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Are you 21st Century Capable? |
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-Larry Quick
Today most of us understand or experience the level of change, turmoil and confusion we are going through as our world transitions and transforms from the 20th century to the 21st century, and from a fundamentally agrarian/industrial age to a different age. Read any newspaper or magazine, or go into any bookshop and you will find more opinion on what is happening, what is right or wrong, and what ‘lofty’ visions we need to aspire to. In this way answers abound!
What is in short supply is well understood and well formed questions that demand and provoke thinking and doing that digs deep into the innermost realms of what needs to be done, and what processes we need to have at our disposal to facilitate such doing.
The bottom line is, that though the capability of the 20th century has served us well in the past, it is evident that the capability to succeed and sustain in the 21st century requires re-thinking – and sooner rather than later! As Einstein said: ‘you can’t solve problems with the same thinking that created them!’
It is now time to move on!
In the moving on, the starting point is to ask four critical questions: 1. Do we understand the immediate and emergent conditions we are, will or may be facing in the 21st century? 2. Based on these conditions, what do we need to do to be 21st century capable? 3. Then, are we 21st century capable? 4. And, what do we need to do next?
Given the scope and size of global and local change we are already experiencing, these questions must be asked at all levels of business, economic, social, cultural, environmental and built environment development - at a team, organizational, business, community, government, city, state, region and global level.
I believe that the first step in achieving and sustaining 21st century capability is in understanding that any organization of people - business, agency, city or community - succeed due to their ability to ensure their capabilities are continuously in sync with the environment in which they operate. In all cases, this means a 21st century environment and capability.
The second step is in focusing on the development of fundamental cornerstone capabilities that individually and combined provide a robust platform for the creation and continuity of successful and sustainable organizations, businesses, communities and cities in the future.
The six fundamental capabilities and requisite processes that I focus on are:
Foresight – the ability to look forward and project back, and to look out and reason in
Whole Systems Innovation Systems – the ability to apply complex systems thinking to ‘whole systems’ innovation
Design Mindful-ness – the ability to put our immense design capability to work in new roles
Network Thinking and Strategy – the ability to apply complex systems thinking to strategy formulation
Open Platform Design and Management – the ability to apply open systems (Linux) thinking to dynamic management and innovation proliferation.
Multiple Bottom-line Development – the ability to apply upfront integration of social, economic, environmental, cultural and built environment strategy as ‘place-based’ development
Why foresight?
For too long the dominant frame of reference has been the past. Whilst hindsight and history is an excellent lens and key element, to create a robust and relevant context for decision-making, a ‘multi-lens viewer’ must be applied that balances history with forward thinking probability and possibility. This requires an understanding of the past, combined with a rich view of the immediate and emergent conditions within which our future strategies and actions will work within. It also requires an alternative perspective from looking backward and projecting the past into the future, to looking out and reasoning in.
This capability also becomes more imperative as its understanding and application start to unearth the power of a shared understanding by key decision makers of the immediate and emergent conditions facing their organization or community. In the 21st century this is critical for two reasons: 1. A shared understanding provides an aligned context that reduces the amount of wasted time in meetings and planning that bog down in discussion and negotiation in deciding appropriate direction and action to take. Different contexts almost certainly drive different ideas of direction. 2. Creating strategy based on immediate conditions (a common fault of strategists) may make sense in the immediate future, but could spell disaster where emergent conditions create a highly disorienting discontinuity in the future. Today’s conventional wisdom may be tomorrow’s crisis!
Foresight also offers organizations and communities the opportunity to not only ask – these arte the capabilities we have, what conditions are they useful for? – But also, what are the immediate and emergent conditions, and how can we tailor our capabilities to provide value?
Why ‘whole systems’ innovation systems?
Whether at an economic development or organizational level, by far most innovation is organic, un-planned, messy and unpredictable. This is and has always been the natural state of innovation in our world. Whilst this is a desirable state to remain in, it is clear that the innovation capability of organizations and communities is not being brought to bear on some of our more pressing and persistent issues. Where attempts are made to address these issues the approach and process adopted does not mirror the natural state of innovation. Most innovation policy and strategy – especially driven by large corporations, academic institutions and government agencies – operate in a state of a linear, low feedback, exclusive, closed system. In its worst form such systems actually reduce the amount of ‘natural state innovation’ that was there before the innovation program commenced.
Whole systems innovation systems as closely as possible mirror ‘natural state innovation’ and provide a more lateral, high feedback, inclusive and open system. The process, management and leadership of such approaches to innovation are central to their success. Such approaches are best managed through the capability of platform thinking and management – a new and emerging way of proliferating natural state innovation.
Why design mindful-ness?
The back end of the industrial era saw the emergence of planning as a ‘winning formula’ and process for creating things and directing action. A key purpose of planning was to gain much demanded control, efficiency and effectiveness as markets and products became more complex and open to more competition. Planning was a masterpiece of 20th century design and mirrored the whole basis of the industrial view – the world, organizations, cities and communities are machine-like, and hence can be controlled and planned for as static entities in a static environment. Given the nature of the machine-driven behavior of many organizations, government agencies and academic institutions of the time, the process produced results.
