Ok. So what the hell is investing energy in life?

Let’s call it being able to discern between ‘resting’ versus ‘being stagnant.’ And, possibly, add in being able to discern when to use energy and when to not use it. By the way.  All of that translates into making choices.

Anyway. Let me use a quote to begin the discussion.

“As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Ah. Now. Be careful when reading this. Lucy isn’t suggesting people not be original or seek to have some ‘depth.’ Nope. She is suggesting investing energy at the appropriate times is a choice. A choice for when energy invested won’t be wasted.

Look. Haven’t we seen those people who go 110% all the time on everything? And they get tired. And often frustrated. And they often don’t seem to get as far in life as you would expect for all the energy they have invested. While they may debate with me (because they feel like they are making the choice that has to be made, i.e., I am ‘working at being successful in life’), the reality is they aren’t making any real choice.  Anytime you do something 100% of the time you haven’t made the tough choice. Shit. You actually haven’t made any choice at all. The switch is simply flipped into a default mode.

The choice truth? There is a time to rest. And. There is a time for energy.

Oh, and yes, you do have to invest energy in life to get something out of it.

Because being lazy doesn’t get you shit.

In fact.

Being apathetic doesn’t get you shit.

Once again. That doesn’t mean 24/7 energy and pushing and shoving and being passionate and trying to kick ass 172,800 seconds (if I did my math correctly that is the amount of seconds in a day).  It’s about making choices. When and where type choices.

So.

What I am saying is you cannot have enough energy to kick ass every second of every day.

(and if you have someone suggesting you should? … ignore them)

But.

You also cannot be passive every second either.

There is resting (before investing energy).

There is stagnant (before never investing energy).

(former good; latter bad)

And they are significantly different because living a successful (happy) life takes energy. And life is a struggle that takes energy to manage and deal with. And frankly happiness doesn’t always come easily.

By the way. This ‘struggle’ isn’t a day-to-day get-things-done struggle.  I mean it is a mental and physical struggle.

Describing this struggle is interesting. Good ole Winston C. suggested Life is the struggle between energy and indolence:

“Life is a struggle between vitality and decay, energy and indolence”

Winston Churchill

Whew.  Good stuff.

Life is all about either growing or diminishing. You are either active or passive. And life is the struggle within the two. At all times.

Some people would simply suggest that an active life is better than a passive one. Oh. If only the solution were that simple (because it isn’t that one sided).  Sure. Embracing adventure or some activity you are passionate about (or believe will make you better) is important to what makes many of us happy and feel like we are being productive within our life. But it isn’t just about going out and doing a bunch of stuff.  It’s about going out and doing the right stuff. And, to be happiest, the right stuff at the right time.

So be careful.

You may elect to ignore people who tell you to “slow down and take it easy” because you feel like you are being productive and ‘doing.’ But be sure you are aware of what you are doing and how you are investing your energy. Because energy is not limitless.

Life is about balance. Balancing rest and energy. But this is where stagnancy or indolence issue steps up to the plate. Because happiness can be such a struggle and ‘doing nothing’ sometimes seems the easiest thing to do. It isn’t (no matter how it may look or feel at the time).  You HAVE to invest some energy at some point. If not for you then you have to for those around you. Because in the end we see that the energetic displaces the passive. Even if the passive is “good” (intentions or in heart). Because evil is restless.  And energetic.

“In this very real world, good doesn’t drive out evil. Evil doesn’t drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.”

Bill Bernbach

Ok. My fear is when people read this last quote they begin to dedicate all their energies to … well … doing.  With good intentions, but not seeing the forest because of the trees.

Remember. We are not Ever-Ready bunnies who can go and go and go.  Because all that “going” means investing energy.

And the people who you see going 110% all the time? Well.  The reason they do is because they haven’t figured it out.  They haven’t figured out when to rest and when to invest energy. And having already decided mentally that they need to invest energy to win the struggle they just invest.

And invest.  And invest (I would like to point out … with diminishing returns).

Please.  Everyone.  This isn’t about time management.

If you read my “time according to Lucy” post you know I am skeptical of the whole managing time concept. The closest suggestion I can make to clarify what I am trying to say in this post can maybe be found in the book Power of Full Engagement. The book suggests that instead of trying to manage time we should be conscious of managing our energy.

I am not talking as literally as the book author suggests (they suggest at different points in the day we have more energy than others as well as more motivated to do certain things at certain moments). I don’t think this is about planning your work times around when you expect to have creative energy (like the book suggests).

This is just about investing energy at the right times.

Yes.

Investing energy at the right time in the right place.

