Futures Foundation

The structural nature of change

Our world is undergoing massive structural shifts as we rush to embrace the new millennium. What once appeared to be stable and enduring, long ago gave way to doubt, instability and speculation.  Value systems founded on village and community life, the Church, and loyalty to family and the firm, are fast disappearing even as the new science turns on its head our understanding of the world and how it works.1      Meanwhile, established ways of working are no longer as relevant as we move from an industrial age - characterised by the  need to manage discrete things, to a knowledge-creating age - characterised by the need to manage interdependent systems.

Underpinning these profound structural changes are a number of tectonic forces – forces that, though mostly intangible, concealed from our view, and therefore seldom the topic of conscious debate are, nevertheless, transforming the way we perceive, think about, and organise our world.2 

The  concept  of  complexity,  for  instance,  [the  notion  that,  at  some  level,  everything  is connected to every other thing in a unified and emergent whole3] derives from a more tolerant and discerning comprehension of living systems.4     Understanding this, however, obligates us to  re-examine  issues  once  thought  to  be  intractable  -  issues  such  as  environmental degradation, the growing incidence of clinical depression among the world’s youth, sovereign territorial disputes and third world debt, for example.

Likewise, the theory of chaos has had a profound effect on our thinking since the early 1960s. Through the work of Edward Lorenz, who demonstrated that minute changes to a system’s initial state may well lead over time to large-scale, and utterly unpredictable, consequences (a phenomenon referred to as the butterfly effect) we now appreciate, for example, that much of the control governments believe they exercise over the economy and society is illusory.5

Then    technological    innovation    (especially   in    the    pervasive   areas    of   information, communications and biogenetics) together with cultural evolution (most notably the fusion of ideas, institutions and cultures occurring as a result of our increasing ability to communicate instantly with one another) continue to shape the restructuring of the world’s political and economic systems, as well as changing the very nature of democracy.

Learning to adapt: the need for intelligence

It is these, or analogous forces, that are now challenging and displacing many of the more antiquated  axioms  from  the  industrial  age.   Axioms  we  have  adopted,  albeit  often unconsciously, as essential to the effective functioning of our civilisation. Axioms that depict a shared model of reality (our indust-reality, if you will) to which the world’s developed nations have ascribed great potency.  This model is most clearly manifested in the ways we habitually construct the world into being (especially through the language we use to explain our reality) and the consequent path of economic growth and development we have so relentlessly pursued for the past 400 years.

At the same time, the structural dynamics created through the interaction of these driving forces are giving rise to new, mostly ambiguous, uncertain (indeed, occasionally entirely unexpected) conditions and contexts for living, working, learning and governing within society.

In this chaotic flux, social, ethical, technological, political, environmental and economic issues now take on an overwhelming intricacy.   Precariously poised on the edge of chaos, even experience accrued over a lifetime offers little by way of reassurance when change itself becomes so rapid and erratic.   When technologies shift, the knowledge monopolies of the past decay and crumble. How can we know what is significant any more? Of myriad dynamic possibilities, what should receive our attention from one moment to the next?  Where do we now look for continuity, meaning and identity?  How can we minimize risks while optimising innovation and creating systemic value?  How can we be sure, both today and in the future, that the decisions we make are both strategically appropriate and systemically viable?

Quite apart from the need for on-going appraisal of our own beliefs and metaphors (and subsequent personal future pathways) the unprecedented volatility and unpredictable nature of current external environmental conditions now requires that we constantly recalibrate the internal configuration of our institutions and organisations, upgrading their capability to remain aligned and integrated with an ever-changing global society, of which they are a part.  There is no other way to maintain the current effectiveness of an enterprise as well as assuring its future relevance.  While perpetual novelty remains the single, most unavoidable, constant in our lives, organisations will need to repeatedly focus on the alignment of internal capability and niche (strategic ‘fit’ and systemic ‘fitness’) as never before.

But achieving and maintaining alignment requires that organisations learn how to constantly reinvent themselves.  This is no mean task, especially in a world punctuated by the ebb and flow of transitory business ecosystems - a world where once-familiar rules governing the relationship between ‘strategy’ and ‘organisation’ no longer apply.   Indeed, the decline of homogeneous industry groupings is, in itself, turning conventional business wisdom on its head.6

For example, the determination of a corporate strategic business framework, most commonly concentrating on the achievement of specific financial goals (related perhaps to share price, economic value-add, profitability or market share) conventionally precedes, and therefore eclipses in importance, the design of other capabilities – even those that may be equally critical to the achievement of such goals.   Worse still, many capabilities like organisational configuration, structure and social ecology, are assumed to be mostly fixed and unchanging, rather than dynamic strategic parameters requiring constant monitoring and recalibration.

