If an idea comes from a group and everyone loves, it probably is not a very advanced idea. We are talking about redesigning our society. Gail and I predicted more change in the last 25 years than happened since the Middle Ages. There was lots of change. In the next 5 or 10 years, there will be as much change as the last 25. We will completely design everything we know. We may also look at some things that have been around for a long time and agree that they should not change.

There has to be a process that allows us to design this. There should be a way to experiment and a way to allow people to migrate to different experiments. That will take a lot more respect for differences. In the old society, agreement was necessary. Communication was slow, and people were not well educated. You had to invest in industrial infrastructure. That was in the industrial society.

The types of things we have to build in the knowledge society are quite different. The process sets the limit of the outcome. There is a logic in the process. No tool is neutral. The process defines the outcome A LOT. It is time to challenge and test the assumptions we bring to that system. The team has to have as a trust that we have a good enough for now answer and we will test it. We will revisit it. We will agree to implement and to support one another in agreement and disagreement. It is like a marriage. You have to take it all. You have to tolerate disagreement, frustration, anger, hurt.

The old organizations had command and control and the boss decided. We brought people from all over the world and built a society and created a workplace where all of these diverse groups were producing together. But this system has reached its limits. We do not have the ability to get everyone to agree on things. So, the real question is what we can put in place that will open discussion, more inclusion, the arena of disagreement. Notice that the ethnic wars in Central Europe came at the end of the Soviet control. The Soviets did not solve anything, but just stopped the killing for a while.

When we open up the environment, we will open up a set of issues that have been under the organizational culture for decades. You have to be able to address those things. You have to be a business. But you have to do it, because the old way will not suffice any longer. Transformation of the organization means transformation of self as well. We get to recreate health care, energy, organizations and corporations. Facilitation is about doing that as easily as possible.

000706.Matt Taylor