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Architecture is a way to create a physical version of an idea or a feeling. It is the way to construct reality as we wish it to be, rather than as it is.

Deyan Sudjic

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“If I had to represent man ‘as he is,’ I should have required so bewildering a tangle of lines that a pure treatment of the element would have been out of the question; there would only have been an unrecognizable blur. Besides, I have no desire to show this man as he is, but only as he might be.”

Paul Klee

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The basic ingredient of architectural design consists of two elements: mass and space. Interestingly, I would suggest this is the basic ingredient of social connectivity. Ponder that. I’ll get back to that later.

Anyway.

If the essence of things is the relationship between these two things, I would suggest, in today’s world, mass has taken on a disproportionate value compared to space. We seem to have a preoccupation with mass to such an extent it almost seems like we have become space blind. This is not a healthy situation to be in. Awareness of space engages in our full range of senses. And, I would argue, engaging all our senses is the pathway to engaging what is possible – for the individual as well as the community engaged with the space. Or maybe I could suggest that our progress is found within our capacity to perceive space from the spaceless. In layman’s terms that is a deepening perception of context and a deepening understanding of the situation possibilities. In systems thinking terms that is a deepening sense of the system as a whole.

Which leads me to say that space is made up of two elements: movement and stillness.

Not to get to “quantum” but these things can happen simultaneously.  This is the people’s canvas with which they can paint whatever experience they would like. And while we may put a higher value on mass, within space, the reality is the mass and space equation can be experienced by anyone, some moving and some still, on an equal basis. The test of our humanness is actually found in whether we can approach space and deal with it as a whole to maximize total potential. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this demands that we do not think too early in terms of how to form the experience. Form should derive from, not be dictated by, either the design and the structure of the space or what we desire to design from that space. Making arbitrary decisions with regard to the experience too early too early in the process tends to stunt thought and inhibits or stop the flow of basic creativity within the space. I say that because once articulated structured experiences are hard to get rid of and tend to impose themselves where they do not belong. I’m suggesting that presence should be emergent. To be clear. I fully recognize we relentlessly attempt to ‘manage space’ and use ‘mass’ (and masses/people) to craft the space experiences all the fucking time. Emergent experiences are not happily embraced by people – generally speaking. In particular, leaders (a mass in and of themselves) invest a lot of energy managing spaces in the attempt to manage people and, well, manage power. In many ways, many ‘mass’ things, people included, are architects and architecture. Architects build for emotional and psychological purposes, as well for ideological and practical reasons. That said. Architecture is about power. What an architect can offer, in part, is the sense they are creating a space in which there is some sense of meaning and purpose or, maybe, that the meaning and purpose can be explored if not found within that space. At its best it includes a sense of belonging to a wider world, but at the same time celebrating the individual (the power) and his or her place in that world. But architecting, and architecture, is far too often concerned with the instinct to control, to order, to categorize, to shape life as it should be lived in a space, to choreograph every activity within every space. In other words, shaping a demand of a certain view of the world.

Which leads me to the interesting relationship between mass and space.

It is one thing to constrain space by structural devices such as walls. It is another thing to infuse space with activities that constrain minds. One could argue that the highest level of value as both mass and space working well together is to heighten the sense of ‘the mind’ and minds. What this pragmatically means is that while there will always be mass there must be enough space to provide for different activities and to allow things to articulate themselves in such a way that possibilities emerge free of constraint. The relationship between mass and space should be a continuous flow of experiences where each moment of time is preceded by a previous experience and becomes the stepping stone for the experience to come. If we desire a continuous flow of ‘progress experiences’, then the relationship of spaces and masses should not be one of constraining but rather releasing. Just to remind everyone, one of the objectives of space is movement. The purpose of a space is to affect the people who use it therefore its composition must encourage a continuous unbroken movement, flow, of impressions and experiences. Maybe what I am suggesting is that mass is a participator of space and should be viewed as an engine of movement, not just stillness.

Which leads me to stories and narratives.

Structures, buildings, meetings and gatherings are all expressions of mass and space of the culture within which it resides. They demand notice and are narratives and stories themselves. These stories are informally created as well as formally created. We, all of us, should think about what I just said. Far too often we emphasize the stories and experiences we construct and craft as the stories and narratives that matter. Yet, structures, buildings, meetings and gatherings generate narratives all by themselves. To be clear. Crafted “space narratives” have always been dependent upon the allocation of resources and manpower. Which means the execution of crafted narratives has always been at the discretion of those with their hands on the levers of power, i.e., those who wield the mass within the space. Although many spaces may appear to be rooted in pragmatism, or even diminished into some definition of ‘just space’. it is a powerful tool of human psychology. Far too often it is a tool for inflating the individual ego to the scale of a community, a city, a nation and, yes, even a business. It reflects the motivations, ambitions, and insecurities of that particular ‘mass’, therefore, if someone squints hard enough they can see the nature of its belief in power, its strategies, and its desired impact upon people. Space, in and of itself, is a form of mass communication. By understanding what it communicates, and the relationship between psychology and power, offers a key insight into what exists and, in fact, our own existence. And there is where I will end. With a cautionary tale for those who thrive in ‘crafting spaces, experiences and stories.’ Space, left to its own devices, tells it own stories and narratives and offers its own experiences. These are the ‘informal stories.’ These are the stories the ‘masses’ tell themselves when some ‘mass’ isn’t telling them what to think about that space or within that space. Ponder.

“Isn’t it because there’s more truth in it than you might wish? … I told him. This brought the conversation to an end and we walked along side by side in silence.”

‘A hero of our time’ by Lermontov

Before I begin … Russian writer Lermontov. One of the most underrated & overlooked/unknown writers of all time. Anton Chekhov once said of him:“I know of no language better than that of Lermontov.” Even with some of the struggles in translation I believe few people have ever had his gift with words. By 18 he had written more than 300 poems, 3 plays, a book and an unknown amount of unfinished work. Pick up something he has written.

Most of us can only dream of using words like he did.

Moving on.

Truth is a tricky thing.

Not only is it difficult to discern.

It is also difficult to “find”, well, definitively define.

And difficult to speak to someone.

And it is also incredibly difficult to hear.

“… more truth in it than you may wish.”

Sharing the truth with someone is difficult. Not just because it is sometimes difficult to find the strength of character to step up to the plate and speak, but it also takes a true measure of your character in dealing with the response. I have found that in most cases that truth, when spoken, has more truth in it than someone wishes to hear.

Does that make it wrong? Not always. But truth is not a light nor sharp weapon, it is more likely a blunt edged cudgel. It typically bashed someone on the head. Not a good feeling. Ponder that when you decide to share some’truth.’

Which leads me to “… we walked along side by side in silence.”

This may actually reflect a ‘good response’ situation for it means at least you are still side by side.

As for the silence part? Truth can often be a silence generator.

And it is almost always also a thinking generator.

In addition, most oddly, truth seems to also often generate doubt, not agreement or something good, just doubt. Doubt in the words. Doubt in the intent. Doubt in the genuineness. Doubt in the deliverer.

And in that we go to another Lermontov thought:

“I spoke the truth, but no one believed me, so I took to deceit.”

And he also wrote this:

I prefer to doubt everything. Such an attitude makes no difference to a man’s determination – on the contrary, as far as I‘m concerned, I always go more boldly forward when I know nothing of what lies ahead. After all, the worst you can do is die, you’ve got to die sometime.

<from Pechorin in Hero of our Time>

I do not subscribe to this belief, but I do believe attitudinally Truth Tellers run a gauntlet of doubt and desire to quit when it comes to actually telling the truth and are often tempted to ‘take to deceit’ instead.

