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Avoiding the pitfalls of the journey ahead
When we find our system striking out in a certain direction, there is a goal of that direction, however distant or vaguely defined the goal may be. So there is always a double unknown for our system, which is that it is both not fully aware of what it is trying to achieve and not fully aware of the crucial contingencies awaiting it in the objective universe of possibilities. Because of these two unknowns, it is important to ask the right questions.
One question we need to ask ourselves is, "Do we understand that we must update our strategy from time to time in the light of actual current events?"
The important follow-up question is, "Do we really have in hand the kind of group thinking processes we will need for updating our strategy effectively for avoiding the traps and self-blockages that will tend to emerge on the road ahead?"
Strategic direction as a learning process
We have made what we believe is our best assessment of the actual trends of the circumstance we find ourselves in. This is our strategic worldview. This in turn breaks down into paradigms, which are our present fixed judgements on the major aspects of our worldview. Each paradigm is composed of a composite of our various individual mental models of what we pay most attention to within any given area of major joint concern. Each mental model is made of a set of heuristics or current rules of judgement based on a combination of experiences we have already had in the area plus the theories we like best that have influenced us the most.
Learning, which is an inductive process, takes place as events conspire to force us to modify some of the rules or judgements that go into the composition of our mental models of this or that area of our joint strategic concern and direction. If we are learning, we find ourselves having occasional paradigm shifts about the very nature of one of our activities and the wider context in which it takes place. These paradigm shifts then accumulate into occasional big shifts in our entire strategic worldview, which in turn eventually leads to a major re-definition of the overall desirable goal for our own system if it is to have a viable destiny.
The need to avoid drifting in organisational routines
If our organisation does not have a shared, clear strategic direction, it will drift along heedlessly in the "business as usual" state. People are, after all, creatures of routine. This is true on all levels of the organisation.
If our organisation does have a shared, clear strategic direction, then it will of necessity meet together in various ways on a regular basis to set its correct short-term objectives on the way to the long-term goal as an aspect of the organisational learning process from periodic review of what has been actually achieved in a variety of important areas to date.
Any avoidance or vagueness about objectives will inevitably spell stagnation and defeat of our total system. The way to correct for tendencies of avoidance or vagueness is through seeking unusual information that might prove useful in updating our windows on the world and for building better scenarios of what can happen.
Routine thinking tries to plan ahead on the map of the familiar, known world, and thus fails to do real thinking at all. Once real thinking is rejected to maintain a familiar sense of reality, learning stops. When learning stops, all possible fruitful thinking and re-planning are deemed to lack the action idiom that would allow us to keep mindlessly busy, implementing an obsolete strategy that is now reaching irrelevant objectives for the long-term viability of our organisation. Drifting in organisational routines thus defends itself as a kind of busy practical realism.
A group of busy managers operating within an agreed and well-defended stagnant strategic worldview are the equivalent of a whole stupid, heedless and unlearning humanity trying to imagine that observations, visitations and subtle interventions from alien races are not taking place or do not affect our planet's future. Failure of organisational learning can take place on any scale.
The need to make a real decision about our future viability
It is easy for leaders to talk about a "good future" for the organisation (or even the whole planet on a global scale) and to sometimes pay lip-service to the need for organisational learning, but such leaders often make 'decisions' about such things only to appear to be effectively concerned. This is what Edward de Bono calls a 'political decision' in his excellent little book, Atlas of Management Thinking:
"In the case of a political decision, a decision is seen to be made. There is action and there is commitment. That it all leads to nothing is not so important. One purpose of a decision is to satisfy the expectations of those eager for a decision. A political decision does that as well as any other. A political decision is real enough but it is designed to leave things in the end exactly as they were in the beginning. It is not a charade, nor is it cosmetic. It is simply designed to have an effect on those watching. To do nothing in an active and important manner is a rare skill."
We may see that we need to change, to improve, to learn to think or behave in a better way about something, but our habitual thinking and behaviour pattern does not want to modify its familiar ways or its familiar world, so it tries to make changes or improvements that do not fundamentally change or improve anything at all. A 'political decision' allows us to convince ourselves and others that we are committed to good change and that we are actually going forward in a new direction, but without having to leave the status quo. While we are wasting time in this way, we are squandering our opportunity to make the drastically needed change. We get trapped in the politics of our situation and cannot get out of it. We are stuck.
Getting unstuck is a cognitive and psychological revolution
Let's think seriously now about getting unstuck, both personally and organisationally. Can we do this? What does it really mean to be serious about urgently needed change?
I am afraid that I have to inform you that there are some rather difficult challenges or crisis-like situations heading our way. I suspect that we are going to be somewhat disappointed about someone or something we are presently counting on. I can even envision a series of disappointments or crisis coming too frequently, one on top of the other, without sufficient rest or breathing space between them.
We need to begin training ourselves to meet the challenges ahead with greater sobriety and intelligence than we presently possess. We need to be less confident or expectant about the future and more fit and alert in response to whatever will emerge. We need both a cognitive and a psychological revolution if we are to survive and thrive. We need fresh learning and greater wisdom and we need them now.
Are we now having a long overdue awakening about something?
Only a self-initiated revolution can be usefully facilitated
We must truly and seriously wake up to the real nature of our systemic condition and to the so far ignored but importantly unusual trends of our overall predicament. In fact, it must be said that it is highly urgent that you and your team need to recognise needed improvements that are necessary even if your present direction is the right one. Even where you generally have the solution to your main problem, you must not allow yourselves to be complacent about it. You and your team need nothing less than learning to forward navigate in a stream of continuous improvements and adjustments with a sustained and reiterative creative involvement in making the solution ever better and more efficient.
Once you and your team have this kind of real change commitment, professional facilitators can be made available to accelerate group learning and performance by bringing the right decision thinking methodologies to bear on your situation. This will be action learning because neither action nor learning will ever cease or become stagnant. To choose either action without learning or learning without action would be a fatal error.
Scotland, March 2003
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