The Most Powerful tool in the world. How do we use it for good?
The following is a TED talk by Dan Pink. Sixty years ago Edward Deming understood the strange counter-intuitive results of experiment Dan explains and railed against the motivational techniques being used in business. Are we finally coming of Age?
Twelve and a half minutes minutes in he speaks of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
The business tools to to help proceed down this new path are being invented now.
Kahatika is that tool.
Thought I’d take a few minutes to answer Seth Godin’s survey to see if I could get more clarity on what I’m doing with Kahatika.
From his latest blog 8 questions and why we get
Myself
Why? – Highest in the hierarchy of needs, Self-actualisation
To “Save the World”
Why? – Seemed like a fun problem to sink my teeth into. Better question; Why not?
Trillions
Why? – Because money engages peoples interest. Vast amounts of money will have them asking why?
Not much now, as I get older more and more
Why? – Life is a journey not a result and I have a plan that makes a large loss of freedom unnecessary
Business
Why? – Because it’s the most powerful card in the deck
He gave it a go
Why? – Hope that they may emulate
All people
Why? – Everyone has something to contribute
Probably not yet
Why? – You, as of yet, don’t have an acceptable, safe way to practice compassion
Watching the World Debate on the BBC last night I noted co-winner of the Nobel prize for physics 2009 Willard Boyle’s take on the internet.
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Like him I often find the Internet Plaghh!
His idea of entrusting organisations to distill information for human consumption is a little bit like entrusting a government formed through representative democracy.
None of us have time to sift through the vast amount of information to come up with an informed opinion on science. Take climate change science as a case in point. In the end we have to trust the system. Deep inside all humans we search for love and truth and therefore, unfettered, the scientific process will eventually deliver something closer to the truth than we previously had.
Now if I could just figure a trustworthy method of distilling the wisdom inherent in our most powerful change agent, business.
Our biggest change agent “Business”, develops, causing society to progress in some direction or another, for what seems like more and more inexplicable reasons.
Surely as a society it would be great to have confidence that our most powerful change agents are doing what they do for admirable reasons?
The case could be made that poor internal communications are responsible for this interesting statistic. The employees just don’t know what is in the heart of their power brokers?
A more probable answer is that the employees are in fact the most reliable source of true understanding of the heart and mind of an organisation.
Either way, a method of constantly measuring that heart and mind, that doesn’t require expensive surveys by expensive consultants would seem sensible.
I have found much to my dismay that if I stop exercising my muscles I get weaker and less capable of doing the physical things I used to do.
The opportunity to do physical exercise outside of the time I spend swapping my time for money is getting greater and greater. There are no end of things being invented to make physical exercise more convenient, exciting and fun. With participation undoubtedly they would make me stronger, yet I am less physically fit than I have ever been.
In days gone by I worked on Farms, building, mowing lawns doing all manner of physical activity. I was fit, happy and healthy. I now work in an office in front of a computer getting fatter and less healthy.
My switch from physical work to more sedentary work shows me the value and need of practicing the physical.
I’ve been wondering if the same principle applies to Wisdom.
Are the systems we implement in business and society taking away the necessity to practice wisdom and thereby making us less wise?
Barry Schwartz gives a TED talk where he gives examples of systems creating barriers to the practice of Wisdom.
Perhaps we need to be designing systems which promote the practice of wisdom. With practice, perhaps we can turn the tide on what is seemingly a collective loss in this area.
Along side our fight against obesity, should we be fighting against this loss? If so, what are the new set of tools to help us with this fight. Kahatika?
Update: Barry has released a little more on the subject. Still no definitive answer to how to ensure more practical wisdom. He does touch on changing the system though.
This is what Kahatika does.
“The world would be saved if we could just love one another.”
An airy fairy statement used by hippies and dreamers?
No matter how true the statement may be, it is hardly a pragmatic plan of attack to “Save the World”.
Defining love is difficult in many ways. It’s association with sexual intimacy, and it’s broad context of use where many contexts are deemed socially unacceptable to even have a hint of that association, make in depth discussion of love uncomfortable for many.
There are so many different contexts where the word Love is used that it is impossible to determine if the world is increasing or decreasing in it’s level of Love.
In science, technology and business, when you have something you wish to measure, which is seemingly unmeasurable, you look for substitute characteristics, or if you are lucky, a substitute characteristic, which correlates strongly. Then you measure that. Interventions can then be trialled and reasonable assumptions on those interventions’ success or failure can be made from the analysis of data. Society moves in some direction or another as a result.
Pretty simple stuff, but what would be a measurable substitute characteristic for Love? I guess we are looking for an indicator or a “Symptom of Love”.
Furthermore perhaps we are looking to build the technology to provide the interventions, measure the results, analyse the data, and rework the interventions where appropriate to maximise the love.
Perhaps if this helped us practice the Symptoms of Love we could and would, over time, generate genuine love.
Use the old “Fake it until you make it” technique of self improvement on a global scale.
Now if I just had such a thing……….I reckon I’d call it Kahatika.
If the role of business is to identify an others pain and offer a cost effective solutions to that pain, one would suspect compassion would have a major role in business.
Should more businesses be embedding, or at least deriving inspiration from a Charter for Compassion when formulating the company mission and standard operating procedures?
Does the profit motive of business explicitly rule business out as vehicles of true love and compassion?
If you had a virus that if given to a patient, cured them, and once cured, would give that patient the ability to infect other sick people with that virus, hence curing them and so on until all sick people were cured; Would you start the ball rolling by giving that virus to the first willing patient?
What would your answer be if only patients with the capacity for compassion were cured and patients without this capacity for compassion died as a result of becoming infected?
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile Universe.” ~ Albert Einstein
We spend an inordinate amount of time creating systems to try to make the world fair.
I agree with what Alain says in the following video. Somewhat staging the issue but not the solution. If you don’t have time to watch it all, the last 2 minutes cut to the chase with a great question and answer session from Chris Anderson
In the early 1980’s I climbed out of my teens, I entered the workforce and started to learn how business worked. As part of a company following the flavour of the month management philosophy I was put through W. Edwards Deming Institute’s training program. Being young and impressionable I thought the philosophy was excellent. I still do. I was tasked as a lower middle management employee to champion the new philosophy through the company.
I knew these sorts of things needed to be championed from the top. I thought that upper management were all committed. I found to the subsequent demise of my employment how wrong I was. A lesson learned. Don’t challenge the boss by pointing out where they aren’t following the philosophy they are committed to following.
There were two things that particularly stuck in my mind from my Deming Training.
Like all good business management philosophies the relevance of their wisdom extends beyond the business context.
Many systems have stemmed from Deming’s teaching; Kaizen (Tony Robbins calls it Cani), Just in time, Six Sigma and many more have tweaked and branded their way to successful consultancy service models. Almost without exception they all tended to avoid what Deming had to say about remuneration.
It wasn’t that they avoided the question of Money and how to dish it out. It’s just that of all Deming’s wisdom, this was the piece that was most consistently ignored.
I came to realise over the years that the reason for that was probably “Fear”.
The following video is old but still true. It is worth watching in it’s entirety but if you don’t have time skip through to the 3 and a half minutes starting at 5 minutes in.
This part is what Deming regards at his third Deadly Sin and what I remember most vividly from my training. As with many people who have been trained along these lines I have come to realise, it applies not only in business but in every day life. Life just isn’t fair