The Importance of Framing when Moving to Non-Linear Thinking

Today and tomorrow we all face a complex design challenge, in transforming existing organisations and economies from a linear to a non-linear economy. We must be able to thrive in a world of constant change and be able to create and lead agile organisations, No Straight Lines has six framing principles a philosophy and practice of how to design organisations and economic models for a non-linear world. – Alan Moore

I am a member of a number of discussion groups on LinkedIn relating to complexity, and one of the best is Systems Thinking World, created by Gene Bellinger. This is a private group and has many leading systems thinkers analysing problems from a systems thinking perspective.

The group is defined by the following premise and purpose:

Premise: We believe a systemic perspective provides the best foundation for creating effective approaches for dealing with challenges and shaping a better tomorrow.

Purpose: Create content and foster interactions which further understanding of the value of a systemic perspective and enables thinking and acting systemically.

However, recently it became obvious to Gene that there were certain problems in the evolution of the group discussions, and he has felt that these have been moving away from the main purpose of the group. This was triggered by him receiving the following comment:

I fear Systems Thinking World is just a reflection of the greater world of chatter…filling in time before we die. Or as we say, muddle headed wombats engaged in the dialogue of the deaf.

Gene then wrote:

After being offered the above perspective of Systems Thinking World by someone I greatly respect I decided a change was in order.

I have a huge amount of sympathy for this dilemma. A large number of group members appear to support this move to refocus on the main purpose and motives for creating the group, while also noting how the term Systems Thinking itself has no single agreed upon definition with practitioners coming from many different academic and philosophical backgrounds. Gene has summarised the many different methods into an overall System of Systems Methodologies, which was inspired by Michael C. Jackson’s work Creative Holism for Managers.

My point for writing about this is to demonstrate that Systems Thinking can be a quite confusing discipline for those looking to learn from it and understand how it can be implemented on a practical level. One of the members of Systems Thinking World made this telling response in the dialogue which has subsequently ensued:

I went to a Systems Thinking seminar with Peter Senge back in the 90s where there was a general bafflement and bemoaning about how this great understanding was still understood by only a few. It seems limited progress has been made in the intervening years. I have had several bemused conversations with high-ups in big-four consultancies who barely know about it all (and one of whom dismissed it as ‘academic’).

So how are we to cross this great chasm between the often rarified philosophical discussions of systems thinking and facilitating the transition to non-linear thinking for non-practitioners of systems thinking? This is absolutely no simple task, and for this reason I very much respect the ability of my friend Alan Moore who has created a way of framing the discussion with the following six principles:

1. Ambiguity – learn how to gain a deeper insight into a complex world by engaging in systemic networked narratives as a form of diagnostic.
2. Adaptiveness – learning to learn how to become agile in a world that is rapidly evolving.
3. Openness – premised upon the insight that natures default setting is open, openness as a principle and practice offers new capabilities, higher organisational performance, trading models, amongst other benefits.
4. Participatory cultures & tools – human nature is designed to work collaboratively. By designing organisational capability with this insight, executives and leaders can accelerate innovation, create breakthrough systemic change, re-define business models, offering a more empowering and legitimate form of leadership.
5. Craftsmanship – how the concept and practice of craftsmanship is as relevant for the individual as it is for an organisation enabling a deeper, more finely tuned approach to learning and the craft of innovation, providing an ethical framework and values based approach to commercial and business practice.
6. Epic – how to design for transformation, how to design for multiple outcomes, how to convert novel ideas into tangible reality, and assert the future.

Alan often works with people by taking them on a “deep dive” in his Transformation Labs. The whole concept of transformation or the journey of the transition of consciousness is entirely missing from the linear and traditional business thinking of the big four business consultancies, and for this reason they are unable to cross the chasm into non-linear thinking. Disruptive does not even begin to cover just how huge the change in worldview is. Alan was the keynote speaker earlier this year at the PINC conference in the Netherlands (People, Ideas, Nature, Creativity). Above is his video where he discusses the concept of no straight lines and it is well worth a watch.

It is one thing to have models and frameworks, but these are not enough. We have to help people with how they understand reality, and framing is a way of doing this which complements the systems models. People can get lost quite rapidly, and framing provides a map which can help people make sense of the conversation and understand where and when the new thinking can be applied in their lives and their organisations. Framing can help a conversation flow, and helps develop a shared understanding while honouring the differences between people at the same time.