William James said: “The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.”

With all due respect to William James the true greatest enemy of any one of our truths is ourselves.

It takes a shitload of fortitude to tell truths of the depth & breadth of ‘more than you may wish.’ It takes strength of character. It takes a strong sense of ‘doing what is right.’

Truth probably has more enemies with more weapons than any superpower in the world.

And there are probably fewer defenders of Truth than ever before and they are armed with … well … no weapons but Truth itself.

Oh. And a belief in self.

Anyway.

I imagine the few keepers of Truth have to believe that it is ‘hard to stop someone a’ comin who is in the right’ or they will fall prey to deceit & doubt.

In the end?

Truth tellers are hard to stop. Thank god for that. But it is too bad they remain fewer than we appear to have today. We need more of them today than ever before. Ponder.

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I used to tell people we use research to INFORM decisions and not MAKE decisions.

Then.

I told people we use numbers to INFORM decisions and not MAKE decisions.

Then.

I told people we use data to INFORM decisions and not MAKE decisions.

Now.

I tell people we use algorithms to INFORM decisions and not MAKE decisions.

Me

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“An idea of working based on three pillars: science, insight and faith. Science because I’m a social scientist by training. I believe in data, robustness of information, making sure you’re on the right track. Insight because if you’re not able to draw insights from research, you’re not a strategist, just someone observing the data. And faith because you never know what’s going to work, so you always need a bit of faith to get everyone started.”

Laura Chiavone

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I believe great companies have one common infrastructure characteristic: culture. Good companies can be grounded in systems, processes, operations, etc, however, the step up to ‘great’ demands a culture (which is always implemented by people) to elevate the ‘infrastructure aspects. To be clear. “Culture” is not some ‘thing’, or values, or some nebulous feeling, it is an emergent consequence of how people interact with each other within a business. It is not what someone does or doesn’t do, it is what happens when people do things with each other. I thought of this because Mike Walsh has a new book, The Algorithm Leader, which suggests that the most successful companies of the future will support/augment/enhance that culture infrastructure – with algorithms. Now. Before anyone defaults into thinking this translates into “empty soul, technology order taker” company, or even holocracy (ponder how polar opposites could be relevant to the algorithm topic), let me share some thoughts on how I believe the thinking suggests structural value creation lift: for business & humans. To me this will occur through a balance of stability (knowledge infrastructure), uncertainty (quests versus missions) & understanding of Antifragility (selective redundancy maximizing untidy opportunities).

Let me pose some thoughts on the relationship between algorithms and antifragility upfront.

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“It is optionality that makes things work & grow.” AntiFragile

Maybe algorithms shouldn’t provide answers, but options. Maybe, more importantly, we become a little less comfortable with the need for construct and more comfortable with using algorithms as dynamic application of ‘movable construct’ at the right time & place.

“The antifragility of some comes necessarily at the fragility of others. In a system the sacrifice of some units – fragile units or people – are often necessary for the well-being of other units or the whole.” AntiFragile

Maybe algorithms should evaluate tradeoffs, fragility versus antifragility & well-being factors (of units & whole).

“The crux of complex systems , those with interacting parts, is that they convey information to these component parts through stressors.” AntiFragile

Maybe algorithms should not highlight solutions, but rather stressors or what Donella Meadows called ‘leverage points.’.

“There is a category of things that we can call half invented, and taking the half invented into the invented is often the real breakthrough.” AntiFragile

Maybe algorithms shouldn’t seek new innovations but rather ‘half invented’ ideas ripe for innovation maturity.

“Meaningful progress is non-linear.” How To Lead a Quest

Algorithms should enable an organization to identify progress paths to explore and discover rather than simply meet the needs of present identified ‘paths’ of progress or solve present identified issues & vulnerabilities.

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Full disclosure on my business beliefs. Throughout my career I have always felt comfortable by making the less certain decisions just certain enough that someone would go “well, it seems riskier, but, if you own it, go do it.” I say all that because I believe all Future of Work discussion should be grounded on the relationship between certainty & uncertainty – for the business, the people within the business organization and people’s minds/attitudes.

Algorithm leadership.

Most people want certainty therefore they let research make decisions, use numbers to make decisions, show data to make decisions and, increasingly, will suggest algorithms make decisions.

This is just a different type of efficiency couched in efficient operations. It will be called “efficient decision making.” The problem is this efficiency is just an attempt to strip a decision of uncertainty and, well, the best, most effective; decisions always carry along some burden of uncertainty.

What made me think about this? I just finished rereading AntiFragile (Nassim Taleb) and reread Mike Walsh’s first chapter of his new book The Algorithm Leader.

The former is about figuring out how to maximize from disorder or uncertainty while the latter is not becoming too dependent upon seemingly ‘certainty.’

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“The future of companies, regardless of size, will be shaped by algorithms.”

Mike Walsh

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Ultimately, it will be humans who use the shapes created by algorithms to assess options, evaluate antifragile components and navigate asymmetrical uncertainty.

It within this dynamic environment in which we should note business is inherently fragile. HBR once said “business is a quivering mass of vulnerabilities.” I say that because as a pendulum swings one way it will inevitably want to swing the other way. We inherently feel the fragile pendulum swing and start seeking to build ‘un-natural’ antifragile aspects to create a sense of antifragility. Aspects like systems, process, rules, KPIs, data/dashboards and, yes, algorithms. Depending on how fragile we see, or feel, the business to be the more likely we use the created mechanisms to ‘tell us what to do.’ We must fight against those instincts.

Frankly, this is where generations DO become relevant in discussing business. Older workers, 50somethings, can be an impediment by seeing past experience as ‘certainty’ . On the other hand, some 50somethings can actually be a bridge between some certainty-type learnings and younger people who are more comfortable with disorder (but they don’t necessarily have the expertise do discern the best bridges between certainty & uncertainty).

Here is what I do know. Business people inherently abhor risk, business organizations inherently gravitate toward the ‘safest’ and numbers, research, data & algorithms look like life rafts in a risky, safe seeking business world. That said. I also know progress is rarely found without some risk and is often found on ‘not-the-safest’ path. Algorithms create a false sense of ‘right thing to do.’ any leader who leans on algorithms too much isn’t leading. Period.

Uncertainty leadership.

For this I lean in on How to Lead a Quest by Dr. Jason Fox. In times of uncertainty a business does not need business ‘heroes’ but rather people aligned on a quest and leaders who embrace the uncertainty of a complex interconnected multi-dimensional business world.

—-

“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

Indira Ghandi

—-

Contrary to popular belief I would suggest a highly successful algorithmic leader is likely a 50something who has navigated research, then data, the ‘dictating’ decisions challenge gauntlet, & who were more likely to see how seemingly unrelated disparate fragments could be coalesced into decisions and futures that the numbers/data didn’t completely support, but also did not completely discount. That was a long winded way to introduce the idea of “data decipherers”. This type of leadership invaluable to an organization more & more steeped in numbers, dashboards, data & algorithms.

Jason Fox calls this “shining a light on the path before us.” Leadership will not use algorithms for ‘squinting into the future but rather to identify the stepping stones in a sea of uncertainty. They will offer people moments of some certainty without promising a certain future nor even promising steady progress organizationally. It will be more about uncovering options, making choices to alleviate stressors, so that teams can breakthrough while others provide the organization with the redundancies to protect an organization from uncertainty vulnerabilities.

