Robert Paterson's Weblog: Organizations and Culture

November 22, 2019

Vespasian - The Familia and the Mafia - a model to understand Rome

Here is the blood side of the Corleone family. This is not the whole picture as we will see in this post.

Today, we will see how the archetypal Corleone "Family" helps us understand how the Roman Familia works.

First of all, a mob Family and a Roman Familia are not only connected by blood - though blood is very important.

The strongest connections between the Don, or Familia head, are with "Made Men" or "Freedmen" or "Libertae".

Here we see the equivalent of the "Freedmen" in the Familia - the "Made Men". Because the "Made Men" are not family by blood, they can never take over the Family. Freedmen and Libertae are the same. They can never marry into the family or hold power on their own. So, they can be trusted more than blood. For, in the end, because blood can rule, all the blood relations are possible threats.

Most important of all the Made Men in the Godfather is the Tom Hagen character who might be Narcissus or Epaphroditus in our story. They are not blood, but their power is based entirely on the Godfather. Tessio, by the way, would never have betrayed Don Vito. Tom has been adopted by Don Vito. Maybe not in law but in custom. He has no family of his own. Libertae, such as Narcissus or Caenis have the same relationship to Claudius and Antonia. There is no one else that will interfere with this connection. Like Tom, both are sent on the most delicate of missions. Narcissus saves the invasion from Mutiny. It is he and Herod that buy off the Guard and put their man, Claudius in the purple. Caenis and Pallas are the messengers to Tiberius and so bring down Sejanus.

Sons in law are very weak characters and prone to betrayal. Marrying into the family, as Carlo did, is no guarantee that you get good work or that you will not be killed. Nor is there a guarantee that your family widow will never get over your death. In the end, Connie reverts back to blood and finds power by being in effect her brother's woman.

On the whole women, in Rome or in the Mafia, play a supporting role, as does Mrs Corleone senior. Some like Connie, Michael's sister, grow into real power players. Those that cannot fit, like Kay, get cast aside. Love is not enough in either Rome or the Mafia.

In Rome, as in the Mafia, adoption, or going outside the obvious line of succession happens often. The point for the older leader is to ensure that the best family member gets the job. Look at Octavian and Caesar. In this case, Michael is the heir supplanting his older brother Fredo. Michael later supports the candidature of Vincent, Sonny's illegitimate son. His own son, though beloved will never make it in the mob. Before her death, you are given the suggestion that Mary was being groomed to play a leading role. But a marriage to Vincent was key to this. Married to Mary gives him the best legitimacy and offers Mary the ability to be a player too. Emperors used marriage all the time to reinforce legitimacy. Nero's marriage to Octavia being a good example.

Nothing in the Godfather shows how blood can be a problem better than Fredo. As Titus was dying after only two years as Emperor, he says that he only made one mistake. The historians of the time make this to mean that he had not killed his brother Domitian. It's interesting though that Michael waits until his mother dies before killing Fredo. There is a code.

In the Mafia Family and in the Roman Familia, the size of the group is much larger and more complex than blood and Made Men/Libertae.

In Roman society, the "Dons" have "Clients". These are people that have obligations to the family head or in the Mafia to the Don. In the Godfather we see the baker in the wedding scene who wants justice for his raped daughter or even more clearly we see how Johnnie Fontaine, the Frank Sinatra figure, is granted a huge favour. In return, the client base owes an obligation to the patron. In the Mafia the head of the family is called often, the Padrone. In Rome, as in modern life, the reality is that most jobs and contracts depend on connections or on the Patron being able to make an offer that cannot be refused. At the death of the family leader the clients in Rome pass to the successor. So Octavian, who had a tiny circle of his own, suddenly has access to a massive network of clients. This is power.

Most Patron's have a particular go-to man for the really hard job, like killing your mother as in Nero's case, or your brother as in Michael's case. For Nero this was Anicetus. Even the name tells us something. Loosely translated it means, "Mr Fixit". Al Neri is this figure in the Godfather. He is the one who kills the top Mafia leader in the climax of G1. In GIII, he kills Fredo.

It's interesting that Anicetus's plan to kill Agrippina was in a boat!

Anicetus could be trusted because he had been Nero's tutor as a boy. Nero had been abandoned as a child as was brought up by his slaves, of which Anicetus and Epaphroditus were the most important. We never know Al Neri's story. But we meet him here in a very favoured position with Michael on the other side of Tom. We are told in this shot that Al is no bit player in Michael's trust. There has to be a story behind this bond. We are never told it but Al could never be just a button man.

Throughout the Godfather films, Michael becomes ever more paranoid and the issues of trust become ever more central. So it was in Rome at the top. But more like Don Vito, Vespasian made great and lasting friends in his life. Men like Tiberius Alexander and Pliny the elder or even Cogidubnus. His son, Titus, was the son that he could trust and he too made life long friends that included Tiberius and extended to Herod and his sister Berenice and Agricola. But as we see with poor Tessio, Michael inspired fear but not friendship. So it was with Domitian whose final mistake was to have Epaphroditus killed. Once the Imperial bureaucracy of Freedman felt that they could be a target for the Emperor's paranoia, Domitian was doomed. He had broken faith with his Made Men.

Why do so many people enjoy Mafia movies? I think that while there is death and betrayal, we are attracted to the idea of personal honour. In a bland corporate world of platitudes and polite meanness, it is refreshing to witness a community that puts honour at the centre and personal courage as the process. They also play for the highest stakes and so, like mountain climbers, experience life at its most precious.

This is how Vespasian and those at the core of power in Rome lived.

Time I think to talk about, Sonny, or Titus. Much later we will talk about Domitian, who is a blend of Michael and Fredo.

Posted at 02:39 PM in History, Organizations and Culture | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 29, 2014

Change in Organizational Life - Just Tech or something more?

Chicken or Egg? - Is the change confronting how we organize to work driven by tech or by culture?

The answer to this question is important. For the large organizations have decided on Tech. Are they right? Or are they wasting their time and money?

So what is really going on?

I am convinced that we live today at a time of cultural evolution similar to the shift in consciousness that we also went through as a species at the time of the Reformation when we shifted from Mystery as the foundation of culture to Rationality. Today we shift from a machine to a natural metaphor. From cause and effect to impact. From separation to integration.

A recent book by Frederic Laloux speaks brilliantly to this idea and is supported by 50 years of work by the late Professor Brian Hall.

Here is the link to the book and here is my review.

A debate rages today as to whether the great organizations of our time can move forward and become networks and so more human. Vast consulting resources and new technology platforms are being devoted to this goal. Laloux, ex McKinsey, challenges those who wish to apply a mechanistic process to this kind of change. He also challenges those who think a bottom up approach will work.