This is not about motivation or creative energy or any of that.  This is simply about recognizing ‘influential moments’ (moments that can swing your day or life) and acting upon them by investing energy.

And that, my friends, is a choice.

A choice to invest what energy you have available, no holding back, when the opportunity arises.

Yes. That is a choice.

And not investing energy at some times (when people look at you and worry if you are lazy).

And, yes, that is a choice.

Choices based on understanding the difference between rest and stagnancy.

Maybe that is “the” choice.

Yeah.  Life is a struggle. And a struggle of choices. But mostly it is a struggle of energy. When to invest and when to not invest.

Ponder. Ponder because it matters.

—–

“Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice”

Karl Marx

——

“It’s never the changes we want that change everything.”

Junot Díaz

—–

How often have we identified a strategy and then went about identifying the obstacles within the system to effectively bring it to life? I would suggest more often than not this is exactly what we do. So, then we go about fixing the system, or fine tuning it to match the strategy, only to find the obstacles we foresaw were not really the inhibitors we thought (or by fixing them we created some unintended consequence instead).

The alternative, I imagine, is maybe we design a strategy to most effectively match the system we have only to watch the system change as it implements the strategy.

Both are flawed albeit the latter less so than the former.

The only thing a dynamic system guarantees is the future you foresee, or envision, will not happen.

My point here is you do need some plans, but plans, in a dynamic market, shouldn’t be followed to the detriment of the objective.

My point here is you need some strategies, but strategies, in a dynamic market, should sometimes be pursued to the detriment of a planned objective.

My point here is you need to recognize that your system is in some cases is not worth the energy to change (use as it exists) and in others tweak to enable plans and strategies, i.e., your system is both an enabling and a restricting constraint.

My point here is that strategies should nest within a system, or system dynamics, rather than have systems support a strategy <note: this is a general rule which under circumstances can be broken>.

Ok. That nested thought.

Nested dynamic processes ARE the system process. Anyone who suggests “this is our process” and describes it as some discrete, mutually exclusive thing, is on drugs. Any one process is simply something you have chosen to put boundaries around just to analyze and describe <that is a bastardization of a Donella Meadows thought>. Processes are layered, distinctly paced and intersectional. There are slow variables to fast variables all of which create patterns with slow to faster moving parts. This means, not only those things happen in combinations of speeds, but that also change occurs, and is encouraged, to happen at different speeds. The only way to manage this is to reduce environment variables to attempt to manipulate the context to create positive dynamics for process/system to thrive. I’d be remiss if I didn’t state these are ‘limited time contexts’ and more often than not dissolve faster than any business person would like. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out this also demands:

• Different configurations of strategy

• Emergent strategy implementation

• Predictive strategies only used for framing not execution

All these layers and connections can create what appear to seem like fluid patterns and interactions, but are actually a makeup of somewhat unexpected patterns (within the transactions, community and world) but typically within a range of anticipated behavior. This also means that while a pattern is occurring, simultaneously, new patterns are being created (new patterns also create new possibilities). This may seem simultaneously exciting and frightening (organizations like tidiness and predictability & replication), but what I can say it should be simultaneously opportunistic and dynamic.

It is key to remember that systems, left to their own devices <maybe with some constraints>, have the ability to expand the proper strategy beyond the imagination of any objective one can place on it.

That said. More strategies die within systems than they do in the marketplace. Think about that. Think about that for a long time because if you don’t recognize the doom loop between strategies and systems you are, well, doomed.

===

“The world went on the same after all. The same things happened every morning. So what if they did not like her? She would go on the same.”

Harriet the Spy

===

Let me get this out of the way upfront: likeability, in and of itself in an organization, is deadweight.

Yeah.

I just said that.

Now. I am not talking about people wanting to be liked. I believe Alicia Menendez wrote a book called “the likeability trap’ which deals with that.

I am speaking of how people desiring to ‘build a culture’ saying things like “its important we like each other.” No. It isn’t. It isn’t important you like everyone, its important to not actively dislike everyone <that is different than liking everyone> and it is important to respect everyone. It’s a business not a circle of friends.

Look.

I am not suggesting someone seek to be unlikeable nor am I suggesting actually recruiting based on finding unlikeable people. Shit. Liking people you work with actually increases some social cohesion. The tricky part about that is effective business culture is more about professional cohesion.

What I mean by that is say you have Joe, and everyone likes Joe. No one has anything bad to say about him and, in fact, almost every conversation begins with “I like Joe”. But then the inevitable shoe drops … “but.” He’s likeable but doesn’t contribute shit. He’s just the likeable guy in the office taking someone’s salary who may be a little less likeable, but you can count on to get good shit done when the business of doing business needs to be done. Yeah. Professional cohesion is grounded in contribution, productivity and respect.