Here is what I do know. Psychologically businesses will arc toward a belief algorithms will provide an increased tidiness and symmetry to business. that is a false sense of tidiness. Business will become increasingly untidy, the paths will become increasingly complex, therefore business will become increasingly uncertain with regard to the best, and proper steps, necessary for progress. Pragmatically business will need more, and better, leadership comfortable with uncertainty despite more numbers, data and algorithms.

Antifragile leadership.

Crisis, disaster resolution is rarely about resources available, but rather people* availability.

• * ‘people availability’: this is all of physical energy, skills and mental energy combined.

Here I lean in Taleb’s AntiFragile. We tend to build redundancies incorrectly, don’t assume for disorder well & only enhance fragility in plans. We too often see AntiFragile as a “leadership concept” when in reality it is best absorbed by agile/adaptable teams.

Risk management almost always solely focuses on resources necessary to sustain, and manage, foreseen crisis. As Taleb points out the largest flaw in that is most crisis do not look similar to ones on the past (they will have similarities but still be unique). In addition. Most organizations build in redundancy safety nets as, well, a net.  Because we dislike fragility so much we start building in antifragile everywhere. We tend to think of leadership as “what if” redundancy design. Antifragile leadership should be more ‘aligning resources to meet different scenarios.” Some people would call this ‘agile.’ I would not. I would simply call this pivoting (I am old school) based on the Law of the Situation. Great businesses have always been able to pivot to meet market challenges and opportunities. This is pivoting – no more, no less.

This is where I would view using algorithms a little differently than other people. Algorithms tend to look at opportunities when I believe they could be better used to identify stress points and stressors. Most good leaders are best as problems solvers or maybe better said “removers of obstacles to opportunistic behavior.’ (that doesn’t mean they don’t optimize existing operations/situations just that where good leaders get paid the big bucks is getting moments/situations unstuck). I would also argue identifying stressors permits smarter experimenting and tinkering.

Here is what I do know. Algorithms, used properly, permit people to stop just optimizing for the present and start attempting to optimizing the future. Yes. It may mean being less efficient in the short term (sometimes), but, done well, will create a more effective long term construct.

Conclusion:

I think the smart businesses of the future will be “directed to act” by algorithms, but not managed by. The latter demands acceptance of algorithm as qualified to make us to do something behaviorally, the former demands we accept algorithms as something that ‘informs’ our doing. Somewhere in between is the decision of how much we, people, are accountable for thinking. Algorithms inherently encourage us to believe business is not best when it is random. Yet. The best businesses resist the urge to suppress randomness and permit people to be more accountable for some untidy decisions with some untidy outcomes.

All businesses will exist, in some form or fashion, grounded in algorithms. I am fairly sure that’s a given. The challenge will be to not get consumed by algorithms.

To realize algorithms do not give answers, but outline options.

To realize algorithms don’t define redundancies, but rather where and when to apply redundancy resources (therefore help to define how to create proper redundancies).

To realize algorithms don’t necessarily create innovation opportunities but rather find opportunities to ‘reinvent’ ideas.

And.

To realize algorithms will not replace people, but rather augment minds and skills OF people. Ponder.

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“Don’t be afraid to write lots of garbage (but also don’t throw any of it away). Have a very large storage system for all that garbage, because it’s only garbage in context. It may turn out to be a treasure in some other context you haven’t discovered yet.”

Courtney Balestier

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“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

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Thinking has a lot of garbage and a lot of in-between time. Unfortunately, today’s world has little use for what is judged garbage in the present, or even the past, and even less use for “in-between” putting the highest value on “useful now.”

This makes the world really really difficult for most thinkers because, if they are honest, they get a lot wrong initially and most thinking may have seeds of smartness and truth initially, but other than that, well, a lot is garbage. I call it “not quite right” thinking. Taleb called them “half invented ideas.”  The ideas that didn’t get traction immediately and, well, if we are honest, business life and our own spans of attention tend to discard an idea if it doesn’t show immediate possibilities or success. But if you keep the fragments of good ideas around, and twist them around a bit every once in a while, like a kaleidoscope eventually they can come together in a vivid image. Voila, your garbage has turned into non garbage. Your half invented becomes a useful invention.

Which leads me to suggest there is a relationship between useful garbage and speed – as in play, pause, rewind & fast forward.

The truth is that every good self-aware thinker has a panel in their head with a play, pause, rewind and fast forward button. They have the ability to see things in real time, i.e., what has occurred up to that point and, in some way, can envision the ripples of what happens from there. Within that ability they decide to fast forward, or pause, or continue playing at the same speed or even decide to rewind a little. They see reality and decide how to best take advantage of it. I would suggest the best garbage users have this ability.

That said. Some thinkers have one speed. These are ‘the bull in china shop’ asshats who only know forward at some fast speed bludgeoning and blustering their way forward. Then there are others like golf carts steadily chugging along at steady long play. Idea management, i.e., sifting through the garbage, demands a bit of all and each and nuanced use.

Well. Today’s world is structurally hostile to nuance. Subtlety not only doesn’t sell because it invokes that wretched inbetween ‘space’ in which others are more than willing to place something. It is easy to go one speed <or just stop when you get tired>. It takes touch and nuance to pause at the right time, rewind accordingly, fast forward through some difficulties or to take advantage of windows of opportunity or, well, just keep playing <which is sometime tougher than what you would think>.

To be a consistently good thinker is not about maintaining one speed, but rather maintaining a consistent sense for how to adjust pacing accordingly and when, and where, to pick through the garbage.

Which leads me to humility.

In today’s business world we like to have simple formulas and handbook guides. Pacing is more ‘feel’ and awareness and … well … yeah … some humility. I say humility because no matter how good a thinker you are and no matter how good your pacing is there will always be some issues <mostly because you get some things wrong>. Part of the ‘wrong’ portion is you inevitably leave some people behind and some ‘minds’ get a little scattered. And you have to get them back on track and aligned and sometimes you have to step up and show a little humility, admit some things are garbage, maybe even sift through other people’s garbage, and everyone resets when you do that, gives you another chance and get a little reenergized to pick up their bags and hit the road with you again.

In the end, all garbage has value. It may not all turn into a treasure someday, but it all shapes perspective. And perspective is imperative in the in-between time when outlines of some really important things can be a bit vague. Sometimes the garbage is what gets you out of the in-between. And maybe that is the most important point I have shared today. Ponder.

Analog – June 1962 – cover artist – John Schoenherr

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 “The single most important thing that could be done would be to substitute reasonably accurate positive images of the future for the depressing images that now prevail, especially in the Advanced Capitalist nations.”

futurist Herman Kahn in the 1970s

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It is just as deterministic to say “if we build social media, the world will be a more connected place” as it is to say “social media will destroy democracy.”

Danah Boyd

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“We saw Cyndi Lauper convincing a gentleman in a suit to put down his newspaper and dance, I saw a world of possibility, one in which adulthood could be fun, with surprise waiting around every corner.”

Shane O’Neil on the 1980’s & 90’s

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I almost called this ‘refinding technological optimism.’ Okay. Maybe it is more about anti-technological dystopia. I am not suggesting we be utopian, just that I question why we should ditch optimism. I thought about this in a conversation with Faris Yakob as we pondered our possibly naïve optimism about technology in the early 2000’s. Anyway. Two of the books I consistently pluck off my shelf to remind myself that technology dystopia has not always been the norm: The Cluetrain Manifesto and anything by Jaron Lanier. And while I imagine the Cluetrain authors may suggest that they were naively optimistic, I don’t agree with them. In those heady days technology was going to offer us many of the things that would solve, or resolve, many of the societal issues at hand. And technology, for its part, has held up its end of the bargain. Where things go a bit awry is with humans. And if you agree with that, fundamentally, anything humans make can be unmade. Just because some of the Cluetrain and Lanier positive possibilities have not occurred, doesn’t mean they cannot.

