Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all you fellow learners.
What I am to write about, is becoming a clearer picture to me by the day.
Yet it is difficult for me to paint that picture. Firstly, it involves
negative behaviour which affects the spirit of my writing. I had to
rewrite this contribution many times trying to get the message through:
"There is a new dispensation for the better of all humans". Secondly, we
have to escape from the Mental Model "business as usual". Proven recipes
of the past have become the very pitfalls to our future.
The last few days South Africa has been in the international news once
again. A squatter camp at Bredell some 50 km from Pretoria was demolished
just as such settlements had been demolished during the years of
apartheid. Many people asked in amazement: "What is going one." Once again
homeless people wandering the country grabbed some farmland belonging to
others by claiming to have self a birth-right to it. It has also been
happening in Zimbabwe and elsewhere. Why?
A couple of weeks ago I saw on CNN during the program Inside Europe the
problem of illegal immigrants in the EU. People from outside Europe
(Central Asia and North Africa) are migrating increasingly to countries of
the European Union (EU). They dream of getting a share in the riches of
these EU countries. Four hundred years ago it was the opposite. People
from Europe migrated to the rest of the world to get their dream
actualised. Some may think that it is setting right the wrong of the past.
But I think it is something else far more serious.
It is people whose dream of riches failed to actualise in the places where
they lived . These people are now migrating to places which they believe
are still paradise and where their dream will not fail again. But most of
them end up in a hell as worse as the one from which they fled. It is
happening elsewhere in the world too. For example, the USA has the same
problem with illegal immigrants from Central and South America as well as
East Asia.
Even South Africa (SA) as the most developed country south of the Sahara
also has this problem. During the years of apartheid men were allowed to
enter SA to work in the mines under strict control. The mines were
profitable because they sold the bulk of their minerals elsewhere in the
world to who ever could afford it. After the contract of the miners
expired they had to go back to their own country, taking their wages with
them. But since the dismantling of apartheid, SA has simply been
overflowed with people from countries north of its border. About one out
of every five people in SA is an immigrant from north of SA. Even though
the unemployment rate in SA is now some 50% while the crime rate is among
the highest in the world, these unfortunate people still come. Why?
They have the dream that in South Africa (SA) it will go better with them.
This dream is fired by stories of success to be found in SA. One story of
success does more to bolster the image of SA as paradise than a hundred
stories of failure telling that hell is everywhere. Perhaps it is even
more important to notice that they do not have such a dream any more for
their own country. Their leaders promised them year after year schools,
shops and factories. But what they got day after day were the experiences
of war, famine and crime. Why?
The vision which their own leaders offered to them for their votes, cannot
become actual any more. (We will later on see why.) Thus the vision
offered for votes has become nothing else than the selling of a treasure
map. It is these false treasure maps for their own country which keep
their dream alive that in South Africa (SA) they will still find the
treasure. These false treasure maps push them towards SA. Moreover, the
vision offered by SA leaders to their own voters pulls them towards SA.
But once they get in SA, it is all over again poverty and crime for the
vast majority of them. The dream cannot become actual, neither for them,
nor for an increasing number of South Africans self. Visions once honestly
offered become increasingly perverted into the selling of treasure maps.
The system cannot adapt any more. Why?
I think that people (leaders and followers) all over the world will have
to question seriously whether leaders are still capable of managing the
increasing complexity of the Global Human System (GHS) with the Simplistic
Thinking (ST) which sustained success in the past. Such questioning is
begged by the recent violent demonstrations at summit meetings of leaders
trying to manage the complex GHS.
These demonstrations show that ordinary people are getting sick and tired
of leaders who now team up globally to sell them treasure maps of better
days. Yet every day becomes a small step backwards from those very
treasures. These people dream that these riots will force the leaders to
keep to their promises. The leaders dream that their collective summit
meetings will help them to prepare better promises. But few on both sides
seem to apprehend that business as usual (Simplistic Thinking) has reached
the end of the road.
If any of you fellow learners live in a country where it still appears
that the dream offered by your political leaders is becoming actual,
please ask yourself whether your country will continue to escape the
ordeal depicted above. Although these leaders claim that the benefits
which you are enjoying come through their leadership enacted within
democracy, ask yourself whether these benefits have not come through
something else. I personally believe that most of these benefits came
through all the Ordinary Organisations (OOs) in your country, each having
its own leaders. I am thinking of every OO in all walks of your society
like education, economy, industry, health services and jurisprudence. The
power of organising has been immense. But will it keeo on ensuring
benefits for the future?
