There is no switch

Nothing quite prepares you for the sight as you round the bend in the road. Now high up on the Rantberge about to descend into the desert. The Spreetshoogte Pass.

I can see for a thousand miles. The breath definitely taken away.

Impossible to describe a desert - this simply inexplicable geological masterpiece. My home for a week. Living in such a remote place with no compute connectivity and deafening peace is at once beautifully chaotic and positively disturbing. Positively.

The immense distances mean nothing. 

1500 million years has not changed the impossible volcanic landscape stretched out before me very much - but I feel completely different. It's interesting how my Western mind pokes and challenges me as to how long I could feel inspired by this place. I will find out.

The relentless search for fresh input has slowed in its pace. Data to my brain now gets translated through uncommon bird sounds, snakes, lizards and insects crawling through my mind. 56 varieties of Scorpion.

The minute sparkling silica at my feet constantly shifted around by weird bugs and ants. Petrified twigs still slightly attached to the main branch are banging against the skeleton of a once proud antelope - or whatever it was. In other times I would be standing neck deep in a river.

An extraordinary performance is in continuous play that will outlive my time here.

A stark absence of all the usual western stimulus forces me into a random form of active seeking. Intrigue comes from a shadow now. And as the wind wanders over hot rock and dead grass my eyes follow and my brain rushes to cling on. In vain mostly.

I find myself bathing easily in this release from the everyday. The word to describe this could be contemplation but I know it isn't. Contrasting this new state with all the stuff - that becomes so stifling and irritating back in the other world - I could say I'm reflecting - but I'm not. Happily now a million miles from anything that I used to call important. Peace of heart and mind - that's enough.

What's the point comparing this place, my current mind and emotions with that totally other world. None - other that to realise the futility of needing to.

I have to break through needing to.

There is no switch.

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Revealing Inspiration

Staring at something - one thing - for an extended period has the bizarre effect of inducing myriad other thoughts. The mind forces this to happen. It wanders. I guess it does so to ensure we don't lose our minds with the compression and pressure of that amount of blinding focus. 

It can unsettle - but mastering it has big rewards.

What's interesting about the phenomena is to consider the puzzle it suggests. To in some way have fathomed how this actually works. Figure it out so that we might ride the wave - always on the hunt for creative inspiration as we train our minds to deliberately flitter around searching a breakthrough answer. Seeking that bigger and better thought.

By being tuned in to being tuned out - and in - yet all over the idea of the conundrum is a mercurial and confounding skill.

People around you - watching and listening would get concerned that you have lost interest in them or their conversation when in fact they have inspired you to go find new mental pay-dirt. You are off in search.

Locking into this state of mind is a hard thing to do. It is tough to describe in a way that people can understand or indeed be taught.

In Search Of The Bedouin Mind

Listen to what your eyes are telling you. Look for the stuff that they aren't. In your head turn the scene around through as many dimensions as you can. Pull the scene apart. Juxtapose the ordinary items and let the narrative in your head go wild. Throw stuff into the scene. Play with the words and related suggestions that enter your consciousness. You won't know where they came from. Imagine you are seeing what you see now for the first time – afresh.

Imagine you have stumbled across this arrangement and you weren't supposed to - it has shocked you.  

This is a recognized state of creativity that flies in and out within a nano-second. The cheating comedian that occupies the brain laughs at our poor performance. This gymnastics will tire you out but it's the life of the bedouin mind and you have to learn to follow its tracks.

Pay attention to its dance. It's disturbing and heightens your flow of adrenaline. You feel on edge. Bits are flying past your mind, your eyes and that inner voice is abusing you for fun. You feel a fraud, a traitor and a killer celebrity all at the same time. The thrill of it is unlike anything else.

You have had an idea.

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I haven't reached the desert yet.

I can feel the pull of it though. Empty but full. Simple yet highly complex.

My imagination only has the typical stuff from third parties to go on. Countless (but brilliant) documentaries of animals and plants that can survive the apparent vacuum and the heat. All in HD of course. People asking me if I have completely lost it. Why.

No room service, no internet. No respite from what it is. No problem.

I've heard horror stories, seen the movies where you just have to eat fellow travellers. Some of whom you have chosen to award less value to - in terms of the escape. You are close to going mad with lack of water or hope - you were certainly looking the wrong way when the sinister music started. You are living in the broken fuselage of life.

So this time tomorrow I will have covered the several hundred kilometres to arrive beyond contact from the rest of humanity. I will have travelled from minus 20 degrees C. To plus 35 or more degrees C. That's a lot of C. In 48 hours.

My mind pictures the scene. The arrid land, the sparse bush, the occasional animal, spider or snake. The unknown and unplaceable noises amid the cool of the night. The sound of new winds, sand and silence. All rolled up. The amazing and diabolical graphic statements of the dunes. 

