When you lend somebody something you assume he (or she) will give the item back in due time. To lend you have to Trust somebody. There are many ways to create a trusted relation. When a long term trusted relationship grows out of a long chain of interactions the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma is at stake. The Chinese are the Masters of Playing this Game.
In some situations it is very clear that a try-out is not necessary. If we look at the cultures of the Earth we can see that the concept of Family or Tribe more or less guaranties a trustful relationship. In a Family it is not needed to create very complicated arrangements like contracts, procedures, laws and judges. The Family uses it own rules.
The consequence of the Concept of the Family and the Tribe is a formalization of relationships based on a Place in a Hierarchy. Everybody has to know its place.
A King has to play the role of the King and a Father has to play the role of the Father. In a Family or an Extended Family (Tribe) you are trained to play the roles you have to play in your life.
Confucius (551-479 BC) saw the universe and all living things in it as a manifestation of a unifying force called the Doe (translated as the Truth, Unity, or the Way). Doe constitutes the very essence, basis, and unit of life that perpetuates order, goodness, and righteousness.
It manifests itself in the harmonious opposition of yin (“feminine, gentle“) and yang (“masculine, strong“), and in humans through duk (“virtue“). Virtue is a gift received from Heaven.
It is through Virtue that a person is able to know the Heavenly Truth and it is the “locus where Heaven and I meet“. Virtue can be realized through self-cultivation. It provides the fundamental source of insight and strength to rule peacefully and harmoniously within oneself, one’s family, one’s nation, and the world.
There are two inter-related aspects of virtue: in (“Human-hearted-ness“) and ui (“Rightness“).
The basis of individual and humanity is the Human-heartedness. Human-heartedness is essentially relational and it involves loving, sacrificing and taking care of others. Individuals are born with Human-heartedness and experience Human-heartedness through the sacrifice and devotion of their parents.
The second concept, ui (“rightness“), notes that an individual is born into a particular family with a particular status. Rightness articulates that individuals must perform and fulfil their duties as defined by their particular status and role.
Confucius considered family and society to be hierarchically ordered, necessitating that everyone fulfil their duties. Fulfilling one’s given role as a father, mother, child, elder, teacher, or politician is considered a moral imperative and not a matter of personal choice.
Confucius considered society to be socially ordered and that each person has beun (“portion or place“) in life. Each beun had attached roles and duties, and each person must fulfil these roles and duties. Duties and obligations of each beun are prescribed by yea (“propriety“).
Propriety articulates expectations, duties, and behavior of each individual according to his or her status and role. For example, chemyon (“social face“) need to be maintained by a person of social stature defined by his or status, regardless of his or her personal preference.
Social order and harmony are preserved when people observe their place in society and fulfil their required obligations and duties.
The fourth concept is ji (“knowledge“). Knowledge allows us to understand the virtues of Human-heartedness and Rightness and to follow these virtues through Propriety. It is the basis of the development of Wisdom.
By the applying the principles of Confucius Chinese Society became a Well Oiled Machine. Every action that was taken was pre-programmed by all levels of education. Every part in the machine knew its role. Life was highly predictable and everybody accepted its place in Society. There was Harmony and Peace in the world.
If there be righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in character,
If there be beauty in character, there will be harmony in the home.
If there be harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation.
If there be order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.
The big changes of Chinese Society came Out of the West. The English Empire destroyed the Heavenly Order by selling large quantities of Opium. The huge underclass of China was a beautiful target for the people who followed the theories of Lenin.
The Upperclass was destroyed and a new Upperclass, The Communist Party, took over. The culture of China has not changed. People still know their place and the Doe (The Way It Is) is now proclaimed by the Party. The new upperclass knows it has to keep the underclass in harmony.
The Party decided to create a higher standard of living by importing capitalistic principles from the West. It is now moving in high speed to the level of the Consumer Society. The West is paying for this move by buying Chinese products for a very low price.
In this way China has accumulated an enormous amount of money (mostly dollars). They are able to buy what they want. With the enormouss stock of dollars they are able to manipulate US Government. China is able to destroy the US Financial System in one fast move. They certainly will not do that.
The Chinese people are experts in strategy. They know how to acquire power without fighting. They keep a social face and play the game others want them to play. They are experts in applying the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma. They know Confucius and his predecessors were Wise man. They knew how to move with The Cycle, the Tao.
Western Society has lost its cultural foundation. The principles of Confucius don’t sound very strange to us. They are easily translated into Christianity.
When the West lost the basic principle of Christianity, Human-hearted-ness (in) one of the two pillars of Trust was lost. The West rationalized Empathy (Compassion, Emotion). I Think, therefore I Am (Descartes) became the basis of the Self.
When people started to do the “wrong thing” the second pillar of Trust, Integrity (ui, Rightness) dropped. Politicians were not Playing the Role of the Politician and Managers were not Playing the Role of Manager. They lost their Virtue.
Finally the Doe (Unity) of Western Society was gone. Families broke up. Everybody was Left on its Own and started to act on a Short-Term Perspective.
The Interated Prisoners Dilemma changed into a chain of disconnected attempts to leave the Prison. The best way to win such a Game is to defect. You always win but your victory is never a Win-Win. On the long term Everybody changes into a potential Enemy.
The West entered the State of Individualism and even Egoism. In this state it is almost impossible to act out of Unity. Everybody is going its Own Way or is Competing with the Other. This makes it even easier for the Chinese Masters to create a new Machine to support their Extended Family.
Black Tuesday, October 29 1929 a giant economic implosion took place.
This implosion was the official start of the Great Depression.
The implosion took place because Something or Somebody was pushing the economy UP while it wanted to go down. An artificial Up-movement of the Economy is called a Bubble.
J.P. Morgan was highly involved with the introduction of Fascism in Europe and the US.
He believed that the major enemy in the World were the Communists.
He was befriended with Mussolini and Hitler and organized a fascists putsch in the US by his own private army, the American Legion.
The putsch failed. The legion was used as a recruiting base for the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Morgan organized the US Communist Party to create an internal external enemy. Morgan used many other dirty tricks to accomplish his goals.
The British Empire was the largest empire in human history. At the time of the Great Depression it controlled a quarter of the world’s population (458 million) and total land area.
The ruling class of the Empire came out of old families and was trained in special institutions like Eton and Cambridge.
The British Empire was based on the ideology of “Free trade”. “Free trade” was necessary to expand the markets of the British Factories. The factories needed raw materials, logistics and markets.
When a country or a person blocked the free trade the British Army removed the obstacles.
Free trade was organized in Trading Companies. They created strategic outposts. When the outposts controlled the region the British Management System (Law, Education) was implemented.
The main goal of the System was to keep the natives under control, and to develop them slowly, and along their own lines.
The British Elite was very practical. They were conservative men with relativistic notions about what forms of government suited peoples (or ‘races’) best. They didn’t go in for ideal systems.
They also knew they did not have the numbers of personnel to try to revolutionize her subjects so they always used local collaborators. They practiced the method of “indirect rule”.
The American Friends of the British Elite shared the commercial attitude of their British friends. They opened up new markets and protected their trade.
They even invented a new tool, Financial Manipulation. In every other aspect they were very different. They were highly ideological and therefore not practical.
They were convinced they were the carriers of the Best Ideology on Earth, Capitalism.Their first priority was to Destroy the Evil Empire and the friends of the Evil Empire, the Soviet Union.
In contrary to their British friends they were not interested in indirect rule. When an enemy was destroyed they left the country and were convinced everybody would embrace their System.
The Power of the House of Morgan was lessened by the New Deal of Eleanor Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt organized a Social Contract that gave more influencers the possibility to take part in the US Government.
The Financial Power of Morgan never disappeared. His group is still behind many influential financial companies (Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase) and institutions like the World Bank.
JPMorgan is reincarnated in the person of Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase). He is playing the same game as his predecessor and is behind many of the intelligent tricks that are now performed behind the scenes in Washington.
Is History Repeating Itself??
The Economy was bubbling because the Government was “pumping” a huge amount of money into the economy. Therefore it was very easy to lend, to spend and to gamble with money on the stock-exchange.
Many people gambled enormous amounts of money on the Stock-Market but on Black Tuesday they lost their bet. They lost their bet because suddenly nobody believed the Up-state would continue.
Why was the US Government pumping so much money into the Economy?
The strange thing happened that the major money pumping engine (the FRS) was controlled by the Government of the British Empire. The US Government was not involved. It was totally powerlesss.The British Empire needed money to maintain the backing of the British Pound (The Golden Standard) and the “old boys” network in the Financial Business just made a deal.
The Government of the British Empire was controlled by an Elite. Lord Montagu Norman of the Bank of England and Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank were of the same club. They arranged the Bubble.
Behind the Elite was one Very Important Person, J.P. Morgan. He was the sole owner of a small company called the House of Morgan. The House of Morgan held effective control of the American government for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Morgan used the US central banking system to increase the ability to lend more money than he possessed. US Citizens paid taxes and their money was used to realize the plans of Morgan and his friends.
Morgan helped his friends (including the Bush family(!)) to get rid of their huge debts and to “buy” many important US companies (AT&T, US Steel).
After Black Tuesday the “friends of Morgan” held directorships in 167 industrial concerns, banks, railroads, and utilities. They controlled the most important media in the United States, including the New York Times.
During the so called E-Commerce Bubble allmost everybody believed that when you sell something on the Internet you will become an instant multi-biljonair.
I did not believe this at all. The funny thing was that almost nobody believed me. I waited for the Bubble to burst.
To my surprise the E-Commerce Bubble became the biggest bubble I ever experienced. At a certain moment I even started to believe I was wrong and something really special was happening, The New Economy.
Later I discovered the reason why the Bubble was able to grow to an extreme proportion. The Long Term Economic Cycle called the Kondratieff-Cycle was at that time in an UP-mode.
The Economy was expanding and many people were looking for a nice investment opportunity.
When the Bubble exploded the Kondratieff was moving Down and the Exploding Bubble excellarated the downfall.
The Kondratieff will start to rise again around 2020. Until that time we will be in a state of Recession.
The people that promoted E-Commerce believed that Commerce was all about Communication.
Just Tell Everybody You are There and Business will Come. But
When Everybody is telling Everybody that they are selling Something Nobody will Find you.
To find you they have to know what they are looking for.
People used a search-engine to find what they were looking for.
E-Commerce created a new problem.
The problem was “how to Manipulate a Search-Engine”. The problem was solved by the Search-Engine itself.
Just Pay us and we Put You on top of the List.
At that time I did not realize that the biggest money-maker in E-Commerce would be the creation of a “fraudulent” search-engine.
At that time we believed the only type of company that would benifit from E-Commerce was a Mail-Order Company.
Amazon.COM was our favorite example.
I knew that the Old Companies were unable to create a Website with a connection to the Back Office.
Their Legacy Systems would block them.
I reseached Logistics, Languages, Legal and Fiscal Issues and the big Cultural differerences between the many Countries in the World you could reach with one simple Website.
I found out that there are a lot of questions you could ask about Commerce that many people never asked because Normal Commerce was “Just Happening”.
We are immersed in Commerce and take many things for granted.
I got in contact with people in the US that where doing the same research.
We decided to create a European CommerceNet. The EG asked me to participate in a big effort to solve the problems of SME’s in E-Commerce. We identified many issues that had be resolved.
The simplest explanation for the appearance of a Bubble is The Bigger Fool Theory. When you buy something and your investment becomes questionable you believe you will always find a “a bigger fool” who pays the price of your life.
Humans are positive thinkers. They believe they will always make a profit.
Everybody feels things will go up. If this happens they want to become part of the tremendous success. What many people don’t realize is that positive feedback has to be compensated by a negative feedback.
Everything in the Universe is expanding and contracting.
People who are entering in the beginning of the rise make a lot of money. People that join when the decline starts lose everything. A Bubble is a very complicated, unbalanced, unfair and sometimes even fraudulent exchange-mechanism.
A fraudulent exchange mechanism is called a Pyramid-scheme or a Ponzi-Scheme. A Bubble is a Ponzi-Scheme where nobody is playing Mr.Ponzi.
In the E-Commerce Bubble many people used the Ponzi-Scheme to make a lot of money.
I don’t want to offend my collegueas but I am convinced many financial advisors knew the Bubble would burst some day and did not tell this to the people they were advising.
They did not tell the truth for many reasons.
They were completely ignorent about the technology and the effect of the technology on companies but the most important reason was sadly enough the fact that they were making a lot of money themselves.
They became greedy.
Greed is the Fatal Attractor behind all the Ponzi-schemes.
Economic Theorists proved that the Ponzi-Scheme can also be applied to other areas of our society like The Housing Market and the Government Pension System.
All of them will finally end in a Bursting Bubble. The people that will win are always first users. The Housing Market Bubble is already exploding, The Pension Bubble is on its way.
Milton Erickson (1901-1980) was “the best therapist that ever lived“. He was an expert in “non-verbal” behaviour. He learned when he was young that people could say “yes” and mean “no” at the same time.
At that time he discovered that body language and tone of voice was telling another story than verbal language. The first part addresses the Unconsciousness. The second addresses the Mind.
Erickson was able to tell two stories at the same time. One story was a fascinating story that had nothing to do with the problem of his patients. Within the first story he emphasized sentences with his tone of voice that contained suggestions that solved the problem.
Later Erickson discovered there were other ways to deceive the Mind. The Mind needs a predictable future. When there is no predictability it searches all the “libraries” of known situations to find an appropriate action-pattern. When the mind is “extremely busy” the door to the unconsciousness of his patients opened and accepted what “nice guy” Milton was telling. Milton started to confuse his patients.
When your Mind is confused you enter a trance-state or a dissociation. When you’re expectation is extremely violated you enter in a permanent trance-state (a dissociative trance disorder).
Milton always confused his patients a little bit. Without even knowing they went into a trance and the suggestions of Milton always went through the Open Door. Milton used self-induced trance-states (auto-suggestion) to listen better to his patients.
The Mind of some of his patients was very clever. It knew that Milton was using a Confusion-Trick and simply blocked the door. Milton was a genius in finding new tricks. He admired the problematic behaviour of his patients and started to seduce the mind. Later he learned he could also use psychological shocks and ordeals to achieve what his patients asked him to do.
In his practice Erickson discovered that every human being was Unique. Therefore every therapy (therapeia means service) had to be a Unique Service to his Customers.
“Each person’s map of the world is as unique as their thumbprint. There are no two people alike…no two people who understand the same sentence the same way…So in dealing with people try not to fit them to your concept of what they should be’.
The Tricks of Erickson and other therapists (Satir, Perls) were investigated by Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Robert Dilts and other Scientists. They transformed the Dedicated Service of Milton Erickson into a Neuro-Linguistic Programming Language (NLP). NLP and other Mind Control techniques like EMDR are now widely used by all kinds of Influencers.
It is not difficult to understand that some of the Influencers really don’t care about the Unique Needs of People. They want to program people to do the things they want them do.
At this moment it is really important to know how you can distance Your Self and your Children (!) from the many Mind Control Techniques that are available. To protect the Mind the first thing we have to do it to protect the Body. The first level of protection against Mind Control is the shared Electro-Magnetic Field.
Michael A. Persinger (The Neuropsychiatry of Paranormal Experiences) “When we applied specific complex magnetic fields many individuals felt a presence interact with their thinking” and “move in space” as they “focused their thoughts” on it”. “Many experiments indicated that the temporal morphology of the applied field, rather than the intensity, was responsible for these experiences“.