In the latter part of the 20th century design began to emerge as an alternative process for creating things and directing action. The design process was placed largely in the hands of the ‘creatives’ - graphic designers, industrial designers, fashion designers, architects etc. Given the profile of such disciplines in the industrially focused 20th century the process of design was not taken seriously unless you were in those industries that relied on the design capability. The ensconcing of design capability in the creative realm is both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate in that it has grown in stature and usefulness through its application to very complex issues and problems. Unfortunate in that those who are still locked into the industrial planning model do not either understand or see the benefit of design applied outside the ‘creative disciplines’. Also, many of the institutions and individuals involved in the ‘creative disciplines’ are loath to release it from their ‘control’. Like the arts own creativity, the designers own design!
Irrespective of ownership, the design process holds many of the keys to formulation of strategy in the 21st century. The design process is dynamic, iterative, ‘chaos compliant’, creatively engaging, messy, non-uniform in its uniformity, designed as a problem solving technique, and able to deal with complexity. All critical attributes for creating sustainable strategy in the dynamic and creative environment of the 21st century.
Design-mindfulness is also prolific and highly affordable – most western countries and a growing amount of emerging economies are graduating design capability at an amazing rate. Unfortunately or once again fortunately most designers are destined to find it difficult to gain substantive employment as ‘creatives’. The fortunate side of this condition is that this 21st century capability is becoming highly prolific and if leveraged in the right manner is available to solve a range of problems that conventional planning will not.
Why network thinking and strategy?
Though we may be unconscious to it at times, we live and work in a ‘network of networks’, or ‘system of systems’ defined by social, economic, environmental, social systems, and built-environment systems. All of which play a part in a greater integrated ‘whole system’ – a ‘plexus’.
Plexus, as defined in the dictionary, refers to ‘any complex network or interwoven structure’. We can see and are part of the plexus through a myriad of things we use on a daily basis – information and communications technology (telephones, TV, the internet, local area networks), networked services (ATM’s, online banking), social systems (communities, groups, organizations), economic systems (‘the market’, customer and supply networks,), business systems (production lines, business processes, financial transactions), built environment systems - city and community infrastructure (transport, water, and energy systems), flora and fauna (birds, bees and flowers), and the natural environment (climate, ecosystems). There are also those systems that we don’t generally see, but through science, know they exist – for example the deep space of the universe’s planetary systems, and the sub-atomic systems that are the basis of all energy and matter. And the plexus that we know and use every moment of our time is a plexus that provides us life itself – the human body.
Given that we live in a plexus, the question is: why don’t we use this way of thinking and processing as a way to learn, understand, design, plan and implement change?
In addressing this question the Plexus Imperative (see my publication of this name) thinking and process provides an alternative perspective and practical tools for organizational and civic strategy. It also forms a new possibility for creating authentic value and wealth for organizations and communities in this new century.
Why open platform design and management?
Anyone aware of the proliferation of the Linux operating system is aware of the power of open platform innovation and open platform management. Linux has experienced unprecedented growth in a world dominated by seemingly more powerful corporations – and all at a fraction the cost and control of its competitors.
Open platform design and management allows for the control of a central ‘kernel’ of strategy, standards and principles that provide strategic direction and a platform base from which not only the owners of the platform grow (in the case of operating systems – Linux), but also the multitude of ‘partnering’ applications who ‘breed’ and launch from the central kernel as momentum is created by its uptake and growth.
Such thinking has created unprecedented growth in the IT sector and is fast being morphed as a process for managing in dynamic times, and for proliferating innovation.
Why multiple bottom-line development?
By any measure human beings, teams of people, businesses, organizations, cities, communities, states and nations can not be measured by single bottom line ‘outputs or inputs’ – so the question is, in the 21st century, why would you only measure economic outcomes?
From an accounting perspective it may make sense to do so as economic measures are seemingly fixed, tangible and measurable. Other inputs and outputs are not.
This is a reasonable argument if you are prepared to let economic forces play havoc amongst other measures like social, environmental, cultural and built environment capital.
However, if you are not prepared to do so, and you are open to thinking creatively about development in the 21st century you would begin to think about how we can create a multiple bottom line, richer in a multitude of value, wealth and measures. This is called MBL – multiple bottom line development.
MBL provides an integrated approach and process to strategy that, from the outset, includes social, economic, environmental, and built environment capital and outcomes. It does not leave any of these capitals as a ‘tack on’ to outcomes once any single bottom line is projected.
MBL isn’t a ‘poor cousin’ to any SBL (single bottom line). For instance, it understands that an MBL will make more money and create more economic wealth over time than an SBL.
The logic behind this is that money has never ever made money. For money to make money it requires a deep understanding of the wealth equation:
Planet + people + culture + knowledge + built environment = Economic Gain
Without these other capitals, money does not appreciate!
Having said this, it also understands that sustainable environmental capital cannot be created without integrating economic development. And that social development (like all elements of an MBL) needs all other elements for any single element to be complete and to work.
For too long a ‘siloed’ approach to these key elements of development and wealth creation have wreaked havoc on real and sustainable growth. The idea and strategy development practice of ‘placemaking’ brings the silos together in organizations, governments and communities to integrate the key elements of city and community planning and development.
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