Words – What On Earth Are They All About?

This post is called an aside. It is not a full post, just a little aside, as it were.

I thought I would mention that I have started to write on Medium. Medium is a new project set up by Ev Williams, one of the founders of Twitter. I am one of the first writers on it which is a great privilege, and it is a very interesting writing experience.

I published this article today : Words – What On Earth Are They All About? - it is some philosophical musings I hope you enjoy.

Thanks

Simon

Book Review: Business Model Generation

Business Model Generation launched in 2010 and has since become a global success story. It was written as a practical guide to enable people to implement effect change in their organisations and businesses via the redesign and transformation of business models. The most groundbreaking aspect of the book is the introduction of the business model canvas. The structure is shown below, and as you can see it is made up of nine key building blocks.

Prior to the creation of the canvas, businesses and organisations communicated their business models via business cases. These would be created in spreadsheets, written up in documents, and presented in slides. The canvas was created to enable a shared understanding of what a business model actually is. With this format, the model can be easily manipulated to enable those discussing strategy to try out alternative models. Here for example is the business model canvas of the Financial Times:

Author Alex Osterwalder describes the benefits of using a more visual language:

Visual thinking is indispensable to working with business models. … Because business models are complex concepts composed of various building blocks and their interrelationships, it is difficult to truly understand a model without sketching it out.

A business model really is a system where one element influences the other; it only makes sense as a whole. Capturing that big picture without visualizing it is difficult. In fact, by visually depicting a business model, one turns its tacit assumptions into explicit information.

I would certainly agree with this, but just because you have visualised a concept does not necessarily mean you really have captured the whole, and it does not guarantee that the visualisation is actually of high quality and helpful. In reading Business Model Generation I kept swaying from one extreme to another. Many times I kept saying to myself this is too simple, and then at other times I could really see the benefits of such simplification.

I have now settled down and arrived at a final conclusion: the canvas is one of those simple tools that at first sight you think is obvious, but in fact if it was so obvious someone would have done it earlier. It’s simplicity is a huge strength, so long as whoever is using it does not get caught up in thinking that having a business canvas is the be all and end all. The reason I say this is that there is that one of the chapters in the book examines the wider business environment, and the diagram from the book lists the additional complicating factors, without positioning them into a new framework or canvas:

One theme I talk a lot about is the act of seeing. I am always interested in looking at how people are using both the current business model canvas, and also how they are looking to improve it. It is one thing to have a business model for a new product or service, but the current business model canvas has no explicit reference to the organisation’s core values. If people within an organisation really do live by their core values (as opposed to publishing a mission, vision and value statement which reads well but is not followed) then all other activities flow from this. For this reason I quite like a remodelled Value Envelope canvas created by Jeroen Kraaijenbrink:

Photo credit: Jeroen Kraaijenbrink

I think one final comment is that the presentation of the book has been designed to be luscious and seductive. This is no bad thing, but I do wonder if the authors missed a trick in examining the realities of some of the companies they provide case studies and commentary on. For example, Amazon features prominently, with two different case studies, the first being their web services and the second being a more strategic look at how and why Amazon needed to diversify. As the authors say in the opening paragraphs, Business Model Generation is about “creating value, for companies, customers and society. It is about replacing outmoded models.” A recent report on Amazon by the Financial Times was quite an eye opener, stating that some workers walk between seven and fifteen miles a day:

The last group, the “pickers”, push trolleys around and pick out customers’ orders from the aisles. Amazon’s software calculates the most efficient walking route to collect all the items to fill a trolley, and then simply directs the worker from one shelf space to the next via instructions on the screen of the handheld satnav device. Even with these efficient routes, there’s a lot of walking. One of the new Rugeley “pickers” lost almost half a stone in his first three shifts. “You’re sort of like a robot, but in human form,” said the Amazon manager. “It’s human automation, if you like.” Amazon recently bought a robot company, but says it still expects to keep plenty of humans around because they are so much better at coping with the vast array of differently shaped products the company sells.

What did the people of Rugeley make of all this? For many, it has been a culture shock. “The feedback we’re getting is it’s like being in a slave camp,” said Brian Garner, the dapper chairman of the Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club, still a popular drinking spot.

