A big, big picture

The “memo” that few individuals see
or bother to read (absorb)
because they assume tomorrow
is going to be like yesterday — NOT …

This page provides
a mental exploration landscape
for navigating a world
moving toward unimagined futureS

The world in which we are embedded

This navigation implies time usage thinking
and time investments

Peter Drucker and Edward de Bono are the
major top-of-the-food-chain contributors

Is it really necessary to elaborate on the
advantages of the top-of-the-food-chain idea?

A basic foundation of awareness for action thinking
aimed toward different tomorrowS ↓

The History of the World in Two Hours — YouTube

If you really pay attention to what you see and hear
during a day, week, month or year,
almost none of the suggested or implied action
is aimed toward a world different from today —
which is really yesterday
because what exists today is of necessity
the product of yesterday and its worldview …

The future is unpredictable … except

It ain’t gonna be like yesterdayS !!!

It ain’t gonna be what you expect !!!

And it ain’t gonna be determined by experts or politicians —
other than in a negative way !!!

You can’t get to the future directly from here !!!
— if you don’t believe me
go back a little ways in time
and test the notion of
linearly extrapolating the past ↓

Is a financially viable smart phone
a linear extrapolation of a
Blackberry™ or black rotary dial phone?

Don’t expect to find answers because there aren’t any …

There are only evolving alternatives and constantly receding horizonS

… and yet we can only work on, with, and toward the things on our mental radar

Our thinking, choices, decisions are determined by what we have seen — the
breadcrumb trail initiated on this page —
a trail through over 500 pages and thousands of topics
depending on the route one takes

What we’ve seen is the foundation of our worldview

The future is between our ears ↓ …

Time-usage decisions are a central challenge …

When you’re doing something
you’re nearly blind
to the unfolding new reality
developing around you …

Proceeding much further, may be somewhat wasted time
unless you whole-heartedly embrace
the real world challenges ↑ ↓ that face you ↑ …

Our mental landscape is populated with signals from the past.

A different tomorrow is going to arrive,
whether you take this challenge seriously or not.

That different tomorrow
is going to have consequences
for many of the things that touch your life.

Making the future ↓

1000 years of European borders change — YouTube
migration, killing, stealing, enslavement, rape, revenge
and other bad stuff

The Prince ↑ by Niccolò Machiavelli — Kindle version available

Navigation implies a map and direction ↓

Not so long ago the world looked like this ↓

… and at that time, unimagined futureS seemed unthinkable …

… and at that time, unimagined futureS seemed unthinkable …

… and at that time, unimagined futureS seemed unthinkable …

… and at that time, unimagined futureS seemed unthinkable …

… and at that time, unimagined futureS seemed unthinkable …

… and at that time, unimagined futureS seemed unthinkable …

… and at that time, unimagined futureS seemed unthinkable …

… and at that time, unimagined futureS seemed unthinkable …

So, tomorrowS aren’t going to be like yesterdayS

What can you do about it?

To do something intelligent you need an action system
that you’ve pre-thought and tested against a changing world. David Allen’s GTD
focuses on the wrong things …

Part of that system rests on an evolving world-view ↓

Landmarks of Tomorrow

… it conveys to the reader both the shock of recognition—
how obvious the unfamiliar new already is; and
the shock of estrangement—how irrelevant
the familiar modern of yesterday has already become …

From Analysis to Perception — the New World View
(HERE !!!)

“Increasingly, therefore, the question of the right size for a task
will become a central one.

Is this task best done by a bee, a hummingbird, a mouse, a deer, or an elephant?

All of them are needed, but each for a different task and in a different ecology.

The right size will increasingly be whatever handles most effectively
the information needed for task and function.

Where the traditional organization was held together by
command and control, the “skeleton” of the information-based organization
will be the optimal information system”

(he isn’t talking about computer systems)

Post-Capitalist Society

… “This means a radical change in structure for the organizations of tomorrow.

It means that the big business, the government agency, the large hospital, the large university
will not necessarily be the one that employs a great many people.

It will be the one that has substantial revenues and substantial results
—achieved in large part because it itself does only work
that is focused on its mission;
work that is directly related to its results;
work that it recognizes, values, and rewards appropriately.

The rest it contracts out.”

↑ I see, therefore I am … ↓

What patterns do you see that can be useful over and over again?

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” — Mark Twain

Each data/information fragment on an evidence wall (above ↑) can be considered
a “brain address.” Forming groups of fragments
by making mental connections
may create “brain constellations” —
different ways of seeing in a world
moving toward unimagined futures.

What’s in it for you?

If you keep doing what you’ve been doing,
you’ll eventually find yourself
trapped and a prisoner of the past.