You’re body is producing an Electro-Magnetic Field. This field interacts with other Fields. The Fields are created by The Earth, Mobile Phone Networks, TV’s, Electronic Clocks, PC’s and also other Human Beings.
An External Electro Magnetic Field produces “a Felt Sense“. This “Felt Sense” generates an Image. Images can be related to Words and Sentences and (by the use of your memory) to Situations in the Past.
Persinger was able to generate “frightfull” images like “the Man in Black“. Others were able to generate an experience of God. Some of the Frightfull Experiences were generated by an Electronic Clock that was situated very close to a Bed where a Girl was sleeping.
It does not matter if the Electro-Magnetic Fields produce real or unreal images what matters is that they can be produced and if they can be produced someone or some thing will produce them. On the lowest level we communicate by producing fields with a certain structure, morphology or geometry.
If you don’t want to be manipulated shield your body, your work-environment and your house for Electro Magnetic Pollution. This Pollution can be created by Systems (TV, The Electric Power System, GSM, …) and Humans who live in your Environment.
When they don’t clean themselves properly (wash your hands with water!) they take the “Pollution” with them. The most important time to be shielded is when you Sleep. This is the moment you are Very Open to External Fields.
The Most Important level of of protection against Mind Control is Language. The main trick of NLP and other Mind Control Techniques is to make use of Illogical reasoning.
Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950) knew that human beings are limited in what they know by the structure of their languages. Human beings cannot experience the world directly, but only through their abstractions (“The MAP is not the territory“).
Korzybski analyzed the Map Erickson was using to influence his patients. He looked for the Territory behind the Map. One of his many discoveries was another type of Logic. In this Logic Yes and No are not exclusive.
He also investigated Time/Space. He saw that Humans are Time-Binding Structures. Humans are moving memories who pass information and knowledge between generations at an accelerating rate.
Korzybski developed a method called General Semantics. General Semantics is “a Self-Defense Kit against manipulative semantic distortions routinely promulgated by advertisers, politics , religion and your own reasoning(!!!)”. .
Beware of People who use Simple Sentences to explain a very Complex Reality.
They want You to Use Their Map of Reality.
Start Reasoning for Your Self and Develop Your Own Map.
About A year ago I was writing a strategy for a company. Suddenly I got the idea I was writing something I had already written a long time ago. I got the feeling that “History was repeating itself”.
I started to investigate and suddenly I found a Pattern. The pattern I found was the Kondratiev Cycle.
Behind the Kondratiev Cycle another pattern appeared. Kondratiev related the cycle already to the Seasons. The Seasons where at time also a subject I was investigating.
I was very interested in Acupuncture and Chinese Philosophy. I already found a mapping of the World Views to the Seasons and the theory of narratives of Bahktin. With ease I could translated the themes of the Kondratiev Cycle to Major Narratives. I made a picture and started to calibrate. The dates I found where significant.
Another insight appeared when I started to have a look at the website of The Cycles Research Institute. This Institute has gathered a immense amount of data about cycles.
The most interesting document was a document of the Founder of the Institute (Dewey) where he tried to explain strange relationships between cycles that were “independent”. What he found was something he called Harmonics. Harmonics are created when waves are entangeld. They can be compared to overtones in Music.
The last and most dramatic insight came from Ray Tomes. He found a pattern behind the pattern of the harmonics Dewey discovered. This is his main conclusion “The Universe consists of a standing wave which develops harmonically related standing waves and each of these does the same“.
If you are interested in Religion you will you notice that he is writing a very old “mystical” statement. He is writing about what people in India call The Svara.
“The proper translation of the word Svara is the current of life-wave. It is that wavy motion which is the cause of the evolution of cosmic undifferentiated matter into the differentiated universe, and the involution of this into the primary state of non-differentiation, and so on, inand out, for ever and ever. The Svara is the manifestation of the impression on matter of that power which in man is known to us as the power which knows itself“.
The pattern behind “History Repeating itself” was the Current of Life Wave.
What I also found out is that the numbers behind the pattern were related to multiples of 5. I started to calculate “Important dates” and “Major Overtones (Harmonics)” and went back as far as 5000 BC. The pattern fitted. I was completely overwhelmed by the regularity of the clocks and the many levels that were in Motion. The Universe was playing Music, The Music of the Spheres.
The last thing I did was to use the pattern and move forwards in Time. I found a remarkable date (2012). It was the date where many many cycles of history would harmonize (A major conjunction) and “start to swing back“. At that time I did not know about the predictions of the Maya’s and others. I learnt about that a year later.
I can tell you one thing.
Prepare yourself for a very spectaculair time ahead.
I am asked to help to define a Strategy again. Defining a strategy is something I like the most. I will share some experience.
The most important part of a Strategy is to be become aware of your Potential. If you want to drive very fast but you are not able to buy a car the Strategy to drive a car is a bad strategy.
Many people and of course companies are defining unrealistic targets. This creates Stress and when you are stressed you are unable to see the Facts.
A Strategy has to make it possible to get somewhere with ease. This makes it possible to keep something in your backpack when you are getting hungry.
The next step is to define The Road you want to Travel. There are two possibilities. You define the Road or you define your Destiny. If you define your Destiny you are not able to enjoy the view. You are always searching at every signpost to find you Destiny.
When you travel down the road you meet people (Alliances). When you like them you can take another turn and travel to another place. When you want to reach your destiny you only want to travel with people who take the same turn.
When I discovered the Cycle I tried to map my experience in Strategy on the five Stages.
The first thing I did was to find names that were related to the Strategy-domain. Suddenly I found the Five P’s, Potential, Possibility, Plan, Practice and Protection (connected to Potential again).
When I saw the relationship between the stages and life-cycles I understood why a company is sometimes unable to define a Strategy (Plan) or is so busy (Practice) that they don’t think about this. It has to do with the stage the company is in.
Another important point I discovered was the direction of cycling the cycle. When you travel against the clock you are basically digging your own grave. The Chinese call the Counter Clock Cycle the Insulting Cycle. It moves counter to the Seasons. In Mystic Terms this cycle is the Cycle of Death or the Cycle of the Night and the Moon.
The last point is the Jump. When you don’t want to travel full cycle you can always make a quick jump to the other side and skip stages.
A Cycle based Strategy starts somewhere in the Cycle. This is important. You have to determine if you or your company is in the Stage of Practice or in the Stage of Potential.
The most interesting phase is Protection. This is the moment of Balance but it is the balance you reach at the moment you Die. When you are dead you are able to be Re-Born. You are even able to Jump to a Higher Level of another Rhythm.
Companies that are in the Dying Phase have a tendency to start the Insulting Cycle. They want to move back from this moment of fear.
They are fighting against new small competitors that are almost invisible. They have not created these small competitors themselves. This would have been the best solution. When people are Adults they become parents. When companies are in the phase of practice (a comparable phase) they are competing and not marrying (being cooperative).
The hierarchical (Plan) managed company is dying. The small network-oriented (Possibility) company is rising. The hierarchy is fighting the small competitors but is also fighting his colleagues.
They want to kill them but their strength is gone. They want to marry them (merge) but they are unable to get children. The most disgustful step is that they want to eat them (take-over). What they don’t see is that they are eating “old bodies” and the meat is not rejuvenating.
Mergers and take-overs create highly complex companies that are easy to beat by the small ones. To utilize the merger the companies have to get rid of employees (their Potential) and integrate their highly complex systems (Plan). It focuses the big companies at their internal affairs. They lose their external focus and therefore lose their customers.
This creates enormous opportunities (Possibilty) for the new innovative small network-oriented companies. The big companies give away their market (Practise) for almost nothing without even being aware of this fact (Practise).
To my surprise many people are still trying to implement Knowledge-Management. I thought everybody was convinced that after almost 12 years of failing people would understand there is something wrong.
I was involved from the beginning. Knowledge Management came out of Data- and Database Management. At that time I believed the human was a Machine. I did not believe that at that time. Later I realized this was the paradigm we were using. When you use the paradigm of the Machine the only thing you can do is Program People.
When you Program people you store DATA in a database and you give them the opportunity to share this data. This can be done by search (unstructured text) or by a SQL-statement. When you do this you are simply automating a process.
Funny enough when I listen to the current generation of Knowledge Managers I hear nothing about the most important thing we did at that time called DATA-ANALYSIS. This Art has vanished for some reason. Data-analysis is the art of finding out the MEANING of what people are communicating. My favorite method to do this was NIAM.
There are special processes where Experts are involved. When you automate these processes you are building EXPERT-SYSTEMS.
This is everything there is to say about Knowledge Management.
But people that are busy with Knowledge Management don’t want to automate a process. They are different. They want to Manage the Sharing of Something called Knowledge (or Experience?).
For some reason people are unable or are not willing to share their experiences (“what they have learnt in Practice”). The first reason could be that they really don’t want to do that because their practice is their income. Many people and companies protect their experience by Law and Patents. If you really want to protect your Experience you have to Organize this process.
The last reason could be that they just don’t know what their experience is. This is very normal. It is the big problem in building Expert Systems. You need an other Expert (an Interviewer) to help the Expert to articulate the experience. This is done by Story-Telling.
Personally I think the best way to organize Experience Management is “to Let it Happen”. In the Cycle of Learning there are moments when people really need to Share (Communion). There are also moments when people need to take Control (Agency). Communion and Agency are the two factors that keep the Wheel of Innovation on the move.
Let’s change the Name of the Game of Knowledge Management and call it Collaborative Learning. Its aim is INNOVATION. This is a link to two documents (Text and Powerpoint) I wrote about this subject.
Collaborative Learning is the process of adaptation to the inside (Mental Space) or the outside environment (Physical Space, Social Space) of the learner.
To adapt to the environment the learner has to see a difference. This difference has to MOTIVATE the learner to perform a short-term (a re-flection, a re-action) or a long-term action (a plan).
A short-term action is controlled by the existing action patterns (Experience). When the environment has changed dramatically a long-term action sometimes needs a change of behavior (paradigm shift strategy).
Why is Knowledge Management failing? I give you a few possibilities.
2. People react and are not able to reflect. The are following their impulses. They are too busy or are already in a state of Stress (Burn-out). When you are highly stressed your body is unable to Act anymore.
3. They know they have to adapt their behavior but are afraid to do this. They have postponed a small change and know they have arived at a turning point. They don’t want to look outside anymore and face reality. They are unable to change their Paradigm.
Now we are back to the beginning.
Why did I change my paradigm?
I changed my paradigm because after a few years I found out it was “not working”. Nobody used the Knowledge Management Systems. It was a waste of time and money. At that time we EVALUATED what we were doing. Evaluation is the step in the Collaborative Cycle where the Emotions are involved.
I know why Evaluation is not often practiced!
When People find out that something is not doing what they wanted to do they start to blame the others. They don’t except that people make mistakes and that learning from our mistakes is the essence of INNOVATION.
Most people are advised by Advisors. They are the specialists in Knowledge Management. Many of them know “it is not working” but they HOPE that someday a MIRACLE will happen. Some of them are also very afraid to lose their jobs. If this would happen a Critical Event would take place.
1. Automate the Processes You want to Manage. Use methods that have proven themselves. Go back in history to find them!
2. When you want to hire expensive Advisors. Ask them about their successes and their failures. But also ask them How they Manage their own Knowlegde. You will be surprised. Most of the time they don’t practice what they preach! If this is the case don’t hire them.
3. Involve them in your process of Collaborative Learning. Pay them when you Learn from them and Let them Pay You when they learn from You.
4. Facilitate and Organize Story Telling in your Company. Connect “Old” experienced Experts with young people. The Oldies love to talk about their experience. This the normal way in Society. You learn the experience from your Grandparents.
5. Build a Story Telling Game. Organize this as a Collaborative Learning Cycle. I love to share My Experience.
Banking is really very simple. It became very complicated when the computer was introduced. What need to be done is to move back to simplicity again. If somebody is able to do this the possibilities are tremendous. If ABN AMRO and Fortis are able to recreate a simple bank again they could Change History.
To keep this blog simple you have to believe the essence of Banking is the Movement of Cash-Flows. A cash-flow is a transaction between two actors.
Every product a Bank is offering at this moment is very complicated construction where cash-flows are manipulated.
A Customer is doing the same thing. He is constantly trying to Balance his Cash-Flows. What a Customer expects from a bank is a Trusted Advisor that is helping him to find Balance.
A Bank could become a Community of Customers who are Helping each other to Balance their Cash-Flows.
For some people it is very easy to balance. They have a nice stable job, good health, friends that are helping them, they are succesful in their business. They have accumulated money. At the other side of the spectrum we can find the opposite. People are without a job, sick, without friends or without a home.
The Cooperative Banks that were created in the beginning of the 20th century tried to find a way to balance the extremes. They got the idea that somewhere in the middle everything was compensated. They believed in Solidarity.
If you want to Keep the Balance you need to do more than “manipulating streams of money”. You need to take care of the sick, you have to provide jobs and provide housing. The Cooperative Movement started to build houses (Woningbouw-vereniging), created collaborative hospitals and insurance companies. They started to educate (Het Volkshuis) and took care of the huge addiction to alcohol. The Collaborative Movement was financed by “Enlightened” Entrepreneurs who created jobs and even build complete cities.
I hope you see “the big picture”. When we see a Bank as the Center of a Community we are able to connect this Center to other Centers (Healthcare, Education, Housing,…).
If we move to the right level of Coordination we are able to Balance the Whole of Centers and Create Harmony.
The Technical Infrastructure to do this is available. It uses the concept of Software-Services and a Kernel based on a Dialogue between these Services (The Software-Bus). The Infrastructure also contains a Monitor who is able to Balance the Centers. Cordys (www.cordys.com) is one of the Providers who has build such an Infrastructure.
A Technical Infrastructure has to be embedded in a Social and an Ecological Infrastructure. The concept of panarchy is one of the beautifull concepts that can be of help. People have to exchange stories and create new myths. Here we can use the Concept of the Chronotope of Bahktin.
When you read my Blogs you will see that I have written many many blogs about this subject. Just take a tour.
In the first blog about the merger of ABN AMRO and Fortis I tried to show that the integration of the technical infrastructure of both banks will be very difficult. In this blog I want to talk about a much more important issue called Culture.
When the merger of ABN and AMRO was starting I was part of a management development course. The person behind the course was a very wise person. He told us what would happen the next years and he was right.
What he explained was that ABN was a very old bank that came out of a very long history. ABN was more or less the succeeder of the Dutch Trading Company VOC that was founded in 1602.
ABN was a deal-making bank. The culture of “deal-making” was very visible in everything we were doing. This was the reason why I could talk and “make a deal” with a senior manager at every level without any problem.
AMRO (Amsterdam Rotterdam Bank) has its history in the big harbors of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. It supported the people who were transporting cargo all over the world. The culture of AMRO was dominated by the Amsterdam culture. The culture of Amsterdam is one of the most difficult cultures to handle. People are always “playing games” and some of them are “dirty” or better “clever games” (practical jokes). Let’s call this culture “political” because politics is the game people of Amsterdam play the best. The political game is hidden behind the façade of the hierarchy.
The very wise person told us that the political game of the AMRO would finally kill the deal-making culture of ABN. This is what sadly enough really happened. It was the main reason why I left ABN AMRO. Many people were playing the finite game. They wanted to win and when you win there are always loosers and losses.
