Transitions

I've been thinking about this post of Jon;'s for some time and I think I'm getting somewhere with its content. Wirearchy · The New Realities of Engagement – Stories That Drive Action Planning and Implementation

This new model is the antithesis of the model that it may replace. Clear signs of what this new model are all over the place.
(To help explain, we’ve used diagrams from Geoffrey Moore’s widely-accepted “Crossing the Chasm” model for the progression of uptake of new modes of behaviour or new paradigms)

One of the things that has troubled me is exactly that image. I think it betrays us because it takes no account of transitions, it looks only at those who "win" and doesn't deal with the dynamics of the process.

So I've done a little graphing of my own to help me explain what I think happens.


Its a way of trying to show how messy this process is and it too by no means conveys anything like the reality. There is nothing there yet that shows people vacillating as they shift from preferring one side or the other to being unsure of which side their best interests lie.

In the media business, for example, there is a lot of that going on right now as old media tries to stop the net from destroying it. Rupert Murdoch Says Google Is Stealing His Content. So Why Doesn't He Stop Them?

At a meeting of media executives going on this week in Beijing, Murdoch and Curley gave impassioned speeches, saying they're mad as hell and they aren't going to take it anymore. They warn that aggregators like Google had better start paying up, or else.

"We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission," Curley told the audience.

These guys have passed through ignoring it, trying to take it over, trying to be hip and "get it" and still watched their major business investments going down the drain so they have moved to shouting, resisting, calling for the lawyers etc, even though they know that they can't afford not to play either. The conflict stage is both external and internal.

Another point is that we have no way of knowing where we actually are in the process. In the huge shifts taking place in the world right now we may think we are in the chaos phase as the old order of the capitalist scorpion commits suicide from programmed mindlessness but we may in fact still be at the conflict stage where the old orders tries to defeat the new by looting it six ways to Sunday.

The graph is of no value except in hindsight, as is any model that has an element of chaos.

But wait, there's more. The two graphs still show the transition from one state to another and there is absolutely no guarantee that we will make that transition. This is also every bit as possible.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to say that the outcome will be better, or even different. It is entirely possible that the bankers may keep their teeth into our throats and we move to the apogee of financial capitalism; the slave state.

Comments

[Jon Husband]

This is such good thinking, and an improvement over what was there for you to start noodling.

Nut .. but, but, but ... Earl, dang it, you are requiring people to think again, whereas they're so used to the "management buzzword" that is crossing-the-chasm that the deeper thinking you are describing would (likely) lose many, or ahelp them think "I don't want any of that, too messy, too hard".

Remember (why am I telling you sumpin' you know betterthan me) so many of "us" like things neatly compartmentalized, demarcated, categorized, measured, finished before starting again, etc. remember what we are up against.

Truly, I do appreciate the deeper thinking you have offered, and I am going to think on how to incorporate it in my thinking / articulation in a way that won't lose (too) many.

I'm probably being needlessly or (semi) consciously arrogant in deciding that lots would find your deeper and more accurate descriptions of less interest / pertinence than the familiar Moore-isms.

There's a book out there (little read) by Derrick de Kerckhove and Mark Federman titled "McLuhan For Managers - New Tools for New Thinking" that has a stellar sub-chapter on management buzzwords. Reading, thinking and understanding it deeply kept me awake for two days straight about three years ago.

[Earl Mardle]

Hah.

I just realised that the graphics that loaded were frigging well wrong. I'll fix.

I wonder if that will change the way Jon sees this.

[Earl Mardle]

OK, fixed the graphics, size was the issue.

Anyway Jon, I don't believe people are that closed off. I think part of it comes down to the usual consulting model of trying to simplify things for the audience which is a form both of disrespect and a way to keep the "special knowledge" they are paying for locked away.

As you also say, the Open Space model has never failed you. It depends on everyone there opening their intelligence to the world and engaging with it and its inhabitants in an adult way.

These are the same people for whom you try to simplify the model. The only thing that changes is your expectations of them.

Give them the benefit of the doubt, try it. But don't drop it in their laps, get them to build it for you.

Worst comes to worst, I'm only one hop away on Air NZ.

[Jon Husband]

I wonder if that will change the way Jon sees this.

Nope .. have often remarked on the regression to and reinstatement of old dominant model. (I think) I'd argue, for example, that whilst in the middle somewhere of the transition(s) being offered to us by all the interconnectdness and interactivity, there has (as a generality) been a regression in many instances to more hierarchy as a response to increased complexity

As you also say, the Open Space model has never failed you. It depends on everyone there opening their intelligence to the world and engaging with it and its inhabitants in an adult way.

These are the same people for whom you try to simplify the model. The only thing that changes is your expectations of them.

Give them the benefit of the doubt, try it. But don't drop it in their laps, get them to build it for you.

Yes indeed ...

Worst comes to worst, I'm only one hop away on Air NZ

Noted ... Mr. Fix-it ;-)

[Jon Husband]

Give them the benefit of the doubt, try it. But don't drop it in their laps, get them to build it for you.

You meant "get them to build it for themselves", didn't you ?

[Earl Mardle]

Jon.

Aye. Nice catch.