|
Fuzzy Signalsextracting the signal from the noise |
|
|
Fuzzy Signalsextracting the signal from the noise |
Just over a year ago I started this little experiment, thanks to my beloved big T's encouragement (more like badgering me out of my fears), which I articulated in the Blog's Conceit. And I would never have thought of acknowledging this day if it weren't for the Chocolate and Zucchini blog party I attended here in Paris put on by its founder who is one of my favourite food bloggers, a fantastic genre all to itself. (Stay tuned for our food blog, Tablenotes, which will become live when Toby gets around to it. Work deadlines somehow take precedent. Go figure?!)
Anyway, many thanks to the people who read this, whoever you are. I have no sense of how many readers I have, apart of my friends and family, but that doesn't really matter. It's been a delight to do, opening more doors, new conversations and connections than I'd ever imagined, while given me greater confidence to write and make sense of the world. The feedback has been gratifying -- although I wish you left more comments -- and the opportunity to join Worldchanging, which was just nominated for the Independent Press Awards, as a contributor has been inspiring.
Marilyn Monroe Blowing Out Candle on 30th Birthday Cake
© Bettmann/CORBIS, 1956
At the end of the day, this blog experience has confirmed an instinct I had, which was the possibility that I could write and that I would love the process. This I certainly do. So perhaps, this is what I'll be when I "grow up"? Novels and book projects might be in the works. I have tonnes of material to use given my syncretic, explorer's life and career adventures hoping across conventional categories and boundaries. And at the very least, there are a few articles that might see the ink of print. I look forward to more blogging, more writing, more interacting with interesting people, experiences and ideas from around the world. I feel as if I'm just getting my stride. Wish me luck!
Merci bien tout le monde
- Nicole
...said the late Victor Borge, the byline in the "Books and Arts" section of this week's edition of The Economist (October 28, 2004) about the global spread of stand-up comedy. Apparently, British franchises are finding markets all over the world now, with surprising successes in places like the Middle East. But if humor has traditionally been so culturally specific, why is stand-up spreading so fast? They argue "partly because American sitcoms have been sold to almost every country with cable television, and their brand of international humour has made all forms of comedy more accessible." Of course, western comedy doesn't always fly in different cultural milieus; the no-no's in Singapore were "politics, sex, and religion" (what else is there?).
I'd only add this: while the current comedy format may be a Western export, other cultures also have a similar tradition. The worry is that they get steam-rolled and lost. For instance, the Burmese have their version of stand-up, something called a-nyeint pwe, which is a theater form mixing dance, music, opera, drama, and slapstick humor that usually takes topics from everyday life. In addition to being good local entertainment for people, pwe also performed the important social release function of political satire. We all need court jesters and often it's the comedians who do the truth-telling in society. Since the Junta took control of Burma (changing the name to Myanmar), however, it's been very hard to practice pwe freely. When I was travelling there in 2000, I met one of the famous performers known as the "Mustache Brothers" in Mandalay. But his other brother, U Par Par Lay was imprisoned still for telling some jokes about one of the generals at the home of Aung San Su Kyi, the Noble Prize Winner and leader of the opposition. I seemed to recall a global protest from comedians world-wide, but I'm not sure what came of this. So while laughter may bridge the communication gaps and provide some comic relief during a trying time, laughter doesn't always set us free. Even so, this is still a quirky global trend to watch.
(See Toby, I can write a short posting :)
UPDATE: This entry was unfinished, and accidently posted, so many apologies. Here is the version that should be been published but languished in draft form on my server.
Making the Invisible Visible: An Emerging Capability
More and more, a key skill and capability is to make visible the invisible. Quite simply, this is because many of the most powerful insights lurk here. Powerful both at the individual level -- that is, the leverage we get when we're more conscious of the unconscious influences (both internally and externally mediated) on our thoughts and actions. But also powerful at the strategic and innovation level because of the many driving forces increasing the invisibility of things, such as: the gradual dematerialization of our economy into bits and bytes; the shift to knowledge-based industries and thus "intangibles" as the main driver of wealth creation; the fact that the locus of power in society is becoming more complex, relying just as much on the manipulation of abstractions and symbols and soft power methods as the traditional tools of coercion and control, something that NGOs and networks like Al Queda have figured out.
Derrida, a key postmodern thinker, a French intellectual, who recently passed away in Paris, saw these drivers we now take for granted and gave us some intellectual hand-rails from which to make-sense of these. He underscored the new reality -- that we live in an uncertain, multi-textured, increasingly complex, pluralistic world -- well before it was appreciated by the mainstream. Only now are the professional classes catching up, incorporating these ideas into their tools and practices, mostly unawares of where these came from.
The work I do and many worldchangers do, then, has been at the vanguard, without many us really knowing it, so caught up we have been within the swells and eddies of deeper waves of change. Still misunderstood and fringe-like, still provoking quizzical looks, still fighting against legacy thinking stemming from the Cartesian, pre-quantum world, we're called a variety of things: "scenario planners", "futurists", "strategic foresight practitioners", "navigators of uncertainty", "contextual risk" specialists, "social entrepreneurs" and so on. Whatever you call us -- language still falling behind reality -- I believe that now and in the future the most valued consultants, advisors, change agents will have the remit to help leaders and organizations surface these invisible drivers and show them how certain assumptions are shifting and in decline. Only then can they make better "win-win" choices in an uncertain, complex, rapidly changing world. A little self-serving, perhaps, this observation. But so be it. It doesn't make me wrong, and I've had a habit of being on the new curve of change before most. (If only I could learn to capitalize of this sense more readily.)
Having said this, perhaps, this kind of role isn't so new and has always been thus, a timeless skill set only with different tools and methods, the big difference being scale and magnitude of what we're being asked to surface and make sense of. In fact, thinking back to genesis of scenario-planning going mainstream, it really started with Pierre Wack, the Alsatian "heretic" who brought this into Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s. I can't help but think he must have been influenced by this thinking, maybe knew Derrida himself, given his Paris base for much of his life. Perhaps Napier Collyns, one his collaborators at Shell, might know. Napier, any thoughts on this speculation?