It is crucial to bear in mind that countries in Southern and West Africa,
South America, South and East Asia also have such OOs. But the GHS has
become so complex that most of the OOs in these continents do not have the
requisite complexity any more to keep pace with the increasing complexity
of the GHS. The LRC (Law of Requisite Complexity) has become a closed door
for most of their OOs. The graph for the complexity in being of the GHS is
accelerating while that for the OOs is retarding, thus causing a
bifurcation. Hence the benefits of belonging to such OOs are diminishing
while increasing entropic force-flux pairs are appearing.
(I want to thank Chris Klopper for making me aware of graphs in which the
complexity of a system's being is compared to the complexity of the
becoming of its surroundings. Rick, please archive the graph as usual and
point fellow learners to its URL. Thanks.)
Even the vision offered by the national leaders of these countries are
doomed to become the selling of treasure maps. It is because more OOs
which took care of most things in the past are now failing increasingly
and will fail dismally in the future. At first the country's people jump
from political to political party. They assume democracy will set it
right. Then the people become angry at almost anything appening in their
country. They assume authentic emotions will set it right. Eventually the
excessive failures of management on all walks of live drive many to the
insane dream that fighting destructive outcomes with destructive methods
will bring prosperity. They assume destroying the past will set it right.
The same is going to happen in those fortunate countries spared up to now
from this ordeal. The LRC (Law of Requisite Complexity) has been up to now
an open door to these fortunate countries. But as the GHS becomes more
complex, more of their own OOs will not have the requisite complexity to
keep up the pace. For country after another, or perhaps even a flock
together like in the Balkans, its people will experience the LRC becoming
a closed door to them. Thus the benefits gained from OOs like families,
schools, farms, factories, shops, hospitals and courts will diminish. The
visions offered by the many leaders of their many local OOs that they will
take care of them will become increasingly a mirage.
The same will happen to the political vision offered by the country's
leaders. The leaders will be forced increasingly to sell treasure maps.
They will condone indecent and corrupt practices to stay in power so as to
avoid poverty self. They will misuse the Mental Model "business as usual"
to sustain their own lives. But eventually the country's people will
neither have dreams any more for their local OOs nor a dream for their
country as a whole. They will begin to migrate to the fewer fortunate
countries still left over.
Does this mean that leaders of countries and all OOs in them should not
offer their vision to their followers? No, they still have to dream a
vision which will became actual with the correct mission. However,
whatever Mission&Vision (M&V) which they come up with, it will now
definitely have to pass the test of the LRC set up by the GHS. But how
will we know that any M&V will not pass the test other than by
experiencing the tragic failures which I have reported above?
We need to know what exactly is making this GHS (Global Human System)
increasingly complex!! Dr E Deming articulated it as profound knowledge. I
will also articulate it as the deep creativity of some humans which
evolved in them through their own authentic learning. The profound
knowledge (deep creativity as its "heart" and authentic learning as its
"brain") of these individuals were then amplified by all these very OOs
giving many other people the opportunity to copy them. Thus the profound
knowledge of these individuals diffused into humankind itself, making the
GHS increasingly complex.
When the M&V of the leader involves little, if anything, of the profound
knowledge of the followers, it will not pass the test of the LRC. When the
M&V of the leader actually prevents any deep creativity and authentic
learning among the followers, they will be following a mirage in the
desert rather than a dream which will become actual. They will perish in
the testing.
I have examined as far as is possible for me the OOs in countries which
cannot keep up the pace anymore with the GHS. They invariably quenched
the profound knowledge of their members. Why? Since they are OOs and not
LOs, they cannot provide within the OO an environment in which their
members can pursuit deep creativity and authentic learning. Hence these
OOs cannot sustain their members to keep pace with the increasing
complexity of the GHS driven self by profound knowledge. Since the
Mission&Vision (M&V) of the leader makes it difficult, if not impossible,
for OOs to emerge into LOs, that leader is actually selling them a
treasure map.
Because these OOs increasingly fail to provide within them an environment
conducive to deep creativity and authentic learning, their members become
increasingly convinced that only elsewhere their dreams will become
actualised. So they first begin to move from a poorer part of the country
to a richer part of the country. Finding not the treasure which dreamt of,
they then migrate to a richer country close by. Again, not finding the
treasure which dreamt of, they migrate to a richer country in another
continent. As long as there is a place where profound knowledge still
acts, they will keep on migrating to it.