Source: Amazon Unpacked, Financial Times

Amazon have also launched another service called Mechanical Turk. This allows anyone with a computer and internet access to carroy out crowd-sourced jobs (which are described as HITs – Human Intelligence Tasks). This sounds like a great new business model, but often the jobs are poorly paid, with workers signing an agreement which means they are not covered by minimum-wage requirements. Employers can reject work on any grounds, and those doing the work have few options to complain and claim compensation for unpaid work.

So when we examine Amazon, despite a business model canvas which on the surface seems to be cutting edge and next generation, in fact harks back to the beginning of the twentieth century and good old fashioned Taylorism. This is not a paradigm shift from the industrial revolution, it is the industrial revolution with computer chips and security tags and time and motion studies.

On Transition Consciousness I do every so often look at organisations and business leaders I rate and who I think have something extremely valuable to add to the global conversation on the shape and evolution of business, and how business can be inspired by nature. I think that the Business Model Canvas is a valuable tool, but we need to ensure that we do not become seduced by it. In the right hands it becomes an extremely powerful tool to promote effective dialogue and to aid creative thinking around the logic and structure of new business models. But without Values at the core of the thinking, we are in danger of believing the hype and not being able to see that what seems like a visionary business model is in fact just “business as usual” in a different disguise.

Just to be clear on how I rate the book, I do recommend people to read it. While many reviewers on Amazon criticise it for being too simplistic, I think the actual concept of the canvas is powerful, and for those who have not worked with business models and business cases before, for those who are looking at starting or developing a new business for the first time, the book is an excellent introduction. A canvas by its very nature is blank, waiting to be drawn upon, and I can see many ways in which it can be used creatively to develop new insights, innovations, communication and team building in organisations, and in fact I am developing various workshops utilising the canvas at this moment in time. But ultimately, it can only reflect the quality of thinking which goes into the thinking behind the business models, and so we continually need to seek out mentors, role models and also inspiration from nature if we really want to be a part of what Peter Senge calls The Necessary Revolution.

Dee Hock in his own words

The source of all our problems today comes from the gap between how we think and how nature works. ~Gregory Bateson

Dee Hock: Credit – Social Action DK

Today’s post is brought with help from my good friend Jan Höglund who is a great person to follow on Twitter. Jan regularly tweets extracts from the books he is reading, and this week he has been reading One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock, the founder and creator of VISA. I started with the quote from Bateson because Hock as a young adult was an avid reader of the latest thinking in biology, chaos and complexity theory. In this sense he was way ahead of his time in contemplating what this nascent science could teach those in business. He created the term “chaord” which referred to a type of organisation existing on the edge of chaos, a system consisting of both chaos and order.

Slide credit: Simon Robinson

Hock said that the VISA organisation only ever managed to implement around 25% of his vision. I find him a very interesting character, and well worth studying. There are a few interviews with him you will find on the internet, but in the meantime, with thanks to Jan, here is just some of his philosphy and wisdom:

I learned a long time ago that listening to what people don’t say is often more important that listening to what they do.

People are not “things” to be manipulated, labeled, boxed, bought and sold. Above all else, they are not “human resources.”

Everyone is a born leader…We were all leaders until we were sent to school to be commanded, controlled, and taught to do likewise.

The source of that abuse [of human ingenuity] is mechanistic, industrial age, dominator organizations and the management practices they spawn.

Without question, the most abundant, least expensive, most underutilized, and constantly abused resource in the world is human ingenuity.

In every moment of life, we are simultaneously leading and following.

In the deepest sense, distinction between leaders and followers is meaningless.

Joy and satisfaction are in the pursuit of an objective, not in its realization.

The real power is yours, not theirs. Forget management! Strike the word from your dictionary!

It is from failure that…growth…so often come, provided…that one can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and try again.

Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, employ good people, and free them to do the same. All else is trivia.

A true leader cannot be bound to lead. A true follower cannot be bound to follow.

Leader presumes follower. Follower presumes choice. One who is coerced…is not a follower in any true sense of the word.

The nature of our organizations…is not only increasingly irrelevant to our enormous…problems, it is a primary cause of them.

The highest levels of management in all organizations…are now formed of an interchangeable, cognitive elite with immense self-interest.

The industrial age became the age of managers.

Just as the machine metaphor was the father of today’s organizational concepts, the industrial age was the mother.

In industrial age organizations, purpose slowly erodes into process.

There can be no life whatever without balanced cycles of giving and receiving.

The essence of community, its very heart and soul, is the nonmonetary exchange of value.