In event event, I think it's timely to reflect and recognize that we owe much of our intellectual foundations to people like Derrida. That out of seemingly fuzzy, abstract, confusing, much misunderstood and derided thinking, can come very useful, practical, frameworks that improve our lives and make a difference in how we see the world -- something that's often forgotten in our short ROI, relevance-obsessed world, so easy we are to dismiss things we don't understand and things on the periphery of conventional thinking.
Reconstructing Derrida: Pros and Cons of Post-modern Thinking
It's commonly lamented, somewhat nostalgically, the simpler world that existed before post-modern thinking came in to blow away and challenge all of the established verities. Many people who study identity politics note the cognitive dissonance and dislocation people feel without the secure foundations of big T, "Truths" to anchor them. And some of this may be true. I empathize with this, in part. It's much harder work to be in a deconstructed world. However, there are many positive aspects to the postmodern project that are often overlooked.
Don Michael, in Planning to Learn and Learning to Plan, 2nd Edition (1997), put this well. The whole movement to deconstruct our language helped us recognize that we play an active part in constructing our own social reality, which in turn "opens possibilities for major changes in our beliefs about the feasibility of apparently unlikely changes, such as future-responsive social learning." In his view, the sum value, then, of this body of literature and way seeing the world is what Michael's calls "boundary demolition". More specifically, this means:
The emphasis on stories in this literature also supports the scenario-planning genre. Because, in Michael's words, "stories describe what humans do or could or should behave. Stories are the ineluctable context and stimuli to thinking and acting, for changing and maintaining boundaries." This is also something Jay Ogilvy, a GBN co-founder and former Yale philosopher professor (a Hegelian specialist), often points out. His piece, "What Strategists Can Learn from Sartre" in Strategy+Business, is excellent.
All of this connects to my earlier post on Adversarial Politics. Perhaps a way to dialogue and create a shared space is to dismantle these boundaries so that they can be reconstructed in a more collaborative way?
But there are down-sides. Every boundary-spanner destroys and invades an established territory, and thus often creates the opposite reaction: boundary defenders. This is what Al Queda is all about, not to mention the extreme Christian right. And in Michael's estimation the primary disadvantage is that "the deconstructionist story is insufficient to under-grid society." Another problem is that most human beings can't engage in this "generous way of thinking" -- a sound reality-check to my hopes around a new model for communication. Also, a major preoccupation of Michael (I should mention a brief but dear mentor of mine before he passed) was that this modus operandi overlooks the powerful role of unconscious fears, rages, needs, etc. I'm not so sure Michael was right about this later point. I think postmodern thinking can actually acknowledge these, which is a theme that's picked up in some the many tributes to Derrida, all of which seem to ironically "reconstruct" the fragmented interpretations of his work.
I enjoyed this Op Ed in the New York Times, "What Derrida Really Meant" by Mark C. Taylor (October 14, 2004.) I quote him at length, since it echoes my thoughts above, and especially now since the article can only be purchased, which to put it mildly, is not very blog-friendly:
When responsibly understood, the implications of deconstruction are quite different from the misleading clichés often used to describe a process of dismantling or taking things apart. The guiding insight of deconstruction is that every structure - be it literary, psychological, social, economic, political or religious - that organizes our experience is constituted and maintained through acts of exclusion. In the process of creating something, something else inevitably gets left out.He showed how these repressive structures, which grew directly out of the Western intellectual and cultural tradition, threatened to return with devastating consequences. By struggling to find ways to overcome patterns that exclude the differences that make life worth living, he developed a vision that is consistently ethical.
Rather, it is necessary to recognize the unavoidable limitations and inherent contradictions in the ideas and norms that guide our actions, and do so in a way that keeps them open to constant questioning and continual revision. There can be no ethical action without critical reflection.
Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief - one that embraces uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we do not understand. In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don't know so that we can keep the future open.
Key Words: US Election, adversarial politics, activism tactics, communication models, dialogue techniques, conditions for innovation breakthroughs, solving tough problems, new social ingenuity, micro and macro behavioural changes, personal anecdotes, Paris scene.
There is a pre-election debate this week in Paris between representatives from Republicans Abroad and Democrats Abroad. The topic is "The United States future under George W. Bush or John Kerry." Again, this is kind of impressive and interesting, an extension of the democratic process well beyond the US borders, more evidence that a nation-state concept based on just physical territory is less relevant and meaningful.
The room will be packed, no doubt; the event oversubscribed. But I'll probably give it a miss. I confess, I'm experiencing election fatigue. Even in placid Paris and even without a TV (the absence of which saved my sanity during the Iraq war), I'm getting burned out by its constancy in the media and its dominance in daily conversations. I also don't like what this election is doing to me personally, especially in how I interact with people I disagree with. (The article by P.J. O'Rourke, "I agree with me" in The Atlantic Monthly struck a few chords.)
At first I thought this malaise was just over-stimulation, a function of the sheer volume of coverage, which unlike other media frenzied events like the OJ Simpson trial or Elian Gonzalez (remember him?), the amount of attention at least seems proportional to the importance of this event to the US and the world. But then I realized that something more systemic was at work. My hypothesis now: that it's not so much the quantity of messages bombarding us that is the problem (although as the engineers' rule goes, a ten-fold quantitative change = a qualitative one) but more it's how we are communicating with one another during this election and more generally in society.
A provocative piece by Aidan Rankin called "Punch and Judy Politics" in The Ecologist brought all of this to the surface for me. Rankin exhorts that adversarial politics is threatening the democratic process instead of enhancing it because "human sympathy and tolerance give way to dogmatic certainty, and moralistic slogans thinly veil amoral and cynical acts. ‘Winning’ becomes an absolute principle, overriding any attempt to arrive at truth."
Adversarialism is an inferior way to do politics, in his view, because
all issues are presented as opposites, but in fact ... are complementary principles, or parts of a whole. The game of adversarial politics creates artificial divisions that result in individual bitterness and disappointment, and the diversion of progressive movements from their original goals towards self-limiting cultural niches. At a global level, adversarialism assumes a more sinister form, fueling the revival of ethnic and religious conflicts, masking a larger battle for control of the earth’s resources and the rise of fundamentalism, whether religious or economic.
