– or a response to the popular business philosophy of Lean Management Strategy,
organizational physics and other strategic management ‘schools of thoughts’ out there.
If you made it so far reading this, you probably agree with me
that any system or operation which wants to be contemporary, efficient & relevant,
needs, not only constant feedback on processes, procedures & methods,
but also a frequent analysis of production & communication,
as well as a review of system design & architecture.
My analysis wants to go deeper, review the psychological & philosophical implications behind all this,
and examine the underlying ‘intelligence‘ of such human undertakings or behaviour.
In fact, a ‘mature intellect’ implies not only great self-analytic thinking
but also a strategically coordinated approach to life as a whole.
Here everything is very complex and stands in a multifaceted context.
The ‘whole thing’ is multilateral interconnected & entangled in a network of thoughts.
Everything is interdependent with & to the mental plasticity of the reader.
All these thoughts are far from being complete,
their real ‘value’ comes with sharing them.
In this spirit, any feedback would be highly appreciated !
– and then remember,
Now,
thinking of Thinking,
let’s not forget critical Thinking !
Let’s recontextualizing the way we think !
Having my head wrapped around Einstein’s notion of a different ‘Level of Thinking’ for quite some
time, I feel compelled to share some of my observations here.
Since I seem to understand the basic idea of ‘Strategic Thinking’ and I can fathom most of the popular
‘Lean’ Management Concepts this might induces, I would like to clarify some fundamental principles here,
as well as challenge some of the general assumptions often made.
First of all, Strategic- and strait-forward-thinking seem to contradict each other.
The dynamic of life, our eco-logic & eco-nomic reality is not straight or linear at all.
Strategies have to deal with this complex & intricate reality
and need to be equally & correspondingly perceptive & organic;
qualities which most strategic thinking of today are missing.
Unfortunately, ecologic thinking has been replaced by strait-forward nonsense.
Next thing coming to mind is that ‘Lean’ thinking doesn’t necessarily mean ‘Clean’ thinking,
where clean is defined as healthy, sound & whole rather than antibiotic, monotone & sterile.
The fact alone that such attributes like ‘lean, clean or organic’, in the context of ‘thinking’, need an in-depth explanation,
is a sign of linguistic entanglements at best, and an abstract confusion at worst.
For example, using the adjective ‘lean’ to describe something or somebody as slim, sparse or slender vs. fat,
heavy & plump is one thing, but as a metaphor, and in the context of ‘thinking’ it implicates a more sensitive, rational & efficient mental processing. I would like to add simplicity to this thinking
and elevate this term to a ‘critical starting point’ of any ‘Strategic Thinking’.
In this regard, it is also very interesting to observe the use, or misuse, of Chinese characters
which sometimes can reflect a very different approach to linguistic determination.
Especially the logical aggregation of its compounded ideograms can cause more misunderstanding,
and consequently more problematic, than comprehension.
We have to understand that Chinese characters evolved from pictographs of particular things to more or less abstract symbols and express abstract ideas rather metaphorically.
This in return requires a deeper understanding of this particular collective consciousness
and its subconscious, social-emotional implications.
Therefore I think that all these 400-year-old, Asian principles & practices, even their wisdom,
need a serious overhaul or at least a comprehensive revision before we adopt them into our terms of thinking.
Also, their more wHolistic approach can not fix all the intellectual shortcomings of modern economics.
An utterly dysfunctional monoculture, a product of the Abrahamic Religions,
has taken over our existence on this planet.
The concepts of monoculture, combined with Exceptionalism,
created the foundation of today’s Anthropocentrism
Aggressive in its nature, this linear, hierarchic worldview is now dominating all aspects of our lives.
To overcome this mentality it takes much more than just some old wisdom, a more intelligent design
or some better systems engineering.
What is needed is a reawakening of our Social-Emotional-Intelligence in its old depth & coherence.
In that regard the Chinese characters, and there is a good reason why they are called ‘characters’, can stimulate
a deeper, more associative thinking process and thus might help to transcend our way of thinking.
In this context, and to widen the horizon of these thoughts, here a more metaphorical,
etymological approach to our western languages:
– Our ‘Inner Compass’, is one of my favourite metaphors here.
I believe that a ‘lean, clean, thinking’ method, if applied wisely,
can get rid of some of this ‘toxic fat’ that encumbers our minds.
