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Thursday 09 of September, 2010

The 21st Century Organization

Articles By John Caswell Articles written around the Critical Context we find ourselves in in the 21st Century. New thinking about how to create sustainable change A series of short articles that describe the context within which we need to work if we are to make a difference to the way we operate and survive in the 21st Century - Our Leader Article on 2010 - A Decade Of Change? There Is No We Becoming WE Adjudicating Over A Fools Death 21st Century Manifesto The Burning Platform The Arena For Change Changing The Way The 21st Century Organization Thinks & Works Sustainability Dimension Associative Democracy Chasing Tornado's Articles On 21st Century Tools The 21st Century demands different thinking and ideas to cope with the complex context we have now created. These short articles begin to describe how we are thinking about these areas and starting the debate about what we might do to resolve them. Heuristics & Becoming A 21st Century Organization Pull And Semantics Approaching Brand Performance The 'Pixar' Of Consulting To The Power Of 24 Not Solving The Wrong Problem Really Well Weiqi - Integrative Thinking The Power of Tools - The Tools of Power Unreasonable Reason It's All About Me. iThink Articles On Thinking One of the main agenda items for success and survival in the 21st Century. These articles explain a lot of the technical and strategic ideas that inform our work - Integrative Thinking Systems Thinking Thinking Design Living Systems Critical Thinking Biomimicry Value Networks Design Thinking Principles Of Thinking Articles On Meaning At the heart of the inertia we observe in transformation and change is the way in which humans attach words and stories to their experiences while this is a natural human condition it needs to be understood if we are to create the tools that overcome conflict and lack of improvement in complex systems. Meaning Making What Do We Mean? Meaning Making Words Conditioning Articles About Ethics Increasingly organizations are determined to really make a difference and not just debate how and what. These articles debate the importance or really getting to grips with the issues that are affecting the entire planet. The Ethical-Commercial Continuum' Sustainability Hard Rain - Observation From Aarrgh to Aha!... Articles About Being On The Road It's a great privilege working and being able to travel. Ever so slightly tongue in cheek and yet ever so slightly true. The following are notes made to humor myself. Observations that inspire or annoy. Ibadan & Perfect Living Systems The Art of The Swiss Miami By GPS Miami By GPS 2 Miami By GPS 3 2010 - Uxbridge - South Africa 2010 - Johannesburg - South Africa 2 2010 - Football - South Africa 3 2010 - Sarah Palin - South Africa 4 2010 - Anger Management - South Africa 5 2010 - Cape Town. Timing, Type, Systemic Stupidity. 2010 - London. Ducks & The New Heuristics of Patternism

I have an apology to make. It's not simple! Sorry. Strategy isn't. Ever.

On the road. 3rd-10th February 2010

Those who are looking for strategy to be simple are in the wrong job, place and time. Get over it. Leave me alone!

I'm sure we've all come across a very broad mix of people in senior leadership. The forensic types, the delegators, the inspirers the mavericks and a thousand others in between. For me it’s the ones who expect or want it all to be simple that are actually the scariest. I can understand them wanting the outcome to be clear, simple and readily resonant with their audiences but a simple way to get strategy done? No. Never.

The world is no longer simple. In fact it’s not been simple for generations - centuries.

The 21st Century beats every previous generation. Mind explodingly not simple. Wickedly complex. Today it’s about spotting trends where there are no obvious signs, seeing clues in contrary notions; subtle eye movements - then avoiding one’s own prejudice or judgment long enough to see.

This is not simple.

To make it clear - I am not an advocate of complexity. I don't desire to understand every nuance, or the forensic physics of everything, but I do try to seek out a new truth wherever that may be. But explaining these non observable insights seems like alchemy to many. Onlookers may see this as weird. It wont fit their comfort zone. Because, in our work, we turn discussion into physical things, we can transform the vague into something that shocks. A thought becomes a thing. An idea can challenge the status quo. It’s often a deliberate disturbance to the safe and to the comfortable.

By doing this we seek out positive irritants, unfortunate curiosities and let them loose. Shaking up the sacred cows, shouting at the unspoken. Challenging the lazy mind.

Strategy involves patterns and subtlety recognition.

A pattern can only be seen retrospectively – you look back and notice that a pattern has formed by observing similarities in events or behaviors. It gets called a pattern. In fact the on the very first occasion of these ‘types’ of happenings - it is obviously part of the pattern, but when it first occurs it is not seen as being a pattern – therefore it is both part of the pattern and it isn’t the pattern. In fact it’s the first template through which all subsequent events will be ‘seen’ - it is an emergent pattern.

In other words it is a brand new archetype (Greek for ‘first’ type). The trick for the 21st century business will be to hold and contain the energy of this new pattern, exploit it for what it really means, before it becomes defined and set in concrete – by which time it has lost all its energy and power. It becomes just another paradigm.

Heuristics, Anti-Heuristics & The New Science of ‘Patternism’

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck - it's a duck. Unless it's not a duck.

