JUST THINK

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” – Frank Outlaw

We are silently observing the failure of our systems. We are in deep like never before. Our systems are in meltdown and everyone is just watching. Everywhere we look we see and hear the anguish and squealing of the death throes of corporations, institutions and governments. Our nostrils twitch with the reeking stench of rotting enterprise and political disgrace. We see it on the news every day, school shootings, workers striking, wars – terrorism that we are becoming numb about. Train smash TV is the norm. We are complicit. We all know the Earth is being pillaged to feed and cool or heat, move, clothe and entertain 7 Billion and growing and we know it can’t.

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way man thinks.” – Gregory Bateson

But wait a New York minute. What on Earth is going on here. Nothing gets learned? Haven’t we been at this rodeo before? We are stunning at complaining about the system, we keep sucking in our breath and pontificating about the stupidity of it all and then we pump another few billion back into the same stupid institutions. Is it because we just like to complain about them or have we got used to the soundtrack and just keep humming?

Are we the stupidest species on earth? Who the hell are WE anyway?

Agony.

Why? What? Err..? Well in organizations all over the world the song remains the same. The reason for the repeating neurosis. The same debate in the same way at what might as well be the same meeting in the same room. Living hell. The same conversation, week after week. People talking past each other. The usual nodding and polite chit chat. These dull rooms where we can feel the lack of energy in the pits of our stomachs. Everyone hoping for something different to happen – but wait – that would mean change. That’s scary.

In so many ways we sense the contempt for anything new, the disregard for new perspectives with risky positions. If you have the ability (or is it death wish?) to observe important meetings then frankly you know there is actually little agreement or stuff of value going on in the conversations anyway. They may as well not be happening really. But they do, and that is what scares the stuffing out of me and so the same old same old carries on. Witness sheer determined denial. Firm commitment to no meaningful change.

Worse, these ritual dances our institutions and corporations undertake – when there would be an agreement you just know it probably signals impending doom – a rocky road ahead. There can be immediate problems. “What just happened? How can this be? I thought you meant this… I saw it like that… “ Throw a few well meaning experts in there and catastrophe. Either everyone breathes a sigh and awaits the final bell. Litigation against swathes of contractors, mass sackings and strife – resignations and scandal. Blame and defensiveness. Everyone senses the subtle weaponry being secured – forming defensive battlements and arguments for what is about to come. For what we are about to receive.

“Here’s the important thing to say about meetings – nothing important ever got decided in meeting. The place to get your own way is over lunch, in someone’s office, over drinks, dinner, anywhere but in a fucking meeting. What meetings are good for, however, is stitching people up – undermining, belittling and humiliating them.” John Niven. Kill Your Friends

So I offer a framework of optimism on the basis that if we can describe the reality then we might ‘bust’ the stupidity. We might shine light on what is actually going on and rebuild a different system. I call the framework:

The 7 Sacred Pillars of Inertia.

1. Myopia. Dystopia. Cornucopia: The Behavioral Mindset – Stuckness – Small Thinking
2. Tyrannical Pyramids: The Org Chart – Command & Control – FUD
3. 800lbs of Permafrost: Cultural Inertia – Unwritten Code – but we all know its ‘there’
4. Expert – Devil Syndrome: Standard/Best Practice – Outdated Doctrine built on dubious data.
5. Dumb. Founded: No Cognition – Thinking, Reasoning, Analysing
6. Idea Vacuums: No Ignition – Inspiration, Creativity, Energy
7. Death: Amnesia & Anaesthesia – What Burning Platform?

Signal to noise ratio.

It’s plain to me that there is way too much noise around all this. Even writing about it worries me. I’m just adding to all the blather. Humanity has become way to intellectual and academic about the way this all operates. These self serving systems. Even a simple discussion about why we like or dislike something can be interpreted a thousand ways. It can be a discussion about a single small event giving rise to a tirade of personal experiences or it can be a deep genetic and scientifically reasoned debate that will go on for days and cover behavioral psychology and quantum physics. No matter how long something stays in the headlines we don’t seem to move very far.

