Leaders Today Must Be Master Capacity Builders
Introduction to Continuous Transformation for the Future: The Power of Language—Especially If You Don't Master It
How do you think of something if there is no word to describe it?
Here is a reason for leaders to learn a new terminology to help prepare for the future. Very simply: we are both limited and liberated by our language.
We can become fluid in the language we know that describes the concepts and tools we already use, but what about the limitations? Often times we cannot or will not think beyond the words and concepts we already know. Old words and old phrases that are readily understood explain a time gone by and were developed for an Industrial Society based on hierarchies, standard rules and linear thinking.
In this time of historical transformation, our society is morphing into a structure of networks, webs and non-linear dynamics. The old language does not fit the new realities as our society grows more complex and interactive—connecting and disconnecting peoples, organizations and ideas at will. The coming age requires leaders who understand the need to “uplearn” and function at a higher level of complexity and competence.
How do you think of something if there is no word to describe it?
Here is a reason for leaders to learn a new terminology to help prepare for the future. Very simply: we are both limited and liberated by our language.
We can become fluid in the language we know that describes the concepts and tools we already use, but what about the limitations? Often times we cannot or will not think beyond the words and concepts we already know. Old words and old phrases that are readily understood explain a time gone by and were developed for an Industrial Society based on hierarchies, standard rules and linear thinking.
In this time of historical transformation, our society is morphing into a structure of networks, webs and non-linear dynamics. The old language does not fit the new realities as our society grows more complex and interactive—connecting and disconnecting peoples, organizations and ideas at will. The coming age requires leaders who understand the need to “uplearn” and function at a higher level of complexity and competence.
It’s like looking for a problem you don’t know you have,
and the answer keeps changing before you can find it.
How can we prepare for what we don’t know?
We need different words and concepts to free us from the parts of the past that will not fit the future, and provide us a way to adapt quickly to the unknown. It’s like looking for a problem you don’t know you have, and the answer keeps changing before you can find it.
Take a look at the terminology below as we learn to transform your leadership as a Master Capacity Builder.
Mastering Communication for the Future
ACCESS POINT: That opening of any system or situation which allows an opportunity to introduce a new idea, method or connection.
ADAPTIVE PLANNING: Planning that allows for massive or minor change as needed or desirable vs Strategic Planning which tends to be rigid.
AND/BOTH THINKING: The capacity to see direct, indirect or oblique connections in everything without having to identify the one best answer.
BIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES: Establishing initial conditions, designing parallel processes, interdependence and systemic thinking, Includes:
1. connecting disparate ideas and processes
2. emergence of ideas and outcomes from “futures generative dialogue
3. feedback based on what occurs, self-organization
4. adapting to changing conditions.
CAPACITIES FOR TRANSFORMATION: New abilities, skills and knowledge that support individual, organizational and community transformation that redefines the in-kind nature and scope of each entity.
COMMUNITY BURDEN: What it costs for a community to take care of its members who are unwilling or unable to contribute to sustain the community. For example, the community burden of poverty connects to medical services, law enforcement, tax base, government and agency assistance, etc.
COMMUNITY BURDEN INTERCONNECTIVITY: Connected factors in a community that all must be addressed at the same time for progress to be made. For example, poverty, education performance, law enforcement and workforce development can all connect and hold each other at a negative level.
COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION: Community Transformation is the concept of preparing local communities for a constantly changing, interdependent and increasingly complex society by challenging traditional assumptions of how we educate/learn, how we do economic development, how
we lead, how we govern, even how we think.
COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS: The design and interaction of living systems that change and adapt according to the change in environment.
CREATIVE MOLECULAR ECONOMY: A new type of economy that is emerging from the last stages of an Industrial Economy based on manufacturing to an Organic Economy based on creativity, biological principles that will be self-organizing and genetic engineering methods that will produce products.
Advanced, cloud computing will be a key technology to support this new type of economy.
CREATIVE TENSION: A condition that leads to sharing of differing or similar perspectives that leads to the creation of something new. For example two writers producing a paper have to work out who will contribute what parts and how. A band or acting troop writing or learning a new song are in Creative Tension as each part contributes to the whole. Creative Tension can also turn into Destructive Pressure, such as when a band breaks up.
DESTRUCTIVE PRESSURE: Describes the breakdown when Creative Tension can no longer be maintained.
DICE: A development process:
1. Design: What process will you create to achieve or obtain what you want? How will you reach out to find the people and resources you need?
2. Identify: Who will you need to help you? What will you need? If you don’t know, then who can help you find out?
3. Connect: How will you connect with key people and resources you identified and get them together? What will you say to ask for what you want?
4. Emerge: When will you start? What attitude will you take towards adapting your plan as new information and options emerge? How will you expand the processes, networks and learning for what you want to achieve?
DIRECT CONSENSUS DEMOCRACY: A parallel approach to local decision-making that is based on citizen control and ownership of each of three stages:
1) identify key issues;
2) define key factors to understand most important issue identified;
3) develop alternative strategies for citizens to choose.
