==

“That proves you are unusual,” returned the Scarecrow; “and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.”

The Land of Oz

---

“Men have become the tools of their tools.”

John Stuart Mill

==

Let me begin in an odd place. Progress is the inevitable increase in complexity. This means when we speak of a simpler past, in many ways, we are correct. The less things are connected, the more simple it is. And if there is one thing one could say about civilization’s progress, it is that we have been quite good at inventing things that connect us. The consequence of that progress is, well, increased complexity. This complexity has a variety of different consequences, but let’s focus on individuality today.

Which leads me to self-expression as a tool for individuality.

Today’s world demands that we each, individually, cultivate a habit of constant self-expression. More and more we are encouraged to ‘be yourself,’ “bring your whole self everywhere,” and more and more we are encouraged to become more aware of our ’emotional selves.’ This is encouraged whether we want to or not or whether it’s healthy or unhealthy with regard to the health of “me.” This happens because we live in a self-expressive culture and society. In addition, we are constantly encouraged to trust our instincts and our impulses above anything else. In other words, trust the things inside ‘me’ and distrust the forces outside that we perceive discourage our instincts and impulses or even suffocate what is best for me. All of this means self-expression is a weapon against a world attempting to make us less unusual, less distinct, and less of ‘me.’ I would argue this isn’t really a true battle’, but I don’t think it’s too far off to suggest that everyone wants to etch a sense of self in the walls of the world – through behaviors, habits, and attitudes. The trouble arises in that, paradoxically, self-love has a nasty tendency to encourage unhealthy focus on instincts and impulses. Unhealthy self-love isn’t always ego-ism, but it does encourage ignoring wisdom from others and the outside world. Along those lines, true love demands connectivity and through that connectivity it has a nice tendency to counter unhealthy instincts and impulses by balancing them out with what other people value. In fact, true love eliminates the distinction between me and you. I want to be careful with the word eliminating. I do not mean to suggest that ‘me’ is completely erased, but rather me has a reflective mirror with which to objectively and subjectively reflect upon itself. “Me’ becomes a bit of a blend of all the people one has met and all the conversations one has had. Its kind of like Hanzi Freinacht’s transvidualism. Anyway. In other words, your personal and unusual no longer reside solely in the purview of ‘me,’ but also in the context of the collective. I would argue this is where the healthy unusual resides.

Which leads me to ‘me’ and competition.

I don’t think it’s a big stretch to suggest society encourages competition as a means of maximizing one’s “me potential.” Well. That is fraught with peril. For example. In recent research lower social-class university students (and other adults) do worse than their higher-class counterparts on a reasoning task only when they’re led to focus on outperforming others. Competition, in other words, exacerbates social inequality. In other words, competition constrains potential.  I would posit this occurs because people with higher status, and wealth, believe life offers them more chances even if they get something wrong, while lower class people feel like there is less margin for error. I would also posit competition encourages ‘less unusual’ among the masses, i.e., conformity enhances probability of survival/some thriving, as well as encourages mediocrity. I would argue that in a competitive world, every ‘me’ must to start with where power lives. This is counter to self-reliance, self-responsibility and ‘power of me’ narratives because all of those things suggest you should think in terms of your influence on the world. Instead, in a competition-based world, you need to first and foremost understand your influence is in the hands of the existing power. This is painful to say, but there are no real independent individuals in this world. I would be remiss if didn’t point out technology has exacerbated this issue. Technology makes us feel more independent and, yet, the reality is it makes us more dependent upon other people’s opinions, attitudes, beliefs and input. We have, in other words, become tools of our tools. Which leads me to communities of unusual. Communities of unusuals may seem weird to suggest. And, to be clear, I am not suggesting a conformity of a certain type of unusual, but rather I am suggesting a coherent community of those who are unusual in some way. I suggest a community because when you are in groups, you can be very powerful. You can change things. You have confidence when things go wrong that you don’t when you’re on your own. It changes the concept of power. In fact, it is Grace Blakeley, at the end of Vulture Capitalism, who reminds everyone that when people work together, they have more power than any system.

