My last post focused on lostness. In that post, I sought to avoid the implication that acting decisively is beside the point — or worse that wallowing in the melancholic miasma of lostness is somehow noble. In the post, I decried a kind of conformist, unthinking certainty that masks attuned awareness and effective compassion. But that could have left the reader thinking that other forms of certainty are suspect as well. While I aspired to thread some needles, my sense is that there is real value in explicitly exploring the converse of lostness. This piece serves as ballast for the last by overtly addressing the art of focused action.
The Pace of Life
Before we get to the art of action, it is worth speaking more generally to the role of action in the context of the times in which we live. In our hectic post-modern world, most of us operate at the ragged edges of our existence almost all of the time. We are in scrambling states of pervasive action and experimentation. Our attention is forever outward. Like primeval sharks, we are in constant motion at every moment. This shows up for many of us in the busyness of our lives – in the constant need for engagement and activity. As a result, we find ourselves living within a massive matrix of cultural and individual ADD to the point that we frequently measure our worth and even our identity in how active we are. The common answer to “how are you” in the business world is “I am busy” – a statement worn as a badge of honor and which, if not true, would be a source of potential shame or at least concern. Even our organizations are constantly on the prowl; seeking to grow, hunting, living at the edges. Why? Because we are convinced to not be in obvious action is to risk becoming existentially irrelevant.
Our client families are overwhelmed by the onslaught of activity as well – constant motion all the time. Too busy to meet. Too busy to focus. Tyrannized by the urgent. Foregoing the significant. Swirling, spinning action everywhere we turn. Action items. To do lists. Accountabilities. Paperwork. Social connections. Information flow. Electronic communications. People depending on us. Chores to do. Weekends jammed with activity. Late nights at the office.
Media feeds this jangly, fractured buzz of action. Politics panders to it. News cycles thrive on it. Commerce attempts to harness and exploit it. Markets feed it. These calls to action are everywhere. It is an inescapable carpet bombing of the senses. And, weirdly, it is highly, highly addictive. We go through shaky withdrawls if we must sit still. Periods of silence and stillness are alien to us and we are even frightened by it. Leaving our “smart” phones behind can trigger waves of fidgeting anxiety for many of us. We are a culture that is high on action and in constant need of the next fix.
In the end this post-modern morass means that we live in perceived worlds consisting of only surfaces and without a lot of depth. We are miles wide and operating on razor thin margins – personally, professionally, familially, culturally. The result of all of this can be a kind of brittleness and narcissistic trappedness. We are in a hall of mirrors with no way to orient to ourselves and one another.
One way to view every post in this blog – all that is written here – would be to see it as an attempt to address this core problem with respect to wealth in families. There are no 10 tips for this or 5 signs of that or facile list of “bite sized how to’s”. There are few action steps by design. The posts are long. The language assumes intelligence. The ideas are divergent and meandering but ultimately attending to a core challenge. It requires a focused mind and a bit of stillness to get through these posts. The entire enterprise is designed to challenge this impetuous addition to unreflective movement. To my surprise, I have found that there is a very real hunger out there for this way of thinking and writing that reflects it. I have been amazed at the reception to this long-form blogging and the deep thirst it seems to quench. And, in full transparency, part of this project is done selfishly. I too am as caught up in this headlong rush as anyone else – perhaps even more so. These musings force me to slow down, take stock and reflect.
With all that said about the post-modern dilemmas that drive our lives, the problem we face is not in acting per se. We are embodied creatures. We cannot not act. We are in action all the time. It is simply impossible not to act – we eat, we sleep, we breath, we walk, we run, we write, we talk, we listen – we are constantly doing something. Even when we are sitting still, we are sitting still. To be alive is to act and to act is to be alive. The problem thus lies not in action per se, but in the dawning of the realization that our action isn’t coherent – that it is desperately fractured, unmoored and untethered. Is it any wonder that we can often find ourselves floundering?
