In Gut we trust.

Are we getting to the end of the world that we know? Climate Change, Pandemic, economic downfalls, social and political unrest have marked and keep marking the last decade, a proliferation of problems and issues without a clear end in sight.

Tomorrow is anything but predictable, which highlights the challenge as to how can we, as individuals, societies, businesses, and governments, react. Therefore, it would be useful to understand how we got here to comprehend how can we move forward. To do so, we need to have a quick run-through history, study our evolution as humans, societies, and how it influenced our perception of our environment. We will try then, figure out how we can use this understanding, to be the disruptors, not the Gatekeepers of a new world that we currently still know little of.

Let us start from the very very beginning…

In the beginning, was the Word, the Church, and the King.

Before the Agricultural revolution, humanity consisted of sporadic tribes hovering over the lands for survival, without any specific agenda, just hunting, and fishing. The Agricultural revolution, introducing us to sedentary life, lead to the formation of the first villages, initially on the banks of Euphrates and Tigris rivers, what is historically known as Mesopotamia, today’s Iraq. The fact that we now live in a defined ‘place’, exposed a need to communicate, interact, hence… Languages and alphabets were developed, and soon after, standardized, each on its own. This invention gave unprecedented and absolute power to the “word”.

We gave the “word” a Holy meaning, based upon which, the Book (religion) became the word and the word dictated societies. With that, we defined “what” we are… finally giving our existence… a “word”, a name.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” — John 1:1

Wise men say

Wise were those who managed the ‘word’, and thus they ruled. They were considered reasonable. Wisdom was not only an adjective but quickly became a sovereign science, a power that delivered. The word shaped the way we understand, communicate, feel, and work. Society, newly sedentary and growingly sophisticated, needed to find a word for everything, words became lessons, ideas, labels, and stories.

The Book (Bible, or Quran), offering stories of forgiveness, togetherness, the family, defining the good and the bad accordingly, was seen as a solution for an otherwise salvage world. Religion became more than a belief, it became a collective character, to which the Book was its ethical benchmark. This gave religious establishments leverage over societies, for that they were the most alphabetical, and in most cases, the few able to read the book. They were not only preachers, but they were also translators, teachers, scientists, saviors, and the explicit conscience of the state.

Religious authorities blessed kings, from which they gave and received their relevance. Alliances made through weddings, sometimes even by request from the Cardinal, Patriarch, or the Pontiff himself, decided the destiny of Kingdoms, uncovered their interests, and those of the religious authorities. Failing to subjugate to the Holy authority, often isolated these entities and impoverished them.

Rulers then were perceived as powerful, mostly for their wisdom, their insight, and ability to organize and see the end, and as religion, dictated the social pact, the end was God. Kings were deliverers of the holy cause. Their states’ organizations were perceived as a following of the modalities that resemble God. Therefore, the well-organized system was the one able to receive the Goodness of the Lord and transmit it to its subjects, conforming to the Holy order. (Pisan, 1997)

This aspect of ruling flourished at the beginning of Europe’s Medieval period… specifically at the end of the Carolingian Empire in 888 A.D. The power vacuum allowed municipalities and small kingdoms to multiply, marking the basis of feudal Europe, expressively catholic and highly theist, not only as a society, but also as army, diplomacy, economy, and culture. This concept benefited smaller, local governments, like the Italian communes and Baltic city-states.

Numbers don’t lie, neither Science nor Bureaucracy.

Arabs imported the numerical system from India, simplifying and giving it much more depth and length than preceding systems. Its use, however, was limited before the industrial revolution, which gave an exponential advantage to those who mastered it, the Florentine Republic.

The industrial revolution posed many challenges to the status-quo that facilitated it. Having large lands for agriculture and an army of slaves (or servants) meant less than it did before. Industrialization took over, and with it, engineering, and accounting. Mechanization touched large parts of our lives, and to sustain it, we needed to create a favorable ecosystem. Mathematics and Sciences grew to the top of college curricula, responding to society’s new thirst for engineers, accountants, medicals, chemists, scientists, and biologists.

Numeration entered our identity. Convenient and simple to understand, we are worth as much as the grades we get at school and in which disciplines. It decided our status, employability, and intelligence. This scaling of a sciences-minded population allowed bureaucracy to substitute provinciality and mercantilism in how the government operated, a system that absorbed lengthy processes, more challenging operations, and more complicated solutions for a public sector that is now running more like a machine.

Being a Noble, a Duke, a Beik or an Emir became an unsubstantiated label, a reminder of an old era, of an advantage that is no longer relevant, nor sustainable. While many of the old aristocracies were able to infiltrate the new government, it was only because they had access to learning and the necessary connections to do so… eventually, this advantage decreased, and they were fully substituted by experts and technocrats…

The End of States

Democracy became a belief rather than a right, the preconception of the sovereign being the representative of God on earth and with that, his words and decisions are unquestionable, became a myth. National movements grew all over Europe and historically inclusive figures like the Habsburgs of the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ had to battle the new Prussian Empire for ‘German’ supremacy. German, Italian, or Slav became now unifying or dividing characteristics. Every Nation became its free country, and the Empires that were not able to acknowledge the importance of race, language, ethnicity, or community, fell.

