We all like to see ourselves as Kings, Princesses, Great Warriors. But the heart of the myth in LOTR is that what is really needed to do the most dangerous work are Hobbits.
Hobbits!
A Hobbit is small, physically weak, unpretentious and Innocent. All the conventional heroes live in the real of the "Ordinary" (TAOW) The Hobbit gains the Victory because they are the Extraordinary approach.
So again what has that got to do with you and me?
I think that the answer is found here. Most of us live humdrum lives. We live in the Shire or worse we live in the Matrix. We think that we are helpless and have no power. We think that we don't count.
How could any of us be heroes? We are such little people! See where I am going? We, just the you's and the me's have to play our part. We cannot let our feeble strength and unheroic stature hold us back.
In the next year many of us will hear "The Call" of the Mono-Myth. The Dark Riders and even Orcs will invade our communities. (Metaphor!!) Many of us will lose our jobs, a way of making a living of staying in our homes.
Paradoxically we will be freed by this assault on our old lives. The choice will be to collapse into lethargy, self pity, TV and sending out resumes to jobs that will not happen. Or we can heed the call and leave the shire and work/strive to help each other to make where we live fit to live in again.
No Hobbits - No Victory - No Me - No You - No chance. For the first time, we can rise above the humdrum. We even know the way - it has always been there for us - like Dorothy's red Shoes:
....... we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the heropath. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."
Our great work will be to rebuild our way of life so that our communities can be self sufficient and self reliant. So that our communities themsleves are connected to each other.
In a way, we will be going home. We are going home again to the place where humans fit. where we are once again reconnected to ourselves and to the planet.
(Here is a link to my own vision of what this kind of future could be like - Download 20.01.GoingHome-1)
Just as people at the end of the Middle Ages rediscovered the wisdom of the Classic world, so we are re-discovering the experience of tribal, or connected, life.
I don’t mean by this that we will have to take up hunting and live in caves. For we have made a Great Return before and we know how it will play out. Renaissance men did not put on togas. What they did was to remember the wisdom of the classic world that had been forgotten in a millennium dark age and applied this wisdom to the world of their time.
So, we too will begin to experience a new way of living and of
being and apply this experience to our own time and to our own
challenges.
Here is my favourite quote that foretells what is to come:
.
There will come a time when humanity will choose to go against
nature, to exploit her bounteous gifts, causing a sickness across the
planet. People will forget the ecstasies of communion, and life will
become drab and colorless.
In these coming dark ages, though, a deep sense of loss will cause the beginnings of a Great Return. They will look at the landscape and the old temples, built to withstand the cataclysms of millennia and understand once again the sacred laws of Existence.
When this day comes, humanity will have come of age. It will
consciously acknowledge its role in the creative impulse that comes
from the Sun, fertilizes the Earth, and calls forth the flame in the
hearts of men and women to worship Life and the miraculous forces
behind Creation.
Miller, Hamish & Broadhurst, Paul. The Sun and the Serpent: An Investigation into Earth Energies
I wish to thank you all. Thank those who spoke. Thank those who came - some from half way around the world. Thank those who helped - all you guys at UPEI. And most of all - thank you for reading all of this.
This is Galadriel - an Elven Queen. Her great contribution to the mission is that she gives Frodo the gift of light. She gives him a vial that will in a crisis enable him to "see".
This is Elrond, an Elven King. His great gift is that he gives Aragorn a sword. This is a special sword - the reforging of the sword that had killed evil. The gift is also an anointing. By accepting the sword Aragorn accepts his destiny and becomes the true King. His sword is the sword of Truth and Trust - the hallmarks of the True Leader.
Leadership is a theme of the conference and surely is a concern of our present times. For we search for the definition of True Leadership. Too many of our leaders today have betrayed the trust we invested in them. This is the Myth Meaning of the Ring itself!
For the Ring - is the Symbol of Ego and Vanity. Leaders who rely on Ego and Vanity bring on the Darkness. Sadly, we can see the essence of this myth in our lives today.
One last Myth Lesson before we get The Art of War.
An important part of the underlying myth in the characters of Galadriel and Elrond is that they are immortal. In our time we are so impressed with the new. What most of us have never been exposed to is immortal wisdom.
Immortal wisdom does exist. Wisdom is the truth, the essence of the human condition and our place in the universe. This is not knowledge. This is not information. This is not 'How To". It is wisdom.
