THE NAVIGATOR OPTION

Forgetting Covey

2009-07-11T17:30:00.002+10:00

Stephen Covey in his famous book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People espoused what many of us know to be a key survival technique for both individuals and societies: we do best if we BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND. In fact organisations like the Lifeboat Foundation www.lifeboat.org have taken this thinking to a whole new level by suggesting our brains work better if they have clear goals.

Imagine my surprise then, at the answers I heard, when I’ve asked over 100 CEO’s (from small to medium enterprises) what they think the end of the current economic downturn, circa 2015, looks like. Few, if any, despite the billions invested by governments everywhere, could easily define what the end of downturn might look like. Their answers have been varied and many. For the most part they have one consistent theme; whatever that future might be it is not a return to what we understood was life in 2007/8. That thinking I suggest has profound implications for policy makers and strategists everywhere. It suggests that those who purport to lead need to articulate a coherent view of what the future looks like “at the end of the downturn,” and a strategy to position to obtain the greatest benefit for whatever that view might be.

Not to do so is like driving a high speed car through Shanghai blind folded. Some of course might argue that that is what the taxi drivers of that fair city do anyway and the results speak for themselves.

BUT WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?

2009-06-29T11:10:00.002+10:00

A good friend Mark Fowler sent me a recent Wall Street Journal article (29June 2009) which talked about the climate change change . It detailed the views of a rising number of skeptics in the climate change debate while ignoring the recent concerns of the Copenhagen group of concerned scientists. This so called reasonable scepticism they argue provides a rationale for many conservatives to oppose governments finally trying to tackle the climate. The science they maintain just is not there and therefore its OK just to go on doing what we are doing. Although I personally believe that the debate on man made climate change is well over its the ‘do nothing’ argument that bothers me the most. However the reality is that if we exclude climate from the debate for a moment and look at the global issues – many of which are also carbon related- of water use, energy, air pollution, excess consumption, waste and the devastation of the commons most of humanity are using too many resources to produce too little value and creating a series of rather unhealthy global interdependencies.

All of this points to a humanity disconnected to its environment. Thus we must confront a deeper question; are we at a point where the the age of progress (using resources without thinking) is over if we are to maintain control over the key systems that support us? You don’t have to be a scientist to understand that energy on demand, clean air, easy access to fresh water, available food on a generationally equitable basis, strong biodiversity AND A CLIMATE WE CAN LIVE WITH are all part of what makes sense to survive beyond this century.

Controlling the use of carbon is I suggest an easy and first step in tackling this far deeper more systemic problem of being disconnected to the environment. Legislative signals which control its use – and by proxy how we use many resources- will not only slow down the rate of climate change already locked in but will stimulate a range of innovations that will push us into the post carbon era quickly. Thankfully everywhere we are seeing businesses and regions investing in new technologies and deploying better business models that will radically change the competitive landscape leaving those that fail to do so to replicate the history of ‘rust belt’ cities. But it is not sufficient to leave this to chance. I for one worry that the climate change sceptics are asking us to play a game where the stakes are at an all time high and the consequences of failure are potentially catastrophic. How we deal with these reckless card players will be the greatest challenge of the next decade and how they justify themselves to future generations will be interesting.

Summits and Base camps

2009-01-23T09:16:00.002+10:00

Since the mid 90’s most cities and organisations have grown exponentially. Year in and year out last years summit of success became next years base camp for future conquest. As time went on we lost sight of the idea that there was anything in the world but the next peak. Sure from time to time we heard that someone had experienced a trough - a retreat from last years base camp - and we either pitied or punished those thus affected. However for the most part standing still, or going backwards, never entered our collective consciousness. What a rude awakening we have had.

Now we can clearly see that the drive for growth or ‘summit mania’ pushed many into a world of reckless, amoral and sometimes immoral folly. Why did we think the model of this summit being next years base camp could last when any kind of future extrapolation at a collective level clearly pushes us into impossible mathematical and physical equations? Thus its all the more surprising that we are still having conversations about how fast we can get back to a world where summit mania rules.

What if the rules for success need to change? What if our future will be forever one of summits and troughs that on balance leave us - at least in the material sense - standing still? Would we be any the less happy? What if this is the new normal? How would we reinvent our organisations and cities to cope with such a world?

Above all what if we discover that in a world of peaks and troughs, the troughs are the well spring of the innovations we so desperately need to ensure our crowded humanity can coexist with the planet it lives on? As we suffer through the transitions of the next little while would such a future really be so bad? After all where is there to go after Everest?

A failure in design; our sub prime world?

2008-10-20T10:59:00.001+10:00

As we part sit, part wallow in the chaos of the current financial meltdown most of us can but wonder at how the trigger – bundling and spreading the risk of loans to people who had little or no hope of meeting the repayments – persuaded too many people to abandon common sense and prudence for what seems a remarkable stupidity combined in equal doses with greed and an ‘I want it now’ avarice. Perhaps it was the euphemism ‘sub prime’ that was to blame?

As the world grapples with the challenges of stability and a new normalcy there are a few important voices quietly but insistently pointing out that as bad as the crisis seems it will be almost inconsequential in a world that fails to act on climate change and other environmental system concerns. As with the current crisis it is all too easy to convince ourselves that the day of reckoning will never come; a sub prime world with sub prime cities increasingly hostile to human habitation. Might it be that in a decade or so from now our tardiness in reacting to the real but insidious problem of creating economies based on resource use, with few constraints, will be seen as a failure of stewardship far greater than that of those complicit in the sub prime crisis and its consequences? How will we account to future generations for this?