So to make it very clear what Fortis is buying is AMRO and not ABN. The ABN-part (deal making) was preserved in the International Network (bought by Santander) and Corporate Finance (bought by Royal Bank of Scotland). In my opinion Santander has made the best deal!
The merger will only be a success when the Fortis-culture is able to cope with the “political (Amsterdam) culture” of ABN AMRO.
The Fortis culture is a combination of two Insurance Companies (Belgian and Dutch) and a bank VSB (Verenigde Spaarbanken) that originated out of a Cooperation (just like RABO). A insurance culture, a cooperative culture and a Belgian culture fit. At this moment Fortis can be best seen as a “Belgian Bank”.
Before the merger with ABN AMRO tried to merge with a big Belgian bank. This merger failed. The “Amsterdam culture” and the “Belgian” culture are completely opposite cultures. Belgians play the game of socializing. Everything happens behind closed doors and is arranged in restaurants. Belgian people enjoy food and wine. People in Amsterdam are also making fun but they make fun of each other.
Now let us have a look at what Fortis is really buying.
ABN and AMRO started to operate on the Retail market when the Dutch Companies around 1960 decided to pay the salary of their employees by a bank account. Before that time the employees were paid in cash. Both banks were more or less forced to move into the consumer market. Before that time both banks had really nothing to do with consumers. Consumers (Poor people) were served by the Postal Bank (now ING) and Cooperative banks like VSB.
Because “Consumer banking” was not part of the “essence” of ABN and AMRO were never (!) able to serve those customers. This is still the case. The Services of ABN AMRO are constantly valuated by their clients on the lowest level possible.
What Fortis buying is a part of ABN AMRO that is of a very different culture, operating with a very low service-level and supported by a very complicated technical infrastructure. Many customers of ABN AMRO are already very frustrated. They are not stupid and they know that the merger will not help to improve the service-level. The only thing that is stopping them is the burden of moving their accounts and the extreme low service-level of the competitors on the Dutch Market (ING is has moved to the first place in non-performing, ABN AMRO is now second).
Today it is almost sure that Fortys will buy ABN AMRO. I was involved in the merger between ABN and AMRO in 1991.
AMRO was the most important competitor of ABN. It was a strange idea that we (ABN) were combined to become a “Global Bank”.
Soon I found out that we were in many fields completely different. My part of ABN was not hierarchical. We were a network. The manager at the top and the manager at the bottom were freely talking to each other. We were highly efficient and cost oriented. AMRO was completely different.
They were strictly hierarchical and were (in our eyes) extremely wasting money. The effect was visible. ABN was doing the same work with 1/3 of the amount of people.
The information I give you was not known to us. We did not know anything about them and “they” knew anything about us. Nobody informed us or could inform us. Because we (ABN) came from a very open culture we trusted our colleagues and our colleagues were telling something completely different. In their eyes AMRO was the best. They were telling their way of the truth.
In the culture of AMRO everything was a plan. They were “selling expectations”. A better system meant “We have a plan to improve our system and when we have finished the plan we will be the best”. In the culture of ABN a System was not a plan but a Working System and we were always very hesitant to over-sell. So what we were telling our colleagues was really there. It was operational and it was doing more than we told them. Both of us “believed the other”. We were operating out of our own Worldview.
ABN was a “Sensory-Bank” (Based on Facts). AMRO was “Unity-Bank” (Based on Models). At that time I did not know anything about World-Views.
After some time the big DECISION was made. The Dutch Homemarket would be supported by a combination of the AMRO-Batch Systems and the ABN Branch Systems. The International Systems would be supported by ABN-systems. The last decision was simple. ABN was an International Bank.
The big problem was that the International System proved to be a big problem. Almost nobody knew this because the International System was “almost finished”. Many of us knew that this system was a software-mess.
When you find out something in the FUTURE You always think people knew in the PAST what you know now. This is very big mistake that causes a lot of trouble.
What also caused a big problem was the difference in NUMBERS. We were 1/3 of the whole. There were much more AMRO managers and employees and everybody was give a “position”.
An example will give you an idea what NUMBERS do to you. The Educational Department of ABN aimed at IT consisted of 2 people. Everything was outsourced. The AMRO department consisted of many people. The level of a Educational Manager at ABN was low. Education was a staff activity and Staff was “not important”. What happened was that the two people of ABN just were put in a team and all their knowlegde of doing things “cheap and efficient” disappeared. The “old way of working”, “we do everyhing ourselves” just went on.
Much later we found out that “the DECISION was wrong”. The realization of “the Facts” started a new process. We started to distrust each other. Nobody was aware of the differences in culture. People started to believed “they” had plotted and “they” had given “false information”.
The “distrust” was also caused by the way we worked. The managers of ABN and AMRO kept on working in the old way. The ABN-managers quickly restored the “old boys” network. The managers of the AMRO found out that we were talking with important managers everywhere in the company. They did not like that. They wanted managers to behave like hierarchical managers.
The effect of two very different cultures created a very instable new culture. This instability started to emerge when the great work, the integration, was finished. Until that time we were very busy solving very complex puzzles nobody ever was able to solve. We did not know about these puzzles until they appeared out of the blue.
The next step THE CONVERSION was much more complicated than we thought. When we started the process of conversion we soon found out that we had to support three systems, The ABN SYSTEMS, THE AMRO SYSTEMS and the slowly growing ABN AMRO SYSTEMS.
The first problem was COMPUTER CAPACITY. The mainframes we needed were NOT AVAILABLE on the market!!! Finally IBM helped us out.
The next step was the MAPPING OF DATA. We had to compare every field to find out what ABN field could be mapped on what AMRO-field. Soon we found out that the programmers never took any time to describe the data.
The last step was CONVERTING SOFTWARE (2.300.000 Software Programs!). This time we found out we were really in trouble. Many programs were not documented and worse (!!) many load-modules were without a compile-deck and a source. We could not find out what many programs were doing. When I left the bank in 1997 many of the problems were still not solved. The Year-2000 problem was very helpfull because many software-programs had to be checked and changed.
I don’t know what the current situation is but am convinced the quality of the IT-infrastructure has not improved but has gone down. The main reason is the Outsourcing and the Low Quality of the Current Generation of Programmers. I have written about this earlier.
My advice would be to abandon one of the IT-infrastructures and only convert the Data. This wan’t be easy.
My most important advice. Don’t touch the software! I feel this will open up a box of PANDORA. I have to tell you that this is not only a problem with ABN AMRO. Every company that has developed software from the Beginning of IT History or has Merged will encounter this problem.
A few years ago I met the most important game-designer in the world. He is the inventor of many board-games but also of very successful television-games. His games were sold all over the world. At that time he was just hired by one of the most important entertainment-firms in the word to become their Chief Creative Officer (CCO).
We started to talk and I found out that I could do what he could do. I was generating new game-concepts with ease. When I generated these concepts his comments were very clear.
“This is not possible because of the state of the IT-technology“.
What I found out first surprised me but later I found the reason. The entertainment-industry was way behind the banking industry. This is normal. Every segment in the Industry goes trough a cycle of maturity and has no idea what is happening in another segment.
I wan’t say they are re-inventing the wheel because the Entertainment-Industry has been very innovative in the area of the User-Interface (The front-end). Banks were unable to do that because their front-end was a branche-office.
Because I understood what the CCO wanted to do I was able to make a connection between two independent areas.
The other thing that surprised me was his focus on the TV. I explained him how easy it was to use a PC as a TV. I also explained him that a combination of many User-interfaces (PC, TV, and GSM) could create completely new concepts. Concepts are named Formats in the Entertainment Industry.
After some time he asked me to arrange a demo. I went to TNO. I have been working as an advisor for TNO for many years. TNO is a huge government-paid research organization. They experiment with every thing you can imagine. They were abl to demo all the upcoming innovations and he was very surprised.
I wrote a document about “what was possible” in his language. I used Cordys as an infrastructure and defined many new technical concepts like the Worldwide Media Hub, a Format Engine, a Monitor (Generating Feedback) and a model of the Emotions that could be used to stimulate Impulsive Buying Behavior (based on Frijda). I also defined a Scenario-generator based on the collected Stories. This generator could generate a completely new type of Soap.
The CCO became very interested and wanted to start a business outside his own Company. The company he was working for was not interested. He was allowed to do this (The so called Right of First Refusal). We made a complete business-plan and started to look for people that wanted to finance our business. The amount of profit we could generate was tremendous.
To my surprise nobody was interested. Our plan was too advanced. People in the Investment Business had no idea about the combination of Banking Technology and Entertainment Technology. Their idea about the World was based on the concept of the Website.They were also very hesitant because they lost a lot of money in the E-Commerce Hype.
Now almost 3 years later big worldwide media companies are finally interested and it looks like we are going into business. So if you want to make a lot of money this is your chance to jump on the bandwagon.
When you want to build a Story-Based-Game the best way to interview is to ask people about their Life-story. Let us first have a look at the The Foley Center. The Foley Center of Northwestern University is specialized in Life Stories.
Dan P. McAdams of the Foley Center uses Agency and Communion as the major “modalities in the existence of living forms“. These two modalities may be viewed as two thematic clusterings in life narratives, each articulating important life goals, strivings, needs, and desires”. When I read the articles of McAdams it was not difficult to see that he was using Interpersonal Theory .
Because I was able to map Interpersonal Theory to The Theory of Will McWhinney . I was able to to open up a huge potential to litterally Play with Life Stories. Will has also mapped his World Views to Games Levels.
When you consider a Life Story as a Narrative a mapping to the Theory of Bakhtin about Chronotopes is also very helpful.
When you use the concept of the Chronotope you will see that a life-story takes Place in a named Time/Place-continuum (A House, The Office,). So not only ask When an Event took place but also Where it took place. A place is are very important factor in a life story. Many people remember the atmosphere of a Place. The House I was born felt Warm and Cosey. In my office I felt Alone.
When we had a look at the thoughts of Bahktin about Context we realized that we were really trying to describe a Situation and that other Actors in the Situation also plaid an important Role (Father, Mother, Manager, …..). So not only ask Where and When but also Who was playing an important Role.
Many people are unable to make a distinction between the Self (I AM) and the Role they are playing in a Situation. This is an important cause of conflicts. When you are a Manager you have to play the Manager and not be the Manager.
A life story is a Sequence of Situations that are always started by a CRITICAL Event. There a many ways to classify Events but a simple classification is a high point, a low point or a turning point.
In his book Paths of Change Will explains that there a many “Strategies” to change a life and of course a Life Story. Every connection of a World View to another World View can be considered a Change, a Conflict, a Game or a Dialogue.
An Event is related to the the World View Sensory. Sensory People view the world as a Causal Chain. When an Event takes place the Emotions come into play. Emotions are related to the Social World View.
According to Nico Frijda:
An emotion is usually caused by a person consciously or unconsciously evaluating an event as relevant to a concern that is important; the emotion is felt as positive when a concern is advanced and negative when a concern is impeded.
The core of an emotion is readiness to act and the prompting of plans; an emotion gives priority for one or a few kinds of actions to which it gives a sense of urgency – so it can interrupt, or compete with, alternative mental processes or actions. Different types of readiness create different outline relationships with others
An emotion is usually experienced as a distinctive type of mental state, sometimes accompanied or followed by bodily changes, expressions, actions“.
Emotions Evaluate a Situation. When they Evaluate a Situation they use a Concern to Priotize. When they are able to priotize with ease or when the Event is Dangerous the Action is Unconscious. When a dangerous event takes place the Reptile Brainstarts to work and the only re-actions that are possible are Fight, Flight and Freeze.
When a Major Event happens the priotization becomes Conscious. The Actor has to make a Decision. This decision is crucial for the next step (a new Situation).
When you have a look at (or feel, or listen to, ) Life Stories the Process of Decision Making is the most important factor. Socials always feel what the Others are doing or start to take care. Unities start to manage and want to restore Order. Sensories take care of Themselves (Ego) and Mythics want to restore harmony. What we see here is the Self-refererence of the Model of Will McWhinney. Inside the Emotions the World Views are again at play.
If we know how people Evaluate we are able to learn a lot about their Personality.
When we look at the Chronotopes of Bahktin we also know their Favorite Life Narrative. A Sensory uses the Chronotope of Destiny. His or her life is a sequence of events that are just happening.
A Social uses the Biography, the praise of a public figure who has accomplished something in life. When he has not accomplished anything his life is worthless. He is a total failure.
A Mythic is always searching for something (The Grale). His story is described by the Chronotope of Adventure. Deep inside the Mythic wants to find Rest and Harmony. When he finally finds Rest he feels the urge to move on. Therefore the Life of a Mythic is full of Turning Points.
When we know the Favorite Life Narrative we also know “How to Help“. A Social needs to be re-valuated. He needs a tap on the shoulder. He needs to be praised.
A Sensory has to stop to Wait and See. He needs to do something and learn from his mistakes. Somebody has to tell him that others have made the same mistake and he is able to prevent mistakes by looking (!!) at other life stories of comparable people. The most important persons could be his father or mother. They also have made mistakes and when they just tell their children frankly what they did many children would simply learn from the parents.
I hope you understand why the theory of Roger Schank is so important. His theory is able to help the Unity/Sensory-combination (Experts or Craftsman) and this combination covers about 80% of the people in Western Civilization.
Roger has now created an impressive Virtual School for Children all over the World. He is teaching children to learn a CRAFT again. He is not teaching THEORY but he is giving children the opportunity to ACT in REAL LIFE SITUATIONS. He is teaching them to become a Nurse or an Engineer. Craftmanship is HIGLHY needed in the underveloped countries.
The Virtual School is FOR FREE. It is financed by people who want to take care of the poor children in the World. The Virtual High School is using Games and it able to train Children to move to the level of the University within a very short time (max 8 years). Roger has made connections to Famous Universities in the US. They are also giving away their educational content (again Games developed by Roger Schank!) for free.
Funny enough I was unable to find anybody in the Netherlands who just wanted to try out his Virtual School. Every School and University in The Netherlands is re-inventing the Wheel. This is a Rule. The Dutch Government is spending billions to create something that is already available. This is also a Rule. If you want to know more send me an EMAIL.
About ten years ago I was asked to write a book. It was the first time somebody asked me to do this. The person who asked me to write a book was the former director of a foundation called SMO, Wim de Ridder. SMO is a Dutch think tank paid by many big companies in the Netherlands.
Together with Wim de Ridder, Erik Vreedenburgh and Gerard Rijntjes a team was formed. We wanted to explore a concept called Open Form.
Open Form uses the principles of evolution. We organized the book as a process. We started to interview many scientists and artists about evolution and created an interaction between them. People in isolated field of science got together and created new combinations. The book was a picture of a certain state of the process but the process went on after the “book” was published.
Konstapel. J. Vreedenburgh E, Rijntjes G.J.P. De onvermijdelijke culturele revolutie. Den Haag, SMO, 1998.
Open Form became the method SMO wanted to use and the first project was a big one. Big companies in the “Stimulant” Industry like Heineken wanted to start a dialog with the Dutch Government about the prevention of addiction. They gave us a budget to explore an innovative approach. The new approach was based on the theory of Roger Schank. Roger was a friend of mine and he was asked to become an advisor. He adressed the so called Les Indes Meeting in the Hague and the participants were so impressed that they gave us a budget.
What we wanted to build was a game and the inputs of the game were “real life stories”. The story of the project is told in this book “Virtueel Genieten. Diekstra, Drs. J. Konstapel, J.G. van der Leij, Prof.Dr. J.B. Rijsman, Drs. M.A. Visse, K.B. Vos, Drs. N. van Geelen”.
