Musings on Efficiency

Did I tell you about, Albert Einstein? He said,

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." [1]

Unfortunately, I don't recognise too many people who apply that to their large problems until there's no other option (including me sometimes). I think it is part of the human condition to find a 'sweet spot' or 'comfort zone' and prefer to use the tried and true. [2]

A quick scan of the environment will show you that the way things are is pushing change in social structures and endeavours. The pace of change itself has accelerated since Einstein made that comment. The economic system may finally realise that it NEED-s reasonable and equitable rewards up and down the production and supply chain, without that consumption dries up. Finally, if we are lucky we may just side-step an collapse and complete reset of the natural environment. All that on or about the 2016 time-frame. (Why 2016? No reason, it is and arbitrary choice.)

An environmental reset can be avoided by changing the way we think about our ecology. The idea of CO2 and other green-house gasses as "CO2-e Pollution"[3] is one move to shift our thinking. More traditional societies probably kept a kind of ledger [4] of their consumption (input) and effluent (output). If you didn't, you needed to pack-up sticks and move your village when the midden got to smelly or your ran out of game. There's enough humans now to make that impractical -- Exporting your effluent down-river or down-wind only delayed the boomerang's return.

I commented on an "Global Economic re-Boot" as an upgrade of your PC's software. It is a literal analogy, to me. It isn't just the behaviour that changes, the internal logic and mechanics will need re-assessment. I'm not equipped to out-guess the 'great minds' who husbanded the current state-of-play. My feeling is that everything we are doing now is embodies old thinking and while helpful, my reading is that the effect is leading any response the powers that be bring forward. May be it isn't so much a reboot, this is a paradigm shift from PC to MAC -- From a mouse with two buttons and a little wheel, to the single-button mouse (no wheel).

What does that mean for you? Opportunities abound for people thinking outside the square. For me, you ask? I'm one of those people who consistently thinks outside "your square". As noted above we all of us find changing our inner kind-of-thinking[1], one of the first reactions is to defend[2] a (comforting?) status quo. People with the edge are the ones who move fast, who use the way things are (and about to be) to create a net benefit.

I also pointed out my understanding that a major structural change is needed to provide a reasonable and equitable reward and exchange system. For purely selfish reasons too, if you can't provide your customer with enough of the means to acquire your good or service, your income shrinks. The trick in a modern system, is that the person providing your customer with the means to provide your income is NOT you, most of the time. Until recently it has been banks, finance companies and fund managers[6]. This must sort itself out in the normal way of competitive (natural) selective that complex system ecologies establish dynamic-balance.

"When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -- R. Buckminster Fuller [5]

The pace of change will accelerate. This can be a good thing or a not-so-good thing. Change seems to encourage 'defensive' behaviours like hoarding, protective strategies, defending what can be defended (say a thinking[1] or reputation) before seeking solutions. Change often creates confusion and selective focus of attention. It can also be disruptive[7].

What if you were an MP3 player manufacturer 2001 prior to Steve Jobs' iPod launch? Would you have built a marketing model around the new MP3 player configuration? No one did. Consequently Apple expanded the MP3 and mobile media market virtually unchallenged. Did they follow with a competitive model? Not really. A 20/20 example highlights the drawbacks of marketing myopia, what you need is someone like me with his/her head out of the sand; someone ready to apply marketing far-sight.

Once more, the coming changes will no doubt reveal a 2016 world as different from today as we are from the innocent days of 1908.

William.

References ...

1. Albert Einstein Quotes
2. "Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices", By Paul R. Lawrence, Nitin Nohria (2002)
3. Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (wikipedia)
4. (reference required)
5. R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes
6. "The Global Financial Crisis", Ravi Batra (2008)
7. Creative Destruction (wikipedia)
8. mbi Marketing
9. Foster, Richard (2008) "Creative Destruction and the Financial Crisis", McKinsey Quarterly, Dec-2008.
10. Greiner, Larry E. (1978) "Organization Practices in the five phases of growth" (12manage): If global systems also fall victim to Greiner's maturity model, is the global economic infrastructure experiencing a known crisis (per Greiner), or an emergent crisis?

Labels: change, competitive selection, dynamic-balance, ecology, economic re-boot

# posted by Will : 10:24