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Planning in Disruptive Change

“We want desperately to take the uncertainty out of the future. But when we take the uncertainty out, it is no longer the future. It is the present projected forward.”

–Peter Block from
Community: The Structure of Belonging

By Abby Straus

We are living in exciting and challenging times. Until recently, strategic planning during a global pandemic would have been unthinkable; yet here we are making the best of it as folks on a mission to create a bright future for our organizations and their people. As well as COVID 19, we are experiencing unprecedented rates of technological and social change, some of which—like a new awareness of systemic racism—are rocking the very foundations of American society. We are fortunate to stand on the shoulders of academics and practitioners who have studied this brand of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (known as “VUCA”) and who have developed frameworks that help us navigate such unfamiliar and changing terrain.

One thing we know for sure: In light of accelerating rate of change, we can no longer create static plans where we invest large amounts of energy up front and then simply implement. Rather, we must work from first principles that we know will stand the test of time, and then build strategies and action plans, revisiting them frequently, and testing them for relevance and feasibility. We must establish dynamic control by using a probe-sense-respond methodology, where we try new things, feed what works and remove resources from what does not. We must be adaptable in our thinking as well as our action and be willing to pivot when the situation demands.

That having been said, as organizations with jobs to perform, we need concrete direction for how to proceed day-to-day. Here are some tools that support us in understanding the territory and creating a roadmap to the future we desire.

Tools for Navigating VUCA

The Cynefin Framework

The Cynefin (pronounced Kin-e-vin) framework, created by complex systems expert Dave Snowden, helps us understand the thinking and action necessary to deal with VUCA. Much of traditional planning lives in the right-hand quadrants and is based on the premise that the future will be enough like today that we can successfully meet our challenges and opportunities by relying on what is known and the advice of experts.

For some time now, however, we have been living in complexity (upper left quadrant) surrounded by unpredictability and rapid change. Add COVID 19, and we are catapulted into totally novel, or chaotic, situations (lower left) where it is impossible to tell with any certainty what the future will bring. Will libraries once again be places where people gather? How might services have to change to address the new needs of communities? What will happen to budgets? To jobs? To the health of our citizens? Will there be a “new normal” and, if so, what will it be?

In this environment, we can only speculate about what will happen next. Therefore, the action we take must be based on a very different kind of thinking. We must cultivate a high tolerance for uncertainty and the means to try new things. This will undoubtedly involve creating new organizational structures to maximize adaptability and minimize red tape, so that we can quickly, and with the least resistance, develop and implement novel solutions to challenges as they arise.

Will we still operate in the simple and complicated domains where best practices and the advice of experts suffice? Of course we will; but we must also become good at navigating the complex and, if recent history is a guide, the chaotic dimensions as well in order to develop the agility necessary to thrive today and tomorrow.

Scenario Planning

Scenario Planning is an activity we can engage in to use what we know today to imagine and plan for the future. This framework consists of four steps:

  1. Identify driving forces: What is going on in our world (society, economics, technology, etc.) that is having or will have a big effect on our organization
  2. Identify critical uncertainties: Which two to three of these will have the most influence on your organization?
  3. Develop plausible scenarios: How might these uncertainties combine? Develop up to four scenarios describing what might happen.
  4. Discuss the implications: How will these scenarios affect your organization, it’s mission and strategy?

It is important to remember that we cannot predict the future; we can only develop a sense of what might happen based on the knowledge we have now. This process is particularly useful when we have clear trends to work with, the increasing use of online platforms, for example, or the certain demise of an industry. When we have less definitive information, it is frequently wiser to use techniques to help us understand the kind of adaptive capacity we need to build in order to address a range of eventualities. One way to do this is to use the four-step environmental scan described below.

Environmental Scan

  1. What can we control that affects performance and outcomes?
  2. What can we influence (outside our sphere of control) that affects performance and/or outcomes?
  3. What are we concerned about in our environment (outside our spheres of control or influence) that affects performance and/or outcomes?
  4. How can we adapt our strategy and/or actions to take advan­tage of the opportunities and manage the risks identified in this environmental scan? 