But let’s get to the optimistic part.

The roots of technological optimism arise way before the internet and computer technology. Its roots are grounded in technology (a) better utilizing resources against growing demand and (b) easing some of the societal issues through more efficient productivity/use of human time. Technological growth, in the minds of the optimists, meant technological advance where humanity got more output per unit of input – rather than simply more of an old technology. The optimism gained some momentum with the idea of ‘exponential.’ Technology was to provide exponential benefits rather than a more plodding additive or even multiplicative. In other words, today’s limits would look silly in the future because of the accumulation of a seemingly endless amount of breakthroughs. For the most part, this happened. But. We were also offered a blueprint for what could go wrong at this time. Toffler and McLuhan outlined the cognitive issues (human limits) and Anderson outlined the market issues in The Long Tail theory. Fragmentation in the market, profited exponentially, and humans, cognitively, didn’t quite profit as much. The exponentiality was indifferent to symmetry and asymmetry can be a motherfucker to humans and their minds.

But let’s get back to optimism. Distorted market incentives are solvable, businesses and institutions structured to exploit technology can be solved, even societal expectations and objectives can be solved. None of those things have anything to do with technology; they are human issues. That said. Constructive technological advances could enhance human solutions to those things. Technology, in the right hands, could even combat some of the negative features of existing technology.

To be clear, this optimism is not utopian (although I do believe we should do some more utopian thinking). This optimism is rooted in what we know and what we can actually do. To make a point, almost everyone who signed the AI “pause” letter could, if funded well, could develop technological solutions to much of what dystopians lose sleep over. I say that to suggest we should have technological optimism … as long as the right humans are involved in technology’s future. I imagine my grander point on that is technology has not failed us, we have failed technology. And within that we should find some optimism because no matter how bad people can be, good people have a gravitas that bad can never attain.

“In the long run, optimists shape the future.”

Kevin Kelly

Which leads me to shaping.

An optimist almost has to believe, in some form or fashion, that exponential technological growth will expand resources and minds ahead of exponentially increasing issues. This is a tough thought in today’s world because from most people’s perspective technology is an aggravating factor – amplifying all that is bad – rather than an expansive factor – amplifying possibilities and imagination to be mined. But once again, the problem isn’t the technology; its us (humans). The undesirable, aggravating characteristics, consequences of technology are reflections of humanness which many of us simply ignored or submerged under a variety of other things (results, altruism, etc.). Market forces are most typically a reflection of humanness. That is not to say technology doesn’t tweak our worst instincts, just that technology is equally a force for good and bad and only pursues what we want to pursue. The consequences are more us than it is ‘them’ (technology) so if we optimistically shape our technology we can shape a more optimistically good world.

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“I don’t think our goal should be to create conscious intelligent machines. Everything that makes a machine useful are generally the things that are not human, why do we need to create an emotional, unpredictable, volatile, machine and put it in charge of something mission critical. The whole point of machines is to do they can do the things we don’t trust humans to do consistently.”

Mike Walsh

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The fact of the matter is, McLuhan was right: “We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” Technology is not just about things and devices; it is about processes and verbs and attitudes and people. You have to be a little careful about what technologies you adopt, because each technology is, broadly speaking, a way of doing things. Maybe we place optimism on top of these questions L.M. Sacasas suggests:

1. What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me?
2. What habits will the use of this technology instill?
3. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of time?
4. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of place?
5. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to other people?
6. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to the world around me?
7. What practices will the use of this technology cultivate?
8. What practices will the use of this technology displace?
9. What will the use of this technology encourage me to notice?
10. What will the use of this technology encourage me to ignore?

Which leads me to suggest technological optimism is about faith and craft.

To be optimistic is to believe in human ingenuity with no foreseeable limit. Technology can be crafted as an unending cascade of advancement. What this means is a belief that each advancement can not only eliminate the present technological issues, but also stretch the limits of what is currently possible. In its constant stretching both good, and bad, can occur but the good is constantly erasing the bad. Yeah. It’s an understanding that technology is both empowering/enabling and oppressive/constraining; often simultaneously. But within optimism is a rejection of a conclusion that the world is ugly and the people are bad. Optimism rejects dystopia as well as the status quo. I believe the status quo never invents the future, and vision, creativity and innovation crafts the future. Yeats is correct, the center cannot hold, so the center may be the status quo and who’s happy with that today? Instead of griping about what’s deplorable, it seems a discussion about the future would be much more interesting. We can wring our hands all we want, but there’s no going back, so what’s ahead?

“Well, that’s the universal law of technology, that it can be used for good or evil.”

Michio Kaku

“Ahead” technology discussions today careen between an anticipation of doom or deliverance. All of today’s technologists, while they craft for utility, power and profit, appear to have as their north star as rationality. Somewhere along the way the technologists lost the distant dreams and aspirations for a better world. Sadly, I believe this is a reflection of business and society in general (it is a tough time for dreamers these days). While tools could have been shaped to shape a better society and world, the tools were shaped – by human hands and minds – to serve financial objectives (which, obviously, is the easiest way to pay for the technology). So. While we should expect far more from our technological innovations then convenience and efficiency, or even cognitive survival, we do not. It gets a bit worse. We also demand deliverance from problems, even the problems that technology creates, from technology. Yeah. Technological growth clearly aggravates real human problems and it is silly to optimistically count on technological advance to solve all of them. Technology is a mixed blessing capable of producing undesirable as well as desirable consequences. The mixed consequences of technological development is an issue that becomes more critical the more technological advance entails risks with catastrophic potential. That said. There is only “ahead” and we should be focused on delivery (and deliverance from dystopia), and not doom.

Which leads me to why dystopia is so much easier than optimism.

Part of the issue is that technology has become a God-like tool for, well, everything to, well, everyone; not just technological optimists.  As Alan Turing said:

“(Turing) predicted in about 50 years time it will be possible to program computers to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than a 70% chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. It is at that point we would start deeming a machine’s performance as intelligent.”

The truth is we are at the 70%, if not higher, now. But go on the internet and you can find all the tech nerds and philosophical thinkers adamantly stating all the ways a computer is not human and cannot mimic a human and, in fact, it is not intelligent. Well. The issue is the majority of the world are not tech nerds and philosophical thinkers. To the majority of THAT world the computer is intelligent. In fact (an aside to all the tech nerds and philosophical thinkers), that imitation technology is more easily understood than the tech nerds and philosophical thinkers.

What this puts us at is what complexity theory calls The Edge of Chaos. This refers to the exploration zone of complex systems where interesting things happen. In this zone systems are not so rigid that they cannot change at all, but not so chaotic that they immediately dissolve into useless disorder. The edge of chaos is the fertile ground for possibilities to emerge. It describes where we live in today’s world. It is from this space where optimists thrive and progress towards something better can thrive.

It is time to explore.

I believe there about the same number of neurons in the brain as there are a number of stars in universe. We have used technology to explore space, to explore the brain, to explore the body, to explore the capacity of humans. Technology is the ship which can carry us to the farthest parts of the universe. My real fear and pessimism reside not with technology, but with ourselves – human beings. We have met the enemy and it is us. The truth is technology simply amplifies all the worst things of human beings. I’m not speaking of evil, although it lurks in the depths of the Internet, I’m speaking more about conformity. The internet defines how things should look like and scores of people line up to conform to that likeness. The same thing occurs with ideas and, well, everything. We are imitation machines. More access to all this information and imagery and words just simply encourages us all to become average, i.e., to all become the same. At some point we will all look like each other, speak like each other, and even use all the same words. That is my fear. My optimism resides in the belief that people are not average, they do like to be distinct, and they like progress to something new and better. Yeah. All progress is grounded in some spectacular risk, some spectacular mistake, or some spectacular idea that encourages everybody to zig while everyone else is zagging. And my optimism also encompasses technology because technology mirrors humanness.