The game was a success. It was such a success that many government paid institutions started to block the implementation of the game. They were producing brochures and employed many researchers. The blocking of the implementation was successful. Strangely enough the researchers never paid any attention at the theory of Roger Schank. Sadly enough they have not done this until now. Researchers always want to re-invent the wheel.
Later a new tool was developed to support people that were un-employed and mentally ill (Virtual Work). The story of the project can be found in this book INTERNETSTURING IN DE ZELFREDZAME SAMENLEVING, Prof.dr. J.B. Rijsman, Drs. N. van Geelen, Drs. T.J. Golder.
We still used the theory of Roger Schank but combined his theory with the theory of Will McWhinney. The same thing that happened with our former project happened again. The government agency that was paying for the tool was unable to use it. Until now they are unable to help people to find suitable work. The main reason is that they are blocking every innovative action of a person who wants to start all over again. There are many rules that prevent this.
The next project was called Time Out. The target of this project was to build the most advanced story-telling-engine ever made. All the experience we had gathered in the former project would be used and the budget was spectacular. Unfortunately the project was never started. SMO decided to do it their own way. This is the game they created: http://www.mazzle.nl/.
This is the book they wrote about the project. MAZZLE, Nieuw perspectief op gezondheidsvoorlichting, Jeroen Duijvestijn.
Many people are now developing story-based websites but developing an effective story based game is something (I think) almost nobody has accomplished.
I will give you a two hints why all of them will fail.
The first thing is the collection of stories. Many people are telling stories but after a some time you realize that 80% of the people are telling the same story all over again. They are the victims. When you want to motivate people to “change their lives” stories about how people are not changing their lives are not helpful. This is also the problem with many self-help-cites. Victims always find places where they find other victims. The victims are entrained by the stories of the other victims. Nothing changes.
So when you want to find people that were successful you have to look elsewhere. This was the real problem with the project Virtual Work. The Dutch Government Agency that is taking care of the unemployed UWV , was unable to provide us with people with a success story. We used our own network to find them and they were rare.
The second problem is the Interview itself. You need a special gift to get the right story out of people. This gift is called empathy. You also need to know all the stories that are already told to know when the real important facts are “coming”.
A big company hired a very expensive advisor to make more deals. The expensive advisor made a list of “highly important people” and for some reason I was put at the top of the list.
The advisor suggested to invite the most important person to a very important event, an Opera in the most important place of Music, in Amsterdam, the Concertgebouw. The event was so important that even The Queen would attend the Opera. I love Opera and the Opera (The Magic Flute) was of my favorite composer Mozart.
I was sitting next to the CEO of the Big Company. I did not know him and I also did not know I was selected as the most important person in the hierarchy of the big company I was working for. You can imagine this created a lot of confusion.
The CEO started to talk about all kinds of issues that were not of my “business”. I mentioned the names of the most important Managers and explained him how to get into contact with them. I enjoyed the Opera, thanked the CEO for the invitation and left home.
It will be clear to you that the very expensive advisor did not do his homework properly. At this moment it is very easy to do the homework. Just type “Hans Konstapel” and push the button and Google will show you many things “about me”.
But the homework you have to do to sell a product is much more than finding everything you need to know about an important person.
Understanding his Network is much more important. You could use Linked-in
The influence of a person in the Network is highly determinated by the the amount of bridges in his network. When the amount of bridges is high the person is able to connect to many other (Sub)-networks. He is a “boundary-spanner”. A boundary-spanner is related to other boundary-spanners. They are also bridging networks. So a boundary-spanner is able to connect You to almost everybody you want to connect with ease.
Boundary-spanners are highly influential in the informal network of a Company and the external network of the Company. They are almost invisible in the Hierarchy. Boundary-spanners advice people with a status in the Hierarchy. They are asked for their opinion. Most of the time their opinion is the most crucial factor in a decision.
Boundary-spanners almost never buy a product. They don’t have the budget or the authority to do this but when you are related to the boundary-spanners in a company you will always know “when the need for a product is arising”, “what products are on the short list” and “who is in favor for what”. When the boundary-spanners don’t know anything about your product you will probably never sell anything.
Later I realized that the very expensive Advisor perhaps did his Homework properly. I was one of the Boundary-Spanners in my Company and because of the names I mentioned the Big Company was introduced in the Network of my Company with a very low budget.
I have negotiated many contracts in my life. The biggest contract had a value of about 60 million Euros. In this blog I want to share some of my experience with you.
I want to start with a funny story. I start with a funny story because buying and selling has to be fun to both of the parties involved. If you don’t see it as a game you will never sell anything.
One day we wanted to make a world-wide deal with a big American Company. Because it was a deal between a Dutch and a US-company the deal was very complicated. We used legal advisors that knew a lot about US Law to help us. US Law is and was very different from Dutch Law. A US contract is ten times bigger than a Dutch contract because of all the liabilities the US-company wants to exclude.
When the contract was almost finished we had to make the Final Deal. To make the Final Deal an ESVP of the US Company came to Amsterdam with his private plane.
We prepared this meeting keeping in mind that we wanted to negotiate the lowest price possible. The first thing we did was to create the Magical Manager behind the scene. We were not the final decision-makers. Somebody, Our Boss, a very high level executive had to say Yes. He was not available to talk but when we were finished one of us could contact him.
The next thing we did was prepare a beautiful environment to eat. We knew the ESVP was from another time-zone so a little bit of alcohol (wine) could change his attitude.
The next thing we did was create tension. When he arrived we kept him waiting in a room for more than half an hour.
When the meeting started the ESVP was surrounded by five advisors. At that moment he was still not aware of ‘what the contract was about”. We knew every detail.
His first question was “What are we talking about”? His advisor whispered the amount in his ear. “Only twenty M?” he said (The contract was 20 million dollars). “Ok lets make a deal!”.
For some reason twenty millions dollars was nothing to him.
The fact that that he was not informed about anything gave us the oportunity to negotiate a dream contract. We asked him to have a talk in private and his advisors had to leave the room.
We took him to the beautiful restaurant in the Centre of Amsterdam and gave him a glass of wine. After some time the conditions of the contract changed in our favor. When we used our last “act”, the mystery manager, we even got a better price.
The ESVP left Amsterdam with a good feeling. He had negotiated the contract “on his own” and he never (!) heard about the effects of the contract because his plane left to another “important” meeting with an “important ESVP”.
What happened was something that is called “gunnen” in the Dutch language. “Gunnen” can be translated into “doing a favor” but this is not what “gunnen” means.
“Gunnen” means “I buy something from you because I like you and you like me” and “I buy something because you will do what you promise to do” and “I know that some how you will be buying something from me” and “you will tell your friends that it is a good thing to buy something from them” and “last but not least” “we have negotiated a fair price” and “we will never need the contract because when we will be in trouble we are able to sort things out” because ” I just have to phone you and you will solve our problems immediately”.
When you are a salesperson and you have a relationship with somebody that is able to “gun”, “to do you a favour” you are able to sell everything with ease.
For some reason “gunnen” is not possible anymore or better you have to “hide” “doing a favour” because “doing a favor” looks like “bribing”.
When I was responsible for big contracts salespersons tried to “bribe me” in many ways. I was invited to brothels, was offered presents (Christmas), was invited to have a beautiful and of course very interesting trip to a beautiful place, visit a concert etc… I was put under high pressure by using the “we know the big boss-trick” and some people even tried to block my career by telling dirty stories about me. I never gave in to these tricks.
Because others accepted bribes things went wrong. The others that accepted bribes were not removed out of the company. They staid and slowly the limits of what was “acceptable” were widened. In the end things went really wrong and to prevent (!) that these things would happen again the buying process was “formalized”.
We had to write RFP’s (Request for Proposal) and the Vendors had to respond to the RFP with a very detailed document. In the end one vendor was chosen and the other lost a lot of money because they had to spend a lot of time to write the proposal.
Sometimes the whole process was a fair process but many times it was already clear who would get the deal because “behind the scene” the process of “gunnen” just went on.
Now we are in the Final State called Compliance. Everything You are doing has be registered to show that You are doing the Right Thing. This is blocking almost everything Activity in a Big Company. It certainly blocks Innovation.
Believe me If People want to Bribe they always find a new trick. The only people that are the Victims of this almost Paranoid reaction are the people who were HONEST.
You don’t need to be a scientist to understand that hostile behavior always attracts hostile behavior. So if you want to Enforce Peace with Violence you will always attract Violence.
Perhaps if you could eliminate the Cause of Violence it would be possible to stop the Violence.
If you could eliminate Saddam Hussein or Adolph Hitler you end it all. Sadly enough those people are not the only cause of the violence. They are the Symbol of Something that is creating the violence. Behind those people are other people who support the Leader, the Followers.
They support the Leader because they believe in his cause or they support the Leader because they are afraid to show that they don’t agree with what he is doing. There are also people who don’t do anything (the Silent Majority). They “Wait and See”.
If you eliminate the supporters of the Leader (The Taliban, The Nazi’s) the Others will stop the Violence and Peace will come.
If you use extreme violent weapons you will always make a mistake. Sadly enough you will always kill innocent people. Because of the first rule some of them will be attracted by hostile behavior and join the followers.
When Extreme Violent Weapons are used a small amount of violent people is able to destroy many people. This is called A-Symmetric Warfare.
If the Enemy looks like “a normal person” they are able to do what they want. If you want to stop the violence of people that look like a normal person you have to suspect everybody is a violent person. This will increase the amount of mistakes and because of the first rule it will attract hostile behavior.
When Extreme Violence is used a new Level of the Human is opened the Level of the Reptile. The Human starts to react with violence but he is not able to control this actions anymore. He is dissociated. Dissociations can stay for many years. You can observe Dissociation when you have a look at the Eyes of People. They Stare.
I hope you see the problem. Every time you kill a follower with Extreme Violence a new follower will take his place. The violence will never stop.
Is there Solution to this Problem?
When people of two different World Views meet they are unable to understand the Other.
When they don’t start a dialogue the mis-understanding will lead to a conflict. The conflict can be resolved when they generate Ideas, Act and Learn from their Mistakes. They start to Innovate.
To do this we need two World Views, Mythic (Ideas, Artists) and Sensory (Act, Sense, Facts).
The World View Unity (Rules, Control) is always blocking Innovation because Innovation leads to Chaos.
A person is mentally ill when he is only able to handle one World View (Interpersonal Theory). A mentally disabled Unity is called a Paranoid. If we observe people like Hitler or Saddam Hussein I think many of you will admit that they were Paranoid.
The Social World View is Easy to manipulate by a Paranoid. They are influenced by Status and always “Do What others Do”.
Soldiers in the Western Armies are recruited from two categories Social and Unity. The Unity is trained to become a Manager. They always obey the Rules. The Socials are trained to become Soldiers. They will always do what the Managers are telling them to do. They can be easily forced by Status and Violence.
What we need to solve a conflict are Mythics and Sensories. Both of them almost never join an Army. They are not violent and it is also very difficult to get them into a violent state.
To build a bridge to the Unities we need the Unity/Mythic or the Unity/Sensory-combination.
A Unity/Mythic (Transform Ideas into Models) is an Architect, A Designer. A Unity/Sensory (Put Models into Action) is A Maker, A Builder. A Mythic/Sensory (Put Ideas into Practice) is an Entrepreneur and An Inventor.
So a Conflict is solved when people start to Build and to Trade in the Social Ecology, The Context, where the Conflict Takes Place. When People build and trade the context moves to new levels of Culture by itself. This what happened in Western Civilization. It took about a 1000 years to move from the level of the War Lords to the level of the State.
A Conflict Never Stops when “the Context is Killed” (Bahktin) by Extreme Violent Weapons. People are able to rebuild their environment but when the environment is totally demolished this is a very complicated process. The US created a special program (The Marshall Program) to help Europe after the Second World War. It took more than 20 years to rebuild Europe.
Unity People really believe (!) Violent Weapons will end a Conflict. They believe this because their World View is aimed at Controlling Others.
Unity People also believe in catagories. They believe in the Good and the Bad. Sadly enough the Bad believe they are the Good and vice-versa. Both of them will endlessly go on fighting each other. This is not a real problem. The real problem is that the Unities make mistakes. They kill innocent people (Collateral Damage). Unities don’t believe in Mistakes. They believe they are always Right. They believe in the Absolute Truth.
They also believe they are able to develop new weapons that reduce Collateral Damage. That is why the Arms Race goes on and on.
When the War Lord were in power battles were fought at the battlefield at a certain time and a certain date. Soldiers wore uniforms so everybody could see “who’s who”. Most of the weapons where used in a man-to-man fight. There were also rules for combat. These rules were improved all the time and are now worldwide applicable (The Geneva Convention).
When the Rule Systems went UP the battlefields went DOWN to the level of the Human again. Soldiers are now playing the guerilla game and ignore all the rules. We are back at square one again. We are now in the stage of the 1 Soldier-to-many Civilians combat.
This is an innovation the World Wide Legal System cannot handle. It can only be resolved at the Local Level. People that are part of the Culture of the guerilla-fighter have to convince him that Extreme Violence will not solve their problems. This is the only solution. Inspirational Leaders (Mythics) like Nelson Mandela and Gandhi were able to do that.
The Weapon Systems also moved UP. Weapons were and are able to destroy the World. Strangely enough nobody was able to stop the development of Arms by International Law. Only the EFFECTS of weaponsystems were “forbidden”.
Many people believe this is easy to explain by the theory of “The Evil Weapon Industry“. “They are behing Everything that is Happening“
The US en the Sovjet Union are the biggests Users and Exporters of Arms in the World.
Personally I don’t think the explanation is so simple. My feeling is that many factors are at work and if we are unable to move to the right level of observation we will always ignore something. If we ignore something we will interfere on the wrong level. Instead of solving a conflict we will create a new conflict.
My feeling is we have to Observe at the Level of the World but ACT at the lower level of a Country or Culture according to the State of the Cycle this level is in.
The Arms Industry shows the same behavior as any Industry. Industry is the place where the Sensories are developing new tools (technology). They are the Experts, the Technicians. When a Sensory has developed a Model he wants to put the Model into Practice. When they have build new technology somebody (A Social) starts to Sell to a Unity. When a Unity has bought a new tool he HAS TO use it (Don’t Waste the Money!).
Many Scientists (Mythics and Unities) spend all their time and enthousiasm to develop the Atomic Bom and the Hydrogen Bom. Much later they awoke and saw with their own eyes what they had given to the World.
The problem here is the Process of Creation. When an Idea takes you you HAVE TO DO something with the Idea. The only thing that could happen was that the Creators took some time to have a look at what could be the effects of their creation. The Mythics had to take some time to reflect but time was running out.
If they would have a look at the Context they would realize that Worldwide Weapons of Destruction will always have a negative effect. They were “blinded” by the Enemy (Japan, Germany). They were Idealists and really believed the Bom would create a better world for everybody. This was the Final War. After the Final War Democracy would Rule the Earth. This proved to be wrong.
The most important factor that influenced the final decision to drop the Atomic Bomb was Russia. Japan was in the state of surrender and the bomb did not influence their decision. Everybody agreed that it was very important to stop the expanding Russian Empire ruled by Stalin.
The dropping of the Bomb was a signal to Stalin to show the Power of the US. Again innocent people outside the context of the “upcoming” conflict were the victims. The most important effect of the decision was the Cold War and the Atomic Arms Race. Nobody at that time was aware of this.