As we seize the opportunity to create a new economic order perhaps we should raise our horizons beyond the current valleys and troughs and design for a prime future rather than just a restoration of our old sub prime ways?

The discordant beat of the current drum.

2008-08-26T07:57:00.002+10:00

My alarm that we are creating urban fabric on a global basis that by 2030 continues to increase – with few I think being interested in doing anything – even talking about it. Perhaps it’s only me that hears the discord of the beating drum of progress.

My recent quest has been to try and stand in the shoes of a Asian city administrator and ask myself what are the principles that would need that would help construct urban fabric that has radically reduced footprint while creating wonderful space and place for my communities. By what measure will I judge the rapacious engineering firms and developers all too eager to offer their latest solution.

Thus far my list looks as follows: (it can't be too long or no one will read it)

Building enveloped that are almost self sufficient - with leading edge and waste systems.
• City designs that make mass transit, bicycles and walking the logical choices.
• Symbiotic co-location of industries – the waste streams are inputs to the next.
• Centrally located integrated utilities.
• Ubiquitous broadband.
• High street designs with work/life /play close by and high densification.
• Forms which encourage urban food - including markets /farmers markets/large in city hydroponics/ bioskins on buildings and community supported agriculture.
• Sustainable and smart logistics systems.
• Clusters/ space and place that gives uniqueness and identity.
• An attitude that promotes cradle to cradle design and activity.

It also needs lots of soft design - such as the capacity to cope with change, design that can adapt and learn, and enough chaos that it softens the dead hand of planning and encourages both creativity and diversity.

"If a man (or woman) does not keep pace with his companions,
Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer,
Let him (or her) step to the music they hear,
However measured or far away."

Henry David Thoreau 1849

Four planets required.

2008-05-22T16:26:00.001+10:00

Recent World Bank work in their Eco2 Cities project explains that between now and 2030 we will build as much urban space again as existed in 2001. The growth of course will be mostly in the developing and emerging world, and in its 2030 form will consume some 16% of the land mass. Regretably with current estimated footprints these cities will require a mere four planets to support them.My questions are as follows:
1. What might trigger our collective awareness of the future tsunami we are building?
2. What frameworks might help assist decison makers and planners to urgently reduce city footprints and the level of 'lock in' that comes when we just put up the same old infrastructure today and tomorrow?
3. Given that 76% of all economic activity takes place in cities, why isn't the alarm sounding in our more foresightful organizations?
4. Where are the repositories of smart ideas that can be easily adapted and imitated by the cities of the world - or does each of them have to reinvent the wheel themselves?
5. Finally what role do we who think about the future and its weak signals have in creating awareness of this critical future issue?

Oh and by the way, Hawkins, Lovins, et al. talked as long ago as the 90's about Factor 4 and Factor 10 as a core discipline for strategy. By my thinking Factor 4 would see our cities live within the limits of one planet with not much room for anything else, while Factor 10 would see them live within limits equal to their future land mass.

Just another brick in the wall.

2007-08-29T08:47:00.000+10:00

"I have no teacher therefore I cannot learn," was the phrase that came to mind as I read a New York Times article [Monday 27 August 2007] which suggested that US schools were scrambling to fill their fall quotas as more and more baby boomer teachers retired. Imagine that these same schools were in India where governments have to find another five and a half million new places every year to cope with the demands of a population profile where half the nation is under twenty five! Of course despite their valiant efforts they do no such thing and some four million would be entrants are locked out of the system every year and of course in their ability to participate in the flat earth economy.

But who made it up that learning requires teachers, desks and places? Could it be that as a paradigm for delivering learning this notion has reached its use by date? Perhaps the emerging shortages are really the best thing that could happen as it will force schools to innovate in order to deliver to the demands of their students. Might we be on the cusp of a new age where learning centres are open all year, - which would be a much better return on the huge resource that they are - technology plays a central role in shaping pathways to learning and wise people are on call to act as mentors and guides when required. Is it now time for teachers to challenge the foundations of the current system and begin to devise new delivery mechanisms that will serve the learners of the future?

What happens if the taps run dry?

2007-04-10T16:16:00.000+10:00

I live on the driest continent in the world – Australia – and right now we are experiencing a significant drought with no relief in sight. This drought is driving a major rethink about water by providers and users. Somehow the dryness stirs the survival instinct and creates a very scary sense of personal unease. As part of preparing to facilitate a forum of decision makers and experts on the subject of water, I reviewed what I thought I knew about water. Surprise, surprise, I was shocked by what I read – somehow as the world has focused on climate change – my view is that the issues of water have taken a back seat. When was the last time you heard a celebrity talk about water?

Here are a few things that challenged my thinking:
Unless we take more care of water than we do now two thirds of the worlds population [that’s around 5 billion +] will face water scarcity by 2025.
Only 2.5% of the world’s water is fresh water and most of that is locked up in ways that mean we can’t use it [eg: snow, ice].
Of what little we do have, 70% is used in growing food – but not all foods are equal. One kg [2.2lbs] of wheat uses 1-2,000 litres of water but the same weight in grain fed beef uses 13-15,000 litres of water. It makes me think quite differently about the steak I had last night!
Most of the water in the world’s major aquifers is significantly degraded, the River Jordan looks more like a drain, the Dead Sea is not only dead, it is almost dry, and in some cities the quality is so poor that even bathing in it has health risks.
The message I think is clear. Water and better water utilization, needs to be at the forefront of the consciousness of governments, organizations and individuals in the same way we think about climate. We don’t need piecemeal measures, but bold and radical rethinking. As those living with scarcity start to fight for control of water, even those who live with short term sufficiency will be affected. It will change where and how we grow stuff, [should we start thinking about water miles?] and in the long term where we live. If we fail to understand that water really matters we humans who are really 98% water beings will have seriously compromised our long term future.

