The Burning Platform
From GPWiki
 NEW - 2010 - TAKE A GOOD LOOK AROUND: HELLO - THE ARENA FOR CHANGE - CHANGING THE WAY THE 21ST CENTURY ORGANIZATION THINKS AND WORKS - ALL THINGS CAN BE SOLVED BY 24 CONVERSATIONS - AND THEN VISIT THE 'PIXAR' OF CONSULTING - The 21st CENTURY ORGANIZATION - WICKED PROBLEMS - THE AWESOME POWER OF MEANING - SIGNS - STRUCTURED VISUAL THINKING™' - 4D™ - THE MEANING MAKING MACHINE - 4D™' - WINNING THE BIG BIDS - 'KEVIN HOFFBERG'S 'BLOG' AND JOHN CASWELL'S 'JUST THINK' BLOG - MAIN PAGE - THE TRAINING SECTION - THE TECHNOLOGY VISION- INSIGHTS AND CREATIVITY AT WORK - EXPLAINING HOW TO CREATE A VISION MODEL - LATEST THINKING |
Friday 10 of September, 2010
Humans are a strange breed
Do you recognise this scenario? - To be read in the tone of David Attenborough narrating the life of an endangered species.
 
Articles written around the Critical Context we find ourselves in in the 21st Century. New thinking about how to create sustainable changeA 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 - 
Articles On 21st Century ToolsThe 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.
Articles On ThinkingOne 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 - 
Articles On MeaningAt 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.  Articles About EthicsIncreasingly 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. Articles About Being On The RoadIt'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.
 |
We are humanity, made up of tribes, nations, clans, communities. We are civilized intelligent and highly skilled. In every sense we are way ahead of all other animals and mammals on the planet, whatever the species. Whether it be the herd of wildebeest, the ants nest, the school of fish, the flock of flamingos they are deeply unsophisticated by comparison with us...
Not even close!!
If you observe our species - homo sapiens - at work for any length of time some strange patterns of behavior emerge - these are very visible to the naked eye. In nature each species has a knack of making the 'system' work as a whole interconnected cycle and in some kind of balance. Whatever the species, however difficult the terrain - it works and survives in a myriad of subtle ways. It works as a whole, at both the core and at a distributed systemic level.
Of course we humans do too - up to a point - and we do possess stunning intelligence but for some bizarre reason in business we seem inept at truly getting the living system thing We seem inept at working as a team; removing the obvious and daily barriers to yet more efficiencies or effectiveness.
Whilst we love to complain about the frustrations and stupidity of it all we let it happen and seem almost to prefer to have something to bang on about. What is even more frightening is that we, the species called humans, are crashing headlong into scary territory and destroying the connected and natural systems around us that we fundamentally rely on.
"The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way man thinks." - Gregory Bateson
Whether we run a large, medium or even small scale business we are a very busy people. We are so busy with everything. We are constantly doing stuff. Moving stuff, Making stuff. Thinking about even more stuff.
We are SOooo busy that we often seem to forget what we were doing - at all. We seem unsure what we are doing it all for in the first place or whether it is the best or most effective way. We seem content to waste precious time - stacking up significant cost every single day. We know it is happening, and we might complain - but we seem unwilling or incapable of doing anything about it.
And when it surfaces as a real problem that's needing urgent attention in the business. We award the task to a small team who can easily duplicate errors by creating the quick fix. They will be seen busily repairing to keep the thing running, they will happily plaster over cracks to cobble solutions together.
We know the species does this - we see it all around us.
There is also that strange dance we do - adding to the deceit by arguing why the blindingly obvious isn't what it seems, explaining in the face of fact why this time it is different. We readily turn a blind eye, convince ourselves the issue has simply gone away.
On top of all this we spend fortunes solving a 'perceived' problem - the fashionable fix. For some reason we don't spend a lot of time examining the real cause of an issue and almost as often don't really know what it is we are actually trying to solve.
Mankind apparently does this entirely without flinching, innocently unintentionally
Therefore the Question is - "What is the alternative...?"
- Systematic assessment of the reality and the objective
- Sharing in all the implications and opportunities as the future gets created
- Conversation and understanding of shared criteria for ongoing decision making
- A common framework against which all analysis, synthesis and work is checked and revised.
- Physical and Practical artifacts that are evidence of progress
- Logical models that can act as tools for wider engagement and sharing
- Regular refreshing and realignment to the vision and strategy to check progress and fix course correction
- Enterprise tools that can continue to support and educate.
Some Thoughts
See Also Value Networks
See Also The Tangible Intangibles
See Also Living Systems
Charles Ehin suggests - "Unless a business eliminates all people - so that in effect it is totally automated it will ALWAYS have an informal self-organizing social system that will exert a tremendous amount of influence on its operations. So, one really has two choices: ignore such emergent networks and let them function clandestinely or develop an organizational context/ecology that will “influence” most of the informal networks to support the business’s goals and objectives."
What one needs to do is place emphasis on continuously expanding what I call “the organizational sweet spot” where the formal and the informal systems overlap. Most people, essentially, will support formal organizational goals IF they understand how the goals benefit the business, its customers, society as a whole, their fellow worker, and themselves. It’s surprising how many workers are clueless of such outcomes.
You can have a “disciplined” work environment when you treat people humanely and when they grasp the benefits cited above. The key to success is to fully understand what one can and can’t control. Simply put, organizational contexts can be managed/adjusted but not the people who work and function within those work environments. The reason for that is straight forward. People’s “relationships” are emergent and thus can’t be managed. That is, they can be influenced but not controlled.
Unfortunately, that subtlety as to what can and can’t be controlled in a work environment is still hard to grasp for most managers. There is, however, a bright light at the end of the management tunnel. There are currently great strides being made in “social neuroscience” that is starting to take the guess work (that’s been mostly wrong) out of our management theory. Learning how to “unmanage” social systems will be the name of the game in the future.
"A business's effectiveness is primarily dependent on the size of its "sweet spot" or the extent the formal and informal systems overlap. "Real" leadership is all about "value-added facilitation" not command and control." - Charlie Ehin
We need to remember that there are NO two people on this planet who are physiologically (mentally or physically) identical. Therefore, each person must first learn/interpret a given situation (process, problem, opportunity, etc.) in their own way before they can/will take some action. Engineers can develop efficient/perfect processes and systems but there is no such thing as a perfect social system/network. Some people, unfortunately, still think they can develop efficient/perfect social structures. They are essentially pursuing a fairy tale.
Complex adaptive systems (self-organizing systems) such as social systems/networks develop certain distinguishable patters (dynamic order) over time but those patterns are in constant motion. For instance, it only takes one person in a complex adaptive system (network) who happens to have a "bad day" to change a particular dynamic order.
It's best to remember that people are NOT machines by any stretch of the imagination. That's why more education/training or trying to change a culture can only take you so far. It can never lead to some form of total perfection when it comes to social systems. For example, "Does every pilot fly the same plane EXACTLY the same way?" That's an impossible feat!
There is, however, a big difference between dynamic order and chaos when it comes to social systems. Nevertheless, let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking that we can somehow develop perfectly functioning social systems. One doesn’t have to look far to see the misery we create by treating people like machines.
