Motivation problems in the next economy

The old economy has cultivated hordes who are motivated by money and material acquisitions. They are not motivated to open what is closed, share what has been privitized or collaborate with formal rivals. Within their value frameworks, it does not pay to be cooperative, collaborative or commons-based. Rather, compassion shows up as losses, defeats or concessions on their radar. They cannot do things for others unless it gets rewarded in a game like Farmville or World of Warcraft.

Being motivated by money is the same as lacking self motivation. Extrinsic motivation eliminates intrinsic motivation. Tangible rewards become addicting. The addict fixates on getting more payoffs at all cost. They cannot validate anyone who is intrinsically motivated to serve, mentor or care for others. Being generous with one's time, talents and energies appears foolhardy, unproductive and contrary to the rules for succeeding.

As the next economy replaces the excess of paying jobs with more cooperative endeavors, those addicted to extrinsic rewards will become chronically unmotivated. They identify with what they do, not with who they are. They need a fix to feel right about themselves. They feel extremely wronged when deprived of a paying job. They will be in no mood to volunteer for, contribute to or share with others' projects. Unfortunately, they will feel the urge to act disgracefully, anti-socially or even criminally.

A sustainable network economy needs to resolve these motivation problems or getting dismantled by their corrosive effects. It won't work to hope the addicts go away or their addictions fade away. Intrinsic motivation cannot compete with extrinsic rewards at a personal level, much less at scales of neighborhoods, communities and regions.

Working with the outer fringes

I fully expect the next economy to work very well with the outer fringes of the global market economy. I've characterized those fringes as relational patterns, not typical segments like manufacturing, service, or agriculture. While the core economy collapses in the coming decades, these stars at the fringe of it will embody the right stuff to function resiliently and sustainably. The next economy I'm envisioning will interface with these stars effectively. Here's a glimpse at those stars and the ways they contrast with the fading core economy.

Improvisational roles: When we're stuck in jobs that provide steady employment, we're bored by the repetitive nature of the work. When we're free to improvise, we find new problems to solve, fascinating issues to resolve and complex changes to facilitate. We're enlivened by the variety, timing and challenges in the numerous roles we deploy.

Immersive engagements: When we're committed to the core economy, we have trouble focusing on our workload or paying attention to directives. We're easily distracted by the enticements online or in our surroundings. When we experience our working as a spacious network, we're effortlessly immersed in the challenges. We feel like we're in pursuit of something mysterious. We're living our questions and wondering what could be next in our space.

Design thinking: When we're cranking out products or services, we're seeking perfection and avoiding mistakes. We're doing things according to specs or on time & under budget. When we switch to design thinking,  we need to consider all the customers and their contexts of use, need and challenges. We see new ways to serve them, make a difference and generate further interest in our designing with them in mind.

Discovery systems: When we're caught up in delivering what's been ordered, sold or promised, we're operating in task mode with closed minds. We've been taken hostage by an all-consuming interior. When we switch over to operating a discovery system, we migrate to being amassed at the border. We're interfacing with those on the outside who inform the inside what's changing, problematic or opportunistic. We're practicing organizational learning which cultivates a fifth discipline for revising the circuitry of chronic problems.

Processing stances: When we've taken a positional stance, we make enemies of customers, allies and supporters. We ask for trouble by opposing our opposition and antagonizing the antagonists. We fail to see life as a mirror of where we're coming from. When we crossover to taking processing stances, we're free of all that manufactured misery. We see ways to work with what's happening and let things take their destined course.

Results Oriented Work Environment: When we think of work as a prison, we dread going to work. When work is something we accomplish, it can get done without showing up for useless meetings. We switchover over from obligatory compliance with counter productive procedures to delivering the desired results on time. We find we can do what we love to do in ways that make the most sense for us while maintaing a life "outside of work".

Benefiting from paradoxes: When we're convinced it "cannot be both", we suffer from the tyranny of either/or. We go from one extreme to the other, oscillating in first order changes. When fail to realize it is both/and, two sides of the same coin, or essential ingredients of one synthesis. Once we can benefit from paradoxes, we maintain balance, realize winning combinations and achieve transformational (second order) changes.

All of these relational patterns can work very well with an economy what minimizes consumption, materialism and monetization. These patterns at the fringe of the core economy can welcome the challenges posed by those of us seeking ways to evolve an economy that proves to be resilient and sustainable.

Positional vs process stances

Human history is littered with failed social experiments to launch economic alternatives to unbridled greed, exploitation and abuse. In my view, each of these utopian ambitions met their demise because they took a positional stance against the market economy. They sought to isolate themselves in order to remain untainted by the toxic culture they opposed. As I've been imagining the next economy, I've envisioned it working with, rather than working against big corporations, government controls and proprietary interests. Instead of taking a positional stance against the current world order, this economy takes a process stance toward the future.

When we take a process stance, we are saying "yes" to the process instead of saying "no" to the opposition. We see a process in those who oppose the innovations and collaborations that will change their game. We see how innovations can emerge and incumbent systems self-destruct without forcing either outcome. Both occur naturally through inherent growth processes toward more cohesion, sustainability and resilience.

When we take a process stance, we switch from following procedures to processing whatever occurs. We've opened our minds to fresh thoughts and opened our systems to outside influences. We extend the boundary of inclusion to welcome outsiders who can benefit from the processes within. We see ways to work with those with different interests, outlooks and stories. We avoid taking evidence literally so that we're free to change the meaning, diagnosis or frame of reference in use.

Using a process stance also sets us up to win without a battle. Rather than making enemies or war with the opposing side, we make like we're facing a mystery. We don't know what will come of the conflict, so we work on knowing ourselves and our enemies deeply. We see how much we have in common, how much each has at stake, and how much freedom to maneuver is available to both. We avoid the pitfalls of assumptions, vengeance or control dramas. We use our not-knowing to become trouble for opposing positional stances. We trust the processes of bubbles getting burst and fears coming true. We watch as the others find they are being  over-confident, delusional and too smart for their own good.