Rethinking real

2007-02-12T16:33:00.000+10:00

We live in a society where the infotainment media inhabit much of our waking lives. So powerful are they that in many ways they define – or at least try to – what is important and what is real. No longer is it possible to easily see the difference between spin and fact. Celebrities led the way with airbrushing and cosmetic surgery and politicians are now valued because of their ability to deliver a 10 second sound bite rather than ideas of substance. Our airwaves are dominated with the sages and the stupid who are encouraged to pontificate on every subject known to mankind. But now we have technologies that further blur the boundaries.

According to Fortune magazine[1], http://www.fortune.com/ in November last year IBM settled on a range of significant investments in a global meeting held within an interesting virtual world known as Second Life. In Second Life http://www.secondlife.com/ all the participants can develop personas known as Avatars and can meet in either open or closed spaces with other avatars to act out either fantasies or reality. So in IBM’s case they held their meeting in their virtual Second Life meeting room, owned by IBM, and the participants were avatars of IBM staff from around the globe. As virtual technologies like these evolve they will continue to challenge ‘what’s real’ with virtual relationships, virtual lives and virtual friends. These are communities where people are making real money from supplying virtual goods and services!

So have we in the process lost our sense of reality – a question much beloved by lecturers in philosophy 101? Does it matter? I would argue that it does only if the focus on ‘different realities’ takes our atention away from the significant challenges that face us and reduce our ability to debate as societies and civilisations how we might tackle such challenges. Lets hope that in five years from now Second Life will be credited as the single defining influence on reducing our environmental footprint. Now that’s the kind of ‘real’ I can live with.

[1] January 23 2007.

Its not about Al Gore

2007-02-06T09:30:00.000+10:00

Recently I spoke at a UNESCO and WTA sponsored conference about future cities. I talked about how issues like climate change, water and air quality were things that will reshape the economic and social agenda of governments, organisations and I hoped scientific discovery for years to come. Like all good conference persons I wrote a paper that outlined in a more substantive way the things I covered in the key note. This I shared with a few colleagues hoping for ideas and feedback on what I thought was a pretty significant idea. Two responses in particular shocked me.

The first came from an American colleague who cautioned me not to become too political. I was, he said, sounding too much like Al Gore. Yes its true that Al Gore has talked about climate change but Al Gore didn’t invent it and as far as I know wasn’t on the recent intergovernmental panel on climate change which has said that the scientific evidence shows without doubt that negative man-made impacts were without dispute. I also doubt that Al Gore even figured in the calculations of Britain’s Chief economist when he said that if we don’t do something soon we can expect a cost from climate change of around nine trillion pounds within ten years. To further illustrate how weird this all is a recent Wall Street Journal article by Kimberly Strassel took issue with ten companies who she said were climate profiteers and by implication talking up the whole issue of climate change not out of any real concern for the crisis that is emerging but because it feathers there own nest! Given the resource use of the world’s largest and most powerful economy it strikes me that politicising a crisis that should be beyond partisan politics could potentially doom us all.

The second response that concerned me came during the conference itself. I was gently advised that while my paper was interesting it belonged in the ‘environment box’ not the ‘science box.’ This is not the first time I’ve heard this and my worry is that this misses the point. It is precisely because we have put things into different boxes like the economy box, the social box and the environment box that we have got to where we are now. I suggest that some, if not all, of the environmental and social crises that face us are so profound that they transcend boxes and that those that can think beyond the silos are those that really deserve our attention. In a way that brings us back to Al Gore. That kind of comment in my view simply puts the whole issue in a political box and allows us to more easily dismiss what will undoubtedly be a less than comfortable future if we don’t’ rethink and redesign many things soon.

Defining Moments

2006-09-19T15:22:00.000+10:00

As we go past the 5th anniversary of what has come to be known as 9/11, I suspect for this generation and mine, at least in the western world, it will come to be one of those moments when each of us knew where we were and what we were doing when it happened. Given that I’m now half way through my life I can count the assassination of JFK, his brother and Martin Luther King together with the first moon landing as similar defining moments. Like so many things it will shape the attitudes and lifestyles for many years to come.

As the leaders of the free world focused on the war on terror, Sir David King, Britains Chief Scientific Adviser issued a chilling statement that too should have been a defining moment. On Oct 15 2005 he said that “the scientific evidence of climate change is irrefutable and the need to reduce greenhouse emissions is pressing. He estimates that by 2080 something like 50 to 100 million people will be displaced in Asia as a result of global warming if we don't do something now. Climate change, he says, has the potential to destablise the political and economic basis of the global system.”[1] But it was not. Most people know of 9/11 but few have even heard of, or care, about David King.