I want to unleash a whole new school of thought upon an over complex world.

Like all new ideas it will have a high degree of antagonism, skepticism and pessimism wrapped up in it. It will also have a bunch of people totally against it. I look forward to that for the very reasons outlined below. I'm calling it Patternism for now (I might decide to change it! Ha) and I submit the following definition.

• Patternism is designed to assist a 21st Century way of thinking. Firstly it embraces all ‘isms’ - bring them on! It embraces them with an intelligent balance of admiration for their past experience - mixed with a healthy skepticism of them because they’ve passed.
• It learns from their legacies but demands a 21st Century reality. Patternism is an ‘anti-anaesthetic’ – it challenges the norms and preconditioning of us all. It’s deliberately designed to force thinking and questioning (not because anything is necessarily wrong). They may not be wrong but let’s at least be sure we know why they are right.
• Patternism identifies the patterns that have no name. It resists any attempt to classify this pattern with any previous definition. Patterns that have no discernable pattern but are clearly there.
• Patternism embraces value ethics and all the new tools of 21st Century life.

"We often find differences in similarities, and similarities in differences." - Aquinas

Read that statement a few times if it doesn’t crash straight into your mind with a blinding flash of obviousness. It’s obvious of course, and true, but only if thinking is applied. Only if you can be bothered to understand the meaning. Patternism states categorically that any branding (defining) of current patterns by traditional terms is in fact to damn its resolution. To call something by a socially acceptable description to explain it is entirely counter productive as that very definition wraps it in a probable lie. It stops any likelihood of any new thinking required to deal with it. It transfixes the mind.

Patternism is squarely set against Definitionism.

Definitions are critical but they are the devils work.

I quote this quite a lot. “A definition of definition. The wilderness of idea, trapped within a wall of words.”

Recently I read Ben Okri’s brilliant book The Famished Road and came across the following line. This describes the power of events. Events have the habit of just being. They become lore. They are the stuff of humanity and we all live this way. There isn’t anything wrong with this unless it creates wrong. Patternism explores these effects and seeks not to alter humanity - just pose better questions - to ensure that these myths are positive; not undermining of the need for change.

"Everyone talked about her in low voices. Her legend which would sprout a thousand hallucinations, had been born in our midst - born of stories and rumors which, in time, would become some of the most extravagant realities of our time." - Ben Okri from his book 'The Famished Road'

Definitions are major traps in the 21st Century. Semantics are the scourge of shared definition. Sadly, because of the absence of sharing the definitions the real meanings of words are often lost. They become the sticks we beat others with. They are land mines for the unwary. Definitions are by nature highly subjective and therefore full of risk. These last few weeks have caused me to review long held but sometimes vague thoughts around paradigms and values. These weeks have brought out the painful agony of semantics and our inability to think in the open. Naked, free from stereotypes, norms, terms and conditioned beliefs.

"If one learns but does not think, then one will be confused, but if one thinks but does not learn then one will be in danger." - Confucius

At a certain level Patternism is a deduction based on some rules of thumb that then creates newer rules of thumb. The rules of thumb that constantly evolve and are themselves emerging ideas are the value behind these new patterns. Not a comfortable place if one insists on sticking only with the rules of thumb from the past.

Preconception is misconception - judgment before the facts is misjudgment. Misconception + Misjudgment is Systemic Stupidity

Patternism aims to outlaw systemic stupidity. It does it by education, the application of heuristics and anti-heuristics and the ideas of value ethics. Heuristics is quite a geeky word, sad really as it's a brilliant - much needed 21st Century idea. Unfortunately ideas and all their blossoming fruit get ritualistic attack. Systemic Stupidity. Especially attacked as woolly and dangerous by those who bang on in the name of clarity and focus, simplicity and urgency. These same people look for the knowing nods of approval without sparing a New York minute to understand what that takes.

"Humans are by nature close to one another, by practice far apart." - Confucius

Unfortunately for humanity impatience gets mistaken for leadership - macho alpha male courage. It's admired. Not by me. There is a big difference in risk, time and effort between deciding a series of plausible choices to get to the right outcome and a JFDI approach by adrenaline fuelled time poor senior executives.

Heuristics is the bedrock of Patternism and the enemy of the butterfly mind.

Patternism cannot abide impatience. It seeks out and befriends the curious. It is the bedfellow of systems thinking and the administrator of intelligent conversation. Patternism as a science requires both the analytical and the open mind. Two qualities that are at opposite ends of a non existent spectrum. Patternism is about paradox. Find logic from seeming irrationality through heuristics in a constantly dynamic state of flux.

===='When the systems archetypes are used in conversations about complex and potentially conflictual management issues, reliably, they objectify the conversation. The conversation becomes about "the structure", the systemic forces at play, not about personalities and leadership styles. Difficult questions can be raised in a way that does not carry innuendos of management incompetence or implied criticism..."====