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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

Road Report – Miami – London – The final chapter – 15th - 19th December 2009

PART 2 - THE REFLECTIVE PART – Lost in Space.

Where the hell am I?

Time zones have lost any meaning. I've given up trying to figure out what color the sky ought to be outside, what the next meal should look like. I’ve stopped altering my watch so as to surprise my brain what perky kind of mood to be in. I'm losing it with the hotel staff and can't remember a room number anymore. I hear them say it but the sound just evaporates. Even reading it out loud to myself as I fall out of the elevator it still makes no sense. Nor the little sign on the wall pointing to a bunch of rooms heading off either way – that always sends me the wrong way.

I drag the dead body of Nick behind me. I think.

Do I need my own GPS?

Not knowing where I am any more translates into everything - every part of my life as the year comes crashing to a finale.

Cracking year 2009. We never cracked it though. I can't remember a year so full of bad news, bad TV, celebrity golfing disappointment, lying politicians, ‘Bankers’, stupid wars, frustration all over and yet so much to be optimistic about. As a business we didn't crack predictability. We didn't crack sustainable growth but we did crack how to stay in business and make it to 2010. Without the aid of GPS.

The great news is that it looks like 2010 is going to start how it ended. Busy.

Lot’s of sessions, plenty of marvelous hotel rooms, us wrestling with the logistics of the big ugly complex systems that rule our lives. Never fully knowing where I am. Spectacular these systems, living systems, business, political and the technology variety, it doesn't matter - we humans have the total inability to figure out where we are in any of it. I’m actually enjoying it. I’m wearing black. At least it’s more exciting than Switzerland.

Ironic really - we are in fact 'Business GPS' - Group Partners Sonar.

It's a thrill to show others how to figure out where they are and how to get them to where they need to be. Helping them to plot a course that avoids too many bear traps and tsunamis. GPS for the business involves ‘plugging in’ your coordinates - then trusting that data long enough for the logic in the ‘system’ of the framework to get to work sorting out the ‘so what does that mean then?’. It works. Still I get lost between my room and the elevator.

It's not that I don't have a sense of direction I do. It’s that I've possibly lost belief in the systems. Why the hell do I not know where I am within them!

Living Systems and Connectivity

Well the problem with any system is the ability of it all – all the systems - to connect. Connect so that they make sense. Any sense. Connect to the benefit of us. Even occasionally. Once? They need to join up - bit to bit and between each bit – between each system - then to constantly recalibrate as stuff changes. This is the sporty bit, well two actually.

Machine to human relevance requires spectacular expertise or patience either:

1. By the human or the machine
2. From machine to machine to support the humans

While it sounds either scary or brilliant, depending on your perspective, it doesn’t matter. Right now it doesn't work.

Humans find it hard to deal or be patient with machines. Machines don’t care. Machines are often not talking to machines. These things aren’t connected and nobody is at the controls. Our work is mostly human to human and that can be pretty scary too. Humans find it hard to deal or be patient with humans. Humans are often not talking to humans. Many humans no longer care. These things aren’t connected and nobody is at the controls.

Everything is great.

The machine to human stuff though is where I think the action is. Where the biggest work needs to be done. Actually that’s rubbish. It’s all connected so it’s all important. It has become very politically correct to focus on the humanity and emotional aspect of it all. While that’s important forget the machines at your peril. Try taking an i-Phone off someone and see how emotional that becomes. Quickly.

We are not machines and we've come to expect that they will work for us. Currently they don’t. The machines are not joined up. The systems we live in are rubbish. How does that happen? Evidence all around us points to the fact that we are the total jerks who set the 'machine' up in that way. Doh! Remember that all systems are in fact just various sized machines and stuff, procedures, standards and what not joined up by us stupid humans to make something tough that bit simpler. To help us eat.

In far too many cases it all ends up being a miserable experience - totally out of whack with what is required. Remember we have the vote. We choose to buy the product or service or buy the ridiculous newspaper. We did that. No matter how we vote. It doesn’t change.

Machine to machine at least cuts out our involvement. Relax. No need to run or even walk. We can just let the ‘machine’ bits get on with whatever they get to bicker and bang on about. Hmm. Trouble with that. Clearly there is a balance required here but we now have billions of these chattering bots all chattering and whirring away. All of them causing risk to a well meaning (?) machine to human to machine to machine to human system. Us humans. You. Me.

You can stop reading now.

We are way behind the cleverness of many of the machines - the joined up, not joined up systems we have to now suffer within. Unintended consequences. Have we become so utterly lazy? Have we got anybody bright enough to go and figure all this out? We have lost the ability to alter the effects of them so now we blame them and not ourselves. It’s way more fun. The machines can't speak (oh OK they can) - they just do what they were told by us and that royally pisses us off. If you add all this up you can easily see how ‘systems’ become how we live.

Add all of these bits, these machines up and they make up the systems. They become the process of everyday life. Add up all our reactions to the processes and it’s the way we become shaped - forced to operate - as humans. It’s now the way we BE. Our political systems, the businesses that work to survive within it all and the media system that feeds and fosters and survives by trading on the madness of both. Hang on we did this - didn’t we?

A world gone stupid.

As you know I am a huge fan of airport systems. And shopping malls. Many systems in most industries have totally failed to excel at the combinations of machine to human to machine to machine to human stuff going on.

For illustration I no longer answer the land line phone at my home. Partly because I am never there and partly because if I do it’s normally a machine asking me if I would like to re-lay my garden lawn as there is a special offer just now. Brilliant. Had the machine realized that my 4th floor balconies don't allow for soil or any form of deep photosynthesis it could have saved some of it's valuable stupid dumb assed time. Human to human to machine insults also arrive when the smiley smiley check-in lady attaches the bright orange ‘Priority’ label to your luggage and you know your bag will be guaranteed to be one of the last ones off. Except in Zurich.

Personally I find it hard to feel directly responsible for the utter disgrace and mess that is now every high street. The insanity that is the Tiger Woods fest. The endless round of dumb bile passing for TV. These endless and deliberate drugs for the new mindless masses. Anaesthetizing them. Yep no point watching anything that may value or enhance your chance of doing anything valuable or useful to you. Or even intellectually engaging. Nothing to make your mind stay alive or curious about anything interesting. Whole nations of sheep - unthinking brainless folk watching dancing, singing, cooking excrement reality TV. Eating. Not thinking.

But I am responsible. Think about that. Yep blame me.

The truly horrific fact is that dangerous effects caused by the current cancer of these systems have stopped pissing us off too. A dangerous amount of Americans are bored with global warming and the deconstruction of the ‘machine’ that creates the air we breathe - The Rain Forests. Great. Thanks. America. America is not alone in this but it is one of the most influential and key contributors to any chance of salvation for the species. Wonderful then that it is developing national Alzheimer's just when we need the planet to wake up and realize what's going on.

So here's the thing.

We are living in a totally connected world that isn't connected in any way that makes any sense at all. At least to me. So lets stop saying it is. If it is connected then it’s so NOT connected to anything I need. I want thoughtfulness. I don’t want to be forced to be cynical. I resent how it all makes me feel. We have no global consciousness and stand no chance of anything unless we stop taking everything for granted.

Oh and there is no WE. For more on that topic! There Is No We

See - I told you to stop reading.

I feel better now.

Go to Part 3