He systematically builds the case that, just as individuals progress through a series of values shifts through life: an infant is attached to their mother - a two year old is breaking free - teens are different from children - people in the 30's different from teens - 40 year olds are different - 75 years olds are different, that the larger human culture moves along a development track as well.

He identifies the attributes of these cultural shifts in detail - from a kind of gang leader in a foundation culture like Russia and so President Putin - where personal loyalty is everything - and the typical corporate culture where ROI and metrics are everything and several other stages both in between and after. He makes no value judgement - a kid is a kid and has to be that. But he is clear. There is a trajectory of stages that gets more complex. He gives each stage a colour to help us identify them.

The crux of his book is a focus on what we are experiencing today. All the cultural steps until now have been part of a progression but the one that confronts us now - and why it is so hard to cope with - is a bifurcation. This is a shift in world view from an external bias - to an internal bias where we are not only motivated by internal things but also see ourselves as being part of everything. This new worldview has NO SEPARATION. He gives this the colour of Teal.

This is no longer a stage that can be reached along a progression. It's not "More" it is different.

In this new world view all is integrated. In the old world all is separate. There can be no shift from separate to integrated. There can only be a process of transformation. A caterpillar cannot by itself become a butterfly. It has to undergo a kind of death and resurrection to make the shift from crawler to a winged being - there can be no hybrid form.

In this context he makes a powerful statement. An organization is itself limited by the values and world view of the leader. So an organization that has a CEO that still is in the external POV, has no chance of transforming. The power of the old will be too much.

He is also cautious about the world view that is just on the edge of the bifurcation - Green - this is the messy utopian edge view that rejects hierarchy and structure and that believes passionately in a bottom up transformation for organizations. There is no evidence that this has ever occurred.

On the other hand there is a lot of evidence for what has worked. This transformation has taken place in new organizations with the transformed leader as the catalyst. The book is filled with examples of Teal Organizations. Some are quite old. All share the same rules ands structure. Here is another key observation. The new is known. To those that are prepared to look and observe.

Laloux's views stem from observation not from a theory of the day. He has observed what works and what does not and he can see the rules that emerge in all. His views therefore are like Newton and gravity.

So is this just one man's view and will it be easy to challenge him?

I am sure that McKinsey and others like them will want to find a way that fits their culture that will help the Fortune 500 change. They have to find an engineering way to the future. And on the other hand there are many who hold onto the utopian view that there is no structure and that if we only got rid of hierarchy, it would be enough. Both will struggle with this book. After all how can just one person and one set of data set the rules for the revolution?

For me the final test for the validity of Laloux's work is that it is confirmed by the work of the late Dr Brian Hall.

Hall's work began more than 40 years ago by an exhaustive codification of human values. He started as a social anthropologist (His great work is contained in his book Values Shift and his questionnaire that reveals your values and your cultural development track - Values Technology) He uses different labels but his cultural landscape matches Laloux precisely. As do his two big conditions: that any organization is limited by the values of its leader. And that there is a bifurcation at the point of where we shift from an external to an internal POV. Both men use very different language but their conclusions are the same. Both started from opposite ends of the issue and meet in the same place. This is how all great discoveries take place. This is a Koch/Pasteur or Darwin/Wallace moment when two great minds working in isolation come to the same dramatic conclusion. And so maybe change the world?

Laloux has the advantage on Hall in that he writes today when the issue of transformation is at the top of the agenda and when there is so much technology that allows such an organization to exist. Hall was working back in the 1980's and 1990's when this was seen as esoteric. Hall also writes in an academic style whereas Laloux writes for the reader of today.

I am looking forward to the connection between Hall and Laloux. There is so much to learn from each other and there are many disciples of Hall's work who will be ready to work with Laloux.

In the meantime, I draw some conclusions of my own. The transformation that Laloux and Hall see cannot take place as a result of any mechanical process or be even an act of will. A caterpillar has to "die" to transform. A bifurcation by definition is violent adjustment to an opposing state. It is not a rational act. In my own case 25 years years ago, I felt as if I was going mad. My friends and colleagues certainly thought so! I did not know what was happening to me but in the end I had to leave the only world I knew for a new life that I knew nothing about. Now I know but then it was a mystery. Then few were experiencing this now many are. What is going on?

What I observe is that more and more individuals react to modern life by taking one of three choices - but choices like toothpaste in a tube. It's all about the pressure of the inhuman life that is the modern Amber Culture. Many retreat into a primitive culture of Red or Phase I (Laloux/Hall). We see this in the growth of fundamentalism of all kinds. Many stick to Amber/Phase II and hope for a spot in the current system. The "slaves" serve the masters in the hope of a bone. But, more and more people transform and so - like the Pilgrims - choose to live in another culture alongside the old. They have no choice. They have to get out. And when they do, they find themselves alone and poor.

But this too is changing.

They, like planetary dust are coagulating and creating the new structures along the lines of Laloux's book. The new is emerging. What Laloux will do by codifying this is to act as an accelerator. With a codified design, the new can go there quickly. The transformed will have a map that helps them make sense of their predicament. The transformed will have a design to help them get together with others and so create a new new world.

And when they have build enough of the new, then the rest will follow.

If I could give this book 10 stars I would

Posted at 08:23 AM in Natural Organization, Organizations and Culture | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 27, 2014

Transformation - How do we get from A to C? - Part 3 - It's the Network!

In this short, 3 part series I have been musing about how large organizations will make the shift from Hierarchies to "Wirearchies" (Jon Husband's great insight). Much of "Big Consulting" and "Big Tech" are selling their services in the hope that CEO's will believe that you can get from A to C, or Hierarchy to Wirearchy, by a set of incremental steps in a staged and mechanical way.

I hope that posts 1 and 2 might offer up reasonable doubt for that hope. In summary, I state that the shift from Hierarchy to Wirearchy starts always with the individual who experiences a spiritual death of their old ego and a spirtual birth of a new persona. A new persona that experiences being fully integrated into the flows of the universe. I make the case that this only happens on the terms of the individual and cannot happen as a result of any direct kinetic external agency.

You cannot use mechanics, data and argument to force this change.

But I do say that this kind of birth can be made easier, faster and with less pain, if the person enduring the shift has the help of a "Midwife"/Coach. This helper though has to meet two conditions to be of any use. He/she has to have made the shift themselves. For the power of the helper is energetic. There is no kinetic force here but only "attraction" and energetic support. I also make the point that such a helper also needs to have many of the "skills" required to navigate and to love in the new world. He/she is a cultural advisor.

For the new person has only known the old world. He or she is like the girlfriend following Crocodile Dundee into the outback.

If you think that you can use the old rules in the new place, you will get into trouble. But all your life you have used the old rules. So the transformed person has a profound challenge early in their new life. They tend to default back to the old rules and can risk leaving the new and returning to the old.