Means and Ends
Rankin then gets into controversial territory by describing the corrosive impact of adversarial politics on progressive people and groups (hey that's us!), the self-identified agents of change. As he puts it, "inspired by ideals of social justice and equality, and seeking positive change, they [progressives] often take on the negative aspects of their opponents, usually the characteristics they most oppose." According to Ranking this happens in two steps:
First, they are co-opted: they are changed by the system, rather than changing it themselves. Second, they lose their positive energy -- the reason for their existence in the first place -- and replace it with anger, fanaticism and personality cults...
Protesters, in particular, have to be careful not to buy "into a political culture that finds its eventual expression in war," writes Rankin. (Indeed, the power of underlying metaphors in driving social change is something I discuss in an earlier blog, New Frames.) So, before well-meaning progressives know it, they start sliding into dogmatic postures and develop a reactionary mentality that stifles "creative thought and shuts off intellectual and practical possibilities." (My emphasis.)
Ouch. Ring any bells? It does for me. As a facilitator, I've seen this self-limiting cycle in many advocacy groups, especially when they have to work together, ostensibly because they have shared aims around making the world a better place. (Also see Alex Steffen's timely call for a new approach to environmental activism.) Like many Worldchangers, I've been disappointed the most by the organizations and people that inspire me the most in the social change sector. To my surprise, I've discovered that working with hard-nosed, short-sighted, narrowly-motivated corporate folks is much easier than Long View, high-minded kindred spirits in the change-the-world sphere. I really wish it weren't the case, but alas it is. The reasons for this are multi-faceted (Rankin skims just the surface) and far from new. Gandhi saw this dynamic half a century back, and why he said "means are ends in the making." Orwell also bespoke of these dangers in his vivid dystopia, Animal Farm and history is littered with horrific cases of revolutions turning in on themselves -- of Big Idea politics gone dastardly wrong. Again, I think a window into why this happens lies in how we communicate and approach problem-solving.
Coincidentally enough, this is a hot debate amongst Worldchanging contributors. In rapid-fire email exchanges, the conversation has been primarily over whether we should or shouldn't be strongly partisan and political in the aftermath of this election. And while I wasn't active in this exchange (still muddled was I) I can now see why it was important. Here we have an opportunity to model and experiment with alternatives to adversarial politics and avoid its negative trappings. But then this begs a big, hairy question...how do we do this?!?
Dialogue as Social Ingenuity
Indeed, what are the alternatives to adversarial politics? When is it useful and necessary, and when is it counter-productive and part of the problem? We're so locked into the dominant mindset about how we talk to each other -- both in business and political life -- that we can scarcely imagine another model. This mental map, born in a machine-metaphor world, sees communication as happening like a transaction (See below diagram.) In the same way that electricity flows, it presumes that communication is a back-and-forth linear exchange between "senders" and "receivers." In actual fact, most communication is organic and recursive, with much getting lost, conflated or misconstrued in the transmission. As we all know from personal experience, what a sender thinks she said is often interpreted quite differently by the receiver, and vice versa, the messages refracted through the prisms of the communicators' beliefs, experiences and assumptions. This "transmission problem" only compounds when we start interacting with people from different backgrounds, cultures, and belief systems, a circumstance which is increasingly hard to avoid in our interdependent world.
Many sage observers are noticing that this new social complexity is creating an "understanding gap." Dan Yankelovich, a venerable pollster who has studied American attitudes and opinions for five decades, believes that the types of problems today require more shared understanding than in the past. This is disturbing because we may be losing "social capital" within our communities, just when we need it the most. Adam Kahane makes a similar point in his book, Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening and Creating New Realities (2004). To work on the toughest problems today, Kahane posits," we need a shared commitment and purpose... not just new ideas."
This is hard for many Cartesian rationalists to swallow. Sounds too soft and fuzzy. But this discovery is also mirrored in the business world. In studying how innovation happens in the world's best companies, MIT Media Lab's Schrage found that the key driver was not just "clever ideas but clever interactions between people." His biggest, most surprising insight was that better behaviours between people, rather than knowledge or the "killer idea", was the sustainable lever for innovation. In other words, it's not just content but also the process that enable better conversations. This creates a virtuous cycle because better conversation often means better ideas, and with the social capital or connectivity already created amongst a wider group of people, the chances that these ideas will get traction and a chance to succeed in the organization go exponentially up. They key is to create tools, techniques, and processes that put people into the collaborative mode of communication. This doesn't mean there isn't any conflict or friction; sparks usually fly when creative juices are flowing. But with the presence of a "shared space" which is usually co-created, people can surface and test assumptions, harvest the knowledge and experience of the group, and talk about hard things beyond just personal and professional agendas.
But how do you get into this space? This is no small feat, especially as the personal stakes get higher and higher, and the problems get tougher and tougher. And this is a huge topic and the focus of many emerging methodologies and approaches. However, a shared space for communication can happen around prototypes, new frameworks or models, a theory, a physical location, simulation, shared learning experience, or through stories or scenarios for the future. The tools are many. But no matter what one does, the first step is to understand that all "talk" is the same nor equal, even if we jumble them all together in our heads in practice. For now, let's unpack these briefly (consult the books at the end for deeper exploration) as the six "ds": dowloading, dictating, debating discussing, deliberating and dialogue.
Most of these "Ds" fall on a continuum within the transactional model of communication.
Dialogue, by contrast, is another species of talk altogether driven by a collaborative mode of communication. Dialogue techniques combine open listening and empathy with a rigorous discipline of surfacing key assumptions people are making about themselves, their conversants, and the shared problems on the table. This skill, while hard to do, is important because our most ingrained thought patterns and beliefs are tacit; if left unrecognized and invisible, these assumptions can isolate us from each other and prevent understanding. As Martin Buber describes it, good dialogue is about transcending the "I" and "you" and meeting in the ridge in between where the conversation can be about "we", about both/and instead of either or. Adam Kahane refines this a bit further, describing two kinds of dialogue: reflective dialogue which is listening from the inside, both to ourselves and to others empathetically and subjectively; and generative dialogue, which is listening and learning to see the whole system by connecting to multiple ways of knowing and insight. A higher form of consciousness, to be sure.