Which leads me to end with a thought Pamela McCorduck had: “this thinking machine amplifier would amplify these qualities as other as other as other machines have amplified the other capacities of our body.” The development of AI continues to promise to provide an extension of the human capacities we value most like, well, conversations and exchanges and connections:

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“The first markets were filled with people, not abstractions or statistical aggregates; they were the places where supply met demand with a firm handshake. Buyers and sellers looked each other in the eye, met, and connected. The first markets were places for exchange, where people came to buy what others had to sell — and to talk.

The first markets were filled with talk. Some of it was about goods and products. Some of it was news, opinion, and gossip. Little of it mattered to everyone; all of it engaged someone. There were often conversations about the work of hands: “Feel this knife. See how it fits your palm.” “The cotton in this shirt, where did it come from?” “Taste this apple. We won’t have them next week. If you like it you should take some today.” Some of these conversations ended in a sale, but don’t let that fool you. The sale was merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.”

Cluetrain Manifesto

Of course, there are reasons to be concerned especially when pondering latency – where effects are manifested long after the initiation of their cause – coupled with irreversibility, or a resistance to correction. Or the zero-infinity characteristic which refers to effects that are extraordinarily unlikely to occur, but catastrophic if they do.

Look. I am certainly not suggesting gambling our future on an optimistic point of view, just that optimism can shape the future we want. And I believe optimism is actually the only way to forge our way to a better future. Let’s go explore. Ponder.

A Human Algorithm: Flynn Coleman

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

Kai

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• Preface: apologies to all my technology friends because I am going to mangle some technology concepts to make some points.

With all the talk about ChatGPT (large language models), which seems to bleed into a larger technology angst discussion, I thought it may be important to remind everyone about, well, humans.

The one thing smart machines and humans have in common is choicemaking. From there the paths diverge – fairly significantly.

A major difference between humans and computers is that at any given moment people are not choosing among all possible steps. What this means is when humans think of possibilities or ‘desired futures’ they are not even close to making the optimal choices. Instead, we, people, typically lean in on a deeply nested hierarchy of ‘knowns’ in our minds which we recognize as ‘better’ paths, or stepping stones, toward the future we desire. These nested ‘knowns’ are typically bounded biases (self-sealing beliefs). The self-sealing beliefs issues gets compounded by the fact we tend to pursue short term goals, or more immediate gratification/results, rather than maximizing for the future. We may think we are, and we may even may make valiant attempts to do so, but we are inevitably constrained by those pesky nested beliefs and shorter term gratification.

Which leads me to smart machines.

Given enough data a smart machine can recognize your self-sealed beliefs (even the ones you may have submerged fairly deeply). From there it can manipulate your nested beliefs which inevitably changes your view of future possibilities. We all have these nested beliefs, often called heuristic thinking, and they do help us navigate shit. That said. Because they are so embedded it’s difficult for us to see let alone reshape ourselves, but a computer can – sometimes incrementally over time and sometimes in one fell swoop. As you can imagine, this can be very good, and it can be very bad. And that is where this whole thing gets tricky. While we all have personal preferences, computers simply have data and the knowledge to see your preferences – but not understand them or the reasoning behind them – and smart machines are built with the purpose to modify human preferences because, well, smart machines modify human experiences. Preference modification is a slippery slope. It can modify good and modify bad and, well, machines are machines and without some intuition they may mathematically steer a preference away from a more optimal path – specifically to you – simply because the machine has assessed it to be so. This gets compounded by, quoting Brian Christian, “when a computer guesses, it is alarmingly confident.” Look. Machines will most likely make preference modification more statistically optimal (even weighing a 51% probability in a binary way), but the truth is some of the best preference driven choices people make are the less obvious ones. So maybe what I am suggesting is that ‘always optimal’ leads to a less-than-optimal destination. Yeah. Imagine that if everyone did what the computer said the entire world inches a bit closer to the mean (average) and runs the risk of eliminating the soaring heights attained in the improbable. And, if humans are anything, they are improbable machines.

Which leads me to how smart machines are both smart and dumb.

Machines do have an ability to learn at a variety of levels. At one level is repetitive task automation where the machine has been taught how to perform a specific task reliably, but its knowledge cannot grow any further based on its experience or in response to changing conditions. This is a closed loop system and typically very affordable. At another level the computer is able to observe the effects of its performance or results of its analysis and make adjustments to what it “knows”, usually by experimenting with other possibilities that might perform better. This sounds good and it is good, however, it can’t question anything because it doesn’t really have the ability to assess context awareness and learning. It cannot really question anything beyond any of the inputs it has been told to consider in its optimization. This is also a closed loop system just broader than the first that I outlined – a little less affordable.

This closed loop is important because far too many people talk about AI as being some omniscient thing, i.e., an open loop all-knowledge-encompassing process. It can be, but mostly it can’t because of cost. I cannot tell you how many times I have talked with a software developer about an AI/algorithm-based idea and they have responded “that is a great idea, but I don’t know anyone who would have the budget to build it.” What this means is ‘closed loop’ is also ‘budget-manageable.’

Anyway. A smart machine will end up being good at pattern recognition (assuming it has a large enough data base) and will be bad at intuitive sense. For example, machines “see” items as a patchwork of lines and dots and ones and zeros from which they identify things that match what they have in their database. But they cannot easily identify the essence of what item is. And even if a machine is able to successfully match an object to an image in its database, a slight change in perspective can baffle the shit out of a smart machine.

Our brains, however, are quite capable of taking different perspectives and variations into account. Our brains are subconsciously performing trillions of calculations. Basically, artificial intelligence is trapped in a closed loop. That loop can very large like large language models, but however vast they appear, alas, they are a closed loop. Brains, on the other hand, are an open system with nested loops inside. And this is maybe where common sense is not so common gets explained. Individual’s brains love residing in a nested loop. That nested loop of thinking is experience-based ‘data’ where the identification of what needs to be solved pops up as common sense. That said. The issue would be the same as a smart machine in that this heuristic thinking is a closed loop system which ignores additional information flowing in. That being said the brain is an open loop system and has the ability to be to be able to feed consistent additional information into any one of the closed nested loops within our brain, if we elect to permit it in.

“The fact that digital computers are able to outperform humans and performing some mental tasks should come as no surprise they were designed to do just that.”

University professor Phil Auerswald

Which leads me to the fact good decisionmaking is not always the optimal decision.

Good decision making has always been in the purview of humans. While we all bitch and moan about the lack of good decision making by certain people, the truth is the majority of us make good decisions most of the time. Or, maybe said, we make the best decision that we possibly can in the moment with the information that we have at hand. Which leads me to say people have learned to make the really hard decisions by first making a lot of easy ones. People gain skills and confidence from simple situation decisionmaking where it can be determined afterwards whether a decision was made well or not. So. If we were to allow smart machines to take over these ‘starter decisions’ and leave only the highly ambiguous situations for humans, there is a risk that effective decision making would be a less-than-optimal choice for humans to make. Yeah. They would just suck at decisionmaking. Yeah. If fewer people understand how to diagnose a decision because they’ve never had to run the gauntlet of all the easy ones, how would we be able to even assess whether a good decision has been made on the hard ones later on? I sometimes worry that we will find ourselves under a smart machine decision making autocracy by default in which less educated, or less concerned, decision makers automatically follow the decisions of smart machines. I’m not suggesting this will always be a bad thing. In fact it raises the possibility that a lot of good things happen faster. But it will only be a good thing until it’s not. Sometimes it will be a very very bad thing. And I worry we humans won’t know which is which. But then again, if we absolve ourselves of responsibility for all the easy decisions, aren’t we by default divesting humans from the hard decisions?