From the air it looks like the moon. From down there I am expecting something far more distant and yet human - far from Hollywood. I am expecting to hear my mind working.

I can imagine a place that has been utterly ravaged by the sun and the wind. It has been hit by a violence that I can only imagine and nothing survived. I can also forsee a microscopic abundance of life itself. Not a microcosm but life. Itself. I can sense a different air, I can conjur a thrill of a different nature.

Will I be right!

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Living Systems & The Curious Case Of The Sociable Weavers

Strange. I like strange. 

I'm happy with it because it reminds me never take anything in life for granted. We are all living with Pygmy Falcons and Strange Attractors. Let me explain. 

Peoples, animals, insects - indeed every species and individual within them are all drawn to different things. Good job too of course otherwise everyone of them would be watching X-Factor.

However it does make for interesting challenges when developing, transforming and changing anything.

The Sociable Weaver is a bird found all over Southern Africa but particularly common here in Namibia where I'm writing this. When you first see its nest you are struck by the sheer audacity and crazy scale of it. Next your mind admires the beauty of it and then finally the complexity. Each structure hosts many families and a single tree can host many similar thatched constructions. 

Like all complex systems it embraces some strange stuff too. 

In the case of the Sociable Weaver's 'system' that has to be the Pygmy Falcon. The Pygmy Falcon shares the structure - lives there too. It probably does no work to help the Weavers build it. It mostly eats small insects, grasshoppers and geckos and yet it will also occasionally take one of its hosts as supper.

Anyway, how did the Weavers make this outrageous thing? 

Stuck, defying gravity in the fork in a tree or the cross rails of a telegraph pole. How did they all work together to achieve this? How did they know what the end result would look like as they weaver away? 

No drawings that I can see.

Well they do and it is an incredible living system. It houses many birds - a social network. In the telegraph pole versions the nest even has data connectivity. Not yet broadband though. Although they are probably too sensible to sign/switch on. The structure creates the perfect temperatures, air cooled to survive the heat and sufficient strength to survive the incredible winds. The downside - with too much rain (not much chance) it can get too heavy and break the branch it's built on.

So, in complexity theory, and given certain important parameters, communities, Birds, Zebra, Ants, Meerkats or Human teams all become self organizing around a mission - or just anyway.

Teams, and the individuals that make them up, become naturally attracted to certain 'flowing states'. These states are effectively the patterns that they make up - which are in turn the system.

These flowing states are known as 'strange attractors' in chaos theory. This metaphor is helpful in understanding the value of the visual frameworks in our work too. Without a frame of reference, or a vision, it is simple to see how easily unintended consequences would show up. We don't really want the Pygmy Falcon but the tax we pay gets us to live gecko free.

By observing the patterns of any organization, and in our case that's typically the people - their knowledge and the data, we can start to gather valuable clues about the business or the community itself. Armed this way we can then begin to map the way in which the 'enterprise' thinks and works.

Initially (and as in the case of the Social Weaver - the need to mate and survive) it starts with identifying the existing strange attractor. And then in our case a Vision or a better outcome. By degree we start to build the frame. As it emerges we are agreeing the shape (or that an existing shape needs to alter in some way).

During the evolution of the framework we - and the Sociable Weavers - are building a new shape - and as each new stick or twig gets added - setting the new course by plotting fresh patterns to operate by. Every season repairs are made to the nest as new families get accepted or new improvements/repairs need to be made.

Somehow the Weavers get there by some instinctive engineering and us by having a proven and logical framework and blueprint.

Not consensus though.

Why? It's not a viable objective in nature - nor is it in business. 

There are deaths along the way and fearsome battles. So it's important to figure out how to feel good with disagreement. I watched the Weavers attack each other - Sociably. Fighting for territory and not allowing newcomers access. It gets vicious. It's real life.

Our work in simplifying complexity is creating an agreed vision - the 'strange attractor' - and in some basic way the shared meaning that needs to come with that. It's hard. Many people attack the newcomers. They fight for their territory. Their twigs get criticised. It can get very emotional. Kill your own damn gecko then!

It's worth understanding a working definition of the idea of a shared mission.

We often observe agreement in teams out of the lack of a better idea. Terrifying. An almost last ditch acceptance. People can easily just give up in the face of strong opinion. Good or bad. This is not a good place to be. But at least with a framework in mind it is often better than the opposite. A bland and open vacuum devoid of real thought. I don't know where the Social Weavers get their grand design from but it sure works for them. 

I'm sure a new nesting system will see a few blind-eyed Sociable Weavers at the end.

Because in developing our visual framework we attack the ultimate objective (strange attractor) from multiple directions and at different stages, a lack of an answer or agreement earlier on will become the breakthrough idea later. 

It's not consensus necessarily but a greater revealing of a shared sense of something. That's a big part of our grand design. It saves on the medical bills.