Why is it that a warning of such macro change fails to impact? Why is it that we can modify our travel behaviour at airports because of ‘terrorism’ but we don’t seem willing or interested in really changing our behaviour because of climate change? Why is it that we have a whole group of politicians who trade off climate change imperatives for short term economic wellbeing? And why is it that we would probably vote them out of office if they didn’t! Some think it is because we don’t feel compelled to confront problems we haven’t personally experienced. But who wants to experience a major climate change disaster? [2]

Last week I was in conversation with a senior manager from a large transnational. A cornerstone of their strategy, he told me, is that climate change is happening and that the world has moved into a future of more expensive energy. As a result his organisation is moving away from fossil fuel dependence to renewable sources as fast as they can. It was his view that most of the competitors and most of the public won’t really understand the strategy until there is a climate change event so dramatic and so irrefutable that no one, but no one will contradict it. “The timeframe for such an event,” I asked? “Around 2008,” he replied.

I don’t want to see any more defining moments caused by the negative impacts of climate change, although I’m all too well aware that in the famine areas of Africa, climate related tragedies are occurring as we speak. For me I would prefer a defining moment when most of us accept David King’s premise as being true, we shun the naysayer’s in the same way we shun the proponents of terrorism, and we agree to work with purpose and urgency to begin to unravel the disaster that we have created.

[1] For a more detailed version of his comments please go to www.foundation.org.uk and search for the 9th Zuckmann lecture
[2] I recommend Michael Watkins article: Predictable surprises: the disasters we should have seen coming Harvard Business Review, March 2003 for his thoughts on this matter.

Incrementalist to the core.

2006-09-06T06:43:00.000+10:00

At a recent international procurement conference I delivered a series of future scenarios from the perspective of a rather older man in 2030. As I hope you might imagine I assembled all the usual suspects; climate change, environmental degradation, careless use of resources, failing infrastructures, irresponsible technologies and so on – and played out some of the impacts as they converge on each other . Like many future pictures they were quite confronting to many in the audience, whose life stories and world views were firmly attached to the current paradigm.

In one post session conversation, a senior strategic adviser said to me that he was ‘incrementalist to the core’ and that the kind of transformation I was suggesting was not realistic or even desirable. Naturally to support the case he picked up on a couple of factual errors I had made in a 90 minute conversation and interactive commentary – I hate that! What struck me as interesting about what he said was how his views would obviously directly effect both the design and the deliverables of the very significant projects that he was working on.

Two thoughts: firstly, there seems to be a gulf between ‘incrementalists’ and ‘navigators’ and its growing. Navigators believe living with accelerating change and making lots of them is what we all need to do; whereas incrementalists believe that only change which can be controlled and that is measured is desirable. Perhaps there is a fundamental wiring in the brains of both groups that cannot be undone whatever the circumstances and whatever the evidence.

Secondly, if the navigators are right – and I would suggest that on the big issues the evidence is mounting – then the delays caused by incremental thinking have consequences for those that support them. My worry is that in not articulating and exploring the incremental and the transformation options in a clear and credible way, we lock ourselves into futures that are not understood and that may be less than desirable. Of course those that have to really live with the consequences are normally those that have the decisions made for them.

It strikes me that all of us, in our lives, organisations and societies need to decide where we stand in terms of Theodore Roosevelt’s stark words:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

Or will our present actions frame a future that will decide it for us?

Always On

2006-06-27T08:41:00.000+10:00

As I sat in a meeting the other day, I watched in amazement as several other attendees performed, what can only be described as a kind of myopic mating ritual, with their Blackberries. Apart from being mentally absent from the room, which is a rudeness in itself, I pondered the consequences of a world were we are always connected – always on. Clearly in the near future the technology will go one step further and imbed personal communications devices in our clothing or on our person and then shortly thereafter, “I’ve got you under my skin will take on a whole new meaning!”

Being ‘always on’ is in many ways quite seductive. We knew in the 20th. Century that information and knowledge was power, and many of us still have that sense deeply ingrained in our psyches. But like many seductions it is all an illusion. While the power, seamlessness, and real time qualities, of streaming information is undeniable, in many ways being ‘always on’ is actually being ‘often off.’ Information without context is really quite useless and certainly can’t masquerade as knowledge.

Of course we need new information, but in a non linear world we also need to take time and space to make sense of what is occurring. We need to understand the new patterns. My experience is that so many Blackberry addicts stay in the old patterns becasue they are so busy being preoccupied with information! They have failed to understand that with the amount of new information being created every day to fill a small sized room with digital information, the rules for success are changing. What we all want and need is the ability to filter, synthesize and apply.

Taking time away from information gives us the space, allows this filtering to occur and also fosters synchronicity. That is the connecting of totally new ideas, from outside our established patterns with what we know, to produce new stuff. Otherwise all that happens is that we just get caught in the hype of the moment. In the 21st Century the processes and frameworks that we use to process the vast array of information are as important as the information itself. Taking time to reflect - turning off - is really the time when processes and frameworks meet information.

In many ways the global media mimic Blackberries on steroids. They think that all people want is information, and of course we all do, but only to a level that helps us make sense of what is occurring around us. I think we also need ideas and commentary that helps us make sense of it all. That ability to provide commentary was what earned the media its initial title of the fourth estate. One, that of more recent times, they have happily abandoned in favour of their infotainment ‘circus circus’ role.[see note below]

Being ‘always on’ is learning how to step away from the information, to get in touch with our internal selves and build the courses of action that will help us navigate this uncertain and turbulent world. In many ways it is much more uncertain because of the rate and nature of information exchange. And for those of you who are really addicted to your email, who really feel that the world can't do with your reply to all emails, do a quick audit and name 10 significant emails that you read last week. Can you?

Note. From four to five estates? The notion of estates refers to the institutions of competing interests that need to be balanced, if one is to create a civil society that is open diverse and tolerant. Depending on who you read, in general terms these estates are, or were: The King, President or executive who constitute the first estate – they lead. The second estate is traditionally the church [or in some societies]senate or representatives of the landed interests [nobles] – and the third estate is the people – they provide mandate and set the laws.

