Back to the future
Where did things go wrong..?
“Living backwards!” Alice repeated in great astonishment. “I never heard of such a thing!” “But there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.” “I’m sure mine only works one way,” Alice remarked. “I can't remember things before they happen.” “It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”, the Queen remarked. — Lewis Carroll 1
Imagine you work in an organisation that’s a flourishing, vibrant community where people naturally cooperate and collaborate, doing great work together.
Everyone recognises that none of us is as smart as all of us, and people learn with and from each other to co-create new value in new ways, contributing to widespread human flourishing and societal well-being.
Mutual respect is the norm and people share a strong sense of shared purpose, relatedness and belonging.
Sense making, decision making & action taking are tightly coupled, rapidly and repeatedly iterated, deeply embedded and widely distributed throughout the organisation.
The organisation’s culture of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness takes in its stride the twists and turns of an increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world.
Then something strange happens.
A weird virus begins to affect people’s perception.
It makes them believe that their individual, partial, biased, and one-sided “2D” perspective is the only valid, right, and proper way of seeing things. 2
This alienates colleagues who see things differently, leading to increased frustration and irritation.
The organisation begins to fracture and fragment as people form cliques with those who share similar 2D perspectives.
The various cliques become increasingly isolated and antagonistic as they retreat further into their bunkers and start to lob accusations, then hand grenades, then cruise missiles at each other.
Communication degenerates towards email — because why would “we” want to leave our bunker and risk encountering “them” face to face?
The energy and vitality of the past gives way to internecine battles, blame-slinging, and backside-covering.
Long emails start to circulate, copied to everyone who’s anyone, making claims to the effect that “mistakes were made but not by me”.
Dialogue is gradually replaced with discussion and debate. 3
Camaraderie and cooperation give way to antagonism and accusations.
The abilities for shared sense making, effective decision making and purposeful action taking collectively atrophy.
The previous sense of coherence is replaced by formal written agreements that rarely last long — despite the increasingly interminable meetings required to produce them.
Unresolved issues fester until they can no longer be ignored, then require urgent action — any action.
So, when action does get taken, it’s with little thought of unintended but readily predictable side-effects.
Problems smoulder until they eventually burst into flames.
Fire-fighting becomes the norm.
Certain individuals are celebrated as heroes for their high-visibility antics, rushing around putting out fires.
Few notice that many of the fires are ones the “heroes” failed to deal with when they first started.
Some of the fires were even started by the “heroes” themselves.
Being a “fire-fighting arsonist” looks like an increasingly attractive career path.
This end state describes current reality in far too many organisations.
But the reverse journey is possible... 4
“Through the Looking-Glass” Chapter 5 “Wool and Water”.
Find out more about 2D perspectives and 2D3D mindsets in this previous article.
For more on dialogue, discussion, and debate see this previous article.
How to embark on the reverse journey? Start by Creating Conditions for Emergence.