This 'something' emerges by degrees. Over time it starts to add up more to the participants. It has arisen, surfaced if you like, after leaving some form of positive vacuum of 'good enough' - returning later to a far better thought. It is becoming in some way instinctive.

All this happens because the framework is already there. 

It is in our heads and on the wall just and just as present as the grand design exists in the DNA of the Weaver. It insists on each member of the 'team' tackling different dimensions of the same objective. Different patterns start coming together in the search for a 'system' of things that will suit everyone. Well hopefully everyone.

This is the power of reasonable logic. There is an innate energy being applied. Whether natural and instinctive (as in the case of the Sociable Weaver) or us working as a co-creative (if not consensual) team this is the real value of developing 'systems' within visual and logical frameworks.

We are all Sociable Weavers. Bring on that Pygmy Falcon

If you want to be yet more impressed by this bird check this out! http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1170/is_2002_Jan-Feb/ai_80903894/

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Life On the Road

4-30am

Very early alarm. Very. Suddenly standing in the shower. For a long time. Fast reboot to Awake Mode. Urgent e-mails first. Ghostly coffee machines, trouser presses stand idle. Who uses those things? Mind numbing, arcane - poorly written entreaties to conserve toiletries interrupt these precious moments with sufficient toxicity to ensure their destiny – they go in the trash. The hotel room is starting to throttle my mind. Gotta leave.

6-00am

Arriving, coffee in hand (with luck) to the empty shell that in a few days will entertain the big cheeses. A combined emotion of anticipation and creative determination to beat the scene before me. The walls are a mixture of challenges. Barriers to a fast start.

Despite requiring 'flat' walls there is a language barrier. Yes they will be flat. So why the fascination with ornamentation. Walls that were guaranteed to be clear of any protrusion – now a profusion of clocks, switches, whiteboards, wires, dado rails, oil paintings, hooks, wooden fish, mooses heads, windows, doors, spanish arches, medieval chests full of lead, helpful cabinets full of hand wipes – pizza trays, felt pens and thousands of paper clips, curtain rails, architectural follies, overhead screens and the like.

Shortly after 6-00am

The room is always a further obstacle course. Always unhelpful and ugly chairs - oddly assorted tables with the attendant rats nest of cables, phone leads, data cables, routers, modems, biro's, broken floor traps, dead pigeons and unwary carpet tiles, now soaked with the stain of previous ceremonies. Yes the death meetings or conferences of yore.

Sooo...

Firstly the big decisions. Can I cut round the ditritus before me? Will Roger find enough flat surfaces to cling to? Can I find sufficient space to draw even a thought bubble?

Or?

Build an entire wall. An inner skin of 8ft x 4ft lightweight panels joined together with the worlds most ingenious material - gaffa tape. Gaffa tape is compulsory kit for all high level strategic thinking. Build a wall. Yes a wall.

8-00 am.

The room now has the appearance of 'flat' walls suitable to create something elegant, meaningful and worthy. I can relax. There will be decision quality today.

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Free To Think

Flying is a great opportunity to think. I think. Nope it's not! Crap, what's going on.

The freedom and space to think can completely blow my head to pieces - release from insane schedules and pressure cooker thinking now becomes a hurdle. Great. Thanks. Right now thinking is the hardest thing to do. Am I even awake to what's going on.

Thought seems to demand me to scan an infinite universe of conundrums while harvesting conflicting implausibilities. And that is when I can even latch onto something. That’s not often. Each useless fragment taunts me with violent shrugs of utter contempt. I know where writers block lives. Possibly even the precise cave. Anything of any value guarded by fogged out sprites - lurking like some ferral pimpernels in the inner walls of my mind.

Vapour thin cloths hanging, messed up bits of something dart for a second with the thought seductively exposed and then gone. A second earlier I'd projected the diabolical ideas that were mine alone. I thought. Now lost.

I start giving in to the more easy to catch mediocre notions. I capture and commit to my selection of meaningless junk. Then tear them off the big screen that suddenly assembled with the rush of a jet plane. Fooling me into thinking that I'm thinking. It's like slashing at the neck of an infinite snake to finally pull something lucid into the real world of my real world.

What's so bloody annoying is that I know the better stuff is in my fucking head - I am just bloody useless at trapping.

Now look.

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Roll over Pareto. 80:20 Vision

Change is an unfortunate term isn't it – it's overused and misunderstood.

The bringing together of 'easy to say' things like increased collaboration, systems appreciation, creativity and fresh ideas can only really happen when conditions for them to flourish exist. Change will be deeply resisted if their meaning is left open to interpretation.

Change can therefore only happen when the conditions are developed. This means that there is probably a leader with vision - or at least a hunger for what's next. There will be a culture for teamwork  - or at least a recognition of the need for it. And a 'burning platform' or passion of sorts - clear recognition that things just have to change - at least a few folk looking outside at the gathering black clouds!