Taking a process stance can break this pattern of failed social experiments. Success will enliven the participates and invite others to join in without a hard sell or big expense. It's value will be so evident and enticing that the replacement economy will "sell itself".

Getting beyond survival mode

The core functions of the global economy are currently in survival mode. There are peripheral components which may transition smoothly. However, most of the banking, investing, manufacturing, governing, educating and services sectors are in trouble. Those facets in survival mode must be thinking " we don't do anyone any good if we collapse, we should do everything possible to survive". That kind of thinking is of a short sighted variety that results from fear, extrinsic rewards or taking evidence literally. When any enterprise goes into survival mode, from an individual to the entire global economy, there's a recognizable pattern to all that becomes unconscious. Here's some dimensions of that recognizable pattern of obliviousness:

1. Losing sight of a guiding purpose or the vision for a preferred future
2. Overlooking the freedom amidst the imposing constraints or the possible alternatives adjacent to greater limitations
3. Dismissing the sources of the deteriorating situations and the ways underlying assumptions are feeding the problems
4. Dwelling on the dots without connecting them into trends of declines of successful arrangements, uprisings of game changers, reversals of fortune or replacements of incumbents
5. Misreading the signs of self-confirming evidence, delusional constructs or failures to question what is missing
6. Avoiding the paradoxes worth pursuing and the best of both combinations of apparent dilemmas
7. Arresting the processes that cultivate trust, restore balance and collaborate on new solutions

It takes those not in survival mode to apprehend all that gets overlooked. We can get beyond survival mode by asking what-if questions, playing out different scenarios, and exploring creative efforts at the cutting edge of the status quo. I've been a lot of that amidst my being too busy to do much blogging lately. Here's some possibilities I'm pondering that I'll explore in future posts:

• The current level of unemployment may rise higher in all the economies that were thriving before the global recession. That's because it's not really unemployment, it's the emergence of redeployment 
• An increasing portion of the next economy won't have the income to get taxed by governments which fund social services, public safety nets and redistribution of privileged access
• The shrinking middle class and the widening income gap between rich and poor can create a huge space for new ways to look after each other's needs and desires
• A default on the staggering debt burdening western democracies could bring down the widespread system of greed and abuse of disadvantaged peoples and natural resources
• Elected governments can only fall into partisan gridlock when they depend on jobs created by the private sector to fund their "doing for citizens what the citizens cannot do for themselves"
• The next economy will "do for government what government cannot do for itself" without a system of revenue generation to accomplish those objectives
• The next economy will replace failing systems for pensions, health care, educational access, neighborhood revitalization, etc. -- without costly top-down interventions

Stay tuned for more developments....

Overpowering motivators

New technologies for lending a hand and caring for others won't gain traction like tools we can show off and stockpile. Extrinsic motivators overpower intrinsic motivation so thoroughly we lose any sense of self motivation. In Daniel Pink's book: Drive, he explored seven deadly flaws of contingent (extrinsic) rewards:

1. Extinguishing intrinsic motivation
2. Diminishing performance
3. Crushing creativity
4. Crowding out good behavior
5. Encouraging cheating, shortcuts and unethical behavior
6. Becoming addictive
7. Fostering short term thinking

Said another way, we become possessed by our possessions. We lose sight of who we are, what we really want and how we can make a difference on others' lives. We become possessed by the urge to possess more possessions. We get hooked on gaining the world and losing our soul of meaning, purpose and genuine fulfillment. Our lives become increasing empty, desperate and driven rather than validating, calming and free of fixations.

Extrinsic motivators don't merely compete with intrinsic motivation, they annihilate it. Extrinsic motivators don't offer a choice between greedy accumulation of more stuff and creative reuses and reduction of clutter, they eliminate creativity. Extrinsic motivators don't merely make ways to show off seem rewarding, they turn it into an addiction.

For these reasons, motivators are far more powerful than mediators when the two function at cross purposes. Paycheck prisons win out over social media. Job requirements and rewards defeat the widespread compassion mobilized by new technologies.

Mediators vs motivators

Some of us have jobs or school work which requires the use of our smart phones, PDA's, tablets or Wifi connected laptops. Most of us are torn between what we're paid to do and what we're getting mediated to do by these new technologies. When put into competition, the extrinsic motivators of employment will usually win out over the mediating influences of technologies.

When we're getting mediated by social, communication or other technological media, we're feeling powerful. The tool has amplified or extended our previous abilities. We experience more freedom to maneuver, connect and express ourselves. We become deeply invested in this magical effect on our abilities. We keenly aware of every opportunity to utilize, it, enhance it or show off it's functionality. We'll go out of our way to accommodate the technological requirements. We'll even become addicted to the tool for awhile without realizing how hung up we've become. We've been mediated by the media we're using.

Marshall McLuhan perceived all these subliminal effects that every technology has had on human minds, emotions and conduct. We saw the effects on incumbent institutions of these new extensions. He presumed that the electronic technologies would have the same spell binding effects as the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet, printing press and automobile. He also foresaw the digital age reversing the usual explosion of tools, uses, users and supporting infrastructures. He anticipated this next array of advances would be experienced as an implosion. Rather than extending our reach, the world could now reach us;  "coming into our living rooms" on TV. Nowadays the world even finds us wherever we are currently located via our Wifi, G3/G4, GPS and cellular signal technologies.

McLuhan did a very good job of questioning what could overpower the established regime of mechanized factory production, transportation, communication and education. It appears he failed to question what could overpower those overpowering influences of new media. In my view, extrinsic motivators have far deeper and more lasting influence than any media. It's not the factory mechanisms that are built to last, it's the managerial and governmental schemes for incentivising, recognizing and rewarding goal attainments that are here to stay. What we now know about the effects of extrinsic rewards on brains, decisions and conduct reveals how motivators can win out when competing with media for influence on individuals, groups and cultures. What we've learned about our inherent irrationality sides with the overpowering influence of motivators.

to be further continued ....