To be clear, just like I said, dialogue doesn't mean people have to agree or even like the other side. But if done well, dialogue results in two things: mutual understanding and insight (”thought”) and mutual trust and respect (“feelings”). Both of these things provide excellent traction for decision-making and action in subsequent interactions. Both provide a more enduring platform for shared problem-solving.
One famous example: while we didn't know it at the time, dialogue played a special role in reversing the nuclear arms race and ending the Cold War, as Yankelovich recounts in his book, The Magic of Dialogue : Transforming Conflict into Cooperation (1999.) When Gorbachev was asked a few years after Reagan left office what the turning point was for the relationship, he said it was a meeting at Reykjavik, Iceland. Because this was the first time the conversation extended beyond their main agendas; where they explored each other's aspirations for their two countries and without judgment tried to understand each others core values and assumptions about the world. It was there that the political impasse broke. (This is freshly picked up again in a new book, An Icelandic Saga: Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended by Jack F. Matlock Jr. which is reviewed in the New York Review of Books.)
Almost all non-violent big breakthroughs, I would argue, have a similar alchemy. There are, of course, courses for horses. Dialogue is a specialized form of communication to be used only in certain circumstances. It's no panacea, and there is clearly a time and place for all of the other "d"s, although it's hard to justify "dictating" and "downloading" for anything but military-like contexts. As Adam Kahane found when working in deeply polarized conflicts in countries like Guatemala, Colombia, Cyprus, and South Africa, when it comes to working on stuck problems or creating something new, dialogue not debate, is the best approach. As he explains,
Experts form ideas and present them, and then authorities adjudicate among these already formed ideas. This approach works for deciding between already created alternatives, but it does not create anything new... and that open listening is the basis for all creativity –- in business and engineering as much as in politics.
Shoemaker's Children
So dialogue techniques, processes and tools is a place to look for new social ingenuity, and this may come in handy in the post-election circus. All of this I sincerely believe and I hope this wee tutorial helpful and timely. But some recent regressions on my part have given me a good reality check about how hard this is to put into practice, and just how hard-wired our instincts and habits are when it comes to talking. So the teacher -- and I do teach this -- remains a learner and a chastened one. However, we all study our own problems to some degree, yes?
Two personal stories I'll share to illustrate my point. The first happened just two weeks ago when my "favourite" uncle visited me in Paris. (They are all favourite when they visit.) He's a well respected, smart lawyer in the biotech field and quite involved in my hometown politics and community--a big fish in a smallish pond -- so I was interested in hearing his thoughts on what kind of prospects there were should we want to return home some day. I really was looking forward to this positive, future-oriented conversation, but as soon as I heard through the family grapevine that he was a Bush supporter, I started dreading his visit and the inevitable adversarial conversation. And this reaction really surprised me. Like, it's just politics, right? It's just an election? What troubled me, in particular, was the nasty thoughts and feelings this conjured up in me against someone I loved and respected. "How could someone that intelligent believe Bush could possibly be an option", I thought to myself. And I'm sure he thought the same about me.
When the topic was breached, as I knew it would be -- I had forewarning, remember -- instead of practicing everything I've learned, I reassumed my old pre-dialogue self. What set me off was the well-intended but vigorous lawyerly cross-examination, no doubt intensified by the bottle of Brouilly we had just consumed. So right from the start I had unconsciously conceded the communication style to him, which was really the beginning of the end of any real conversation, and exactly what Rankin was talking about. We were soon just "downloading" our own beliefs and attitudes without really aiming to understand the other's position. It was about scoring points, about me proving how smart I was to my uncle and vice versa.
Admittedly, this kind of talk was fun on one level, jostling and jockeying for position, a little amusing, young buck-older buck rough and tumble. But on another level, there was no real satisfaction. No one learned anything from each other, and if we put a mirror up to the situation, our best selves were poorly represented. I was all of a sudden living with my teen self again trying to prove that I was a grown up now, and he was a middle age man out of his context trying to impress his young turk of a niece that he was worldly and knew best. Sadly, we were worldviews apart with no bridge in sight.
And a real opportunity was lost: an opportunity to actually talk about how we were talking, which in turn would magically take us into meaningful territory: namely, how as a child this communication environment shaped me as a person, the path-breaking first grandkid trying to be authentically heard in a large, complex Latin-Saxon family (a combustible, contradictory mix of Italian, Irish, Scottish stock.) How this adversarial politics within our crazy clan continues to be the source of key problems at an individual and family-wide level. We're no Bosnia or Rwanda, but like society as a whole, this extended family talks a great deal, but almost never directly and never about the things that matter the most. It's hard to imagine this changing within my own family, let alone the world.
The second story took place in June in San Francisco at a cocktail party a friend of ours threw for us while we were in town. Before the party, a bunch of us went out for dinner at a Tapas Bar in the Mission District, and I happened to sit next to a couple I didn't know very well, but the woman I knew peripherally; she was another Canadian, a good friend of a close friend of mine. Her boyfriend appeared a little too "golf course and GQ" for my tastes, but I tried to repress any pre-judgments. So far so good. I quickly learned he was passionate about politics. Even better. And then learned that he was a staunch Republican and backer of Bush.
But, curiously, this didn't put me off. I was somewhat fascinated, because I had remarked to someone earlier that being in Paris I had not met one Bush supporter, and this troubled me since it indicated a certain narrowness of my social network, a boundary limit of sorts to the kinds of people and ideas I was interacting with. This was doubly troubling given that a key tenant of my business is that good foresight and better futures need multiple perspectives at the table. As a practitioner, then, I should practice what I preach or else I'm susceptible to the same blind-spots I help mitigate in others.
In any event, we got to talking and to my disappointment it quickly turned adversarial. I honestly wanted to understand why and how he thought the way he did. I wanted to peel away the superficial speech and get down to the deeper issues, and see if there was a place where we could both meet. But within five minutes, it was clear that there was no chance of this. It takes the consent of two people to dialogue and the right conditions, which simply weren't present. He wasn't willing nor able (emotionally or intellectually) to get into this kind of communication. I was also to blame. While I didn't regress as badly as I did with my uncle, I was aggressively Alpha. The trip switch was his ad homonym attacks on Kerry, as a person, as opposed to any policy discussion or reflection on Bush's record. But this was a garden variety meltdown, in itself not a big deal. However, what really saddened me the most was what happened later. Hours into the evening, when we were at the cocktail party, I overheard him in heated discussion with his girlfriend, saying that "he couldn't stay at the party because there were just too many Democrats in the room." And soon after that, they were gone.
