first person who rejected the belief that any single metric could guide all decisions. And while it’s easy to focus on profit, we should be equally appalled by the pursuit of any other single universal metric applied in today’s business world.

The business world seems to be caught in a tug of war between Drummond and Keynes. Henry Drummond suggested “the pursuit of wealth is to the mass of mankind the great source of moral improvement” and John Maynard Keynes suggested “we should not overestimate the importance of economics, or sacrifice to its supposed necessities other matters of greater and more permanent significance.” Whether business wants to explore this tug of war or not is irrelevant because the tides of time are demanding business reflect upon its significance – to society, to its employees, to the future.

Which leads me to dismantling the present.

I purposefully use dismantle which will chafe on the business people who have had productive and profitable businesses. But in order to build a new future of business, the present needs to explore some first principle thinking, i.e., what are some of the fundamental aspects of the mindset that has created the business world as it exists today and why it thinks its significance is driven by significant numbers.

Look.

• Better business needs a structural change. Period.
• Better business needs a vision, not transactional changes. Period.
• Better business needs an attitudinal adjustment (toward organizational structure, toward how people skills can be maximized, toward how productivity is viewed, toward what businesses role in community/society is, toward what is significance). Period.

Now. Yeah. But. How could we begin to dismantle greed and zero-sum competitiveness? Well. Not to oversimplify, but this seems attainable by simply being much less greedy and less competitive. What I mean is that in pursuit of true significance business resists the temptation of letting profits today become the needs of tomorrow. Maybe perhaps by scrutinizing what are significant needs, versus just wants, and scrutinizing what progress really looks like; not just by some simplified ‘growth mentality.’ Maybe, just, perhaps If business does not find any of that appealing, or have the strength to do any of this, perhaps business could just stop applauding the type of economic progress we seem to idolize today. To that point it was EF Schumacher who said “it is the sin of greed that has delivered us over into the power of the machine.” If greed, or an unhealthy pursuit of ‘more,’ were not the master of business, it seems like the ruthless pursuit of profits and unhealthy ‘more’ would possibly subside. Or maybe business reflects a bit and sees significance is buried somewhere in the idea that economic success is not solely economic advantage and growth & progress does not demand ruthlessness. This attitude shift, maybe a mindset shift, is important because as long as there is a clear belief in the significance (desired impact) of an organization, leadership always finds a sensible way to pursue it; that’s what leadership does. But if the belief is only in efficiency and profit then I would argue the business loses its ability to function any other way – kind of ‘anti-agile’ as well as antifragile. If business identifies some “number” as to what should be significant, process replaces vision and moral value is demoted to technical tools of efficiency and speed. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this results in a hollowness in society and an increasing functionality of process. This last point can actually get worse. This ‘hollowness’ replaces true significance-seeking and meaning and, in William Stringfellow’s terms, builds a business where process and the pursuit of what it has deemed significant is actually “moral vindication” for behavior (and attitudes I imagine). That is bad, but it gets a bit worse. The worker, and by extension the family dependent upon that worker’s compensation, actually surrenders their lives to the company and its pursuit of their objectives. To be clear. This doesn’t mean that workers are engaged or even dedicated to the particular company, just that their morals, attitudes and behaviors become subservient to the business targets. And, yes, I am suggesting people can be manipulated that way. If a business frames what it deems as significant well, and it is tied to a specific number (which feeds into how the larger company is viewed as significant in the market place) it becomes a warped version of purpose, meaning and impact. well. it becomes a hollow version; all beget by the business. I know that all sounds horrible but claims of business for morally unique status are for the most just words and some posturing. I feel relatively confident saying that because those words and postures are fairly consistently contradicted by empirically observed injustices and behavior. So, I circle back to the beginning of this section – business dismantle the present. The business world promises a warped version of ‘salvation’ (kind of a bastardized version of the Gospel) through a bastardized version of ‘significance’ in that they presume to announce a form of salvation to people, and consequently the world, even though they don’t always word it that way.

Which leads me to business’s trickery with significance.