This form of 'smart' change means being aware and connected in ways we haven't even begun to imagine.

Developing 80 : 20 vision

Real strategy and smart thinking means charting a course through the unknown. This is where there is the need for real reconnaissance, vigilance and peripheral vision. Change means a massive distortion to our traditional and safe vision - literally and symbolically - and especially so at the edge. This is where 21st Century businesses need the help most. Things that can be observed to need change, are probably well trodden territories and don't strike so much fear - let's call that 80% - it's not even the remaining 20% of the issue that cannot be seen which gives us the problem – it's 20% of that 20% (maybe less - it doesn't matter). It's the edge. The edge of our known stuff and the cause of all the woes or the root of all opportunity.

Problem is most enterprises spend almost a 100% of their time reacting to the 80% - worse the effect of it. And very little time getting out ahead of it. At the very least business needs the 80% tick smoothly and then get a strategy for that critical 20% of the 20%. In this blurry, noisy, irritating fog lies all the opportunity you can imagine. Competitive advantage, critical insight, innovation, early warning and massive risk. Great.

Why I spend so much time fooling with the edge is because I feel that only there am I training my filters, sharpening my sensitivity and preparing my mind for what might happen. Yes we need to leverage networks of people, systems and clever connected 'social' media to help us think about all this and we know these systems are already there but very few traditional businesses leverage this stuff properly. They don’t know how to create the ground for them to exist. The 80% gets in the way.

These new tools are already not new - decision tools - things like Google, Facebook, Twitter and their close cousins. They will soon be making smarter choices - creating better filters that improving every decision you make. Don't ignore them. Discover them. We may not recognise them soon but they are the pioneers of our new world. They are the pathfinders. They, and many others that you won't have heard of yet, are the networks for increasing peripheral vision. From 80:20 to 20:20

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Loving Travel Again! (Well the comedy of it)

So the App finally arrives to aid weary air travellers. Great.

Actually the BA Application does work and while it's got the utility to recognise you, check your bags and all that - someone needs to tell their staff and systems that they have it.  As you file towards the 'thing' that scans the traditional paper ticket you see the attendant squirming with apprehension of what to do with an iPhone. Instead of scanning it they turn round and hit a key on their desktop and then tell you to show it again to the flight crew - who in turn just look at your phone and wave you on. So what's going on? Could I be anyone with a weird barcode on a phone?

Hey I am not complaining.

What I am complaining about is the seriously expensive 'check in friendly' new bag that supposedly means I don't have to take my prized Mac out of it's duvet and place it precariously in a grubby Tupperware box for x-ray. It worked fine in T5 but despite me pointing to the instructions saying it is check in safe the idiot in Geneva said I still had to take it out. Fucking idiot.

Did I really believe that global airport systems would align on this? Stupid.

Anyway the last few months has seen me witness 39 check ins (writing this in mid-air) so I know what I am talking about. Actually no I don't. I have come to realise that I have no freaking idea what to expect or how to navigate any check-in, any customs or passport check - anywhere - ever. It's always diferent. You would think that would be exciting or interesting right? Nope.

As regular readers know I am a big fan of travelling but the leading opponent of airport systems. Well now they just raised the game. So check this - Armed with an iPhone and a suitable Airline App we can now add another feature to entertain us throughout our travels - battery failure at check in.

Bye!

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Flying Thoughts

Intriguingly counterintuitive. What?

Well most smart things.

For me it's depressingly easy to identify cases of the wrong problem having been solved really well. So well in fact that the effects caused by the first wrong thing being solved have now been solved too - by layers of additionally annoying 'sticking plasters' - solutions to the initial incorrect diagnosis. The result is a stuck, layered, systemic mess of stinking proportions - held in place by armies of folk defending it all. That’s because they either were or weren't responsible for the creation of this hairball in the first place. Systemic Stupidity as I call it.

I'm talking about every level of business and western society when I describe this phenomena. Elinor Ostrom a professor at Indiana University and Nobel Laureate describes the systems we see and often suffer from as ‘polycentric’.

This is an important concept to understand.

Fundamentally she means that in an ideal state - multiple public and private organisations at multiple scales jointly affecting collective benefits and costs. A system where many elements are capable of making multiple adjustments for ordering their relationship with one another within a general system of rules where each element acts with independence of other elements. That makes sense.

The key word/idea here is 'capable'.

This capability or lack of is completely at the heart. To me for capability read thinking. Joined up and collective thinking that can avoid this rubbish and cause the kind of transformation business and society is crying out for. There are lots of eager folk describing the state of play when it comes to the need for better 'thinking' these days. Illustrating a gymnastic need for leaders to hold multiple paradoxes in their heads - complex data and seemingly impossible conundrums.