Wisdom is hard to find. Today, it is found in the corners of bookshops where most never look. Who takes Marcus Aurelius on a plane ride today? Anyway, Wisdom is not simply read. It has always been taught. Taught not by a credentialed "Teacher" but by a TEACHER. We all know the difference.
So how does all this talk of Phials of Light, Swords of Truth, Immortality, Wisdom and TEACHERS fit with Boyd 2008, with the Art of War and above all what has all of this to do with our lives and our times today?
The wisdom of the Art of War is immortal wisdom. It always helps those who care to listen.
It, like Galadriel and Elrond, offers two essential things - "Light" - the ability to "see" what is not obvious about the world and the titanic forces that are there to be harnessed. It also offers "Truth". In Myth the sword is always truth. In LOTR, the truth and trust were lost, the sword broken. It had to be reforged and it had to be given to the right person.
The Art of War is also offers the essential the Truth about the core of our reality that we have lost. This Truth is that we inhabit a universe where all is connected and so all action, all things and even all thinking and feeling is interdependent.
It is a teaching about how to cope with conflict. Not just war - but all conflict such as getting your ideas accepted or having a workable marriage. Its premise is that in human life conflict is not only inevitable but constant. It even exists within us.
But extracting its teachings is hard.
I too have passed by the bookshelf and seen The Art of War. I have known that I should read it. But for 40 years, I have felt daunted by the text alone. For my whole adult life I have waited instead for the teacher.
For me the great gift of this conference is that that old idea of "When the student is ready the TEACHER will come" has worked out. As if by magic Jim Gimian and Barry Boyce "turned up".
They gave us a glimpse of how The Art of War can offer the "inSIGHT" that can enable us to "see" not only the world but also the energy in the world. And they offer the eternal Truth about the role, the nature and the work of the True Leader - The Commander. In so doing they give us a context and a set of principles that gives me hope that, though the Fellowship is tiny now, we achieve the great victory that has to be.
So what did Jim and Barry tell us? Wisdom is not an instant cake mix. It is not a How To either. Jim and Barry had an impossible task at the conference - all they could do was to give us a taste of what it takes years to fully master.
I, as a commentator on a commentary am in even worse shape. So I will confine myself to doing two things only;
Their translation of the Art of War - which has a lot of essential commentary and their follow up book which has even more commentary, The Rules of Victory - can be found on Amazon here
The best version of The Art of War I own, | By | Reviewer X (Las Vegas, USA) - See all my reviews |
The central idea of the Boyd Conference is that our world is so tightly coupled that the recent cracks have the power to take all we know down. The Hope of the conference is that if we can understand - "see" the OO in OODA, the underpinning reality of the interconnection, that we might build a better replacement based on a networked system of local and self sufficient networks.
Our great challenge is that, like Hobbits leaving the Shire to take on the vast forces of Darkness, that we are so few and so weak. How can such small and weak forces prevail?
Of course, this is the predicament of all "People's" wars. The masters of People's Wars are often students of the Art of War - itself a product of a time of great turbulence in China, the Time of Warring States.
This is the over view of TAOW. See its link to the OODA loop of Boyd - himself a student.
As with Boyd, TAOW starts with how you "see" the world. Here we return to another key aspect of the problem assessment of the Conference. Our problems cannot be fixed until they are understood outside of the context that created them.
How we see is the starting point. Our failure is above all a failure to see the world for what it really is.
If all we learned from TAOW came from this slide it would be a huge asset. I will humbly offer what I understand as its meaning.
Interconnectedness
Inevitability of Conflict
Taking Whole
Knowing
Victory
Shih - pronounced sort of "sheer" is another exceptional aspect of the world that most cannot and do not see.
Being in reality interconnected, the world is full of energy. Energy that can be used to augment our power and forces. Simply put, if you had wanted to reform the world financial system 2 years ago, you would have had no chance. The existing power system was at the top of its game. This would have been like a frontal attack of a walled city - or the first day of the Somme.
But now! Now the walls are all down and the confidence of the old leadership shaken to the core. Now the system has been subject to shih and can be attacked with light forces.
At the right moment vast energy can be released as if a trigger was pulled.
The forces of Shih are immense right now and are on the side of those that wish to make change. In 1989 all of the Soviet Union collapsed. In 1987 it seemed invulnerable.
Our great institutions have lost their trust. No more than the DOD. Their failure is so manifest that they can now be taken on with confidence. Who can defend our education system? How can our healthcare system be defended now? Who has faith that government itself works?