Today’s philanthropic efforts from the extremely wealthy simply seem to be a consequence of a hope that the business pursuit of goodness and virtue, and meaningful significance, can be postponed until we have attained massive prosperity. This gets supported by the fact the business world constantly suggesting that the single-minded pursuit of wealth/growth, without bothering over moral questions and ethics, is the only realistic path to rewarding society with the most prosperity. As if morality, ethics and what is environmentally good actually encumbers that pursuit. They may not overtly say so, but there is a suggestion that incorporating the good stuff and still being able to optimize “their significant numbers” is irrational and unrealistic. But don’t worry, business softens this up a bit.  They suggest its temporary and the exclusion of morality and ethics from economic growth is something society and the world can get away with “for a little while” as long as economic growth is successful enough to reward enough people. This is a Faustian bargain. But worse? Few have truly reaped the benefits, the many have been exploited, the world has been extracted, and, well, the hollowness has shown a bit of a spotlight on the moral and ethical problems.

Which leads me to business’s second trickery.

“Gradually, of course, this mechanistic ethic of extreme individualism has been transmuted so that initiative now covers and allegedly justifies not only authentic ingenuity, audacity and hard work, but inheritance, luck and, on occasion, a little bit of larceny.”

When business refuses to participate in societal issues, societal health, and public values, it is actually being consistent with the existing standard business operating attitude. And this stance is consistent maybe not for the reason you think. While a portion is, of course, as noted earlier a belief it could hinder profit maximization, I believe a larger reason is that business prospers when it sets the rules within which it plays. I say that because there are no rules in being involved with society because the relations are both too complicated and too complex. In addition, there is an underlying fear that their value creation is susceptible to being challenged by a small percentage of the population. So, what business does is to triple down on analytics and “reason” as a force for good. In other words, they treat reason as an administrative tool for ‘good’ and, as a consequence, business become a reason-based, but morally-directionless machine, run by process-minded, scientific management (measure-based) mindset management; bereft of greater good. Yes. I am suggesting business hides behind a “mechanistic ethic” where, at its core, it is just a structured methodology of mathematical measurement. It’s a warped vision of even the warped Taylorism that got us to where we are today. It is almost like much of business is being led by a societally-illiterate group of people. I purposefully use illiterate to suggest they are just incapable of understanding the relationship between their power and societal values/morality AND societal progress. If I were particularly harsh, I would suggest they are willing to sacrifice the unmeasurable for hollowed out, but profitable, progress in business. All of this leads me to say we should stop being surprised by the ineptness of existing leadership with regard to true ‘business significance’ in that they don’t really know where they are going, other than measured short term goals, and they cannot even really envision how process/practice-driven knowledge is actually hampering the actions necessary to create and sustain a substantive healthy society. That last sentence is my warning that the search for significance actually begins by recognizing what significance is. And I worry about that.

Speaking of worries. As business encourages everyone to think that “ethical AI” (or any version of conducting business ethically through technology) is the path to progress, well, technology provides no moral guidance, nor values, by which to resolve human conflicts and the tragedies of that conflict. I say that because business will not find significance through any technology or AI, but, they could let technology and AI diminish their significance; the choice is theirs.

Technology has come to signify progress and, yet, it is clear technology can be harmful to, and for, social configurations. Langdon Winner said ‘we do not use technologies as much as we live them.’ If business is to search for true significance it will have to navigate this conflict. Business needs to not only understand, but accept, that technological progress is independent of social constraints, ethics, morality and what is good for humans – unless it is purposefully designed to be beneficial to humans. Theey need to accept business significance will not be found in technology, but humans. I will expound on this point a bit later but let me say this is important because business authority only remains in power of the existing system if, collectively, the people bestow it decision making and direction. It is a relational connection. If, collectively, people decide that relationship is unhealthy, or that the objective of significance is not desirable, or the decisions of authority are unhealthy, they can negotiate or design a new relationship/relational connection. In other words, business’s search for significance is inextricably tied to the collective needs, wants and good of people, i.e., society.

Which leads me to the search for significance.

Business should always be conscious in the effort to balance the interests of all stakeholders including investors, employees, customers and partners/suppliers. Losing the interest of any of these segments will diminish the overall value creation or, at minimum, limit its potential. To support this point, it was German businessman Heinrich Henzler who suggested that business should be seen as serving all the people not just shareholders or even employees. Henzler called it a social balancing act arguing that business should always accept that homelessness, illiteracy, and other social ills are not just only morally unacceptable, but also economically harmful. Drucker said something similar when he spoke of in and of society and it is not possible to have a healthy business in a sick society. Stewart Brand offered the idea “in the long run saving yourself requires saving the world.”  The truth is business can bear a considerable social involvemnet AND achieve its business financial objectives because of its long-term benefits to the business and economy itself, i.e., save the world and you are saved.