Here is what I know.

A smart machine will always make optimal choices. The best future is rarely, if not ever, found by making optimal choices. In fact, it’s the less-than-optimal choices that tend to foster the spectacularly-more-than-optimal results. And I tend to think humans are the best spectacular error and spectacular success machines in the world. Ponder.

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“No, I’m not interested in developing a powerful brain. What I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the president of the American Telephone and Telegraph company.”

Alan Turing

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“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”

–

Albert Einstein

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“We need timeless principles to steer by in running our organizations and building our personal careers. We need high standards — the ethics of excellence.”

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Price Pritchett

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Ethics are our morals in action. Ethical behavior is the system we develop framed within our moral code. Our moral code, or our morals, are a system of beliefs emergent from our values. Values are the foundation of our ‘right/wrong judgement’ which create some belief system. This is personal, an individual decision, not universally accepted.

“values are our measures of importance, whereas ethics represent our judgments about right and wrong”

(Shockley-Zalabak 1999, p. 438)

It may seem like I am parsing thought here, however, in the business world all the words get tossed around flippantly (interchangeably) – particularly when it comes to culture. It is important because culture is emergent, not dictated. Culture is a collection of individuals, with individual values, who act in a coherent behavioral fashion, within an organization (where the systems enable or suffocate the individual behavior). I say this because this is when “principles” comes into play. Principles encourage a specific coherence not by dictating but rather by establishing some common agreement. In other words, despite each person having their own value prioritization, the organization establishes its value prioritization (establishing not what to do, but what not to do).

Look. Here is a truth.

We don’t really like to admit it but Life, in general, more resembles a constant teetering on the edge of a slippery slope than anything else (especially with regard to ethics, i.e., “doing the right thing.”). Life, and business, constantly, relentlessly forces you to make, well, ethical choices. Now. They may not look like ethical choices, but if you look real closely you will see the face of ‘right or wrong’ staring at you wagging its finger. We don’t look that closely because it would force us to admit:

• Right & wrong is often contextual
• Right & wrong is often not a clear black or white
• Right & wrong is often measured, ultimately, in consequences not actions, yet, we are demanded to choose right or wrong and act now

You will most associate this constant teetering (also a recognition of being on the slippery slope of fading ethics) as “just this once” behavior. We don’t really like to admit it because ‘just this once’ tends to be used to explain away some of our more dubious behavior and decisions.

This ‘dubiousness’ gets couched in a variety of ways. Safety. Utility. Benefits (functional and ‘to me’). We find a lot of ways to justify our behavior, decisions and attitudes before we ladder up to ethics. As my friend Faris Yakob (see image) suggests it is almost a Maslow-ian decision model. Its not that we ignore ethics or even not care about ethics its just we prioritize a number of things before we get to ethics. This suggests ethics is not a foundation from which decisions emerge, but rather are a final, fairly wide, box in which a decision has to be checked against.

source: Faris Yakob

If that is true, then ethical fading is commonplace, yet, justified by ‘pragmatism’ criteria. I bring up pragmatism because, whether we admit it or not, unless you actually think about ethics, morals and values (in a non-meta philosophical way) then it becomes a little more difficult to understand how principles can play a fairly important pragmatic guardrail role. The truth is that ethics are constantly challenged, in context, by safety and utility. For example, would we steal to feed our children or lie to keep us safe.

Sound moral judgment is rooted in strong values and acted upon by our ethics. An organizational judgement, a collection of these individuals, is herded in common principles.

Principles, yes, before you despair, principles guard against ethical fading. Principles are the cornerstones of your ethical building. Without principles you have no solid ground to stand on in a world constantly trying to tip you over into a variety of holes, slippery slopes and dead-end tunnels.

‘Principle’ is defined in Nuttall’s Concise Standard Dictionary of the English Language as, “n. the source or origin of anything; a general truth or law comprehending many subordinate ones; tenet or doctrine; a settled law or rule of action; to impress with any tenet; to establish firmly in the mind.”

Principles protect, in a very fragile way, against ethical fading.

They do so in a number of ways

1. They establish a foundation, or a moral filter, for ethical behavior. Maybe call them the ground rules of how you assess what is right versus wrong
2. Unfortunately, the foundation is a framework not a “how to do” manual. Therefore upfront they help define exceptions to the ground rules and, yes, we will always find some exceptions. Some ‘blurring’ of the guardrails as it were.
3. Unfortunately (part 2), this blurring, while not always creating ‘just this once’ behavior, it CAN create just this once behavior which is, well, the slippery slope of ethical fading. In this situation principles can actually be the solid lily pads of ‘no more’ certainty from which one can stop the slide down the slippery slope of ethical fading.
4. Unfortunately (part 3), principles, while resilient, are not immortal. Facing the onslaught of ethical fading they can, well, fade and once they have made their last stand you are screwed. You are on the slope and the only question left to answer is how far down the slope you end up.

So, despite their fragility, let me talk about principles.

“The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won’t be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence.”

Stephen R. Covey

To me principles revolve around a discussion of soul (selling your soul ). Some people may disagree with me but, to me, soul represents the intersection of I & We. It gives us life energy (call it our subconscious passion). It what joins us together with an external shared common vision – kind of our common value proposition for Life. It creates a connective tissue for, well, acting in a humane fashion with other humans. It is within this intersection in which we seek the common ground between morals, ethics and value and arrive at a coherent principled behavior as a community or business organization.

Let me suggest 4 cornerstone principles (not ranked, just foundational):

• Inviting culture premised on affection for humanity. Lives are to be lived for others (therein lies where we gain meaning), not just for our own success and advancement. We must model lives that matter if we want to nurture into living lives that matter. We believe that we are not islands unto ourselves but social beings who need community to flourish and become our best selves. Believing you are in, and of, community.
• Commitment to character demands involving oneself into multiple traditions and frameworks for what makes up a good life (contextually expanding your view). This means accepting a responsibility to pose questions which introduce one to a variety of cultures and contextual questioning.

Believing that character takes involvement & commitment & work.

• Do good. I imagine I am suggesting that if you do good you will contribute in a meaningful way (some call this a purposeful life). We must simply follow Aristotle’s advice, or Emerson, that “the purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good.” The point is not merely to study the good, in a detached and academic way, but to invite oneself to develop as a person of character.

Believing that a virtuous life is not found in attitude, but behavior & actions.

• Be curious about everyone and everything. Keep your head in a swivel as context changes. Exhibit a dedication, imagination and commitment to context as the fertile ground for intellectual growth, knowledge and ethical resilience. Ethical resilience is NOT rigid ethics, but rather strongly held principles which can accommodate the nuances of cultural context (reflective of cultures surrounding the person and decision). This principle, in particular, does not dictate character, but is intended to provide a compass to help each person find their own path and to grow in their awareness of self (and others).

Believing principles are not steadfast and unmoving but rather depending on adapting to new learning.