Which leads me to eccentricity (the word most associated with unusual).

I, personally, do not believe unusual is equal to eccentric, but let me explore eccentricity a bit. I could find the only person to have looked into eccentricity: David Weeks, an Edinburgh psychiatrist and co-author of the 1995 book Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness. What he discovered during a ten-year study of 1,000 peculiar people < including a Chippewa Indian who walked everywhere backwards and two Californians who hypnotized frogs> might surprise you. I think most people believe that extreme eccentricity is a short step from serious mental disorder. But, in fact, Weeks’s subjects suffered less from mental illnesses such as depression than the majority of the population.

Fewer than 30 had ever been drug or alcohol abusers. He also found that eccentrics visit the doctor 20 times less often than most of us and, on average, live slightly longer.

The study conclusion? People benefited from non-conformity. Simply put, those who don’t repress their inner nature in the struggle to conform suffer less stress. Consequently, they are happier and their immune systems work more efficiently. Overall, Weeks found that eccentrics tend to be optimistic people with a highly developed, mischievous sense of humor, childlike curiosity and a drive to make the world a better place. Well. Kind of maybe makes you start thinking about envying eccentric people rather than laughing about them, huh?

Anyway. I believe eccentrics are the people who tend to see problems <and life> from new and unexpected angles.  Their slightly odd, off kilter, perspective allows them to conjure up innovative solutions. They are the visionaries, even within smaller individual life moments, who make giant imaginative leaps. Weeks, in his study write up, suggested maybe that like the occasional mutations that drive evolution, eccentrics may provide the unusual, untried ideas that allow human societies to progress. Not too shabby for folk who are very often dismissed as cranks and crazies and nutjobs.

“No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.”

H.P. Lovecraft

Which leads me to I am worried about the world.

Society, and communities, appear to have abolished any type of eccentricity <or individuality> within meaningful power positions. Society, which tends to dictate behaviors, seem designed to promote the rise of the ‘accepted and acceptable’ behavior.  Think about that. One can be fairly sure that you won’t find too many Teslas surfacing in the next few years as they are weeded out early by the application of standardized policies designed to produce standardized human beings. When I was younger it seemed like businesses had their share of quirky, slightly nutjob, people and they added color to the office. They added a dimension to the work, and workplace, which sometimes made a tough day better and a tough assignment less challenging. Not always, but at minimum it made the experience more interesting by far.

Anyway.

Look. I am not suggesting more people be eccentric, but maybe possibly less people should find conforming as important as they do. Maybe embrace being, well, unusual. That’s it. If for no other reason than a research study suggests you may be happier.

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

In the end I imagine the challenge remains that we reside in a world that glorifies individual success, yet, our greatest power lies in our ability to come together. A truly empowered and resilient society can only arise from a sense of unity and collective purpose, not self-interest. How can we reclaim the power of the collective without losing our sense of self? Maybe we should be asking how we can create more communities of unusual. Maybe it will be the communities of unusuals who will be most likely to have the ability to navigate increased complexity and ensure progress for civilization. Ponder.

==

“a manner of speaking becomes a manner of thinking”

====

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

Albert Einstein

====

Being Erica:

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

====

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

====

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

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

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

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

Which leads me to changing the mindset.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All that said. Change wasn’t hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter Drucker

————————————————-

In the end.

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

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

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

====

“Embrace the present and invent the future,”

Karl Lagerfeld Chanel

=====

“Questions are what matters. Questions, and discovering the right ones, are the key to staying on course. The wave of information threatens to obscure strategy, to drown out details and numbers, calculation and analysis, reaction and tactics. To have strong tactics we must have strong strategy on one side and accurate calculation on the other. Both require seeing onto the future.”

Gary Kasparov

=====

This is about technology and intentionally shaping the future we desire and, peripherally, about business.

Where we are.