Questioning the persistence of steady jobs

When Marshall McLuhan was pondering all the implications of a shift from mechanical to electronic technologies, he foresaw the replacement of steady jobs with roles in flux. He perceived steady jobs as by-products of factory models for getting work done. He regarded jobs as fragmented and sequential like every mechanical technology. He suspected jobs would get obsolesced by the unifying influence of electronics (a.k.a. the digital age). He anticipated that we would be functioning with more improvisation, iteration and fluidity as we now are with our online technologies.

The planet is still littered with people seeking job opportunities, getting job offers and holding onto their jobs in downturns. Enterprises continue to hire people to perform jobs with clearly defined responsibilities and accountabilities. Job holders perform routine functions which yield measurable results. This raises several questions about McLuhan's forecast:

1. Does the transition to roles only apply to electronic interactions (text messages, phone calls, collaborative game play, photo sharing, etc.)?
2. Are jobs persisting because so many goods and services are continually produced by mechanistic means?
3. Is the increased use of temps, contract employees and free lancers a response to the impacts of digital technologies on work processes?
4. Will those holding jobs continue to create job openings and acculturate those who are adept digitally into performing mechanically and anachronistically?
5. Will digital technologies take even deeper effect on outlooks, values and desires in ways that will make "jobs" seem repulsive in the future?
6. Will the design and varied uses of jobs realize sustaining innovations which enable their continued use amidst disruptive innovations in industries and institutions?
7. Are the fluid roles McLuhan envisioned, not the opposite of steady jobs, but a new way to benefit from paradoxes about work load, rewards, etc. 

Today I'm all questions. The questions I've posed here suck. These are closed-ended questions that merely require a yes or no answer. This exploration first calls for my posing different and better, open-ended questions.

to be continued ...

Migrating from silence to voice

When we're learning the "one right answer" codified as authoritative knowledge, our voices of confusion, distraction and disobedience become silenced. When we're learning to play by the rules and comply with the institution's policy manual, our voices of deviance, testing the limits and challenging authority become silenced. When we fit in with the tribe and conform to their consensus, our voices of dissent and differing viewpoints gets squelched. The transition from voice to silence is far more common in the world than the reverse migration from silence to voice.

Those who are committed to authoritative knowledge find the migration from silence to voice very disconcerting. It undermines their their control of the situation and reveals what they're dismissing. Modernism wants to impose its dominant narrative and refute post-modern empowerment of alternative stories. Empiricism wants objective evidence to overrule superstition and speculation without getting into quantum about observer-dependence and indeterminacy.  High ranking individuals seek to overrule the small minded and tunnel visioned subordinates with top-down directives without listening to bottom-up initiatives.

In the years I produced videos with the the troupe of puppets I created, I gave voice to the silenced members of enterprises. I upset the apple cart, exposed the emperor's new clothes and questioned authority from many different angles. During the subsequent decade of college teaching, I continued to explore this migration from silence to voice in the different ways to be a great teacher. Most recently I've been full of encouragement for the ways the Internet facilitates this migration beyond my wildest expectations.

Over the weekend, new voices appeared on a blog post that Clay Spinnuzi wrote in July of 2010 on Acting in an Uncertain World. He had inspired me to comment on his post and read that book last year. I then wrote up my reflections in:
Anticipating the Next Economy
Acting in an Uncertain World
Outgrowing delegative democracy
Translating public interests
Talking with our tools

This morning I realized that Acting in an Uncertain World articulates my long standing interest in this migration from silence to voice. It explores how public concerns can sidestep the double delegation to politicians and scientists so the concerns get articulated directly by the people involved who can better inform the public discourse. It poses the choice for those in positions of authority to groom and listen to concerned citizens or to dismiss and silence those voices. The authors share my relational worldview that favors symmetrical power and evolving processes over positional stances and objective evidence. It was great to revisit all that over the past two days!

The economy I want

To wrap up this latest series on the next economy, I'm revealing the next economy I'm anticipating with enthusiasm and optimism. This envisions the end game without the middle game to get there. I'm seeing signs that the transition is well underway and does not need to orchestrated, only anticipated.

1. I foresee a massive reduction in consumer spending which will shrink domestic economies dramatically. This reduction will fall into place as people become less materialistic, less satisfied with shopping experiences and less addicted to extrinsic rewards.
2. I suspect that neighborhoods will evolve along the same lines as the recent wonderful upgrades in homeschooling. There will be fewer isolated efforts and more collaborations. This will reduce the need for duplicate appliances, tools, backup supplies, even vehicles.
3. I expect a new balance to be found between private, public and social production. This will reduce the profitability and size of private producers, the tax revenue and size of public producers. It will replace much of what is done for paychecks with volunteer efforts that the contributors find intrinsically rewarding.
4. I foresee more of us picking up the slack for corporations and government agencies. We'll do for the big institutions what they cannot do for themselves by our being close to their embarrassing problems and capable of serving one individual at a time.
5. I expect life long learning will become the norm as changes in lifestyles, food production, education, and social services. There will always be much more to explore as we seek to become competent and effective in our new ways of contributing and participating.
6. I suspect that job sharing will become commonplace as individuals will seek enough paycheck income to maintain their homes, but want most of their time to be discretionary.
7. Rather than go off the deep end of government supplied free housing and transportation, I expect we will work out a better balance between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. We'll see how to juggle what we love to do with a little daily grind on the side.

All these changes are already showing up. In a little more time, it will become obvious how to get on board, lend a hand and move situations in these directions.

What the next economy wants

Having explored what the old economy wants yesterday, two issues have been raised: what the next economy wants and how any economy could "want" something at all. Objective science objects when we assign intentionality to inanimate objects and abstractions. We're supposedly personifying or indulging in animism. Linear models of causality refute the possibility of recursive systems functioning as if they have minds of their own and intentions. However, subjective models of explanation allow for everything to enact processes and interests. We subject things to our perceptions and attributions in ways that are influential, engaging and ruinous to objective detachment. Our interests transform the interests we behold.