A far greater appreciation of the critical interdependencies and delicate balance required within the evolving fabric of an organisation’s social ecology is now needed in order both to optimise  business  performance  and  create  sustainable  systemic  value.   Structure, for example, is becoming inherently ephemeral: within the context of responding in ‘real-time’ to critical changes in its transactional environment, persistent re-mapping of the business can ensure that an organisation remains aligned to its niche.  Strategy, however, can be allowed to emerge, based upon the most “strategically appropriate” sets of opportunities available at any particular moment.

Likewise, most contemporary business strategy still relies on strategic positioning as the primary means for generating value.     Traditionally, this methodical approach to strategic development emphasises the creation of value ‘chains’ through highly customised offers to markets – all relative to one’s competitors.  While positioning of products and services has tended to work reasonably well in stable conditions, the astonishing churn characterising today’s global business environment demands a very different approach.  Most significantly, such turbulence elevates the need for spontaneous improvisation (and continuous adaptation) around product offers and brands merely in order for a company to remain optimally aligned with the business ecosystem(s) of which it is a part.  And as the capability for adaptiveness depends upon the expedient use of strategic intelligence, so the significance of strategic processing (of information for adaptiveness) becomes critical.7

Strategic process, indeed, has now become an imperative even within the most hallowed halls and traditions of the public sector.               In spite of this, most approaches to strategic management still conform too readily to obsolescent notions of long-term planning or change management and are far too cautious, almost leisurely, in character.  Once critical changes in systemic conditions have been detected only rapid, purposeful transformation can possibly hope to guarantee long-term viability.

Yet most organisations are superbly ill equipped for this task.  Unconscious of what they do not know, they remain oblivious to all but the most transparent of changes occurring all around them.

Steering a course through turbulence

Evidently, particularly given the lethargic internal state of even the most highly regarded of contemporary corporations, what is needed is an ability to remain fluid; to play out alternative futures; to embrace uncertainty, ambiguity and change as an intrinsic part of organisational life.  These are characteristics of viability.  Put simply, viability means being self-sustaining over time.8

Organisations are most inclined to remain viable if they are able to steer a secure course through the dynamic turbulence of their environments, at the same time achieving improved results for all their stakeholders.  Viability requires that they be intimately connected with their external world in ways that promote mutual learning, responsiveness and adaptiveness.  It also necessitates continuous upgrading of the organisation’s internal capabilities (both to perform and to navigate) in order to create value - wellbeing, or “fitness” in ecological terms - for itself and for the business ecosystem of which it is a part.  We call this capability to remain aligned, integrated and viable, strategic navigation.9

Although the metaphor of navigation is an apt one, I am not necessarily referring solely to the sort of navigation practiced by Europeans.   These navigators begin with a predetermined plan, or course, which they have charted according to certain universal principles.       The voyage becomes one of relating their every move to that plan and all effort throughout the voyage is directed to remaining ‘on course’.  If unexpected events occur, as they always will, the European navigator must first alter the plan, before responding accordingly.

Similarly  beneficial  in  today’s  complex  world  are  the  traditional  navigational  arts  of  the Trukese sailing masters of Micronesia who begin with a purpose, rather than a plan.  Setting off towards a destination, they respond to changing conditions in an instinctive yet impromptu manner.  Steering by utilising information provided ‘in the moment’ by the wind, waves, tide and current, fauna, stars, clouds (and even the sound of the water lapping on the side of the boat), their efforts are directed to doing whatever is necessary to reach their destination safely.

In the context of developing a robust system for managing today’s complex and turbulent business environment, this type of navigational process is best understood as one of systemic facilitation. Systemic facilitation differs considerably from the more systematic ‘project management’ approach to planning and change used by most organisations (an approach that is far more in keeping with the conventional European navigational style).  Furthermore, the implications of such an extemporaneous approach to business conditions approximating perpetual novelty are quite profound.