The Roots of the Problem
In all of this, it seems we are finding ourselves in the midst of a great cultural shift. In the 20th Century, modernism – by which I mean largely a complex worldview based on scientific materialism – seemed to have outgrown its moral compass. Rooted largely in the Renaissance revival of humanism and an Enlightenment inspired rational view of the universe, modernism gave rise to technological advances that came to outpace the ability of the culture to assimilate them. Medicine, commerce, government, technology and even war simply overflowed the banks of what old moral systems founded on individual human dignity and self-sufficiency could contain. We ended up with raw action unrestrained by larger frameworks that oriented us within these actions. As societies, we did things because we could. We could extend life, so we did– despite staggering economic costs and an inability to calculate the human consequences of doing so at the extreme margins where death is inescapable. We forged ahead with commerce – without an ability to account for the burgeoning externalities of human, societal and environmental consequences. We careened from political nightmare to political nightmare with no sense of a larger strategic or moral framework. We waged war indiscriminately and even preemptively without contemplating the far larger societal unraveling that follows. Modernity – which was deeply rooted in human values at the start – simply outstripped its ability to cope. In the end, the entire humanist notion of social contract lay in tatters, mocked by its own ultimate impotence in the face of technological juggernauts that cared not a whit about such niceties as moral engagement.
What arose in response to the alienation and amorality of modernism has been a kind of discursive post-modernism. Post-modernity seeks to deconstruct the social order and offer everyone a place of relative significance. This willingness to include every voice substitutes for definitive moral structures. While post-modernism honors every perspective, it offers no real solution to the problem of action. That you experience reality differently than I do is no doubt interesting and because you are a human being and I am a human being, neither of us has the edge in taking focused and directed action. Beyond that relativistic perspectivism, post-modernity has given us a profound overlay of extended psychotherapeutic self-examination and absorption with the inner sense of self-process. The harbingers of post-modernism, at the individual level, are the shadow selves represented by the neo-gothic characters Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Dorian Gray and the more reasoned legacies of psychodynamic analytics explored by Drs. Freud and Jung. Thus, at its worst, post-modernism finds itself mired in a kind of moral relativism and potentially endless self-referential interior examination that freezes us in indecision, doubt, and the inability to act. Post-modernism is a consummation of a modern age run amok. It tells us that at least social reality (and perhaps all of the human experience of “reality”) is socially constructed. Through our biology, language, culture, and so on, we have simply created what we experience. Because reality is constructed, truth is myth and certainty is hubris. Everything is narrative – and often smallish, individual narrative at that. Grand narrative is dead.
There are many philosophers who are trying to find a way out of the intellectual morass of post-modernism. There are some promising clues in developmental perspectivism (e.g. Habermas), critical realism (e.g. Bashkar), and, my personal favorite, process philosophy (e.g. Whitehead). But we seem far from a coherent intellectual framework that will take us to new structures of consciousness. And without a framework it is difficult to sort this morass out in our heads – we are relegated to dealing with bits and pieces in the meantime.
The Water in Which We Swim
Many of you may be asking yourselves what does cultural critique and high philosophy have to do with the work we do every day? My answer is that, like fish, this is the water we are swimming in. We don’t see it because it is all around us and it affects every little thing about how we think and what we do all the time. It is inescapable. It shows up in the assumptions we make, the way we talk to clients, the way we relate to friends, the way we raise our kids, and the intimacies of our closest relationships. Almost everything of consequence in the way we experience ourselves and the world around us is made of this stuff. To me, this is the invisible problem I am dealing with at every turn, in almost every interaction and at the heart of every system I engage in. Wholesale relativism and distraction are universal.
Now that I have described my idiosyncratic view of the nature of the modern human condition, it is time to turn to the implications of all this with respect to our work with families – and the fine art of action.
Here lies the central question of this post: because we must take effective action, how do we do so in a world with the kind of complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity we face? When outcomes are inherently unpredictable, when perspectives are diverse, and when the present is entangled with a very complex past – how do we thoughtfully, morally and coherently act?
The prior post was about taking stock. The woods in the opening poem were a metaphorical stand-in for the post-modern dilemma. In the face of that sort of complexity, there is value in simply stopping. But that can only be a momentary pause. We have to move if we are to get out of the woods. I offered in the prior post that wandering is what people do to orient themselves again. One lens through which to see this post is as a guide to wandering well. What follows is a proposed set of the governing principles for this movement– nothing more, but also nothing less. I have shared this with a few people and they have found it helpful. One Tiger 21 group[1]I was with in Aspen actually wrote down one portion of what I write about below – and when highly accomplished and successful people write down one’s ideas as potentially useful, it is humbling but also somehow affirming of the wisdom at play.