This is the power of shih. The wise commander always assesses what Shih is up to when she makes her appreciation of the field of conflict. The time for great change is indded now.
The great commanders of all time have known when to wait and when to strike. So does the great bureaucrat. The wife who wants something that her husband is reluctant to agree to. The child who wants something from his parents (A Red Ryder BB Gun?)
The great commander uses the power of shih to augment his own power. The fool cannot even see that shih exists.
The ordinary and the extraordinary - very powerful ideas of how to engage with your opponent. I can best explain this idea by going back to LOTR.
The Ordinary is the Army lead by Aragorn. It is obvious. It is expected. It is also weak and therefore tempting as a diversion. Sauron has no doubt that he can crush it.
The Extraordinary is Frodo & Sam. Who would expect the real threat to come from two Hobbits acting alone?
In the Bullring - the Bull sees the cape. The cape hides the man. In the end the Cape hides the sword. Boyd, in his successful wars against the might of the Pentagon, used this technique. He called it a "Cape Job". He would find something obvious to distract his opponents while beavering away on his main work in secret.
The concepts of form are all related to this. The most challenging opponent does not offer enough of himself to be attacked. This is the great frustration of conventional forces when they meet guerrillas. If only they would form up in a nice easy to attack mass?
This leads of course to deception. The great poker player uses this all the time. He hides what he has and he misleads when he can. The poker player who shows what he has all the time loses a lot of money.
Showing all you have, when you are the weaker player is called suicide.
You can see that all of these ideas are about the mind and character. Boyd of course believed that all was won here too.
This is the essence of TAOW - that if you do your work and if you have the character, then you win before the first blow.
TAOW - OODA - Most of the work is in your appreciation of the context for Victory.
Did I not hear a commander declare victory a few years ago?
Forgive me Jim and Barry - I am sure I have tortured TAOW. This is not even the late lamented Classics Illustrated. But it is all I can do today.
As with Stuart Baker and all TEACHERS, there is no substitute from being in their presence. I invite any who seek to know more to contact them.
I am done now with providing commentary on the speakers at the Boyd 2008 Conference on PEI.
I would like to close in my next post on what I think it all might mean to us. I give you one hint, in keeping with the LOTR metaphor I have been using to link all of this together - which archetype have I left out that completes the myth?
PS I leave it to Jim and Barry to fight it out as to which one is which Elf - only reminding them that of course in Myth things are not what they seem on the surface
Here are Jim and Barry's Slides - Download Boyd-conf
This is Saruman - the Shadow of Gandalf. He is the wizard whose ego takes over. He is the fallen angel - he is the Dark Side of power.
Most of our great institutions were created to be the ego-less servants of society. Education, Health care, the media. More important and more costly than any of these great servants of society was surely the military. Most people still join today seeking only to serve their country. The US spends nearly a trillion dollars a year to provide for security.
But then many - especially those who can "see" - realize that what these great institutions now serve is something else. Many can now see that this vast investment of the nation's treasure in life and money may be misdirected. They see that what once served us now mainly serve themselves.
Chet's talk illustrated this widening gap between what institutions seek to do with what they actually do by taking a sharp look at the US defense situation today. He made a compelling case - further deepened by a new book called America's Defense Meltdown - that the vast current spending and even the mission of the existing organization was at the best misguided.
In this commentary I will do my best to give you the Coles Notes of his briefing.
But first a quote from the end of his talk and a clip from a recent interview concerning piracy and the US Navy
"My good friend Pierre Sprey forwarded this amazing quote by Vice Admiral Bill Gortney. Pierre’s comments are in BLUE and Vice Adm Gortney’s comments are in italics.
An utterly convincing testimonial, from an expert witness with flawless credentials, regarding the benefits of quality over quantity for the fleet:
“The U.S. commander in charge of the waters off Somalia, Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, told CNN on Monday that he thought it would take a force of 61 warships to safeguard the sea lanes just in the Gulf of Aden, compared with the 14 international ships now patrolling off the Horn of Africa. If the U.S. Navy alone had to provide a force that size, it would take every destroyer and cruiser in the fleet, plus three frigates. ( Navy Times, 12/09/08 )”
Pierre continues: In other words, the USN’s pursuit of ever more “capable” ships has provided America with a fleet that is incapable of handling the Somali pirates."