Firstly, systemic facilitation assumes change to be a continuous process rather than a single event, or sequence of events.  Secondly, it presupposes that changes of all kinds are ongoing and that they will be both anticipated and unanticipated.  Thirdly, resources are distributed as needed  throughout  the  entire  period  of  change.   Initially,  of  course,  there  may  well  be deliberate, or intentional responses to change.   Later, there are likely to be cycles of both emergent changes and opportunistic changes interspersed by further intentional changes. Consequently, the emphasis in systemic facilitation is mostly on continuous variation and transformation, working through strategic issues as they occur and continuing to do this, all the while learning as we navigate ahead.

Today, it seems to me, insistence upon relevance to an historically established core purpose is no longer a criterion for viability.  Nor, for that matter, are cutting-edge technologies, low- cost marketing, or being a high value-added producer or service supplier.  Even exercising a monopoly, for example, as central government agencies have traditionally done, is no guarantee of success.

Openness to learning, however, (where learning is understood to be the exploratory process of continually making sense of a situation by transforming experiences into knowledge as the basis for informed action) is a prerequisite.                                                                       Above all, given that human beings exhibit intentionality and are able to exercise free will and judgement, strategic navigation requires that our thinking and acting be driven by intelligence.  Intelligence that enables us to rapidly transform who we are, what we do, and how we do it.  Intelligence that is strategic in nature.

The nature of strategic intelligence

The motivation to detect, synthesize, and act upon received information derives from an organism’s need to coevolve in healthy correspondence with other organisms in its ecosystem.  Essentially, coevolution (formerly located conveniently in the domain of biology) is the notion that all things - biological, societal, and technological - adapt to and create each other from one moment to the next, simultaneously weaving themselves into a single ‘healthy’ system.  In other words, the evolution of an organism is inseparable from the evolution of its environment.

The fundamental idea behind coevolution, then, is one of adaptation, specifically adaptation of niche (or function) in response to the needs of the ecosystem(s) of which we are a part.  This can apply both to the individual self (relative to the changing needs of the organisation) as well  as  to  the  organisation  as  it  redefines  or  even,  at  times,  completely  transcends  its previous form in response to the changing needs and demands of society.

Unlike incoherent bits of raw data, or disparate chunks of information, the intelligence synthesised from strategically appropriate information enables us to more accurately assess the  significance  and  urgency  of  the  systemic  dynamics  with  which  we  have  to  deal. Moreover, the continuous use of wideband intelligence (intelligence drawn from a variety of perspectives and from across the entire web of inter-relationships that comprise any business ecosystem) helps shed light on the complexity surrounding such critical issues. It allows us to comprehend  the  scale  of  our  predicament  and  act  ‘intelligently’  to  improve  or  change prevailing circumstances.

This type of intelligence is both strategic and corporate in nature - it enables the acquisition and use of intelligence explicitly for strategic navigation - providing the means whereby the corporation (or organisational entity) is able to adapt to changed systemic circumstances by redefining it’s niche, redesigning it’s internal capability, or transforming every aspect of it’s identity if that is what is required, in order to effect healthy systemic coevolution.

Corporate strategic intelligence differs from business strategic intelligence - a more highly- focused, narrow-band type of intelligence, (typically acquired from environmental scans of the business environment) which allows the organisation, and its various parts, to respond and adapt to explicit changes in it’s chosen niche.10      Furthermore, both corporate and business intelligence differ from operational intelligence, which allows us also to take heed of the more practical aspects of what is (and what is not) possible, channelling in information about what we do not yet know that could make a significant difference in our ability to take action. And it differs from knowledge, which comprises both conscious and unconscious  processes for ‘knowing’ that enable insights, understandings and practical know-how to be acquired and used in ways that allow us to remain functional.11

Creating strategic intelligence

Strategic intelligence, then, is an organisational capability. This capability is a higher order learning capability, comprising two discrete yet interdependent elements, namely:

(i)         The continuous acquisition of information that enables critical changes in systemic conditions to be sensed and understood, coupled with

(ii)        The processing of such information in ways that give new insights into when and how we might respond to such changes, given our particular preferences and intentions.

Thus, strategic intelligence feeds and nourishes the composite of interrelated systems, processes and practices required for strategic navigation.12    Essentially, the development and continuous use of a robust strategic intelligence capability ensures that the organisation as a whole, together with its various parts, remains attentive to the system’s changing structural

dynamics and coevolves in relation to these dynamics.