KAIR or Dynamic SWOT

Keep-Abandon-Invent-Reinvent (KAIR) is a process we developed for exploring how to create positive change. You can use it as an individual, in a team, or throughout an organization. It is a dynamic, adaptive version of the traditional Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis that is both aspirational and generates immediate calls to action.

The tool has four parts:

  1. Keep strategies or activities that are working well
  2. Abandon strategies or activities that are a barrier to future success
  3. Invent new solutions that have not been previously considered
  4. Reinvent activities or solutions that could benefit from improvement

The KAIR process is useful for individuals, teams, and organizations, as an after action review or as part of a planning process.

All of these practices—and others—may be used together as part of an effort to get our minds and hands around our future. Regardless of the method we choose, it is vital to constantly uncover and test our assumptions. We must ask

As we said, the shift in thinking lies in learning to hold our plans lightly enough that we can allow change as it occurs rather than wasting energy with anything proven not to be viable. It takes some practice, but the rewards are huge. We can create our new path one step at a time by testing the ground as we go. In order to create the future, we must be able to dance with uncertainty, knowing that we have what it takes to navigate VUCA together.

 

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Own Your Story, Own Your Day

By Abby Straus

A client once told me how stressed out she was by watching the news. “What’s preventing you from turning it off?” I asked. To which she replied, “I have to stay informed!” This began a conversation about whose script she was working from, hers or someone else’s. Her story went something like this: “If I don’t know about everything that’s going on in the world, I’ll appear uninformed, and people will think less of me.”

I asked what alternative story she might adopt that would support her in lowering stress, which was getting in the way of many things, including working well and enjoying her life. Initially, she was resistant, unable to get her head around the idea that there might be another story to tell.

But then a light went on. “Oh,” she said, “Do you mean that maybe it’s not true about me having to know everything? That I just made it up? Or somebody else made it up and I bought it? “Bingo!”, I said, and patted her on the back. “Now, let’s think up a better story.”

What’s your story? What are you telling yourself that’s keeping you from finding joy, and getting things done in a way that’s safe and sane? Here are some other popular, and equally destructive, stories you might have heard:

  • I’m being selfish if I take time for myself.
  • If I’m not busy all the time, I’m not getting anything done.
  • If I don’t know the answer, I will look weak and stupid.
  • I’m not enough. This one comes in many flavors: thin enough, rich enough, smart enough, sexy enough.
  • I’ll be happy when… (you fill in the blank).

Wow! Who made this stuff up? Actually, it was me, aided, of course, by cultural messages and habits of thought we all pick up if we’re not paying attention. A big shift happened when I became aware of my stories and realized that I could replace them with better ones, like these:

  • When I take time for myself, I’m happier, healthier, and have more to give others.
  • I’m dropping “busy” from my vocabulary. I want to be productive, not busy!
  • Genuine curiosity and willingness to learn are traits that I value and intend to model as a leader.
  • I am enough. (This one is hard, and it helps to recognize that there are entire industries dedicated to convincing us otherwise via every form of media.)
  • I’m looking for things to be happy about right now!

While we can’t control the stories other people tell, or the cultural fishbowl in which we swim, we can interrogate our own thinking. We can identify the narratives we run over and over, ask how they’re serving us; and, if they are not, we can replace them with ones that support us in living our best life.

What’s one story you tell yourself that isn’t serving you? What would you be able to do, and how would you feel, if you stopped telling this story? What new story might you tell that would support you in doing and feeling your best and owning your day?

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A Mindful Practice for Social Distancing

By Abby Straus

If you’ve spent any time with the M&B team, you’ll know how enthusiastic we are about mindfulness practice. Focusing our attention with skill allows us to get more done, minimizes stress, improves performance, supports health, and enhances relationships. Many of us associate mindfulness with sitting meditation, yoga, prayer, or martial arts. While these are tried and true avenues, we can also bring awareness to simple acts in everyday life, like cleansing our bodies to keep ourselves safe during a pandemic.