Now, I know this must happen all the time, especially in polarized parts of the world. But I don't think I'd ever really encountered this kind of self-segregation so close to home. I could also see a personal scenario for the first time where this kind of thing becomes the norm and worsens. I hated that. Clearly, if non-dialogue is a precursor and perpetuator of violence, it's not a long way from these polite slights and social avoidances to something far more ugly and sinister. And while I hope it doesn't come to this, this election could trigger such a regression if we're not careful, which is a scenario that's unfortunately plausible. (See "The Coming Post-Election Chaos"By John W. Dean, 22 October 2004).
As these two anecdotes illustrate, adversarial politics is bugging me not just because it's annoying noise in the ether or morally worrisome at some conceptual level, but also because it's infecting me at a personal level. The moral of these stories underscores a key lesson in systemic change practice: we have to start with changing ourselves first. That a vector to macro change is clearly at the micro level. Such a cliché, I know, but true in the sense that it's certainly a more satisfying way to live.
Unimaginable Possibilibiles
Just last night, watching Star Trek, there was a throwaway comment by the Captain in conversation with another species, I can't recall which. He lamented that while Earth's peoples had learned out how to live together peacefully and collaboratively in the 21st century, regrettably the clashes between different worlds continued to persist, making it necessary for the Enterprise to be ready to do battle and resort to violence on occasion. This saddened him.
While this scene seems definitely science fiction, and truly fanciful that we could ever get to such a stage in our species development, as Nelson Mandela put it in describing the South Africa situation, "One effect of sustained conflict is to narrow our vision of what is possible. Time and time again, conflicts are resolved through shifts that were unimaginable at the start." Dialogue and collaborative communication technologies will creation the conditions for impossible things to emerge, while avoiding the most pernicious effects of adversarialism and violence-based solutions.
These observations are often dismissed as idealistic, but I can attest that when you work this way you're surprised, again and again, by just how much more effective and yes, practical it is. Every time I do this, I still have to suspend my disbelief, but then shake my head after, saying,"why we didn't start doing this sooner?" Trust in emergent processes does require some faith.
Another way to see this: much like how life made the radical leap from single cells to more multi-cellular entities capable of handling complex activities, our chance as a species I believe depends on making a similar leap in how we communicate. We need a more complex and collaborative way to communicate. Processes like dialogue might point the way to how this might be achieved. So let's try as Worldchangers to put these tools into action in the coming weeks and days, for how we talk to one another will be surely put to the test.
Books and Articles Mentioned:
(Thanks to fellow Pioneers of Change chum, Bjorn Brunstad, for forwarding this to our email group. The article is not available online so click here. This work-around aside, the magazine is good so check it out and buy a copy. With a tag-line "rethinking assumptions" how could you resist? Well... actually...hmmm... I can think of many people who avoid this at all costs and therein lies one of our big worldview divides.)
A revelatory article today, "Chirac warns of 'catastrophe' of world 'choked' by US values", from the Associate French Press (AFP). I wonder what kind of play it will get in the US?
Speaking to an audience in Hanoi, Vietnam en route to China,
Chirac warned Thursday of a "catastrophe" for global diversity if the United States' cultural hegemony goes unchallenged. This, he said, would lead to a "general world sub-culture" based around the English language, which would be "a real ecological catastrophe".
Behind this quote lurks lots of things; some are insidiously political and self-serving, while others are noble and important, one of those vexing contradictions we often find in France. First, let's talk political strategy. With diminishing influence already within its grand EU project, France is now spending much energy developing closer ties with China. It's a shrewd and good move, if they can pull it off, just one of many countries competing for China's attention. So far it looks like it's working. According to a BBC Worldservice broadcast today, France may be edging out the Americans in this race for influence. The Chinese President, for instance, was here in Paris during Chinese New Year, the event crowned with an unprecedented parade down the Champs-Elysées, the first ever featuring any non-French ethnicity. (This doesn't include, of course, the involuntary parades like when the Germans marched into town). You can see the quid pro quo already between this Sino-Franco relationship. In the EU, Chirac is unabashedly trying to push through regulatory changes that will favour China. Lucrative arms contracts and deals for French companies will emerge from this current overseas tour. And while they are very different cultures, one can see how these two countries might find some deeper affinities which may facilitate such a collaboration. Both China and France, for instance, share revolutionary pasts based on big ideas. As a result, both favour a political culture favouring centralization and continuity versus change. With long lasting cultures and a rich history where they have been the frame of reference of other countries, both feel they are a "Middle kingdom" and this gives them a claim of superiority if not leadership in matters of culture. Indeed, Chirac's bemoaning the spread of English and the spread of American pop culture will endear him to Beijing and Chinese people. The ironic thing is that English, according to some studies has actually peaked in terms of its world market share of languages. (See The Future of English/)
But Chirac does have a point and an important one. The current mass extinction of different cultures is a catastrophe for humanity. But this is a hard case to make for many people, especially when the spread of English has made it so convenient for Anglo-American interests to do play and work around the world. The case for cultural diversity is clearly complicated by its problem type. That is, like the environment, this is one of those commons issues, a burning public good with slow-fuse. Having said that, a good case can be made on many levels: practical, aesthetic, social and moral lines.
The practical case is simple. We lose much social ingenuity and knowledge every time we hobble or destroy a culture. This is denying us a reservoir of ideas which may help us now and in the future to work on practical problems. Deep wisdom often runs through many cultural practices, such as the rice paddy water cult in Bali, which after researchers studied it, found that it was an amazingly sustainable and resilient system able to maintain the precise biochemical balance of the soil for thousands of years. Similarly, the revival of ancient water harvesting practices is already helping countries in the Middle East manage their supplies more sustainably. New drugs and medical cures are also likely to be found in bio-rich areas like the Amazon. Identifying these will be greatly facilitated with local knowledge.