Here is the paradox in a nutshell - never has America spent more and got less for its defense dollar.
One of the most complex characters in LOTR is Eowyn. As the story unfolds, she is an orphan princess (poor) caring for her uncle the King who has lost his mind. But when he regains his strength, she needs to find a new role. She finds this as warrior and puts away her Princess attire and dons armor. She slays the immortal Witch King - he thinks he is immortal because he can never be killed by a man. "No Living Man" But of course the warrior he faces is a woman. By the film's end, she finds her true love, Boromir's brother and becomes the Queen.
So what's the link with KETC and Public Media?
When most of think of Public TV or Radio - we think of Big Bird or Nature or All things Considered. We think "nice". We think "soft".
The surprise is that KETC has put on a warrior role and is out fighting hard to slay the monster that is the Mortgage and now the larger Financial Crisis that is affecting the very survival of its city. If they are successful will they remain poor and dependent? I doubt that. They will have earned their place in the hearts of their community.
Who would have thought that they could or should do such a thing? When we get to The Art of War part of the Boyd Conference, we will see how this approach fits into the ancient wisdom of winning victory by engaging with the ordinary and winning by using the extraordinary.
KETC is not moving in a haphazard way into conflict. It is being very thoughtful. Without having read the Art of War - many of the principles of its wisdom are being evoked as we will see later.
It is also innately using the wisdom of John Robb and Rory Francis - suggesting that all are drawing on an inner truth rather than merely punting.
KETC is a pathfinder station that is transforming itself from broadcaster to convener. It is moving to becime one of the critically important tools in our path back to self reliance and resilience - a "Platform" where the citizen and the community no longer simply consume content but also create it and some thing more - they are given a "Trusted Space" in which to extend their conversation into action.
See how similar this view of what KETC is doing is to John Robb's idea of what a Platform looks like.
I can see the similarity between what KETC is doing and what the Bio Alliance is doing. Can you see this too?
They are creating "Trusted Space" and balancing all the types of people in St Louis.
For in a time when Trust in the formal institutions is reaching every day a new low - Public TV and radio are the most trusted parts of the nations. Trust is the rarest thing around today and is therefore surely the most valuable thing that an organization or a person can possess.
KETC is an egoless connector. It connects the resources to the resources and the resources to the people. It connects via its own Trust by using its name and its ability to use TV and the Web.
If you wish to find out more about the why and the how - please go here to this link. Here I offer the context and the story for the work as it was when we started.
Here is the resource pool as it is right now. Imagine this being pulled together in your city? What new power for good would you have if you too could do this.
Like the Bio Alliance, KETC has convened the most trustworthy resources in St Louis who can help those who can be helped to save their home. For the public, KETC has used their air and the web to shift people from being frozen by fear and shame to having hope. Hope based on being able to find safe help and hope based on sensible advice leading to pragmatic action.
Why can't commercial media do this? Conventional media tends to stay with sensation and its sites are filled with people who seek to prey upon the vulnerable. Each story will also have ads attached that promise you an easy way out! There is no trust and no hope there.
Why could the helping agencies not act alone? Who was going to call the meeting. What we now know is that the meeting caller can have no ego - no axe to grind. If the United Way had called the group - many would have felt that the United way might be winning.
Only an outsider with no axe to grind can be the ideal convener.
Until KETC convened the real help in St Louis - many of these organizations had never spoken to each other - let alone met to do work with each other. So what is also happening is that the social helping capacity of the city is being strengthened.
Is it working?
More than this. KETC is changing Public Television's role in society. The measurable success it has demonstrated below has lead to new work on the horizon. To test this role of convening in many more markets. There is a good chance that Public Media may become a vital platform for establishing local resilience in America. This amy also be the saviour of the Pub Media world too. For in these terrible times, there will be little money around for anything that is not vital.
Good deeds are not enough - Great deeds are required. Great deeds deserve the support of the community.
As a Canadian, I find it so much harder to do here as there is no good starting place like KETC. The CBC is too much a centralized bureaucracy to take up this role right now. It is very hard to start this kind of work without a public TV or radio station as they are constituted in America.
Watch this space for news of this work expanding shortly.
Does this approach work? Is this really making a difference?
Amy did not have the time at the Boyd Conference to share the metrics of what KETC has accomplished. So I will add some here. Like the Bio Alliance on PEI, KETC may be a Nurturer, but they are very business like and make measuring Impact and Outcomes a central tenet of what they do. No touchy feely here!