Let us have a look at the local level of the Conflict in Afghanistan.
The Culture of Afghanistan is “way behind the European Culture”. It is dominated by the War Lords. Afghanistan looks like Europe in the Middle Ages.
If the War Lords and the Taliban would use their old tools (the Jezail, Guns) nothing would happen. They would fight their battles on the battlefield. After some time one of them would become King and later the Renaissance would start. Just what happened in Europe. The big difference is that this process of Cultural Development would not take a thousand years.
The big business of the Warlords in Afghanistan is opium. Everybody is trying to change the attitude of the farmers. They have to grow wheat. Wheat is not what the War Lords want. Opium is paying 15 times more money. When the Warlords stay in power nothing will ever change the situation. When the people in the West keep on buying and using opium the market will also not disappear.
Afghanistan was already in the stage of the King. This stage was stopped by the Russians. They wanted to create a Socialistic (Read Paranoid) State. To stop the Russians (The Bad Guys) the US Secret Service (CIA, The Good Guys) started to support the Warlords and the Taliban. They supplied them with weapons to fight the Sovjet Union. They had a rule that no weapon in Afghanistan could be traced back to the west, so they supplied Soviet designed equipment from Egypt and China. Unfortunately the Soviet Technology was Inferior (!!!!) so they gave them the American Stinger. When the war with the Russians ended the CIA tried to buy the Stingers back from the Taliban. They wanted to pay $150,000 each. It is almost certain that the Taliban still have a few left.
The US and NATO are fighting their Own Weaponsystems. They are fighting their Own Creation, the War Lords and the Taliban. They are fighting a Market while they promote the Free Market. Many of the consumers of this market are living in their own country. They are fighting their own consumers in their own country. The consumers are addicted. Addiction is a problem of Socials. They get addicted when they are highly stressed. Many soldiers are addicted because of all the stress they have experienced in the War against the Enemy the Unities (or the Paranoids??) of their own Country have created.
How can we resolve this conflict?
It sounds strange but my feeling is by doing nothing in Afghanistan but doing something in Western Civilization itself. If We Solve our Own Problems first this will have a huge impact on everything that is happening in the World.
Observe at the World Level but Act Locally in your Own Context. This is the only Context You Understand.
Start a Dialogue with the other Contexts and accept their Local Culture. Try (!) to understand Why they are doing the Things they are doing.
This can be done by looking at your own Cultural History.
Somewhere in the past You were doing the same things they were doing. Find out what happened that made your culture move to the Next Level. Now you have a common ground to talk. Accept that the others are trying to find a solution of their own. Perhaps this is also something that will help you in your own culture.
Christopher Alexander wrote many beautiful books about Architecture. His book about Pattern Languages had a huge impact on Architectures in IT. When I searched the Internet I found a review of the books A Pattern Language, The Nature of Order and The Phenomenon of Life written by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho.
The review appeared in the Journal of her own Foundation “Science IN Society”. I visited her website and I became very exited about every document I read. Here are a few statements of her about Beauty and Harmony.
“A breaking wave in the sea has a kind of life that moves us, so does the ripple on a tranquil pond. A clear mountain pool has life, as opposed to a stagnant pond. Marble feels alive, as wood does, more so than polymerized stone dust or chipboard“.
“There’s degree of life in human events, and it correlates with the quality of freedom. Or should I say spontaneity: an unplanned, unpremeditated coherence of action“.
“Alexander captures the ideal of spontaneity and freedom that describes the sublime moment of creation in Chinese art and poetry, that I identified with the state of perfect (quantum) coherence with the universe; but he sees it also in the most ordinary living transactions”.
“The freedom which arises when life is at its most spiritual, and also most ordinary, arises just when we are “drunk in God”, as the Sufis say – most blithe and most unfettered. Under these circumstances, we are free of our concepts, able to react directly to the circumstance we encounter, and least constrained by affectations, concepts, and ideas. This is the central teaching of Zen and all mystical religions.“
Now I want to move to one of the many articles that are available on her website. The article is about Acupuncture. Again a few citations. If you don’t want to read them move to the end where I will give a brief summary.
“Practically all living processes are organised in cycles. The organism is thick with biological rhythms ranging from periods of split seconds for electrical activities of brain cells to seconds such as the heart-beat and respiration, to periods which are circadian and circannual. But no one has ever been able to explain why that should be.
The answer is provided by thermodynamics. It turns out that symmetrically coupled cycles are the key to both the conservation of coherent energy and compensation (or cancelling out) of entropy within the system so that living organisation is maintained.
As one cycle of activity is running down, it is charging up a second cycle, so that the role can be reversed later. Similarly, as disorder is created in some part of the system, a kind of superorder appears in elsewhere, which can restore order to the first part”.
“The connective tissues of our body include the skin, bones, tendons, ligaments, cartilege, various membranes covering major organs and linings of internal spaces. We tend to see them as serving purely mechanical functions to keep the body in shape, or to act as packing material. Actually, connective tissues may also be largely responsible for the rapid intercommunication that enables our body to function effectively as a coherent whole, and are therefore central to our health and well-being.
The clue to the intercommunication function of connective tissues lies in the properties of collagen, which makes up 70% or more of all the proteins of the connective tissues. Connective tissues, in turn form the bulk of the body of most multicellular animals. Collagen is therefore the most abundant protein in the animal kingdom“
“But collagens are not just mechanical fibres and composites. Instead, they have dielectric and electrical conductive properties that make them very sensitive to mechanical pressures, pH, and ionic composition and to electromagnetic fields. The electrical properties depend, to a large extent, on the bound water molecules in and around the collagen triple-helix“.
“A major factor contributing to the efficiency of intercommunication is the structured, oriented nature of collagen liquid crystalline fibres. Each connective tissue has its characteristic orientation of fibrous structures which are clearly related to the mechanical stresses and strains to which the tissue is subject. This same orientation may also be crucial for intercommunication. Aligned collagen fibres in connective tissues provide oriented channels for electrical intercommunication, and are strongly reminiscent of acupuncture meridians in traditional Chinese medicine“.
“The special energy relationship in the organism, therefore, is what enables it to mobilize energy at will, whenever and wherever required and in a perfectly coordinated way. In the ideal, the organism can be conceived as a quantum superposition of coherent activities, with instantaneous (nonlocal) noiseless intercommunication throughout the system. The flow of qi in meridian theory corresponds rather well to the mobilisation of coherent energy. Coherent energy is vital energy, and it is arises because the organism is especially good at capturing energy, storing and mobilising it in a coherent form“.
“I have argued that a body consciousness possessing all the hallmarks of consciousness – sentience, intercommunication and memory – is distributed throughout the entire body. Brain consciousness associated with the nervous system is embedded in body consciousness and is coupled to it“.
“Traditional Chinese medicine based on the acupuncture meridian system places the emphasis of health on the coherence of body functions which harmonizes brain to body. This makes perfect sense if one recognizes the brain as part of the body. Western medicine, by contrast, has yet no concept of the whole, and is based, at the very outset, on a Cartesian divide between mind and brain, and brain and body. Because there is no concept of the organism as a whole, there is, in effect, no theory of health, only an infinite number of disease models, each based on the supposed defect of a single molecular species. There is an urgent need to develop a theory of health for proper delivery of healthcare in the next millenium“.
What Mae-Wan Ho is explaining in all her articles is (more a less) that the old Scientists (!) in the East were right. She uses the new terminology of Physics and Mathematics to explain the same thing.
The Body is an “Electro-Magnetic Field” (A Whole) and connected to all the other Electro-Magnetic Fields (Wholes) in the Universe by “Symmetrically Coupled Cycles“. The Cycles balance the Wholes.
A Human Being is able to connect to every Whole by something called “quantum superposition“. It is a term used in Quantum Mechanics and it defines a state of “Harmony“, “Coupling” or “Entrainment”. When we are entrained to the Whole of the Wholes or or the Web that was never Woven (the Tao, Chinese) or the Centre of the Centres (Alexander) we are “drunk in God” (Sufi). We experience Oneness.
The Body stores something called “Coherent energy“. The Chinese call this Qi (The Force of Life). This coherent energy is transported in the Body by the Tissues. The Tissues consist of Collagen.
Collagen is organized in liquid crystalline Fibres. The Fibres are the Meridians of Acupuncture. The collagens are highly influenced by Electromagnetic fields. When the fields are “too strong” the System breaks down.
The System is also highly dependent on the special structure of the water molecules (the Hydrogen Bond). That’s why we have to drink a lot of water to get rid of the negative effect of the current Electro-Magnetic Fields. Water is also the Carrier of Information.
In many places she is warning us about the huge impact of electro-magnetic fields on the Body and the Mind. The effects are felt in the Body and the Mind because the Body IS the Mind or The Mind Is the Body. They are a WHOLE and the WHOLE is connected to other WHOLES. Just like the Centres of Christopher Alexander. Both of them are telling the Same Story.
Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary.
Resilience in social systems has the added capacity of humans to anticipate and plan for the future. Humans are part of the natural world. We depend on ecological systems for our survival and we continuously impact the ecosystems in which we live from the local to global scale.
Resilience is a property of these linked social-ecological systems. Resilience as applied to ecosystems, or to integrated systems of people and the natural environment, has three defining characteristics:
The amount of change the system can undergo and still retain the same controls on function and structure
The degree to which the system is capable of self-organization
The ability to build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation
When we translate Resilience in the Dutch language it is translated in “veerkracht“. A “veer” is a spring (a spiraling ring).
When we pull at the end of the spring it will expand and when we stop the pull the spring will spring back into its original state.When the spring is pulled too much it looses its elasticity. It slowly turns into a line. In the end it will break because of almost nothing.
In the old times partners married and promised to stay together for the better and the worse. The ceremony was concluded by exchanging iron rings. The ring was used by the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. The ring was put upon the left hand, on the finger that was connected to the heart by the “Vein of Love“. It was a symbol to remember them of the season “to fall in love”, Spring.
Resilience shows itself in all kinds of relations when “things go wrong“. When everything “works fine” we accumulate wealth, we are happy and the relation is a success. The partners are “Playing the Infinite Game of Creation and Cooperation“. Their relationship is Self-Organizing and they learn from each other. They adapt their relationship all the time.
The real strength of a relation shows itself when critical events happen. A good relationship is able to handle a lot of them but every critical event takes away a little bit of the accumulated wealth and decreases the elasticity of the relationship. At a certain point in time the spring breaks and the partners are “on their own” again.
Hierarchical organizations are highly organized. Self-organization is something the System cannot stand. It creates “(P)Anarchy“. Hierarchical organizations are focused on aquiring economic wealth. When they are managed with care they reserve funds to use when “things go wrong“.
What they don’t do is accumulate “social wealth“. When the economy is in its downfall they reduce the amount of people they employ. They keep the “strong” and release “the weak“. The weak are moved to another Ecology called “the Social Security System“. This Ecology is also a hierarchical structure and unable to accept Self-Organization and Play.
At the end of the line something called Social Cohesion is going down rapidly. The Resilience of Society is decreasing with a high speed. The amount of divorces is rising exponentially. The iron ring of marriage is corroded and easy to break. Many people live on their own are left alone and are even bowling alone.
Bowling Alone is a book of Robert Putnam. Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected. We are disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures. People sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know their neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and socialize with their families less often.
All of this is an indication that the were are in The Break, a step in the Panarchy Cycle. The Break is followed by a fast Reorganization. The disconnected parts of the relations connect again on a new scale. The new Scale is based on a old foundation that is stored in the Collective Memory, the Unconsciousness.
When I started to work in 1976 I never heard of something called HRM. My boss hired me.
He discussed my salary and gave me the assignments.
The salary of my colleagues was a secret. I also did not know why my salary was raised. It just happened.
Three years later I was promoted to manager (group leader). I was very surprised this happened.
My new manager (called a section leader) handed me the files of my employees. I had to take care of them.
They contained many secret documents about what the former managers thought about the employee. At that time the managers talked about the employees in complete secrecy.
We, the New Managers, did not like that. We opened up the secret files, destroyed the “not-objective” data, standardized the data and put the data in a Database later called a HRM-System.
Suddenly I was the one who was responsible for hiring and firing. Every group-leader was different. I was always very open to my employees. We worked as a team to create and maintain software-systems.
I loved to program and design and I never felt the need to stop this. Managing my group was simple. It took about 1 day a week. In this day I had to attend meetings with other managers.
Other group-leaders (mostly much older) were spending all of their time managing their group. I soon found out that they were really managed by their group. They were unable to resist the informal power of some of their employees. When the new salaries were fixed some of them got a lot of money. This became known in my group and I got into trouble.
Why is he paid more than I am paid? He is really doing nothing!
I went to talk with my colleague but he did not want to talk. I talked with my section-leader and I found out that my colleague was his personal friend. He “covered his ass“.
At that time there was a big difference between an employee and a manager. When you became a Manager you became part of an Elite with its own Privileges and Culture. The most important Rule was that people of this Elite always covered the ass of the other members. We, the New Managers, did not like that and we started to destroy the Old Management Culture.
The other group-leaders experienced the same situation. We started to talk about this issue at our Section-meeting. After many discussions we went to talk one level higher (the director). The end result of all our actions was a revolution. We removed all the old powers and took over.
This also happened when I was a student. I was part of the baby-boom-generation that reorganized society. We were the revolutionaries that wanted to create a better society based on the principles of the new age of Aquarius.
Now almost 30 years later my old colleagues and I have created a System that is blocking everything they stood for. Just like my section-leader they want to stay in power.
The big difference between 30 years ago and now is that the New Revolutionaries have to change a (Software) System. It is impossible to detect the Human Cause of all Evil.
We, the Baby-Boom Managers have standardized almost everything. The Systems have taken over Control and the Sad Thing is that almost nobody knows what the Systems are really doing. They live a Life of their Own.
It is almost impossible to reach consencus because many many specialized managers are involved and they all defend their own territory. The Sad Thing is that almost nobody knows what their Territory really is about.
Everything is Magically connected to Everything Else by the PatchWork of Overlapping Systems. A Problem in One Area suddenly comes back in a completely different Area.
The only way to accomplish something is to play the Game of Politics. To play the Game of Politics you need to make friends and you have to stay in the right coalition.
To do this you sometimes have to abandon your friends to reach the Goal. The effect is that nobody trusts nobody anymore or friends are covering the Ass of their friends. The effect is that many incidents are covered up. The effect of the cover up is that many people don’t know what is really happening or (worse) many people know what is happening but discuss the issues in a secret place.
The effect of this is that many people are not working at all. They are gossiping all the time. The effect is a loss of productivity and the only Solution we can think of is to implement more Systems.
The most important effect is a Change of Focus. The focus is directed inside the Company and not outside the Company. Outside the Company somebody is providing the money to play the Game. He or She is called the Customer.
The Systems have transformed the Customer into a Standardized Object stored into a Computer.
The Systems have completely Blocked the View on the most important Asset of a Company, the Human.
What Happened?
We developed a system that wanted to treat Everybody the Same Way.
How did we do that?
Step 1: Classify what everybody is doing (programming, designing, project-management …).
Question: When somebody is capable of everything (a talent) what do you do?
Answer: Always start with the lowest classification in this way people believe work is moving Up.
Step 2: Define a Career Path.
Step 2.1. Define Low (junior), Normal and High (senior). Take care that this is a normal distribution. If you do that people keep the believe that a Senior is better than a Junior!