The Concept of Nation-States emerged, Monarchies started falling one after the other, some with an exceptional tsunami, notably France’s under the French revolution, Tsardom Russia under the Bolsheviks, others fell under the weight of Great Wars, such as the Ottomans and Austro-Hungarians.

The Ruler’s closeness to God stopped being a decisive factor in his ability to rule, nor what now the citizens need from their rulers. People want the right to vote, decide, work, and the fact that their ruler is a true believer in the Lord or not changes nothing in the equation.

Sovereigns became too outdated, ineffective, and in many instances, clueless of the challenges facing their countries, unable to adapt… they fell into irrelevance. Republics, emerged in many of these places with elective officials chosen by the people… through a majority, i.e., numbers decided their suitability for the job, and numbers as well decided how much good they were in doing it, and numbers eventually got them out.

And the Beginning of Others.

Unable to remain the sole economic, cultural, political, and religious power; State lost its monopoly. it became an association, among many others. Its significance is related to the political character of the nation, and its established unity in decision making. The pluralism of the theory of the State fell, making it less dependable on the sovereign and his personality (and proximity to God).

Religious, cultural, economic, social associations rose with the political one sometimes being at odds with the others. This facilitated the transformation of the government into a political unit in a federalist structure, which takes its relevance from the respect and consideration that only the others allow it to have. (Schmitt, 1992)

Capitalism, Communism, Liberalism, and Social Democracy became the new de facto religions… with enough stories, promises, and charismatic leaders to move Nations and societies into wars, while religious figures were reduced to secondary players.

The Wake-up Call

After over a century of the industrial revolution and during the second wave of globalization, businesses scaled, so did industries, populations, and wealth. Inflation touched all aspects of our life.

Academia exploded

Hundreds, thousands of academic institutions flourished globally, competing over the best alumni and campuses. With tailored, sometimes impossible to access entry exams, they designed a world that celebrates learning and education as a condition for employability, and a reflection of intelligence. Suddenly, a degree is not enough anymore, and our BAs can only get us this far, now we have MBAs, DBAs, and industry-specific recognized certificates. Work became increasingly challenging, and employability one step farther.

The same system that facilitated the Industrial Revolution and its dynamics scaled to a point where it became impossible to sustain. We needed the financial crisis of 2008 to realize that. What we used to consider “intelligent” was redefined, our understanding of the term became limited and one-sided. Corporate finance professionals, White-collared managers, and executives switched careers, opening their own bakeries, handmade chocolate factories, or design houses. For the first time, they felt it viable to do what they really love.

Now we can ask, why do we perceive an engineer as more “intelligent” than a dancer, a painter, or even an accountant? We celebrated Mathematics and literary materials, while art came always at the bottom, a side hobby, better left hidden. Consequently, most people undervalued their talents and skills, based only on the grades they got at school, the university applications they did not pass, the rejections in vacancies they did not secure.

Like a river flows

The financial crisis not only uncovered a class of creative people but also made it possible to have some perspective, after a century of linearity and strict mathematical reasoning.

It would be interesting to go back to a quote by Abraham Lincoln, from the second annual message of the congress in December of 1862, where he highlighted the fact that “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” (Lincoln, 1862)

This quote highlights the need to not only think new and act new but also to rid ourselves of what we consider granted, a given. Detox our mind from past beliefs and traditions that have, for so long, dictated how we think, see, and understand. A millennium of religious anecdotes decided the good and excommunicated the bad; a century of educating children out of their creativity and stigmatizing their mistakes, limited their “worth” to a limited number of disciplines and careers, out of which, they were outcasted, sidelined.

The linearity in business, caused by this philosophy, supported by mechanization and standardization, made sure that with X as input we must always have Y as an output. We built and optimized our solutions accordingly. We became too reliant on a certain common sense, that it was too difficult to get rid of or imagine relevant solutions that do not fit it. Standardization touched all parts of our lives, from education, communication, to fashion and food, but also taste and world views.

Standardization on all levels and in all fields went even further, with the global population growing exponentially. We ended up with millions of medical doctors, engineers, and grade A students, having the same skills to do the same jobs. Processes were also standardized. We ended up searching for and employing the same profile of people, trying to implement the same processes, for the same results, and same clients.

This hurt the competitive advantage companies needed to stay afloat. Imitability and conformity became toxic, intolerable, boring, not to mention stagnating for businesses. Now, we need something new on all levels, and fields.

Nation-States proliferated

With over 195 UN-recognized countries and counting. The concept of nation-states exploded too. A proliferation of countries, under political, religious, social, ethnic reasons, any reason really, made it that now we have nations of continental dimensions, as well as micro-states.