Only fools worship their tools.

The nonmonetary exchange of value is the most effective, constructive system ever devised.

All things are simultaneously independent, interdependent, and intradependent…

Agriculture that destroys soil & poisons water…Unjust judicial systems…Governments that can’t govern…Economies that can’t economize.

Schools that can’t teach…Unhealthy health-care systems…Corporations that can’t cooperate…Welfare systems in which no one fares well

Today it doesn’t take much thought to realize we’re in the midst of a global epidemic of institutional failure.

It need not have been so in the past. It should not be so now. It cannot be so forever.

Tyranny is tyranny no matter how petty, well intended, or cleverly rationalized.

For centuries we have conditioned ourselves to ever more powerful notions of domination, …and separable self-interest…

At bottom, desire to command & control is a deadly, destructive compulsion to rob self & others of the joys of living.

Life is eternal, perpetual becoming

Control requires denial of life. Life is uncertainty, surprise, hate, wonder, speculation, love, joy, pity, pain, mystery, beauty.

Language is such clumsy communication compared to that between breeze and bird.

For all the wonders of modern science and its obsession with measurement…life will never surrender its secrets to a yardstick

I have long chuckled at the absurd notion that mind, body, and spirit are separate things, like cogs, cams, and springs of a clock.

We are a microcosm of the infinite interconnectedness of all things: at once particulate & whole, self & not-self.

I feel compelled to open my life to new possibilities.

Business, power, and money are not what your life is about.

We live in an era of massive institutional failure.

About Jan Höglund

Jan Höglund has over 25 years of experience in software development. Jan publishes on both his personal blog (in both Swedish and English) and also on Twitter @janhoglund, inspirational articles and quotes from authors he has been reading. Jan is “In search of more life-giving ways of working” with interests covering Agile software development, Sociocracy, Large Group Methods, Visual Facilitation, Self-organization and Presencing.

Let’s Hack Brazil! Thoughts on the implications for Twitter’s move into Brazil

Jack Dorsey

I live in São Paulo and it was therefore extremely interesting to watch a recent interview on Globo News with Jack Dorsey, the inventor of Twitter, and Ronaldo Lemos, Director of the Centre of Technology and Society, FGV, one of the most important educational and research institutes in Brazil. In discussing Brazil, Dorsey had this to say:

You have a lot of amazing events coming up in the next four years and the world wants to see them. The world can’t all be here but the world wants to participate. The more Brazil can share the amazing things which are happening in this country, through Twitter, through Vine, the more the world can see, and the more the world gets engaged with Brazil. I think it helps everyone in the country. But also it allows a connection between Brazil and the rest of the world. Not only will people be sharing what is happening here, they will be reading about what is all around them and getting a sense of the most important and meaningful things. So I think, the responsibility is, I would like to share what is great about this country with the world. We are providing two great platforms to do this with Twitter and Vine. I hope to see a lot.

(Source: Globo News. Note that this link will take you to the full interview. It starts with an introduciton in Portuguese, but the actual interview is in English with Portuguese subtitles.)

One of more interesting parts of the discussion though was what Dorsey had to say about Square, the new mobile payment system. Lemos had asked about this especially since in Brazil, a large proportion of people still do not have bank accounts (bank accounts seem to be far more expensive here to open and maintain each month, as are credit cards).

The focus on mobile payments is the wrong focus. We want to make payments disappear completely. They are a burden. Not all can participate in it. We are not focussed on payments but commerce. It has become difficult and abstract. We can increase participation and the velocity.

Brazil is the third largest country in terms of users on Twitter, with around 40 million subscribers. Adam Bain has been in São Paulo this week and he sees Brazil as being a huge comemrcial opportunity over the next ten years. He was here to develop strategies with some of the largest consumer brands, and his focus is on developing revenues which will come from the two major sporting events, the world cup and Olympics. According to Bain, “users in Brazil are responding better than others to advertisement in the form of promoted tweets with an engagement rate two or three times higher than the global average.” (Source: Reuters)

Bain’s interview in Reuters focussed exclusively on seeing Brazilians as consumers who react the most in the world to adverts on Twitter. This was a little sad I thought, but then his job does obviously focus on maximising revenue from Twitter’s customer base. Dorsey is a very interesting person, and in my previous post I wrote about how he is attempting to ensure that his new project, the Obvious Corporation, develops as a mindful organisation, utilising the tools and methodologies of Holacracy to do so. Dorsey also had this to say about entrepreneurship:

Entrepreneurship is an attitude you take on, to take big risks to do something you believe in. You can start a company or also inside a big company. It means having the conviction and you can paint a picture of what you want to see in the world, then work backwards, then fighting like hell to make it exist. Many people have excuses which stop them doing what they really want to do. People have to start today, show people and then get feedback. They may say the idea is stupid. They may be wrong, or it may be right.

