Suddenly, part 2

Finding ourselves unmoored.

Mar 05, 2025

In Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli was dispatched from Florence to investigate the erratic behaviour of Pandolfo Petrucci, the Lord of neighbouring Siena.

Petrucci’s explanation impressed him:

“Wishing to make as few mistakes as possible, I conduct Government day by day and arrange my affairs hour by hour because the times are more powerful than our brains

I’ve taken the quote from Eamonn Kelly’s 2005 book “Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of Our Uncertain Future” In it, he observes that for every plausible, evidence-based story about the way the world is going, there is an opposite, equally plausible, evidence-based story. We have, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, to hold two opposing ideas in mind simultaneously and retain the ability to function.

It is easy to take refuge in criticism of personalities when behaviours violate currently accepted behaviours, but I think it can miss the point. Among the pieces that have been thrown up in the air are pieces that deserve to be, that have been ignored because they are economically inconvenient, and which lend a degree of legitimacy to the bonfire of relationships we are witnessing.

The reality is that Donald Trump is not the cause of what is happening; he is merely the catalyst. His questionable qualities are secondary. We are experiencing the rapid decline of the industrial era into incoherence before whatever emerges to succeed it makes itself known.

If it wasn’t Trump, it would be someone else.

What is true of our global politics is also true of our organisations; it’s fractal. The same forces are at work: the ignoring of inconvenient truths on the one hand and the crude application of power on the other. When it comes to work, we are all Ukrainians, vulnerable to protection racket corporate cultures, and we must learn similar lessons. I drew a comparison last week with the enclosure movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and I believe the metaphor holds. The combination of power and technology changed the way we lived, worked and associated in a few short decades. It will probably happen faster this time round.

It is not all bad news, and it is not optional. Suddenly is with us and accelerating, and we need to find moorings.

The work to be done will not go away, but the way it is done will. Precisely how is difficult to see at this point, but as with earlier changes, it will require new skills and approaches. I’ve had a small experience of it in the last couple of weeks.

In my work over fifty years I’ve been involved in dozens of new start-ups and innovation projects, mainly as a manager, but half a dozen on my account. They have always followed a similar approach, which evolved into some version of a design approach. Start with an idea, or an acquired venture. Research, analyse, ideate, test, review, plan, launch, review, repeat. I have found myself revisiting this process for my work and have been variously shocked and impressed.

Firstly, the last time I did this - around five years ago, the process of research, analyse, ideate, plan would have taken three weeks to a month, going full on. With the tools now available, it takes a day, and the results are better.

Secondly, the plan was King. Now, it’s only a set of starting assumptions. The key lies in fast feedback loops, iteration, and course correction. The leadership and communication tasks are very different.

Thirdly, and most importantly, in my view, the speed with which what is known can be assembled means that the plan is not a source of advantage - everybody has access to the same tools I used. Experience and ability may have an advantage in terms of the questions asked and the interpretation of responses, but I think it’s probably marginal. What matters now is that the plan is the starting point. The difference is in all the things that technology cannot do - see what’s missing. the stuff of imagination, passion, conversation, and other very human qualities.

Azeem Azhar wrote this week about “vibe working”, which reminds me of qualities like reverie and reflection, which are very inefficient but where breakthroughs live.

Things AI can’t do, from Wisdom of Crowds

AI Can’t Free Associate. New School professor Eli Zaretsky writes: “Computers have had no infancy, therefore no primary process, and no free associations because they have nothing to free associate to. … [C]omputers have no inner world to discover.”
AI Can’t Use Language. New Yorker writer Ted Chiang argues: “A dog can communicate that it is happy to see you, and so can a prelinguistic child, even though both lack the capability to use words. ChatGPT feels nothing and desires nothing, and this lack of intention is why ChatGPT is not actually using language.”
AI Doesn’t Have a Direct Sense of Objectivity. So argues Ted Gioia. Everything AI “knows” is mediated, through data — not immediately perceived, as with human perception.
AI Can’t Draw Caricatures. Writer Freddie DeBoer says: “[A] human illustrator can render a vastly more convincing likeness than a hideously expensive machine learning system.”

The lessons are simple and difficult. There are no “staff answers”. No “cheat sheets”. We have to work on embracing uncertainty and AI with all its foibles.

“Certainty is a prison,” “It robs you of wonder and fear. And fear is an essential part of life. It gives you impetus to do something, to move forward. That means you have to discover and then you explore. You aren’t stuck.”

Victoria Oruwari

Given this last week, who knows what this week might bring as what no longer works fights, despairingly, for continued relevance?

The five qualities I have been writing about, and will be exploring in more depth here, feel more relevant than ever:

Let the work that excites you beyond money find you.
Work with people who will help you develop it.
Look for timing, not urgency. Find your own space.
Curate - share what you know with others, as they share with you.
Don’t work for people you’re not proud of.

I’m rethinking how I do what I do here because the times, they are a changing.

More soon

P.S. Margaret Heffernan this week. Brilliant….