The Future - can we fix it?

Unfortunately, last week my diary had a crash collision and the impact zone was me.

Fortunately, I came round on Thursday at &Co’s CEO Symposium RE-FOCUS: How do we measure value in relation to our audiences’ experience? in a room of 30 peers all dealing with the same anxiety about what the future holds.  I found that my peers provided expert care and attention to relieve my symptoms (chronic fatigue, disillusionment, paranoia, hot and cold sweats) since they shared my symptoms.  During our day-long session together, I gradually felt that I was getting back to a full recovery.  The early signs this week are promising, but I’m not off the critical list yet I’d say.

I’ve been advised by experts Graham Leicester[i] and Mark Robinson[ii] that it’s likely I’ll need to continue to receive treatment for the long-term.  I’ll need to build up my immune system as a cultural leader to help me become stronger in dealing with anxiety and running a cultural business within the operational context of confusion. This is the future.

Expert 1: Graham Leicester

I’d describe Graham as an ‘alternative therapist’.  I’ve always found his bedside manner to be soothing, beguiling, but nevertheless, therapeutic. 

Last week, the therapies he provided for me and other CEOs were initially drawn from Eastern wisdom through a series of six Tarot cards.  The cards had been tried and tested by the International Futures Forum and from the cards selected, Graham provided readings designed to prompt from us all more effective responses to today’s challenges. 

For example, the first card drawn by one of the participants in the room depicted a line of people hand in hand with the words ‘disperse responsibility’ at the foot of the card. Graham informed us that this first card offered an overall orientation to the challenge; it guides us to think about the need to involve as many people as possible in the response – especially if you are in a leadership position where you have responsibilities to disperse.  The final card I picked.  It was illustrated with a small flock of sheep, one of which was black and was set outside the bigger white group with just one white sheep next to it.  The wording stated ‘Resolve differences by empathy not isolation’. This Graham informed us, was a hint for the journey ahead.  We were advised to think about differences in view, in opinion, in orientation and value systems.  If we can find a way to empathise difference rather than just tolerate it, we can find ways to collaborate, find partners and strengthen our networks.

Graham then led me and my colleagues on to consider the relationship between money and meaning, challenging the notion that the creative ecosystem of ‘art and audience’ uses money as its source of nourishment to help it grow.  We need to understand what does make our ecosystem grow and in turn, what value it creates.  In recognition that an economy is a shared pattern of valuing between people, co-ordinated by a currency, Graham challenged us all to consider what currency could be used to define the value of art.  The conclusion he draws is that:

* art is the currency of experience

* art is the currency of the economy of experience

* the economy of experience co-ordinates individuallives into the collective experience of being human

This is echoed by US anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s quote ‘Without man, no culture.  Equally, and more specifically, without culture, no man...We are in sum, incomplete or unfinished animals, we complete or finish ourselves through culture – and not through culture in general but through highly particular forms of it.’[iii]

So, I came away soothed by Graham’s advice that money isn’t everything but still confused because the dilemma remains – how do we make money (i.e. not go out of business) whilst remaining true to our core purpose, making meaning (i.e. not lose our integrity or make ourselves ‘culturally bankrupt’)?  And, having acknowledged this, what treatment do I need to help me, and my organisation, live forever more in that tension?

Expert 2: Mark Robinson

Our second expert in my mind is more of a ‘shock therapist’. This is a new form of treatment for me and I’m dangerously compelled to follow through with what Mark describes as ‘creative destruction’ – knowing what needs to be kept, being brave enough to let go of what doesn’t and developing the capability to understand what needs to be invented.  Charles Darwin got it:

‘It’s not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.’

But again a dilemma arises.  We can all recognise that change is essential.  In fact, that is the only one certain thing about our future.  But alongside change there also needs to be stability.  Without some point of solidity or constancy we all cascade into freefall, a place of no control or rescue, a hopeless place. 

Mark’s prescription for organisations wanting to embrace the future without yet not necessarily understanding it in full is to become adaptive and resilient.  To adapt with integrity i.e. stick to your core purpose (that means you have to know what it is of course), to absorb the disturbance around you and to remain productive.

In terms of building resilience within your organisations, how do you measure up?  Can you identify your organisation with one of the types Mark has defined below?

*  Vulnerable dependence: those with few adaptive resources and little orientation towards change

*  Coping persistence: those with good adaptive resources, but little orientation towards change

*  Frustrated innovation: those with strong orientation towards change, but few adaptive resources

*  Adaptive resilience: those with both the adaptive resources and the desire to change.[iv]

And if so, what does that tell you about your future?

Finally, what about us the cultural leaders, the individuals leading the organisations?  Are we prepared to face up to a new reality?  What do we need to do to become adaptive and resilient?  If we are working out and facing up to how we can fix our organisations for the future, what do we now need to do to work out how to fix ourselves and are we ready to empathise with one another?

Alison Edbury, Chief Executive & Co