: macro views or micro views or both :

... not quite sure why, but over the past several months my attention has been captured more by macro thinking than specific micro stuff. Authors like Thomas Homer-Dixon, Jared Diamond, Peter Senge, Jeffery Sachs and others. Maybe just stepping out of day-to-day responsibilities in a local organization freed up some head space, or maybe something altogether different I cannot put my finger on? Maybe time will tell, I rather hope so.

... on the plane ride home from Ontario Friday night I was reading an interview with Naomi Klein, the author, a few years back, of 'No Logo' ... and last year of "The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism" ... which is pretty heady stuff, but good I think? A Canadian, with a serious pedigree ( her father-in-law is Stephen Lewis, but that's just for starters ), with quite the ability to get her head around issues, for example, as a non-economist she certainly grasped a level of economics in order to write Shock Doctrine Klein is not yet 40!

... there was a quote in the article/interview that jumped out at me. Klein was explaining ( and doing so very well ) that a specific chain of events, from a certain economic world view, may either predispose a reaction/response to world events, or more intentionally, capitalize on them. Here is her explanation/quote ...

Klein ... "there is an awareness that these disasters ( could be significant changes ) create opportunities, and so you have a whole movement ready within a think-tank infrastructure. I think of these think-tanks as sort of idea warmers - they keep the ideas ready for when the disaster ( or change ) hits. Milton Friedman said that 'only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change, and when that crisis hits, the change that occurs depends on the ideas that are lying around ( at the time )' ..."

She uses a range of examples from 9-11 to Katrina to Poland/Lech Walesa to the fall of the Berlin Wall to describe this. Technically, I think she might say the current US mortgage crisis is big enough to force/create real change in the US financial system, but I digress :) ... basically, on a huge scale, like Myanmar and China this week, 'disasters are malleable political moments -- people are in shock, blasted out of the way, entire world views have been shattered'.

... I wonder, on a smaller, organizational scale, if there are some applications of this theory? what got me thinking was the idea that 'the ideas lying around at the time' are what are going to influence the future ... of that organization, the response to disaster, even recognizing an opportunity. I would hope most of us ... as individuals, families, teams, groups, organizations ... would have an "incubator" function ... like Klein's 'idea warmers' ... where we are perking on, nursing, maturing, developing future concepts. I thought about this in terms of my last 5 years: 2003-2008 ... and it made sense, and may still be influencing developments there.

... so what 'ideas are lying around' your world right now that may influence things for good, or otherwise, and how can you capitalize properly on them? are you writing them down? articulating them in any way? sharing them with your colleagues? ensuring that good things are not lost in trans(la)tion?

... food for thought.

dlc