At this point in this article I do have to reference Brazil’s problems, which are many. However, I am only doing so in order to be able to take a look at some of my ideas for a way forward. In the coming months we are going to be seeing more and more articles in the press, both in and outside of Brazil, questioning the readiness of the country to host the games. While some stadiums are being completed, others are behind schedule, and little work appears to have been done on the very severe transport and infrastructure issues the Government promised would be fixed. Gregory Michener, Assistant Professor of political science and administration at the Fundaçao Getulio Vargas (EBAPE) in Rio de Janeiro has written an excellent piece of analysis asking if Brazil can avoid the downward spirals now facing its other Latin American neighbours. This shows just how bad the political problems are here, but underneath these problems is a mindset which to me seems more interested in maintaining the status quo rather than displaying any discernible signs of desire for progress in this struggling country.

So Brazil’s problems are severe, and that for me means just one thing. we’re going to have to hack Brazil. Although Twitter are focussing on advertising as a means of generating revenue from Brazil, I think we really need to take a deeper look at Square, and just what it is offering in terms of payment solutions. Innovation takes many forms, and it is not just about creating new things. It is also a way of seeing, just as Steve Jobs many years ago saw the potential in graphical user interfaces when he visited Xerox Park.

Photo credit: ericandemilysadventures.blogspot.com.br

I really feel sorry for the many entrepreneturs here in Brazil, and there are huge cultural and legal barriers preventing them from really being able to take their ideas from the concept stage and see them become a reality. Brazil is plagued by a bureacracy which is addicted to long and complex processes, and where Brazilians have to pay considerable amounts of money and time having their documents “legalised”, i.e. going to a privately run cartório office in order to have any form of document be stamped to show that it is authentic and official.

Given how all the mobile networks are currently really struggling with the roll-out of 4G networks (and to be honest, they are still struggling with 3G and many other aspects of their businesses) then there is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs who are mindful of the issues in Brazil to really start to hack a solution to a great deal of social problems. Rather than seeing Sqare as just a payment system, it could surely form the basis of a platform for many other authentiction processes, and could really provide Brazilians with an alternative to being exploited by the country’s cartório owners?

Maybe, or maybe not. There are many other possibilities too. But as I often say. Sometimes it is not about the technology. We are drowning in new technology and struggling to come to terms with the implications of the Big Data paradigm. In concert with the new horizons opening up with new technology, we also need a transition of consciousness. I will continue to mentor and carry out my activities here in Brazil centred around innovation and creativity, and with the help of mindful entrepreneurs, rather than chipping away at the problems, if we all hack together we will make some much needed and dramatic progress for everyone here.

São Paulo is already hosting hackathons in the form of campus parties (this seems to be the translation of hackathons in Brazil), and there have been some major events run by the Campus Party  organisation. I would love the likes of Jack Dorsey and Adam Bain to start to address the youth in Brazil, because there are many good people here looking to discover solutions, but help and mentoring is needed, and with help from the right people with the right mindset, great things can happen, of that I am sure.

References and Links

Ciencia e Tecnologia conversa com Jack Dorsey, criador do Twitter

Twitter eyes big business in Brazil’s World Cup, Olympics

Can Brazil buck the Latin American trend?

Can a 10 kg lump of clay help us see better than Google’s new glasses?

My first job after graduating in psychology was to work at BT Laboratories in Ipswich. For a bit of a nerd like me, this was geek heaven, especially having futurologist Peter Cochrane, Head of Research as your Director. As well as our day jobs as design thinkers, developing products and services based around human needs and not just technical capabilities, we had skunk time, free time each week to be creative and dream new dreams.

Peter Cochrane

All sorts of prototypes were built in our part of the labs, and we played a lot with virtual reality machines and wearable computers and mobile concepts. As you can see from this screen shot from a documentary made in 1996, the wearable technology was bulky to say the least. In reality, these “mobile” concepts had hidden cables running up our clothes, connecting the screens to hidden Macs running the software.

