Today, the pace of change and its ramifications, is no longer merely the subject of articles and essays, but is also a living reality that individuals, communities, and corporations face, on a day-to-day basis.
How do we adapt or respond to this change?
The first order of response to change is always modifying the world around us – the institutional structures, the policies and processes we adopt, and the business/ social models and systems, in & through which we live.
The second order of response to change is adopting tools and methods that enable us to cope and adapt with the changing environment. This is where technology not only enables change, but it also speedens up the pace of change.
The third and deepest response to change is to change or evolve ourselves – modify the ways we think and react, evolve the models of reality we hold, re-orient our own patterns of responses to the challenges we face, and also develop a new vision of ourselves as human beings.
Society has developed powerful disciplines and methodologies to help us systematically awaken to the first and second orders of response.
But the third order of response – the evolution of individuals – is caught up in an almost medieval mixture of religion, psychology, ‘how-to’ rituals, and sage ‘advice’ from those who seem qualified to give us this advice.
Can we create systematic, replicable, scalable models or maps that describe how human beings can “evolve” (or at least grow in the direction they seek to change)?
Can we create methods that help individuals within large organizations and human systems, use these models to transform themselves, and become capable of adapting & responding to the new environment in positive, self-fulfilling ways, and, in systematic & measurable ways?