The United Nations’ principle of the right people to decide over their own destiny became so accessible, regardless of whether such a step is a sustainable decision at any level. Failed states too numerous, movements of separatism flourished unstoppably. From Africa to Europe, passing by the Middle East, years of peace and growth now look too thin in front of major disruptions.

Where is Ideology in all of this?

The fall of the Berlin wall didn’t only mark the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and the Communist ideology as a steppingstone for Nation building, but it also left a void that exposed the relevance of democracy and capitalism itself. A power vacuum that social dynamics are filling. Politicians and their too-correct messages are just as outdated and unresponsive to today’s challenges as Monarchs were during the Grand wave of Nationalism.

Not all, nor everyone in, societies are the liberal elite who want a world of Peace, collective cooperation, and multilateralism. Many are seeing their resources stolen, destroyed by the powers advocating for Globalization, freedom, and human rights. Political parties today echo messages that are empty of any interest to the receptors: People who want their dreams to come true, their wellbeing respected, in a society that can facilitate that.

Some Nation-states became too big to solve many of today’s problems reactively. Scale now is more of congestion than the absolute advantage it once was. Bureaucracy is now synonymous with slow and ineffective, once a movement away from feudality and provinciality. Politics, unfit to respond to challenges like climate change, information technology revolution, and recently, the pandemic, are reduced to literature and ideologies.

This situation helped sub-national and Sopra-national entities step forward in suggesting, formulating, and applying solutions. Society and its dynamics are taking over, whether through ethnic, religious, social, or other cultural divisions… in deciding collective destiny.

Only fools rush in…

The limit of standardization and imitability uncovered the real value of Creativity. But we already downplayed creativity for centuries, giving it names, suppressing it systematically. Artists were treated as fools, sorcerers, witches, or at best, lost potentials. Centuries of prejudgment engraved in our collective conscience now are changing abruptly and exponentially.

This is placing the Human in the center of the business field, and with that comes a new take on dealing with it. Human Capital reclaims resources as organic, very different from our mechanical rational mind, the result of decades of glorifying standardization. This means that with x resources and y contexts, well will have an infinite pool of unique solutions.

The diversity of talents would reconstitute our perception of intelligence, from conformity to uniqueness. A change that would undermine the basics of rationality, upon which our modern world has developed. Now that we can get rid of the doctrine of “action and reaction”, or at least the predictability of well-calculated simulations and analyses, we would be left with a new concept that will not only redefine our perception of space and place, but also our perception of time, Passion.

Passion and Signal.

Passion is what excites our spirit and energy, with which, time differs accordingly. With change back from the industrial to a more humane mode, we will lose our ability to standardize, conform and trust linearity. The new model will imply a more organic way where the need is to allow resources to flourish, each on its own time, place, and space, just like agriculture. And we should expect different inimitable results.

We, ourselves, will move from Management to facilitation. From managing scaled solutions to facilitating specific ones. From managing processes to rethinking how to solve pain points without waste. Most importantly, from managing strategies, to create signals.

Signals are less coercive, like an open door of an enlightened room, inviting enough yet not invasive. Signals help understand the support available to develop solutions, not dictate the way we will be receiving, consuming, or executing them. And success will depend on our creativity and perseverance, not on our gender, academic accomplishments, professional record, or portfolio, not even our ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, social class, family name, connections, infrastructure, or where we do come from.

Places need now to find the right formula that can disengage their communities from the effects of past ideas and superstitions and let them not interfere in how they live, solve problems, and do business. Immigrants normally excel by detaching themselves from where they lived, where they have a ‘status’ based on a collectivity that decides their faith and social mobility from the day they were born.

Only God knows how many inventions, and ideas, we missed because the people who were supposed to push for them were stuck cultivating rice, milking cows, managing accounts, or archiving files. Dictated by religious, ethnic, or social structures that forced on them what to think, how to think.

The Great Migration of twentieth-century America may have freed only the African Americans, but it gave us all a lesson, Globally exportable. Anonymity helped migrants start from nothing, being truer to themselves than societies at both ends. It helped them start fresh, independent, not only from a land that did not allow them to be what they want, but also from ideas, solutions that their old societies simply ignored, stigmatized, or undermined, forcing barriers every step of the way, from ideation, formulation to implementation.

Some Things are meant to be.

We are all dictated, beneficiary or not, by a system that named us, raised us, defined our belief, intelligence, and worth. Our Migration should begin from our pre-judgments and false expectations, based on a feeling of entitlement (or lack of) that are no longer relevant. These entitlements not only decided our pursuit of a better life, of happiness, but they were also so limiting and at times, stagnating.

The lack of any feeling of necessity and immediacy, false of empathy, created by the Gap we unconsciously created between us and whoever the ‘other’ is, forcibly detached us from anything that is not… us.

Climate Change, the Pandemic, the Information Technology Revolution will not only reshape the world… They will also redefine it since inclusiveness and acting as one, will be the only viable way of responding to many of today’s (and tomorrow’s) challenges, a Task extremely hard after millennia of fighting the ‘other’.

It is difficult when we have no word for the enemy.