This is a video of “Embodied”, the last sermon by the Reverend Elizabeth Teal, a dear and longtime friend of mine, who passed recently. Liz describes how the mindful act of washing our hands, face and feet can provide us with connection we so need in these times of physical distancing. She shows us how to turn a mundane necessity into a sacred rite of self-care and compassion, which is exactly the kind of alchemy that can take place when we bring awareness to everything we do.

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Gates’ Rule: Go Home So Others Will Too

All leaders, from the executive down to the team level, should view themselves as stewards of their organization’s most valuable resource: their people. As the person in the lead, others will be looking at how you set the tone and pace of the organization.

In too many organizations today, extra hours and days worked are seen as badges of honor. We often get dragged into competition with colleagues over who stayed the latest or showed up on the weekend. Mobile and remote technology can add fuel to the competition as emails zing back and forth long after most have officially ended their workday. All of this supposedly signals who is most dedicated or should be promoted within the organization.

We all want to be passionate about our work and feel valued within our organizations. Sometimes this does mean contributing extra hours for a special event, new initiative, or emergency situation but the grinding 24/7 “always-on” work culture cannot be sustained, not without diminishing returns for the organization as a whole. And it’s not just our place of work that suffers but also our health, our families, and our communities.

Few people alive today have as impressive of a resume as Robert M. Gates. His multidecade career in public service took him to the top of the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense. In addition, he also served as president of Texas A&M University, national president of the Boy Scouts of America, and on numerous corporate boards… to keep it brief.

In Gates’ book A Passion for Leadership, he discusses a practice he established for himself and others as both Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Secretary of the Department of Defense. These cabinet-level positions were demanding and answerable directly to the President. Gates explained that, absent a meeting at the White House or national crisis, he would try to leave the office by 6:00 P.M. every night. Quite often, as head of these expansive agencies, he would have additional work to finish at home. However, by leaving the office he signaled to staff that it was okay for them to leave as well, to spend much needed time with families and to rest. He knew that as long as he stayed in his office, others would too and work late into the night. Over time, this would lead to worn out staff making “bad decisions and giving bad advice.”

For these same reasons, Gates said he always used vacation time: three weeks in August as CIA director, two weeks in the summer and one at Christmas as defense secretary, and four weeks as president of Texas A&M. As Gates said about his time-off:

“I always returned from vacation with a yellow tablet full of ideas and initiatives for further change and reform.” It’s about recharging so we can use our creative energy and talents most effectively.”

Mobile technology and remote working options have created new challenges for escaping this “always-on” frenzied work culture. Perhaps the biggest challenge is the bleeding between work and home life.  How many of us still respond to phone calls, text messages, and emails after leaving the office or “logging off” for the day? How many of us go to bed and wake up checking work messages? Has your weekend ever started off on the wrong foot because a colleague fired off a heated email at 7:00 PM on a Friday night? Ever take a quick “peak” at your work email or “check-in” from a family vacation? Our modern working lives do not have to be like this!

While there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to setting boundaries and expectations in the workplace, as a leader you set the tone and pace for your organization. Make sure your expectations are clear to everyone and lead by example.

In the spirit of Gates’ 6:00 PM Rule, below are a few ideas to consider when setting expectations and guidelines for use of mobile technology and remote working within your organization:

  1. Avoid checking work communications outside of set hours
    • Turn-off work devices at home
    • Uninstall work email apps over long weekends and vacations
    • Ask: do I really need work email and related apps installed on my personal phone?
  2. Be mindful of colleagues’ personal time by not sending message outside of set hours. This can create a ripple effect and breed unhealthy competition where everyone is engaging in work at all hours
  3. If working later than other members of team, use your DRAFT folder and schedule send times for the next business day
  4. If “on-call” or working to meet deadline, the team should set a clear start and end time/date
    • Set clear expectations for what needs to happen in these special circumstances
    • Use leave time immediately following any extra demanding periods

Most importantly, as leaders, be the champions of cultural change in your organization. Set the example. Go home, unplug, and rest up. Then encourage others to join you so we can all give 100% when it matters most.