Please.

Please no one suggest I am suggesting a binary. This isn’t an either/or discussion. This is a “what is most important discussion” and a ‘proportional” discussion. Let me address the latter. “Likeable’ takes on disproportionate importance in many businesses and how they view ‘culture’. What I mean by that is whenever a review comes up or senior folk are gathered around some mahogany conference room table the “everyone likes him” cloaks all the other business negatives surrounding good ole Joe. Yeah. Proportionally we seem to disproportionately weight the importance of likeability higher than just professional contribution. Its almost like we view the likeability/contribution organizational formula as a zero-sum analysis where a lot here, zeros out a little here. That’s slightly absurd and not really a good way of ‘constructing a healthy culture.’

Let me be clear.

Joe is deadweight.

Joe is also actually bad for the culture. Yeah. Deadweight and bad. Deadweight in that salary earned is supposed to be related to business value provided and in this case that translates into “we are paying him because he contributes to the likeability in our culture” (maybe suggesting he contributes in some way to social cohesion). Which leads me to bad. Bad in that everyone else in the company senses that if you don’t really have anything to contribute, but figure out how to be likeable you can pull down a sweet salary and get healthcare.

In the end. I dislike, no, hate when people discuss likeability when it is related to culture. “We want to be known as likeable” is a horrible objective. I am fine if someone states “lets make sure we are not unlikeable as we craft a distinct professional position in the marketplace”, but likeable? Please.

===

“Sliding down the slippery slope of mediocrity.”

David Ogilvy

====

Turn on television on any given weekend in the United States and you have a very high probability of finding the movie The Replacements at some point. While the movie, at its core, is about taking for granted what you have versus taking advantage of opportunities, tucked within the movie is what I call “the quicksand moment.”

This is the scene where the coach asks the players their greatest fear and the quarterback says “quicksand.”

Businesses get stuck in quicksand all the time. Shit. People do too. What makes it worse is that most times you know how to play the game well, in fact, you may have actually been playing it well at the time so the first thing that goes wrong is just a blip.

“Just one thing” is what you say.

Then another thing happens.

Then another.

You fight back alone and sink.

Or.

Someone notices (usually management) and they help you fight back.

How?

The first response almost every business has to a problem is “more resources”. Oh. That is the first sign you have fallen into quicksand. As Brooks pointed out in the Mythical Man Month, even on projects, our first instinct is to add more people. This only makes everything even slower and more dysfunctional.

If that fails, the second response is usually even more resources.

You sink deeper.

Faster.

On a personal level this comes to fruition in “I’ll stay later or get in early.” You are on the edge of quicksand. You see added resources as “more time.” So, you put in more time. And more time. And this is where fear enters. You know you are trying hard; you know you are doing right things and, yet, it still keeps going wrong.

You are sinking despite all the effort.

And then you can’t breathe.

Organizational quicksand.

Now.

Quicksand and slippery slopes share some similar characteristics.

The first is that you don’t know you are in, or on, them until its too late.

The second is what I call “just this once” behavior.

It is absolutely easy to compromise – in business and in life. “Just this once.” An exception. And then another.

And before you know it you are on that slippery slope.

Regardless. This is a Life and business lesson. So, let’s just call it “truth.” It’s a truth about work, effort, decisions, compromise, lies (or “half-truths”) and almost anything else I can think of.

Slippery slopes are incredibly easy to step onto AND get stuck on. What do I mean?

“Just this once” you say to yourself when you are tired. Whatever the decision or action we are discussing, to you, in the moment … it is mentally “an exception”.

“Just this once” when you are asked a question and you ponder your answer and maybe you embellish a bit.

“Just this once” you say to yourself when you put off that thing you wanted to do. A workout. A chore. A book. A project. A diet. A decision.

“Just this once” you say to yourself when it is a silly rule or what you are doing isn’t really unethical, but its not 100% ethical, it’s just in the margins of “okay to do.”

Before you know it <after some “just this onces“> you have edged on to that slippery slope. Once has become many and, well, many becomes the standard.

Business is funny that way. Its sneaky. It permits you to look at things in a mutually exclusive way so that you don’t really see the accumulation of events and decisions until you have sunk.

Oh.

Quicksand.

Ponder.