With that approach in mind, an economy shows interests in surviving and thriving. These interests are widely distributed through any local, regional, national or global economy. There are ongoing processes of growth, evolution, transformation and dissolution which enact these interests. An economy's interests transforms the interests of everyone participating in it. As I see economies, the next economy is nothing new. We're collectively losing interest in whatever the old economy wants for it to survive and thrive. We are gaining interests in different processes and beginning to enact them. Here are some of those processes which I'm calling "the next economy":

1. The next economy wants us to feel connected to everyone and everything so that we revitalize every place on the planet. That means we will create a sustainable human culture that is compatible with ecological systems, limited resources and the long term consequences of our actions.
2. The next economy wants us to question our conduct, hesitate before acting and interrupt our addictive compulsions. This will curtail our excess consumption and the inadvertent subsidy of any unfettered expansion of multinational corporations.
3. The next economy wants us to become possessed by the meaning of our conduct, the purposes we serve and the intrinsic rewards we find for ourselves. This will bring out more creativity in our lives to replace the passivity we enact as viewers, consumers and hoarders.
4. The next economy wants us to get a good read on everything we read, hear or watch to sense who can be trusted, which motivations are reliable and how inner conflicts can get resolved. This will dismiss unreadable presentations, advertising and journalism which happen to be lacking in transparency, self disclosure and honesty.
5. The next economy wants us to embrace digital freedoms as the model for using technologies, value propositions and delivery systems. That implies that the use of analog models will appear to us as "old clunkers" and "quaint reminders of the bygone era".
6. The next economy wants us to take consumer advocacy up a level so everyone has access to scrutinizing the quality of "customer experiences", "support after the sale" and opportunities to customize our purchases. This will diminish the acquisition of products and services from providers who relate to customers as enemies, zombies, idiots, fools or blobs.
7. The next economy wants us to find our unique voices and to express ourselves through every media form that captures our imagination. This will drown out the deafening silence of those getting spoken for incorrectly or otherwise dehumanized, profiled or categorized as "one of those".
8. The next economy wants us to see the highly paid stars as human, the leaders as equals in stature to us and the powerful as empowered by their followers. This will knock the arrogant off their pedestals and work some of those "first shall be last" reversals.
9. The next economy wants us to experience symmetric relationships will all things living and inanimate. This will transition "ecological awareness" from something to talk about at length into passions to enact as living examples and to go the distance to heal our world.
10. The next economy wants us to share what we have, care about others' interests, serve our common ground and co-create new possibilities. This will mess up property rights and litigation over violations of contracts which make sure no one shares, cares, serves or collaborates with us.

If you already have a foot in this practice of the next economy, you can see how it's no problem. The changes are in progress and getting explored in delightfully diverse ways. We're free to contribute our fair share, participate in collaborative outcomes and benefit from all the other contributions.

What the old economy wants

Kevin Kelly's forthcoming book is entitled: What Technology Wants. That got me inspired this morning to characterize what the old economy wants and new economy will want differently. I thought of so many facets to answer these questions, I cover them in two posts. Here's want the old economy wants us to think, to react to and to do according to its dictates:

1. The old economy wants us to feel lonely, insecure and isolated so that we spend our money on consumer products and services that compensate for these dreadful feelings. That means we need to ignore how connected we feel, admired, respected and joined by so much of our online and mobile technologies.
2. The old economy wants us to act senseless, driven, desperate and needy as if we're addicted to sports, entertainment programming, news, advertising, shopping, eating and driving around. Never mind how we're spending more time in personally meaningful ways.
3. The old economy wants us to become possessed by our possessions, worried enough to buy warranties, and eager to stockpile inventories of "just in case" items in costly storage spaces. Forget living in the now with just enough stuff to get things done.
4. The old economy wants us to trust providers, experts and professionals who are being opaque, secretive about their processes, closed to amateur inputs and protective of their private knowledge. Don't get inspired by transparency, honesty, humility and revelations within open systems.
5. The old economy wants us to favor analog copies which degrade when duplicated, put us at risk to loan them out and morph us into property rights freaks like the guardians of income streams from the pre-digital era. Never mind what a game changer the digital copies have become.
6. The old economy wants us to blindly accept the hype, hypocrisy and hullabaloo of push models of production, corporations spinning off toxic externalities and institutions turning a deaf ear to constituencies. Forget having a voice in all those comment boxes, customer advocacy publications, and platforms for self expression.
7. The old economy wants us to enjoy the benefits of "double delegation", let others be our spokespersons and feel we're in our proper place when we've been silenced by superior expertise. Dismiss the democratization of authorship in the long tail of niche voices.
8. The old economy wants us to take those high profile individuals making big bucks at face value, as if they can be taken at their word, held up as shining examples and valued as role models for the rest of us. Never mind what gets said off camera, what other lives they're living or what really motivates them.
9. The old economy wants us to embrace asymmetric relationships where those in the know feel superior to the ignorant, those with the goods see those without as bad and those with advantage be sure to put others at a disadvantage as all this plays into premium prices, elite privileges and expensive access to off-limits enclosures. Don't change expectations from the abundance of opportunities to relate as diverse equals.
10. The old economy wants us, as Clay Shirky tells us in Cognitive Surplus, to act spiteful toward others who could freely share in our wealth and to withdraw from mutually beneficial exchanges. Forget how much we can share without any loss to our own supply or well being.

Stay tuned for the sequel: what the next economy wants.

Amorous amateurs

I'm in the process of reading Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky and will have lots more to share that I'm finding in this wonderful book. For starters, Shirky tells us that the word "amateur" is derived from the Latin word for love: amor. Amateurs used to mean people who loved what they were doing and felt passionate about their pursuits. In modern parlance, they were intrinsically rewarded for their accomplishments. They did not need to be rewarded because doing the work, making a difference, contributing their talents and expressing themselves was reward enough. They were self motivated.

The word has suffered from "semantic shift". The meaning of "amateur" has changed over time. Nowadays, professionals think of amateurs as unprofessional, lacking credentials and disqualified from legitimate practice. It's regarded as a way to enter into a professional elite, but otherwise an obvious failure to advance oneself. Amateurs are presumed to dilly-dally and operate indulgently with low standards. There's no way they could be superior to professionals according to those who are educated, licensed, certified or otherwise qualified to practice.

