In our age of increasingly abundant information and AI, the internet did not end totalitarian tendencies or reoccurring racism. Quite the opposite, fake news has often contributed to it.
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and had gone 84 days now without taking a fish” wrote Ernest Hemingway, in first line of his classic tale.
Today’s popular word ‘resilience’ is not to be found in the usual and simple novel that contributed to Hemingway winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
Is our thinking about information technology and how we approach management a touch guileless and adolescent?
In management is there nothing new under the sun Or, perhaps there is ‘too much new’, but not worth paying too much attention to? ‘New’ does not mean innovative, it often means recycled, and perhaps, even misleading. Are we both unsophisticated and gullible in how we look at things?
Are we gullible?
There is a naïve view that ‘more powerful information technology will necessarily lead to a more truthful understanding of the world.’
As the historian of change, Yuval Noah Harari points out, more information is not automatically better. It does not always reflect reality. Information does not equal truth.
In our age of increasingly abundant information and AI, the internet did not end totalitarian tendencies or reoccurring racism. Quite the opposite, fake news has often contributed to it.
“When we look at history of information from the Stone age to the Silicon age, we therefore see a constant rise in connectivity, without a concomitant rise in truthfulness or wisdom,” writes Harari.
He continues, “Contrary to what the naïve view believes, Homo sapiens didn’t conquer the world because we are talented at turning information into an accurate map of reality.
Rather, the secret of our success is that we are talented at using information to connect lots of individuals. Unfortunately, this ability often goes hand in hand with believing in lies, errors and fantasies.”
Is more [and more] better?
Does the same thinking apply to management, and thoughts about enterprise models? Do we have a naïve view about business? Is more better? If all one had to do was read a few books, watch a few snippets of YouTube clips, listen to a few influencers, who would not be a business success?
But like Santiago, the down on his luck fisherman, in Hemingway’s timeless enduring tale, events rarely go according to plan, and bright ideas, combined with good intentions don’t equate with instant accomplishment. Somehow there is a gap between knowing and doing – the ability to make good things happen.
Unlike Santiago’s time, more than 70 years ago, normal is nowhere to be seen on the horizon.
“Unexpected crises, volatility, and a generally accelerated pace of change have increasingly become the norm. But it doesn’t feel normal. For many, it feels stressful and exhausting writes,” Jacqueline Brassey of McKinsey
“Think of all the very large disruptions on leaders’ agendas these days—widespread use of automation, artificial intelligence, and other technologies at work; geopolitical and global economic shifts; impacts from climate change; genomic editing and other scientific and bioengineering innovations; social justice trends; and evolving workforce demographics and employee expectations. It’s unprecedented,” he surmises.
Bouncing forward
Wonder what Hemingway - who committed suicide in 1961 - and his character Santiago would think of all of this? Today we are told that to be adaptable, we need a mix of skills.
Today’s incessant management preaching from pulpit tells us “Resilience requires—among other things—the ability to view change as a challenge or an opportunity to bounce forward, regulate thoughts and emotions, take lessons from prior experiences, and execute on change. Adaptability requires, among other things, the ability to approach uncertainty with an open, learning mindset and to think flexibly and creatively about problems as they arise.”
Wise words, but only that. There is a wonderful seductiveness in all of these turns of phrase like ‘open learning mindset’. They sound great, but what does this really mean?
We tend to look outwards, constantly making our incisive cutting judgements, all the time with the sole aim of looking good, decisive and insightful. Yet, ours is a naïve view, it’s not about fishing around changing the status quo, it’s about shifting our perspective.
As author and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl noted in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