The Futility of Planning
What I suggested to that group was that I had come to a point in my life where I realized that all my planning didn’t seem to work. I would set goals and objectives. I would be strategic. I would have a vision or a mission. I would then get tactical. I had action steps, to do lists, and so on. And to some degree these things seemed to help, but more often I found that my life didn’t cooperate with the templates I had devised. The world was simply too non-linear to oblige itself to comply with my straight line desire to move from point A to point B.
Planning, as it is traditionally done, is a modernist tool. It is founded on notions of linear cause and effect. It is premised on simple feedback loops and longish time horizons. It presumes a world that is rational and predictable. Planning does not explicitly take into account the subjective. It rarely manages complexity. It is not well suited to flux. And it has no way to even begin to acknowledge mystery, beauty or truth. It grows out of a materialist world-view where pieces on chess boards are moved to achieve measurable outcomes. Yet given the world in which we live – filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), plans are almost universally gutted very shortly after the ink is dry. As von Moltke said, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Or as Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until the first punch.”
I am sure with von Moltke firmly in mind, Dwight Eisenhower noted, that while plans are useless, planning itself is indispensable. Why would this be so? What is the value of planning if the resulting plans are without value? I believe it has to do with what Otto Scharmer points to that I mentioned in the last post: that the shape and quality of our attention determines outcomes. Those who study such things tell us that to survive VUCA (which is a nomenclature that grew out of military planning for “kinetic” situations –known to us civilians as combat), we must 1) anticipate issues that shape conditions, 2) appreciate the complexity of systems, 3) acknowledge alternate realities, and 4) be quick to recognize relevant opportunities and threats. Good planning helps us to extend our vision and particularly opens up our peripheral vision. That peripheral vision is critical to acting well. Yet with all this, plans still don’t survive.
“Emergence”
One form of alternative engagement that I have seen on numerous occasions discards planning entirely with a kind of haughty, almost spiritual, distain. This approach is based on a kind of action explicitly based on “emergence” or autopoesis (self-organization). In this there is a sense of co-operation with what is happening in the moment and a kind of inner and behavioral responsiveness to that emergence. It is highly sensitive and even hyper-alert. This form of action is very “in the moment”, based on “presence” and acknowledging the power of “now”. By analogy, it is like a potter shaping a pot – the wheel is turning and the clay is moving and the hands are responsive to the spinning clay. What is usually forgotten in the practice of this model of action is that the potter has something in mind and is being responsive to a purpose. Too often I see the “emergence” school failing to recognize that if everything is “in” emergence, then everything is almost inevitably an emergency. In practice, this results in a kind of organizational bypass and an institutional establishment of patterns of dysfunction that remain unseen, suppressed or avoided and therefore unaddressed. These systems seem to lead quite predictably to high drama based on a rather pedestrian categorical confusion between tactical and strategic action. Emergence is clearly a profound tactical response to VUCA. However, because this approach is a wholesale capitulation to “emergence”, it seems to be a poor ground for overall sustained collective action. While few families have adopted this approach consciously, it is this approach that I see a lot of families take by default. They react “in the now” with less than ideal consequence. Being in the now is great, but if the “now moment” is not seen as the eternal now – with past and future woven into the fabric of that present moment – it is simply a capitulation to chaotic chop.
Design Thinking
I would humbly suggest that the strategic antidote involves a shift from “planning” to “design thinking.” While on the surface they may seem similar, design thinking is not the same as planning. Planning assumes linearity. Good design accounts for chaotic, non-linear systems. In design thinking, people intentionally generate divergence before converging. Design work is multi-vectored and multi-faceted. It is nimble, agile and iterative. Good human design flexes and explicitly incorporates processes by which to gain that flexion. It takes into account the needs of people and stakeholder groups. Not only that, design brings in aesthetic and even moral dimensions that traditional planning does not. Beauty, elegance, balance, and inclusion are all important in design thinking. The very process of designing (unlike the traditional process of planning) is integrally important to outcome and a great deal of thought is put into the process of how design happens. Human consequences and externalities are factored in.