—-

“I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”

Geronimo

———

This is about Geronimo and it’s not. Geronimo was a Chiricahua Apache who, after his family was murdered by Mexican troops, pretty much dedicated himself to revenge as a warrior. Ok. At the same time he dedicated himself as what we would call “anti-establishment” in today’s world. He just wanted to be left alone on lands he believed was his tribes, to live with people he loved, and live a life he loved. My point is it is difficult to talk about Geronimo and some fairly heinous actions without at the same time acknowledging the context, the environment, within which he did those things.

But let’s cut to the chase.

Geronimo was 79 (maybe) when he died of pneumonia after spending the last 23 years of his life as a prisoner of war. He spent years at war which, if examined, was actually spent mostly not fighting or engaging with his enemies, but rather seeking freedom from his enemies. I point that out to finally get to his last words “I should never have surrendered but fought until I was the last man alive.”

The world is not really a very welcoming place for ideas that don’t conform. And if you happen to be the owner of one of those ideas you have a variety of choices, but suffice it to say they inevitably reside in one of two places – conform or fight. Now. I’d be silly to not point out either is a viable choice. Despite the fact ‘conform’ has a variety of negative definitions the truth is, like Geronimo attempted when he surrendered, it can give you an opportunity to fight the system from within the system. Not an easy task but certainly offers a possible path to your objective. Conform does not necessarily mean submit. However, this is where it gets tricky. The system will often try and convert your surrender, ‘the conform decision’, to submission. And that is where things go awry. And that is how someone like Geronimo, on his death bed, can state “I should have fought.”

To be clear, there is no political message in what I am communicating today <it seems like everyone always wants to read something into everything> this is solely about ideas, mindsets and beliefs – and regrets I imagine.

Not everything (not many things in fact) that you believe or an idea you have is worth dying for. Yet. Many more of those same things can make you feel like it would have been better to die for them.

To be clear. I am speaking metaphorically here.

There are clearly some things when you surrender you end up surrendering a part of your soul at exactly the same time. Business is infamous for this exchange. You surrender an idea and sometime in the future you will find out you had surrendered more than you had bargained for. I point this out to defend some people who fight too long, and too hard, for their ideas and beliefs. While I sometimes think they are being absurdly stubborn I can also clearly see the possible costs of surrender and, well, I think I would fight until I was the last person standing too.

The choice is not clear cut.

Not every surrender costs you more than your idea. But costs lurk over the horizon so when you do surrender, and conform, you can never be exactly sure what all the costs will end up being.

Here is about the only wisdom I can share on this. Those who you surrender to typically have a history. Leopards don’t change their spots, animals always carry fleas and businesses are consistent. Assess well and choose wisely if you decide to surrender, or, be the last person alive over an idea or belief.

“Each moment is a place you’ve never been.”

Mark Strand

====

Innovation can embody some seemingly innocuous inspirations. This is also true of social behavior and social dynamics. What I am referring to is that a nonlinear “exaptation” occurs.

In biology ‘exaptation’ are variations on the usual variations of natural selection. Unlike adaptations, which are changes to an organism that respond to environmental conditions, exaptations are novel, unexpected applications of these new traits. For example, wings evolved as an extension of reptile’s webbed forelimbs wherein evolution was in search of a stronger limb, yet, somewhere along the way the ‘newly winged’ discovered its capacity for flight.

“An organ initially constructed for one purpose may be converted into one for a wholly different purpose.”

Charles Darwin

I say all of that to talk about technology. And I don’t mean anything specifically within technology, just technology itself. I read somewhere years ago that the most profound change brought about by technology will not be some new program, AI or even involve some whizbang software, the most profound change will reside in our generic expectations of technology itself. Through its ubiquity the broader shifts will occur in corollary effects that trickle in, and out, and throughout, everyone – the subtle gradual changes that shift the foundation upon what we know and what we think (about Life and ourselves). Living in our technology-created-“memory palaces” (or information spaces always nudging us) will inevitably engineer a social transformation which, in turn, inevitably cascades into the pragmatic functions of life itself – education, healthcare, business, etc. In other words, maybe technology will offer us ‘exaptations’ of which we cannot envision. And maybe worse is that some of these exaptations we cannot envision, will make our lives easier, but worse.

Norbert Weiner, Alvin Toffler and Marshall McLuhan all invested a lot of energy and brain power thinking about this and even telling us in the 1960’s and 1970’s – but I am not sure we actually listened. We fell in love with all the technology things and widgets and embraced, for the most part, how we adapted. But. What they were warning us about were of exaptation.

Which leads me to effectuation.

A causation approach focuses on a predefined goal and then goes about finding the means to attains the goal. An effectuation approach focuses on the means at hand and then have them coalesce with the intent to achieve some outcomes which inevitably achieve some goals (not all predefined).

