My thanks to the community and organisers of Transcending The Crisis for allowing me the opportunity to discuss Responsive Organisation, Context Shocks and Responsive People.
30 Minutes I really enjoyed - and I hope you can find time to, too.
Thank you in particular to Mark Buchan and Si Alhir.
The further ahead you look - the faster you go | davidpcushman AT gmail.com | These are my views and my views only.
Friday, June 26, 2020
Friday, June 19, 2020
It never was all about the economy -stupid
Context Shocks - as Covid19 demonstrates time and again - reveal trends that the system was already aligned to generate.
We have seen it in distributed working, reimagining of the city, targeted education etc.
Another very significant one reveals itself in the level of state intervention required when markets fail in their primary task - to allocate resources vs human need.
This is an interesting challenge to the western political hegemony - in which the tendency is toward 'In The Market We Trust'. It has seemed there is no problem the market couldn't handle.
But rather like a Prime Minister 'taking personal control' of any and everything that appears to be going off the rails, it turns out - somewhat ironically, that the market only has a limited amount of political capital to spend. And it is all spent out.
The massive scale of state intervention around the world (another £100bn of quantitative easing announced in the UK yesterday) reveals a trend to truth - that the role of The economy is subservient to the Government, not the other way around.
The capacity and necessity of massive state involvement illustrates this truth.
And this trend to truth reveals another, just as important. The state intervention is to meet the needs of people. Given our perilously constrained resources - it is also to meet the needs of the planet. There's no people, government or economy without the planet.
So, the content shock of Covid19 gives us a new context in which to experience, and in this new experience we can imagine, and are starting to observe:
The role of Government is to gather insight about the needs of people and planet.
The role of the economy is to gather insight about the needs of Government and the needs of people.
The role of the economy is then to respond to the needs of Government (and people and planet)
The role of Government is then to respond to the needs of People & Planet.
With this we do at least have a simple way of describing the systems goals. Feedback loops flowing between people and planet, between Government and Economy and all combinations thereof will need to be understood and managed in order to steward the right outcomes.
But at least we can establish some clarity about who and what the outcomes are intended to benefit.
It never was about all about the economy - stupid.
We have seen it in distributed working, reimagining of the city, targeted education etc.
Another very significant one reveals itself in the level of state intervention required when markets fail in their primary task - to allocate resources vs human need.
This is an interesting challenge to the western political hegemony - in which the tendency is toward 'In The Market We Trust'. It has seemed there is no problem the market couldn't handle.
But rather like a Prime Minister 'taking personal control' of any and everything that appears to be going off the rails, it turns out - somewhat ironically, that the market only has a limited amount of political capital to spend. And it is all spent out.
The massive scale of state intervention around the world (another £100bn of quantitative easing announced in the UK yesterday) reveals a trend to truth - that the role of The economy is subservient to the Government, not the other way around.
The capacity and necessity of massive state involvement illustrates this truth.
And this trend to truth reveals another, just as important. The state intervention is to meet the needs of people. Given our perilously constrained resources - it is also to meet the needs of the planet. There's no people, government or economy without the planet.
The role of Government is to gather insight about the needs of people and planet.
The role of the economy is to gather insight about the needs of Government and the needs of people.
The role of the economy is then to respond to the needs of Government (and people and planet)
The role of Government is then to respond to the needs of People & Planet.
With this we do at least have a simple way of describing the systems goals. Feedback loops flowing between people and planet, between Government and Economy and all combinations thereof will need to be understood and managed in order to steward the right outcomes.
But at least we can establish some clarity about who and what the outcomes are intended to benefit.
It never was about all about the economy - stupid.
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Recover: Helping social impact entrepreneurs to build back better
Are you ready to play your part as we Build Back Better?
Join me for a unique event tailored to helping Social Impact businesses recover, stronger and more able to fulfil their visions of a new better.
Recover: Equipping Social Impact Businesses To Build Back Better is on July 3. It's entirely pro bono. Tickets cost what ever you can afford to give to the UNHCR Urgent Appeal For Refugees - COVID19.
Expert help comes from Ragnar Agnell, Frank Kelcz, Owen Valentine Pringle FRSA, Gareth Dean, and Dr Gary Coulton
And I'll be sharing my approach to #Planet Experience
Follow the link to register.
Follow this link to watch videos from the event: https://2y3x.com/videos/july-social-impact-event-recordings/
Follow the link to register.
Follow this link to watch videos from the event: https://2y3x.com/videos/july-social-impact-event-recordings/
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Let's talk about the Responsive Organisation
I'm going to be talking in more detail about The Responsive Organisation, benefiting from Context Shock and how we can become Responsive People, at The Future of Work 2020 on June 25.