I will note that all the Principles are solid in belief but adaptable to time, knowledge and context. This is a recognition that we, humans, are not of self but rather of something bigger – society, community, connectivity.

Yes. This suggests Principles are not simple, but complex.

This leads me to leadership.

Leadership can be of one’s own life or it can be in combination with other people. Regardless, someone must develop some skills for successful leadership – for self or for group.

The first is the mindset that leaders see leadership as a skill that needs to be continually developed and improved (active listening, giving feedback, talking to people).

The second is a recognition that certain things happen under the surface and have a significant impact on the performance of the team, such as interpersonal dynamics, the way individuals work, disputes and tension between people (typically originating from the past). Leaders have to have the skills to bring these things to the surface and resolve them.

** note: this is also true of self and inner conflict

The third is power and inclusion. Power dynamics effect any social structure (you are misguided if you don’t believe this). You have to recognize, and acknowledge, power dynamics in order to be inclusive, empathetic and create complete connections. If you elect to ignore the relationship between power and ethical behavior, i.e., how power stresses individual values prioritization and behavior toward goals, you will ignore the truth that the more power you need, the more likely ethical fading is to occur.

That said. In old structures (hierarchy) power can be directed, but in future organizations power emerges (networks evolve) and leadership is expanding potential from emergent power dynamics. This will demand a different type of character. This type of character navigates the I, we, larger We dynamics of an interconnected life, business & society.

“Character, like oxygen, is most noticeable when it is missing.”

Richard Reeves

The new powerful leadership will not lead with power, but rather principled driven energy and instead of just accumulating wealth/profits/achievements, seek to accumulate outcomes to be proud of.

Look.

These are very strange times. I would not say it’s the worst of times, but it seems to be a world that demands binary, black & white stances despite the fact navigating ambiguity and uncertainty is the path to not only success, but progress. What I can say is that holding onto something in a black and white way in a world of swirling colors, and grays, creates an ongoing sense of uncomfortableness. Maybe worse is attempting to hold onto binaries you will slide down the slippery slope of ethical fading without even noticing until its too late.

And maybe that is where I will end. You would think ethical fading would be associated with gray and the graying of morals and choices, but its not. Ethical fading occurs one black & white step at a time.

In the end.

We often speak of “principled leadership” or desiring leaders to have principles. I would argue each of us, to be successful, need to grapple with our own relationship between values, ethics and principles. Because, in the end, while we may be grounded in our values and measured by our ethical behavior what will matter will be the principles which make all of these decisions coherent to our Life – what we will, or will not, do. Yes. Refusal of “ethical fading” suggests “we are what we refuse to do” or, as Paul Chippendale stated, “we are what we refuse to adapt to.”

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“The rules cannot be understood apart from the virtues at which they aim”

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Telos is the Greek word for a human’s ultimate aim. Its kind of the smart version of today’s dumbed down “individual purpose. It represents his ultimate purpose and function — an essential nature that can only be realized by throwing off the inertia of default desires and actively striving after it. Its kind of like attaining “what you could be”, your potential best, if you could clear the decks and do it. to be clear, this isn’t excellence, it is more about flourishing as a human being.

Which leads me to virtuous.

Here is what I mean by virtuous:

• Do good. I imagine I am suggesting that if you do good you will contribute in a meaningful way (some call this a purposeful life). We must simply follow Aristotle’s advice, or Emerson, that “the purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good.” The point is not merely to study the good, in a detached and academic way, but to invite oneself to develop as a person of character.

Believing that a virtuous life is not found in attitude, but behavior & actions.

I believe it was Aristotle who suggested being a good human was both functional and objective which means that being virtuous is not just lived within what you do (so asking to be judged by your actions may mean well but you are likely to be doomed within judgement of) but also within intent (your aspirations to be better). That said. I imagine the conflict of self, in life, mainly resides in the liminal space between who we are and who we could be at our best.

Which leads me to coherence.

Far, far, too often people suggest consistency is the key to attaining your purpose or even a life better lived. They would be wrong. It is coherence. Life, business, shit, everything, is driven by connections with others and other thoughts. And within each of those connections you have conversations – with others, their ideas and even in your own head. At some point, if you want to make any progress, this lends you some coherence within all the scattered ideologies and feelings and attitudes and opinions so you can shape some perspective. It shapes both imagination and reality all of which shapes identity.

I would argue they shape your telos as well as create the platforms for a better life, business, and society. And while these three things may never be completely in sync, I would argue that the constant coherence around seeking the sync is where things get better – everything.

That coherence establishes some parameters and ultimately people, not just an individual, get mobilized within those parameters to do better things, think better things, and become better.

I imagine this is an argument for each individual doing the right thing, and if they get close to individual telos, the greater good, the greater community and society, is positively impacted.

Which leads me to end with rules do not help.

While I don’t want to confuse, or conflate, morals and virtue, I will use philosopher Alasdair McIntyre, “when a moral culture lacks a teleological element, rules become the primary concept of the moral life” to make a point. Rules do not define behavior nor do they define virtue. Rules are a default mechanism for people too weak to decide what is right and what is wrong, what is virtuous and what is not.  Simplistically, a societal system, or even a business culture, which lacks a coherent understanding of its telos, there can only exist negative proscriptions for appropriate behavior, i.e., rules shape behavior. The reality is rules are not meant to move people toward meaning or purpose or mattering, they are simply reductive, and restrictive parameters, to basic behavior. If you want to be better, as a person, as a business, as a society, rules will not get you there. I am not suggesting rules should be abolished, but I am suggesting the closer we get to a true telos mindset, the less we will ever have to use rules. Ponder.

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“There are countless ways of achieving greatness, but any road to achieving one’s maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity.”

Buck Rodgers

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While I have always been a Tom Peters fan, especially his book Thriving on Chaos, I have always chafed at The Search for Excellence. Ok. Let me be more specific.

First.

In Search of Excellence was the first book I faced in my career that became a ‘formula’ for business people I worked with. Normally sane thoughtful independent thinking business people (mostly men) would pull out the book or point to it on some shelf and would say “we need to do this.” Without question it became the first business bible, of many business bibles to come, of what everyone needs to do to be excellent. And while I could debate some aspects of the book itself suffice it to say, its good, has some great ideas, but is not a bible.

Second.

Excellence. While excellence seems like an innocuous helpful objective, when placed into a typical maniacal business environment (business pursuit of profits) excellence as an objective can become quite unhealthy. Its almost like perfection. Seeking excellence, and even perfection, can often make things better, but when they become objectives everyone gets measured in an “absence of” way <both are actually unattainable so when measured everyone will appear lacking>. When I was younger it was impossible trying to convince people excellence was a dubious objective at best. Later in my career as I got better at pointing out how good ideas can be misinterpreted and misused and become misguided objectives, I took this battle on more often (more on that later).

Then I found this snippet from a research paper (source lost):

In the eighties and nineties, N. Aubert and V. de Gaulejac (2007) argued, that the “ethics of excellence” in people management created the moral foundation of a system striving to control the totality of a person. In convincing employees that, by working for the firm, they were working for themselves, a complete blurring was made of professional and personal ambitions, and companies emerged as institutions capable of mediating individual destinies, supporting self-development, objects of true love, and in the end the only instrument able to fulfill the need for immortality of the self.

This work ethic creates particular interactions between people, interactions marked by the constant necessity to become visible. This quest for visibility takes the form of a new social game in which everyone is striving to capture the attention of others. In a sort of Goffmanian ‘parade’, self-branding and “newsing” oneself are ways to occupy the mental space of others and to stay on top of the competition. For businesses, being always present on personal communication channels, on webplatforms, etc., is a way to colonize the minds of their managers and to reduce their capacity to imagine another world.