How do we measure media? In most cases on air we can get a sense of who is watching. On the web we know exactly who is watching. As we started the experiment to see if a Public TV station could help a community help itself we had to know more - we had to know if what we did - on air, on the web, in person and by measuring itself (Remember in Quantum the act of measurement affects the measured) had an impact.
Would what we did activate action?
Would what we did change perceptions?
Would what we did have a result in improving the health of our community?
Might acting as a social catalyst be the higher goal and role for public media?
Well dear readers, the research is in - yes to all of the above.
A huge thank you to Professor Dhavan Shah and his wonderful team at the University of Wisconsin (see follow on)
One of the points that we measured was the number of calls that the United Way got from people seeking help timed against our on air pieces. Here you can see a massive bump directly related to what we did.
There is more - we found that the act of measuring/surveying had also a huge impact
What do these numbers mean? Are they good, OK or mediocre?
I have shared with you just the highlights - we have a lot more information that tells us that not only were we able to shift beliefs, motivate reaching out and action but also increase support for the station.
It is going to be fascinating to see what happens as this work spreads more broadly in the public TV and Radio world.
It's one thing to bring good content and information to the public. It is another to be able to help activate the public to take back power and control into their lives.
Amy's Slides are here - Download PEI Presentation
I feel that we are on the edge of a breakthrough - the networked world is finding its place and its organization
The Mission is heart-breakingly hard. Not only will we face powerful enemies but also huge inertia. While confronting all this opposition, the way forward is also not known in detail.
Maybe most challenging of all will be to forge a Fellowship that contains enough Mindset diversity but enough commonality to provide the courage and the capability to get to the end.
When I say "Diversity" I don't mean the shallow idea that prevails in society today about the color of our skin or whether we are male or female but the deeper diversity that is found inside us all - our mindsets and culture.
In LOTR, the main characters are not really Elves, Dwarves, Men or Hobitts but archetypes of personality or mindset types that are common in the real world of people. To do this work all have to be able to work together but still keep our unique perspective. The "Harmony" that Chet shows us in the slide above. The Wisdom of Crowds is not found in Group Think. James Surowiecki lists what he feels are the key criteria for wisdom where a smart group has to be subject to:
So knowing that we have to find a way of doing this - how can we actually pull this challenge off?
Stuart Baker showed us how.
I can only give you a surface impression of his talk - that seems very simple but has the power to deepen indefinitely. I urge you to see the video when it is available - this too only gives you a snapshot. Better still speak directly to him.
Here is an overview of the "Map" of the traditional main types of Mindset that most humans fit into
The largest group are "Nurturers" - seen on the bottom left. You will find these people in Non Profits, in Health Care Delivery (Not surgery!) Teaching etc. On the bottom right you see the "Providers" - these are people who have to make and do things that provide wealth. Business, especially entrepreneurs lives here. Both groups have also a "Dark" side. Both can be seen as the traditional roles of the two sexes. But neither are in reality gender based. Men can be Nurturers. Women can be fierce Providers.
At the apex of the diagram, are Pioneers. These are people who are on the Quest all the time. ideas and the new are what interest them. They can be unworldly - I live here and become more like a nutty professor all the time. There are few of these - but they are essential.
It is clear that these archetypes have little to say to each other. It is also clear that an ideal society would find ways to link them and to balance them. It may be clear to you, it is to me, that we are currently very unbalanced - that our society has shifted decisively to the Dark Side of the Provider - where all is merely a transaction and all is about money.
So let's go a bit deeper and see how the system can be balanced. Let's start to explore the connective process that has the power to offer up Fellowship.
Here we can start to see the complexity in Stuart's map. Of course it is Fractal! Any natural design has to be.
Each Archetype embodies an interior copy of the whole.
To make the Fellowship work, you have to have connectors in each area that are similar. So Providers have Pioneers who can link up to the lower level of Pioneer in the Pioneer realm. They can Translate. Rory Francis is a Pioneer Provider and he can easily connect to me up in the Pioneer Nurturer realm. Without him - I can never get anything done. My wife Robin is a Nurturer/Provider - we connect in the Nurturer realm. I fail to connect on my own to Provider/Providers and to Nurturer/Nurturers. I need bridges to do that.
In the video, Stuart will offer you more detail on the characteristics/Values of each realm and you will see the top layer of the Social/Mindset world we actually live in.
