OMFG! Finally! He's gone! To the bar!

George Bush


Don't miss the inaugerat, eeh the inageratu...inauguratu.. Ah, what the hell. Don't miss Obama tonight ok?!

Tags: inauguration, leadership, change, Bush, george bush, Obama, Barack Obama, president usa

Obama inauguration: Prepare for a grand vision

Big day tomorrow. Everywhere you look you get hit by headlines about the inauguration. Even the polar bears here in Sweden talk about it during coffee breaks (we use them as rickshaw drivers now when the oil prices are a bit steep).

Garr Reynolds (Presentation Zen) writes about Scott McCloud in his latest post. Scott, the only "cartoon guru" I have heard of, reasons about three types of vision in a presentation made on TED:

1. Vision based on what one can not see (unseen and unknowable)
2. Vision based on what has been proven (or has been seen)
3. Vision based on what can be, what may be based on knowledge (but is not yet proven)

That immedieately got me thinking about Obama's speach tomorow. What will Obama's vision look like? I don't think the content will surprise us very much as the road is pretty much set already from the campaign. Words that come to mind are:

• change
• equality
• freedom
• hope
• collaboration
• future (education, environment)
• transparency etc.
  

But how daring will Obama be? My hope is that he will be JFK bold and go for a vision based on what one can not see (no 1 above).

That's what we all need now in the financial turmoil that hangs over the US, and therefore over the whole world today. We need Obama to inspire people not only to hope, but to change their worldview in order to bring about a real change. Most of all Obama needs to inspire the business leaders of the world to live according to the words above.

If Obama can set the vision to inspire, let Scott McCloud show us all how to reach that vision;

• Learn from everyone
• Follow no one
• Watch for patterns
• Work like hell

You can bet Obama will do his part. The question is, will you?

Tags: change, leadership, inauguration, Obama, Scott McCloud, inspiration, vision

The recession as an opportunity to create a better world

Recessions are part of a cyclical change. But we seem to forget that. Peter Schiff's early warnings about overconsumption, debt, low savings and underproduction was ridiculed and laughed at. We can now see that Schiff was right. Good for his career. Bad for us. Or is it?

Umair Haque writes about the same overconsumption as Schiff. Haque goes a step further by stating that "We're addicted to consumption". This addiction is driven by the push marketing/sales culture in our present business paradigm, the industrial paradigm. A paradigm that is based on what Riane Eisler calls "dominator systems".

The industrial age represented the mechanical universe and the organizations were patterned after the dominator model:

• fear-based
• characterized by rigid hierarchies of domination
• an ethos of conquest (including the “conquest of nature”)
• a high degree of institutionalized or built-in violence
• male domination
• and contempt for “soft” or stereotypically feminine values

The industrial organization was made for another era, when control, efficiency, order and predictions were the foundations for success. Here is the paradox. The world we live in is completely different from the industrial age. Still, we rely on the same principles for organization today as we did 100 years ago.

The recession does not have to be the worst thing since "New Coke". Crisis also breeds opportunity (Business Week). Andrew Carnegie started building his empire 1873, in the beginning of a depression. Hewlett and Packard started their operations during the Great Depression. What is needed in order to capture the opportunities are courage and innovation.

I believe the world has an urgent need for two kinds of innovations;

• organizational innovations that release us from the decaying industrial paradigm, and
• business model innovations that focus on real value creation

I believe these two breeds of innovation are closely linked. Organizational innovation may not be a prerequisite for business model innovation, but it can certainly pave the way for radically new business models.

In order for this to happen we need courageous leaders. Leaders that are brave enough to pioneer the emerging paradigm, while their peers will ridicule and laugh at them. Just like Peter Schiff's "peers" did a year ago. But look who's laughing now.

My hope is that the recession will not just be misery, bailouts to preserve the old power structures and economic waste but that we will see pioneering leaders emerging, leading the way to a better future for mankind and our planet.

Tags: Peter Schiff, recession, Umair Haque, consumption, industrial paradigm, opportunity, courage, change, innovation

Nothing endures but change - Heraclitus 535-475 B.C.

There was more change last century than in all previous centuries, combined. Information has grown exponential. 100 years ago the problem was to get enough information. It was a scarce resource. Today we are overwhelmed with information and our problem is to find what's relevant to us. A recent estimation is that we will see more change in the next 14 years than we did in the entire last century. Holy cow! Can you imagine that?

This means that the information overload will be extreme. We have not yet begun to develop systems and structures for this information boom. Even more important, our organizations are not ready to handle it. People are not ready to handle it. Managers and leaders are not ready. As the level of change accelerates uncertainty will increase. A natural reaction is to try to increase control, which many companies are doing today, but that goes against nature so to speak.

Change is inevitable and the only way to deal with it is to "go with the flow". Another way of putting it is to have an agile, flexible organization that quickly reacts to the changes. It also means changing our values from control to adaptability, openness, transparency, trust and real empowerment. Here we come to the point I'm trying to make in my book; this is only possible by removing the dominant hierarchies as they are built for control and efficiency.

