Friday, May 16, 2003

UPEI Context for the Course What is the course all about really? It is about seeing the difference between the machine metaphor for organization and for life and the organic metaphor of how nature and life itself is organized. Why should we do this? I think that we can establish that the machine model does not have the flexibility to cope with the pace and the scale of change that we are living in today. Oh you say there has been a lot of change so far and things seem ok - what's new? This is what is new. It is the scale and pace that is new. Here are some of the factors that make our time more difficult to cope with and which demand immense flexibility? Any one of them would be tough to cope with. They are all converging into a crisis in the next 5 years. 1. Demography - In 10 years time most of the population in the developed world will be over the age of 60! There will be a very small cohort of 30 year olds - you. This has never happened before.To any species! The average age of nurses is 48. The same with farmers. The top three levels of the public service are all the same age and can all retire on full pension in the next 10 years. The imbalance of old is especially extreme in Atlantic Canada. Older folks consume more than 3 times the healthcare costs of a young person. Old people consume 1/2 their total health care costs in the last year of life. There will be very few kids. The birth rate is around 1, or half of replacement. - What will this mean for government? What will this mean for business? What will this mean for you - you are going to have to do all the work and pay all the taxes and raise all the children and look after your old parents? Looks like fun. We will have to rethink retirement. We will have to rethink healthcare and education. We will have to rethink immigration. We will have to rethink employment. 2. The rapid and disruptive shift in technology. It took 70 years for the telephone to become mainstream and in every house. It has taken only 7 years for the internet to become the centre of life. The cost of computing drops and its power rises at an exponential rate. This is leading to disruptive shifts in our world. Online shopping is attacking conventional shopping. EBay is on track to match Wal mart over time as the largest mart in the world. Just as some retailers are becoming vast - there is now room for micro retailing where an artist or a craft person can sell small amounts of stuff. Think of cars. If you learned how to fix a car engine 75 years ago, you could still fix one now - just. But what about hybrids? What about fuel cell cars? It seems that in every area new stuff is coming that will disrupt the old system. Hey what about online learning or telemedicine - what affect will this have on bricks and mortar based offerings. Can you imagine what this will mean to education and health care? 3. Shifts in our values. Many of us don't want to be part of either a mass market or a Dilbert cubicle world anymore. There are maybe 35 million like me in North America that are self employed and who could never go back to working for an institution. Neither of my children could work in a regular job and are both self employed. The internet and the supporting technology enables this type of life style. I type this now in my home office in my pyjamas - (thank God I have the web-cam off) Survey after survey tells us that the next generation - you? - want a work life that fits your whole life. Some of you have old me that you have seen the sacrifices that your mother made and you demand more balance. Many of you have seen your parents loyalty to their employer disregarded. Many of you know that you will not even start work with the thought that you will be in the same place all your life. So your generation is small and does not need to play the old work game. What kind of workplace will you demand??? Will you have power in this new employment game or will the employer? 4. Lastly we live in a time when how we live and how we organize is affecting the planet itself. At the heart of our impact on the planet - think of the loss of the cod, the loss of topsoil, fertility and fish kills on PEI, think of the weird weather, think of the growing shortage of fresh drinkable water in the world and so on - is how we organize for business - the business organization itself seems to be a big part of our problem with the environment. Will our agriculture have to change? Will the change be small or comprehensive? Will our how we go to work have to change? How can we balance work and family and say commuting costs if nothing about how we go to work will change? Will thee changes be cosmetic or cultural and deep? This is the context for the course. Surfing will talk about the emerging "Natural Model" It has both theory and case studies.  It challenges the basis of the industrial model of design - make market - sell. It offers a new model of adaption and interaction with the environment. Just a theory? Think of EBay, think of Amazon, think of Southwest Airlines. Think of Dell. The new is here and is kicking the ass of the old. Ironically think of the US Army. No matter what you think of the war. The US military is the most advanced exponent of the new model where the base idea is that the organism that adapts to a fast changing and unpredictable environment best and than applies the maximum energy in the key place will win. Above all the story of the US Army is about the reintroduction of the human back into the organization 9:26:28 AM    comment []