The point here is that searching for excellence, when wielded as a management tool, became not only a power play, but as it became a standardized tool it became an imagination/innovation diminisher. As with most things business does, they decided to make the search for excellence more a ‘paint by numbers’ concept rather than a malleable concept to be applied differently in different contexts. What the idea lost was what Mary Parker Follett called “the law of the situation.” In other words, the situation, the context, dictates the application of an idea or concept – even excellence.

Third.

Excellence aside, there are a number of good well intended ideas that have driven many a good business person off the beaten path to success. Copying and standardization are the worst things that can ever be done to a good concept. I have known that for many many years and have therefore been a pain in the ass for many many years.

I have been a pain in the ass for years.

In mid 90’s I published the highly unpopular “customer is not king/queen” arguing that all it would do is create an entire industry of businesses chasing customer’s whims & wants consistently undermining expectations. My agency was not delighted. But it did.

In 2005 I published the ‘inside/out manifesto’ arguing to achieve highest order of value is thru organization knowing who it is, unequivocally accepting that, with a product as an extension of who they are (successfully addressing a need) matched with customers who want that combo. Branding people were grumpy.

In 2000’s when my agency introduced The Big Idea brief I skewered it as encouraging people to believe the only ideas of value were Big and encouraging clients to only be happy with so-called Big ideas & it would create a false culture in which we made ‘small’ shit, even small shitty ideas, look Big. Agency not happy. But it did.

In 2008 I skewered The Experience Economy (although I think it is one of most important business books/ideas of this generation) arguing it would spawn an industry of vapid ideas & meaningless products wrapped in experiences all the while espousing premium value. It has.

In 2010 I began harpooning customer centric arguing it only leads to unmet promises, false expectations & hollow value (internally & externally) within hierarchies. It demands distributed organizational autonomy or it creates no value. It has & it still does.

In Search of Excellence, Good to Great, Tipping Point … pick a book with a viable idea and it has been abused. The biggest abuse resides in taking one’s eye off the single most important thing – successfully implementing any of these good ideas to the highest order of value are contingent upon a consistently good product consistently delivered. My biggest issue is how all this stuff diverts people from the hard work of developing a meaningful product & creating value in it.

Let me end by circling back to a thought that may have not been highlighted enough. The Law of the Situation (Mary Parker Follett). I love ideas from smart people, I love books and I love learning new things. But. Everything is contextual. Everything. The law of every idea is overruled by the law of the situation. No idea’s maximum value can survive the context without some adaptation. In other words. Each situation has its own order and own concept. I imagine my point is that you can study excellence,  accountability methods, leadership principles, but, inevitably, all that matters is the Law of the Situation. Ponder.

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“a series of steps, each building on the last, but without a predetermined plan. We did what was necessary and as we made progress or ran into problems it became obvious what needed doing next. It wasn’t a straight line. We made mistakes and not everything worked. But we realized we were learning by doing.”

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“The devil isn’t just in the details. He’s in the definitions. And, most of all, he’s in the analytical distinctions: in the ability to tell one thing from another. To not mix things up.”

Hanzi Freinacht

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Where does all our crappy behavior and crappy perceptions of the world come from?

Like most things, it’s mainly the product of learned behavior. That may sound horrible, but we humans are imitation machines. Our subconscious minds constantly take in signals from the environment and integrate them into our mindsets, attitudes and, yeah, even behaviors, all of which end up guiding our perceptions and our actions. And while we want to blame social media, and media in general, the most influential part of any environment is the people in it.

Which leads me to a Toffler, Future Shock, thought.

….. impact of Warehouse of Images (before Instagram existed) …..

Pre-internet we were exposed to a fairly finite, and fairly rigid, sample of the human population to ‘imitate’ or judge our perceptions and behaviors. The people in our neighborhood. In our schools and libraries and community gathering places. At the grocery store. In our office. On the street. On the bus. We lived in smaller community echo chambers, where signals were fewer, and meanings/cues were clearer or, at least, more well defined. The internet exponentially expanded our universes wherein the number of signals we receive has increased exponentially and meanings/cues became scrambled into a moshpit of signals. Our common, well, any commonality, and agreed upon sensemaking lost clarity and gained some fairly vague outlines. In other words, social coherence lost accepted boundaries. Our imitation muscles were overworked as we attempted to learn behavior from a seemingly limitless onslaught of cues of which it became almost impossible to discern the majority from the minority.

Which leads me to the danger and opportunity.

We simultaneously see more crappy behavior than ever before, which creates a perception that everyone is crappy, and, yet, we see more kind and moral behavior than ever before (maybe just not from what we would have easily accepted as an established traditional local influencer in the past) which creates a perception that not everyone is crappy. Generally speaking, it is confusing. Are people good or bad? What that means is because we see more information about other people than ever before we need to be very, very, careful what we normalize because while we may not exactly imitate – we may simply begin accepting some version of crappy behavior. We see videos of crappy behavior of kids in schools, crappy crazy drivers, crappy acting adults arguing in grocery stores, let alone the insane amount of insane self made crappy video rants. All of these things we already knew happened occasionally, but virality implies it isn’t confined to the occasional.  And, well, what a culture sees, is what a culture becomes. The more a person sees something, especially another person’s actions, the more they will either gravitate toward it or simply accept it as “how we are” as people (whether we like it or not). It creates the message that “this is how society is.” Even if it is really not.

Which leads me to what we see (and what we become).

In the wayback machine, we had more control over what we would see. Plus. A smaller community controlled what we saw (in some form or fashion). Simplistically, we had to work harder to see the less-than-normal shit. The problem in today’s world is what we are ‘shown’ doesn’t care about proportionality so the ‘less-than-normal shit’ takes on an oversized shitstorm feeling of everywhere all the time. All this to say we get caught in the wretched inbetween of knowing that access to all this information makes us smarter, can make us safer, and actually can create a more equitable (accountable) society AND knowing that a consistent onslaught, or drip-by-drip, of exposure to crappy behavior, well, suggests we begin imitating some of that behavior in order to be ‘competitive’ in today’s crappy society/world. It’s kind of like the tragedy of commons just with behavior. This all breeds a sense of what is called ‘learned helplessness’. This is where we become conditioned to believe that a bad situation is unchangeable, resulting in an unrealistically negative view of the world and a sense of permanent crisis. Ultimately this eliminates hope, or diminishes it (through crappy perceptions), and we either disengage or assume some crappy behavior aspects.

Which leads me to creating a culture which we want people to see so it can become a better culture.

I have written far too often about how algorithms shape what we see and, therefore, shape culture (at least by my measure). But humans are smarter than algorithms, humans create algorithms, and algorithms do not have culture, do not understand culture nor do they even care about culture – algorithms feed people what they ‘say’ they want. Period. So, we can choose to spread the good stories and starve the bad ones of attention. Period. End of story. The stories we tell and we share, becomes what a culture sees and, ultimately, what it becomes.

By assuming this responsibility, hopefully, we learn something new, good; and we change course.

In the end.

Everyone should think about this a bit because the basic premise I offer is the thought if we continuously see crappy behavior, we will start doing some crappy behavior. A lot of people will balk at that. They will believe they can recognize crappy behavior as unacceptable and will never do it. Uhm. I am not so sure about that. I think it becomes just a bit easier to do some crappy things, on occasion, if you have a crappy perception of the context and think everyone else is going to be crappy. Shit. Think about how business culture works (and doesn’t). That said. Ponder. It feels important.