For let's be clear, Wirearchy is a "New World" as America was the New World for immigrants in the 1880's. This world has many cultural rules that are the opposite of the old but new comers, like those just off the boat at Ellis Island only know their old habits. The "midwife"/coach can also act as part of a Newcomers Association and help make the cultural transition easier.

If we follow the Dundee story, imagine if your guide to the Outback was another New Yorker? Feels wrong doesn't it? So why would you retain a consulting firm from the old culture to help you find your way around the new?

If we can agree on how this change takes place and who can help us make this best, let's get onto the main point of this post, is there a process that can help this transformation at scale? There is and its another fractal of the personal transformation. Let's see a real example.

This is how Channel Nine - Now the Nine Network for Social Media in St Louis (a major PBS TV Station) has done ths. The diagrams come from the work of Valdis Krebs - one of the great thinkers of how networks really work.

Valdis - and his long term ally June Holley - call this process "Network Weaving". As we look at the St Louis example, we can see the larger set of rules.

Channel Nine began by rethinking its role. No longer ONLY a broadcaster, it recognized that as a non profit and a community owned organization, it had a trust in St Louis that maybe no other organization had. The station had a context for this change. St Louis was a city in decline. The station's future depended on St Louis's future.

It also knew that while St Louis had many great organizations that all of these worked on their own and so had limited power to help St Louis restore its old energy as a city. We see this in the first step in the slide. We see a number of great potential nodes and small networks that had very little power to help St Louis because they were not connected and had no habit of working with each other.

So in Phase I, the second stage in the slide, the station acted as a "Connector" it found projects that the larger city needed and hosted meetings of the organizations that had never worked with each other before. It created a safe environment where cooperation and collaboration started to be normal.

At first, Channel Nine was the centre and was the connector.

But then, as collaboration was experienced more, the organizations started to reach out to each other on their own. The common and greater purpose remained the same though - help make St Louis great again. Each organization started to see what Channel Nine had seen - that they all depended on the larger City doing well. The larger context helped them all. The new habits and the new trust expanded and others in St Louis joined.

Meanwhile, Channel Nine expanded its reach beyond St Louis and began to weave with other TV and radio stations across the nation. For here too, Channel Nine depended on the health and the success of the larger ecosystem that was public media. Channel Nine could not sustain itself with out the larger system. The CEO was using the business POV of a Teal organization. Jack Galmiche knew that only if 9 expanded its context for success could it find success. This was not a Kumbaya call but a hard nosed call based on a better POV.

Again this work in the pub media world started with St Louis in the centre, But soon, the most ready stations started this whole process in their cities and now this community engagment network model is spreading across the system.

It's all fractal!

While this was going on, the core of the network in St Louis and in Pub Media grew more dense. In St Louis, the Public Radio station has moved in next door and has taken on the Beacon - an online New organization that had been incubated at Channel Nine. In many cities in the US the Radio and TV stations are linking up and are creating the same new habits of trust locally. Community Engagement is now seen as core to the Pub Media future. Weaving is the process.

Rust belt cities and cities that depended on Hirearchy are creating a new economy based on Wirearchy. St Louis is now seeing that it is in full revival mode and is becoming a startup centre. We can now see the kind of emergent dense core that is in the last part of the slide. St Louis is reawakening to life. St Louis organizations are making the shift.

This Weaving/Hosting/Creating Safe Environments is I think the way ahead for us. Here is the challenge offered by Frederic Laloux - "What can be done is to create environments that are conducive to growing into later stages. When someone is surrounded by peers who already see the world from a more complex perspective, in a context safe enough to explore inner conflicts, chances are higher that the person will make the leap"

I belong to such a network now - Change Agents World Wide - I joined it because I am convinced that acting alone was no longer good enough. I too had to be part of a larger network force that could work like this. CAWW is a network made up of people that have made this transformation. It also has the cultural skills and technical skills needed to do well in the New World of Wirearchy.

I believe that CAWW is the ideal "Midwife" Coach so it can help individuals and it can also play a role in Weaving the larger network.

I think that much of our work will be "Weaving" for now. Connecting others as individuals and as other networks. We already reach to individuals inside traditional organizations and offer those change agents inside the warm feeling of being supported. We reach out to other organizations that have made the shift and connect them to each other. We reach out to other networks that also need to scale.

Our goal is to find the Tipping Point as St Louis seems to have found for itself. If we can connect to the first 12%, the rest will take care of itself.

And the math shows that this may not be as hard as you think. Imagine that you had 4 friends who really trusted you. Imagine that each of them had 4 other friends who really trusted them. Not too hard to imagine? Now extend this to the power of 4 and see what a trust network can influence.

2 - 16

3 - 81

5 - 625

8 - 4,096

13 - 28,561

34 - 1,336,336

55 - 9,150, 625

89 - 62, 742,241

144 - 429, 981, 696

So a Network like CAWW with 55 members has the potential to reach 9 million people. With 89, we could reach 63 million. With 144 (The real max Dunbar number) we could reach 430 million. The Tipping Point is not that far away or so hard to find in this context.

This is the leverage of real trust networks.

In part 4 of this series I am going to offer up a lot of the science that is behind all of this. For what we are tallking about are natural processes in natural systems and everything in nature is bound by rules and by math. There is a hard foundation to this spiritual journey.

Posted at 11:44 AM in Natural Organization, Organizations and Culture | Permalink | Comments (2)

March 26, 2014

Transformation - How do we get from A to C? - Part 2 - It's Embodiment!

Is information enough to transform our lives and our organizations? Can transformation take place as a result of a rational process and data? Is transformation an incremental process or a total process? This is part 2 of a short series that is looking at these questions.

In part 1 I made the case that real transformation cannot be incremental and also cannot be rational. Here is part 1 again if you need to catch up with where I am going with this. Summary - transformation is a bifurcation and so has to be energetic. It is a natural process only.

In part 2 we are going to explore how people are influenced by other people to transform. How can we work with a natural process - like birth - and make it easier?

If we know how to do this, then we might know how to accelerate the process by which human culture may progress from a machine and separate wordview to a natural and integrated one.

So here again is the cultural and organizational journey.

Image source:https://plus.google.com/109479022314471643787/posts/9V61WXEWAxp

We shift from an external POV rooted in separation and in a kinetic modality of force/cause and effect to an internal POV rooted in integration in an energetic modality where there are no simple direct linkages of cause and effect.

Or in another way of seeing this - we move from a world that is simple and complicated to a world that is complex or chaotic. We move from machine to life as the underpinning metaphor.

The traditional consulting who want to capitalize on how to make a business helping organizations make this shift operate from the world on the left. It's all about power/force - it's kinetic - it depends on cause and effect. It is all about separation - them and us.