Complex systems are a fact of life and to add further complexity within all these systems of things Elinor describes 'nested attributes' - critical pools of activity within the system itself. Meaning that there can be very significant sub-systems happily operating with little connection to the whole system for most of the time. But very very important that it exists in the grand scheme of things. Imagine when sweeping national dictates come along and ignore this happy little community doing it’s thing for all the right reasons. Insanity.

What to do?

Reading, as I do often, what the great minds say about all manner of things. It's increasingly obvious that there is energy around the case for dismantling best practices, challenging traditions and developing a new language for us to turn this tanker.  Get at the root causes of systemic stupidity. A note of caution - let not what emerges, new tools, techniques - this new language be a fig leaf for the old thinking carrying on under new management. New language has a habit of being slammed as ‘speak’. Challenge the following trendy but true - for example.

Just a few simple changes  - a new approach to thinking. How brave is your firm?

Develop scenarios - the likely, the possible - the worst case. Have quality conversations - forcing questions – they are vital tools if your teams are going to stay afloat in these times.

Co-creation and collaboration internally and externally - versus - command and control management.

Messy non-linear relationships between things - versus - traditionalist line of sight - cause and effect thinking.

The need for context over the point (or focussed) solution – avoid solving the wrong problem really well.

Patterns and connection versus the well trodden historical evidence - data is king - hmm well maybe.

Breakthrough creativity and radical innovation - versus – evolution/more of the same.

Comfort with paradox, conundrums and seeming chaos - versus - a long-term plan.

Curiosity and freshness - versus - certainty.

Simples.

All important if we are to avoid systemic stupidity but will we? Will anyone?

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Delirium

I’m so delirious it’s incredible.

The idea of being in an altered state is intriguing don’t you think?

For me at least it’s become an increasingly attractive and relevant strategy.  Adrift long enough to enable me to rethink the plainly toxic - stupid world we seem to have created for ourselves. Oh no I must have been through an airport again. Well yes but also been through the recent elections in Great Britain reminding how awful the experience of almost everything in our beautiful land has become.

Delirium works for me

I’m completely out of it. My bearings are completely changed - beyond recognition - everything different. I don’t recognize a thing. How good is that? Inexplicable. Fantastic. Mischievous. Adorable. Sane.

This is how it goes.

I’m probably staring a little too much and for too long at something. My mind, at least what’s left of it, toying crazilly with an idea. Neurons in my head and my body fizzing and crackling like a wasp in a blender. This feeling is like one you probably haven't had since you were a child. It's a kind of freedom you thought possible but you stood it down because the 'system' would frown.

What worked in your head before (desperate to secure a clear choice and a safe direction of course) delirium set in now seems utterly ludicrous. You are laughing at how stupid the prior idea now seems. “The system wanted me to do what? How much? But I pay my taxes already! Another six forms? Are you messing with me? Ha, ha....”

Your perspective on everything shot to pieces - your brain agrees to multiple ‘cahoots’ with a demon - it's done a whole new deal with it and yes you were looking. You can see it conspiring and you play along. Because it makes utter sense. You insist on odd reasoning about precise if wacky details like “I know - let’s do it once – I’m paying so shouldn’t they serve me? Does filling out this form eight times actually mean anything?”

Hang on – the voices are suddenly making sense, that stone must be turned, that system IS ridiculous, that spreadsheet is beautiful. Well perhaps not quite THAT altered. I must be delirious. No I must!

Imagine if we could reach that state at will and ask ourselves entirely different questions. Challenge the predictable and the not-working. Get out of our box long enough to challenge just how stupid, stuck and boring we've become as a race.

Hmm, I love the smell of delirium in the morning...

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Inside My Mind - The Fools Cap

The archetype of the Fool as the court jester, is something I completely relate to.

I’ve been taking a look back at this part of history and seen that it is just as relevant to today if not more so. Frank Jacobs wrote the detail below in an original post and I use it here with full credit to him. We need a lot more challenge to the things that surround us and we need to be more open to criticism. The idea of the fool is a powerful one.

In previous ages, the ‘fool’ was a court figure allowed to mock majesty and to speak truth to those in power.

These were rare and useful correctives to the corrupting absolutism of the monarchies of the day. But criticism of this sort was only possible if it was de-fanged by the grotesque appearance of the Fool - preferably a hunchbacked, slightly loopy-headed dwarf, i.e. someone not to be taken too seriously. The uncomfortable truth is that the world is a sombre, irrational and dangerous place, and that life on it is nasty, brutish and short. The world is, quite literally, a foolish place. 

Just imagine if we could take the systems and people we despise down a peg or two. Imagine if there was a channel (that wasn’t the discredited media) that would challenge from a position of official derision. A 21st Century Spitting Image – with a social media movement behind it!

The Fool’s Cap Map of the World

This rather sinister image below is one of the biggest mysteries in the history of western cartography. Most often referred to simply as the Fool’s Cap Map of the World, it is unknown why, when, where or by whom it was made.