The fourth estate is the media who are in many senses the glue or mirror that enable each of the other estates to interact in honest ways with each other. Some, including me, argue that the traditional media have abandoned their role as the fourth estate and reinvented themselves as infotainment businesses – sort of 21st century versions of the Roman circus – to keep the people happy and preoccupied! I and others hope that the fifth estate – the internet - will in time take over this role and in the process disintermediate and make the role of the fourth estate redundant.

Interconnectedness is very rarely a straight line

2006-06-14T15:15:00.000+10:00

Most of us now accept that everything is pretty well connected to everything else. Technologies have made this possible and they are driving profound changes. But it was not always so. As long ago as 2001, a well intentioned but largely derided report, by the politician and commentator Barry Jones was largely consigned to the historical rubbish heap because of a diagram that came to be known as ‘spaghetti and meatballs.’ It was an attempt to describe how the fundamental institutions of an educated society connect to each other. In the run up to an election, the advocates of linear thinking held sway and their view won the day. The idea of interconnection has been banned from the national consciousness.

But what price have we paid? The first is that it makes us hard to have a conversation in other than silos. Most of us ordinary people know that many things are connected. That is our everyday life. What was interesting about the diagram that Barry and his mates produced, was not the original diagram, but how each of the key institutions might evolve as they interacted with each other and as they evolved in their own right.

The second was that it made us hard to have conversations with people who see things in interconnected ways. One has to only look at the how we’ve managed to mangle terrorism, middle eastern tribalism and Islam to get the point. Have the machine based and the linear models, particularly in the western world, impoverished thinking in our societies?

Finally and by no means least, we have a major problem in working out how to balance competing priorities. Of course I know that water issues are important. So is education and so is reform of the health system. The move away from a fossil fuel world also ranks. But how do I decide what is important and how do governments decide what is a priority and what should get what from the economic cake? How can I, or they, possibly integrate anything if everything is presented in disconnected pieces.

The inability to see interconnectedness and to then integrate different ideas is to lose touch with reality. It is, if you think about it, the very behaviour we criticise in alcoholics and people with severe personality disorders. If we can’t discuss a simple diagram with a few extra lines on it perhaps you, me and our society are in a difficult place? Will it take some severe dislocation to rediscover what our biological selves instinctively knows – that everything is interconnected, and that better futures are created by strengthening some connections rather than others.

This is not a time for good people to do nothing.

2006-06-06T14:38:00.000+10:00

If there is a lesson we might all learn from history it is that all too often good people have stood by and let vested interests, at odds with basic values and common sense, impose their will. Regrettably such interests can easily get support from the disaffected, the gullible and the self aggrandising. As we wake up to the nightmares that often such interests create, it takes time, for the forces of the open society, to organise and evict the dictatorship of the few.

What if now was one of those times? What if these vested interests, instead of focusing on the trappings of political power, exercised control, either consciously or unconsciously, and much more quietly, through the levers of economic power? What if in the interests of shareholders – who might be you or me – actions were taken in direct opposition to our interests as humans on the planet? While all this might sound a little alarmist, every day we hear leaders everywhere, almost without thought, putting current economic interests light years ahead of environmental and social concerns. In the face of what can only be called a global environmental crisis, without sounding like some social centralist, or someone so smug in their own righteousness, what should good people do?

Perhaps its time for a different debate? Perhaps as we read the muddy waters of increasingly obscure infotainment we might ask ourselves some of the following questions: [other suggestions gratefully received!!]

1. Will I be able to justify my actions to children born 25 years from now?
2. Do I too easily dismiss the unthinkable because it would undermine what makes me
comfortable and successful?
3. When I consider those things that I believe are important have I thought, at any time, what
information would make me change my mind?
4. Am I the kind of person that needs a crisis, which really affects me personally, before I’m
prepared to advocate change?
5. Do I spend my time listening to those people that support me or those that challenge me?

In sum it’s all a legacy issue. We can decide to build networks with other good people, who are starting the conversation to redesign our planetary society and how to organise to make the 21st Century livable, or we can decide it’s all too hard and simply take what we can now.

In the end we are either future makers or future takers. I know who I want to hang out with.

Optimists who want better futures must not have a crisis of imagination

2006-05-23T09:59:00.000+10:00

In my business, thinking and talking about the future is an important part of what we do. Somehow many of the conversations that I’m now in seem very dark and foreboding. There’s not much hope. Why? Because it’s easy to get depressed when contemplating the effects of higher energy costs, climate change, lack of water, displacing technologies and so on. And if you are from Generation Y, particularly from the developing world, you must be wondering how you can possibly survive, given the wealth accumulated by the baby boomers. All of this suggests that it is unlikely that the future will simply be an extension of what we have now. But before you throw yourself off the nearest cliff, could we use the challenges these disruptions bring, to create a better world than the one we live in now? Is that possible?

My argument is yes. Strategy design and optimism are, I think, two sides of the same coin. That is on the proviso that design includes, from time to time, not designing or simply allowing chaos and natural order to have its way. You see, even a cursory glance at the world we live in suggests that all is not well and that staying as we are is just not smart. Therefore the bigger and sooner the 'tsunamis' arrive the better off we might all be, as it will force change. Can we allow an ever increasing number of our cities to look like Hong Kong in January? What does it mean that the so called successful societies are also the most obese? How is it that we can improve our standard of living and drive quality of life down at the same time? In short is what we have now really that good?