Effectuation is most often discussed within business and how entrepreneurs shape performance. I bring it up because I fear someone truly thinking about what I am bringing up will jump to designing a goal and pursuing it (causation). I fear it because in a dynamic environment like technology and society, by the time we attain that goal, the goalposts will have moved – most likely dramatically. The truth is that this technology-society battle we are fighting is currently asymmetrical and technology has the leverage. I am not a fan of the word ‘scale’, but the reality is technology is scaling exponentially AND with velocity, faster than human brains can scale, and attempting to address it solely with causation approaches is doomed to fail. The real conclusion anyone should take is to embrace effectuation. Take what exists and use it, and the skills that developed all those things, to materialize real progress in real time and outcomes occur making predefined goals irrelevant. Its kind of like nudging at scale.

Anyway.

As the saying goes, ‘the street always finds new uses for things,’ and with technological ubiquity in most lives, we should be paying attention to ‘the street always finds exaptation while we are not looking and maybe technology will encourage people to fly when they have no wings and, well, we will crash’.

Yeah. There is a lesson lurking in that bad metaphor I just shared.

Ponder.

====

“We are all joined in a circle of stories.”
Linda Joy Myers

====

“Stories are like spiders, with all their long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.”
Neil Gaiman

====

In ‘the experience economy’ or ‘experience as value’ world far too many people are simply laying out ‘experience’ as some amorphous wonderful blob of ‘do it well’. Sure. Sometimes it is “customer experience”, sometimes user experience, but more often than not someone stands up in front of a big screen and suggest “experience is the new value.”

*** note: experience is an extension of product value, not value in and of itself. It is an expansion of proof. If the experience doesn’t add value to the product itself, i.e., just be entertainment, it creates unmatched anticipation-to-expectation reality in usage.

The truth is that not all experiences are created equal, competing on experiences is a race to the bottom (or a commodity in which you can charge less and less for) and any experience value truly resides on the experience within the experience.

Let me explain. If you want to find real value, the stuff that drives up experience value, begin identifying the experiences within the experience. A simple trip to the coffee shop becomes an order, an eavesdropped conversation, a thought on how that related to something you may have heard the night before, what your roommate would think of it, the conversation you are having in your head if you talked with them, how that makes you feel, and then your amazement that all that happened to you in an unexpected moment on a bland expected transactional experience you were doing.

The value is found within the threads in individual experiences.

While we like to think not everyone “sees the things no one else does” the truth is everyone sees the experiences within the experience.

In different terms it is actually an ability to take advantage of the ‘now’. An ability to expand experienced time – in a good way. Conceptually this is adding dimension to a linear, or horizontal, time continuum. I bring that up because many businesses map out ‘customer journeys’ <which can be a helpful tool> and, yet, that linearity can make you miss the experience within, which is expandable, and reflects essential parts to value. The best example I have of this is when I speak with UI/UX people and suggest ‘frictionless’ can actually diminish value and that purposeful friction moments can actually expand value.

But. To be clear, many of these experiences are unplanned. They simply intersect with a standard continuum of experiences representing added value. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that many experiences within the experience is a reflection of the fact one person’s experience is intersecting with another’s experience <or a number of them> creating an expandable moment as it shoves multiple experiences into a time space planned for one essential experience.

Yeah. In those moments, at its simplest, experience goes vertical and, at its most complex, it becomes a spinning helix of multiple experiences. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out this is also where ‘stories’ occur, not in the grand experience but rather in the experience within the experience – the moments that become stories to the one who experienced it.

Anyway. All of that can seem overwhelming and create some uncertainty on how to optimize this whole “experience economy” thing being thrown around. All you really have to do is craft an experience that has experience opportunities nested within and then make sure you get credit when someone triggers a nested experience. You will not always get it right, but I can guarantee you will get it righter than someone who simply says “its all about the experience.”

 ============

“Autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go.”

Unknown

==============

“You can’t be who you’re going to be and who you used to be at the same time …”

TD Jakes

======================

Today is the first day of Fall.

……………………………. first day of fall 2016 google ……………….

It is kind of a reminder to everyone that everything is temporary. On another note. I do also sometimes find it slightly strange that death and dying can contain so much beauty.

Anyway.

I kind of find it nice that Life, in the form of seasons, forces us to let go of things. And while we even go kicking and screaming with regard to seasons, Life ignores us … moves on … lets go of the last season … offers us a new season, and once we get over it we are once again shown how beautiful it can be to let shit go.