But how do we make this into an organizational reality? How can we use these ideas and make them world at Scale?
I am going to go into a lot of detail in the next commentary when I talk to you about Rory Francis' work with the PEI Bio Alliance.
But in summary note two further elements in this view. At the centre is the "Governance System". Like all "systems" this has both a nucleus and a boundary.
Both are critical to make this into a viable living system - like a cell.
The boundary has to be porous but must also shield the system from attack. Think of it like your skin. It contains "Trusted Space". Trusted Space is the ideal environment that will support a being to develop to its design potential.
This Trusted Space is defended, as is your body, by an immune or defense system. In societal terms, this would be the "Military". In the small social world this would be the ideal parental unit.
In the case of the Bio Alliance, this is the Bio Alliance Inc. A 3 person unit run by Rory that defends, promotes, encourages, links etc. It is by design a small unit because unlike a head office of a typical machine organization, it does not take power to its own self. It minimizes the ego. No Jack Welch here!
Like the best parents, the leaders in the Trusted Space, are selfless. The more they can suppress their own ego the better. Like the hero in armed conflict, who is prepared to give their all for their society.
So the paradox of the Facilitator of Trusted Space is this. The role is Nurturer. They Nurture their society. But in this role, like the Lioness, they are also warriors.
At the heart of this natural system is of course the nucleus - the governance system. Like Visa International, this has to be truly representative of the members. All the varied interests have to be reprtesented. Dee Hock calls this a Chaord. A "the corporation whose product is coordination"!
I will say more shortly when we talk directly to Rory's work and later to Amy Shaw's at KETC.
But the big idea in summary is this.
If our world is indeed interconnected and tightly coupled - like a network - then our core organizational framework has to reflect that reality.
Currently the heart of our problems is this. That for the last 200 years, we have strengthened a Newtonian Machine like idea of reality and have expressed this in its ultimate form - the modern corporation. This organizational framework - like Mordor or the Matrix - has taken most of us over without us even knowing that we have been subsumed. Even those who lead such organizations do not notice. After all it is our perceived reality.
It was Henry Ford's genius in 1905 to express this idea of the machine upon social organization that has lead to the vast gains in productivity that we have enjoyed. But this model has a price...
Victory and the restoration of a more human and humane and more connected social world - depends on taking the organizational ideas of Hock and Stuart and making them the new normal.
The terrible shocks to the Newtonian Economy that we are currently living through give us the chance of pulling this off - for in this new model lies enormous new productivity.
The power of this emergent model is that it offers the full value of the "WHOLE". In the Ford model, the "way" is directed by a small group or even an individual at the top. In the Chaord, the organization is "Facilitated" to grow to its potential.
Stuart has added a significant insight that has allowed the Early Adopters to pull this off. In the next two commentaries, I will show you not only how this can be done but also - maybe more imprtantly - that the results are showing.
Critical for the success of the Mission in LOTR is that Gandalf make it clear to all the nature and extent of the threat and also what has to be done to "Win".
Most of the time Gandalf advises. Rarely - at crisis points - he acts. Above all he treats all as adults. You take his advice or you don't. He does not preach - he offers.
He is hard to read. There are deep internal forces that are not clear to outsiders or even to himself as he also morphs from Grey to White.
I think many of us might agree that if there is a Gandalf among us - it may be John Robb.
At the Boyd 2008 Conference, John did what Chet said was the key to orientate a group's mindset into harmony. He offered us an overarching context and he offered us a series of pathways that could take us to remedies.
Key is to understand that our world is too big and too connected and too fast to be understood or controlled by the way we think and act today. The financial crisis has caught all the leadership offside - they are all behind and there is not enough money in the "real economy" to cope with the damage done by all the derivatives etc that far exceed the real.
All our problems are like this.
(John's daughter meets a Black Swan!) Worse, all our norms about 100 year storms, spreads in the bond market, world events - no longer have any value because when a system changes, all the old relationships die. So we live at a time when Black Swans not only occur but could be common!
So how management and government leadership is organized cannot cope.
Our world is now so tightly coupled - that a few men in a boat can shut the Straits of Hormuz and take down the world's energy supplies. That such a failure can make a just in time delivery system of food mean that big cities will then have no food in a week or no heat in winter.
Our reliance on tight centralized systems of energy and food supply make us all especially vulnerable. For those that lived through the collapse of the Grid in 2003 - imagine the blackout lasting 3 weeks? How would you live?