ELECTRONIC INFRASTRUCTURE: The interconnection of computers, sensors and wireless technology that forms a comprehensive network for digital sharing of data, information and knowledge.
FUTURES CONTEXT: A framework of ideas, trends and weak signals that emphasize a total shift of environment and thinking into new paradigms that are emerging. Something is always emerging.
FUTURE FORWARD COLLEGE: Colleges that develop “transformational learning” processes around futures thinking and action. This is done utilizing “parallel processes” to seed forty-seven key ideas in the existing classroom structure at the same time that totally new ways of learning are designed within
futures institutes and/or strategic futures centers.
FUTURES GENERATIVE DIALOGUE: The ability to collaborate and develop innovations through dialogue within a futures context.
INTERDEPENDENCE: The capacity of multiple factors, people and organizations to interact and help each other succeed.
MASTER CAPACITY BUILDER: The type of leader who understands the need to help citizens in local communities learn to think within a futures context and is able to build “capacities for transformation” in each other, one’s organization and in local areas. A traditional leader focuses on the short term. A
Master Capacity Builder focuses on the longer-term.
MOLECULAR: The smallest unit that is the basis for organizing a Creative Molecular Economy or community transformation process, whether individuals, or small groups and networks.
MUTUAL COLLABORATIVE COACHING: The process of a network or team of facilitating, transformational leaders who learn from each other as they collaborate to design and develop “comprehensive community transformation.”
ORGANIC: The things we make and how we make them will be tied to understanding and reading life and to programming life for specific purposes. Processes are considered to be organic if initial conditions are set, and emergence occurs as a result of the interaction of people, ideas or networks without predetermined outcomes expected.
PARALLEL PROCESSES: The new method of using complementary processes to focus on different needs of any changing and complex adaptive system. One example is to use strategic planning for short term community development needs at the same time that adaptive planning is used to develop
and nurture new capacities for the future.
REFORMED LEADERSHIP: When coming from a Traditional Leadership background and think you understand and practice Transformative Leadership, but you don't.
SELF-ORGANIZING: The capacity to develop in flexible, emergent ways without actions and outcomes being predetermined.
TRADITIONAL LEADERSHIP: Leadership for a bygone industrial society based on hierarchies, standard rules and linear thinking towards a specific outcome. There is still a time and place for Traditional Leadership.
TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP: A new type of leadership that emphasizes new ways of thinking and relationship-building in order to develop capacities for transformation for the longer run in parallel to short-term oriented traditional, outcomes based leadership. Both are needed.
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING: The new concept of learning that integrates the need to expand knowledge, to include trends and weak signals ) ask appropriate questions within a futures context and connect diverse and disparate ideas for the purpose of continuous innovation.
TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING: There are three capacities of “transformational thinking:”
1) ability to think at different levels, for different reasons, at different times
2) ability to connect disparate ideas
3) ability to identify emerging weak signals and new knowledge as a part of a creative process
UPLEARNING: The ability to think and understand at a more complex level.
WEAK SIGNALS: Emerging new ideas, inventions, innovations and discoveries that are not trends, but have the potential to make an impact on society. The Internet started as a Weak Signal in 1969 and 30 years later grew organically into a Disruptive Innovation we all rely on today.
WEBS AND NETWORKS: The building blocks of a community.
ADAPTIVE PLANNING: Planning that allows for massive or minor change as needed or desirable vs Strategic Planning which tends to be rigid.
AND/BOTH THINKING: The capacity to see direct, indirect or oblique connections in everything without having to identify the one best answer.
BIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES: Establishing initial conditions, designing parallel processes, interdependence and systemic thinking, Includes:
1. connecting disparate ideas and processes
2. emergence of ideas and outcomes from “futures generative dialogue
3. feedback based on what occurs, self-organization
4. adapting to changing conditions.
CAPACITIES FOR TRANSFORMATION: New abilities, skills and knowledge that support individual, organizational and community transformation that redefines the in-kind nature and scope of each entity.
COMMUNITY BURDEN: What it costs for a community to take care of its members who are unwilling or unable to contribute to sustain the community. For example, the community burden of poverty connects to medical services, law enforcement, tax base, government and agency assistance, etc.
COMMUNITY BURDEN INTERCONNECTIVITY: Connected factors in a community that all must be addressed at the same time for progress to be made. For example, poverty, education performance, law enforcement and workforce development can all connect and hold each other at a negative level.
COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION: Community Transformation is the concept of preparing local communities for a constantly changing, interdependent and increasingly complex society by challenging traditional assumptions of how we educate/learn, how we do economic development, how
we lead, how we govern, even how we think.
COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS: The design and interaction of living systems that change and adapt according to the change in environment.
CREATIVE MOLECULAR ECONOMY: A new type of economy that is emerging from the last stages of an Industrial Economy based on manufacturing to an Organic Economy based on creativity, biological principles that will be self-organizing and genetic engineering methods that will produce products.