Aesthetically speaking, diversity makes the world a more beautiful and pleasing place to live in. At some deep level, we all treasure unique things. As David Bowie said, "the more things get commodified, the more we will want hand-made things made out of wood." Just look at the foods we eat today. In one week, my diet on average includes everything from Tom Yum Gai, Sushi, a falafel pita sandwich, coq au vin, sag paneer, to pesto pasta. And just looking around my living room, an eclectic pastiche of the four corners of the world, my world would be much less colourful, less rich without the personal stories each collected item brings with it.
Socially and morally, cultures play an important role. They provide a stable platform from which people can make meaning -- a fundamental aspect of human nature -- and from which to form communities. As we have taken this context for meaning away from billions of people (through conquest, colonialism, commerce) their universe becomes unravelled, disoriented, and dislocated. Many cultures survive and are resilient to these timeless forces, but increasingly we are eroding them at their core foundations. In my home country, Canada, I've long been perplexed by why many First Nations kids I knew seemed so lost, so trapped in a myriad of pathologies: poverty, substance-abuse, lack of self-respect, anger and violence. While I don't pretend to understand this complex and shameful situation completely, I think part of the explanation has to do with how their meaning-system was systematically dismantled and destroyed, and the White culture for various reasons has failed to be the new context in which these people can flourish.
But let's get back to Chirac and China. Because they are both long durée cultures, I can see why they feel qualified to speak about this issue. And while any form of sustained attention on this problem by a world leader is a good thing, the long term solution will not come from the likes of Chirac or countries as notoriously protectionist as France leading the change. The credibility and legitimacy just 'aint there especially when France has much cultural blood still on its hands given its colonial history and direct and indirect pressure for different cultures to assimilate once in France.
Local cultures are of course already fighting back in many ingenious ways. The Anti-Globalization movement did much to help this and channel interest into younger generations, while governments and international organizations have been long working on a variety of strategies to help preserve and protect cultural diversity. But what's working and what's not working? I'd like to learn more about these strategies. What looks interesting, successful and effective? A friend of mine, Zaid Hassan, is fleshing out a paper called "cultural aikido" which will be a blueprint for how local cultures can defend themselves against these strong forces of globalization. When I do read it -- I think it's still a work in progress -- I'll report back when I learn more.
A friend of mine, journalist Elisabeth Eaves, wrote this nice piece "Hunting for Republicans in Paris" for Slate. It's a glimpse into how the election is manifesting overseas, and how much of the organizing is coming from the Democratic camp, no doubt a lesson learned from 2000 when the overseas military vote (mostly Republican) made a difference in the outcome. As she writes,
Americans at home have called this election a crucial one. But it may be even more galvanizing for Americans overseas. After all, it's the first presidential election since the Vietnam era that will turn on foreign policy, and those living abroad feel the impact of U.S. foreign policy every day. They see the antiwar protests. They watch news channels that don't edit out the dead bodies. And they see a hatred for America on the rise.Americans abroad opposed the war in Iraq. This goes without saying," said Connie Borde, a mother of six and the chairwoman of Democrats Abroad France. "The unilateral way in which it was conducted has made Americans abroad feel vulnerable, like we are hanging out here alone."
While this statement is hard to prove one way or another, this sentiment makes sense to me. Living here in Paris these past three years, I don't think I've ever seen (or heard of) my American cousins behave like this before: a mix of new found humility and activism, almost missionary-like in fervor and purpose. A positive unintended consequence, I think, in the midst of this geopolitical mess. Just this week, for instance, I got no less than three messages to attend a live broadcast of the US Vice Presidential debates (starting at 2am our time) hosted by various bars and restaurants in Paris. People staying up all night to watch a Veep debate is zealotry indeed! And Monday, as we were coming back from dinner on the Left Bank on the Metro, a transnational elfish looking woman, head buried deep in some spiral notebooks, immediately looked up at us as she heard my boyfriend mount his political rant, a ritual cleanse I've noticed him perform of late. Soon thereafter, she approached us in English, apologized for overhearing, and gave us her registration drive card with an empathetic plea to vote. We politely and regretfully said that this wasn't possible: being Canadian, like the rest of the planet, we were disenfranchised from the current election on the future global order. Better luck in a different world.
(Patrick Chappatte, Cartoons on World Affairs. Patrick's cartoons appear in the Geneva daily "Le Temps" and in the Sunday edition of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung. He also does a weekly cartoon for the International Herald Tribune.)
Now, I can hear the rebuttals already. "What do you mean global election? There is no such thing because there is no global government." Of course this is true. I'm cheeky and hyperbolic. But it's also true that our current institutions are a poor match for the world we currently live in. The fact remains that this election will have a material impact on the rest of the world, especially people living overseas. We do feel the brunt of these foreign policies in direct and indirect ways. I can no longer travel as care-free and safely to the places I once could just five years ago. The degrees of freedom in terms of my personal business have narrowed considerably. And this lack of say, this powerlessness to exercise my right to make certain decision-makers accountable, really pisses me and many, many, many people off. Over the long term, this democratic deficit is clearly unsustainable. The bottom-up dynamic will break the political dam.
Taken from a long view, this is really not a Republican versus Democrat thing. Even large multinationals are feeling the negative consequences of the last four years, either through boycotts of American brands or through the bottom line. Quite simply, economic growth and markets favours stability and certainty. So you can make an argument (which I heard at Davos last year) that this administration is single-handedly unravelling 50 years of US multilateral leadership in building a global legal and economic order which multinationals need to conduct business around the world. Of course, this can be seen as a good or bad thing, depending on your view. Anti-globalization activists may cheer hurrah, while neoliberals would not. I personally think the neoliberal view is not sustainable nor reflective of how the world (or economics for that matter) really works. Thus my biggest concern is that we don't have a back-up plan for when and if the current system of wealth creation starts to hiccup and unravel. But that's another story.