The structure cannot be ignored in organizational design as it puts limits on the content. The structure also states the rules of the game in the organization.
By building hierarchical organizations we immediately know who has power, who will make decisions and what people are supposed to do and not do. Great for control and efficiency.

If, and this is fundamental, the problems are simple. Research has shown that as problems get more complex hierarchical organizations lose both control and efficiency. So, that is why I talk about leaving the industrial paradigm once and for all in order to open up our thinking to the question that need to be addressed today; how do we design organizations that fit our present business environment and our present organizational purpose. Cause it's not about control and efficiency anymore. That's for sure.

Tags: change, natural organization, agile, values, dominant hierarchies, control, industrial paradigm, organizational design

A word on equal opportunities and integration

OK, I live in Sweden. It’s a pretty good country to live in by any standards. It’s not perfect by any means but it is a democratic, reasonably wealthy and integrated country in comparison with other countries around the world. We are also probably World leading when it comes to gender equality.

When I went to school we started to learn foreign languages already in 3rd grade. As Swedish is not a major language in the world it makes sense to start learning English at an early age. In the 7th grade we could choose to learn a second foreign language. I made a terrible choice and picked German which I liked about as much as having a rectoscopi . Anyway, at age 15 I was able to communicate (if “Guten tag Fräulein“ counts) with people in three different languages which is great.

When we talk about integration we usually mean integrating immigrants in our society. That is of course very important but it makes me wonder even more.

Why the hell do we not teach sign language in our school?

I am now 37 and I can make myself understood with almost everyone I encounter. Some years ago however I was playing Counterstrike on an Internet Café. Next to me was a nice guy in my age that was deaf. I didn’t realize it at first but after shouting and gesturing to him a couple of times he pointed to his ear. We ended up writing messages on paper but it was extremely frustrating. I actually felt ashamed of myself. How could I not have learned sign language? The deaf community is a forgotten minority and one that I believe is segregated from the rest of our society because we don't learn sign language in school.

Now only 1 out of 1 000 people are born deaf. That means that we “only” have around 9 000 people in Sweden and 70 million in total in the world according to WFD (World Federation of the Deaf). Does that mean the group is so small we can ignore it? Is the cost to teach sign language in school to high when doing a cost-benefit analysis? Not in my world.

Considering how much german I can speak today my six years of learning german is much more of a waste. Especially since most germans can speak english today. And if they can't, they at least have made a choice not to learn. Deaf people do not have this luxury. And if the rest of us do not learn they will never be fully integrated in our society. Correct me if I am wrong but I believe it is much easier to learn sign language than to learn a spoken language. That means the cost would be much lower per student when comparing teaching for example german with teaching sign language.

First though, could someone please make a universal sign language?! I don’t get it why the sign language in Sweden differs from that in the US, France or Japan. In our globalized world. I am usually not a big fan of standardization, but here is an application worthy of the effort.

So if any politician would stumple upon this post by mistake, here are a few factors to consider before making that cost- benefit analysis.

The benefits of teaching sign language in school:
1. Integration of deaf people in our society. No they are not integrated today. There is a reason why I don’t have any deaf friends, never had a deaf colleague or played sports with even one deaf guy. The reason is spelled SEGREGATION. Even if there are only 9 000 deaf people in Sweden I would certainly have met more than one in my 37 years on this planet if everything was as it should.

Bonus reasons:
2. An easy way to speak to people around the world when the words fail us.
3. Baby signing is a great way to communicate with kids under age 2. It makes the baby less frustrated and it helps developing spoken language earlier.
4. We all get old… Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to use sign language when your ears falls off your head?
5. Everyday use for places and times when you can’t talk. I would love to be able to show a few signs to a friend at the movies instead of annoying people with my whispering. Well you can probably think of loads of situations when it would be useful.

Cost of teaching sign language in school
Estimation: 1 hour a week for 5-7 years * number of students.
Nothing that we can’t live with. It’s a price we easily must be able to pay in order to integrate a segregated group in our society.
Option: Financing for free. Exchange cooking and baking (household knowledge?) as a subject. How hard is it to read a cook book? I still get mad when thinking about those silly lessons. Total waste of time and money.

Final note. The embarrassing thing is that I still don’t know how to sign. But I will make two promises. I will not shy away from encounters with deaf but instead try to reach out. And If I only get one friend or acquaintance who is deaf I promise you that I will learn sign language faster than you can type hypocrite.

Jonas
Ps I would love comments from deaf people. And please tell me if I am wrong about anything, I admit to my ignorance, this is just my best try to capture what I feel about this subject. Thanks!

Tags: equality, equal opportunities, integration, segregation, deaf, sign language, world change

Code of the Paladins

• Our mission is to change the world into a better place.
• Paladins fight all evil. Structural, systemic, universal and human.
• Paladins have a holistic world view based on systems thinking.
• Paladins embrace a partnership system worldview.
• Paladins support the integral movement
  
• Paladins do not accept the old industrial paradigm of hierarchical organizations.
  
• Paladins view leadership as action, not as position.
  

Tags: change