Human-ness: what it meant to be human and how to intentionally be human. It didn’t start with technology, but then again it did. Technology has introduced all the distractions necessary to forget we are human. To be clear. This is different than a ‘different than when I was growing up’ discussion (past), this is a discussion about our future and our intentions with regard to being human – individually, societally and in business. The debate, the discussion, should ignore the definitions of technology and focus on the definitions of humans – not generational mumbo jumbo – because there is no contrast between generations (in any meaningful way), the contrast resides in the liminal space we currently stand in – standing between the definition of who and what we want our future to be and a future, as yet, to be defined. Clearly there is room for improvement in how we engage with technology and even in the technology itself, but the expectations of the future should not reside in some fantastical technology, but instead the fantastic visions for people and what they will be defined by. Think about that because although we have a nasty tendency to view society and institutions as an array of products and services to ensure people succeed, the truth is that people will succeed with, or without, technology. That means to view technology as having an important role it should be viewed as integrating into the human experience for who and what they want to be – not manipulated by some technology trying to convince them what to think and who to be. This also means just as our notion of technology needs to be expanded, our notion of people needs to be re-explored, re-instated and reimagined. I imagine I am suggesting some version of a future in which it is a Learning Future where technology is simply learning systems undergirding learning people. Regardless. Intentions. Intentions matter if we desire an intentional future, rather than some future we adapt to, we need a vision for humanness.

Again. This discussion didn’t start with technology and, yet, it did. Technology has forced us, and is forcing us, to think more about being human than ever before. That, I imagine, means technology has forced us to state our intentions for the future.

Technology as an enabler for humans.

The reality is very few of us care about technology itself, we care about what it enables. Technology, wherever it resides (in hand, on desk, in lap, in car) are just tools to get things done (and ‘done’ can be answering questions and learning). Technology represents the means, not the desired outcomes. Technology is just a tool like all tools, if used properly it is effective, if it used improperly, it simply becomes an obstacle to attain some objective. What that really means is before we develop any technology, or technology plans, it would behoove us to articulate some unambiguous vision of what we desire in order to create the framework within which that technology can effectively enable. Let me be clear. This means technology does not lead, it follows and supports. This also means neither the availability nor the adoption of technology, its applications or construct, does not change the responsibility nor the overall focus of the business – we should be attempting to attain the same vision whether the technology is adopted or not. yes. What I mean is that technology adoption should not decrease the likelihood of attaining a vision. This also means technology must be relevant and connected to the vision, the strategy, the objective and the humans (and humanity). Ponder that thought.

Human-centric technology world.

Which leads me to the idea of human-centric and a human-centric Future. In November 2018, prior to the pandemic, I approached the Georgia Tech School of Human Design with a conference idea – The Humancentric Organization – in which speakers** would talk about technology through the eyes of creating learning organizations. In other words, human centric organizations enabled by technology:

It’s an exciting time to be a person in a technology world because it is all about Humans.

I’m convinced that ordinary people have more power in their hands to shape the world, including the future, than ever before. They just don’t know it because they keep getting told it will be a robot, automation, AI/Machine Learning world. The truth is technological progress is dependent upon people, conversations and thinking (morally & behaviorally). It’s clear that Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Biotech and any number of other technology-based innovations are set to impact society with consequences we can only imagine. This represents significant opportunities for people who recognize it will be a Human-centric future.

** note: the speakers who I had asked and expressed interest in being involved included Grady Booch, Mike Walsh, Dr. Jason Fox, Dr. Leda Glyptis, Teodora Petkova, Faris Yakob, Lisa Gill, Zach Mercurio and several others. All portray the goodness of human beings when given the opportunity to do good. I thought it would be interesting to have Mike Walsh, an unabashed futurist, and Grady Booch, one of the forefathers of software, together. Grady, in particular, portrays the goodness of technology when given the opportunity. He is the conscious of technology. He, above all, see humans create. He, above all, sees the integrity within the invisible, the black box of technology, which 90% of people will never understand and therefore are dependent upon the 10% accepting the burden of responsibility.

The human centric future, to me, will see a world in which:

• • Technology will thrive or die depending on humans, not the opposite.

  • The world, business & society, will thrive or die depending on humans, not technology.