Back to Eaves' story, part of the problem in living in such a large country like the United States, so isolated physically and psychologically from much of the world, is a lack of feedback loops across space and time. (This is a species-wide problem to some degree.) Put another way, it's hard for the average American to feel, up close and personal, the consequences of its leader's actions, and more generally the implications of what's happening beyond its boarders. While this has always been thus, as I was reminded recently sitting on the beaches of Normandy recalling how long it took the US to join both World War I and II, September 11th may have changed this dynamic; for this was one gigantic feedback loop, the logical consequence of policies dating back to the American-lead coup in Iran in 1953, the first and best definition of blowback. But even with 9/11, the difference between how the East Coast and West Coast have internalized this event is quite large. People in Manhattan were emotionally shaken to the core, while for residents of San Diego or Portland what transpired was inherently more intellectualized and abstract. Distance from the event does matter. Today, with body bags mounting, the war in Iraq might be a feedback loop of sorts. Or not: because a1000 dead is not the same as 50,000 dead, the death toll in Vietnam. The shock signal has to be louder, an amplification which Michael Moore's film tried to achieve.
The context of 2004 is different from 1972 and 1945. In our interdependent world, it's hard for any country to be isolationist. One could argue, then, that the pervasive and instantaneous global media means that Americans are no longer isolated. That they don't need to travel outside their boarders to know what's going on in the world. If only that were true. More information does not bring better understanding. Actually, it might be quite the opposite. As Brian Eno recently said at a talk he gave for ArtAngel at the Royal Institution in London a few weeks week, the UK and the US have a dangerously mediated environment. If you don't believe this, just for fun, start reading four different newspapers from four difference cultures -- pick Singapore, Brazil, India, and hey even Canada -- and you'll see what I mean. You'll read things you'd never hear in the US media, especially news items that should be there. As Russians would say, the biggest difference between the US and the former Soviet Union is that at least they knew that it was propaganda. Even well educated Americans and British are only dimly aware of just how much of the political agenda and discourse is being driven by a narrow set of informational and political parameters. For instance, immigration has been pounded upon relentlessly in British media, but for most people in the UK it's really not an issue, or at least not in the way that it's being framed. The same could be said for countless situations in recent media history, the poster child being the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which was a politically driven cause by a Washington elite that was entertaining to the average American but ultimately not a big, morally-threatening deal. One bumper sticker put it in perspective: "at least when Bill lied nobody died."
(Cartoonist Alen Lauzan Falcon, Santiago, Chile)
Whether it's the fact that Johnny Depp is hosting an election drive party at one of his clubs in Paris, or watching John Kerry's sister shuttle across the Atlantic more times than the Secretary of State, or hearing the great sucking sound coming from the blogsphere as the information vacuum left from mainstream media gets filled with other voices using different channels: these are important signs of the times, both symptoms of the problem and pointers to what's emerging as a solution. So despite my disenfranchisement and frustration (which we try to compensate for by getting otherwise apathetic Americans to vote), I feel that overall this kind of democratic verve from the City of Light is indeed enlightening, and perhaps a glimmer of hope for what's ahead.
In this essay, I draw attention to a fruitful and rich model for global system change called the Panarchy Cycle, and draw out some high-level implications for a worldchanging strategic agenda.
Effective worldchanging needs good models and theories of change. Models are important because they help us make sense of things. They focus efforts, generate hypotheses and ideas to be tested and tried. They may even help us tell our story, explain the context, beyond the converted. Despite their power, it's been fashionable of late to reject theory as being too academic and abstract, and thus "not practical" or relevant. Business executives and technologists, especially in the Anglo-American world, over-represent this camp. On the other end of the continuum, we have people, usually social activists and critics, who reject models (sometimes it doesn't matter what it is) on principle because they are too "Western" and may undermine other ways of knowing and experience. Both camps have their points. All models can mislead; they can destroy thinking as much as they create it, an observation that must not be forgotten when using any model or theory.
However, the truth is we can't avoid models and theory; whether we're conscious of it or not, we all carry models in our head of how the world works, and we are constantly integrating both theory and experience as we navigate through life. We need models/theory to push our ideas beyond the limitations of experience, and we need experience to test and ground our ideas. Pitting theory versus action and analysis versus experience is thus a false and unhelpful meme, the residue of much conventional education (See Managers Not MBAs by Henry Mintzberg, which is so much more than the title suggests.) The truth is also that thinking abstractly is hard and many of us have been under-educated in how to do this well. But innovation and worldchanging happens at the sweet-spot between these two modes. There's no escaping this. The issue is not whether to use a model or not, but rather the choice between the models we should use. The choice is between finding models that force us to ask better questions and improve the quality of conversation. George Box put it most concisely by saying " all models are wrong, but some are useful."
A Model for Resilient Change
So, what are some useful models for understanding global systemic change? What conceptual tools can we grab to help make a compelling case that the context is shifting in fundamental ways? This is a tall order, especially given then paucity of good stuff out there. Fortunately for us, a remarkable, transdisciplinary group of scholars called the Resilience Alliance have been working hard to fill this conceptual gap. Called the Panarchy cycle after the unpredictable Greek god Pan, this group developed an integrative theory (i.e. comprising economic, ecological, and social systems) to better understand the source and role of change in systems both natural and human. In the process, we learn more about the conditions for resilience and adaptiveness in any system. The Panarchy cycle looks like a figure-eight. It consists of two loops, one lurching forward, the other recoiling backward.
While two dimensional here it's a three-dimensional model, looking rather like the DNA spiral laid on its side. As their research shows, all adaptive systems have a set of nested cycles like this going on at different scales. I'll let the visual do the rest of the talking and focus on some high level implications. And while most people get the gist of it once they see it, there is a lot more to it which is why checking out their book is good idea. (See Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Systems of Humans and Nature. Since its publication, the Alliance have been testing their hypotheses in the field in a series of regional studies.