They are more clever than you are. They use data and analysis. They use physical and kinetic tools. They seek to measure the ROI in $.

Do you feel the disonnance of this? How can a machine make you into a human again?

Only another human can help a human be more human.

There can be no use of power or force. It's like having a baby.

As the old us dies, the new has to be born and as with all new borns, the new us is weak, confused and very vulnerable. It helps to have a midwife. A midwife whose main qualification is that he/she has been through this process themselves. This person is not a parent. For the new you is a true adult. This person helps you in the birth process. They will need you less and less very quickly once they have found their feet.

Here is Frederic Laloux on this point: "No one can be made to evolve in consciousness, even with the best of intentions—a hard truth for coaches and consultants, who wish they could help organizational leaders adopt a more complex worldview by the power of conviction."

Only you can awken. No one can do this for you. But others can be there for you. It is so scary that it might be essential for others to be there for you. Who can forget this scene in the Mission. How fortunate to have his spiritual midwife by his side too.

The Midwife/Coach "Embodies" the energy of the new. That is where the power is. It is not in the word but in the word made flesh. It is your peers who will help you.

So we know what the smallest fractal of the whole is. A person is ready and then transforms. No readiness, no transformation. It's all up to that person. But when it happens, this is a very painful moment. It helps to have a spiritual midwife in attendance.

This is the process. There is no other.

If we know this at the node level, how do we scale this so that we can reach a critical mass more quickly?

There is a 500 year old story that ofers us guidance here. But, as caveat, as I tell the story, I declare that I am not a Christian or a member of any religion. My answer is not "religion" but about an organized response to what religion became 500 years ago and a renewed response to what it is today. A response from inside. Response to hubris and to fear. A response rooted in love but stiffened by courage and by learning.

In response to the sickness of the church and the power of the Reformation, a small group of men - who had all been soldiers and knew all about the sins of the world came together and founded the Society of Jesus. Their approach was unique and applies to the work ahead for us today. They chose not to preach the word. They chose not to retreat from the world. They chose to go out into the world - even to China and Japan- and live the word and if necessary to die for the word.

Their appeal was embodied in their flesh. Their discipline was to be aware. They were selected with great rigour as humans who had grown up. In 100 years of the founding by 7 men, this small band ran 700 schools and sat by the right hand of most of the rulers of the world. They had this place because they had the trust - for they did not preach. They adapted to the culture of the place they worked in. They listened and had compassion - even for the Emperor of China - who saw his mentor Francis Xavier as his grandfather.

They brought humanity back to the church. They were often in great conflict with the church that they served. They are still often in conflict with it. But it is remarkable that the new pope is himself a Jesuit and he is clearly out to reform his church once again.

And what did he do? His first steps were to live what he wanted to see in the church. He stepped away from the separation and the pomp. He embodies what he hopes for the church. He lives the new.

In this way, his power comes not from his position as pontiff but from his rejection of the trappings of the power of this position.

Pope Francis embodies the values of the world to come. Here we see what I think to be the key issue for large traditional organizations. They can only evolve as far as their leader.

Frederic Laloux makes this point: "Can a middle manager put Teal practices in place for the department he is responsible for? When I am asked this question, as much as I would like to believe the opposite, I tell people not to waste their energy trying. Experience shows that efforts to bring Teal practices into subsets of organizations bear fruit, at best, only for a short while. If the CEO and the top leadership see the world through Amber or Orange lenses (Green’s tolerance allows for more hope), they will consider the Teal experiment frivolous, if not outright dangerous.

They might allow it for a while until they understand what is going on. But ultimately, the pyramid will get its way and reassert control. In the process, the energy that was invested often turns into bitterness and cynicism.

I wish I could offer more hope. But I simply haven’t come across a single example of a unit, plant, or department that has operated to any degree with Teal practices for a substantial amount of time to show otherwise. And while the experiment lasted, the people in those units often had to fight, again and again, with the big bosses outside of their unit to defend their unorthodox ways of operating."

This is a tall order. Can we all wait for a leader like Pope Francis? I don't think so.

So how then might we still use the ideas of peers and embodiment and attraction? Laloux offers a hint: "What can be done is to create environments that are conducive to growing into later stages. When someone is surrounded by peers who already see the world from a more complex perspective, in a context safe enough to explore inner conflicts, chances are higher that the person will make the leap"

I then ask, how do we do this and who is best equipped to help?

I will do my best to offer up my answer in part 3. But in advance, I posit that those are best equipped to help, have made the transformation themselves. That they live the new and embody it. That they have the scale to offer the hand of friendship and love throughout the world.

In short I think we need a large network of the transformed whose mission is to be there for those that are ready and to help them help others get ready.

I am deliberately using language here that you do not read in consulting or in business. I use this language because part of being human is to speak like a person. But the ideas behind all of this are not Kumbaya. Underneath the langauge is the science of what is going on. Just as behind the Reformation was science based on observation.

There is much science here. And if you wish to know more - please read Frederic Laloux's book - I think that this is the most important resource that I have yet found on this transformation. It's not the whole thing but it is a great entry point into the hard stuff that underpins all of this.

Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

Posted at 02:00 PM in Natural Organization, Organizations and Culture | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 10, 2014

The coming Cultural Revolution Part 3 of 3 - Why I joined Change Agents Worldwide

In Part 1 of this series, I showed that the people are ready for the transformation of the organization to a more social and networked model. In Part 2, I showed the situation where an established leader of a leading traditional organization had to make such a massive change.

Today, let's look at at what such a change process might be like and why having a network like Change Agents Worldwide as your facilitators would make sense.

Cultural Change is like going to live in another country - it is not a mechanical process

Imagine if you lived in rural Ireland in the 1880's.

Image Source

Your first language might not be English. Your culture would be of a peasant in a state ruled by a foreign power who made all the rules without any participation by you. Your master would be English who lived a very different life than you. You would not own your farm and could be dispossed at any time. Millions had been already. But this was the only life that you knew. It was your normal. It was your culture. You were criticized by your masters for not having more self initiative. But there was never going to be any change to this, so long as you lived in Ireland.

Now you have a brother who lives in New York. He writes to you often about life in America. You and your family share his letters that are read to you by the priest. For you do not know how to read. You get a sense that his life is better. It is hard in New York but he has hope. Especially he has hope for his kids, who are at school. Who can read and speak English. Your nephew is going to join the police where a cousin is a sergeant. Your brother is deeply involved in politics and has become part of the Irish group that runs the local ward.

What you hear above all, is that your brother has much more opportunity and freedom than you do in Ireland. But, so long as you continue to live in Ireland, you cannot get free of the grip of your local culture.

You cannot become like your brother so long as you stay home. This is the critical issue.