A recent survey in Britain - “Chasing Progress - Beyond Measuring Economic Growth” - showed that despite the Gross Domestic Product , [that is wealth] increasing since the time of Margaret Thatcher, the Measure of Domestic Progress (MDP) or social domestic product has gone down. MDP measures the social progress of a society through things like crime rates, air quality, family breakdown and life satisfaction or happiness data. Obesity is perhaps the most telling symptom.

When you think about it, if this is the future that developing countries aspire to then both we, and they, are in deep trouble.

So better will mean change, and change means that we will feel a sense of loss. The upside though is great. As long as we can cope with diversity, openness and tolerance, all we have to do is to try and stand in the future and imagine what it might be like. We know that we have the technological smarts to provide the answers. As an aside, I can’t believe in a world that will soon approach 8 billion people some commentators are actually suggesting that we return to the way things were. That is simply not possible.

I’m suggesting that the optimists start becoming purposefully impatient with those, who argue that the status quo will suffice, unless the evidence suggests otherwise. I so often run across cynical public servants simply perpetuating their own games, some so-called business people acting in unethical and self serving ways, and many people seduced and obsessed by the next sports circus put in front of them. Optimists need to speak out now in very forceful ways, and encourage the navigation debate sooner rather than later.

Falling up the cliff

2006-05-15T21:17:00.000+10:00

I sat through a fascinating presentation recently on generational behaviours. I was thinking about the implications of six generations being alive at the same time, until I saw a graph much like the one here.

It was I felt, not sufficient, as it developed from a simple extrapolation of what we know, now. What would this graph be like if science and technology could deliver a significant extension of living well? After all it has done it before so why not again? What if around 2030 we lived well to about 130? By 2100 we could expect it would go to at least 150. The idea is quite profound and it would sure change a lot of things. What it might mean, for example, is that people in their 50’s, leaving aside generational equity issues, should get interested in 2050 scenarios as they will still be around. By the way, my life extension thinking is probably at the more conservative end of what might be possible. The graph now looks very different. There is a rising cliff at 130 and clearly we would need to redefine retirement, assuming that we have some idea of what future work looks like. However I have no idea what the retirement graph would do!

What this quantum lift in life expectancy does is create a sudden upwards shift. This cliff, or disruption, would require us to rethink what we know, what’s important, and what we value. Perhaps we may even be faced with the interesting question of when and where life should finish! So are these cliffs common? Well yes they are.

Take for example the easily seen cliff of global population change, a trend so significant, that it will reshape where and how we live, what we eat, and how we will treat our environment.

Future technologies create many more, and there are a few sustainability and energy disruptions in front of us as well. As we can see, from the life extension idea, and the growth in world population example, we don’t spend a lot of time anticipating what life might be like at the top of these cliffs. But we should! And in my view very soon, as some of the issues will take time to work through. No doubt we’ll stumble through it somehow – hence the title of this blog!

Our ability to know what life at the top of the cliff is like is a little limited. But I think its something we should all start getting interested in. After all is it really smart to live life in the fast lane, while running headlong into the bottom of the cliff, at the same time?

All I really want my robot to do is bring me my red wine.

2006-05-08T22:15:00.000+10:00

Later this week the renowned British futurist Ian Pearson will deliver the key note at the Australian Institute of Company Directors annual conference. His topic is conscious computers vs mankind. He will no doubt tell this most conservative of audiences what others like Ray Kurzweil have been saying for some time; that within 10 years there will be computers, or artificial intelligence entities, that will not only will be able to ‘think and feel’ but will be smarter than human beings. I’m hoping that, about then, for a very modest sum, I can finally get an early model. It will I think be as smart as the average dog, but a little more useful. Finally I will be able to ask it to go and get me a red wine as I contemplate the amazing ethical dilemmas that the newer smarter computers will undoubtedly bring.

As the time frame shortens the debates are likely to be intense. With such smart entities around what jobs will any of us, especially the knowledge workers do? What sorts of rights might they have? Will they have to buy a ticket for the football game? Might they become fans? Who drives if your robot wants to go to one game and you another? What happens if they take it upon themselves to ration my red wine out of concern for my wellness, the monitoring of which is built into their systems? It may spell the end of overindulgence, which I guess in a politically correct world is a good thing. Perhaps they will make great politicians and bureaucrats!

If these AI entities are, in part biological, does that make them alive? All fascinating stuff. None of it of course is believable until it really occurs. Then again if you had told a person living circa 1900, that within seventy years hundreds of ordinary people would routinely fly in giant planes they wouldn’t have believed you either. What bothers me though is how the Defence Forces in the United States, and I’m sure other countries, have begun to develop smart AI entities with the sole intention of inflicting directed harm on human beings. If successive generations of such computers become conscious, and can feel, and they are really really smart, it will be foolhardy to give them such power. But wasn’t that what Issac Asimov was trying to tell us so long ago when he promulgated the three laws of robotics?

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I have a feeling that if this past wisdom isn’t hard wired into the future then the ritual of drinking a good red wine might become a little sad.

We are all prisoners of a future created by the infrastructures of the past.