I kind of find it nice that Life, in the form of seasons, forces us to distinguish what often looks the same from one day to the next. as we keep our heads down to the Life grindstone and each day dawns without any major incident, other than  the same aggravating everyday incidents which inevitably occur, Life ignores our obliviousness … moves on … let’s go of another season … offers a new season … and we get over the fact we actually have to lift our heads up and pay attention for a little, but, we are once again shown how beautiful it is to let some shit go.

“Between the end of that strange summer and the approach of winter, my life went on without change. Each day would dawn without incident and end as it had begun. It rained a lot in September. October had several warm, sweaty days. Aside from the weather, there was hardly anything to distinguish one day from the next.”

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I kind of find it nice that Life, in the form of seasons, forces us to think a little bit about who we want to be … who we are … and provides some real life aspects to show us how difficult it is to be who you used to be and who you are going to be at the exact same time.

Look. I am not a huge Fall person. I am more of a spring person. Heck. I have even suggested we move New Year’s Day to the 1^st day of spring  because I think it would make new year’s less depressing and more hopeful.

But I admit that Fall, even more so than Spring, forces us to face our feelings, thoughts, doubts, dreams and fears with a fairly discerning eye. An eye that views ‘what could be’ with a little more sense of urgency.

Sigh.

Falling leaves can do that to you.

Better seems a little bit harder.

Better seems to have more of a deadline.

I think we all seek a great perhaps of “what I know can be”.

I think we all know what a better world really looks like.

I think we all want to see the beauty that can be found in what is better in everyone.

And maybe it is within Fall and the falling leaves I think we all better grasp that failed plans and failed dreams can beget new plans and new dreams.

Maybe it is within Fall that we are able to see that new realities can lead to needed life changes.

Maybe it is Fall that reminds us even in times of ‘things slipping away’ you can still find abundance.

Maybe it is Fall that reminds us that Life is a healthy mix of duality — life & death and the ebb & flow of growth and regress.

Maybe Fall reminds those who have a view that a happy and fulfilling life should consist only of highs <or, maybe better said, a significantly higher % of highs than lows> and that a positive life should consist only of certainty <shelving fear and doubt to be successful> that happiness & fulfillment also embraces the ebbs in seasons as well as the flows of seasons.

Maybe Fall reminds us that no matter how you plan your day, year, or life, it will have times of … the best, the worst, wisdom, foolishness, belief, incredulity, light, darkness, hope, despair, everything and nothing.

Maybe Fall simply reminds us that time goes on, things come & go and we always have an opportunity to begin again … arise anew after the Fall as it were.

In the end.

Maybe Fall exists just to remind us to think a little.

“Emotive laziness; repugnances of memory: such things—such revealing imbecilities—exist. I can feel that some worry of long ago, a forgotten indignity, a thorn still rankling in the flesh might well recover its activity. But what, after all, is “the past”? On the other hand, I can foresee and outwit this obsession. Foresee it and avert it. Daytime lights up my ideas and my ideas light up my night-time. The shadow of the idea scares the idea away.”

Paul Valéry

=====

The organization with agility will be the one who optimizes the free exchange of ideas and thinking. This concept almost always brings up ‘thinkers versus doers’ and focus of roles within an organization. Let me be clear. Optimizing each person’s role, and skill, certainly ensures a level of efficiency and the essential replication which underpins consistency. But in order to continuously improve, or even more importantly, exploit opportunities, those people who have been optimized as a “part” need to have a free exchange of ideas with the “whole” if you desire to optimize the system itself. And should a business desire to attain the next level of its potential simply using the employees it has, this free exchange includes a free exchange of mistakes and unrealistic imagination. The latter is important because what may appear to be unrealistic in one individual’s imagination maybe be attainable and realistic when the ‘inspired idea’ is confronted by the whole. This means even the most ‘doer’ organization, one focused on execution, can become a collection of ideas which does incorporate the innovation necessary for continuous improvement but also has the ability to incorporate non-innovation ideas, a different configuration of existing resources and abilities, which is equally effective in terms of profitability and usefulness (using what exists is always more applicable than something new because no one has to learn something new).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out this is also the pathway to maintaining a hierarchy AND increasing organizational effectiveness. Instead of people keeping their potential to themselves, their potential (the unforeseen, by management, contributions any employee can offer when free exchange is encouraged).

Which leads me to links.