This article is the part of a series on how to most effectively manage our time and attention for the work that matters most. Subsequent articles will continue to look at technology and how we interact together in organizations. Check back later for more!

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Tips for Setting Boundaries Around Our Time and Attention

The challenge in today’s workplace is to be increasingly more efficient, effective, and above all creative in our work. To rise to this challenge, we must be able to focus our attention and devote our time to the tasks that matter most, whether that be preparing for a sales presentation or writing a report for stakeholders.

In our hyper-connected world, this means not only escaping from interruptions in the physical world, but the endless barrage of alerts coming from our computers and mobile devices. Setting up boundaries, both physical and digital, leaves open the necessary mental bandwidth and the freedom to pursue our creative endeavors.

Below are a few tips for setting boundaries in the workplace and creating the space to focus on the most important tasks in front of you:

  1. Make it known when you need to focus with no distractions:
    • Announce it at a staff meeting in advance
    • Block out time on your public calendar (“unavailable”)
    • Use a “do not disturb” sign on your office door or cubicle
    • Ask colleagues to hold phone calls and visitors
    • Turn-off alerts and mute all devices
  1. If a colleague or visitor “drops in” for an unexpected, off-topic conversation, greet them politely, as you do not want to discourage “face-to-face” interactions, “open door” policies, or the free flow and exchange of ideas. However, it is imperative that you are direct and upfront that in the moment, you must focus your energy on something else. Invite them to return or schedule time on the calendar for that chat.
  2. The office can be a never-ending flurry of activity. Collective anxiety can rise in periods of tight deadlines, budgeting periods, or tumultuous current events. Our colleagues, both peers and supervisors, will find ample opportunity to infringe on our time and attention. All of this can take away our focus and drain our creative energy.
    If you find this describes your workplace, you may want to find an alternative space, that provides you a needed escape and relief from the daily “busy-ness” around the office. This could include:
    • Unused meeting, conference, or breakout room
    • Library
    • Cafeteria or offsite coffee shop
    • Work from home

Whatever space you use should conform to established organization polices and be most conducive to how you work. Some people like absolute silence, while others thrive in a busy space full of white noise. Working from home has its own set of benefits and challenges for getting things done. Be thoughtful with whatever you chose.

  1. Be strategic and intentional with your calendar. It is said that “time is a finite resource that we will never get back.”
    Do not overbook yourself and make sure that your calendar is being used most effectively to support your goals. This includes how you spend your lunch time, scheduled breaks, or those precious free moments. Sometimes the most “efficient” or expedient ways to spend our time are not the most fruitful. Quite often, we fail to leave critical space for reflection or informal engagements with others.Former Secretary of Defense and Marine Corps General, Jim Mattis, in his new book Call Sign Chaos, offers a kernel of wisdom on this subject from his 40 plus year career in national defense:

    … lack of time to reflect is the single biggest deficiency in senior decision-makers. If there was one area where I consistently fell short, that was it. Try as I would, I failed to put aside hours for sequestering myself outside the daily routine to think more broadly: What weren’t we doing that needed to be done? Where was our strategy lacking? What lay over the horizon? … a leader must try to see the overarching pattern, fitting details into the larger situation.

  2. Find a personal “battle rhythm” that allows you to get things done creatively, separate from the needs and priorities of others and away from endless distractions.
    Some of us work best in the early morning hours, while others prefer to work late into the night. Sometimes arriving just 15 minutes early, before everyone else filters in, can help us set our priorities and jump into a creative flow. Whatever it is that works best for you, find and stick to it!
    Knowing that we all work differently, managers and leaders in organizations may want to examine workplace policies to make allowances for flexible working hours and locations, even if just temporary to help a team get through a project or trying period.