Step 2.2. Define importance. A designer is more important than a programmer. Manager is more important than designer.
Question: Why is a something more important than something else?
Answer: Something is more important when we pay a higher salary. If we do that people start to believe that money is the most important motivator.
Effect: Everybody wants to become a manager because a manager is the best! The negative effect is that a manager does not like the employees in his department who are better. They are his competitors.
Step 3: Define a test to prove you are allowed to move to the next level.
Question: What defines a talented programmer?
Answer: He has finished his training.
Effect: Employees have to spend a lot of time to pass exams. Training becomes more important than experience. People start to act out of the book.
Step 4: Create specialized departments (Training, Security, Data Management, ..).
To save money we started to train people outside the company. The teachers did not have any experience. They knew what was written in the books that were written by people that did not have any experience in the field they were teaching.
Later the teachers changed into consultants and started to tell the employees and the managers how to do it. Doing the trick is easy. Inventing new tricks and implementing the new tricks becomes very difficult. You have to convince many managers.
Effect: Innovation is tricky bussiness. You have to take a risk and when you fail you are out of the carreer-race. Old approaches are implemented with a different name.
Step 5: Create departments that are testing if the employees are doing what the trainers told them to do (Quality Management). When they don’t do what the trainers told them to do we just don’t promote them.
Effect:
Everybody is Equal.
I hope you see what I am trying to show you. By treating everybody the Same Way we finally have created the Same People.
The top (talent) and the bottom (sick, problems at home …) are gone.
We have Equalized the Population.
The steps 1 to 5 are not the only steps. The System has improved itself all the time.
Before the division employees took care of other employees. We have designed a special approach to take care of the sick and other causalities. This has given them a negative status.
The effect is that some of them deteriorate and others are afraid to tell what the matter is. They go on when they are sick or they ignore the problems at home.
The effect is more problems at home and/or stress-related diseases (Burn-Out).
We have divided managers in groups. Some of them manage resources (!) other use the resources.
The effect is the loss of the team-mentality.
We have divided resources into internal and external resources. We hire them from a specialized company.
The effect is a loss of company-pride a higher level of the team-mentality.
We have automated almost everything to speed up efficiency. The effect is that we have to know the number (the unique identifier) to know about people. We are unable to enter unique information about a person. They are standardized on a higher level.
We have created a special department called HRM. They are managed top-down.
The effect is that at every level we are unable to create a unique solution for a unique situation.
What To Do?
Work in teams.
Start to talk with the employees again.
Be honest and open.
When you feel somebody is special give him a special treatment. Explain this to everybody.
Don’t be afraid to take responsibility for what you have done. Admit mistakes.
Don’t store everything in a database. Forgetting something is a positive thing. It makes is possible to start all over again.
Don’t specialize too much. Get rid of all the departments that are too far away from your primary process, servicing the customer.
Rotate. Don’t keep a person too long in a specialized job. Give experienced people a change to teach or to specialize but never keep them in this job for long.
Stop politics. Never allow that people are playing games with people. Fire people who are playing dirty games.
Surprise people. Don’t plan careers. Give everybody the idea that everything is possible.
Stop the gossiping. Give everybody a change to tell what they don’t like and listen.
Demote. When somebody is incapable to do his job give him the job he is capable of and give him the salary of the job. This stops the expectation that everything always has to move up. When somebody gets into trouble when he is demoted make an exception.
Give employees a chance and the time to help other employees.
Don’t hire too much people outside your company. Give priority to teach your own employees to learn the trick of the outside specialists.
Give your own people the time and the tools to innovate.
Hire outside specialists to do the things that are already stable and repeatable or better automate these activities. They are most of the time very boring. This is a very usefull indication to use IT.
When I read the news I feel the Worldwide Financial System is slowly moving into the disaster zone.
The main reason is the absence of Trust. For almost 25 years I have been active in the Banking Industry.
I started my career as a mathematical analyst doing Operations Research. Our most important client was the International Money Market. The next 25 years I was in many roles involved in this area.
Banking is in its essence very simple. A bank buys and sells money. All the products of a bank are sometimes very complicated structures where the flow of money (the cash flow) is regulated. A bank has to balance its cash flow every day. When the cash flow is unbalanced it has to buy or sell money from other banks or the National Bank.
The money market is the most complicated market. The most important person in this market is called a Dealer. To balance the activities of the Dealers a Manager gives them all kinds of Limits. The sum of all the Limits has to be zero on a daily basis.
When they buy and sell money it is very easy to manage the dealers. You just have to add all the cash flows and compare them with the given number.It became much more complicated when the dealers created new products.
In these new products they started to trade Expectations (Options). An expectation is a statistical construction. To calculate the Limit a new way of calculation had to be developed. Not only a new way of calculation had to be developed we also needed a new way to keep the books.
Everytime when we were able to find a way to solve the problems the dealers invented a new product. They started to trade in expectations of expectations and many other very complicated combinations of other products. In the end we were not able to keep the book anymore.
This was the moment when things went totally wrong. Perhaps you remember the end of Barings where a dealer called Nick Leeson was able to fool almost everybody. He wanted to regain his losses and to do this he had to take more risk in every step he was taking. He was gambling with the money of the bank. I don’t want to offend dealers but I think GAMBLING is the best way to describe the current situation in the financial industry.
Not only the bank is gambling but also Companies and Customers are gambling in every aspect of their lives. Customers buy a house and hope the price of their house will rise. Companies buy a company and hope the merger will make a profit.
Gambling is a zero sum game. Gambling is a very complicated way to distribute a whole. The sum of all the chances is one. To state it simple when one person wins the other has to lose. We created a very complex system that hides the fundamental laws of gambling. An example is inflation. Inflation changes the value of a currency. To compensate the ups and the downs of the currencies money flows from one country to the other.
When a bank is unable to reach zero (balance) it has to lend money. There are many arrangements between banks to make this possible. Most of the time banks operate in clusters or networks. They use preferred partners to do so. When you are playing in the lower league you have to pay more. You are playing in the lower league when the chance that you become unbalanced is high. You are a risk and to compensate the risk you have to pay a higher price because the bank has to reserve money to compensate for the risk. The money the bank has to reserve is not making money.
A very long time ago I was responsible for a project called Global Limits. We used the GEIS (General Electric)-network to connect all the dealing centers in the world. The system operated on a real-time basis. Every transaction with a bank was stored in the central database. With one button a central manager could block a bank. If the bank was blocked the dealers were unable to deal with this bank.
The system was created because of the Oil Crisis. The management of the bank was very afraid the Domino-effect would take place. The Domino-effect happens when a bank goes broke and influences the next one. We calculated this effect on a daily basis.
At that time the banking network was not too complicated. Many banks worked in alliances (ABECOR) and the alliances could stop the cascade.
At this moment we are in a totally different situation. The banking network is worldwide, highly interconnected and the transactions between banks are based on expectations. When a worldwide expectation fails the system is almost unable to stop the cascade.
Most of the time expectations are also balanced. When many expectations fail at the same time the Insurance Industry calls this an Act of God. Acts of God (or Destiny) are outside the reach of statistics. They are so rare that it is impossible to predict them.
It looks like the world is hit by many Acts of God at the same time. The System is able to take one blow and a second blow but at a certain point in time the System is down. The money that was reserved to compensate is gone. At that time only Governments are able to help.
They are able to create (!!!) money to help the System to survive. Creating money is a temporary solution. In the end the balance has to be restored. The total System gets out of balance when very big or world-wide disasters occur. When the System is unbalanced for a long time the system is permanently vibrating and is basically unpredictable (volatile).
The creation of money creates Inflation. There is an end to this Support System when the Inflation rises to an unexceptable level.The only way to solve this problem is to change the value of the Currency or to hide the Inflation. This a trick many countries apply. It buys them some time.
The effect is a change of the flow of money from one country to the other country. The most terrible situation arises when the Economy is going down and Inflation is going up (Stagflation). Stagflation is something the brightest economists are unable to handle. You have to stimulate and stop the System at the same time.
The current system is still highly dependent on the Dollar. When the US is unable to manage the flows of money the Worldwide System is in big problems. Currently the World Economic Power is the cause of many Acts of God and experiences many Acts of God.
Yesterday the former president of the independent financial autority in the US(FED) Alan Greenspan predicted a financial disaster in the US. He explained that the US does not have the financial buffers to handle a crisis. When this crisis comes (the baby-boomers) they have to lend the money elsewhere.
What we see now is a very dangerous situation. The banks are afraid to help their colleagues. They don’t trust anybody anymore. When a bank is unbalanced it has to ask the Government for help. When the Bank has to ask the Government for help the customers that have given the bank a loan demand their loans back. The Bank is unable to survive this. When the first bank has fallen the other banks want their money back. When the money is gone the next bank falls and the next bank falls. An endless cascade starts to move like an avalanche.
Self-organized criticality is one of a number of important discoveries made in statistical physics and related fields over the latter half of the 20th century. Per Bak used the metaphorical visualization of a “sandpile” on which new sand grains were being slowly sprinkled to cause”avalanches”. The Domino-effect takes place when the last grain falls and all the sandpiles start to move.
What Per Bak discovered was a Power Law. The Acts of God are predictable by a mechanism that underlies the natural phenomenon in question. The Power Law is fractal which means that the rules of the system come back at every level and behave like the tones and overtones of music. Sometimes the disaster is repeated at every level of enfolding of the system and creates a multi-level avalanche.
What Per Bak discovered was that the sand-pile system is fractal. It is a self-reference. Old fashioned statistics, used by Banks, are unable to handle fractals.They are not able to predict the “sudden disaster“.
“Conventional finance theory treats big one-day market jumps or drops as anomalies that can be safely ignored when gauging risk or forecasting returns. But if you remove the ten biggest one-day moves (both up and down) from a chart of the S&P 500 over the past 20 years, you get a picture very different from market reality. The big moves matter“
“In market terms, a power-law distribution implies that the likelihood of a daily or weekly drop exceeding 20% can be predicted from the frequency of drops exceeding 10%, and that the same ratio applies to a 10% vs. a5% drop. In bell-curve finance, the chance of big drops is vanishingly small and is thus ignored. The 1987 stock market crash was, according to such models, something that could happen only once in several billion billion years. Another aspect of the real world tackled by fractal finance is that markets keep the memory of past moves, particularly of volatile days, and act according to such memory. Volatility breeds volatility; it comes in clusters and lumps. This is not an impossibly difficult or obscure framework for understanding markets. In fact, it accords better with intuition and observed reality than the bell-curve finance that still dominates the discourse of both academics and many market players“.
What they are telling is that disaster breeds disasters. What they are also telling is that INTUITION is the best tool to use when you want to besuccessful in the financial market.
Alan Greenspan explained yesterday what he experienced when he was trying to convince the Government to stop to destroy the Country. He also told the reporter that he was convinced they would not stop the process and he was also convinced the process could not be stopped. I hope he is wrong.
I have worked for a long time as a Chief Program Manager and Corporate Architect/Strategist for a very big bank. I was responsible for a cluster of projects with a very big budget (>500 000.000 Euro).
I managed >120 managers and >10.000 specialists in these programs. To manage all the projects a special Program Office was used. It registered and monitored all the data and most important of all, it managed all the Risks.
Later I was part of a smal Strategic Unit of the bank that was responsible for Strategy, Architecture, Alliances and Research. One of our tasks was to do a Risk Analysis of important projects.
Example
One day when I worked at the strategic unit of the bank a huge project was announced. The budget (>500 mio) was very very big. We advised to abandon the whole idea. The Complexity of this project was too big. It would fail for sure. Many years later we proved to be right.
What we adviced was to upgrade the existing infrastructure. Many years later this was the solution that solved the big problem “how to show that not all the money was wasted for nothing“. This example shows a very important and simple rule. Big projects always Fail.
Reinvent the Wheel
The last ten years when I was a Meta Group Analyst and Consultant I have evaluated many failed projects. All the time I found the same cause. People don’t apply “the lesson that are learned“. Sadly enough we want to “re-invent the wheel” until eternity.
I am still in contact with many highly experienced and talented people in my profession all over the world. All of us have the feeling that the world has turned completely mad.
Big advisory bureaus and important analysts are telling stories that are proven to be wrong for decades. This is not strange. It happens all the time. They have to attract attention, sell the software they have been building and keep the people they employ working.
What is really strange is that people who are working at `the other side`, called Business Believe Them. We did not believe them at that time. We used our experience. What is “going wrong in big projects” is already known for 30 years.
Managers believe packages like SAP will solve every problem. The implementation of a package that is “doing everything” has never been successful. It is a well known disaster. This is also a very important and simple rule.
A Government Agency in the Netherlands is now on a colliding course because of a SAP implementation. The loss is very big (Tax Money). It proves the simple rule.
Managers believe Outsourcing will lower the costs and increase the quality. At this moment the time-to-market in a big bank is more than 3 years, the quality of the software is decreasing and the costs are rising.
The reason is outsourcing. Outsourcing fails when the relationship between the users and the IT-department that is servicing the users is disturbed. When you don’t understand what the other is really doing you are not able to help him. This is also a simple rule everybody will understand.
Worst Case Scenario
I will tell you a Worst Case Scenario. The worst case scenario is a combination of all my experiences.
Sales
The first step of the scenario is the Selling of the Package. This takes place at the inter-company-network. The inter-company-network consists of executives that are part of many advisory-boards of big companies.
When IBM was in his most powerfull phase it could influence high level executives in Government (even Ministers) and Industry. The executives are trading opportunities. If you buy my packages I will buy your cars. There is nothing wrong with that.
The strange thing is that all of the high-level executives know about the big problems related to packages and outsourcing. They are adviced by low level executives that promise them that this time it will be different.
Miracles
A new miracle approach is invented that will solve every problem. The current Miracle is called Service Oriented Architectures (SOA).
When the low level executives have reached the top they will be adviced by the same people telling the same stories. The funny thing is that almost nobody remembers that he is hearing the same story he was telling his boss.
Marketing
The main reason is that the same approaches are given different names and different stories. This is called Marketing.
SAP is a huge software program. It has been build to do `everything`.
To customize this huge software program a software program is developed. A customer has to program this program. This is a very complex activity. The language of the programming program is very special.
Paying a Lot of Money for Nothing
Because programming the program is special the specialists are hired from a specialized company. To hire them you have to pay a “special price” (very expensive).
Most of the time the specialists are trained to become a specialist in a few weeks. They learn the trade at the expense of the customer. Hiring young not experienced people is cheap.
Highly experienced people are expensive. Most of them leave the company because they don’t like the culture of “hit and run” anymore. Big companies don’t hire people that are working “on their own“. They believe (for some reason) that big companies are providing quality.
Big companies have to use big companies because of liability. So many projects fail that they need a way of “getting back the money” when “things go wrong“.
Mediators
When “things go wrong” the problem is so complex that a court is unable to solve the conflict. To “solve the conflict” specialist are hired (mediators). They are also provided by the big companies.
Implementing SAP is big business. The advisors don’t understand anything of the business of their client. This is not needed. The Business People have to tell them “What to do“.
The business people don’t understand the language of the programmers. They are afraid to show they don’t understand the specialists. They never ask questions.
Miscommunication
When they ask questions the specialists talk a language they don’t understand. The specialists don’t understand why the customer is not understanding them. The main reason is that they don’t listen at all. They love to talk with the computer.