We're beginning to see how amateurs can provide superior value, impact and functionality to others. The original sense of the word is returning -- of loving what they do and feeling passionate about their pursuits. They are free of the side effects of extrinsic rewards. They can bring solutions to problems and provide very personal attention. They can do more on a pro bono or volunteer basis using freemium models of versioned services. They are inclined to support each other transparently rather than compete, wall themselves off in seclusion and present an opaque bunch of hype about their processes.

The word amorous has also suffered from semantic drift. It no longer refers to the kind of love we feel for our activities and contributions. My dictionary gives its meaning as: "showing, feeling, or relating to sexual desire", "lustful, sexual, erotic, amatory, ardent, passionate, impassioned; in love, enamored, lovesick". When the meaning of "amateur" semantically drifts back to a superior kind of motivation, I suspect "amorous" will join the migration and refer to less erotic pursuits. We will speak of "amorous amateurs" with appreciation, awe and respect.

Talking with our tools

We've begun to have conversations with our tools. I've messed around with voice recognition software on my computers and tried out the different voices that can read onscreen text out loud. Many toys now speak to the kids sitting in the back seat of a car while the navigation system in the dashboard are speaking to their parents. These conversations assist us in doing what we're already doing. We remain under the spell of the tool which dictates our conduct and blinds us to alternatives.

In Sustainability by Design, John R. Ehrenfeld tells us that these conversations are not sustainable. We are unaware of what we are being, what role we've been enrolled to enact or what choices are available to us. He suggests that our technologies should interrupt what I have called our unconscious success routines. He uses the example of a two button toilet which offers the choice of flushing with less water. It saves water by making us aware of the sustainable or unsustainable role we're enacting.

As I played around with this way of seeing our conduct, I came up with several more extreme possibilities for disrupting our unsustainable behaviors:

• When we're about to put more petrol in our vehicle, the gasoline pump could question us: "where are you going that requires this fuel?", "what choices do you have other than making this trip?" or "how could this drive be combined with travel to other anticipated destinations?".
• When we're about to put groceries in our cart from the produce or packaged food aisles, the grocery cart could ask us: "have you considered the food miles and heat/cooling energy this item has already consumed and the carbon footprint that implies?", "are their other choices available which are more local and less energy intensive?" or "how can you revise your menu plans to eat in a more sustainable way?".
• When we've touched the thermostat to change the temperature setting in the space we're occupying, the thermostat could query our conduct with: "why are you changing my setting?", "how could you get more comfortable by a change in clothing instead f messing with me?" or "what changes in your schedule could reduce the heating/cooling load which counteracts outdoor temperature variations?".

These are design revisions to familiar technologies which increase sustainability. They go one better than reducing excess consumption. They change habits and perhaps even our culture of consumerism. They question how we are being and what we are enacting. However these disruptions to our unconscious consumption would be ferociously opposed by the enterprises profiting from our unquestioned expenditures.

These examples are also conversations that naturally occur when we experience symmetric relations with everything in our world. Actor-network theory envisions us relating to the interests of the networks we encounter through contact with grocery carts, fuel pumps, and thermostats. Networked interests in our increased consumption are conflicted by networked interests in our sustainability. When this debate is controlled by vested interests in our increased consumption, we feel silenced and poorly represented -- as Acting in an Uncertain World helps us discern. When this debate engages us in hybrid forums and dialogic democracies, we become transformed by our participation in the conversations. We define our choices and get defined by our choosing. We see the roles we're enacting and the ways to enroll others in our interests. We become sustainable, less by design, and more by showing increased interest in others' interests.

Takeaways from Sonic Boom

I read Sonic Boom by Gregg Easterbrook to help me better anticipate the next economy. There are several significant takeaways from this book I'll refer back to once I return to formulating my predictions for what we're moving into and leaving behind:

• The planet is now connected by a vast network of deep sea ports and enormous cargo ships. The international trade of raw materials and finished goods is fully supported throughout the world.
• Trading partners need each other and maintain trade balances out of their own self interests. The alarming trade imbalances are mostly urban legends.
• The good news is extremely under-reported by journalists who seem inclined to catastrophize, awfulize and demonize the bad news. (I've witnessed this pattern recently with the financial bailouts that have been repaid, the massive safety recalls by Toyota and the blowup of the BP deep sea oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico)
• The explosion of global population in my lifetime from 3 to 6.5 billion has occurred amidst widespread declining birth rates. The increase is explained by declining mortality rates, longer life spans and better living conditions.
• The overall population on the planet is successfully migrating out of poverty into better standards of living and better forms of governance.
• A surprising variety of cities that were devastated by the obsolescence of an essential technology have reinvented themselves with inspiring resourcefulness and ingenuity.
• The fees earned by venture capitalists amount to being paid to buy lottery tickets once the VC's have hit the jackpot with a particular start-up. It's no wonder the venture capital industry does not want to be scrutinized or regulated to protect investors.
• The increased complexity of the world we work and live in calls for universal college educations. This change resembles the industrial revolution which necessitated the construction of enough high schools to give every citizen more than an elementary education that had sufficed for the prior agrarian economy.

These are the gems that stayed with me a week after reading Sonic Boom. I suspect these proved to be memorable to me because the tie into the questions I'm exploring and the hypotheses I'm formulating.

Getting it together

Inder Sidhu's new book: Doing Both - How Cisco Captures Today's profit and Drives Tomorrow's Growth - gives us some profound insights into the challenges I've previously explored as benefiting from paradoxes. Business enterprises usually rely on a set of metrics to monitor deviance from standards and asses performance of assets, individuals and profit centers. This inadvertently creates one right answer or one way to win which defines the perilous prospect of making career-ending mistakes. In order to "do both" of many different combined objectives, this conformist culture needs to be revised. There needs to be valid mistakes to learn from and new sets of metrics for doing the opposite of the prior one way to win.