This article is the first in a series on how to most effectively manage our time and attention for the work that matters most. Subsequent articles will look at technology and how we interact together in organizations. Check back next week for more!

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F-35 ELCP

Opportunities & Challenges

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is one of the largest and most complex major projects being undertaken today. Nine partner nations and multiple American military and industry partners work together in a high VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) environment to produce a product upon which the lives of service men and women around the world depend.

Effective leadership is required across the organization, and organization systems themselves must constantly be upgraded to allow for the most efficient and effective work to take place.

What we did:
In collaboration with Defense Acquisition University (DAU) and F-35 Program Office Senior Leadership, M&B co-developed the Enterprise Cohort Leadership Program (ELCP), an ongoing cohort program to support leaders across the F-35 enterprise in being and doing their best.

ELCP is a condensed program of sixteen weeks, comprising one half-day per week with workplace learning assignments back on the job, and a capstone project to scope an initiative that will have significant impact on the learners’ leadership development and business/mission outcomes for the enterprise.

The program is designed to maintain a consistent base of frameworks and also to evolve as needs change.

Results:
Eleven cohorts have been completed with over 200 participants who now share common leadership language and frameworks with which to positively influence work across the organization. A cadre of coaches is in place to offer ongoing support to colleagues and to further the work going forward.

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Vibrant Communities: Reinventing an Economic Development Organization

This past winter, M&B principal and Northeast Economic Development Association (NEDA) board president, Abby Straus, appeared in the annual journal of the Kettering Foundation, Connections 2018: Experiments in Organizational Innovation.

In the article entitled: “Vibrant Communities: Reinventing an Economic Development Organization,” Straus discussed the organizational transformation underway inside NEDA to maintain its relevancy to those creating vibrant communities throughout the region. Along the journey toward reinvention, Straus explained, NEDA began to ask itself:

Who has a stake in the economic wellbeing of our communities? How might we engage them, so they feel included and want to participate in the NEDA community? How might we connect members to ideas and to each other to create value that will produce revenue? How might we support local associations in their work in collaboration rather than competition?

In answering these questions, Straus said, NEDA discovered:

… that our purpose doesn’t lie in solving problems for our members, but rather in connecting them to each other and to the solutions they—and we—create together. We learned that there is an appetite for connection and co-creation and that NEDA can provide an environment in which people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives might exchange knowledge and experience in service to creating an economically vibrant Northeast.

Checkout the full article here and tell us what you think! What are some other new ideas in community and economic development that we should know about?

 

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Complex Adaptive Systems & the Myth of Control

This post, originally from January 2013, highlights one of the key frameworks in the M&B toolbox.  We use the features of complex adaptive systems to create tools, methods, and frameworks that allow us to be more agile and realize greater results than we ever thought possible.  We leverage these assets and resources to create a new and more desirable future for our clients and partners. 

The metaphor of the machine or clockwork universe continues to dominate the way we think and talk about the world.

This unusually persistent meme can be traced to Isaac Newton and Copernicus, who understood the universe in terms of elegant, linear, predictable relationships. Behavior in this world is easy to predict, and therefore easy to control.

The theory is that one can understand anything – from the human body to the universe – by dissecting it and completely describing each part. And some things work this way, like your car engine or your computer.

However, we now know that many aspects of our world defy this kind of analysis, that the universe is a system of many systems that operate by a completely different set of rules. The weather, markets, communities, organizations, ecologies of organisms and our own brains, are systems that cannot be reduced to the sum of their parts.

They are complex adaptive systems that learn as they develop. And although the parts interact in unpredictable ways, they develop rich patterns of complex order through a process of feedback that further influences their development. Over time, these systems become more complex, more coherent and more organized.