In the industrial economy, when the rules for engaging in business were familiar and the context was relatively stable, the need for such a process (and, as a consequence, the need for strategic intelligence) was not so evident.   Major structural advances in the fields of commerce and government were rare, obsessive competitive positioning ruled the day in most corporations, and strategic processes were practiced rarely and, even then, mostly intuitively.

In today’s global network economy, however, business ecosystems (and the organisations of which they are comprised) emerge, exist for a while, and wane in a mesmerising dance that is both capricious and dynamic.  The rules for doing business are in a state of constant churn.13

In such an environment, the most significant risk to organisational effectiveness and sustainability is the lack of an ability to navigate.  But without strategic intelligence, strategic navigation systems (and therefore our ability to navigate strategically) simply atrophy and die.

It is probably clear by now that corporate strategic intelligence and business strategic intelligence are both essential capabilities for driving organisational learning and adaptiveness and must occur at varying levels of recursion throughout the organisation.  But in order to create a strategic intelligence system we will also need a distributed intelligence capability (such as formal and informal social networks potentially provide) to ensure that the various meanings derived from the synthesis of corporate and business intelligence are shared and used to inform the development of strategic options at these various levels of recursion.

Within any infrastructure for strategic management using strategic navigation as its core mode of operation, the principal means for creating corporate strategic intelligence will be located in those sub-systems that have been designed to:

·          Inform organisational philosophy and teleology

·          Develop foresight, and

·          Manage strategic and systemic risks.

The major means for creating business strategic intelligence, on the other hand, will be found in those sub-systems that have been designed to:

·          Continuously align internal capability with stakeholders changing needs

·           Maintain market focus, and

·           Address strategic issues.14

Creating corporate strategic intelligence

1.   Inspiring organisational philosophy & teleology

Applied to systems designed to determine purpose and direction, strategic intelligence allows an organisation to engage in the process of determining, and constantly redefining, a strategic framework that can guide whatever decisions, plans and behaviours are most strategically appropriate and systemically viable.  Assuming that insightful information has been derived from the most expansive of possible scans (and synthesised from a variety of novel viewpoints) the process of ‘strategy finding’ at the corporate level should present us with an opportunity to position the organisation as providing unique or remarkable value within one or more business ecosystems.

2.  Developing foresight

The chosen niche of any enterprise nests within a broader transactional environment, which, itself, is part of a more global emergent context.  Although an organisation may well have some level of influence (or even a degree of control) within its transactional environment, it probably has no influence whatsoever over the emergent context. Unhappily, contextual information is frequently neglected, simply misunderstood and consequently misapplied, or totally overlooked by executives whose role is to direct the strategic  management of the  enterprise.     They posit that, because the contextual environment is largely beyond the control of any individual corporation, there is little point paying much attention to it.

History has proven again and again the foolishness of such a proposition.   For it is here, in the intricate, often ambiguous and apparently contradictory milieu of social, political, economic and technological systems that the future is revealed - that the structural drivers for change first manifest.  It is a particular human failing that we tend to filter out of our consciousness anything we believe to be irrelevant to the accomplishment of our immediate goals.  Yet comprehending the structural nature of the global forces shaping societal change often provides the intelligence whereby a corporation’s survival is assured.

The  kind  of  strategic  intelligence  entailed  in  identifying  and  comprehending  the dynamics of change sustains our ability to learn from the future.   It is the art of foresight.  The development of this capability, particularly through the invention of alternative scenarios, allows us to make better sense of what is happening today and helps prevent the likelihood of unpredictable events taking us totally by surprise in the future.15

3. Managing strategic and systemic risks

The domain of strategic risk management comprises systems that:

(i)         Facilitate continuous scanning of the systemic dynamics - in order to identify early warning signals of potential significance relative to the organisation’s strategic framework and current trajectory, and

(ii)         Enable the organisation to analyse, assess, treat, monitor and learn from the impacts of current or predicted strategic issues in ways that are consistent with the organisation’s philosophy and direction.16

Assuming that it is reasonable to view the organisation as a living system, and that tensions and stress will occur as a natural part of that system, risks should be accepted as an inherent part of systemic coevolution and a necessary dynamic for learning, growing, maturing and achieving self-sustaining viability.  Systems designed to managerisk, therefore, must be capable of generating intelligence in ways that enable organisational learning and development as an integral part of their purpose and function.