In the internet world the link is possibly the greatest invention of all time. With one click someone can zoom across the universe (meta or mesa) and reach some destination. What once could only be traveled on foot (trudge down to the library) was now Star Trek ‘transporter’ capabilities. I bring up links to make a point on exchange of ideas and connectivity even within a traditional hierarchy. Linking people, and their ideas, skills and potential, within an organization permits the organization itself to transport itself to destinations yet unseen. And just like a link on your computer, you don’t have to know how it works, you need not even design the link, just click on it and you zoom away. This is the positive aspect of what The Cluetrain Manifesto called “the hyperlinked organization.” In Cluetrain they pointed out everything was transparent with the advent of the internet. While many business leaders shivered, and still do, over that loss of control it actually also offers an opportunity to control, or corral, the potential within your organization – foster it to the benefit of the business.

Which leads me to evolution.

Evolution is always in search of a weakness and systems are always evolving. This means they are dynamic in and of themselves with components working, and failing, and being replaced, and improved, continuously. The constraints are typically the infrastructure (capital expenditures the institution seeks to optimize its investments) and leadership mindset. So, while people, humans, may manage to probabilities the reality is constricted, or constrained, by the institution itself (which actually increases the likelihood of missed opportunity and/or catastrophes). Evolution, left to its own devices, tends to enhance an organization – efficiently and effectively. Should a business solely focus on execution, evolution is stifled and growth and progress has a ‘cap’.

To be fair (part 1), an execution-focused mindset can grind out an excellent profit day to day <and customer satisfaction> and if they compensate the grinders well that machine can go on successfully for quite some time.

To be fair (part 2), in a rapidly expanding organization, either through continuous acquisitions or significant mergers or even velocity driven organic business growth, an execution-focused mindset may be mandatory simply to insure executional coherence (with an outcome of cultural coherence).

To be clear, both of those ‘to be fair’ comments are linked to some specific environment contextual aspects therefore have limited life within different contexts.

Lastly.

Constraints on free exchange of ideas. One could conclude when they hear ‘free exchange of ideas’ an organization in which roles are blurred, departments thinking about other department’s responsibilities and a bunch of people being asked to take their eye off the executional ball. Its not that way. While an organization should always encourage a free exchange of overall ideas and some transparency to how thinking can enhance doing, the reality is the most effective exchange of ideas are transactional in nature.

What I mean by that is someone, somewhere, within the business has an inspiration. That ‘inspiration’ isn’t really an idea yet but the seed of something. It gets shared <free exchange of an idea>, with collaboration <either organic or curated> that inspiration becomes a concept. From there, especially within an execution-focused business, the inspired concept needs to become an implementable concept <inexecutable concepts are wasted use of resources>. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this type of exchange is not simply in the purview of some select, few but rather open to any and all within an organization.

I maintain agility is how any organization, execution and/or creative driven, will ‘future-fit’ for the future and a free exchange of ideas is most likely the foundation for that agility. “The shadow of the idea scares the idea away.”  Ponder.

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“The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact, they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.”

Arthur Koestler

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“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum.”

Donella Meadows

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We love addition. It is simple, linear and understandable. One and one makes two provides some logic in a sometimes illogical world. It implies if we just study each of the ‘ones’ well enough we will be able to predict an outcome when we put them together. Understand one, and then understand another, and when you put that one and the ‘another’ together it will equal something.

Which leads me to “and.”

“Ands” are connections. Between people, between things, in general ‘ands’ are things within a system. This means in order to understand <as well as one can> a system one has to explore the mechanisms/things/connections that makes things happen – the “ands.” Simplistically the easiest way to do this is to step back and watch how the system behaves. And, yet, even this is tricky:

“You think that because you understand ‘one’ that you must therefore understand ‘two’ because one and one make two. But you forget you must also understand ‘and.’”

 (Meadows Thinking in Systems)

It is in interconnection <the ‘ands’> which may actually make one and one equal something other than two. That makes most people’s heads explode, yet, it shouldn’t because it explains velocity, scale and a variety of other exponential growth/progress ideas. Similarly, if you grasp the concept, now you must also accept that, in this case, one and one maybe actually equate to something less than two.

Which leads me to resilience.

Understanding “ands” is actually about understanding the resilience of your business. Yeah. Resilience rarely resides within a system, but rather the connections within a system. So, if you seek to understand a business’s resilience you have to understand the connections <complexity science suggests ‘fractals’>. I say that because resilience is a measure of a system’s ability to survive and persist within a dynamic environment. It has elasticity embedded within in, not constancy. Resilience is restorative from conditions encountered which means it offers non-static stability. All that said. The elasticity is found in the conversations, the connections, the “ands” and the ability to juggle, and find the appropriate equilibrium, of replicable and emergent.

Which leads me to “ands” and complexity.