• Yes. There is certainly a price for embedding social cohesion into your business acumen and being a part of the social configuration, but paying this price on a continuous basis means continuity is built into the system and the business itself. That continuity, let’s call it the replication aspect of a business, permits it to not only absorb emergent issues but also the agility to explore possibilities.
• Yes. I am suggesting that a business can exist for the good of society and the world (or at least the parts it actively engages with) without sacrificing good for itself. I suggest this knowing that in doing so it also propagates the idea that business will simultaneously do good for a long period of time AND this enables thrivability to the business itself.
• Yes. I am suggesting business is not simply a self-propagating institution, but rather part of a social construct – the fabric of givers & takers as well as makers & users.
• Yes. This suggests a business can control its own fate not by focusing solely on its own self-interest, but rather by becoming invested in the collective interest.
• Yes. I am suggesting that a company will be ‘allowed’ to survive as long as it is doing something useful at a cost that people can afford and that generates enough money/profits for its continued growth and development.
• Yes. I am suggesting (I believe Charles Handy in Age of Paradox gave me this thought) that ‘employees, customers, suppliers, investors, even the community, would prefer that a business continue — as long as it is good.’

All of this to suggest business success does not always mean growth and being bigger. Sometimes the purpose should be to grow better and not bigger. If a business gets better at its value creation which is seamlessly interwoven into the creation of a society that its participants value, and if people contribute, feel like they are contributing and the business, itself, contributes to the greater world, the highest level of value (contribution) has been achieved.  I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that value creation, as offered and as received, is the key to all the ‘significant’ numbers business adores.

Lastly, I would argue in doing so the business itself will also attain its highest level of effective productivity, solid efficient productivity, and consistent profitability. I am not sure what else a business could desire. I am also not sure how that isn’t better business for a better world. I am also sure that is achieving significance.

In the end this feels like just a beginning. I read BlackRock’s shareholder letters and feel like I am reading a man discussing and searching for the significance of business. I watch the ‘anti-woke business’ shitshow and feel like I am watching hastily built dams against a rising tide of businesses exploring what their significance should be. That said. I will end with a thought I tucked in early in this piece where I suggested that business, more than any government, most likely has more power to affect values, principled behavior, and fairness in society. What business decides to do with that power is not only significant, but will ultimately define its significance. Ponder.

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“They told me to pour my heart into everything I do. So that’s what I did, I poured and poured and poured. Now they ask me why I’m so empty.”

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“Don’t get down
Good things come when you stop waiting around
Good things come when you stop looking
Don’t get down
You’ve just got to stop looking “

Kathleen Edwards <from song Good Things>

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Individualism, and the overriding belief that everyone is solely responsible for their own success or failure, is very much a uniquely American characteristic. And individualism’s hero, if there is such a one, would be Ralph Waldo Emerson. When you hear a self-help expert adamantly stating if you change your way of thinking, you will change reality, that’s Emerson. It is all captured in his essay “Self-Reliance” (1841). Generally speaking, good stuff, but there is a bit of a “do what you believe is right instead of blindly following society” which tinges individualism and in how ‘self’ gets framed and THAT has had ripple consequences for decades, i.e., “me” always knows what is best for ‘me’. To be clear. I firmly believe in hard work, accountability for self and self-reliance.

That said. Self reliance runs into two basic problems.

The first problem is a sneaky one. Self-reliance gets tied to self-determination which implies no matter the circumstances, no matter the context, no matter the power structure within which the self struggles, well, ‘where this is a will there is a way.’ As with most superficial wisdom like that, there is certainly a fragment of truth. A fragment. But from a whole perspective this attitude leads to disappointment over 90% of the time (I made up that statistic). This leads to one of two things:

• With failure the unraveling of this self-reliance equation occurs and maybe you weren’t determined enough, or reliant enough, or just not enough, and, well, you fucked up your fate. You just didn’t have enough ‘will’ to take advantage of some nebulous way, or,
• You excessively celebrate the less than 10% where your will did find a way, even if the outcome is inconsequential, inevitably using the exception to suggest it is the rule, i.e., convincing yourself self-reliant, determined, ‘will’ will find the way if only I am good enough.