Creating business strategic intelligence

4.   Strategic alignment

Strategic alignment optimises the organisation’s current performance.  It does this by identifying  gaps  between  organisational  performance  and  client  expectations.   As critical factors (and stakeholders’ needs) change in the external environment, so additional changes are required internally merely to maintain ongoing alignment. Nothing less than a constant flow of pertinent information (explicitly facilitating ongoing comparisons of internal capabilities and performance with external needs) allows us to come to grips with the changing nature of today’s reality from a total stakeholder perspective.  Here, a combination of strategic and operational intelligence is used to continuously map and compare the changing dynamics of the internal and external environments (preferably in ‘real time’) so that adjustments to strategy can be made as and when required - thus optimising systemic facilitation.

5. Maintaining market focus

Once a mobilising strategic framework has been created and a strategic business intelligence capability is functioning, the various parts of the organisation should be empowered to determine what strategic initiatives (including appropriate structural re- configuration and ongoing changes to internal capability if necessary) would allow them to respond optimally to emerging business opportunities.         This relatively new, yet dynamic approach to strategy development is known as strategic patching and it, too, is driven by strategic intelligence.

Working from an operational model (depicting how the organisation’s strategic framework can best be translated into achievable outputs) strategic patching facilitates continuous planning, coordination, performance and evaluation at local levels that will optimise business opportunities and realise concrete business goals.

6.   Strategic issues management

One incontrovertible problem for today’s managers is that very few things appear to be certain.  And without certainty it becomes impossible to predict, and therefore control, events.  Strategic issues can arise without much warning17  - often making some (or all) existing strategies redundant and requiring the rapid creation of new strategies in order to maintain satisfactory operational performance.

In this context, conventional approaches to long-term planning quickly become inadequate.         It  seems  far  wiser  and  more  pragmatic  to  engage  in  continuous intelligence gathering, constantly feeling one’s way forward and making corrections to strategy as circumstances demand, rather than to stick to some pre-determined, centrally controlled game-plan that might rapidly become irrelevant. This does mean, however, that organisations must be better prepared and equipped to manage strategic issues as they arise. In such circumstances, strategic intelligence becomes critical.

Surfacing the right questions

Essentially, strategic intelligence has two primary functions. Firstly, it must enable the organisation as a whole to surface the most pertinent strategic questions it needs to be asking, relative to its capability to remain in healthy coevolution with its environment in the domains of (a) it’s desired future; (b) it’s likely future; (c) other possible futures.  Secondly, it must continuously enable significant meaning to be made from information that allows the organisation to adapt to changing conditions in ways that are socially beneficial, culturally desirable, ethically justifiable, economically feasible, ecologically responsible and systemically convincing.18

Astonishingly, many organisations still lack the means for asking the right questions.   And unless they are fortunate enough to have a ‘remarkable person’ in their executive line-up it is extremely unlikely that they will even know how to begin to ask “strategically appropriate” questions.  Others, in spite of their well-intended efforts, may simply ask inappropriate, trivial or irrelevant questions and consequently end up solving the wrong problems (albeit with occasionally supremely elegant solutions!)

One might reasonably inquire how any member of an organisation can possibly know which questions they should be asking at any particular time?  The answer is that they cannot.  I know of no simple formula, no prescriptive ‘made-to-measure’ consultant’s package, able automatically to pinpoint the ‘right’ questions to be asking at all times.

Which is precisely why the prime function of a robust strategic navigation system must be to enable the surfacing of the most insightful questions to be asking, given the particular set of properties and unique state of a business ecosystem at any point in time.  Surfacing the right questions provides the organisation with the means to then search for the most appropriate strategic framework from which it should be operating, given the strategic intelligence it has available to it.

Arguably, the most crucial questions demanding a satisfactory resolution from any system purporting to effectively manage strategy in today’s volatile and unpredictable world must relate to how the organisation surfaces what questions it should be asking in order even to begin establishing its strategic framework or business idea.  How can we know, for example, if earlier questions that were asked, perhaps only a few months or weeks ago, are still the most relevant questions to be pursuing?  Furthermore, how can we ensure that we provide ourselves, consistently and repeatedly, with the opportunities and means for surfacing the most appropriate questions we should be asking?

 This is precisely what an effective system of strategic navigation must be able to facilitate. Clearly this cannot be achieved without a sophisticated strategic intelligence capability.