As I reflected further on this book, last night, I realized more ways to benefit from utilizing paradoxes in business and educational practices. If we take the example of doing both: making useful mistakes and avoiding stupid or repetitious mistakes, we can see several more benefits:

• There are no absolutes, rather situational evaluations of contexts which relies on the people involved to assess the mistake
• Anyone obsessed with too little experimentation or risking the making of a mistake will feel pressured to maintain a better balance
• Questioning "how many errors is appropriate?" or "how much emphasis to place on making mistakes?" will be answered by combined intentions to be right and proven wrong or being in the know and in need of knowing more.
• Personal inclinations to idealize being error-free and then to demonize flawed performance gets transformed into realizing the best of accuracy and experimentation together
• An approach to these contradictory objectives emerges where consistent, prescriptive advice gets replaced by guidelines for making complex judgment calls and insightful readings of the situation
• A systemic approach for monitoring the balance between mistakes and experimentation evolves to recognize too few mistakes, too little accuracy, too many mistakes and too much insistence of flawless execution.
• The successful cultivation of a dynamic equilibrium for each "doing both" paradox become unreadable by competitors and nearly impossible to beat in showdowns between rivals.
• Facing the challenge of doing both as a paradox restores a sense of mystery to daily routines which can increase personal creativity, job satisfaction and dedication to successful outcomes.

We can change our minds about doing both by considering these many benefits. However, changing the culture, business models, and reward systems of an enterprise is a much bigger challenge that Inder Sidhu shows us how to tackle effectively.

Translating public interests

As I've reflected further on the book: Acting in an Uncertain World, I got inspired by the sequence of translations pictured by the authors. Translations is a key concept from actor-network theory which contains the processes of enrolling other's interests in a different approach, alignment or role. Perhaps because the authors study the sociology of scientific practices, their sequence follows the viewpoint of scientists as they address troubling issues in the public sphere. Their first translation moves from the messy world of contaminated data, irrational outbursts and political rhetoric to the secluded sanctuary of scientific laboratories, rational procedures and collegial interactions. Their next translation occurs within this seclusion where the unknowns become established truths, the hypotheses become verified (or discarded), and their critics get answered. A final translation returns to the world where the newly formulated science can inform government policy, commercial product development and individual preventative and remedial practices.

As I pondered the dynamics of alarming symptoms and ill-defined problems getting attention, resolution and solutions, I envisioned a different series of translations. I'm seeing a sequence of five translations that I've illustrated in the diagram on the right.

The first translation comes out of an illegitimate space of silenced voices, imposed denials and suppressed dissent to a gated space of politicized rhetoric. Once the issue has been politicized, it gets covered by the press which evokes much polling, commentary, interest and support for funding scientific research. The synergy between the roles of politicians and journalists spawns a narrative of historical significance. Participants feel like they are making a difference and making history. This process fuels an asymmetry of power, roles and interests between those in the space of politicized rhetoric and those illegitimate outsiders.

The second translation leaves the politicized space to enter the walled professional space. Here we find processes of coming up with scientific diagnoses, precise problem formulations, expert research designs, controlled experiments, comprehensive date analyses and defensible conclusions. This process also fuels an asymmetry of power, roles and interests between those in the professional space of empirical validation and those hand-waving demagogues in the politicized space.

If either translation shortcuts this sequence at this point, the innovations produced will be stillborn. These intermediate translations dead-end in the illegitimate space. Having been created in either asymmetric context of superiority, arrogance and condescension, the value proposition will seem too foreign, sophisticated or esoteric for the public expected to embrace it. They will respond irrationally to the offer as unfair, misfit or useless. The following two translations are essential to adoption and utilization by the public.

The fourth translation also moves from the illegitimate space of silenced voices to a space of commercialized possibilities. The illegitimate space gets reframed as an untapped market demand comprised of under-served or misunderstood interests. The silenced voices are sought out for insights, revelations and perspectives that arise from their unique contexts where end users experience overwhelming problems, setbacks, obstacles and constraints. By now, those outsiders have been exposed to the politicized and professionalized discourse on their silenced issues. Opportunities become clear for how to provide better services, new support systems and other commercial infrastructures for this new market space. The outsiders' experience of working with these commercial interests in symmetrical relationships contrasts dramatically with the asymmetrical experiences in the prior two spaces. There is a natural inclination to trust, open up to and buy-in to the commercial interests that have taken an interest in these silenced voices.

The fifth translation takes this "working with customers" to the next level by entering an ongoing collaborative space. The customers seem like what the authors of Acting in an Uncertain World have designated as "researchers in the wild". These deeply engaged customers are closer to the end uses, more keenly observant of details and more committed to getting their purchases to work better. These customers are full of innovative ideas for better solutions, approaches, and even formulations of the problems getting solved. They feel committed to the success of the business model and contribute significantly, as if they are getting rewarded intrinsically. Next generation innovations "hit home runs" because they read the customers' mindsets accurately, serve unmet needs superbly and guard against becoming too foreign, sophisticated or esoteric for the users.

Outgrowing delegative democracy

In the last chapter of Acting in an Uncertain World, the authors playfully explore the challenges of outgrowing delegative democracy. They make it clear there are vested interests in preserving what they call the "double delegation" to politicians and scientists by the constituencies of concerned citizens. It's very similar to the defenders of closed systems who see no value in switching to open systems for publishing, research, technical design or education. The authors suggest that commercial interests are equally anxious to lock down the thorny issues in order to produce some profitable products and services ASAP. Dialogic processes slowly open up a "can of worms" while involving a larger number of diverse voices, interests and perspectives. To those invested in convergent processes of diagnosis, decision making and execution, opening up several hybrid forums appears to make these messy problems impossible to solve.

As I read this, I realized I take exception to several facets of their argument about the challenges involved with outgrowing delegative democracy. My take on commercial interests is very different from theirs. My familiarity with interactive processes suggests different possibilities for getting dialogic democracy adopted. My research into advances in P2P models of collaboration, production and communities tells me that dialogic democracies is already working at small scales.