This page (and site) provides an exploration landscape
of thought fragments (evidence wall above ↑)

for navigating time

in world moving toward unimagined futureS.

“It requires an almost 180 degree shift in behavior and action …

… But also the shift from manual workers
who do as they are being told—
either by the task or by the boss
to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves
profoundly challenges social structure.” — here

Intelligence and behavior — Niccolò Machiavelli

Even if you’re working in the right area,
ignorance of the surrounding reality and
the future that has already happened
will lead to the wrong decisions.

It’s up to you to figure out what each of the thought fragments
means for you — the cost of ignoring
and the cost of misunderstanding. If
someone tells you your current building is on fire,
what does it mean for you if you ignore that “information.”

It’s up to you to create your own action system.
There’s a place-holder model or prototype below.

A collection of ideas ::: Implementation process

The quality of your time usage decisions should be regularly appraised

Notice the work communities that resemble a herd of zombies …

To navigate time, it is necessary to decide on effective
horizons you want to work toward …

It ain’t easy because the horizons never existed before —
they won’t be familiar. ↓

We can only work on, with and toward
the things on our mental radar —
at a point in time …

Hopefully that mental radar (evidence wall / thought collector) will contain
adequate competing patterns

YouTube: The History of the World in Two Hours

Good intentions → The Road to Hell

Trying to keep Wall Street happy → The Road to Hell

Only in “fairy tales” do they live happily ever after — look here

Warren Buffett’s ABCs of decay: arrogance, bureaucracy, complacency

Consider this: only 11% of the Fortune 500 companies from 1955
still exist today, while the average time that companies
stay in the top 500 has fallen from 75 years to 15 years ::: source

Pollyannas sabotage themselves, their organizations, their communities …

Individuals need to keep themselves prepared for the day
when they are forced to look for a new job:
Why would someone be interested in you? What do you have that they want?

YouTube: The History of the World in Two Hours ↓

A Century of Social Transformation —
emergence of knowledge society

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker
The Emerging Knowledge Society
How Knowledges Work
The Employee Society
What Is an Employee?
The Social Sector
Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity
School and Education as Society’s Center (not the present system)
The Competitive Knowledge Economy
How Can Government Function?
Conclusion: The Priority Tasks — The Need for Social and Political Innovations

Navigating Time — a work approach for
escaping the prison of
daily routine work and the past

A broad time-life navigation foundation ↓

Your thinking, choices, decisions are determined by
what you have seen …

“You can’t depend on your eyes
when your imagination is out of focus.” — Mark Twain

↑ I see, therefore I am … ↓

Do you have a powerful real world knowledge specialty?

“Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge
are essential resources, but
only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves,
they only set limits to what can be attained.”

Knowledge worker productivity is abysmally low. And may be going down ... here

Future of work

Peter Drucker Sets Us Straight
(jobs, debt, globalization, and recession)



Wisdom ::: The Daily Drucker ::: Drucker & Me (the God question)

Management Cases — Defining Purpose and Mission

The new job/assignment: offer response ::: 90 days later
(promotions don’t magically confer new capabilities)

The Post-Capitalist Executive

Managing in a Post-Capitalist Society

The Effective Executive in Action

The Executive in Action

Allocating one’s life — The Josh Abrams story et al
Nobody is going to do it for you

Ten Principles for Life II

The World is Full of Options

Wisdom of Peter Drucker


Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because
so few of the so-called entrepreneurs
know what they are doing ...
This is particularly true of high-tech entrepreneurs. more

Information is not enough — thinking is needed

See attention directing at the bottom of the page

Larger view of the image above

Just reading is not enough …

Concepts have to be converted into daily action

Harvesting and action thinking are needed …

Managing oneself should be the action foundation

You can select and note areas of interest. You can employ what does this mean for me? (illustration) with the PMI, dense reading and dense listening plus thinking broad and thinking detailed with operacy to see where that takes you. The potential effectiveness of our thinking depends on our existing mental landscape → see experts speak. What’s the next effective action?

Concept acquisition → action conversion → click image ↓

When we are involved in doing something, it is very difficult
to look outside that involvement — even when our future depends on it.
Additionally, everything eventually outlives its usefulness continue

And now for the rest of the story

The thought collector below is an evidence wall

larger view of the image above

The thought fragments on this page provide building blocks —
see the blue square above

larger view of the image above

How To Guarantee Non-Performance

Conditions for survival

Peter Drucker Sets Us Straight

“Concentration—that is, the courage to impose on time and events
[one’s] own decision as to what really matters and comes first—is
the executive’s only hope of becoming the master
of time and events instead of their whipping boy.” PFD

More economic landscape vistas

What executives should remember

The Power and Purpose of Objectives: The Marks & Spencer Story and Its Lessons

Freedom: the heaviest burden laid on man

Attention Directing — Code 2

Thinking is the most fundamental of all human skills.