Pursuing viability: the need for intelligence

So, strategic intelligence is indispensable for systemic viability.  But in a fiercely competitive global business environment, continued viability is also dependent upon the proficiency of the organisation to use this intelligence in ways that allow it to become more self-aware - to be able to challenge its own epistemology, or ways of knowing.  In other words, it needs higher levels of organisational consciousness, particularly concerning purpose and identity, in order to ensure that it remains strategically appropriate.

Based upon a number of case studies undertaken over the past quarter of a century, in particular a well-documented investigation into corporate longevity by Royal Dutch Shell, I am convinced that natural systems (explicitly, that class of living systems known as complex adaptive systems) is a most potent metaphor to aid our understanding of how social entities, such as business corporations and government departments, might ideally need to behave in increasingly uncertain environmental conditions in order to secure their continued viability through raised levels of consciousness.19

Knowledge of complex adaptive systems provides us with valuable insights into strategically appropriate organisational behaviour.  Most significantly, complex adaptive systems remain viable  by  distributing  intelligence  outwards.    Unlike  the  power-based  hierarchies  we knowingly, and somewhat masochistically, inflict upon our corporate lives, natural systems are holonocentric – in other words, they do not appear to organise themselves around any central authority nor, indeed, from any one part of the system.   Instead, members of the system are interconnected and systemic viability is dependent upon the mutual interaction of every individual member feeding back information from every other part of the system.20

Through this process of self-communication, natural systems are naturally self-renewing - or what the biologist Humberto Maturana refers to as autopoietic.21   Like life itself, they experiment - playing and creating their world into being at every moment.   To the casual observer, they appear to be totally unpredictable - and uncontrollable!

In effect, naturally adaptive systems self-organise: sensing the slightest change in environmental conditions they evolve, relative to their niche, by adapting appropriately to accommodate perpetual novelty.  This autopoietic quality results from the ability of the system to learn from, and respond immediately, to significant signals in the environment.  In addition, the more a natural system embodies diversity, the greater is its ability to sustain itself - to adjust and adapt to all but the most destructive of situations.

Transferred to an organisation, this capability for self-organising through learning becomes the means whereby systemic viability (and hence sustainability) is assured.

Journeying from knowledge to wisdom

Within the context of responsiveness, especially the need for an organisation to rapidly adapt to changes in its external environment, the most significant aim for any strategic navigation system must be to encourage autopoiesis through the creation of higher levels of consciousness.

Viable systems are able to self-organise in order to create and maintain the ecosystem of which they are a part.  Unlike most orthodox strategic management systems, which impose increasing  levels  of  control  to  minimize  the  degree  of  turbulence  within  the  system, autopoietic systems are self-creating to the extent that they do not require (or may simply absorb) imposed authority or control so as to ensure continuing growth and adaptiveness.

The   implications   of   autopoietic   processes   for   the   development   of   organisational consciousness are profound.  For one thing, autopoiesis ascribes potency to individuals and to communities of interest, rather than to some discrete homogeneous entity conveniently labelled  the  “organisation”.   Furthermore,  as  autonomous  yet  functioning  members  of collaborative networks, each individual is connected to every other member in a vigorous system of intelligence creation that can only be described as decentrally distributed.   The addition of every single person in such a distributed system has the potential to create social richness through diversity. As new ideas are valued, each new member enhances the possibility for adaptiveness as the organisational community openly pursues strategic ‘fit’.

From this perspective, the contributions of each and every individual in the collection, analysis and  meaning-making  (or  knowledge-creating)  processes  of  strategic  navigation  become critical as the ongoing process of creating a purposeful social ecology becomes the norm.  In this way, the flows of information throughout the various interconnected networks within the organisation, together with specific outputs from the organisation’s strategic intelligence systems, serve as the means for raising navigational competence - and organisational consciousness.

Once we become consciously capable of integrating the judicious use of knowledge with intelligence to create an autopoietic organisational ecology, we will be well along the path to representing complex strategic and systemic issues, resolving intractable dilemmas, and accommodating apparently unresolvable paradoxes in ways that will guarantee sustainability irrespective of the changes occurring all around us.  And in doing this we will be helping to create an appreciative society.  That, surely, must be the goal for any corporation intent on surviving the shift from the smokestack economy of the industrial age to the knowledge economy of the 21st  century.

An explanation of terms

Data

Discrete facts and figures.

Information

Data that impacts the behaviour of a system (or organism) in some way.  E.g. reports used for decision-making.