Incumbent enterprises can only come up with sustaining innovations. They cannot disrupt their business model without scaring everybody on the inside into a panic. These businesses provide evidence of the books characterization of commercial interests being very convergent. However, the global economy is brimming with disruptive innovators. They are anxious to better know the unmet needs of under-served customers. They rely on dialogic processes to get untapped market niches to reveal their contexts, problems, issues and aspirations. They do lots of listening after inquiring and inspiring so called "non-consumers" of incumbent offerings.

Dialogic processes are already in heavy use in contexts where the attendees are paid to attend. The four books pictured on the right reveal much of the terrain of these practices. Perhaps the attendees to these workshops, meetings and conferences are willing to participate openly because it's an enjoyable time away from the daily routine. It may be a very different story when participants are volunteering their own time away from their jobs and families to move worrisome issues forward that politicians and scientists are downplaying. But rather than connect the difficulties of outgrowing delegative democracy with the nature of dialogic democratic processes, the difficulties may be better explained by the circumstances of the participants.

Collaborative endeavors are usually in no shape to divide up the work at the start. There are dozens of unresolved issues that require considerable conversation, debate and further exploration to resolve. Working with others is inevitably dialogic and democratic, even if there is someone with final say or a gate keeping role. Experiences with P2P models of collaboration, production and communities are getting documented in videos, blogs and books. A Google search will find an amazing number of explorers of these new ways of working.

In short, we're already outgrowing delegative democracy and migrating into dialogic models as if it's a perfectly natural thing to do.

Acting in an Uncertain World

Last month Clay Spinuzzi wrote a review of Acting in an Uncertain World which inspired me to read the book myself. I was not disappointed. I've done lots of thinking beyond the book, much like I've begun to do with The Great Reset. Before sharing those thoughts in a later post, I first want to reveal how I found Acting in an Uncertain World to be valuable. One way I enjoy reflecting on books that I've read is to ponder what questions of mine were answered indirectly by the authors. Reading helps me realize what open questions I'm carrying by offering me wonderful insights, perspectives and patterns that respond to them. Here's a few of the questions that Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes and Yannick Barthe have helped me answer:

Why do scientists in the public interest go into seclusion when working on high profile problems?

My question arises from the pattern of building trust in our expertise, advice and solutions by revealing our process of coming up with what we want trusted. In other post, Clay Spinuzzi both preached and practiced this pattern. Along the same lines, I faulted the authors The Firm as a Collaborative Community of for their conspicuous absence of transparency. I expect scientists in the public interest to be visible to the public as they contributed to problem formulations, data gathering, hypothesis testing and empirical validation. I learned several reasons why scientists favor opaqueness and seclusion from Acting in an Uncertain World:

• The data in the world is too contaminated or impure to support precision in research findings.
• The reductionistic process of scientific endeavors does not satisfy the hunger for immediate explanations among the public in a panic
• The public appears irrational and unapproachable to scientists, in spite of concerned scientists wanting to serve the public's needs and solve their problems
• Scientists are under constant scrutiny from peers to justify their hypotheses, validate their methods and verify their findings
• Scientists develop symmetric relations with their own colleagues, but asymmetric power over politicians, spokespersons and representatives for the concerned public.

Why do concerned citizens experience so much difficulty getting heard when problems of public concern affect them personally?

Elected representatives now have staff who monitor emails, tweets and blogs for relevant mentions, concerns and commentary. Journalists are seeking lesser known and low profile sources for insider perspectives close to the alarming problems. The concerned citizens can upload text, photos, podcasts, slides and videos in order to get visibility, credibility and understanding. I've been expecting the problem of "not getting heard" to have faded away by now. Acting in an Uncertain World gives us several explanations for the continuing problem of concerned citizens getting silenced, shot down and misunderstood:

• Most citizens can only recite their victim story, but not retell their misfortune in a larger or more abstract context of concepts, patterns and well-defined problems
• Concerned citizens often dwell on the issue, but neglect the cultivation of their reputation, credibility and identity as a legitimate voice
• Citizens abdicate their voices by over-relying on representatives and professional scientists who both prefer their silence through an implicit process of "double delegation"
• Citizens lack support systems and transition processes for entering public forums, contributing to debates or reframing contentious issues as shared interests
• Most concerned citizens don't reciprocate the scientists' interest in public concerns with their own symmetrical interest in scientific concerns which would establish them as compatible "researchers in the wild" capable of authentic dialogue

How have democratic processes effectively addressed problems with backlash, spill-over, residue, fallout and other forms of unintended consequences?

Journalists seem to dwell on what's not working in our world. We get too much information about crises, incompetence and stalemates. We hear too little about effective approaches, competent individuals and effective collaborations. So this question arises from what missing in our biased news diet. Acting in an Uncertain World gives us some models which have proved effective in these situations of alarming public concern:

• A migration from delegative to dialogic democracy involves those people closest to the problem to contribute to problem formulation, gathering of useful sample data, or anticipation of consequences from remedial actions
• The cultivation of roles for "researchers in the wild" validates the perspectives and motivations of concerned citizens while framing their conversations in terms useful to scientists and legislators
• The structured use of models for opinion gathering, consensus building and conflict resolution increase the quantity and quality of participation among citizens
• The shared map of translations -- from the messy world to the secluded laboratories (1) to precise findings (2) to the solutions applied in the world (3) -- creates an expansive space for addressing public concerns productively

To get questions to such large questions as these says to me that this book is unusually useful. That it also provoked many deeper reflections for future posts reinforces my impression of the authors' successful value proposition.

Adapting to the next economy

The next economy will come as a major culture shock to those of us who have relied on full time jobs for our identities, confidence and sense of what to do next. Our past history will tell us we "should get a job" because that's how the world works and that's what is expected of us. Never mind that "what we should do" is a guilt trip that frames us as "bad people" if we don't comply. In that frame of mind, we cannot consider what we could do, would love to do or can keep on doing because it leads us to what we're called to do. We need to be in our right brain cognitive strategies to consider those enlivening possibilities. One way to get there is to play around with visual metaphors. So here's four to ease your adapting to the next economy.