The second problem is far too many people make it the ‘end all, be all’ for judging personal success/failure and it becomes a binary ‘me versus we.’ Yeah. The self reliance thing gets a bit tricky when all success is due to individual grit because then all failure is, uhm, due to lack of individual grit. Maybe worse is that attitude gets applied to all the I’s in the larger We issues, as well as when the collective society attempts to alleviate some of the issues. Look. This is a problem because sometimes ‘me’ can work hard, make mostly good choices, and the ‘we’ (the system, institutions, society) doesn’t reward the ‘me’ – & often penalizing for often random, inconsistent, reasons. The truth is self reliance is only one factor affecting the probabilities of success. Success more often aligns with a variety of external factors; yeah, circumstances and context play a large role. In fact, time teaches most people (if they are paying attention) the value of cooperation is key to success; even if you distrust the game itself. Or maybe think about something Stewart Brand wrote: “in the long run saving yourself requires saving the world.”

I begin there to talk about emptiness.

Well. I believe we all know good things don’t really come to those who wait.

** note: albeit I tend to believe the quote is meant to suggest sometimes patience rewards you

I used to believe if you gave it all, focused on doing good work, being good <generally speaking> you would be rewarded – even if you made some poor/poorish decisions on occasion. Maybe not rewarded in kind, but not completely fucked over.

I don’t really believe that anymore.

The business world, in particular, is a taker – not a giver. It will take whatever you give and not offer much in terms of guarantees with regard to what it gives back to you. Sure. You get a salary, not always commensurate to what you ‘give’ in terms of value created, and there are some perks offered <healthcare, 401ks, etc.>, but you can give a lot and still lose it all and there is nothing but, well, nothing.

To be clear. I never really understood the concept of emptiness while in the midst of doing the business of doing business. I never ran empty. Tired? Sure. Empty? Never. Maybe I didn’t always pour exactly the right things into the business of doing business, but I poured.

So, when I looked at what I had after I had given and saw, well, emptiness, I began to understand simply because you had poured everything into what you did, didn’t mean that there would be something for you FOR all that pouring.

This isn’t to say that business, or your work, is responsible for your non-work personal decisions. For god’s sake, we make a shitload of crappy personal decisions and business can only hope you are better at making decisions in the workplace. That said. HOW you pour yourself into business work – ethically, with accountability, responsibly, empathetic – should matter. I do know, personally, pouring in left a lot of big fat empty in its outcomes for me, uhm, but not who I gave it to. By the way, this is why I think pensions are good things. It is kind of like acknowledging that the work you did then is contributing to the ongoing success happening now.

But this isn’t about me.

This is about emptiness and business.

Business is about numbers. Oh. They may tell you “it’s all about our people”, but, well, that’s not true. They may not be lying (because they believe in the present, they fairly compensate people), but, well, they are lying. The problem is no employee ever gets compensated for long term value; you get paid for present value. So, if you make errors, you don’t get paid as much. But if you make grand successes, you usually get paid the same amount and you certainly don’t get paid equivalent to what you provided. In other words, for many, many, people you get some money, and end up empty. You poured everything in, and were left empty as a consequence (remember, most people invest over 1/3^rd of their life to work). I am not suggesting business , or Life, is always fair and should always be fair, just that maybe if it were a bit ‘fairer’ there would be a lot less emptiness in those who work and have worked a shitload.

Look.

Self reliance is a wonderful concept. And if the future existed of one scenario for each ‘self,’ to aim, and work hard, toward self reliance would have a higher probability to generating less emptiness. Unfortunately, life, and time, is made up of a shitload of unforeseen scenarios AND it’s a bit unrealistic to believe a ‘self’ can be self-reliant, and successful, in all. And maybe that is my point. The unforeseen scenarios, maybe some scenarios you weren’t the best skilled to handle, are the ones that empty you. And they are very (very) often scenarios business puts you in. in addition, business justifies not paying people on an ongoing basis, post working at business, BECAUSE they believe business future is unforeseen and they worry people will want to see a linear cause & effect. Business won’t and workers won’t and numbers won’t. But if you have injected a good dose of self-reliance into your daily acumen, and worked hard, the business is less empty today because of what you did yesterday. Maybe that’s why when someone is asked why they are empty now, they get annoyed. Ponder.