The only thing that can be said about it with some certainty is that it dates from ca. 1580-1590. But sources even differ as to the type of projection used, some referring to it as ptolemaic (i.e. equidistant conic), others claiming it owes more to the techniques of Mercator and/or Ortelius (and being an enthusiast rather than a specialist, I’m not one to call this).  

The map shows the world ‘dressed up’ in the traditional garb of a court jester: the double-peaked, bell-tipped cap (1) and the jester’s staff (2). The face is hidden (or replaced) by the map, giving the whole image an ominous, threatening quality that feels anachronistically modern. 

This is underlined by the mottoes of biblical and classical origin, dotted across the map. The legend in the left panel reads: “Democritus of Abdera laughed at [the world], Heraclitus of Ephesus wept over it, Epichtonius Cosmopolites portrayed it” (3). Over the cap is the Latin version of the Greek dictum, “Know thyself" (4). Across the cap’s brow, the inscription translates as “O head, worthy of a dose of hellebore” (5). 

The Latin quote just above the map is from Pliny the Elder (6): “For in the whole universe the earth is nothing else and this is the substance of our glory, this is its habitation, here it is that we fill positions of power and covet wealth, and throw mankind into an uproar, and launch wars, even civil ones.” 

The reason for so much trouble and strife is explained in the quote below the map, from Ecclesiastes: “The number of fools is infinite” (7). Another quote from that most depressing of Bible books, on the jester’s staff to the right, intones: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (8). Inscribed on the badges adorning the shoulder belt are a few sayings in line with this cheerful message: “Oh, the worries of the world; oh, how much triviality is there in the world” (9), “Everyone is without sense” (10), and “All things are vanity: every man living” (11). 

For some researchers, the sum of these messages, as well as their presentation in a cartographic setting, point to a little-known Christian sect called the Family of Love. This clandestine group is said to have numbered the Flemish cartographer Ortelius in its ranks. If this map is anything to go by, the Family of Love must have espoused a rather harsh and pessimistic view of the world, and of humanity’s place in it.  

But much remains conjecture, as indicated also by the last piece of this cartographic puzzle - the name written in its top left corner: Orontius Fineus. This name (the Latinised version of the French name Oronce Finé) is associated with a map dated 1531, purportedly showing an ice-free, river-rich Antarctica. Why would the name of this cartographer crop up on a map made decades later? Could he have been the mapmaker (12)? Or is he the one being made fun of? 

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Armies of One - Crusading for Common Sense.

I'm pretty angry.

Unlike our alien, unnatural systems of society - it's impossible not to admire natures grace and intensity. It matters. It makes sense. It' a true living system. Yet it's the grace, nature and intensity of human thinking and concerted action that truly matters if we* are to avoid our inevitable decline.

I'm even boring myself writing on this topic again and ranting at people - anyone in authority.

I’m fed up railing on about the stench of experiencing ‘life’ in any western town, stinking cinema, diabolical transport system or ridiculous ‘Mall’ experience. Unless I am completely in control of the experience then I'm prone to opt out of it. You can keep it. Shove it. If I can't shop on-line, I will likely go without. If I have to travel then I will be insufferable. Astonishingly brutish unthinking going on all around me.  

I'm optimistic about our ability to think, but I don't see much of it around me. I remain confident yet I'm deeply impatient to connect all the ‘Armies of One’ up. That would be all of us – right? This would all add up then. We would become the required momentum of better thinking. To cause the revolution. Spare us from the insanity we live in.

I'm worried though as I'm starting to sense fatigue. The tide may be weakening and the narrative becoming repetitive. Is the establishment finally breaking us down?

What's freaking me is that I see complete sense written in countless blogs, books and articles about what is messed up. But we remain messed up. I see the articles and hear the rhetoric about change but very little actual change. I fear that the systems - levers of radical change - will not be allowed to exist to channel the energy to make the difference. In fact we are now so layered, trapped within our own stupidity, that it will take colossal unpicking for any good idea or improvement to make it. The soil is now seemingly dead.

*There is no we.

Hold on! Whoa!

Sorry, I've now left the airport!

Innovation is bursting through everywhere! It’s a new spring. There is definitely a wind of change and every day we inch closer to an acceptable anarchy. Bring it on.

Say no to systemic stupidity.

Vote by opting out of mediocrity. Say yes to the new generations – those more youthful who are by-passing/not listening to these systems. Give the finger to the traditional thinking, the myopic idiots that have ruined every town centre. Say fuck off to those who do nothing and have blighted your public service. Say no to those who have run off with all your money - many times. Spray graffiti. Make your feelings known!

An acceptable anarchy means reversing the systemic stupidity. Stupidity that seeks to undermine the common sense of freedom and quality of life. Systemic stupidity is now so endemic that it requires us to weave fresh forces with immense grace, nature and intensity. To really grab and apply the clues that lay all around us we need a miracle.