Here are some components of complex adaptive systems:

Self-organization: Complex adaptive systems are not planned by a central controller. It is the activity of agents in the system, acting individually and collectively that leads to emergent order. Like birds flocking and fish shoaling according to simple rules of interaction

Systems within systems: Within each complex adaptive system are other smaller systems that interact with each other. Some of the most complex systems humans have created, such as the stock market, food production and distribution, transport systems and the Internet interact with humans in an evolving symbiotic relationship.

Emergence: There is no command, control, planning or managing. It is the activity of all of the parts of the system which influences the activity of the other parts of the system.

Feedback loops: Through feedback, connections grow in a system, which gathers momentum, and patterns start to form, leading to the development of more complex patterns.

Simple rules: A few simple rules of interaction lead to complex outcomes. For example, a shift in the way we speak to each other – from “you must!” to “what if we?” – builds trust and accelerates communication that leads to highly synchronized teamwork.

Period doubling cascade: Complex adaptive systems periodically undergo “phase transitions” to a higher level of organization, in what is known as a “period doubling cascade”. For example, the stages of development of the human brain, the magical moment when a group becomes a high performing team and the big social and technological shifts that occur when humans invent smarter tools, such as the shift from the typewriter to the computer.

Coevolution: When the environment changes, individual parts of the environment adapt to the new conditions created by the interaction of all of the parts.

Dynamic stability: Complex adaptive systems live dynamically on the edge of chaos, where new possibilities emerge from the variety and creativity of the system. These give it life and sustain it.

This is a very different world to the clockwork or networked universe with which we are familiar, one that is much more dynamic, less predictable–and, ultimately more malleable–than the one that has shaped so many of our institutions and organizations.

“Control is….an emergent property, not an option to be selected.” – Dr. David S. Alberts, US Defense

 

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Paterson Alliance

Opportunities & Challenges:

The Paterson Alliance was founded in 1998 by five nonprofit agencies in the City of Paterson, New Jersey, who came together understanding that collectively the Paterson nonprofit community needed to set an agenda that would advance the quality of life in the City. The Alliance has grown to a membership of more than 70 organizations. With budgets tightening and the needs of citizens greater than ever, it is essential to align passion, talent and capability to produce the highest and most effective outcomes for Paterson. Hence the need for a creative and inclusive strategic plan.

What We Did

M&B facilitated a strategic planning process based on collaboration between Alliance members and community leaders. The process included a series of “Community Café’s”, where participants shared their vision for Paterson and their understanding of current reality, and collectively designed a way forward. Once the plan was created, we held an event, where champions of the plan came together to prioritize action items and recommit to collaboration.

Results:

The Paterson Alliance continues to be an anchor for the nonprofit community, which is stronger than ever. The planning process helped to galvanize members for collective action and reinforce a new narrative for Paterson, one of optimism and success. Programs like the flagship “Think Pre-k” early childhood initiative, and the Paterson Full Service Community School Nonprofit Collective Impact Project are making a huge difference to the people the Alliance serves.

M&B continues to work with the Paterson Alliance to support collaboration and the development of initiatives.

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Missing: A Good Model of the System

Two hugely influential leaders in economic affairs, on opposite sides of the planet seem to be lacking a good model of the system to help us navigate more successfully to a brighter fiscal future.

Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, was honest enough to say he did not have a good model of the macro economic changes that were occurring the world as a result of technological change, and doubted if anyone else did.

Down Under, in Australia, a country that has successfully weathered the global financial crisis better than most, the Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey, is presiding over an economy heading south at a great rate of knots due primarily to some major fumbles on his part.

Hockey is responsible for setting economic policy directions for the country. This week he proclaimed in Parliament that the opportunity for Australia is in services – health services, tourism services, accounting services and property services – at the very point in time that the McKinsey Global Institute is warning that the automation of knowledge work (all services) is one of the Big 12 disruptive technologies, that are helping to drive the way our world works.

As any systems thinker will tell you, the most effective way to get the best out of a system is to be able to navigate from one good model of the system, to an even better model, as the system undergoes transformations from one stage of its development to another. The second most effective way to get the best results from a system is to have a great model of that system, and to leverage the features of the system.