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“I don’t think any madman ever said ‘Why, what an ass am I!’ “

BBC discussion on Hamlet

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Well, fortune favors the brave, sir.”

“I think that last night, fortune was merely inclined to favour the least incompetent.”

Richard Woodman

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Ok.

Success can be a, well, a deceitful sonuvabitch.

Winning can be a, well, a deceitful sonuvabitch.

Oh. As a result. Madmen who have had some success or wins can be, well, real sonuvabitches <asses>.

Regardless. Success and winning can be deceitful because it makes madmen not recognize what asses they are or how incompetent the incompetent are. Suffice it to say I have worked in businesses for over 25 years and I have never heard one of the random madmen I have come across admit they were an ass and I have rarely ever heard an incompetent ‘winner’ suggest they were simply the least incompetent that day <or any day that matter>.

Success has that effect on people.

But maybe the most dangerous effect is, for many people, once you have had some any loss seems like a threat to, well, survival. Or, as Clausewitz said:

…victory leads easily to overextension, which leads to defeat.

Uh oh. Defeat is not an option <to madmen & incompetents>. Business people in survival mode tend to shed themselves of any ability to rationally adapt as well as any ability to navigate the ‘unknowns’ inherent to any business world. Instead, most shift into a more desperate effort to fling themselves into any possible path to the next victory.

Ok. Survival may sound extreme, but I cannot think of a better word. Suffice it to say that winners think it is a life or death scenario and losing is all about a part of them dying. The ‘part of them’ may partially be confidence but, what the hell, that is a pretty significant part.

Anyway. Success or failure I do know one thing. Madmen will never say what an ass they are and incompetent people will always believe fortune favors the brave. Unfortunately, that suggests they are unchangeable.

Look. That alone isn’t so weird <or damning>. In general none of us are particularly good at changing <particularly in their business style & character & skills within business>. And THAT is important because far too many try to change themselves in order to ‘be a winner.’ I am fairly sure it was Peter Drucker who suggested it is significantly more effective to improve upon the way you perform – how you already do what you do <rather than try to fix the bad things you do>.

Uh oh. This means <gulp> madmen become more asshole-ish and the incompetent double down on their incompetence. If the mad and the incompetent seek some solace, I would note that most people do not really know shit about how they actually get things done.

Shit.

Most of us have no clue how other people do their voodoo <get things done>.

Shit. Most of us don’t really know what we are good at.

Shit. Even worse, most of us misjudge our strengths.

Shit. Even worser <I made that word up>, most of us who have had some success are even worse at misjudging their strengths.

Shit. The truth is more people actually know what they suck at <not good at>. Oh shit. But even then most people don’t get that exactly right. Holy shit. Suffice it to say we suck at judging ourselves. With all that self-assessment suckedness what do we do? Well, particularly in today’s world, you go the easy path — you simplistically judge off of outcomes/results <the successes & wins> avoiding any interest in scrutinizing any of the details of how you achieved the outcome.

In fact the details of our success becomes so unimportant in the scheme of things we create a mosh pit of all positive things which COULD have contributed to how good we were in that success. It is a crazy mix of ethics, values & integrity <inextricably tied to the results rather than the process embraced to gain the results> blended with a good amount of curiosity & perseverance & resilience <against the negative tides pushing against our inevitable deserved success> all sprinkled with the necessary “team player” <‘I thrive when I work closely with others’>.

Unfortunately, most of that self-reasoning is bullshit. The truth is this mosh pit simply cloaks incompetence, mistakes, errors in judgement and whatever ‘not-so-good shit’ <being a madman> by painting a positive coat of ‘something’ over them <”we weren’t as efficient because I wanted the team involved” or “we pursued this idea out of planned curiosity only to judge it was not the best path” … crap like that>.

Oh shit. This gets worse. Winning tends to concentrate one on doing more of what they perceived they had done to succeed rather than invest any energy on cultivating any additional skills, needs or improvements.

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“it takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than  to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.”

Peter Drucker

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What makes that even worse is that translates into madmen concentrating more on ass–like things and incompetents focusing more whatever bumbling they had done.

Anyway. I have found <without any research> people fall into two buckets on this topic – those who focus on the win and those who focus on improvement. I would suggest the madmen and oblivious incompetent fall in the former bucket and the truly sane business people, with a chance of actually being good, fall into the latter bucket.

