The Future of The Economy is Organic
Our organizations must be brought to life, nay they must integrate with life, so that they can evolve the complexity and diversity needed to contend with the problems we face.
The World Machine
VUCA
The world is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). When we were simpler creatures focused on farming, family, and faith, the world went whatever way it was going to go, and we were but children along for the ride. To deal with our existential fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD), we engaged in hard labor during the day and nightly prayers before bed.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.— The Serenity Prayer
Civilization has changed. In wealthy nations, we no longer live on the edge of destitution and at nature’s mercy; most of us no longer face the possibility of starvation, and our work is less physically laborious. Thanks to Science & Technology, we have generated abundant materialistic wealth. Yet, our influence has become so immense that, in many ways, it is now Nature that has become destitute and still alive by our mercy. We have become powerful, yes, but our power is clumsy and unfocused.
Our existential problems are no longer materialistic, they are systemic: global health issues, climate change, market instability, socio-politico-economic polarization & inequality, and the lack of empowerment that people everywhere face in their struggle to comprehend the political, educational, healthcare, and financial organizations they are forced to deal with.
Dealing with the biggest issues we face is the raison d’être of our conventional institutions — corporations, governments, supranational bodies, and humble organizations — yet, it is clear they are failing us and have nothing left to offer but but bullshit and gaslighting!
No longer are we children along for the ride; like a teenager, the strength and success of our institutions has given us more influence on the world around us, but we have not yet learned to moderate our brash and reckless actions. If we want to survive, we still have much growth ahead of us.
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
― Mark Twain
Conventional Organizations — Can they be fixed?
It’s not the fault of conventional organizations that they are incapable of solving our most complex and global issues — they were designed to work in a particular kind of world, for a particular need, but then the world changed.
Conventional organizations are based on the same modern ideas, such as rationality and logic, that gave rise to the Industrial Revolution. They continue to do whatever it is they were initially set up for because, like an assembly line, predictability — doing the same thing you did last time — is their guiding principle, not flexibility & adaptability.
- Their organization is metaphorically mechanical — based on division of labor, standardized work, and economies of scale.
- Their methods are linear — just do more, create more, faster and cheaper.
- Their motive is simple — to grow by maximizing their profit and material wealth (made easier in a world with a growing population).
They succeeded admirably in producing material wealth and raising much of the world out of poverty. Their basis in the modern industrial-mechanical paradigm, however, will leave them too inflexible to survive in a post-modern world that is increasingly economically interdependent, socially fragmented, technologically connected, and politically noisy.
The problems we face in our post-modern world cannot be overpowered with a “the same, but more” mentality; the solutions are more complex than “growth”.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
― Bernard Baruch
Today, conventional organizations survive by influencing political legislation, by using financial shells and shelters to escape taxation, and by outsourcing & automating operations to reduce infrastructure and labor costs. Those actions, however, don’t offer profitable competitive advantages — they are just the table stakes to stay cost competitive against other conventional organizations that do the same. The profits they make are increasingly from the lack of investment in us, the community they used to need for long-term health.
They still act predictably rational, but in a world in a world where they have become globalized and virtualized (non-localized), they have eaten democracy, forsaken community, and usurped the value of our commons for private gain. We are no longer integral to their business vitality — all outsiders are viewed as expendable externalities in their need to survive another financial quarter. Without the frictions of social interconnection and reciprocity, they act predictably in line with the only motivator they have left — their own short-term financial self-interest.
There is no “fix” or “upgrade” that is possible, because they are fundamentally the wrong tool for the job. The World Machine has become too big to fail, yet it is failing us.
Conventional Organizations — Can they be replaced?
Could the system just be replaced, a la revolution?
Maybe you are a progressive who dreams of a philosopher-king who will build a new social machine, one that is more humanistic and democratic! Or maybe you are a conservative who dreams of a philosopher-king who will come wash away our sins, repair our p2p social contracts, and bring us back to our golden years! Yet, how could either work? The system would see any attempt to replace it as a threat and would act to prevent it by any means possible — and the system has a lot of means.
With the high amount of debt and interconnection (together called leverage) in our global system, even the psychological possibility of a regime change would have outsized unintended consequences on a global scale, almost inevitably causing bankruptcy of the existing system before a replacement could get started. Even if the execution was perfect, as soon as an upstart gains just the possibility of success, stocks would sell off, debts would go unpaid, and our financial and political systems would grind to a halt and come crashing down.
When progressives strengthen the government and limit the market, prices go up and those least fortunate get hurt. When conservatives strengthen the market and shrink the government, social programs disappear, and those least fortunate get hurt. Any sort of totalitarian or populist revolution, whether from the left or the right, would be immediately unable to fulfill its promises — been there, tried that, no thanks.
With seemingly no way left and no way right, no way forwards and no way backwards, for many, they have no choice but to just stop and lie down.
Damned if we Do, Damned if we Don’t?
So, we have a System of the World that can’t be “fixed” because whether it works or not, the current system is not a solution to our systemic problems. Any attempt at replacing our system with something “similar, but better” would at best be a pyrrhic victory. Damn.
The physical and psychological toll of this seemingly intractable situation is obvious and heavy: higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide; the popularity of the prepper movement with its memes such as #shtf and #redpill; and the growing use of marijuana, opiates, Netflix, and TikTok as forms of self-medication that become addictions. In this state of mass ennui, we do whatever we need to self-soothe.
Ennui: en·nui /änˈwē/ noun: A feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement; boredom.
There are no simple, logical, or correct answers here. True, but in that statement also lies a hint of the solution. To deal with a volatile and uncertain world, we have to embrace complex and ambiguous solutions. If we cannot fathom a simple solution, we must evolve an unimaginable one.