The most important people called users are never involved in the project. To convince the users communication experts are hired from the specialized companies.
At a certain point in time the managers become very nervous. They feel something is going wrong. They are afraid to admit that. They start to intimidate the people of the big advisory company.
Now another specialist, called an account manager, is used to manage the managers. He is telling a well known fairy tale. The project is almost finished. They need a little bit more time and of course they need more money. The managers agree. The account managers are trained to tell specialized fairy tales.
Fairy Tales
This starts a new phase. The fairy tale story is coming back all the time and the reaction of the managers is the same. The budget of the project is increasing all the time and the moment of delivery is also moving with the same speed.
At a certain moment in time the manager is replaced or better he leaves the sinking ship just in time. A new manager arrives.
He is not able to stop the project because he is not informed. After some time he knows the terrible truth. The process of telling fairy tales, the increase of budget and the movement of the date of implementation is restored. I was once a witness of a project that staid in this state for almost ten years.
The company is really in trouble when the next phase starts. This phase is `Let’s implement what we have build` because `we have to show we have build something`.
Implementing without Testing
At that moment the users (the victims) are confronted with something they feared for a long time. When they are talking with friends or relatives they hear the same sad story all the time. Because there is no alternative the victims learn to cope with the situation.
When they finally have learned to use the software a new release of the package is created by the vendor and the whole process starts all over again.
Worse: Outsourcing
Outsourcing is a brilliant trick of the managers. The responsibility for the failing project is moved to an outside vendor. They are now the object of aggression.
The managers wants to manage the Outsourcers. To do this many new managers, Vendor Managers, are created. Bureaucracy is increasing.
What the Vendor Managers don’t see is the different Culture of the Outsourcer. A highly decentralized company starts to work with a highly hierarchical company. This creates confusion.
A comparable problem is the culture of the programmers. So called cheap programmers in India are not accustomed to think for them selves. They just do what they are told to do without questioning anything. The customers expects creative programmers and the programmers expect programmed customers.
The situation is getting worse when the programmers know they are able to earn more money at a different company. They move and disturb the continuity of the project-team.
This is happening in India all the time now. Introducing a new programmer in a project takes a lot of time and disturbs the project. When the amount of changes reaches a certain level the project will always fail. This is also applicable to software-changes.
The real customers don’t talk with the programmers. They talk with the managers that are talking to managers that are talking to managers.
Somewhere in the Chain of Communication all the meaning is lost. The result is something they don’t want, the users don’t want and the customers don’t want.
Last but not least the process took so long that the market has changed. Everything starts all over again.
Do you now understand why there is such a shortage in IT specialist? About 30% of IT-projects is succesfull. This means that 70% of the IT-specialists are working for nothing.
If we add the amount of “succesfull” projects that were delivered too late or the amount of projects were the implementation phase took so long because the software was “not-usable” the percentage is even lower.
1%
I have the strange feeling that about 1% of the projects are really succesfull. These projects are projects were a small amount of programmers (max 15) worked in close cooperation with the users. The project was given a Fixed Budget and a Fixed Time-Frame.
The target was to develop a small “package” that Could be Adapted by the Users Themselves.
My Advice
Get rid of Bureaucracy.
Calculate how many people are really programming in your company and how many people are doing other things. Plot this ratio in history and you will see the “Bureaucracy-index”. This will give you some idea about what you are doing.
Adapt what is working as long as possible.
Keep it Simple.
A team of 15 talented IT-people is capable of doing more than a group of 1000 not-talented IT-People.
Never trust a Hype. Always look what is behind the Marketing Language. If you don’t understand the technological language, ask questions and don’t stop until you understand everything. You are not stupid!
Never believe Everything is Possible with One Package.
Never create software that is able to solve many possible problems. Solve the problems that are known. Nothing more.
Never create a program that needs a program to program the program. This is a trap.
Read About Mapping when you want to know more about a simple way to solve complex problems.
Are you sometimes driving around a in big city without any idea where you are going? Do you experiencing loops when you are using your GPS? The cause of the strange behavior of your GPS could be a Solar Flare.
Do you know that a pilot is unable to fly a plane because everything is controlled by computers? If the Flare is strong enough it will destroy the computer system and the plane will crash. This has happened already.
Do you know that your car is full of computers? When they stop working your car will simply stop.
All over the world the old navigation tools like lighthouses are demolished. Every ship on earth is using GPS. If the GPS-system suddenly stops ships will not be able to navigate.
Is your memory deteriorating? Do you need a small book to write down what you don’t want to forget?
Do you have the feeling that time is speeding up? Everything is moving faster and faster.
Are you waking up in the middle of the night (between 2-3) without any reason?
Are you experiencing hallucinations?
The Sun and other sources of intense radiation are influencing the magnetic field of the Earth. Your brain is entrained to this field. The entrainment is measured by something called the Schumann Resonance.
Earth’s background base frequency (the Schumann Resonance) fluctuates and is rising. For decades the overalll measurement was 7.8 cycles per second. This was once thought a constant. That is why global military communications were using this frequency. However recently reports set the rate at over 11 and climbing.
The strongest of the seven resonances is 7.83 Hz, the alpha brain-wave. If the rise in resonance continues it will influence our ability to relax deeply, balance and integrate our mind/body connection. It will influence REM sleep and dreaming. If it continues to rise, it will breach the threshold into “fast” beta activity. This will create attention deficit disorder and worse Alzheimer-disease. The amount of (young) people that are experiencing ADHD is rising.
This is the reason of sleeping problems, the experience of increasing stress, problems with the short term memory and (later long term memory), a sudden experience of the dream state when you are awake (hallucination). You “see” things that normal people never “see” (UFO’s??). Many people don’t want to discuss this with other people because they are afraid to confess “they are not normal”.
The earth magnetic field is wobbling. Some scientist are predicting a complete dramatic change of the Magnetic Pole of the Earth.. The magnetic pole is also moving fast now. The North Magnetic Pole could soon abandon Canada, migrate north of Alaska and eventually wind up in Russia. Scientists connect the fast movement of the Pole to an upcoming Pole Shift.
A solar flare is an explosion on the Sun that happens when energy stored in twisted magnetic fields (usually above sunspots) is suddenly released. Flares produce a burst of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to x-rays and gamma-rays.
Not only the Sun produces flares. Suddenly out of the blue Magnetars (Neutron Stars) appeared.
On August 24, 1998, there was an explosion on the sun as powerful as a hundred million hydrogen bombs. The explosion was an “X-class” solar flare, and during years around solar maximum, such as 1998, such flares are commonplace. They happen every few days or weeks. The Aug. 24th event was powerful. A few days later another blast wave swept past Earth. The source of the blast was SGR 1900+14, a neutron star about 45,000 light years away.
It was the strongest burst of cosmic x-rays and gamma rays we’ve ever recorded. Its power was a million billion (1015) gauss. The magnetic field of the sun is less than 10 gauss in most places, and about 1000 gauss near sunspots. Since 1998, Earth has experienced about 10 similar events.
A huge burst of radiation causes something called an EMP, an ElectroMagnetic Pulse. This is what happened in Quebec in 1998. It was a minor EMP. When the intensity of the flare is very high the energy of the Pulse is able to destroy everything that is connected to the Electricity Power System.
Any unprotected electrical equipment and anything connected to electrical cables, which act as giant lightning rods or antennae will be affected by the pulse. Older, vacuum tube (valve) based equipment is much less vulnerable to EMP; Soviet Cold War-era military aircraft often had avionics based on vacuum tubes.
Most susceptible to EMP are those components with low voltage and current requirements such as solid state devices, integrated circuits, semi conductor devices, digital computers, digital circuitry, alarm systems and electronic sensors.
Generally, as the size of the device decreases, its ability to absorb voltage and current decreases, which results in increased susceptibility to EMP. Due to insufficient funds being available serious problems exist in the Civil and tactical military communications systems.
An EMP will totally destroy the global GPS-system.
Dr. Lowell Wood of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory described the effect of an EMP attack as instantly regressing a country dependent on 21st century technology by more than 100 years. Little has been done to safeguard U.S. electrical systems from the EMP. The EMP Commission reported, an EMP attack on America is a serious possibility and one for which the United States is unprepared.
The EMP Commission was very worried about a terrorist attack. A group of terrorist detonates a small nuclear weapon at a certain altititude. This will create a huge EMP. They did not look at the scenario of an EMP caused by a gigantic flare. At that time nobody was imagining this. I don’t know if somebody in government is looking at the Sun Flare or the Magnetar scenario.
Why are we not informed about this?
We are informed. Everything I am telling you is published in newspapers and broadcasted on television. What we don’t see is the “total picture”.
Why are we not informed about the “total picture”? The total picture is really simple to explain. “Something” in space is producing an enormous amount of radition. The radition is producing heat. Just like the frog in hot water we are unable to feel it but now “strange things” are happening.
Highly sensitive people experience strange sleeping problems. Attention deficit disorder is a huge problem with young kids. We experience strange weather. All these “strange” things are explained by one factor. Explaining Everything by only one factor is the best you can do in science. The principle is called Ockhams Razor (The simplest explanation is the best explanation).
One thing I can imagine is that the total picture will create fear and “strange behavior”. When you “know” a wordwide disaster is coming people would stop working and get into panic or (better) start to enjoy life.
If you believe we are creating our own reality the explanation for what is happening could even be simpler. We don’t need an external power at all. The amount of people that believe the World will soon end is increasing. The 2012-scenario based on the predictions of the Mayan Calender is the talk of the day.
I receive an increasing amount of Emails where people predict an upcoming Apocalypse. If a collective believes this will happen, it will happen. Science has proven this also. We have to prevent that the Dooms Day Scenario becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It will generate a worldwide apathy. People that believe the Apocalypes believe in Destiny. When you believe in Destiny you wait and see.
We have created an world-wide infrastructure that is highly vulnerable. We are highly dependent on infrastructures that are too centralized. If we change the Central Infrastructure into a shared Collective Infrastructure we are independent of almost every disaster. We have to stop creating one point of total failure.
What we have to do is perhaps difficult to realize. We have to become locally indepent of the World Infrastructure. We have to grow our own foods again. We have to create local markets. We have to stop to optimize the value-chain. We need wharehouses when the system fails. We have to generate electricity in our own home. All this is possible.
It will even lower the costs and create a better balance in the ecology and the social infrastructure. People will move out of the big cities and start to produce food. They will start to collaborate on a local level and their culture will be preserved. We don’t have to destroy the collective infrastructure. We can still share our surplusses. We can still move food and electricity from one place to the other but the distance between the centres will decrease. This will save a lot of energy.
Since 1915, Marcel Duchamp occasionally bought simple objects in order to exhibit them as art objects. What he wanted to show is that “The Spectator Makes the Picture“.
To many people the Art of Duchamp was the End of Art.
The end of art was also a new beginning. Many of the artists who rejected the traditional art object found new realms to explore, by moving to a new level of abstraction, Meta-Art.
The meta-artwork is a class of possibilities rather than an individual thing. It may take the form of an always changing pattern (Open Form), a collection of building blocks (Interactivity), a physical process (Process Art), a computer program (Algorithmic Art), or a mere idea (Concept Art).
What Meta-Art is trying to accomplish is to generate all the possibilities and “Let the Spectator Choose what he Likes“.
Producing beautiful art is not easy. Especially if you have to make a living out of it. Many artists would sell their soul to the Devil in exchange for a magical tool that would produce the perfect artwork, enchanting their patrons and producing fame and fortune for themselves. In every era artists searched for generators and libraries of beautiful components. It is well-known that geniuses like Bach and Mozart used music-generators.
The concept of an Art Generator was described in the book “Ars Generalis Ultima“of Ramon Llull (1232-1315).Lullus (his Latin name) got his idea from the ancient Astrologers, the Magi. Ars Generalis Ultima inspired Gottfried Leibniz who inspired Gilles Deleuze (“Le Pli“) and George Chatin (“The Limits of Reason“).
Interviewer: “Can you tell us something about your new opera?” Giuseppe Verdi: “It’s exactly the same notes as the previous one, I merely changed the order a little bit.”
Giving the spectator a choice can be done on the level of a picture (“Now I like it“) or on the level of the process itself. “What he likes” is permanently changing according to the moods of the spectator. If would be even better if the environment and the spectator were constantly in the Now, kept in “a Permanent state of Pure Beauty“.
Mondriaan was inspired by JAZZ
This is what Mondriaan wanted to achieve “Our material environment can only posses a pure beauty (i.e., be healthy and satisfy utility in a truly direct way), if it no longer reflects the egoistic feelings of our small personality: it does not even have any lyrical expression any more, but is purely plastic.”
“For the present moment I see no possibility for arriving at a purely ‘plastic’ expression by only following the organism of what is to be built, focusing only on utility. Our intuition is not sufficiently developed for that, and too involved with the past. [. . .]
For instance, utility often requires repetition in the way of nature (in workers housing, for instance), and in that case the architect needs the concept of plastic expression and the power to go against what the practical goal seems to indicate. Because there are always possibilities for architectural solutions which satisfy the practical goal and the esthetic appearance.”
Mondriaan experimented with Metrical Repetition and Symmetry. He studied Improvization and Jazz to find the perfect pattern. At that time Mathematics and Computers were not helpful to him. Chaos-theory (Emergence), Fractals (Self Reference) and Super Symmetry (The Multi Dimensional String) were “invented” much later.
Mathematicians have been gifted with the Talent of Art. All of them love Music and many of them make music. To me Mathematics is about pure Beauty. It is not a coincedence that Mathematics is the leading force to create innovative Art.
Mathematics in combination with the Computer is capable of much more. It is capable of generating and controlling adaptive environments. Places where happenings take place that create new narratives. We are not far away to create the automated Chronotope, the Holodeck in the famous television series Star Trek.
I have been involved in many experiments in this area. I worked with Erik Vreedenburgh and Remko Scha and Ad Luytwieler . The website of Artifical contains many briljant articles. I used them in this blog (Thanks).
All of them are able to create beautifull buildings for a budget that is a fraction of what we pay now. They even create adaptive buildings. Buildings that can be used by everybody in every state of his body and in every state of his life.
It is time to move ahead. The Computer, the Calculator, is not only capable of slaving the human. He is also able to serve and help us to calculate, to count, to tell us about Harmony and even pure Beauty.
A Human needs to be creative to Understand The Self.
Arthur Koestler lived between 1905 and 1983. The first book I read was “The Roots of Coincidence(1973)”. Its main subject is Synchronicity.
The Reptile Brain Fights Back
In the “Ghost in the Machine(1967)” Koestler argues that the human brain has been built upon earlier more primitive brain structures. When a human is attacked the lower layer is dissociated from the higher layer. The human transforms into a reptile fighting machine (The Ghost). Much later the Dutch psychologist Piet Vroon wrote a very impressive book about the same subject “The Tears of the Crocodile” (1998).
Creation
In 1964 Koestler wrote “The Act of Creation“. The book is about theory building. A new theory is a fusion of two previously separate frames of reference (“bisociation”). For example, dynamic systems theory + psychotherapy = family systems therapy.
A good example of conceptual blending can be found with the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud who used the Metaphor of the Steam Machine to explain the Human Emotions and the Sexual System.
Fusion
What Koestler is telling is that the creative process is not bounded by rules. It just happens when two separate frames fuse. The fusion is not controlled by reason at all. The mind uses many different blending strategies like perceived internal consistency (It fits), beauty (I love it), the ability to make novel predictions (how exciting), or group pressure (They want it to fit).