2006-05-05T09:39:00.000+10:00

In the mid 19^th Century London was arguably the greatest city in the world. However many of is citizens were poor and their life expectancy was really affected by sanitation. There is evidence to suggest that if people got past the dangers of infancy, they could expect to live somewhere between 17 and 45. All that changed for the better under the genius of the civil engineer Joseph Balzagette. He oversaw the development of the first large scale sewerage system and the beginnings of the London underground. From then on, the design of modern cities was tied to large scale distributed systems linked to quality of life as we know it. Utilities of all kinds including electricity, water, transport and telecommunications have all developed from the same model. Their success as ‘open systems’ is tied to large volume use. We use them all the time every day. We never think about them at all unless they fail to deliver, or access to them costs us more than we can afford. They are for the most part designed to provide us with the 'necessities' often for at least 100 years. They are so inextricably entwined in how we work, live and play, that we don't often see that in their size, scale, and reach, they imprison all of us in the future they have created.

Rapid urbanisation, environmental sustainability and advancing technology is challenging this paradigm. There is now the opportunity particularly for domestic and small scale industrial operators to deploy ‘closed systems’ that allow them to use the immediate environment and free energy like, the sun, to deliver in cheaper and more sustainable ways the utilities that make life comfortable. Most of these systems are lighter in environmental terms than the industrial strength utilities we now use.

These emerging closed systems challenge the very basis of how we design cities and create communities. They have the potential to significantly impact the vested interests of governments and large utilities. Importantly these systems allow people to move from a dependency to an interdependency relationship with utility providers. While open systems will always be important they are becoming increasingly costly in both financial and natural terms. This shift seems to be producing an uncomfortable tension between the pro-environmental rhetoric of governments and their mindset as owners and builders of large scale infrastructure. Of course while they continue to think in silos the inconsistencies are easy to gloss over!

Could it be that perhaps for the first time since the Romans and the Incas we have the opportunity to rethink the systems that support intensive human habitation? Could it be that an over investment in open systems is dumb, not smart, design? Is it possible that the very systems, that have until now been linked to quality of life and life extension, might in fact lock in an unsustainable world that creates the exact opposite? Critically, are there enough people that care one way or the other anyway?

I met someone recently who told me that he had once been a spy.

2006-05-03T10:05:00.000+10:00

Over yet another cup of coffee with an old friend I was introduced to a most interesting man who had once been one of

Australia

’s leading spies. Now retired, he had been trained in the ‘old school’ with

Britain

’s MI6. As we talked over his most interesting life he told me that the best spies, as they worked their sources, always encouraged them to share with them the most important things that they knew. He maintained that no matter how outlandish the idea it should always be encouraged with a “really, tell me more,” response. His view was that the modern approach was the exact opposite. Now everything is examined with a sense of disbelief and cynicism. He went on to say that what this sense of disbelief does is cause ‘sources’ to filter information to a level where they know its acceptable and believable to their handler. And in the process, what goes missing is that half piece of information that might be critical. My spy believed that this change in approach was at the heart of many of the modern intelligence failures.

The same mechanism of cynicism and scepticism is alive and well in modern organisations, particularly at a leadership level. Too often businesses require proof that the large shapers of the future will really impact. Few act on the half piece of information as the basis for future exploration, especially if it challenges current success. In the process they abdicate future creation to others.

Nowhere is this truer than with the great issues of our time like climate change, technological convergence, energy shifts and geopolitical shifts despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Maybe what we need to do is retrain ourselves to suspend disbelief and, like the spies of old, encourage exploration of big ideas as a virtue.

The politics of anaesthesia

2006-05-01T08:18:00.000+10:00

When a person undergoes any significant type of medical emergency they are normally given some kind of anaesthetic to help them manage the pain. Over time the anaesthetic is reduced and they emerge from the post operative state hopefully better than when they started. Since time immemorial anaesthetic has been used to mange pain as we transition from one state to another. However if we apply the metaphor to governments everywhere they seem to be using anaesthetic not to mange transitions, but to prevent them occurring at all.

The story runs a bit like this. A section of the community is being impacted by one or other of the powerful future forces now in place in our society. These people complain of their pain and most wise governments listen. What then happens though is that far from using the mechanisms of government to manage the transition, the change is prevented from happening at all. When the next potential change comes the pattern is repeated. At this point the community has an expectation that in any time of pain the government will stop it. They have become addicted to the anaesthetic and wary of change. They will punish any government that suggests otherwise. Regrettably with few exceptions what we see now is political parties of all persuasions competing not on their change management abilities but for their persuasiveness in the amount of anaesthesia they can apply.

The examples of where this occurs are many. For some reason many communities believe it is important that their name is stuck on the side of an aeroplane. They expect governments to protect this image at a time where airlines are consolidating into post national entities. The Swiss government poured millions into trying to keep Swissair afloat and recently, the most profitable of all airlines, Qantas used the government to stop Singapore Airlines flying on the profitable transpacific route. Important as these examples are nowhere do we see some governments using anaesthetic more liberally than in the challenges around the environment and oil. Have we become addicted to a world where the environment doesn’t matter and fossil fuels are ours to use in whatever careless way we chose? And what over time might be the consequences of such an addiction?

Change is like your favourite café closing down.

2006-04-28T08:36:00.000+10:00

Imagine that every day of your student and working life you went to the same cafe on the way to work. The coffee is great and over time you get to know the people that work there and make friends and acquaintances with the others patrons. One day without explanation you find it closed forever. An accompanying friend assures you that the coffee in the café down the road is just as good, the décor better and it is even closer to where you work. Somehow though, this
doesn't remove the feelings of sadness and loss. It is also likely that on your first visit to the new place you will be more critical, more judgemental and less accepting than is really rational. These feelings often flow on through the rest of the day. For the rest of the week you look wistfully at the little café where you felt 'at home'. Over time though, the feelings fade and new behaviour takes its place.