Nature has been dealing with a VUCA world since its inception, and through good times and bad, rich times and poor, it has taken some beatings, and it always gets back up. To move beyond the industrial mindset, we must learn to harness the generative and evolutionary processes of nature.
Evolutionary Organizations
Organizations As Organisms
Life didn’t solve its problems with conscious and logical thinking — it learned to deal with problems and constraints as they arose by evolving around them. Complex ecosystems support Life to produce subtle variations in capability to optimize for slight environmental differences, while also being able to respond to unpredictable or catastrophic changes without breaking.
In fact, life isn’t just robust — the ability to resist failure — in the face of existential challenges, it is anti-fragile — it gets better in response to those challenges. In a very real sense, we can say that Life learns from its failures. Life is the ultimate student, and our best teacher.
Anti-fragility goes beyond robustness; it means that something does not merely withstand a shock but actually improves because of it. — Nassim Taleb; Anti-Fragile
In order to deal with our current problems, our organizations cannot be “fixed”, nor can they be “replaced”. They must be brought to life, nay they must integrate with life, so that they can evolve a level of complexity and diversity that matches the problems we face. That is what Design Thinking is all about — trying, failing, and learning, trying again, failing again, and learning again, in order to evolve in the face of the unknown and unknowable.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. — Albert Einstein
Design Thinking and Agile Underlie the Evolutionary Organization
Organizations that embrace Design Thinking and Agile Methodologies make use of patterns of organization that are similar to those found in biology and ecology:
- Their organization is metaphorically biological — based on Integrated Teams (vs. division of labor), Evolutionary Processes (vs. standardized work), and On-Demand Responsiveness (vs. economies of scale).
- Their methods are non-linear — they seek to solve the right problems, incrementally and temporarily, with a lot of testing and validation with real users along the way.
- Their motives are human-centered — their processes are grounded in empathy and curiosity in order to maximize the joy, health, and wellbeing of humans (even in a world with a stable or shrinking population).
By building teams that are diverse and creative, and then starting not with a problem to solve, but rather a people to care for and a willingness to try and fail, the Design Thinking method is intended to evolve a temporary solution that is good enough for now, but always capable of improvement. It recognizes that there is no “correct” answer, only answers that “fit” the need at the specific time and location of their implementation. It is a process that is never finished, and whose creative bounty is only ever artificially constrained.
When coupled with another popular evolutionary organizational process, Agile Development, we see the foundational framework an organization can adopt to overcome its fixed structure — that is, if it is willing to properly implement them. Design Thinking and Agile can create organizations (organisms!) that are intelligent rather than predictable.
Fearful of disruption, conventional organizations try to figure out how to implement these creative methods that were pioneered by tech startups, but they struggle because they attempt to implement them in a mechanistic way that is structured from the top-down.
Conclusion: The Future is Alive with Possibility
Conventional Organizations
- Their organization is metaphorically mechanical — based on division of labor, standardized work, and economies of scale.
- Their methods are linear — just do more, create more, faster and cheaper.
- Their motive is simple — to grow by maximizing their profit and material wealth (made easier in a world with a growing population).
Evolutionary Organizations
- Their organization is metaphorically biological — based on Integrated Teams (vs. division of labor), Evolutionary Processes (vs. standardized work), and On-Demand Responsiveness (vs. economies of scale).
- Their methods are non-linear — they seek to solve the right problems, incrementally and temporarily, with a lot of testing and validation with real users along the way.
- Their motives are human-centered — their processes are grounded in empathy and curiosity in order to maximize the joy, health, and wellbeing of humans (even in a world with a stable or shrinking population).
The Continued Growth of Design Thinking
The world is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). Our world is still dominated by conventional organizations that are fundamentally limited in their ability to deal with our most pressing existential problems because of their fixed reliance on only rational and logical methods for problem solving.
Organizations that adopt Design Thinking can overcome this limitation because they implicitly use a growth mindset — a strategy that can point to successes such as Life and Intelligence. Design Thinking doesn’t exclude rational and logical problem solving; it situates them as one part of a more human-centered context, where its strengths and limitations are respected.
As organizations become less mechanical and more organic, and as the boundaries around those organizations become fuzzy due to interconnected and mutualistic partnerships, they will be more naturally able to adopt our human-centered values. As this happens, we will see increasing benefits to our physical and mental health, our communities and corporations, and our global economy and ecology.
Design Thinking will help us overcome treating humans and the planet as a means to an ends, as human capital and natural capital to be spent on false “progress”, and it will fill the world with good design that brings joy to the world.
A Personal Mantra for Getting Started
If you want to get started with Design Thinking, the first step is to check your ego at the door. You don’t have to be a genius, and you don’t have to be an expert. You have to start with humbleness and compassion.
I find it helps me to recite the manta, “Evolution is smarter than me.” What I mean by this is: I need only to be curious about others, to put in the work to empathize with them, and to remember that I don’t have to have all the answers. The answers will come as we learn to work together.
Evolution is smarter than you are.
— Leslie Orgel
Thanks for reading, and for your kindness and support. In order to grow, I would be grateful to hear your feedback. If you know someone else who might enjoy this article, please pass it on.
References:
- Utopia & Dystopia: Image
- VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity. Wikipedia. I originally came across this phrase in the book, Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present by Bob Johansen.
- Serenity Prayer: Quote
- Mark Twain: Quote (Disputed)
- Hammer & Globe: Hammer | Globe (modified)
- Bernard Baruch: Quote (This quote is disputed)
- Arab spring: Image
- Lying Flat: Image
- Ennui: Definition is a mashup from several dictionaries.
- Little Plant: Image
- Anti-Fragility: Quote. From the book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
- Einstein: Quote (Also disputed)
- Billy Madison: Image
- Tree on House: Image
- Flowers: Image
- Leslie Orgel: Quote