Krugman’s problem is he does not have, nor does he believe anyone has, a good model of the system. He points out that technological change of the “whole digital era, spanning more than four decades, is looking like a disappointment. New technologies have yielded great headlines, but modest economic results.” “Why?” he asks.

The problem with Krugman’s model, is he appears to have conflated two, if not three stages of human socio-technological development, and called it the “digital era” when in fact we already know and recognize these stages as the Information Age (50 years), Knowledge Age (10 years), and the current Wisdom Age (which is almost over before it has even begun).

The hoped-for boost to productivity gains that Krugman seeks from investments in the latest technologies is largely negated by embedding out-of-date leadership/management approaches, coordination methods and processing techniques.

Sadly, the operating center of gravity of many organizations remains stuck in the earlier Industrial Age paradigm operating according to a command and control model of management waiting for some upstart from nowhere to finish them off in an act of what Schumpeter called “creative destruction”.

The problem with Hockey’s model is it hails from two socio-technological generations in the past, an Information Age or at best Knowledge Age view of the system. He is betting Australia’s future on an economic model that is on its way out, kind of like over-investing in the horse and buggy and buggy whip manufacturing at the start of the 20th Century, just as motor cars were taking off.

The Australian government is further damaging Australia’s future prospect by cutting investment and support for R&D in the technologies of tomorrow by both the public and private sector – with renewable energy at the top of its hit list.

Instead they are giving big tax breaks – a $20,000 instant write-off – to small business for capital equipment such as cars and computers that are no longer made in Australia, or will soon cease production.

Workshop

Here is a workshop you can use to help your organization think about the structure of future paradigms. It uses a model Maverick & Boutique has developed to help people think about the paradigm shifts that occur at increasingly shorter intervals (see image at the top of the post). We have created thus model by identifying the central scientific model or essence at the heart of current and emerging paradigms, and using the new metaphor to extrapolate from the current system to the emerging system.

We have filled in the blanks for the past three paradigms using the most appropriate metaphor that fits our observations – the computer (Information Age), the network (Knowledge Age) and the ecology/complex adaptive system (the emergent era, we have tentatively called the Wisdom Age). Just for completeness, the earlier paradigm is the Industrial Age and its’ metaphor is the machine.

Our best guess for the next paradigm is the “hologram” metaphor. This conjecture is based on what we have learned from examining the contributions to our strategic planning/future creation workshops involving hundreds of people from all walks of life, in many countries.

The task is to imagine the features of the next paradigm after the Wisdom Age, to think about and describe the kinds of technologies/tools that may be emerging as well as the coordination methods, the rules of interaction, the roles that people play using the hologram paradigm as our guide.

So what features of a hologram might be useful? We know, for example, that if you cut a hologram into small pieces and shine laser light on any piece, you get a 3-D image of the whole, just fuzzier. The means for reproducing the hologram is distributed throughout the entire hologram; just as DNA is distributed throughout every cell in an organism. Thinking about this feature, could we perhaps postulate that leadership capacity or coordination capacity might be best fully distributed throughout the system, in every person, each being capable of stepping up to a leadership role when necessary, rather than being found only in a few individuals, at a single central location (e.g the C-Suite) or at nodes (e.g. team leaders).

1. What are the features of a hologram? Thinking about what it does, how it works etc.

2. Thinking about the features of a hologram (e.g. information distributed throughout the whole of the hologram), how could we interpret this for each of the following features of a socio-technological system – the technologies (tools, technologies, processes, techniques etc.), roles (jobs), rules (rules of interaction, co-ordination or leadership methods), relationships (structure, systems)?

3. Test: How well do the features of the new paradigm align with each other? How well do the features evolve from one paradigm to the next? What inconsistencies are there? What earlier features now inconsistent and need revision?

4. Improvements: What improvements could we make to the model that resolve the inconsistencies within the new paradigm and across paradigms for each feature?

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