I say that because any pivot points in progress tend to become more obvious in reflection than in the actual ‘living’ within the moment.

Therefore, if all I do is focus on the win I will reflect with little true critiquing and most likely remain a madman and incompetent <this is actually called ‘objective blindness’>.

Therefore, if all I do is be slightly perpetually dissatisfied with my performance and critique, in a healthy way, I will most likely increase my competency and have progress.

The former says “fortune favors the brave.” Always.

The latter says “fortune was merely inclined to favor the least incompetent.” At least on occasion.

Lastly. I would suggest that madmen and the incompetent have one thing in common — lack of meaningful convictions <beyond success at any cost>.

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“Convictions are not like gloves; one cannot easily change them.” …

General Petr Grigorevich

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Well. “Convictions are not like gloves.” There is a keeper of a thought. Madmen and incompetents are incredibly good at treating convictions like gloves.

Shit. Their convictions are more like chameleons.

I end there because I wish more of us in the business world would keep all of this in mind. Especially the madmen, who are asses, and the incompetent <who win more often than they would like to admit … despite their incompetence>.

Sometimes you can be an ass and it is <generally> okay if you are aware enough to sit back and say “what an ass am I!”

Sometimes you can be an incompetent and its <generally> okay if you are aware enough to sit back and say “fortune was merely inclined to favour the least incompetent this time.”

Who am I kidding? No madman has ever said “what an ass am I!” and no incompetent has ever said “fortune was merely inclined to favour the least incompetent this time.”

That’s only the kind of things we, the normal business people, do. Ponder.

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Inevitabilities are not scheduled prophecies.

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I have said increased complexity increases the desire for increased simplicity for years if not decades. It is not a brilliant insight. It is simply an observation based on ‘every force has an equal opposing force’ attached to human desires. I say that because I recently heard the phrase “the great simplification” as in society will enter an era in which simplification will become the currency needed to navigate an increasingly complex world. Without the hyperbole, it is probably true (in some form or fashion). And with that said, therein lies the peril. Simplification does not solve complexity, all it may do is provide lily pads of exploration.

Therein lies the paradox of simplicity. For simplicity to be effective there needs to be complexity and complexity needs simplicity in order to have some progress.

The truth is that increased complexity increases the likelihood of something of a higher level to be created. So, while humans relentlessly pursue simplicity; biology and ecosystems relentlessly thrive on complexity. One almost has to wonder if this is the ultimate conflict in business. As an institution is more is more likely to thrive, the more it embraces complexity, and yet the humans within the institution do everything imaginable to simplify.

Which leads me to suggest maybe the optimal state is ‘complex enough to make business happy.’

“Complex enough” has some positive aspects in that it offers enough reality, but not too much to freeze everyone into indecision. But an incredibly important aspect is diversity because complexity demands a diverse response, which demands diversity within the response group, in order to be successful <complexity is a natural multiplier of both good and bad therefore a structure needs to be established to nudge and constrain complexity to the needs of the institutions>. And, yet, in today’s world everything feels extreme and full of binaries; not a celebration of the robustness of possibilities found in complexity. I am truly astonished by the deeply entrenched deterministic thinking that drives most of today’s narratives.

I am astonished because deterministic thinking is a blinkering force, the very opposite of rationality even though many people who espouse deterministic thinking believe themselves to be the most rational purveyors of ‘common sense.’ Deterministic thinking tends to seed polarization and distrust as people become entrenched in their vision of the future, or the vision of “what is the right thing”, of which neither is conducive to navigating a complex world. It is simplistic thinking which only drains the oil from a high-powered engine.

Which leads me to what I consider two of the foremost simplistic mistakes people will make in a complex world.

The first is I fear a world of decision making by data because what it may lead to is a number of nonsensical results as the outcome you get by plugging numbers into an equation without really thinking through the implications will only be to create nonsensical results. In other words, simplification leads to (harmful) nonsense.

The second is the complex social-economic system is not self-correcting or self-managing; sustained, self-conscious efforts are necessary to deal with the problems and they often must be maintained against strong resistance. To be clear, ‘efforts’ are rarely simple and ‘corrections’ are ongoing, i.e., “not put a plan in place and simply let it work.” Yeah. Social/economic issues demand complex solutions; not simplistic ones.

Ponder.