JUST THINK

I’m on the continent of Africa working with a major firm just now.

I’ve been noticing (increasingly recurring) some key global factors that seem to have entered the global conscience. Substantive conversations within our work have changed – in some very important ways for me – over the last 12-18 months.  A couple of years ago there was a highly apparent (hugely frustrating) lack of true association and application with important values within some of  the teams we were working with. This showed up in the frameworks. It was borne out through results.

Now things are definitely changing and the quality of attention and outcome is tangible.

The Critical Themes

1. A deeper appreciation of ‘design’ and ‘design thinking’ and how it affects performance and experience in everything.
2. The pressing need for social and human values to return to the fore. Really.
3. Much more focus on living systems, sustainability and ‘systems thinking’ in the connectivity of it all.
4. Far greater recognition that our major political and media systems are broken and we need alternatives.

I know that this is our field so we would spot these wouldn’t we - but this list sprang without much intervention from meetings with 50-60 people strong middle ranking groups in firms in America, the Middle East and Africa. I’m also following several youth blogs and the same themes are there too. Co-incidence? I don’t think so.

What are your thoughts and I’m interested to know what you think is really going on here?