While the LRC (Law of Requisite Complexity) still provides you with an
open door, do not wait for that time when it shuts the door before taking
action. The fact that people migrate from a country in which the door has
been shut to a country in which it is still not shut, should be more than
enough warning. What is most compelling to me is that almost all migrating
people were involved in OOs rather than LOs in their countries of
departure. These OOs could not sustain their evolution in profound
knowledge to make their dreams become actual. Neither will the OOs in the
country of their destination be able to do so. These unfortunate people
will migrate from known suffering to unknown suffering, but never
understand why they suffer.
The worst for me in all this suffering is the children. To migrate from
one country to another country is for adults. It is also a lucrative
business, perhaps bigger than the smuggling of drugs. Children have
neither the experience nor the money to undertake such a migration. Hence,
unless a parent can take them along, they have to suffer in a country
where their OOs have failed to provide them with the nourishing
environment to develop deep creativity and authentic learning. They have
to suffer because of OOs not capable to match the complexity of the GHS.
People with compassion send food and clothes to these suffering children.
It helps temporally, but not everywhere because the need is too great.
Here in Africa south of the Sahara more than a hundred million children
are suffering. I think that each of you fellow learners have deep
compassion for their suffering and try to assist them materially as best
as you can. However, what they need is spiritual besides material care.
Furthermore, their own people can provide them with much better spiritual
care once their OOs have emerged into LOs. But then they need leaders not
fooling them with treasure maps by claiming that the democratic system
will assure success.
These children as well as adults need leaders in all walks of life who
will guide their paradigm shift from simplicity to complexity. The leaders
of their OOs will have to transform the OOs such that these organisations
will sustain the evolution of profound knowledge in their members. Deep
creativity and authentic learning will have to become the most valuable
asset of their members. Shall we call these transformed OOs by the name
Learning Organisations (LOs)?
The problem with the LO is that since its articulation by Senge some dozen
years ago, it is one of many organisational models being offered. Most
efforts by Senge, De Geus, Kleiner and others to convince people that the
concept of a LO has a grounding in its striking longevity have fallen
among deaf ears. Leo Minnigh and I have once explored the guilds of the
Dark and Middle ages as the LOs of those times. Our exploring has
convinced few.
One of the oldest Learning Organisations known to me, is the invisible
church of Jesus Christ. This invisible church consist of people saved by
the offering of Jesus himself on the cross outside Jerusalem almost two
thousand years ago. This invisible church manifests itself in visible
institutions (congregations and denominations of them). Whenever a visible
institution keeps on acting as an OO rather than as a LO with Jesus as its
teaching leader, sooner or later it stops to exist. Here in South Africa
the past twenty years (ten of them during apartheid and ten after
apartheid) I have observed it happening too many times not to be sure of
what I am claiming here in words.
But please notice that I am not claiming that LOs are an invention of
Christians. Nor would I claim that it is an invention by Muslims, Hindus
or even atheists for their own kind. I am merely claiming that even
religious people (irrespective of their religion) have to create deeply
and learn authentically to keep pace with the GHS (Global Human System).
For this becoming in profound knowledge they need an organisational
environment which will sustain them.
Even Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt some four thousand years
ago knew it. It is astounding to see how many of his guidelines in the
first five books of the Torah (Old Testament of the Bible) had the effect
of transforming the OOs of the Israelites into LOs. But this does not make
LOs and invention of the Jews. I have studied also ancient manuscripts of
India and China as far as I could lay hands on them here in my country. I
also found in them attempts to articulate how to guide the emergence of
OOs into LOs.
I am claiming that if you want to provide a safe and sustaining
environment for all the children of the world and not only those of your
own family or even country, you will have to look beyond Ordinary
Organisations (OOs) into Learning Organisations (LOs). A LO is not merely
an organisation in which all its members are learners. A LO is an
organisation which provides for all its members the opportunity as well as
assistance to surge forward in profound knowledge, i.e. deep creativity
and authentic learning.
I am claiming that if you want to diminish the migration of people from
other countries to your own, you will have to help them in transforming
the OOs of their country into LOs. Forget about your own "business as
usual" and forget about telling them "act as we require". To expect an OO
to pass the test of the LRC when that OO is failing the LRC is like me
expecting you to jump over the moon when you cannot. Rather help them to
jump over the obstacles preventing them from developing their own profound
knowledge. Help them to remove the obstacles preventing them from deep
creativity and authentic learning.
Look again at the graph. Try to picture how the entropic force-flux pairs
between the profound knowledge of the GHS and the simplistic knowledge of
the OOs is driving people with dreams to migrate. Ask yourself is this
migration does not show their need for LOs in their own country.
With care and best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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