We must keep an unwavering focus on humanness because as technology improves (as it will do) there will be a tendency to turn our focus more sharply toward seeing technology as the solution to, well, everything in the future. But this belief should give us some pause. If we focus too much on technology, we lose sight of the true purpose of technology which is to facilitate learning and improve the situation for humans.  I know I could argue whatever example someone comes up with that the future solutions should be created with same care and expectations as traditional effective solutions. Why? Because everything will still revolve around humans – an individual doing and thinking things interacting with other humans who are doing and thinking things. This is where complexity does come into play. We often, even with technology, think of our solutions in a one-dimensional way. The solutions, particularly if interested in creating a learning revolution, shouldn’t simply be based on convenience and simplicity but rather challenged and challenging. There will have to be a multi-dimensionality to the future – a complex one. I guess what I am suggesting is the we should not diminish the need for traditional principles like engagement, interaction and critical thinking but rather the strategic objective should have the intention to create some additional depth and dimensions to these principles.

A learning revolution.

Technology is first and foremost used for educational purposes. Now. We can debate the definition of education (beyond the institutional aspects), but for the most part people interact with technology to learn and do. [ponder.  This makes technology a transformation tool, but to what? There is certainly a role for undirected education/learning but inevitably if we seek to have a better system, the system should have an identified strategic objective. Far too often we make technology benefit into some simplistic ‘convenience’ tool. Why shouldn’t we expect technology to enable a learning revolution? This will demand a different type of leadership – one that is not passive but rather one that leads a revolution into the future. Since the preservation of the status quo tends to be equated with either protecting traditional values or principles, most leaders have learned (from experience) that ensuring a transformation unfolds slowly permits them the luxury of maintaining positions of power longer. A learning revolution demands a new type of leadership one that is active, enlightened and engaged. Any revolution is part push and part pull but technology offers a new dynamic environment in which opportunities can be exploited, in pursuit of a grander vision or strategic objective, if one is willing to actively engage with them. I have said this before but this new type of leadership is not about charisma, but rather about framing and thinking conceptually. The revolution only occurs if someone can frame the issues in terms that are directly relevant to the communities. The concepts are framed in a way that are easily articulated, understood and assimilated into individual (and collective) objectives. This is a bit grander than alignment (although alignment is certainly a key aspects) but rather it is about finding the coherence necessary for energy gravity grabs hold to increase progress.

Part of this progress, within a learning revolution mindset, is an understanding one cannot study something to death. Emergence demands some resolve to understand and take advantage of trends, opportunities and learning I general. Evidence gathering needs to be effective AND efficient wherein the mechanism neither slows nor delays yet offers up enough guidance to insure movement toward the vision and objective rather than away. This gets tricky with technology for 3 reasons:

• • Technology software is designed and consequences can run away faster than humans can actually assimilate. This is a Norbert Wiener concept.

Design carefully.

• • Technology is often the biggest contributor to ‘over-evidence-seeking’, big data and overwhelming amounts of information, and it must instead become a balancer to a culture of proper situational evidence – seeking not certainty, but rather probabilities.

  • Technology embeds some human bias/beliefs/convictions. What I mean by that is institutions, believing they are uniquely unique, put an overemphasis on what they perceive to be their uniqueness blinding decisionmakers, and learners, to realities which could actually improve their situation if not their learning (which is the first step to improving their future situation).

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

Sir Winston Churchill

Uneven progress.

Now. Understanding that technology in and of itself is significantly different than effective use of technology is the first step to achieving the future system we desire.  Technology, when implemented, will have an impact and an uneven one. As a result of these impacts a new set of rules, roles, relationships and behaviors will emerge. This emergence will recast any business, as an institution, in a new shape – one of which was not designed by someone upfront. The business model, as an unchanging institutional environment, no longer exists. In fact, the new business enterprise has little in terms of boundary constraints (even in expectations), but rather will reshape itself relying on dynamic, interrelated networks to enable the examination of arising issues within timeframes, some compressed some elongated, under which the system itself operates. In other words, people will change without any ‘transformational plan of action’ or ‘change management’, but rather through simple continuous iteration through interaction with each other and the marketplace/society/community.