But these were great times and a great working environment. So of course it has been interesting to follow the launch of Google Glass. What we envisioned in the early 90s has now become a viable commercial reality.

Photo credit: Google

A review of Google Glass caught my eye this week, as it did many other followers of all that is high tech and new. It was technology writer Robert Scoble’s review of Google Glass, being one of the first people to have access. After one week’s use, he wrote that he barely went one minute without them, and that he could no longer see himself living his life in future without this kind of device.

This is the most interesting new product since the iPhone and I don’t say that lightly.

Yeah, we could say the camera isn’t good in low light. We could say it doesn’t have enough utility. It looks dorky. It freaks some people out (it’s new, that will go away once they are in the market). 

But I don’t care. This has changed my life. I will never live a day without it on. 

It is that significant. 

Google Glass projects images directly into your retina, allowing a virtual reality to be overlaid on top of the physical reality. Speech recognition means no more clunky faffing on a touch-screen, and according to Scoble “nearly everyone had an emotional outburst of “wow” or “amazing” or “that’s crazy” or “stunning.”

Photo credit: Google

One phrase Scoble used was interesting, especially as I did not know quite what he meant by “having these on opens you up to a new commerce world.”

What is a “commerce world”? I have no idea, but this allows me to enter into a discussion about perception, reality, and mental models. I finished my degree in psychology with a deep unease which I could not accurately pinpoint. I had studied the human mind for three years, but felt I knew little about the human condition. People would say to me “Simon, you studied psychology. You will know all about…” and then discuss what ever interesting aspect was currently in the news, or of interest to them.

In truth, the mind and brain are still a mystery to us. Yes in the last twenty years brain scanning technology has progressed rapidly as with all technology, but the use of brain images to accurately comprehend cognition and consciousness is rife with confusion and a total lack of consensus as to their interpretation.

What was missing for me was phenomenology and hermeneutics, and a immersion into the worlds of the great European philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Their conception of reality was opened up to me via  Henri Bortoft, my teacher for the first week of my masters degree in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. Henri turns you world upside down in ways in which you could not possibly imagine, and his dynamic way of seeing requires far more than just a reading of his books, far more even than contemplation on a degree course. I have spent these last few years since graduation exploring in every way I can phenomenology and hermeneutics, and gradually I realised that here was what I could sense but not know was missing my my psychology degree.

I am currently working my way through Merleau-Ponty, and English speakers have the great luck of having a new translation of his classic Phenomenology of Perception. I will not attempt to summarise his stance here, but he offers a couple of wonderful observations on the value of philosophy. “True philosophy entails learning to see the world anew” and “the philosopher is a perpetual beginner.” Ultimately, “we must not wonder if we truly perceive a world; rather, we must say; the world is what we perceive.”

This last phrase is critical – the world is what we perceive. For philosophers of perception such as Merleau-Ponty (and remember, his philosophy was informed by the latest scientific insights from psychology and neurobiology) it is not a case of there being an objective world out there, replete with meaning, that we just have to physically perceive. The “world” we experience is a mixture of what is out there and all the meaning and memories and significance that we attribute to it. Hence people literally do live in different realities.

Alan Moore

Humility is required to really break out of our existing realities, I feel a dramatic instance of this is told by Alan Moore, author of No Straight Lines, a book which alerts us to the very different non-linear reality we now are living in. Alan runs some very inspirational workshops he calls Transformation Laboratories, and he often asks students to participate in a deceptively simple 10 minute exercise.

Alan splits the class into groups of three, and gave each of them a 10 kg lump of clay. 10 kg is both large and heavy. In the time available students are not allowed to speak, and they are required to hold the clay at all times. Their task is to mould it into the most beautiful thing they could.

When the time is up it can be quite remarkable what great artwork the groups produce. But this is not always the case, and Alan notes that it is sometimes business leaders who experience the greatest challenge. Sometimes one person takes on a dominant role, literally stamping their mark on the clay, flattening it or pounding it as opposed to allowing the creativity of the group as a whole to flourish. When participants in this type of high level role suddenly encounter for the first time the impact of their actions on others, and on a piece of work which is so concretely visible, the impact on themselves can be profound, astounding, quite emotional and long-lasting.

