The Rise of the Individual

Bad governments come in at least two forms: they put up bureaucratic obstacles to those who are pushing beyond the current norms and / or they ignore the plight of those who are failing. Good governments don’t ignore one of these goals at the expense of another. And this is a trick of the hardest kind: creating a system that makes allowance for the individuals for whom the system does not work. This is the paradox of progress.

Systems don’t easily transform for the individual. Too much of what passes for self improvement is actually the act of conforming the individual to the system, to society, to the institution. We have not yet lived in a time when social systems were considered disposable and individuals essential to preserve; to date, our experience has been the reverse. Flipping this order would be transformative. Dopeless hope fiend that I am, I even think it can be done.

“He didn’t think in human dimensions. Humanity was never of any importance to him. It was always the concept of the superman … the nation, always this abstract image of a vast German Reich, powerful and strong. But the individual never mattered to him. Though he always said he wanted to make people happy – he started a variety of welfare and recreational organizations in the Third Reich – personal happiness was never of the slightest importance to him. “
- Traudle Junge, in Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary

Soft Technology Invention

Most attempts by business to understand the future rather seem to miss the point. They come across as technology plays, predictions about which breakthroughs are likely to come to fruition and how they'll parlay these into products. This is fine if you are head of a research lab, but has less obvious application if you are tasked with other management positions. If your job is to head up a business or function, you're likely looking - if indeed you are looking at all - at the wrong kind of technology.

Some should focus on the evolution and change in hard technology - changes in cars, computers, drugs, and telephones. Most managers should be focused instead on soft technology - changes in culture, behavior, roles, beliefs, and organization. It's true that in practice these two, the hard and soft technologies, play together. It's also true that any one individual is likely to focus on one dimension. Thanks to roughly a century in the evolution of the formal role of scientists and engineers, we have clearly defined the tasks associated with the development of hard technology. By contrast, roles for developing soft technology are less clearly defined. Indeed, what plays catalyst for the shift in public opinion or new practice often seems unpredictable and random. Of course, so is the development of hard technology, but that doesn't stop societies from investing hundreds of billions into its development.

Most management types should be looking at the future of organizations, work, and society. It is not that they should remain willfully ignorant of the hard technology, but often there is little that a CEO or VP of, say, Human Relations can do about furthering the next generation of web development software. They can help to develop the organization.

There is so much that can be written about this, but I will for now limit myself to this. There are a variety of questions that anyone in management - from small business owner to CEO - can ask, questions that intelligent and imaginative people scattered throughout the organization can answer more creatively than me. Managers should be regularly asking these questions.

1. How do we more fully engage our people in work? What work place designs, chunking of tasks, and communication protocols should we use to encourage focus?

2. How do we clarify consequences? What can we do to more clearly link the work of the individual to the value created by the organization?

3. How do we more clearly tie together individual effort, longer term consequences, and organizational performance? Are there lessons we can draw from market economies?

4. Are we prepared for the devolution of power and decision making as accords with self-adapting complexity and market dynamics that might follow from designing a system that allows individual initiative in place of central controls? What are the consequences of creating such a system? How would we make this operational? What are the practical obstacles to moving in this direction today?

5. Are our people motivated by a vision of their future? Do they see this organization as a place of possibility or are they even interested in realizing their own potential? Why or why not? What would we have to change about our organization to allow a critical mass of our employees to realize their potential?

6. Who in the organization is tasked with coaching our people towards the realization of their potential? What is the lost revenue resulting from our lack of interest in this?

I would argue that seriously pursuing questions such as this could be the catalyst for developing new organizations, for creating the next generation soft technology. If your business is hard technology, you are likely focusing an enormous amount of energy on creating the next generation of your products. If you expect to remain competitive as a senior executive, you should be just as focused on creating the next generation of soft technology.

A Clear Definition of Progress

Progress is a muddled concept. The current concept of progress suggests that if a community increases its GDP by 5% while eroding its habitat, it's making progress. The current concept suggests that if people feel compelled to stay indoors at night and spend more money on home security systems and Chinese take-out because of high crime rate, thereby driving an increase in GDP, it's progress.

I'd like to suggest a measure of progress that is conceptually more clear than growth in GDP, even if is harder to measure.

Progress means more autonomy for the individual. A person with shoes has more options about where to go than a person in bare feet. A person with a car has more options than a person with shoes. And a person with access to a great transportation system that costs hundreds per year has more options than a person stuck in traffic paying thousands per year for gas, payments, and insurance. A person with the option to enjoy a local forest on the weekend or even on a lunch hour (I used to love jogging the fire trails through the redwood trees between classes at UC Santa Cruz) has more autonomy than a person who lives in a concrete jungle miles and miles from any bit of wilderness. Progress = more options for the individual.

When the West wrested freedom of religion away from the medieval church, the individual had more autonomy - more choice about how and whether to worship. This was progress.

When the West wrested political control away from monarchs, the individual had more autonomy - more influence over the policies that defined the community.

When access to credit and investment markets was popularized, when the average person had access to retirement accounts through a combination of retail innovations and social security, the individual had more autonomy - more control over the financial irregularities that could be so devastating to an individual or household.

There are at least two dimensions to this progress: the initial surge of progress (monarchs lose power to merchants) and the gradual, continued dispersion of that progress (minorities gradually win the right to vote - minorities as varied as blacks, women, and conscripted 18 year-olds).

Such a measure of progress takes into consideration technology. Cars, computers, and even iPods give a person more autonomy. But this measure of progress also takes into consideration social inventions - credit cards, civil rights, and the joint-stock corporation.

By this metric, policies can be evaluated. Does the new legislation provide more autonomy? To whom? At what expense?