It is here though and we* are it.

The new platform is us, connected, vital, thinking, communicating - sharing our intent into a movement so that the people in power** cannot ignore our voices. Voting with our feet and our wallets demonstrating our distaste for boring bland service, automaton attitudes, needless bureaucracy.

Perhaps not fast enough in the macro societal sense - but I can see common sense starting to shoot back through.  Armies of One, every blogger, every thoughtful human with an idea, energy and passion for change can get his voice heard and if he has a big enough idea and an eye for the new connectivity then we have real hope!   

I’ve stopped now.  

*There is no we just yet.
**Politics, Media, Business.

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The Wall 2

A wall is a vastly underestimated device. It has scale. It can be viewed from many angles. It is impressive. We tend to walk blindly past them. Not me. I love them. I use them in my work. I get to notice a great wall. Even when I am not in China.  In my opinion the wall is a 21st Century tool.  A massive canvas for the integration and interrogation of thought. A place to paint wisdom and knowledge. A tapestry. It’s time to rethink the wall. If the wall were taken less literally it could have a thousand metaphors/symbols for the 21st Century.

The power to display the strength of humanity in the face of increasing threat. This is what the great walls always represented. Why do we forget as a species?

Think of them as massive statements – billboards for quality expression. The unity of mankind could use the wall to turn back its mistakes.  Walls could become a symbol of hope in the midst of turmoil, standing firm against the swirling elements. A manifesto of optimism, telling the story of change for the future. The proud balustrades of a new pioneering peoples against the inequities of our past. The structure of change and creativity. The reflection of all thought. The mechanism for capture and synthesis that enables scale, context and perspective.

If you've ever seen a Son Et Lumiere in France (This one was at Le Mans) you will understand. You will get what I am saying about scale, storytelling and the power of the array on the walls.  At 50 -100 feet the impact is uplifting. Looking at the sheer magnitude of the whole thing is breathtaking for humans. This says to us that we should change scale more often and see what we can see in a bigger context. A feast for more of our senses - at more meaningful size and juxtaposition.

Technology will soon enable whole walls, vast spaces to be covered in High Definition display. The Advertising world has long used these tricks to amaze and capture attention and imagination. Soon all of us will have the power to command attention. What would we say?

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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The Wall

Walls are just stuck there. Immobile, one dimensional, passive.

Rubbish.

They are alive and all around us. They are outside and inside.
They form the inside - they define the outside.
 They can be at once forbidding and tantalising. They hold secrets.
They invite and engage enemies and allies alike.
They defend - they beckon.
They are my canvas.

Walls are athletes. They are agile and dynamic.

We often don't think about them like that because we don't often think about them like that.
Performing vital tasks - buildings to live and work in - demarcating land.
Secure and partitioned spaces. A major part of our lives. We make them.

They're a lot more present than we may think.

They exist in software, technology, engineering and every known physics and science.
In biology they are capiliaries - the ducts that enable life itself.
They point out the foundations of every structure known to man.
They are the canvas of our human endeavour.

They represent the assets of establishment and success. They are our castles.
The laminin to all our efforts. They defines the shapes and sizes of our imaginations.
The wall has exceptional characteristics. It's written and crafted on. It is canvas for unlimited creativity.

A wall is never a barrier but always a summons to creativity.

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John Caswell. The Movie

<div>More visualization

I'm always upgrading my Bio. I was prompted to do this again and so here is the latest re-write of history. I hope you find it interesting and of course slightly challenging. I'm always rewriting it to try to make it hang together better but hey if you have any suggestions let me know.

 

 

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Group Partners - The Movie

<div><div style="width:420px;text-align:left;">Open publication - Free publishing - More strategy</div></div>

 

A rapid run through what we do at Group Partners.  There is a companion one about what i actually do and that will appear above this one. I've chosen the stories I always tell and often get asked to explain. As always these are things that just keep us fresh while telling the story.

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Compulsory Viewing for the 21st Century!

 

Charles Leadbetter has done it again in my opinion and I cannot imagine anyone having any truck with the sentiments expressed in this short animation.

Beautifully crafted and articulated. The thesis here is one we practice fully so no surprise to regular readers to this blog. Some neatly phrased bits though and I will blog on the book when I get a minute. Go Charles! 

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This Changes Everything. Good!

Ray Kurzweil famously stated in his law of accelerating returns in The Singularity Is Near -

“In the next 100 years, and at the current rate, we will witness 20,000 years of progress. Or about one thousand times greater than that of the 20th Century.”

The 21st Century is driving a truck through every business plan and every government policy. There’s a tidal wave of change drowning the traditional business and operating models - that’s true of every category and each sector.  While change has always been with us, the exponential rate at which it is now gathering pace is having increasingly massive impact. The killer questions of How? Where? and What? can we do about it are preoccupying senior leaders and their executives like never before.