This is where your brother lives and he and his family become American by being immersed in the new culture. Nearly every rule that governed life in the old country is the opposite here.

This is what it means to have cultural change!

Some observations about what cultural change is and so how to experience it

Culture can only be learned by prolonged immersion - Culture is a set of unspoken rules about social habits and expectations that are shared by a community. Like a language, or like learning to drive a car or to fly a plane, they have to be habituated. So they can only be learned by an immersive process.

So, no amount of books, courses and tuition will change a culture. Nor will orders to change how you think or live. Nor will teachers who are not of the new culture themselves. But this is how we have been used to "Change" in organizations.

So You Can't Change the Whole Place at Once - The Irish went to New York one family or one Village at a time. The whole of Ireland did not cross at one time.

In part 2 we saw that Fisher built Dreadnoughts one ship at a time. He could not transform the whole Navy at once.

It is best to use the Adoption Theory process here. Start with the most ready. Work it out with them. Then enlist them to help with the next most ready and so on. Peers must help peers. Successful immigrants create support systems in the new place. The Irish who were resented by many, organized to look after each other and dominated neighbourhoods, polictics and the police.

Rely mainly on peers to help each new wave. Tell lots of stories. Enable folks to hold real power in the new.

Set Up Facilitating Structures to support and accelerate - Make it easy! - Major Shipping lines redesigned their entire business to support mass immigration. They redesigned their ships, marketing, costs to focus on this group. This was where they made their money too! Ellis Island was set up to facilitate the arrival process too.

There will be the equivalent processes for a process to help a large organization make the shift.

Build a New World - In the 1880's, immigrants got on a ship and went to a new world literally. By so doing, they could leave the old behind and be immersed in the new. You have to create this reality too.

You can't still be in Ireland and become American.

A new culture has to be embodied. People have to move to a new place in physical terms where the new rules apply and that is organized itself according to the new rules. You cannot still live in an Irish Rural Village and try and be American. The Dreadnought was very different from older ships.

This implies not only a new kind of web environment but a new approach to face to face and what is an office - if there is an office!

Summary of the Work

This is not your typical "Change Management Process". It is not about engineering. It is about understanding how humans behave.

It is a dance rather than a set meal.

It is all about trust and in the end it is about love. This is not a term used much in business but it is a term understood in the high performing part of the military. The consultant cannot be the outsider. The consultant has to become the client. Such an assigment might take many years to complete.

Such work demands a long term partnership with advisors who know their place. For in this work 99% of the work has to be done by the client or it will fail. Such an approach demands a certain kind of ego and native experience.

It is this high leverage that keeps the costs down for the client. The consulting costs are trivial when compared to the effort put in by the client.

Why CAWW?

So why hire CAWW to help you do this?

We have a unique perspective of Old and New - There are 2 types of people in CAW. There are those like me who have been natives of the new culture for a very long time. We know it not because we have read a few articles but because we have long since left the old country and we are natives of the new. Natives who not only know all about this by experience but also have ourselves large networks of support and talent.

There are also others who are still in the corporate world. They are like portals into the system that has to be changed. So CAWW lives both in the old and in the new country.

We have created a New Country - Whether we are a freelancer or still have a job in CAWW - we both inhabit a new country that models the form and behaviour of what your new country may be like.

We have leadership in a vast range of related issues - Every area of concern has at least one leader in CAWW. If there might be a missing aspect, the network can fill the gap.

We are global and have great diversity - Members are of many nationalities and so can help with the cultural nuances of a global customer. Being global, we are also on call 24/7.

CAWW does not have the cost burn rate that drives the need to bill typically - There is no office. There is no senior partner overide. There are no recuiting costs. The admin costs are tiny compared to a conventional practice. CAWW is a true network.

Find out more here.

Posted at 12:27 PM in Natural Organization, Organizations and Culture, Paradigms | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 09, 2014

The coming Cultural Revolution Part 2 of 3 - Why I joined Change Agents Worldwide

This is a portrait of Admiral Sir John Fisher as First Sea Lord. To save the Royal Navy and to push it ahead of all other navies at at time, he set in motion a change in culture that risked losing it all. He knew that if he did not make this change, another navy, the US, France or Germany would do what had to be done and then the RN would never catch up.

His story will be retold soon in modern organizational life.

Some leader, whose organization is at the top of the tree, will recognize that, unless he or he makes the real change, a competitor will and that will be the end.

This person will make this change, knowing that it also will mean that all the rules that made that organization #1 will have to change and that the organization will have to start again from scratch. But they will make it knowing that, when you have the headstart in this type of race, you will keep the lead.

I tell this story as part 2 of a 3 part series (Part 1 is here) on why and how this change will happen and why I think that Change Agents Worldwide or CAWW, the network I have just joined, may be able to help in this great matter.

In this story we will look at 3 ships and the century long transition it took for the RN to shift from sail to the modern battleship. It is a story of how success and power holds you back. It is a story of how it takes a wrenching change from the TOP to shift a powerful player in an old paradigm to take leadership in the new.

In part 1 of this series, I told the story of how the people change. Millions of people are ready for the network world and the technology that will support this is here. It just all has to be put together in the right way. This is what our story is all about.

HMS Victory was built in the 1760's. She was already an old ship by 1805 and the Battle of Trafalgar where the RN took hold of a global dominance that it held until 1918.

Here she is in about 1900.

She embodied not only the paradigm of sail and wood but also as importantly a culture.

It was her culture that lived on well into the age of steam, steel and turret guns. As much as anything, this was what Fisher had to change. For the real problem that faced him, and all navies, was that if you used the culture of Nelson in a modern warship, you would fail. The culture would not support the new tool to have the full use of its new power.

Here is what Fisher had to work to overcome.

In Nelson's navy, the #1 rule in combat was to get in close. It was to close the enemy and pound. It was all about courage and the kind of training that meant that the RN would out gun the enemy. Any one who stood back could risk execution as Admiral Byng found who was shot for cowardice.

This would make it very hard for a big gun ship who could shoot miles away. The RN did not shoot from far away. In Nelson's navy, real men got close. It was all about courage and class. It was bad form to use science or distance.

In the sail navy, watch officers were gods. So if you were an engineer, you had no standing. This was going to make it very hard for engineers who would be needed to run all the machinery of the steam navy. The Navy saw itself as a club of gentlemen. They saw engineers as lower class people who had got their place not through family and character but by going to school.

These kind of cultural differences are what holds back the traditional organization today. We have a view of the kind of relationships that are normal and best. These do not work in the network world. We have a view of the kind of skills and the kind of person that fits best too. These skills and these kinds of people are not enough in the network world either.

So the RN then, and we today, end up with something that looks modern but that actually has very little capability when compared with what could be possible.