As I said before, to see well is an act of humility. Google Glass may well add to our visual field, but profound perception is much more than what enters our visual field. Sometimes we need experiences far beyond that which we experience every day, and it only through the skilled facilitation of someone as creative and insightful as Alan that we will really be able to change the way we see.

Yes new technology is great, but what will lead to us creating fairer, happier and a more humane society is a process of transition, inner transition. Alan has created a wonderful structured experience for this transition in his Transformation Labs. These are incredibly intense two and a half day experiences where he holds the space to enable a the emergence of deep and profound insights in people who are looking for really innovative solutions for their organisations.

It will be interesting to see just how much demand and use their is for Google Glass. But we must never forget that perception, and an augmented perception of reality which is the dynamic way of seeing, it comes from within, and no amount of additional technology will help us truly see in new ways. It is a learning journey, and if we can find that humility inside ourselves, whole new worlds will literally, open up to us in ways we could never have imagined.

Holacracy – A New Operating System for Organisations – Who they are, what do they do, and why they are interesting

I have been following the guys at Holacracy for quite a while now and I’ve been meaning to jot down some thoughts in a blog for some time. In my lectures in complexity I talk a lot about complex systems in nature, for example the ways in which animals swarm, behave  intelligently, solve intricate problems and can make life-and-death decisions accurately and repeatedly. I then look at various business case studies such as Kyocera’s Amoeba Management System and Gore Inc’s lattice management structure, noting how they too appear to be based on nature’s principles.

One of the major challenges though is moving from an out-of-date mechanistic top-down hierarchy to a more natural business structure. The results can often be even more complexity:

Today`s big companies do very little to enhance the productivity of their professionals. Verticallly oriented organizational structures, retrofitted with ad hoc and matrix overlays, nearly always make professionals work more complex and inefficient – relics of the industrial age.

Lowell Bryan and Claudia Joyce The 21st-Century Organization McKinsey Quarterly, Issue 3, 2005

Transforming an organisation at a very fundamental level is therefore no simple task. It is for this reason I have been studying Holacracy’s philosophy and solutions. Brian Robertson, the founder, notes that organisations have the following issues, as seen in this slide below.

Slide credit: Brian Robertson, Holacracy

Robertson asks the question that perhaps organisations are designed to achieve these results? Perhaps they are features or side effects of the system, as a result of how we organise? So we need to look at how power and organisation and communication works.

Slide credit: Brian Robertson, Holacracy

Holarcracy is a social technology allowing an organisation to upgrade its operating system. In Robertson’s words, it is an “upgrade which changes how power works and decisions get made.” One of the central developments Holacracy have created is their written constitution which documents the core rules, structure, and process of the Holacracy operating system. This has recently been re-published in plain English, and can be downloaded from the Holacracy website.

I recently took part in a Holacracy seminar, and it really was interesting. One thing becomes clear which is the whole Holacracy system is more than just a number of physical documents. I would recommend that you watch the introductory presentation above to get a much more detailed picture of what it is and how it could be implemented.

One of the key proponents of Holacracy is Evan Williams, one of the founders of Twitter, and who has also founded the Obvious Corporation which recently launched Medium (of which I have just started contributing to). The clear focus from Williams was to create a mindful organisation, and he saw Holacracy as a key foundation for his vision.

“Holacracy is the opposite of the cliché way to run a startup. People think “freedom, no job description, everybody does everything, it’s totally flat, and that’s cool because we’re all down with those rules”. But actually that creates tons of anxiety and inefficiency, and various modes of dysfunction, whether we have to build consensus around every decision, or I’m gonna do a land grab for power… People romanticize startup cultures, but I know it’s fairly rare that people in startups say “this is it, it is amazing and everybody is super-productive and going along”. So in Holacracy, one of the principles is to make the implicit explicit — tons of it is about creating clarity: who is in charge of what, who is taking what kind of decision — and there is also a system for defining that, so it’s very flexible at the same time.”

Evan Williams on Building a Mindful Company

Much of the work I am doing here in Brazil is to help organisations overcome complex problems. Brazil has huge problems, of course it does, but then so do pretty much all countries right now. I think for a certain type of organisation with the right mindset and a deep seated desire to evolve, Holacracy offers a very credible potential solution, an upgrade to a more natural organisation, one which is authentically whole. I have not implemented Holacracy myself of course, so I can not speak from experience. But a number of organisations with visionary leaders are beginning to implement the constitution and structure, and for this reason it is certainly worthy of study and investigation.

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