The fragmentation of the environment
Where does the content end and the context begin?
Laszlo Kovari
Let’s consider engineering, or physics, chemistry, mathematics, even biology, anthropology, etc. components of the Content.
One of the mistakes we frequently make today is confusing some of the contents with context.
Paradigm shifts between components, or fragments of the “Content” is just a difference of flavor; e.g. shifting views of organizations from mechanical to organical, etc. It is a pattern of flawed thinking: mistaking the symbol with what it symbolizes.
It seems like we continue picking one (content) or the other, assuming they are contexts, all the while we further fragment the content, focusing our attention on smaller and smaller and more and more pieces, creating seemingly more content to consider. Actually specialization increases, but integration is not keeping up. With the increasing fragmentation we are broadening the context in a direction of increased negative complexity (increasing decay), cutting up bricks to smaller and smaller pieces, confusing involution with evolution, essentially attempting to build sandcastles.
Today’s best practices within a flawed and deteriorating context is the mirror image of the context itself. Fragmentation of the context is what essentially caused the fragmentation of the content. Patterns of deterioration of the context can be observed in scientific revolutions.
In such a flawed and deteriorating context, analyzing the content in order to discover the truth (the hierarchical integration between context and content, some would say essence and substance), will instead lead to further fragmentation, quantification and weakening integration, awareness, thinking, etc, taking us farther away from it.
Attempts to bring integration back into the equation (e.g. with General Systems Theory) will not lead us back to the true context (the purpose of science), since you can’t stop involution as involution as a system contains patterns that create a self-reinforcing cycle.
In plain words sand castled can’t be strengthened. Building real ones have become impossible since the current “builders” have long lost the blue prints and they are mesmerized by the decay, which is reflected in their way of thinking and shrinking attention span.
At this time we feel the need for a major shift, perhaps a new scientific revolution, yet -when speculating about which piece of content it will come from- we are thinking along the very patterns that sustain involution.
We need to go back directly to the state before involution kicked in to find the “new”, or true context. Anything else is just “patchwork” producing temporary results and ill defined “benefits”.
This is an enormous task, but so is the crisis…
Could CEE be the answer to the innovation crisis of the USA?
Laszlo Kovari
Brief Context:
Knowledge is content and today the context for knowledge is also: knowledge.
Cut off from context, which could generate true knowledge, content is proliferating and specialization is getting out of control.
If no integration happens hand in hand with specialization, disintegration takes place.
Since the “knowledge worker” finds himself in ever narrower fields and he identifies with what he knows, his perspective is getting narrower.
Leadership is fundamentally an integrating reality that horizontally enables the integration of specialists (management), vertically aligns management along the context which, ultimately generates valuable, true, as opposed to second, 3rd, grade proliferated knowledge: i.e. commodity.
If the education system only adapts to this disintegrating market reality it only contributes the proliferation of knowledge, which results in people (specialists) focusing on the accumulation of knowledge (quantitative process), as opposed to enabling the emergence of leaders, who focus on context/thinking/integration/innovation: qualitative process.
Situation
Historically the US has focused on specialization as opposed to integration and when this escalated into offshoring, outsourcing, etc. it financed other countries that will compete against her in the game of specialization.
If the US wants to get back into the game and compete against India and China on their own turf, it has to find a way to own the CONTEXT, or to work with countries who do.
The solution will not come from known sources: C level (specialists), (specialized) academia, and (specialized) consultants/advisors.
It will come from an effort of integration.
The US at this moment can’t innovate.
This may sound shocking in the land of the Valley, but there is a lot of truth to it. It is of course leading on the consumer/social-communications front (like social networks), but that is more of a natural unfolding of social patterns, where the States is just a passive “leader”, rather than break-through innovation.
Most innovators from the States have already gone back to home (India, China) and continue with break-through innovation there.
The States is a sales/marketing/project management/financing machine that is increasingly running empty now. It is looking for new markets in India and China: it needs to sell stuff that surprises the hell out of the people on these emerging markets.
Could it be that innovation that will produce such break-through stuff will come from Central and Eastern Europe?
Example for a possible scenario:
American VCs or Sovereign Funds investing money in CEE countries that are typically under funded (there is hardly any VC activity there), but historically are great innovators/thinkers and instead of exiting here, bringing the innovation back to the States, commercialize it, and exit there. The synergies would be good: there is no sales/marketing/project management/financing experience in the CEE region, but there is everything else.
There would be of course some integration problems to be solved, (eg. cultural integration), but these could be overcome and to some degree even solved.
illusion of conventional conflict resolution
Laszlo Kövari
- conventional conflict resolution initiatives are driven to solve a situation (of conflict) thus even when they try to perform root cause analysis, they will inevitably miss the point.
- conventional root cause analysis is not deep enough: it disregards individual patterns
- on the lower level of the organization conflict resolution initiatives may provide results; but always only temporarily.
- conventional methods often follow irrational and flat out infantile patterns
- high level integrators are potentially conflict free. once they are actually conflict free, the whole organization maybe in conflict with them in which case conflict resolution initiatives are not appropriate.
- very often what is being considered a conflict resolution case, should actually be a case for organizational development/enablement
busy-busy
too busy is not good.
if a specialist is too busy, it means he is not managed well.
if an integrating specialist is too busy, it means he’s given too much to do and he is not managing well.
if a specialized integrator is too busy, it means he is in an impossible position.
if a main integrator is too busy, it means he is not in a ceo or chairman role.
there is a difference between a busy organization and an energetic organization. an organization that is too busy, is constantly loosing energy.
an energetic organization is active and dynamic and there is time for the important things in it.
an organization that is too busy is lethargic and yet it’s racing against time. it knows it can’t win, yet: it sacrifices the important things for the seemingly important ones, to maintain the illusion of winning and the dream of energy and dynamism.
to put it differently: an organization that is too busy is trying to pretend it’s an energetic organization.
and this pretention is what creates cynism and sabotage.