And this is what this looks like. HMS Inflexible in 1881. Her first captain, had been Fisher himself!

At first glance , she may look quite modern to you. She is made of steel. She is steam driven. She has a huge turret amidships with 16 inch guns. She has masts but only as insurance.

But she is not modern and has very little real capability. And the reason is that she is operated and so designed using Nelsonic culture.

The big guns are muzzle loaders and take a long time to load. They have to be swung into line with the body of the ship and are loaded and rammed from there. She is designed to fight alongside the enemy. Her engineering crew have very little status. One of the key signs of success in the navy at this time was how clean the ship was. Hard to pull off when powered by coal.

She looked mean but really it was the mystique of the RN that was her real power.

From the 1880's until 1905, this is what navies did. They all added features of the new but all kept the old culture. Is this not what most organizations are doing too today?

But, by 1900, all navies were wondering if a ship that only had big guns and that would enagage at long distance would be the winner. Of course such a ship would invalidate doctrine and make all existing ships obsolete overnight. But who knew, so no one made the dangerous move.

In 1905 this idea was tested at the Battle of Tsushima. Here the Japanese under Admiral Togo demolished the Russian fleet. The opening shots were fired at 6,200 metres disabling the Russian flag ship. Later analysis showed that only the big guns had any value. It was also clear that being slow was fatal. Much more engineering had to go into the propulsion.

So Fisher was faced with a terrible decision. If he built a ship that embodied the new culture, he would make very ship in the RN obsolete and he would up end the operational culture. All other navies could start from ground zero with him. But if he did not, then the RN would lose for sure.

This is where a leader is going to find themselves today. We are going to see a new entrant demolish an old one using the new. We are going to see the proof of the value of the network. And then a brave leader of the old will have to take the plunge and go for the new themselves.

Here she is. HMS Dreadnought of 1905/6. She is the embodiment of the new.

She has steam turbines and not reciprocating engines. She used coal but coal that was mixed with oil to give a higher burn. She was faster than any other capital ship in the world.

She had 10 12 inch guns in five turrets and had a barrage twice the weight of any other ship.

She was designed to fight at a distance and she had to have first class engineers and gunners.

She could sink an entire opposing fleet of old ships.

This is what it is like to put the whole package together.

Of course, Fisher met with massive opposition inside the leadership of the Navy. For in producing Dreadnought he hurt many of his peers who were completely invested in the old. But he also saved the navy. By being first, the RN stayed ahead of all others and kept its dominance until the end of WWI.

And CAWW?

The hard work will be cultural design. Culture is created by having a set of habits. Learning a new culture then is like learning to fly. You can read every book under the sun, but in the end you have get into a cockpit with a person who is a pilot and learn new habits - many of which don't make any sense - from this person. Only when these habits are "Habitual" and so you don't have to think about them - do you know how to fly. And even then, you have other stages. No Navy pilot lands on the deck of a carrier without a series of new learnings under their belt. Learnings that are best learned from a person that has done all of this and is a personal master of the issue.

The old organization that embraces the new will not able to stop learning when they solo in a single engine Cessna. This is Navy flying.

In the third and last post of this series, I will make the case for why it is likely that you might find such instructors in CAWW and not in a conventional practice.

Part 3 is here

Posted at 04:25 PM in Organizations and Culture, Paradigms | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Coming Cultural Revolution Part 1 of 3 - Why I joined Change Agents Worldwide

Many thanks to Susan Scrupksi who has kindly invited me to join Change Agents Worldwide - More on CAWW Here.

What does this mean to me and maybe even for you? The quick answer is that this is all about the great cultural transition from a machine context to a natural or networked one. The quick answer is that I think the time has come for the change to take place in a leading organization that will set the stage for everyone else. The quick answer is that such an organization will need the support of people who have made the change themselves and who embody and live this change.

The Tipping Point needs more weight to "Cross the Chasm". I and others cannot help on our own. I and others like me need the power of our own network to do this work.

The cells have to form a molecule!

So here are 2 stories that have helped me understand that now is the time and this is the work. But first, some context.

The Initial Phase of the Change Process is Done

My regular readers know that I am usually early on issues. For as long as I have been blogging - Since 2002 - I have been saying that our mechanistic way of seeing the world is taking us down a path to failure. I have been saying that a network model for life has a chance of offering us and our kids a future. I have been saying that the transition from the old the new is a step in our development as a species.

These mad ravings are not so mad anymore.

What seemed odd back in 2002 - 2010 is now more mainstream. Many of us, as individuals, have stepped out of the traditional organizations and out of the job world. This group is in the millions now.

The idea of networks is now widely understood. After all, most of us inhabit social networks now as our normal. This group is in the billions.

But most organizations remain bound by the old rules. The power systems all use the old models. Only a handful of organizations have made the move. Many organizations play with the new. They use the buzz words. They hire, at great expense, software vendors that offer collaborative tools. They hire, at great expense, A-list consulting firms to help them speed up their processes. But actually they are stuck. In spite of all the new social tools, in spite of all the change projects, they have not had a commensurate increase in productivity and innovation.

Why is this?

Individuals can change more quickly than institutions. Millions are ready. Billions are aware but institutions are stuck because of where they are in the change cycle.

What is the barrier? To make this kind of change, the old culture in the organization has to die. It is stuck because to make the change they have to give up the way they have always done things. A way that has been successful in the past. A way that those at the top made their careers on. Put yourself in their shoes.

If you are an admiral in the navy that was based on sail, moving quickly to steam means that all who have made it on sail are marginal. If you are a surgeon before anesthetic, your career was made on speed. Why would adopting anesthesia help you? If you are a journalist who made your career in print, why would the web appeal?

We must not judge.

This situation of "stuck" is why have I joined CAWW. I see that the time is right now to reach out to a few brave leaders of traditional organizations.

Why now and why them?

To answer this I will offer two stories about big change. The first one today is about the settling of the American West. This will explain the Change Lifecycle. For all change has such a cycle and when we see it, we can stop judging and be more open to what we can all do to help.

The second is about the story of the shift from sail to steam in the RN. This will explain the cultural final act of the change process. How and why do some at the top of the old system give it all up? The story gives support to the brave few who will do it.

The American West - The Cycle of Change

From 1880 to 1914 about 50 million people left their homes in Europe and came to America. They were inspired by a new story. They had learned that, in America, you could be who you wanted to be. All you had to do was to go there and work hard. This was the opposite of life in the old country where how you were born was your destiny. There was also "free land" in the west. No land was available back home.

But this was also true in 1830. So why did so few go there then? This is our story about the change lifecycle or the Adoption Theory.

After the expedition of Lewis and Clark, a few weird men left all traces of civilization behind and began to explore what had been the Louisiana Purchase. Loosely called "Mountain Men", they loved the wildness of the new and they fitted in naturally to all aspects of the cultureof this land, including the culture of the native Americans that lived there.