And maybe this is where I touch on Purpose a bit because I envision someone saying to themselves “well, if the organization/person has a Purpose, that would probably resolve all future concerns of too much unevenness.” 

I believe individuals can have a Purpose and, in fact, if tap into Purpose are happier, healthier and more productive. I do not believe Business has a Purpose in the sense purpose is typically discussed.  I don’t believe ‘shareholder value’ is a Purpose, it is simply an objective (which creates systems in the business to achieve). I believe business has intentions. These intentions can get masked by visions or missions, both of the which can play valuable roles, but I believe a business should lay out its intentions – all of them.

An intent to contribute to the environment.

An intent to act with integrity every day.

An intent to engage with community.

Things like that (and there should be no limits to # of intentions).

Within these intentions the people IN the organization have a variety of paths they can choose to walk on – and clearly see where paths do not lie. I hesitate to call these principles because, well, they seem simply like intentions. With intentions understood a business can have a community of people interested in working coherently (some people may call this culture) and pursue quests to fulfill those intentions. Intentions put some boundaries on the unevenness while actually encouraging unevenness which increases velocity toward some vision. Intentions put some boundaries on technology.

—

“Community is the fact that we work toward the same goal, that we accept our respective roles in order to reach it.  Values is the fact we trust each other. And, culture?   Culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit. That matters because most people don’t do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.”

Fredrick Backman

—

Intrinsic energy.

In having intentions and pursuing quests the business rely less on not having to tell people what they cannot get away with and encourage them more to go do what they can do. People gain knowledge, get better at whatever they do (and how they think), there is continuous improvement, progress is achieved (for the individual and the business), quests are pursued and everyone feels a sense of meaning in having contributed. Technology is simply a means to help achieve these outcomes.

Positive progress.

I have always believed we do a disservice to 90% of people by scaring them with disruption, revolutions and robots/automation stealing their jobs. I gravitate to people who make the pragmatic exciting. I gravitate to people who articulate change in ways people don’t distrust it, but instead are open-minded. I gravitate to people who don’t spew bullshit to sound intellectual, but rather see smartness in communicating in ways people can understand. The world, to me, is careening between technology-based fantastical hollow promises and dystopian technology hyperbole. I think we do a disservice to people by suggesting some piece of technology is more meaningful than a human being. I think we do a disservice to any person doing any job that they cannot find meaning in what they currently do therefore they should be happy some algorithm or robot can do it for them.  I believe we should put a stake in the ground for understandable positive human progress in an increasingly technological world. Progress, with or without technology, should be positive for humans and humanity.

Integrated.

I have always believed most futuristic discussions have done disservice to people in its “one-offness” or one-dimensional discussions. I believe we would benefit in presenting the future in an intentional integrated way – a system in totality. Software engineering, how people think, organizational structure, media & culture, power of individual purpose, how we speak thru technology. I believe if showcase humans at the center of the future in an integrated way we can show people that people are the thread to the future, not technology. Show people that if we are empowered to think and do, we will think and do. Show people the system is them and they are the system.

Human Future view.

I am tired of digital transformation, artificial intelligence and even customer-centric. The future is about human transformation, human intelligence and being human-centric. This can be practical business principles or larger societal issues, but at the center of all that will be done, what will be created, will occur thru humans talking with humans and humans creating things. That should be our strategic imperative for future intentions. Period.

Humans should tinker with the future, not technology, and they should do so intentionally.

In the end.

Intentions matter. What I mean by that is if we do not embrace a human centric world, intentionally, technology will be increasingly less likely to (a) be optimally effective and (b) optimally useful to the betterment of humans. Establishing the future is not about technology. It is about humans, society, culture and institutional tradition. The decisions for our future are both top down and bottom up, simultaneously, in which vision and pragmatism are aligned (and resources are equitably dispersed).

I would note that when goals and objectives are not reached, it has little to do with technology, but has a lot to do with people. This future system will not be the result of incremental change but rather of a strategic decision and structural mental models. The strategic decision, stating the intentions, permits the system to emerge rather than be driven by external forces and we inevitably find ourselves in a system in which human-ness thrives.