Registration is open:
Registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/
Thursday, June 11, 2020
The future doesn't just happen. It is up to you
There is only one scenario in which the future happens to you - the one in which you take no action.
The future is, quite literally, what you make it. It isn't some weird place, separate from us and our decisions. It is entirely the result of our collective response - our actions taken - to the present and our anticipation of our own needs and those of others in the context of now and next.
By its nature the future contains anything that is possible. If it's possible, it can happen.
Some of those possibilities are beyond our control (The emergence of a pandemic is a good example - and even in these it is our response that allows us to control our experience of them).
However - most possible outcomes are the result of our responses. We are imagining and deciding the future we intend to live in.
I am not dismissing the structural frameworks that limit the choices of many people now. I am saying the collective choices we make now are deciding how those frameworks get to impact the lives of people in the future.
In the future, our needs will be the same. The context in which we experience them will vary.
It is in our understanding of those needs in the emerging contexts of the future that we are able to shape the future we intend.
We can allocate our resources to probe for them, make sense of them and serve them.
This is the promise of the Responsive Organisation: It is not simply to test and learn all possible futures - it is to provide the mindset and ways of working to create the future you can imagine and intend. That is, one:
The future is, quite literally, what you make it. It isn't some weird place, separate from us and our decisions. It is entirely the result of our collective response - our actions taken - to the present and our anticipation of our own needs and those of others in the context of now and next.
By its nature the future contains anything that is possible. If it's possible, it can happen.
Some of those possibilities are beyond our control (The emergence of a pandemic is a good example - and even in these it is our response that allows us to control our experience of them).
However - most possible outcomes are the result of our responses. We are imagining and deciding the future we intend to live in.
I am not dismissing the structural frameworks that limit the choices of many people now. I am saying the collective choices we make now are deciding how those frameworks get to impact the lives of people in the future.
In the future, our needs will be the same. The context in which we experience them will vary.
It is in our understanding of those needs in the emerging contexts of the future that we are able to shape the future we intend.
We can allocate our resources to probe for them, make sense of them and serve them.
This is the promise of the Responsive Organisation: It is not simply to test and learn all possible futures - it is to provide the mindset and ways of working to create the future you can imagine and intend. That is, one:
- Informed by insight,
- Ignited by imagination
- Centred on the human experience
- Constrained by the resources and goals of the organisation.
- Your North Star Amid The Ambiguity of the Next Two Years: Learn, Learn, Learn.
- How To Respond To Context Shocks
- Learned Personal Antifragility
- Being Change - The Responsive Organisation Needs Responsive People
- The New Better of Work - The best of distributed teams and office life
- People Audits - When your people aren't coping
- Urgent Digital Transformation
- Accelerated Trend to Automation
Friday, June 05, 2020
Join me for Transcending The Crisis
We are following up on the Leadership Through & Beyond The Crisis event held last month with a series of deep dives into the subjects raised: Transcending The Crisis.
I'll be on screen in conversation about my approach: The Responsive Organisation - how to Be Change vs trying to Do Change - and expanding on some of the concepts and frameworks for response shared in recent posts such as:
- Your North Star Amid The Ambiguity of the Next Two Years: Learn, Learn, Learn.
- How To Respond To Context Shocks
- Learned Personal Antifragility
- Being Change - The Responsive Organisation Needs Responsive People
- The New Better of Work - The best of distributed teams and office life
- People Audits - When your people aren't coping
- Urgent Digital Transformation
- Accelerated Trend to Automation
I would love for you to be there and to share with everyone you know who we could help find their happy place.
Thursday, June 04, 2020
The North Star is clearer than ever - Learn, Learn, Learn
There is a clear new goal for every organisation - a North Star of brilliant clarity.
The obscuring clouds of the old normal have been blown away by the Context Shock of Covid19 and that has revealed a simple truth: In the Chaotic-to-Complexity reality of the next two years, as my good friend Rory Yates put it, organisations that learn the most will win.
The route ahead will emerge from the weak signals of the unknown unknowns - the very things that what you think you know, will blind you to. You can never be an expert in the new. The only way you can get a handle on chaos (or seek to understand complexity) is to find ways to learn from it. Dave Snowden's probe-sense-respond in Complexity or act-sense-respond in Chaos, for example.
As we learn we can reimagine our place in what we discover.
First apply some constraints - a framework in which to learn. The two essential constraints on a global scale are those defined by Doughnut Economics (follow that link for an interactive illustration) and activated in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. The upper constraint is the planet's capability to support us and the lower constraint is minimum standards for humanity re rights, education, food, shelter etc. The space between (the ring of the Doughnut) is A Safe And Just Space For Humanity.