Every major cultural change starts here.

I was was one of those weird "mountain men" back in the 1990's. In 1994, I gave up up my traditional "Civilized" life for the life of a freelancer. This was a time when few made that choice willingly. When blogging appeared in the late 1990's early 2000's I jumped in with both feet. It was as if I had found a home. I had now found a new culture to replace the void I had having left the old one.

At the time, most people still in the old culture thought people like me were mad. How could I make a living like this? What was I doing writing in public every day? How could I find friends all over the world? What was all this social thing?

This is what "Mountain Men" and the "Annie Oakley's" do. They find out how the new world works. They explore the trails. They find the best and the worst places. They establish a culture. And they tell stories that annoy many but excite some.

They are the "Innovators" in Adoption Theory. They have no pull with the people who really count but can inspire regular folks.

Innovators are defined by Rogers as "Innovators are daring, rash and risky. They are able to cope with a high level of uncertainty". Rogers says, "While an innovator may not be respected by the other members of a local system, the innovator plays an important role in the diffusion process; that of launching the new idea in the system by importing the innovation from outside of the system's boundaries. Thus the innovator plays a gate-keeping role in the flow of new ideas into a system."

This Innovator stage of the cycle has its time and the next phase begins with the early "Early Adopters".

These are always individuals and families. They tend not to be organizations. In the story of the west, these are the brave souls who go west on the wagon trains. They are the pathfinders. They take a lot of risk for no sure thing.

Some of the ex Mountain Men get jobs guiding wagon trains west. Wagon trains that are made up of the next layer of adopters. These fit into the Early Adopter category.

Their going west is hard for them, but it is also hard for the west. Major things are lost as we see in this tragic painting. This next stage destroys much of the old culture. It also opens a wedge. For the powers back east now see the old culture of the west as a danger to the settlers. The Indians become the problem.

As more Early Adopters go west, the people with power in the East start to see the opportunity for themselves to make money serving this shift. They undertstand this pull that is attracting more and more people. They ask themselves how they can do well out of being party of this.

The Authority Leaders who make up this part of the Early Adopters are defined like this: Opinion leadership is an important aspect of the Early Adopter. They often serve as a role model for other people. They are more integrated into society than the innovators. "The early adopter is respected by his or her peers, and is the embodiment of successful, discrete use of new ideas. The early adopter knows that to continue to earn this esteem of colleagues and to maintain a central position in the communication networks of the system, he or she must make judicious innovation-decisions. The early adopter decreases uncertainty about a new idea by adopting it, and then conveying a subjective evaluation of the innovation to near-peers through interpersonal networks," Rogers said.

They build BIG TOOLS to make it easy for people to go west. They makes changes to policy to help the flow. This is the point where the Authority figures join the Early Adopters and start to build the bridge to enable the Early Majority to "Cross the Chasm".

Without this infrastrutucture, the "Chasm" cannot be crossed at scale. The journey to the West has to be made much easier than the wagon train. Here some of the old Mountain Men are hired as mappers. Many of the wagon train routes are used. But the power is now in the hands of the engineers and then in the marketers. They build more than a railway across the plains.

The "Bridge" goes all the way back to the old world. Immigrants are actively recruited. Steam ships and lines focus on their needs. Ellis Island is built to process their arrival. All of this combines to bring millions to the new world. Much of the work is about engineering and marketing. It is not about the old culture of the west and it is not about why the people come. It is about the supporting infrastructure.

But, why the people come is still the old story. They come to find a better life where they can be what they can be. Underpinning all of this movement of millions of people is culture.

There is coming a moment when the tension between the old and the new will become so great that some organizations will make the real change, and when they do, all those that do not will face oblivion.

The issue will be culture.

This is why I have joined CAWW.

It is itself a network and is not an organization that uses engineering as its model. It is a tribe. It is inhabited by people who are like me. It is a home for ex "Mountain Men" and "Annie Oakleys".

My hope and the hope of my colleagues is that we can act as the cultural guides to those that wish to "Go West" too. Our credential is not that we have read the book, or can spout the dogma, but that we live there in this new place. We are the change.

I have also joined because I think that each of us are weak when we are only on our own. Several dear friends are in CAWW. We have known each other for many years. But now I think it is better that we get together more formally. The work is too large for just a single person.

The really hard work is about to begin. The hard work is about the culture. The new organizational social tools are here. Most people now use social tools as individuals. But society and organizations remain locked in to the machine culture. So the new tools get us nowhere.

But soon, one or two major players are going to have a leader that will know that they have to go for it. And when they do, they will need to have the best advice and support. For they will risk it all.

In my next post, on the RN, we will see what this means. We will see how one man, risked it all and won.

But as a teaser I ask you to look at this picture of HMS Inflexible (Don't you love the name!). This was the pride of the RN in the 1870's. It looks modern. But it isn't. It represents the challenge that traditional organizations have with only using engineering as their way ahead.

Here is HMS Inflexible. It's first Captain was Jackie Fisher - whom we will meet in the next post when he was First Lord of the Admiralty. It is what a large organization is like that uses all the new tools but in the old way.

And here is the revolution, HMS Dreadnought. This is what it like when the new tools and the new culture are aligned.

November 14, 2013

In Pain? Lost? Confused? The "Call" - Please hear it

I write today for some people I know that are, at this very moment, standing on the edge. All their lives to now have been based on working hard to be a success. But now the Call is so loud that they cannot double up on their past efforts. They have given their all and then some.

I offer a message of hope. There is another life. The feeling of being lost is merely the first step to finding this other and better life. The feeling of being lost is the key to the early part of the Hero's Journey.

Image Credit

Dante opens the Inferno with the classic lines:

In the middle road of my life

I awoke in a dark wood

Where the true way was wholly lost

This is not an easy path. For when it is completed, the old Rob, or the old you, the you that was defined by "success" or "failure" in the old world, has to die. No wonder you may have refused the Call before.

The Call gets refused until it cannot. Like surgery in the pre anesthetic era, there comes a time when the pain of the operation is better than the pain of the bladder stone.I was so confused that I had a nervous breakdown. I could not see how I could give up the life that I had devoted myself too with such effort. Others I know have suffered physical health breakdowns. Others have lost their spouse and kids. Some die.

Is this where you are now?

Please don't worry. All that you will really lose by accepting the Call is the illusion.

In his wonderful book, the Heart Aroused, the poet, David Whyte, shows the illusion.