While ‘ands’ are connections it is within connections where one can actually find insights into a system. While interconnected can look incomprehensible you can actually see some insights within the connectivity because connectivity, at its most basic level, are small linear fractals within a nonlinear complexity which represent. To be clear. I propose insights are not causally linear (they simply release a nonlinear aspect of probabilities) nor are they simple rather they are reflective of unleashing complexity’s non-linear potential. These insights may appear simple, because at their best they focus on some linear fractal, but they are complex in nature.

The truth is below the surface of any complex system outcomes lies a complex arrangement of fractal connections <”ands”>. By rummaging around the ‘ands’, you can discover some human insights (mindset/attitude/behavior) or some recurring patterns that ground connectivity AND observe some of the more nebulous inconsistent interactions/connections. Technically these are ‘fractal simplicities’ or what Alvin Toffler suggested in the 1980’s as halfisms versus wholisms.

Insights actually straddle halfisms and wholisms (albeit I could suggest insights are halfisms which lead to a wholism). Regardless. Insights reflect a connection TO the truthism while not offering the whole truth in and of itself.

Which leads me to the “art of ands.”

“And analysis” is an art. Here is what I mean. It was Arthur Koestler, in The Act of Creation 1964, who identified something called “bisociation of matrices” or how one creatively identifies patterns or connections.

** note: (Koestler) “The pattern underlying [the creative act] is the perceiving of a situation or idea, L, in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference, M1 and M2. The event L, in which the two intersect, is made to vibrate simultaneously on two different wavelengths, as it were. While this unusual situation lasts, L is not merely linked to one associative context, but bisociated with two.

I have coined the term ‘bisociation’ in order to make a distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single ‘plane,’ as it were, and the creative act, which … always operates on more than one plane. The former can be called single-minded, the latter double-minded, transitory state of unstable equilibrium where the balance of both emotion and thought is disturbed.”

‘Ands’ are grounded in a “bisociation of matrices” and, as Robert Kegan (Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, 1994) stated, the idea of a “holding environment” which offers two key aspects within thinking — the Socialized Mind and the Self Authoring Mind:

Order 3: Socialized Mind. Cross-categorical thinking-the ability to relate one durable category to another-is evident in the third order of consciousness. As a result, thinking is more abstract, individuals are aware of their feelings and the internal processes associated with them, and they can make commitments to communities of people and ideas.

The ability to scan about for cross functional, cross categorical, cross institutional, thinking is at the core of sense making.

Order 4: Self-Authoring Mind. Cross-categorical constructing-the ability to generalize across abstractions, which could also be labeled systems thinking-is evident in the fourth order of consciousness. In this order, self-authorship is the focus. Individuals “have the capacity to take responsibility for and ownership of their internal authority” and establish their own sets of values and ideologies. Relationships become a part of one’s world rather than the reason for one’s existence.

‘Ands’ almost demand an understanding of the parts AND the whole, the intentions of the individual and community effort to be successful. In other words, ideas are self-authored AND socialized through connections so that the vision, idea and implementation are aligned to the benefit of the concept AND the business. in other words, ands is artistic thinking.

Which leads me to why understanding “ands” matters.

Even if you don’t completely buy into the mindset that all of business is complex, at minimum, most agree it is dynamic, constantly shifting and never/rarely static. That said.

• • • • I believe complexity just is. Period. It is the system in which all businesses work within. All dynamics are simply the dynamics of systems – institutions, people, process, automation, technology, society, culture (inside & out of a business), community (inside & out of a business), global, etc. – interacting with each other. In other words, a bunch of “ands”.
      • I believe complexity is expansive in nature, not reductive. Therefore, the objective of navigating complexity is always to unlock its potential, not ‘reduce complexity.’ In other words, maximize the “ands” and maximize complexity.

• • • • I believe there are linear aspects within complexity and there are causal relationships. In other words, “ands” are linear and their outcomes are causally nonlinear.

In the end. Thinking in ‘ands’ keeps us from simply dividing an issue into what we perceive as a solvable part versus unite the complexity into one seemingly unsolvable issue. Counterintuitively, the latter is actually the path to meaningful progress even though I suggest it is ‘unsolvable’. You do not ‘solve’ complexity, you use ‘ands’ to navigate and untap complexity’s potential.

I believe we would be better off thinking about this. I imagine my larger point is that systems and individuals are inextricably linked and if one desires to ‘work the system’ they will also need to ‘work the individual’ (I hate that phrase) and become experts in “and analysis.” Systems are people and people, inherently, are unique typically working in coherence to the benefit of a larger collective. In other words, systems are people, but systems effectiveness resides in the “ands.” Ponder.