My own Planet Experience framework illustrates how this can be good for the planet, good for people and good for profit. In my view it is THE business superpower of the next 20 years.
Your North Star is therefore to learn as much as you can within the constraints of making a positive contribution to an economy which has, as its purpose, not growing GDP or y-o-y growth, but the creation of a Safe and Just Space for Humanity.
It's important in the conditions we face - of multiple unknowable outcomes - to acknowledge the decision makers role is now to be the steward of an ecological system rather than the operator of a machine. Decision makers must embark on that learning journey now.
There will be specific stocks and flows in the systems of your business which allow you to add energy or seek to dampen feedback loops towards unique and valuable contributions to the Safe And Just Space.
Applying these become your guide to how you organise, the kpis that matter most to you, how you plan, how you set targets and how you describe success. Because it's not just the amount you can learn, but how able you are to respond at pace to what you learn - how you act on the insight - that really matters.
This focus on learning was always valuable and a core part of the CX-led businesses that now dominate the planet. Amazon is not only brilliant at gathering insight, it is designed to learn from that insight. It's a learning organisation first.
Today - in a period of Context Shock, it is even more important to become a Learning First organisation - to make Learning your north star. This is not a time to make plans like you used to make plans. This is not a time to set targets like you used to set targets. This is not a time to describe success like you used to describe success. That way leads backwards.
To be a learning organisation is to make your journey towards The Responsive Organisation; Always learning from change and acting on it with rapid iterative, insight-led ways of working, lesson-seeking, value-focused people and the organisational antifragility to handle the no-normal ambiguity of the world we find ourselves in.
Further Reading:
The obscuring clouds of the old normal have been blown away by the Context Shock of Covid19 and that has revealed a simple truth: In the Chaotic-to-Complexity reality of the next two years, as my good friend Rory Yates put it, organisations that learn the most will win.
The route ahead will emerge from the weak signals of the unknown unknowns - the very things that what you think you know, will blind you to. You can never be an expert in the new. The only way you can get a handle on chaos (or seek to understand complexity) is to find ways to learn from it. Dave Snowden's probe-sense-respond in Complexity or act-sense-respond in Chaos, for example.As we learn we can reimagine our place in what we discover.
First apply some constraints - a framework in which to learn. The two essential constraints on a global scale are those defined by Doughnut Economics (follow that link for an interactive illustration) and activated in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. The upper constraint is the planet's capability to support us and the lower constraint is minimum standards for humanity re rights, education, food, shelter etc. The space between (the ring of the Doughnut) is A Safe And Just Space For Humanity.
My own Planet Experience framework illustrates how this can be good for the planet, good for people and good for profit. In my view it is THE business superpower of the next 20 years.
Your North Star is therefore to learn as much as you can within the constraints of making a positive contribution to an economy which has, as its purpose, not growing GDP or y-o-y growth, but the creation of a Safe and Just Space for Humanity.
It's important in the conditions we face - of multiple unknowable outcomes - to acknowledge the decision makers role is now to be the steward of an ecological system rather than the operator of a machine. Decision makers must embark on that learning journey now.
There will be specific stocks and flows in the systems of your business which allow you to add energy or seek to dampen feedback loops towards unique and valuable contributions to the Safe And Just Space.
Applying these become your guide to how you organise, the kpis that matter most to you, how you plan, how you set targets and how you describe success. Because it's not just the amount you can learn, but how able you are to respond at pace to what you learn - how you act on the insight - that really matters.
This focus on learning was always valuable and a core part of the CX-led businesses that now dominate the planet. Amazon is not only brilliant at gathering insight, it is designed to learn from that insight. It's a learning organisation first.
Today - in a period of Context Shock, it is even more important to become a Learning First organisation - to make Learning your north star. This is not a time to make plans like you used to make plans. This is not a time to set targets like you used to set targets. This is not a time to describe success like you used to describe success. That way leads backwards.
To be a learning organisation is to make your journey towards The Responsive Organisation; Always learning from change and acting on it with rapid iterative, insight-led ways of working, lesson-seeking, value-focused people and the organisational antifragility to handle the no-normal ambiguity of the world we find ourselves in.
Further Reading:
- How To Respond To Context Shocks
- Learned Personal Antifragility
- Being Change - The Responsive Organisation Needs Responsive People
- The New Better of Work - The best of distributed teams and office life
- People Audits - When your people aren't coping
- Urgent Digital Transformation
- Accelerated Trend to Automation
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The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