Is it a surprise to you that Walmart's hottest item right now are home safes?
So if our traditional centralized top down tightly couples system can no longer cope - where is the new value?
John looks to networks - especially those that use the idea of a "Platform" - the web is a large example itself. A set of DNS enabling coupling and focus - where all parties can use the mutual Network effect. Visa International was the early example of such an organizational platform.
Here is Drupal with the masses of parts that make up the ecosystem that is Drupal - where providers and users can exchange positions. Where a central DNA gives the network power.
This is what we will see emerging later in the Boyd Conference when we look to the PEI Bio Alliance and KETC's work on the Mortgage Crisis.
What were the areas that John felt were best to tackle:
The Mission - putting the Ring into the Fire - is to create local resilence and to connect yoyur local resilient system to others.
This process is already starting with the Towns In Transition meta project
Of course the web allows us to speed up new ideas.
Ideas about local resilience are spreading like wildfire
Here is Charlie Edwards blogging John's talk
Here are John's slides - Download Resilient Communities
The bottom line: We cannot fix the world so that we one we knew can come back! We have to go to a new place - we have to help make where we live viable on its own and we have to connect ouyr place to others
The metaphor of Lord of the Rings reminds us that most do not see the signs of trouble. They seem blind to the signals and too focused on the world as it was.
Of course they are not really "Blind" - it is that their mindsets are so "set" that anything that is outside their "Normal" is invisible.
This issue of the imperative of seeing beyond your conventional mindset was the centre-piece of Chet's opening remarks. The entire conference was designed to help us all "see" and to harness the diversity in the room to provide a deeper and a wider perspective on both the challenge and the opportunity.
Anyone who may feel this idea of looking at the power of mindset to hinder or to help, need only recall how most of the pundits got the financial crash that we are now living through all wrong. They could not see it and most were locked into Group Think.
The OODA loop is clear. All planning and all action is likely wasted unless you have "Seen" what is really going on and that you have processed this insight properly via your available worldview/mindset.
If you have a Newtonian - cause and effect mimdset - you cannot "get" the idea of an interconnected world.
Chet laid out for us - the Fellowship - our greatest challenge. How were we going to help groups of people to open up their mindset so that they too could "see"?
Typically, we all "see" the world differently to each other. All groups form like this with a myriad of "views". The hard work is actually not to get everyone to see excatly the same - for that gets us back to one of our problems today - Group Think. When we all think the same - we are at extreme risk.
What Chet recommends is "Harmony" not "Unison". With most people in a larger frame, youi have the value of low friction but also useful feedback - so that important things are not missed.
So how do you get to this ideal?
By setting the best Context and by using a great deal of conversation and practice to get there.
The core Context for the Boyd 2008 Conference was this:
Download Richards -- Mindsets#DA9A70
Chet Richards‘ OODA Loop refresher is valuable. Listen here (mp3) (Thanks Charlie Richards)
Later I will post a video
Over the next 2 days I will be offering up some of the presentations, with my commentary of the Boyd Conference. Later I will add video. All will be available on the Ning site for the Conference that you can find here.
But for now, I would like to offer up my first impressions of what I think transpired.
There is a deep underlying metaphor in Lord of the Rings. That the problems in the world are not initially visible to all but a few. But that these problems are dire and could be world ending.
A few do see the risk and in spite of their own differences come together in a fellowship and set out to do what is necessary to protect their future.
That is what happened this weekend.
A number of us Chet and John Robb - showed us a compelling view of the future - some told us of what they were doing to help their communities. And we had a few Wizards and Elves who had the Sword of the King and some Spells that we all could use to make us more powerful when confronted with all the power of the "Dark Lord" and his minions.
But more than anything formal - we had a huge ongoing party - with dinners and lots of "free time" plus for a few - a miserable shared winter travel experience. What really happened was that a group of strangers discovered a true bond with each other.
What we discovered was the character of the individuals and of the group. For the other side of Boyd's insight that Mindsets are the key to understanding conflict and problems is the issue of character. For to take on the system demands all a person could posses. And paradoxically it often takes an unlikely hero - like a hobbit to begin the journey to Mordor.
A Fellowship was born. Already, only 2 days after, many are talking about how they can help each other. The journey has begun - Like the Fellowship of the Ring, all we know for sure is the peril. Like the Fellowship, ww have the great advantage of having each other - a group of many and great talents and a group full of big hearts as well.
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