Can you feel the urgency? No?

I can’t think of a single recent case where the unknown’s of developing a strategy have not far exceeded the known's. There is no certainty in all this. The terrain is far more treacherous - more fatal to the unwary than ever before. The fascinating bit of all this is that there has never been more opportunity either.

Think about it.

As any market reaches maturity and fashion becomes tired and ordinary the new and the extraordinary is in immediate demand. The innovators can win, the entrepreneurs can sense the moment, the dreamers can achieve their dreams. In the blink of an eye a new product or service can catch fire. Sparked by the death of an old solution the new one is immediately king of the hill.

Time is compressed, distribution is almost a given – it’s a commodity – if its good it’s out there. The world is available to the brightest of ideas and the only game in town is capability and imagination. Creativity.

So how much of this do we not get? None right? So how much of this do we see people thinking differently about? Not many right?

The Killer Questions

To survive, Businesses and Governments do not need more of the same thinking about change, strategy or transformation. They do not want or have time for yet another boring consultant with this or that methodology. It just won’t work. It ain’t gonna cut it. They need different thinking. That seems so obvious a statement and yet we witness every day how stuck or caught in the headlamps of the truck they are. New ways of tackling this tornado, this tsunami and this careering inevitability are required.

How can we act differently? So what must we do differently? Now what will be different? Why is this the right kind of difference?  Then they are on into When? Where? Who? Business wants to have answers to these big questions. The right answers if at all possible. Providing the right answers though is now as much an art as it is a science. It's subtle and therefore deceptively simple. Why are these questions so hard for so many to get their heads around?

The Killer Application

Well we could be a lot better at doing the basics. We have found that the simple ways to solve complex issues can appear very hard to grasp and actually not that simple. This is a paradox around which we have to get to survive the 21st Century. Try these - Dialog amongst teams, visualization and telling an actual story that interests people. Make reasoned arguments and share meaning within a logical framework that everyone can see and engage in. This involves talking, listening, being creative and actually putting the outcomes into practice. Doesn’t this sound like common sense?

It is. Where did it go?

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Surfing An Apocalypse - Tribute To The Crazy Ones

That's It!

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Surfing An Apocalypse 3 - Diving Into Creativity

Is the world ready for real creativity?

Sadly a misunderstood and very overused term - one that evokes a war of words waged by the winged devils of definition. But remember I don’t actually care what people think. To me – what I mean by creativity has become the critical tool for the 21st Century. The opposite of creativity is atrophy.

Without the human spark of a simply crazy idea, that incredible burst of energy that we get from the new and the challenging - we die.  Without creativity there is no challenge to the current order of anything. Creativity is challenge. It says fuck you. It says try this. It makes you think. It creates a new path. Creativity is a rebellion. It is difference making.

Without creativity and challenge we become dull. Without knowing why we get to feel useless, then depressed – always under performing, blandness abounds, the ordinary becomes acceptable. From a societal point of view it’s ground us all down, the sameness and lack of vitality drives many to distraction - eventually crawling back under a rock. Humanity regressed.

What’s up with that?

War and poverty aren't caused by creativity they are borne out of the lack of it. Poor education, bad health and social inequity aren't brought about by creativity - these things are enabled by the absence of it.  Revolutions in technology, business and social change are caused by innovation, by the crusades of a very few. The audacious, the courageous, the stubborn, the discerning.  That's where the power of idea gets born and our futures secured.

Imagine if we could all get together behind a single cry for the creative change to the systems that cause us to be like this in the first place. The fact is that these systems don’t want us all to join forces for a challenge to their strongholds. As I have written before - currently there is no WE.

Applying creativity to cause change. Change the system! Will we allow it?

The kind of ideas I'm speaking about are always around us. They are not new.

Unfortunately our system of stupidity has become resilient to intelligence and creativity.  The power of community to make change is not new either but now more than ever possible if only we apply creativity and determination to it.

We are increasingly enabled to make change through technology. New transports for ideas are now available. Look at the difference caused and enabled by the Internet. Allowing communication and the education of peoples all over the world in ways we never could even 5 years ago.

Innovation in biology and science are causing the rise of robots/nano-bots to be grown with the intelligence to reverse cancers in the body - eventually to re-grow limbs. If we let it.  Access to better decision making based can transform the way we think about the bigger issues of the planet. If we let it. We can utilize this better information ensuring we create even better outcomes for everyone – that’s everyone. If we let it. We will be at liberty to secure yet more efficiencies, saving precious raw materials and removing the reliance on commodities that countries go to war for. If we let it.

Real creativity needs to be applied to letting these ideas pierce and alter forever the fabric of our systemic stupidity. Change our minds or die. That is the kind of creativity we now need. Will we let ourselves?

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