quarta-feira, novembro 25, 2020

"test out the future"

"it is characteristic of complex systems that small actions can make a disproportionate impact. You just don’t know, won’t know, until you try. And try again.

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What makes people and institutions abandon old bad habits and acquire new, better ones? Some argue that pressure eventually produces a tipping point, while others maintain it’s all about the cogency or timing of the message. When large corporations and institutions require strategic change, investors and participants demand a theory of change that promises to contain or define their risk. But the test of a good theory is that it can predict—and what we know about complex systems is that, while aspects of them may repeat, they are inherently unpredictable. So theories of change in highly dynamic systems might purport to offer certainty, where it often proves most illusory. The value of experiments is that they disrupt apathy, acknowledge ambiguity, and give people hope.

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Experiments are pragmatic ways to test out the future, but to have real impact requires that other people contribute.

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traditional management is addicted to grand plans. However much executives claim to want, and to support, innovation and so-called transformation, much of their enthusiasm runs tepid to cold. They want safety and certainty, not the creativity and risk that come with experimentation. The irony is lost on no one: the more they demand certainty, the more they constrain their chance to discover a safer future.

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Nowhere has this constraint been more obvious than amid the bloodbath of retail, where companies seem to have taken to heart Hilaire Belloc’s line: “always keep ahold of Nurse / For fear of finding something worse.” So afraid are they of failure that they plan shop closures and layoffs with meticulous efficiency—while failing to be inventive enough to keep those businesses alive. Market analysts may call this creative destruction but it’s hard to find much that’s creative about it. Experiments and innovation are almost nowhere to be seen."

Trechos retirados de "Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future" de Margaret Heffernan.

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