Yesterday in Davos Peter Schwartz witnessed about the result of a report concerning the effects on global climate:
The rate of climate change is much faster than we all think
There will be many extreme large weather events. It is more urgent and catastrophic than we previously thought.
Read Stephen Voss report about it at bloomberg.com
Today Paul Saffo is commenting on the mood on the current meeting in his journal.
…the mood this time is a sense of vast uncertainty regarding the scale of the challenges we all face and the ability of global institutions to meet these challenges.
Ironically, this uncertainty has grown because other issues have become more clear. There is no debate about global climate change here because everyone accepts it as a fact; all the conversation is about how to respond. And there is also a clear consensus that the nation-state order is on the wane, and thus the discussion is all about what institutions will fill the void.
This just confirms that the apparent decline of the nation state have reached Davos as well. What concerns me is the next passage in Saffos comment:
Perhaps there are no surprises in the foregoing, but what is a surprise is how I hear CEOs and other business executives responding. The sense here is that the weakening of traditional institutions means that the new global challenges can be overcome only if corporations throw their full effort into finding solutions.
This really worries me since many of us have time after another found that corporations are inherently blind to aspects of life not directly related to this or next year revenue. Maybe they haven’t noticed what I use to call “the strategic gap” which cuts through almost all organizations effectively cutting of the top management from the lower parts where the work is being performed. I will certainly blog on this subject really soon.
From a forthcoming blog post on the future of the hierarchic organzation:
I look forward to your upcoming blog on the future of the hierarchy organization. I would like to understand more about this “strategic gap†that you talk about.
I think a hierarchy organization is one way mankind has found to defend itself against a network, such as the network shown in the forth panel after the black arrow.
A hierarchy creates horizontal relationships that create a vertical displacement (moving up the ladder so to speak). This vertical displacement creates a powerful internal force that push these horizontal relationships together (friction producing), This vertical displacement then, with its powerful internal pressure, is able to displace itself into different areas, in which it may not have been able to enter, if it was organized as a network.
In other words, a hierarchy uses the power of the relationships (and friction) that are created laterally, which networks don’t have.
A network has connections but no relationships, because all relationships have friction. A networks objective is to create connections without friction, with the resources going to those areas with the less friction and away from those areas with friction. In fact when too much friction is present, a network discards its connection to that area.
Which is fine, unless you are one of those friction-producing areas, such as being poor or without the ability to take care of your own needs, but understand what you want. A hierarchy is able to take care of these needs, with the simultaneously displacement of two movements in different directions (which is the power of friction), and in the process share in the want that it might have not known it needed.
I think there have been other mechanisms developed to counter the effects of a network, one of these is religion.
Nice to see someone blogging “scenario planning,” I’ve long been a fan and have (without much success) been nudging the US Forest Service in that direction for years. I try to embed scenario planning/strategic thinking into some of my own blogs (listed under my name here), particularly adaptive management, environmental management systems, forest policy, and ecological economics.
Do you know of others who are blogging this? If so, I’d like to know who might be so I can consider adding them to “sidebars.” I’ll now browse further into what you are up to.
I heartily endorse Larry’s comment above expressing enthusiam for “your upcoming blog on the future of the hierarchy organization.” Most of my own management books/thoughts somehow deal with the “twilight of hierarchical/patriarchial organizations.” See, e.g. http://forestpolicy.typepad.com/am/2007/01/rebuilding_publ.html
And the embedded piece “Effective Organizsations.”
http://forestpolicy.typepad.com/am/effective_organizations