Something about my experience at Disrupt Sydney triggered memories of feverishly trying to consolidate and publish my thoughts each day at SXSW. Which, in turn, triggered an associated itch to pick up my laptop and put… er… pen to paper. So here we go!
Disrupt Sydney, is a one-day event, held by the University of Sydney Business School, with speakers and workshops centred around tacking the significant global challenges.
Please forgive the stream of consciousness style ramble on this one, the topics discussed on the day were both deep and broad. Books can, (and have) be written on all of them. Below are simply some of the highlights that grabbed me and the tangential thoughts I had about them.
Right from the get-go, the framing aligned with a concept my colleagues and I have been thinking about a lot. Paradox. The paradox of competing, seemingly diametrically opposed objectives we place value on, and simultaneously pursue with resulting tension, compromise and challenge.
Speaker: Kai Riemer – Professor, Business Information Systems
The banner theme for the day was “Rethinking Success”. I’m very much aligned with the concept that this paradox, and the resulting negative externalities, experienced at the level of the individual, groups, organisations, nations, the planet and beyond, (we are pretty reliably and consistently going to space, after all) means we need to examine how we think about “success”, and raises essential conversations about what we value, collectively and individually, and what we plan to measure and optimised for in our lives.
Many of our current behaviours as a species, driven by the goals we are enculturated to work toward, are, on a timeline we can see, (without squinting too hard), catastrophically unsustainable.
I’m going to use the word ‘enculturated’ a few times in this post – a helpful way to think about this term is via a quote I heard the other day in a fantastic documentary on Gregory Bateson where he quotes Krishnamurti.
“You think you are thinking your thoughts, you are not; you are thinking the culture’s thoughts.”
J. Krishnamurti
While there many fine, valid and necessary technical solutions that we can explore to help solve for change, my view is that a shift in the global consciousness, the way we think and feel about what constitutes a successful life, is foundational to the challenge and a force multiplier impacting how we develop and deliver systems for thriving, (so the solution should be a quick fix). And The biggest lever we can pull is the consciousness of the leaders who shape our institutions and organisations.
If we take this framing to be valid, the idea of rethinking success truly is a global strategic imperative.
The lamentable aspect of our predicament is that we know much of ‘what’ we are optimising for has little to no impact on our happiness. A well worn, but no less impactful illustration comes from a Princeton study conducted by Daniel Kahneman, (all-purpose legend and individual who’s work I reference often) and Angus Deaton, (I don’t know Angus’s work as well, but I’m sure he’s also a legend) which suggests the income level at which the impact on self-reported happiness tops out is ~$75k (US). So additional income doesn’t make us happier, but many of us seem to persist in the pursuit of more.
Andrew Baxter spoke about a “crisis of trust” between individuals and institutions, predicated on the behaviour driven by systemic incentive structures, namely the enculturated belief held by too many organisations, that shareholder value is the absolute North Star to which boards are obligated to act in the interest of. Of course, we know of many instances where this pursuit of returns over everything else led to damage and value extraction somewhere along the chain.
Contrast that with the actions of leaders in more consciously skewed organisations, Patagonia being one example, (shared in a later talk by Paul Faraggi) which optimise for stakeholders to an increasingly inclusive degree at they evolve, (In Patagonia’s case, this would be the planet). This aligns with Integral thinkers such as Frederic Laloux, who, in his book, ‘Reinventing Organisations’ brilliantly expands on the work of Ken Wilber, Clare Graves, Jean Piaget, etc. in an organisational context. Theorising that, as the consciousness of organisations evolves, they move from more egocentric to ethnocentric to world-centric ways of being and acting.
I suspect this focus on broader positive impact may also resonate with many individuals when considering employers. I’ve written about Dan Pink’s work on motivation in the workplace many times in previous posts, but here we are specifically pointing to the ‘purpose’ aspect of his triad. I don’t know may folk who are especially pumped about throwing themselves into their work for the sole purpose of making shareholders even more wealthy. The consequence? “Woke” organisations get “woker” as a talent and customer attraction strategy?
The pressures of competition is, of course, very real, and organisations must be financially viable in the long term. So It’s not that organisations shouldn’t strive to generate returns for their investors, of course they should, the investor model would break down without a potential upside to what ultimately amounts to a very risky bet, (based on the current average lifespan of organisations). But leaders must be crystal clear on what financial success is on behalf of, beyond numbers in the annual report. How do they want that business to show up in the world? What shadow will it cast? This shift in mindset is hard. “Thriving” is personal, subjective and much more challenging to measure and optimise for.
I loved Connie Henson’s talk on disruption as a catalyst to thrive. The research she shared showed that individuals who were subject to either voluntary or unexpected disruption actually improved in many measures of subjective’ thriving’. Thriving in this context being made up of a remarkably consistent definition, given by study participants, as ‘personal growth’ in how they think, feel and act.
So not only is disruption a strategic imperative, but the disruption itself is a catalyst for personally meaningful growth. “The obstacle is the way”, as a wise man once said.
Collective action bubbles up from all kinds of groups, facilitated and mediated by technology. Anaesthetist and advocate for patient outcomes in our medial institutions, Rob Hackett of The PatientSafe Network, showed this with his talk in which he unpacked the groundswell of support, facilitated by social media, (see, it’s not always bad!) for a fantastic, initiative.
Time and lives can be saved in operating rooms by improving the speed and clarity of communication. How did rob achieve this? By merely getting people to write their name and role on their surgical cap. “Jane, can you grab the defibrillator” elicits a much quicker response that “can someone get me the defibrillator”.
Rob’s story was shocking. He was met by moves to aggressively suppress the ‘naming’ initiative by institutional leadership. The fact that ego and fear resulted in push back on what appears to be an extremely powerful, almost free, mechanism to prevent patient death points again to not the fact that its minds that must change as well as the systems and structures around them. I was stunned, and genuinely have no idea what the rational argument against this would be.
This kind of change can happen through a shift in the consciousness of the leaders who have been enculturated to a particular way of being. Which, of course, would be far more preferable than option two, waiting for years until the folk at the top are replaced by an emergent generation which, according to some of the data Rob shared, are more embracing of modern ways of working.
As I’m sure you can tell from reading this far, I’m on board with the view that we are faced with a challenge of ongoing, evolving, conscious assessment of what we value individually and collectively. But here in lies the work! This is not a problem that will be solved in one dimension. Individuals, organisations and nations must question their values and beliefs, and get clear on what they are striving for and why. We must then all work to shift the structures and systems in which we operate to optimise for what matters most, not just what’s most comfortable to measure.
So, y’ know, a simple problem to solve.
Side note. How Disrupt isn’t more popular, I don’t understand. The quality of perspective from the speakers and facilitators was outstanding. The intimate nature of the event made it far more enjoyable for an introvertedly skewed person such as myself. Small table discussions, a warm, friendly atmosphere throughout and easy, rich conversation with a very diverse and interesting crowd. I didn’t even get a chance to unpack my takeaways from half the talks and workshops I attended!