It is important to note that design thinking is not airy, but is highly disciplined. It is not new age whimsy, but found on sharp thinking. As such, it moves through very specific phases: definition, research, ideation, prototyping, choice, experimentation and learning. Design, I would submit, is the decidedly post-post-modern answer to planning and it is hugely important to any person who wants to be effective in the post-modern world. Most modern companies – especially tech companies – are founded on this approach to action. In my work, I have found that families that “design” are far better off than families that “plan”.
Yet design alone is not enough. In the end, design must be animated by some deeper guidestars. The first of these guide-stars (and what my Tiger 21 friends wrote down) is the way I find myself navigating these days with the life I am designing for myself. I tend to pay a lot of attention to three things on a day-to-day basis: synchronicity, people and energy. When spooky things, coincidences or patterns of events start to show up, I pay a lot of attention and move towards those things. I am also finding myself paying a great deal of attention to doing things with people I trust and like. Who one chooses to act with is almost as important as what one does. Finally, I am paying a lot of attention to the energetic feel of things – with “energy” here being a gloss for intuition, attraction, aversion, resonance, and the like. I am seeing these three pillars as harbingers of good design. These are the tactical “tools” for paying attention to emergence.
Moral Imagination
Beyond these guidestars, and perhaps the big idea that sits over all of this, is that I have come to believe that there is tremendous power in what John Paul Lederach refers to as “moral imagination” (and he is openly borrowing this term from others). It is at the heart of almost all great religious traditions that action separated from the centered Source (whether that source is conceived in form as divinity or the formlessness of pure awareness) is without meaning.
While we can find moral frameworks in fundamental religion or idealistic humanism, the post-modern world, it seems to me, has outstripped the leaden application of such principles. What is required is a re-kindling of a higher order of moral imagination to guide action. Such moral imagination arises in groups and I have written about that work elsewhere. The core of this work lies not in rule sets, but in the creative weaving together of relationships in ways that support life in its core dimensions. It is highly networked and highly relational. In individuals, I have found that moral space lies in authentic connection between centered inner stillness and vulnerable engagement at the edges. Under this approach, that which enhances life in communion is moral. That which degrades human experience and fractures community is not. If how we use ourselves as instruments of moral creativity – as moral artists as it were – is the lodestar of action, then it seems to me that we have come to something important that will carry us individually and in small groups out of the morass of both modernism and post-modernism on a practical, if not intellectual, footing. How one exercises moral imagination in these endeavors occurs in unpolarized dialog and the collective creation of new stories about a common future.
In my experience, the process of exercising moral imagination results in agreements that arise in the form of stories. These story/agreements are inherently embedded in a notion that we are better off when we act together. Acting together, in concert and attuned to one another, requires a kind of moral commitment to higher purpose that transcends but includes individual agenda. As Orland Bishop asks, “Who must I be so that you can be free?” In the answer to this question, we find our own liberation. And to answer that question we must see one another in ways that create a kind of free and mutual consent within a mutual story in which we both participate. I have often said that the motto of a successful second generation family is the same as the famous affirmation of the Three Musketeers, “One for all and all for one.” This is an ancient truth, expressed in a million different ways through the ages, but it is a key to effective action. To define the common good and then act consistently with it shapes effective action (not merely concedes to post-modern activity and solipsistic narrative) and it can help to begin to move us beyond the meaninglessness and alienation of a post-modern world.
In Summary
To sum up, each of these strategies of action depends on one thing – moving from reactivity on the surface of things to a connection between the inner sense of things and the outward world of action. The fine art of action, in my very humble view, requires the pause before action which I described in some detail in my last post. But from this pause must emerge a strategy grounded in design thinking. The seeds for that design lie in paying very close attention to synchronicity, people and energy. The strategic intent that arises then takes shape through tactics of emergence, resilience, adaptation and learning. And all of this inevitably occurs within community and therefore requires the tacit or explicit creation of agreements and consciously shaping stories in a conversation infused with moral imagination. When action is governed by intent, moral agreement, consequential narrative and good design, it seems much more likely that action will be truly effective and will likely avoid both the rougher consequences of raw modernity and the dizzying distractions of post-modernity.
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[1] Tiger 21 offers peer-to-peer experiences for very wealthy investors, much like Vistage or YPO.
— October 30, 2014