The quality of our future will depend directly on the quality of our thinking.

Is it then not only astonishing but also absurd that thinking is not the core subject in all education and the central subject on any school curriculum?

It is not.

It is not there at all.

There are some schools that teach thinking.

Many of them teach critical thinking, which is excellent but totally inadequate.

Judgement thinking is important but so is design thinking.

We need to create as well as to judge.

David Perkins at Harvard has shown that ninety per cent of errors in thinking are errors of perception.

This has also been my experience over the thirty years in which I have been involved in the teaching of thinking.

Yet over the ages we have put all the emphasis on logic.

If your perception is faulty, then even excellent logic will give you the wrong answer.

Excellent logic will not, itself, provide excellent perception.

If your eyesight is very sharp but you are looking in the wrong direction you will not see what you are looking for.

An explorer is sent to a newly discovered island.

The explorer returns and reports on a smoking volcano and a bird that does not fly.

The backers of the explorer are not satisfied:

‘What else was there?’

‘That is all that caught my attention,’ replies the explorer.

So the explorer is sent back again with some ‘attention-directing’ tools.

The explorer is asked to ‘look north and note what you see’.

Then, ‘look south and note what you see’.

Then look east and west in the same way.

Also make notes on:

flora, fauna, geology, water, etc., etc.

This becomes a sort of checklist.

We need ‘attention-directing tools’ for human perception.

“To know something,
to really understand something important,
one must look at it from sixteen different angles.

People are perceptually slow,
and there is no shortcut to understanding;
it takes a great deal of time.” Drucker read more on this

Many years ago I designed a set of such tools.

They are now in use (as the CoRT programme) in thousands of schools around the world.

They are also being taught in business through the DATT programme (operated by APTT).

In the Karee platinum mine in South Africa there used to be 210 fights every month between the seven different tribes working there.

After the basic attention-directing tools were taught (by Susan Mackie and Donalda Dawson) the fights dropped from 210 to just four.

Jennifer O’Sullivan, in Australia, had two job clubs and every one of her unemployed youngsters was deaf.

Teaching these youngsters CoRT thinking gave an employment rate more than double the average for job clubs.

In a pilot project with unemployed youngsters in the UK, the use of these methods by the Hoist Group improved unemployment four- to fivefold.

Attention-directing tools are very powerful.

If you are looking in the right direction you see things.

Once you have seen something you cannot ‘unsee’ it.

Your thinking, choices, decisions are determined by what you have seen.

So code 2 is a very simple set of attention-directing tools.

You can instruct yourself to use a particular tool.

You can ask someone else to use a particular tool.

You can suggest to a group that a particular tool be used.

In a computer you might pull down a menu and then click on an item on that menu.

The thinking tools are items on a ‘thinking menu’.

Wondering what to do next? There’s no quick fix (your life aspirations may change) ,
so start here and take your time exploring and considering
where major various alternatives “might” lead … in a world moving toward unimagined futures

At the very least you’ll acquire some competing mental patterns

Drucker’s books ::: de Bono on thinking

Post-Capitalist Society ::: Management Challenges for the 21st Century
Managing in the Next Society
The Definitive Drucker

There are over 500 separate web pages on rlaexp.com

To maintain a view of unfolding news stories, set up a special Twitter account and follow only users such as: The Economist, FT (Financial Times), nprbusiness, CNNbrk, AP, YahooNews, YahooFinance, the Reuters accounts, MarketWatch, MarketWatchPF, MorningEdition

my delicious bookmarks

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic”. — Peter Drucker

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The shift from manual workers who do as they are being told — either by the task or by the boss — to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves ↓ profoundly challenges social structure …

“Managing Oneself is a REVOLUTION in human affairs.” … “It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers’ thoughts and actions from what most of us—even of the younger generation—still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.” …

… “Managing Oneself is based on the very opposite realities: Workers are likely to outlive organizations (and therefore, employers can’t be depended on for designing your life), and the knowledge worker has mobility.” ← in a context

 

 

These pages are attention directing tools for navigating a world moving toward unimagined futures.

It’s up to you to figure out what to harvest and calendarize
— working something out in time (1915, 1940, 1970 … 2040 … the outer limit of your concern) — nobody is going to do it for you.

It may be a step forward to actively reject something (rather than just passively ignoring) and then figure out a coping plan for what you’ve rejected.

Your future is between your ears and our future is between our collective ears — it can’t be otherwise. A site exploration starting point