Most change is like the closing of the café.
I spent a few days recently with a small leadership team talking about the strategic options facing them and their organisation. They have a proud history and some amazing successes to their credit. But much of that is now in the past. Sales are falling and their major customer seems to almost hold them in contempt. The industry they once served has splintered and most of it is now in China in a low cost / no frills paradigm. Their shareholders are becoming increasingly insistent that they move into new areas of service or they will take the investment elsewhere. If all of this is true staying where they are is a very risky idea indeed.

All of this is known and accepted by the leadership team but still they find it difficult to change. Why? Because over time we build up patterns in our brains about how things should be. These patterns are like friends. They, like us with our the café, have become very comfortable with them. As they plan their future they look at the future options with a very critical eye. Despite knowing the risks of staying where they are, they spend more time than they should staying
with what is familiar. Change creates feelings of sadness.

The reality is that they have to move on knowing that probably the future will be more about a lot of coffee in a lot of different cafes and that nothing in the future is likely to replace the original. They and their strategy need to replace the organisational equivalent of loss of the café with a shrewd judgement of good coffee. If that kind of refocusing occurs then constant change
will be as a good thing. Constant change after is what what keeps us young and vibrant. What itshould mean is that, over time, there will be many great coffees and new and interesting experiences with both old and new friends.

Future milestones

2006-04-27T07:35:00.000+10:00

I heard a recent news broadcast where "births, marriage and death" were described as the most significant milestones in our lives. I wondered if this was really true anymore - at least in the so called 'developed' socieites. We have after all through birth control reduced the number and frequency of births and for many it's only a short interlude in worklife as babies are consigned to child care. Marriage has become a series of events with less and less ceremony attached to each successive one. And as for death, well except where it is unexpected, life extension is pushing it further and further out and the dying process is being handled in an increasingly pain free way. Some think that as humans and machines merge 'death' may be avoided all together.

So if we are freed from these biologically determined milestones what will we use to mark the passage of time. While there seems to be some evidence that major discontinuities like war, tsunami or a September 11 have filled some of this void, could it be that in creating a world of endless choice we are destroying our chances of finding meaning? How will our society organise itself when we have five or more generations alive and well at the same time?

Perhaps one of the most interesting trends of the 21st century will be a renewed search for meaning in a post biology world?

Different futures and political philosophy

2006-04-24T09:44:00.000+10:00

On Friday I was giving a key note speech at an Innovation luncheon on The Future of Science: Can Queensland keep up? As part of it I talked about the kinds of challenges that we all face and an advocacy of how science can help us move from a thoughtless and careless world to a more thoughtful one. As soon as I'd finished the question came: " Do you support capitalism?" What was left unsaid, but clearly implied, was that the creation of different futures was somehow socialist and therefore contrary to the prevailing world view. It is so easy to dismiss challenges if you can label them as failed or dangerous.

My reply was as follows. "Socialism as it was practised in the 20th century, and capitalism as it is practised now, are both inadequate and incomplete as a dominant logic to address the challenges that confront us. I'm not sure if what we need is a new philosophy but surely we need better mechanisms to understand how to balance private and public good and smarter ways to balance financial and resource capital with the capital demands of nature, society and people. We also need to understand how to measure what's important like well being and happiness instead of assuming that an increase in GDP is all that matters. Furthermore. it seems that a few of our public and private leaders have already figured this out and are creating strategies accordingly." Could it be that the idea of political philosophy is an idea that has reached its use by date and that what we need now are new frameworks for policy creation and community discussion?

Towards a world of thoughtful design

2006-04-20T16:04:00.000+10:00

We seem to have reached the limits of a world which enjoyed the carefree use of resources, like oil, and an economic growth model which endlessly has driven down cost. At first this depressed me. Now I'm becoming excited as I've seen more clearly the downsides of the poorly designed world most of us live in. It's not hard to think about a future that is better than the one we have now.

Let's take fossil fuel use first.
It doesn't matter if you are a peak oil theorist [someone who believes that half the oil in the world has been used up] or a technological optimist, the likely future is one where we will design our travel with much more care than we do now. Costs will force us to. As we do, it's quite possible that we might design a way of living that has less stress in it with less time spent in traffic jams and more time spent in and around those communites that we have created for our desired lifestyles.

Which brings us to the cost thing.
Most of us have a very narrow definition of cost. We think of value only through the price we paid at the check out counter. We forget we pay through community taxes for disposal and ignore the adverse envirnmental impacts that might have been part of the manufacturing process. But one way or another, sooner or later, we all pay. It's just not calculated in the original purchase price. Few of us stop to think about the effects of many large scale enterprises focused solely on low cost. The reality is that they, probably unconsciously, have driven down the living standards in the communities in which they operate. Firstly to survive they must outsource to the lowest cost of manufacture - and for most places that is offshore. In the process they make local manufacture uncompetitive. Secondly they have a formula which keeps wages low which in turn reduces the spending power in communities. We can't really blame the businesses we can only blame ourselves as we seek more and more 'bargains'

So what does this all mean?
It means that we need to have different kinds of discussions [and given our trashy media that's difficult] and we need to spend just a little time thinking about what kind of future we really want to create. For me it is a future that's gentle on the environment, and me as I get older, that encourages us all to enjoy discovery and change, allows people to get on with their own lives in their own way and which helps all of us to remember that there is more to life than work. That I think is what the navigation option is all about.