"Becoming aware of this after a lifetime of accepting success as the ultimate healing balm, as something that will give you protection is, declares Dante, like waking in a dark wood. He begins by admitting that the human mind never sees success as "here", but always ahead down the road. He says that the day that you have your desk finally cleared will never arrive. That the level of safety that you are aiming for on the corporate ladder is an illusion. He says that the child you have at home for whom you are making many sacrifices, will be grown and gone by the time you struggle back from the traffic. ....

When you awake you will be lost because you will meet a stranger. And that stranger is you!

When you do awake, you are rousing a different part you, a barely experienced life that lies at your core. Having forgotten this central soul experience, you do not recognize where you are. To that part of you that loved your sleep (in the Matrix), it feels as if it is waking in the dark. It appears to be lost."

No wonder you will feel lost. I had no idea who Rob was. I knew Robert. But Rob? He had disappeared maybe when I was 6. He or she is the best friend you will ever have he and she will love you like no other. This whom I found.

You know who you really are. Reach out to him or to her. Trust him or her. He or she will take you home.

Campbell says this better than I can.

....... 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."

**********************************

".....The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. "Live," Nietzsche says, "as though the day were here." It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal - carries the cross of the redeemer - not in the bright moments of his tribes's great victories, but in the silence of his personal despair."

The Hero of a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell, 1949

Now the real adventure of your life begins.

Posted at 11:29 AM in Great Disruption, Health, Ideas - philosophy, jobs, Making a Living, Mindset, Musings, Organizations and Culture, Paradigms | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 23, 2013

What is it to "Do" in an energetic world versus a kinetic one - Why Networks are Different

This is dynamite. Powerful stuff. But it is mechanical. It works by expanding. It uses mechanical force. To have a bigger bang, you need to compress it and add more. Bigger is better. The more compression, or control, the better.

Its energy is Newtonian. It is kinetic. It uses direct force. This is also how most human organizations work. When we say "Let's do something" we mean do something Kinetic. Our current organizations operate cause and effect levers. They make things or products in carefully engineered processes. They direct operations from the top. They even communicate and so market by using kinetic force. We are bombarded by messages. Above all they control.

This kinetic metaphor applies to each of us as individuals. We are all separate. Unhappy spouses blame the faults of their partners. "If only HE would change!" Sick people look to their doctor for help and refuse to think about their own part in health. Teachers talk at us and confine the curriculum. We measure kinetic outcomes.

To a limited degree this kinetic view works. It works for simple and complicated things. But it is not very effective when applied to complex or complicated issues. Such as people!

Also this Kinetic view of power means that most people have none. Bigger is better.

If we want real power for each of us as a person, we have to go beyond the kinetic.

This is an atomic explosion. It creates kinetic energy but is based on a very different context. The power comes from releasing the inherent energy contained inside an atom. It is really about tapping into the energy of the universe. This is the type of energy that will be used in the best design networks.

This is how I see the new power of people inside a network.

Here are some examples. Many of my regular readers know that in the last 4 years, I have transformed my own body and health. This process began at first by my meeting Euan Semple after an absence of a year or so when I was struck by how he had done the same. If Euan, who I liked and respected could do this, maybe I could? At the same time I met an old friend John Lahey who had done the same. Now I was being influenced by two people that I trusted. Then a third friend introduced me to Michael Rose, one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists. He showed me what I had to do and why.

None of this is kinetic. Without their supprt, I could not have tried this. I would not have taken in the new information without the trust. Without my wife Robin supporting me, I could not have done this. Without my own body giving me feedback, I could not have done this.

In turn, my actions to align my inner self to my evolutionary design has lead to me having an influence on others. I sell nothing. I wait. We talk. They act or they don't. It's all about trust and readiness. I do nothing kinetic. Those that are ready are attracted to my story.

I now see that I am also part of a network of other people who are making the same changes to themselves. This network is coming together. As we find others, our sense of trust and confidence grows. At some time, not far in the future, there will be a critical mass and then there will be "criticality". This powerful movement will attract enough other people into the network to challenge the system. They will challenge it not kinetically by trying to attack it or to change it, but will instead ignore it.

Instead they will help each other. Help each other change inside. Help each other find the new science. Help each other bring to life a new food system. Yes there is lots of kinetic work here, but the energy that drives all of this is social. It comes from releasing the power of the human spirit.

In finding our own power we attract others.

This social energy will change the world.

Posted at 12:22 PM in Organizations and Culture, Paleo, Paradigms | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 22, 2013

Why our institutions cannot cope - Machines Don't do Complexity

Bureaucracies, or how we organize large organizations, have a kinetic culture. If we can accept that the world we live in today is truly complex, then we see why our linear, kinetic, machine-modeled institutions struggle to make sense of it.

Dave Snowden's Cynefin model shows us why. A machine organization is designed to be at its root simple. It is kinetic. Being kinetic, it is based on the idea of direct linkages and so of cause and effect. That is why they spend so much effort on control. Most banks spend more than 40% of their costs on their control system. They are designed to operate in a simple or in a complicated world.

This used to work because they were born in an environment when the world was smaller and so less connected. They inhabited a local space where it was possible to approximate a simple, or at worst, a complicated space. That is why they worked 50 years ago.

But now, even the individual lives in a global space and so do all institutions. Such a global space is by definition complex and sometimes chaotic. This all about how the individual gets empowered by being connected. This connectivity has accelerated since 1985 with the advent of the web and the mobile phone. The connectivity of the individual is growing exponentially. But this is not how our institutions are organized. This personal connectivity and all that it means is an anathema to institutions. Being kinetic they are designed to work top down and to keep the masses silent. They are designed to deliver the benefits to the owners and not to the servants and certainly not to the "customers" who are objects subject to the power of the kinetic tool.

So as the institutions themselves grow in their end game they clash with how life is lived and clash with the real needs of employees and those that seek to be served.

This is why they enforce a one size fits all curriculum. This is why they have to find a pill that is aimed at one part of one pathway. This is why they have to react to crime and not prevent it. This why they have to kill people to make them free. If they let go, they know they will die. They look at the newspaper and at the music industry and see their own death. They are upping the stakes for all dissent. They have no choice.

The more they seek control, the more the dissonance.

Our current response to this dissonance is blame. We think that the leaders are stupid, venal and weak. Now all this may also be true but it does not get us anywhere. Because, if you were that leader, you would be captured by the system too.

Blame here is a waste of energy. Reform is a waste of energy.

This issue is not a moral one. It is about a design that has outlived its utility. A machine is always a machine. All machines work kinetically.

The real issue is about evolution.

We have to design new institutions that are well adapted to the world that we now live in. This means that the new have to be based on natural networks. They have to be able to do the things that Dave talks about here.

Many hope that our institutions can learn from Dave. I don't see how any organization that is based on a values system that is simple can. But a new organization, based largely on a network, can use all the quadrants when needed,

This is why my only hope for us is to stop trying to reform the old and get busy creating the new.