Opportunities for Change in Times of Flux
A leader of this project was C.S. "Buzz" Hollings, the path-breaking ecologist. In a recent paper, From Complex Regions to Complex Worlds (easier to penetrate than the book so start there) Hollings draws some profound observations: that is, much evidence suggest that we are entering the “creative destruction” phase (Ω Omega) at a global level, with the following implications:
During such times, uncertainty is high, control is weakened and confused, and unpredictability is great. But space is also created for reorganization and innovation. It is therefore also a time when individual cells, individual organisms or individual people have the greatest chance of influencing events. In societies, there is opportunity for exploratory experiment if the experiments are designed to have low costs of failure. The future can then be mapped by experiments that fail and succeed, rather than by long term plans. It is the time when a Gandhi or a Hitler can use events of the past to transform the future for great good or great ill. (Emphasis added)
This theme also struck me as I read Adam Kahane's new book, Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening and Creating New Realities (See Jamais' Worldchanging Interviewwith Adam Kahane). The success of the Mont Fleur process in South Africa, one of the first and most famous applications of scenario planning at a national level, was partially due to the fact that the whole country was in period of profound transition. This work occurred during those neither-neither years (1991-1994) after Mandela's release, when apartheid was clearly over yet the white regime was still nominally running the government but without the legitimacy to do so. As Trevor Manual, as a member of the Mont Fleur team, put it:
There was a high degree of flux at that time. That was a real strength. There was no paradigm, there was no precedent, and there was nothing; we had to carve it, and so we were perhaps more willing to listen.
This unique moment made these people, once bitter enemies across racial and political spectrums, not just open to new ideas “out there” but also new ideas about themselves.
Bad News, Good News
Think of South Africa as a microcosm, an early bounded experiment, for a broader period of transition that our world is going through. (As Kahane argues, we have the "apartheid syndrome" lurking in many places within our society. In our companies, in our governments, in ourselves.) However this is both bad and good news. The bad news is that, like many revolutions in the past, transitions often get ugly. At the very least, we can expect more turbulence, disorder, disruption and possibly decline as the old structures break down and the new ones emerge. We may not be as lucky as South Africa was in terms of avoiding widespread violence. "Transformation is not easy and gradual. It is tough and abrupt," writes Hollings. So when you throw around the word "revolution" -- which I hear many well-meaning change-makers do-- be careful what you ask for. If history is any guide, it could be a rough ride.
The good news is that it need not be. We can learn our way through this, however belatedly and spasmodically, if we continue our worldchanging efforts independently and collectively. The good news is that we have more opportunity than ever before to change the parameters of the system, and do so peacefully and thoughtfully. "Contextual change is the cradle of new institutions" writes Richard Normann, a wonderful business theorist.
If the Resilience network’s findings are true, this means that the central challenge of the moment is to trigger a bunch of "mini" panarchy cycles at local and regional levels before the threshold is crossed. This will create complimentary pools of social ingenuity and learning to select from as the transition creeps towards a global scale. As a result, this may mitigate the severity of the release point and ensure that we are more resilient and adaptive -- that we can manage this transition with the least amount of “destruction” and the best amount of “creation.” We want to avoid situations like the French Revolution or the last mass extinction, events where there was too much change, too fast, making the leap to renewal all the harder to do because so much was destroyed when the systemic dike broke open.
How we do all this is still dimly perceived, but hints are found in this blog, in books like Kahane's, in exceptional research like the Resilience Alliance, and in the myriad of experiments happening around the world, especially in hotbeds of transition like South Africa, India, China and Brazil. Indeed, Hollings argues that "the only way to approach such a period -- where uncertainty is very large and one cannot predict what the future holds -- is not to predict, but to act inventively and exuberantly in diverse, adventures in living and experiment." To improve our chances for a positive phase of renewal, he recommends the following strategic agenda:
i.) Encourage innovation: a rich variety of experiments and transformative approaches that probe possible directions. It is important to encourage experiments with a low cost of failure to individuals, to the environment and to careers, as many of these experiments will fail.ii.) Reduce inhibitions to change, common when systems get so locked up.
Encourage discourse amongst the full range of parties to try to understand where we are going and how to achieve it.iii.) Encourage new foundations for renewal that build and sustain the capacity of people, economies and nature for dealing with change, and ensure that these new foundations consolidate and expand understanding of change.
iv.) Allow sufficient time. This is a global phenomenon... and it could potentially affect all levels of hierarchy, all the way up the chain, from the individual/family, to national and global systems.
I feel this is a wise description of where the world is at, and a wise proscription of what the world needs right now. It's also encouraging verification since elements of our collective work seem to touch on aspects of Holling's list. This framework puts the work of Worldchanging in perspective and may help us think about our strategic agenda more clearly. What kinds of questions does it suggest to us? Where should we best intervene in the system? Does this model help us tell our story in a more compelling and credible way? I think it does.
A good model can also act as a foil, as a prototype (design term) or transitional object (psychology term), where collaborative sense making can hash itself out, where people can react to something using all their senses. For instance, Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar piece describing the Open Source community proved seminal, not because it accurately described the movement (arguably, the metaphor of a "bazaar" is misleading), but because it put an important stake in the ground and triggered an important set of debates, both inside and outside of the community, about its identity. (Insight from Steve Weber's, The Success of Open Source.)
Lastly, this model may be useful beyond just us worldchanging folks. Since this theory tries to transcend human and natural cycles, and its very shape appeals to ancient wisdoms and other ways of knowing, this big picture scope might help us engage with other points of view. Clearly, the biggest worldview rift cleaving the world today is a fundamental ideological difference over how change is perceived. To reduce this grossly, we have roughly two groups in collision: conservatives and progressives. For conservatives, change is perceived as a negative thing, an enemy of tradition which should be preserved. For progressives, change is inherently good, a driver of life and renewal, while tradition and the status quo is something to be challenged and overturned. Most people have a combination of both tendencies in themselves; all of us love and hate change. But the Panarchy model showed me that all healthy resilience civilizations have an ideological division of labor between progressives and conservatives: a system of checks and balances where both elements -- continuity and change -- are present and allow themselves to be at work. While we don't like talking with people with a different view, especially in polarized America, finding useful transitional objects to dialogue around is essential if real worldchanging is going to happen without force. My hope is that modified models like the Panarchy cycle, accompanied with real life stories and examples, might be the sturdy planks in the conceptual bridge to the other side, a tool to have a better dialogue for how to build a better world.
For those of you still somewhat fuzzy about the what, why and how of blogging, check out this resource I just stumbled upon, a primer by Rebecca Blood. Also scan back to my first post, The Conceit of this Blog.