1. How have you outgrown your past? When we're growing like crazy, we can no longer fit into the clothes we wore a few months prior. Likewise with our minds, competencies and compatibility, we become too big to play it small anymore. We become big minded so we can see much more than before: recognizing patterns and reading situations wisely. We become more competent with more experiences under our belts so we can do more heavy lifting and take on bigger challenges. We stand taller than before so we can see eye to eye with those of greater stature and command their respect more easily
2. How have you moved forward? When we're making tons of progress, there's no going backwards in our lives. We gone beyond our comfort zone of familiar routines to a less familiar place that offers us new mysteries to solve, unknowns to explore and potential discoveries to realize. We're not the same person because we've solved some problems, met some challenges and realized some accomplishments. We've been changed by making changes in our world. We've moved to higher ground where we keep our perspective with ease.
3. What have you built? When we've been working on projects, challenges and changes, we realized some accomplishments. These inform us in ways that revise who we think we are, what we presume we can get done and how we'll go about our next round of accomplishments. We have learned by doing to not only do things better next time, but to do different things that give us more meaning, deeper fulfillment and experiences of making a bigger difference. We've got our creations to show us who we've become and show others how to see us differently.
4. What growths are you cultivating? When we work with organic processes of growth and decay, we realize we cannot make things happen mechanistically. Everything has a life of its own to respect, serve and trust. Some situations will appear to be forming buds that will blossom or bear fruit in time. Other arrangements appear to be decaying, withering and disintegrating. Some situations will appear to need weeding, pruning or restricting while others need encouragement, support and attention. When we see which of the varieties of growth we value for our own reasons, we can look after its flourishing and then nurturing us in return.

With these metaphors in mind, you can now consider how to continue what you've been doing. How can you keep on outgrowing your past, moving forward, building something new and cultivating growths? What can these processes lead to, set-up or turn into a different possibility? What differences will this make in others' lives that will come back around to change who you think you are. How can these patterns enroll you in a role of being who you're meant to be?

Anticipating the next economy

Over the past week, I've been finishing my reading of the four books pictured on the right.

• Acting in an Uncertain World - An Essay on Technical Democracy by Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes, Yannick Barthe
• Doing Both - How Cisco Captures Today's profit and Drives Tomorrow's Growth by Inder Sidhu
• Sustainability by Design - A Subversive Strategy for Transforming Our Consumer Culture by John R. Ehrenfeld
• Sonic Boom - Globalization at Mach Speed by Gregg Easterbrook

Each is worthy of individual attention that I may provide soon, but I've been most captivated by the intersections between them. Sparks have been flying in my mind as I contemplated how these four books speak to each other. Together, they give us some wonderful clues about how the next economy will take shape. They're seeing the same trends through different lenses. Together they've increased my confidence in what I'm foreseeing as the sustainable replacement for the exploitative economy of the past three centuries.

Getting on speaking terms

The old economy takes for granted that we're not on speaking terms everywhere we turn. After all there is money to be made, work to be done and expansion to accomplish without idle chatter! So it has been business as usual for there to be disconnects between spokespersons and those spoken for, scientists and lay persons, manufacturers and resellers, product designers and customers, trend watchers and journalists, as well as employees and their top management. All four books show us ways to get on speaking terms with others throughout the next economy. The most radical version comes from John R. Ehrenfeld who was inspired by Bruno Latour's sense to dialogue with anything and everything. Ehrenfeld suggests how sustainability will come about by conversing with the thing we're about to consume. That will interrupt our automatic, thoughtless consumption with challenging questions for further exploration. The act of exploring our own interests as well as those of sustainable conduct will make us temporarily aware of the role we've been playing and another we could play out instead. Imagine how much more creative, collaborative, resourceful and responsive the economy will seem to everyone as result of replacing disconnects with dialogue.

Solving the right problem

The old economy has profited from solving the wrong problems without paying for the costly errors. The right problems don't appear as lucrative to solve until the beneficial side effects of a correct diagnosis are well understood. Each parochial interest has repeatedly gone into an exclusive silo, tried harder to do its thing and spun off troubles for others to handle. Now we know better than to ego-trip in our connected world. We can solve different problems with our access to information about who and what will get affected. We'll address the deeper nature of problems that spill over into others, blow back against misconstrued attempts at remedies, and escalate symptoms when addressed in isolation. We'll develop superior products, services, policies and programs to intervene where problems persist.

Hybridization of polarized opposites

The "tyranny of either/or" has ruled the old economy. As revealed by Collins and Porras in their 1994 classic: Built to Last, successful companies figure how to do both. Mutually exclusive pairs, stifling dilemmas and irreconcilable differences are all fodder for the mill of hybridization. There are paradoxes, balancing acts, meeting in the middle and winning combinations to be synthesized. Inder Sidhu's book applies hybridization to an amazing array of business issues. Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe apply it to the the collaborations between secluded professional researchers and the passionate "researchers in the wild". Easterbrook inventories inspiring synergies between opposing sides all over the globe. Ehrenfeld explores how the migration to sustainability calls for both the elimination of unsustainable practices and the embrace of approaches for flourishing in our lives.

Enrollment in roles

The old economy is rife with protestations about taking added initiative or responsibility. It's spoken as "it's not my job", "I gave at the office" or do I look like I care?". We've been compartmentalized and specialized in ways that undermine our cooperation, collaboration and reciprocation with others. The next economy has already begun to make us much more aware of others' pain, limitations, and forestalled possibilities. We're seeing many more ways to make a difference, lend a hand and show how much we care. It's something we'll do as the situation arises, not everyday like clockwork. We'll get enrolled by what we've discovered, how it understands us and what it asks of us. We'll play a role for the time being like we're playing a game or playing a part in a story. We'll have a sense of a space being created to enter inside, find others in there as well and together explore freely for the time being.

When one book makes a prediction about the future I'm thinking I'll wait and see. When four books perceive the same patterns emerging from such different viewpoints, I'm thinking I'll get onboard with lots of buy-in and eagerness to spread the word.