Against Method
This is also the message Feyerabend wanted to tell in his highly attacked book Against Method(1975). A citation: “My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits. The best way to show this is to demonstrate the limits and even the irrationality of some rules which she, or he, is likely to regard as basic“.
Confusion
You probably ask your self why I have combined so many issues in a few lines. It creates confusion. You are “mixed up”. The blends I wanted to mix are not mixing at all.
Let me help you.
Wheels within Wheels
The seven wheels (chakra) are rotating around two complentary centers centered in the Heart being the pump that connectes two flows of blood that because iron is moving through a magnetic field produce electricity.
If you believe the theory of Koestler you will probably see (or feel) that I am discussing two separate layers. I am using the layer of the Reptile and I am using the layer of Thinking to explain something. In both of the layers something happens called (Con)Fusion.
Dissocation
In the Reptile-layer an attack dissociates two layers. The dissociation is caused by confusion. The pattern of the higher layer of Thinking is suddenly disturbed. The sudden “explosion” needs a lot of energy. This energy is needed to dissociate just like the dissociation of water in oxygen and hydrogen needs a lot of energy. After the attack the Human is highly dissociated. He is unable to remember what he was doing. The association of the layers needs a new process of fusion.
Insight
When something produces an In-Sight (Aha!) the fusion of the frames takes place and suddenly a lot of energy is produced (the emotion of happiness).
The two layers are part of seven connected layers called Chakras (Wheels). The Chakra’s were discovered by Oriental Scientists.
If Oriental Science is not one of the frames you use you will not understand. The explanation will not fuse. Perhaps you believe Oriental Science is not using the right method. You don’t believe Feyerabend. Oriental Science uses the blending strategy of Beauty. Perhaps you don’t believe Beauty is an important strategy.
Embodiment
Perhaps you don’t know what George Lakoff and many others have discovered. They discovered that Humans use their Body to Think(Embodiment).
The only thing you can do is “give it a try“. Perhaps you are able to generate novel predictions or this article proves Oriental Science is not scientific and you are proven right again.
If this Blog is not blending perhaps a next one will. I am telling the same story again and again. Every Human is doing this until he is attacked and has to connect the seven layers again. If this happens perhaps the 6th or even the 7th layer will open.
Survival
The layer of the Reptile is called the Basic Chakra. It is connected to reproduction (sex) and survival. It is the lowest chakra. The layer of Thinking is called the Throat Chakra. This is the 5th Chakra. It is related to communication and expression. The System contains Seven chakra’s.
Twee Paths of Change (PoC) zijn verbonden via het Hart waar ook de twee bloedsomlopen samen komen
Paths of Change
If you want to understand the Human you have to accept the Seven layers and connect them at the right level. All the layers contain the same stages. In the 5th level fusion and con-fusion takes place. It also takes place at all the other layers.
Connecting a layer needs a specialist. The specialist needs to understand the level he has to act on. He has to understand the strategy to accomplish association. The best strategy to accomplish this is Beauty or Harmony. He has to understand that an association at one level is able to disturb the next levels. To harmonize all the layers he has to be intelligent (the 5th layer). The specialist needs the 4th layer, the Heart, to be able to take care. He also needs the 7th layer of Consciousness to become aware of this.
Arthur Koestler fought against Nazism
During the Second World War, Koestler continually spoke out against the Nazi regime in Germany – his Central European Jewish family background made him particularly involved in a way that many British and United States politicians were not. He had also witnessed personally, the growth of extremist tendencies in the region.
Koestler and a minority of writers and public figures believed that if they sufficiently described the horrors being committed in Europe in news media and public meetings, it would spur the West to action. Despite their efforts, these protests often fell on deaf ears. Capturing their frustration, Koestler described these people as the “screamers“.
Screamers
“We, the screamers, have been at it now for about ten years. We started on the night when the epileptic van der Lubbe set fire to the German Parliament; we said that if you don’t quench those flames at once, they will spread all over the world; you thought we were maniacs. At present we have the mania of trying to tell you about the killing-by hot steam, mass electrocution, and live burial of the total Jewish population of Europe. So far three million have died. It is the greatest mass killing in recorded history; and it goes on daily, hourly, as regularly as the ticking of your watch. I have photographs before me on the desk while I am writing this, and that accounts for my emotion and bitterness“.
Just like Feyerabend Koestler was a “screamer” all his life. He protested against almost every act of unjustice. To earn money he wrote many books and articles. He researched almost every subject he could find (including the para-normal). He inspired many artists (Orwell, Sting, Pat Metheny). Many of his insights were proved right much later.
Mythic Personality
Koester was a Mythic and he lived the life of a Mythic. In 1983 suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and terminal Leukemia, Koestler committed suicide via drug overdose. Koestler practiced his own preaching. He was one of the promoters of Euthanasia.
Later I also read many other books and articles like “The dialogical imagination”, “Towards a philosophy of the act”, “Discourse in the Novel”, “Rabelais and His World”, “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics” and “Speech Genres and Other Late Essays”.
1 Chronotope
Bakhtin invented the term Chronotope, “The place where the knots of narrative are tied” or “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature“.
Currently we use the term Content or Media for Literature.
A Chronotope is a Topological Concept
Space (Place, Location) and Time (the narrative) are connected by a Knot.
A knot is a complicated twist in a rope.
The twist is needed when you want to close a system in itself.
The simplest topological structure that visualizes twisted space/time is the Moebius Ring.
2 Narratives
The Chronotope is the Centre out of which every narrative that we are able to tell is enfolding and unfolding.
It produces narratives and absorbs narratives.
Bahktin places Folk-Lore, Myth, the Language of the People, in the Centre.
Every narrative contains a twist, a moment where the expansion of the beginning turns to the contraction of the end.
It is the moment where the narrative is balanced. The reader holds his breath.
It is also the moment where the narrative is aware of itself. It observes the whole.
Sometimes the twist is in the end. You know “who done it”.
Sometimes the narrative starts with the twist. There are even narratives without a twist. You know all the time what will happen.
Scientists don’t realize that a scientific article is also a narrative.
They use citation to prove they are telling a true story.
Funny enough scientific citation has created the Internet. A hypertext is nothing but a citation-structure.
3 Citation
Old narratives produce new narratives. This is always accomplished by Citation. “The word in language is half someone else’s.
It becomes “one’s own” only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention.
Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language. . . but rather it exists in other people’s mouths,
in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own“”. The cursive sentence between brackets is a citation of Bahktin.
4 Dialoque
New narratives also oppose old narratives. They are Dialogic. “The entire life of language, in any area of its use . . . is permeated with dialogic relationships“.
“Thus at any given moment of its historical existence, language is heteroglot from top to bottom:
it represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth”
The Centre generates new narratives all the time.
They are a mix of the old and the new.
The centre is the Centrifugal Force and this force is powered by Contradiction.
5 Monoloque
The Institutions, the Ruling Power, are constantly trying to standardize (the Centripetal force). They formulate rules and try to transform the dialogue into a monologue.
The centripetal and the centrifugal force create a huge tension.
This tension moves the Wheel of Creation. The wheel always moves through the stages of Order and Chaos. In the middle of the Tornado of Creation is the Centre, the Chronotope. In the centre you will always find rest and inspiration.
The monologue (the magisterial dialogue) is the dialogue of the Magister, the scientist, the manager, the judge, the physician and the teacher.
They use science, the law, books or other Magisters to enforce their power. By formulating rules they try to destroy the creative centre (the context).
6 Context
“A context is potentially unfinalized; a code must be finalized. A code is only a technical means of transmitting information; it does not have cognitive, creative significance. Code is deliberately killed context“.
At this moment the Centripetal force is implemented in the Search Engine.
Narratives are found by typing codes. This makes it very difficult to find a context. Companies like Google are manipulating the coding. They are paid by the Centripetal Force of the Commercial Companies.
Creation
The centrifugal force is never at rest. It always generates new alternatives.
The creation of new literature is not bounded by rules. Every time a new structure is defined the Centre starts to play with the rules and generates a new combination.
The Centre is not only combining rules it even invents new rules. The Centre is the inventor of new Games to Play.
Producing literature is a process of spiralling out.
It follows a cycle but at a certain point in time a new Centre appears and the Cycle starts a new process of Folk-lore.
The new centre is always connected to the old Centre. New myths and new fairy tales are created that are a representation of the Spirit of the Time.
With and Against the Clock
Every cycle is governed by a Clock.
The periodicity of the Clocks is determinated by the number five. It runs at a frequency of 1250, 250, 50, 10 or 2 years. There are frequencies that are moving faster (the Atom) and much slower (the Universe).
Bahktin has developed a very interesting theory about the development of the Chronotopes in history.
7 The Cycle of Western Culture
The Sheng Cycle.is the result of Connecting the points of a 3×3 Magic Square called the Lo Shu. The cycle can be mapped on Paths of Change wich is a variant of the Quaternio (Fourfold) of Carl Jung.
Cycle generator based on the Chinese Sheng Cycle. The wave is a Sinus related to Harmonic Theory.
Cycles
This theory was reinvented by Ray Tomes when het researched the data of the Institute of the Cycles created by US Government to explain the Great Depression.
The Kondratiev cycle has a periodicity of 50 years. The cycle is created by using the Sheng Cycle generated by the Lo Shu.
The Bahktin Cycle. The cycle is generated with the Lo Shu also with a Periodicity of 250 Years.
The five Chronotopes of Bahktin
I will tell the Tale of the Chronotopes of Bahktin on the level of the Cycle of Culture (P= 1250 .years, 250years per stage).
Between 450 and 700 the Roman Empire is destroyed by the Huns. It is the time of the Great Deportations. People out of Asia move to the West. They are the ancestors of the Ostrogotes, the Visigotes, the Franks, the Gauls, the Germans and the Celts. 1250 years later they are integrated in what we now call Europe. Between 700 and 2000 the Europeans explore and conquer the World.
Around 1200 the new powers have created many Kingdoms and have organized the Crusades to conquer the Holy Land. To show their power they build the Cathedrals. The Cathedrals are the instrument of the Education of the Masses. The old folk-lore is transformed to the new of the Christian Faith. The old-folklore is not destroyed. Many symbols and important events are preserved. They are cited. The transition of the Sun in Winter is transformed in Christmas. The new apostles are connected to the old animals of the old Wheel of Fortune.
Between 1200 and 1450 the Chronotope of the Greek Romance (Tristan and Isolde, Arthur and The Grail) appears. It is the Chronotope of Being and Destiny. “There are a lot of suddenly’s”. Everything happens. The actor in this Chronotope is without identity. He is tested by destiny. When he has passed the test he is not changed. There is no time and space. Time (“adventure-time”) is reversible. The actors are public figures and space is public space. In the narratives we are able to see and hear everything.
We are in the Middle Ages. In the outside world destiny is also playing its evil game. Western Civilization is almost destroyed by the plague, feminine and wars between the Kingdoms. Even the Christian Empire of Rome is divided by a schism (Byzantium). At the end only a few Kingdoms survive. These Kings become Emperors. They represent God on Earth.
This (1450-1700) is the time of the Chronotope of the Adventure. It is the Chronotope of Becoming. The identity of the actor is transforming. He is responsible for his own actions. Life is full of turning points (twists). The actor wants to take control of the outside world. Space becomes “private space”.
To give the reader insight in what is happening the Observer is introduced. He is a voyeur, a prostitute, a rambler, a rover, a tramp, a spy, a servant or an animal. The observer is not influencing the story at all. He is just watching. Objectivity is also introduced in space (court).
In the outside world we are in the Time of Renaissance (the Era of Discovery). It is the time of new inventions in Science (Copernicus), Art (Leonard Da Vinci) and Religion (Reformation, Luther, Calvin). The Bible is translated in the language of the people. It is also the time of the Great Explorations (Columbus) of the world outside the West. Western Culture starts his quest to control Nature and eventually the World.
The next Chronotope is the Biography (1700-1950), the praise of a public figure who has accomplished something in life. We are moving from the outside world to the inside world of the actor.
Inner space is closed. “This offers a new relationship to one’s own self, one’s own particular “I”- with no witnesses, without any concessions to the voice of a “third person“.
Outside events affect the inner world. The actor is not showing this. In the outside world the actor is judged by his actions and not by his inner space (his essence). “The essence of man is realized not by his condition but by his activity“.
To give the reader a view on the inner space the outsider is introduced. His outside actions are governed by a distorted inner space. The outsider (the fool, the eccentric) acts as a reference.
The actor is a pretender. He is constantly in doubt, grumbling, cynical and sarcastic. He is also passive. He is watching from a distance. Everything is Relative (Bahktin was a fan of Einstein). The only time when the actor is able to show himself is at the carnival. During this short period he is allowed to choose his own mask.
This is the time of the Industrial Revolution. It is the era of mechanization. It starts with the invention of the Mill and the Factory. It ends with the mechanized Consumer watching Television.
Starting in 1950 we are again in the phase of Folk-lore. Western Civilization is moving to a new Centre, Earth.
New myths and legends will be created. They have to be based on all the tales, myths and legends that are available on Earth. Some of them will be a citation. Others will be an opposition.
All kinds of dialogues will take and have to take place. We will experience many conflicts (Mennipian Dialogue). We will also have to listen and ask questions to understand the other cultures (Socratic Dialogue). We have to stop our Western Magisterial Monologue.
In the beginning it will be a Heteroglossia (a many voicedness), a very complicated Knot we have to untie. When we have found the tread we will be able to weave a new web of narratives that will start the phase of the Greek Romance again.
Between now and 2100 “We must make the new by our own effort”.“We have to face problems of reality and human potential, problems of freedom and necessity, and the problem of creative initiative“. We have to become persons “who emerge along with the world and reflect the historical emergence of the world itself”.
“In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding — in time, in space, in culture. . . . Our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space and because they are others”
We have to write our own Novel. “There is no causality in novels, no genesis, no explanations based on the past, on the influences of the environment or of upbringing and so forth. Every act a character commits is in the present, and in this sense is not predetermined”.
We have to act without hesitation and leave history behind. There is no experience we can reuse. The future is unfinalized (open).
The Magisters are not able to tell us what to do. They are out of tricks. We have to put off our own masks and take responsibility for what we are doing. “There is no alibi for being”. We have to stop pretending and use citations of others to prove we are right.
9 Carnival
We are now part of the Worldwide Carnival of Fools. Choose your mask out of the many masks that are available all over the world. Listen to the stories of other cultures and be surprised about the beauty and the experience they are containing. Give the Fools and the Eccentrics, the Outsiders, a chance to help you.
Laugh.
It will be fun.
I want to close with a citation of Paul Feyerabend (Killing Time (1995)): “People, intellectuals especially, seem unable to be content with a little more freedom, a little more happiness, a little more light. Perceiving a small advantage, they seize it, circumscribe it, nail it down, and in this way prepare a New Age of ignorance, darkness and slavery. It is rather surprising that there are still people who want to help others for personal reasons, because they are kindhearted and because they have not been intimidated by principles. It is even more surprising that some of the people can work in institutions despite the greed, the incompetence, the power struggles that seem to surround the noblest cause.”
Do you want to know more about Feyerabend read The Act of Creation: About Fusion and Con-fusion
Many people think I am a very intelligent person. I am able to solve very complex problems in a very short time. In reality I am a normal person. I use a trick. The trick is called Mapping.
I map a complex unknown domain to a well known simple domain. I sol]]><
