Captain’s Log Issue #10 – Systemic Change

I’ve started writing a weekly Newsletter: it’s an email group, so old style! I will periodically share it here on the blog, as you may like the variety! You can signup here if interested.

There is nothing like Disney to make you feel reflective. I’ve spent this week in orbit around the theme parks in Orlando, inhabiting that weirdly distant relationship with reality that this entails. The whole environment is choreographed: the footpaths, lakes, hotels, park benches, fake volcano and dinosaur looming over me at coffee time. Strangely appropriate to have a conference here, as often learning is equally abstract. Interesting, fun, even entertaining, but ultimately lacking any correlation to the real world.

My focus has been on completing the Social Leadership ‘My 1st 100 days’ book and, as I write this, I have one illustration left to do… I will be very happy to get this into production!

In the News

Change is here

Autonomous driving in the news with Intel’s acquisition of Mobileye. I share this because it’s indicative of the Social Age: one the one hand, this technology is here, driverless trucks are crossing Singapore as we speak, yet on the other hand, I recently spoke to an HR director who denied that any ‘machine learning’ system would impact on the job market. We are not prepared for the massive disruption that is on the doorstep: we will need new types of organisation, new relationships with employees, new types of leadership to survive.

A living wage

We have a rather telling conversation in the UK at the moment, where we have a government mandated ‘minimum wage’, and a somewhat higher, socially acceptable, ‘living wage’. Lush, a company I see around the world now, but actually based near to my home, has opted for fairness and social responsibility to its community by adopting the latter. I like it, as it speaks to how organisations must be attuned to their community and, put simply, to share the success:

Doing the homework

A simple story, but I like it because it speaks to Open Data and engaged communities: a schoolboy corrects a NASA data error. It’s on my mind as we launch our Research Hub this month, and I’m thinking about how and why we run an Open Data Model: because we are stronger, engaged to our community.

My writing

I started the week reflecting on the ownership of conversations. As organisations gain access to the co-created thinking of a large population, who owns that story?

My main thinking and writing this week has been around Resilience. I worked up a new session that draws together a number of streams of work, exploring the limitations of formal systems, the strength of empowered communities, and the role of technology. I delivered this session yesterday and it seemed to go down well, so I’ll see where I can take this worth further.

What I’m thinking about

I’m primarily thinking about systemic change at the moment: how we require a holistic pattern of adaptation. Last week I sketched some ideas on Organisational Design with this in mind, the design focussed around purpose, not simply functional entities.

I continue to mull this over. Clearly, community sits at the heart of it, as well as a new mindset towards technology. More fluid, enabling, disposable, adaptive.

As I fly out to Seattle and San Francisco for the next week, I’ll keep working on this. Considering how we find the energy and shared vision to drive systemic change: to build the Socially Dynamic Organisation.

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