Unless you have a secret power or a time machine, we must face the facts: everything we experience is in the present. There’s a lot of talk about emergence, because we’ve realized that things never become completely what we had anticipated, with a small or large gap. In this interweaving of causes and effects that create complexity, emergence has taken on its full meaning. And emergence is the future.
To work well together with emergence, an attitude, a posture seems essential to me: consider everything as a starting point and not as an arrival point. Because no matter how you look at it, all you have in your possession is the past and the present, but only the present can you manipulate, direct, manage.
If we accept, if we understand, that everything is a starting point, we will know how to receive, apprehend, emergence.
What does this mean?
If, for example, I want to reorganize my company “in such a way”. If I project myself: the company should be organized in such a way for such reasons. This “such a way” is my starting point, even if it’s a target, or a vision. Because complexity will mean that things will be somewhat or very different in the future, inevitably. You know “the map and the territory”.
So either I understand that it’s my starting point and I know how to apprehend, receive, the emergence that will make things different.
Or I decide stubbornly that things will be “in such a way” and I deny the complexity and the world around us by fossilizing, by making things immobile, by suffocating them (no space, no air). This way of doing things fails, at least in complex environments, or tremendously destroys the value of things (they are turned into statues).
Understanding that my target is my starting point allows me to apprehend emergence. The interweaving of things in a complex context makes numerous element factors emerge, appear, dawn, which will change, move, improve, adapt your target, etc., no need to draw you a picture.
- “I’m reorganizing my teams” is a starting point.
- “I want to have a career in medicine” is a starting point
- “I want to go around the world in 80 days” is a starting point.
- “We have the best product in the world” is a starting point.
- “The bank wants to do (or is doing) an agile and digital transformation (combo)” is a starting point.
We are in the present. If you understand that these things are your starting point, your attitude on these subjects changes drastically, for the better!
If we make it an arrival point, we won’t know how to apprehend what will actually happen, we’ll suffocate ourselves, turn ourselves into statues. If we make it a starting point, we are de facto attentive to what will happen. This is indeed a state of mind.
Perfect is the enemy of good
This state of mind brings two additional things with it. On one hand, you’ll be more sensitive to the effort you want to put into defining your starting point knowing that it’s the starting point and not the arrival point. Is it useful then to detail it extensively knowing that it will turn out different? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But there’s an awareness about a descriptive effort that is primarily meant to be reassuring. But when you know this assurance is artificial, you’re less inclined to seek it.
The eternal how, the eternal why
And on the other hand, if you mentally grasp that you’re working on a starting point, the how, the means, fades in favor of the “why”. This doesn’t mean that your starting point must be a “why”. My starting point can remain “I’m reorganizing my teams”, but it puts the emphasis on the “why”.