Knowledge

Specific processes for ‘knowing’ which enable insights, understandings and practical know-how to be acquired

and used in ways that allow us to remain functional. E.g. understanding how to play a musical instrument or undertake an audit.  Such processes may be conscious or unconscious.

Intelligence

A capability developed by sentient organisms that allows them to adapt and evolve in response to perpetual

novelty in their environment.

Strategic intelligence

A higher order learning capability developed by human beings encompassing:

(a)    The continuous acquisition of information that enables us to discern critical changes in systemic conditions, coupled with

(b)   The processing of such information in ways that give new insights into when and how we might respond to such changes, given our particular preferences and intentions.

There are two types of intelligence required by most contemporary organisations:

1.     Corporate strategic intelligence

The capability of a corporation (or organizational entity) to acquire and use strategic intelligence for strategic navigation - and thereby to effect healthy systemic coevolution.

2.     Business strategic intelligence

The highly focused, narrow-band intelligence (mostly acquired from environmental scans of the business environment) which allows an organization, and its various parts, to respond and adapt to explicit

changes in the transactional (or business) environment.

Distributed intelligence

The learning processes of a complex adaptive system that allow the system to function as a cognate, integrated

whole, relative to the larger ecosystem of which it is a part.

Wisdom

The discriminating use of knowledge combined with intelligence to represent complex issues, resolve intractable

dilemmas, and accommodate paradoxes in a manner deemed appropriate by the majority of stakeholders.

Internal capability

The ability of the organisation to meet the needs and expectations of its stakeholders (as well as its own aspirations).  It comprises those eight key interdependent areas that can be targeted for change in order to achieve improved alignment with the organisation’s niche, namely: strategic framework, strategic intelligence systems, distributed intelligence networks, resources, configuration, social ecology; operational programs, and productivity

& performance systems.

Business ecosystem

As discrete industries, forged at the time of the industrial revolution of the 19th  century, continuously change in a bewildering game of shifting alliances and strategic partnerships, so the boundaries around traditional industry

groupings begin to merge and blur – to such an extent that the term ‘industry’ becomes almost unusable in the context of the knowledge economy.  More expansive still than the customer-supplier networks of the so-called

extended enterprise, business ecosystems are socio-economic communities comprising a number of interacting

‘agents’ (customers, suppliers, regulators, intermediaries, lead producers, competitors and other stakeholders) that coevolve over time in alignment with the directions set by one or more principal members.

Chaos and complexity theory

A new understanding that randomness is not unusual but inevitable – that chaos is built into the system of order

and that an underlying order is apparent within chaos. This, together with other discoveries in the real of non- linear physics and biology, have completely undermined the neat equations and elegant hierarchies of the

Newtonian-Cartesian worldview upon which the majority of conventional management myths are based.

Coevolution

Arising from Darwin’s theory of ‘coadaptations’ of organisms to each other, coevolution is the reciprocal

evolutionary change that occurs in interacting species.  Essentially, it is the notion that all things – biological, societal and technological – adapt and create each other from one moment to the next, simultaneously weaving themselves into one whole system.

Complex adaptive system

A living system that is able to learn to adapt to changed environmental conditions by virtue of its capability to

detect, process and act upon intelligence.

Appreciative society

The hypothesis of a self-organising civil society able to learn its way into preferred futures, in ethical reciprocity

with its environment and in ways that are ‘appreciative’ of all of its members needs, expectations and desires.

Autopoiesis

An organism is said to be autopoietic when it exhibits a self-organising (or adaptive) nature.

References:

1  The “new science” refers specifically to a major shift that has occurred in the philosophy of science this century. Crossing the traditional boundaries of scientific disciplines, and challenging the Newtonian notion of a world of almost clockwork-like certainty and Euclidean precision, research into chaos and complexity has taken us from a reductionist to a more holistic view of reality and the non-linear nature of complex dynamical systems [Author’s note]

2  Glenn, J. C. and Theodore, J. G. (editors) 1998 State of the Future: Issues and opportunities. American Council for The United Nations University – The Millennium Project, Washington, 1998

3  Lewin, R. Complexity: Life on the edge of chaos. Macmillan, London, 1993

4  Barlow, C. (editor) From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected writings in the life sciences. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1991

5 Briggs, J. and Peat, F. D. Turbulent Mirror: An illustrated guide

 to chaos theory and the science of wholeness. Harper & Row, New York, 1989