We all say things in a particular way to each other and observe the inertia or motivation of those around us by the way we have said it. At Group Partners we’ve reached the point where we feel there needs to be a total rethink. We think business and organizations need entirely different strategies if they are to cut through this noise. They need to embrace wholly new ideas and tools if they are to achieve their visions and get ready for the future. We are at least trying.

Organizations need acceleration and mastery – of all things – things that speed up the resolution of business issues. And they need it fast. Things that urgently need doing currently take too long, or are just too difficult and complex. We will be the masters of solving these problems and issues.

When organizations encounter complicated problems their first thought should be to get people together, change the dialog in order to share definitions, think, remove complexity, solve problems through conversation, story telling and by creating a shared perspective around the choices and alternatives they may have. We can prove that by using the timeless traditions of conversation, shared meaning and visualization. Simple ideas like drawing a picture that everyone shares in and that loses irrelevant and unnecessary complexity.

Complex problems range from hard to wicked. Wicked problems are those that require more than just a few resources thrown at it to figure it out. The bigger and more wicked any problem gets, the less it lends itself to top-down, fundamentally analytical approaches. This is true of all species of problems.

While wicked problems, and even just hard problems, are quite visible at the macro level – political change, the unintended consequences of legacy systems, new geographies opening up, dramatic need to control costs in the public interest, increasing customer expectation, that sort of thing – the texture of the thing at ground level almost always reveals a richer picture requiring new and different ways of thinking.
[edit] Thinking in order to win.

We can deconstruct complexity, take away rather then add – remove everything that creates confusion and over engineering. We need to enable the organization to create an accurate and meaningful structure through a more emergent process that grows and adapts dynamically within the right context and focuses on what matters. This style of approach enables people to go with the journey and maintain higher degrees of ownership and understanding.

This allows us to create intention. Intention requires persistency – persistency enables the organization to build a way of working around a serious intent, integrity and a coherent plan. This delivers to the organization – weapons grade thinking but together – solving for the long term, applying the right thinking with the right people sooner rather than later – starting with the end in mind, building things in early but as a team, rather than bolting it all on later. As the organization shifts gear with models like this and against this background – working with complexity becomes more natural translating it into meaningful simplicity.
Intelligent Design – The 7 Simple Pillars of Evolution.

1. A Full Systems Picture: The simplest route through complexity within frameworks
2. Shared Logic Models: The straightest route to understanding and reason
3. Meaningful Conversations: The fastest path to knowledge and meaning
4. Decision Quality: The quickest hop to glory and clarity
5. Visualization & Simplicity: The shortest means to engage/inspire and motivate with purpose
6. Collaboration & Co-Creation: The speediest way to integration, innovation and creativity
7. Social Technologies: The critical leap to scalable inclusion, engagement and sustainable value

Organizing thought’ – this is what we help clients to do. This changes the way organizations thinks and works.

Huge benefits can accrue from thinking this way. In terms of greater efficiency, value generation, differentiation and reputation. Greater ownership in teams and individuals through deeper and meaningful engagement in what relates to them. Partners included in the ‘system’ of thinking see huge benefit and success and improved performance. From effective inclusion comes commercial dividends in terms of increased revenue, greater margins through increased leverage of a value network and the ability to enable others to deliver the method.

Brand recognition and even stronger reputation for world class, best practice and quality of thinking, design and rigor. Capabilities will increase significantly through attraction of the best talent, bringing new ideas, creativity and constant innovation. Organizations achieve greater clarity of roles, shared ownership for delivering the practice through optimized processes and most appropriate tools and technology. Globally contributing to environmental and social responsibility.

“Changing the way business thinks about solving problems”

Collaborating and co-creating with intelligent people to solve complex problems is about accelerating complex decision making through partnership, directly and indirectly across the system. Our philosophy is to enable and partner with our clients to leverage the tools and methods. This is about delivering persistency, mastery, sustainability and repeatability across the value network.

“Changing the way the world thinks and feels”

“Individual subjectivity results from the unstable interlacing of collective determinations that are not only social, but also economic, technological, environmental.” – Félix Guattari, “Les Années d’hiver” ["Winter Years"] (1980-1985)