Advanced, cloud computing will be a key technology to support this new type of economy.
CREATIVE TENSION: A condition that leads to sharing of differing or similar perspectives that leads to the creation of something new. For example two writers producing a paper have to work out who will contribute what parts and how. A band or acting troop writing or learning a new song are in Creative Tension as each part contributes to the whole. Creative Tension can also turn into Destructive Pressure, such as when a band breaks up.
DESTRUCTIVE PRESSURE: Describes the breakdown when Creative Tension can no longer be maintained.
DICE: A development process:
1. Design: What process will you create to achieve or obtain what you want? How will you reach out to find the people and resources you need?
2. Identify: Who will you need to help you? What will you need? If you don’t know, then who can help you find out?
3. Connect: How will you connect with key people and resources you identified and get them together? What will you say to ask for what you want?
4. Emerge: When will you start? What attitude will you take towards adapting your plan as new information and options emerge? How will you expand the processes, networks and learning for what you want to achieve?
DIRECT CONSENSUS DEMOCRACY: A parallel approach to local decision-making that is based on citizen control and ownership of each of three stages:
1) identify key issues;
2) define key factors to understand most important issue identified;
3) develop alternative strategies for citizens to choose.
ELECTRONIC INFRASTRUCTURE: The interconnection of computers, sensors and wireless technology that forms a comprehensive network for digital sharing of data, information and knowledge.
FUTURES CONTEXT: A framework of ideas, trends and weak signals that emphasize a total shift of environment and thinking into new paradigms that are emerging. Something is always emerging.
FUTURE FORWARD COLLEGE: Colleges that develop “transformational learning” processes around futures thinking and action. This is done utilizing “parallel processes” to seed forty-seven key ideas in the existing classroom structure at the same time that totally new ways of learning are designed within
futures institutes and/or strategic futures centers.
FUTURES GENERATIVE DIALOGUE: The ability to collaborate and develop innovations through dialogue within a futures context.
INTERDEPENDENCE: The capacity of multiple factors, people and organizations to interact and help each other succeed.
MASTER CAPACITY BUILDER: The type of leader who understands the need to help citizens in local communities learn to think within a futures context and is able to build “capacities for transformation” in each other, one’s organization and in local areas. A traditional leader focuses on the short term. A
Master Capacity Builder focuses on the longer-term.
MOLECULAR: The smallest unit that is the basis for organizing a Creative Molecular Economy or community transformation process, whether individuals, or small groups and networks.
MUTUAL COLLABORATIVE COACHING: The process of a network or team of facilitating, transformational leaders who learn from each other as they collaborate to design and develop “comprehensive community transformation.”
ORGANIC: The things we make and how we make them will be tied to understanding and reading life and to programming life for specific purposes. Processes are considered to be organic if initial conditions are set, and emergence occurs as a result of the interaction of people, ideas or networks without predetermined outcomes expected.
PARALLEL PROCESSES: The new method of using complementary processes to focus on different needs of any changing and complex adaptive system. One example is to use strategic planning for short term community development needs at the same time that adaptive planning is used to develop
and nurture new capacities for the future.
REFORMED LEADERSHIP: When coming from a Traditional Leadership background and think you understand and practice Transformative Leadership, but you don't.
SELF-ORGANIZING: The capacity to develop in flexible, emergent ways without actions and outcomes being predetermined.
TRADITIONAL LEADERSHIP: Leadership for a bygone industrial society based on hierarchies, standard rules and linear thinking towards a specific outcome. There is still a time and place for Traditional Leadership.
TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP: A new type of leadership that emphasizes new ways of thinking and relationship-building in order to develop capacities for transformation for the longer run in parallel to short-term oriented traditional, outcomes based leadership. Both are needed.
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING: The new concept of learning that integrates the need to expand knowledge, to include trends and weak signals ) ask appropriate questions within a futures context and connect diverse and disparate ideas for the purpose of continuous innovation.
TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING: There are three capacities of “transformational thinking:”
1) ability to think at different levels, for different reasons, at different times
2) ability to connect disparate ideas
3) ability to identify emerging weak signals and new knowledge as a part of a creative process
UPLEARNING: The ability to think and understand at a more complex level.
WEAK SIGNALS: Emerging new ideas, inventions, innovations and discoveries that are not trends, but have the potential to make an impact on society. The Internet started as a Weak Signal in 1969 and 30 years later grew organically into a Disruptive Innovation we all rely on today.
WEBS AND NETWORKS: The building blocks of a community.
Leadership: Traditional vs. Transformative
Traditional
Focused on short-term outcomes Quantified accountability Goal/objective oriented Linear thinking Organized hierarchies Present oriented Strategic Planning Projects initiated Less talk, more action Single factor thinking |
Futures Context/Transformative
Focused on building capacities for new ways of thinking/acting over time Accountability through innovation Connections, ideas, relationship oriented Non-linear thinking Organized by webs/networks Futures oriented Adaptive Planning Projects spun from dialogue More talk, bolder action Systemic thinking |