Previously published in LinkedIn 2019SEP06
Part 3/8 of Transformation Flows, Flaws, and Fails
- How the physicality of my experiences frames my mind, and limits my grasp of an asynchronous, digitized world.
- How to understand a situation beyond the “containers“: assumptions, expectations, intentionality. The common and everyday: it’s cultural, a way of seeing -or not seeing.
- For leaders: understanding agility as how a classic organizational structure meshes with a digitized world.
I’ve rejoined the table, where my friends are playing with Decontainering scenarios.
“… so we have given access to our personal and genetic info – like granting cattle grazing rights – naively not considering how the fine print gives away mineral rights, too!” grins Rex as he finishes his point.
”My father – he’d tease about how staring at college books blur our eyes, and all common sense, too.
“Getting back to the organizational transformation thing?” Rex says thoughtfully, ” – Feels like I’ve noodled it into gnarly knots, before even finding an end of the string.”
I watch him absently swirling his glass of wine, and say, “Rex, I said I’d share an approach that keeps to simple, practical essentials.”
A Digitized Context. “Bear with me – the approach only makes full sense if we understand the context that created it.
“The Digitized Era –how a digitized world is way more than paperless interactions and transactions. Candidly, we all – both the Industry and the Digital Age– struggle to grasp digitization’s extent and velocity as a liquefaction, but it is changing culture in fundamental terms.
“For example, marketers define a Digital Generation as people using digital as everyday appliances, and digital interfaces as a native language, right? Yet, our language actually shapes us.”
“Of course! Language articulates experiences into containers,” adds Bledge.
I nod, “So, the physicality of our experiences: think of how it actually frames our mindset in more fundamental and subtle ways than we realize. Yet, in our world’s exponential digitization ? It feels like early alzheimers – bewildered in my own neighborhood.”
.
The Async DeeGees and their Multiverses “Have you wondered why kids and their friends will absolutely not answer the phone, so you’ve had to text them instead? It’s rude, to the async ethic of a Digitised Generation. I call them the DeeGees, .
“Interactions and transactions make a culture. So, what should we make of our kids’ texts, snaps, memes? Their abbreviated patterns: Quick-burst, fast-frequency, and async?”
“ Asynchronicity allows these strange beings to co-stream: loosely; fluidly. Presence is decoupled- freed – from physicality. DeeGees are very present in very close relationships. Able to delineate aspects of presence, relationships – aspects that our generation keeps in one container. A DeeGee belongs to multiple micro-communities. And so, what is nationality going to mean, eventually?”
“My teen has this talent for rolling her eyes in eleven dimensions at me,” an animated Bledge pantomimes with his arms, “We’re mere blobs from a klunky, four-dimensional universe.”
I continue, “Physically accurate avatars are becoming commercially available. I can travel, and still be home every evening – present to my kids.”
Bledge inserts,“And what if your wife finds your android a more perfect you?
“And, whoah. I’d guess dating and relationships can get pretty much on-demand, AND creepy. ”
Brick and Buffer “So, back to us old school managers who are used to highly condensed matter,” I continue. “ Naturally we organize as hierarchic structures with very concrete blocks of authority. At the edges, we need agile teams to buffer between us and a fluid, messy world.”
“Sure, viscous coupling. Too bad, in school most of us took mechanical structural over the hated fluid dynamics. “ reminds Bledge all too accurately.