Complexity, Innovation, Knowledge and Learning: A quantum interpretation of management

Humanism and business

Le Monde of 16 september 2008 titled "It is difficult to select the managers of tomorrow".  Is it ? The article mentioned that since three years HEC had introduced a leaderships component in their MBA (I sincerely hope it exists already longer). The article continues that managers in general are seduced by short toolkit-driven courses like "developing your charisma in three days". Interesting, not really new.

The Newzy of June 2008 asks the question whether a business could be humanistic and they observe that increasingly companies become interested in "meaning".  What are we doing it for ? A few statements in the article are illustrative.  "Today, people often have opinions, but few have a view point". "In companies, we observe a vocabulary that becomes ever poorer with a misuse of meaning, under the false cover of sophistication".

And yes, the suggested way out is teaching managers (and management students) much more humanities. Did we indeed make management education a toolkit-education? Did we suggest our students that there exist quick solutions to problems that can easily be analysed? More than anything else, I think we need a more systemic understanding of management, and for sure, that is not easy to teach.

Slow Management

Does management need to be at any price "fast": a constant stream of decisions that merely suffice to get us by until the next crisis. I use the words of Derek Cheshire, in his article "Slow Innovation". For those interested in his challenging ideas, they can consult his blog (that I also put in the list of interesting blogs in my readings page). I would like to elaborate on some of his ideas.

He uses slow innovation as opposed to fast innovation, and he refers to the fast food industry.  What is the difference between fast food and slow food? In the managerial world, there is a huge pressure to deliver "results" fast, and therefor we need to take decisions fast. But with fast food we know what we loose: the pleasure of sharing our food and a nice moment together. We no longer enjoy food and we do not give it the time necessary for its nutritional role that is primarily contributing to our health. The quality of fast food is highly questionable; there is a clear addictive effect (it asks for more); that "always more" works highly toxifying. We indeed seem to go from crisis to crisis, and they only become more severe.  I am afraid the fast food metaphor is a correct one for fast management.

The word "value" dropped already.  Cheshire refers to value when he defines innovation: a blend of creativity and knowledge (or know how; probably the enacted cognition concept of Varela would do very well here).  As a business concept, innovation is sought to create value.  I would say, management and business is about creating value and that is not something that goes fast.

When value creation would become again the main purpose of business, business will have to slow down.  And what we have most probably seen while business has been speeding up over the last decade, was the end of value creation. Management no longer cared for value creation.  Instead we created money and we managed numbers.

Today we arrive in a split.  We know it goes too fast; we know we are exploding the use of our natural resources and we are polluting our planet in an unacceptable way. We know we have to change: we all start talking about sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, even ethics.  But we do not have the concept, the paradigm that gives that manager that is willing, the tools to manage slower. That is the real challenge for business today and of course it is the same challenge for Business Schools today.  Can we make a shift to a slow food society and can we become aware again that we are here to create value, value for all, and not money for few.

To use a last time Cheshire's words: "In the world of slow, there will be less waste as there's time to be more resourceful and to use materials already available."

Consciousness in Action

From Thursday 9 to Sunday 12 August, the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) held its 12th International Conference: Consciousness in Action, the science and practice of transformation.  If you have some interest in my work, you know how much I appreciate what IONS is working at for many years now.

With their own words: "The Institute is not a spiritual association, political-action group, or a single-cause institute. Rather, we honor open-minded approaches and multiple ways of knowing, bring discernment to our work, and support diversity of perspectives on social and scientific matters. The institute's work is dedicated to transforming contemporary worldviews on the relationship between consciousness and matter. The implications of our empirical research and community education efforts extend far beyond the laboratory and the lecture hall. Indeed, our work speaks to a shift involving humanity's deepest knowing and understanding of ourselves and our universe."

I went there with my spiritual counterpart, my wife Erna, and why not to share a nice picture.

An impressive number of very interesting speakers shared their ideas, but even more so their commitment to the work of IONS. With the risk of leaving out some crucial ones, a little list of those that at least left a strong impression with me.

Of course, the IONS founder and former Apollo Astronaut, Edgar Mitchell. The visionary who understood the importance of better understanding how consciousness works, and this already many years ago. The IONS researchers Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, Dean Radin, Tina Amorok, and Cassandra Vieten. Visionary workers and speakers, that all make an impressive contribution to the world, in making that world a more happy and worthwhile place to live in. Moreover, they are all able to share their commitment with the roughly 1000 participants present in a straight forward and involved manner.

Van Jones on green collar workers and in the inclusion of less favoured youth in the society. Lynne McTaggart about the extreme power of intention and how it influences the world. Hazel Henderson, known from her site on ethical markets, about the impact that all of us might have on how economics behave. And not to forget the life stories of Lynne Twist and Hafsat Abiola. Such nice people that might be real examples for all of us.  They do have an impact on the world, and a real positive one.

Not only was this a very motivating event, for which I would like to congratulate IONS.  Many speakers also highlighted that we really needed another economic model, another theory of the firm and another shared value set amongst managers. A subject dear to me, to which I hope I can continue contributing  and hopefully even in a more impacting way. Is it a dream to have an IONS research program around a paradigm shift in economics and management, a transformation, and is it a dream to have IONS more present and active in Europe ?  I hope not.

When scientists become "crazy"

When scientists become "crazy", we might finally get to the essence of what happens.  Not surprisingly, it are quantum physicist like Einstein, Pauli and others that have invariably asked the real questions about existance beyond the measurable.  I'll devote a specific post on the most exciting conference of the Institute of Noetic Sciences a week ago in Palm Springs CA, but I just want to paraphrase Edgar Mitchell (PhD of MIT and Apollo 14 astronaut; by the way, the founder of IONS).

"... we are working at the most compelling frontier of our time and that is consciousness.  The integration of science and spirituality allows us to understand and give true meaning to our connectedness to the inner self, to each other, and to the Earth".  We might need this, in order to give some sense to ideas around sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and others.

For those that want an easy and attractive start in this journey, there is a site with so called psy games, based on the IONS research, in order to experience some of it, without too much effort. Enjoy it.

A holistic management approach

The Euromedian Management Approach course is again finished and 3 blogs (made by syndicate groups of third year students) are really worth studying. I want to congratulate the students for this brilliant work (Groups 14, 32, 43) and invite all those that wouldn't really understand what holistic management might mean, to have a look.

A next semester of holistic management courses

Since the semester has started again, happy to announce the re-start of the Euromedian Management Approach, a course that attempts to give the students a more holistic view on management.  You can follow their work in the discussion section of this blog, via the wiki-page link.  In groups of 5, they have to create a wiki reflecting their learning during the course.

We also start a course on knowledge management: the biology of business, in which we confront the students with the whole scala of knowledge forms: from rational to non-rational. More difficult to follow, but the best final assignments will be posted on the blog.

French site on holism and systemic thinking

Dominique Beriot published a book "Manager par l'approche systemique" and made a site, that gives a nice overview (in French) of what systemic thinking is, giving also references to most of what is published in French and is interesting.