Then, as long as we find our real ecologic guidance system[1], – or ‘hoshin’,
this kind of mentology can add some real ‘Value’ to the ‘economic’ means.
But when it comes to our understanding, or not understanding, of this ‘economics’, that’s where it gets tricky.
Simply applying a little common sense will tell us that our economic behaviour & rationality[2]
has failed us royally; – something is fundamentally wrong with our comprehension of life[3] as a whole,
something has corrupted human intelligence quite deeply, and is now haunting our entire civilization.
Just looking at the term ‘sustainable growth’,
in context of ‘economic’ thinking,
exposes an utterly misguided mentality
and reveals this dissonant perception
which is haunting us since the days of Moses.
Since some ‘lean-green thinkers’ are claiming
that their ‘method’’ reflects an organic structure
or mimics an ecologic system,
allow me to share some observation
on this very topic,- the green–eco issue.
My thoughts are trying to dissolve the paradigm of the linear-hierarchic causality
which lies behind too many management models of today.
My analysis pivots around the common understanding that ‘language’
is the determinant or matrix of all human social or collective activity.
This all begins with ‘the Word’, the Logos where all logic originates and our creative consciousness
enters the Realm of Existence. Language extracts from our abstract thinking, brings our thoughts out
to the light of reality and makes them so a tangible force we all have to reckon with.
We think in terms of words and we create, or better, co-create, our life-stories as part of our collective history.
Language is incredibly powerful but its effect on the individual psyche and our common,
social-ecologic behaviour is totally underrated.
Language is reciprocal to our psychological reality [4] [5]
Contemplating that we have lost sight of the fact that everything-there-is and anything-we-do,
is somewhere & somehow interconnected with the Rest-of-Creation;
and, that we are now incapable to see the ‘Big Picture’, unable to sense the universal entanglements
which have made us a viable part of the eternal life-cycle and a co-creators of all this, our -our world.
I concur with C.G Jung’s [6] observation that somewhere in the process of changing into a technologically
driven society, humanity lost its intimate connection to the Rest-of-Creation, – our natural habitat,
and is now missing the communion with the WHoliness of Life, – the all-including Psyche.
As our ancestors discovered the efficiency & productivity of specialization and the food- & tool-production increased dramatically, societies began to replace their sense for the Eco–Dynamic-Synergy with a strong belief in human intelligence & wisdom.
With a growing ability of abstract thinking, we began to cultivate ideas of human
domination & Anthropocentrism, detaching our Self, mentally & physically,
from the motivational & inspirational energy of the environment as a whole.
Inspired by the success stories of the new monocultural approach, the inherent pantheistic Spirituality of the old societies got slowly reformed, redesigned or replaced by a new linear-reductional & causal rationality.
Lines were drawn in the sand, separated Mine or Ours from everything Other or Alien, planted a new sense
of proprietorship & entitlement and set the stage for a new hierarchic, chauvinistic world order.
Now, depending on your point of view, these new walls & fences we created to keep ‘wilderness & chaos’
out of our fields & orchards, are also locking us out from the ‘Garden Eden’, systematically breaking ground
for the religious psychosis of Monotheism.
A new kind of law was written in stone, the ‘divine’ establishment of a hierarchic chauvinistic world order, justifying the great appropriation of our earth and setting the stage
for a constant fight against any different or opposing mindset.
With the new world-order came not only the exclusion of the female from the ‘God-Humanity covenant’ [7][8]
but also the disqualification of whole other nations & races; – and the rein of divine discrimination had begun.
Our new Life, also known as Psyche, became a constant competition and eternal struggle for domination.
Ruled by a rigid system of reward & punishment, our new reality had arrived. Life became a suffering in the Here & Now on earth
versus a longing for peace & harmony on the-other-side, the distant and illusive ‘Garden of Eden’, our Paradise;
– to get up & ahead of the game, became our endless war against evil.
Any appropriation or taking-ownership launches a traumatic mental process of selection & separation
with all sorts of denial, restrictions & discrimination.
By denying the chaos of the wilderness to enter & mess-up the discriminatory system of our fields & gardens,
we have also restricted our own access to the ‘properties’ of other realms out there and locked us into a glass cage.
This has cut us off a world where spirituality & profanity are still united and in harmony.
This separation trauma has damaged our sense of belonging substantially,
and left deep, open wounds in our psyche.
For an untainted eye, it is easy to see that this hierarchic, chauvinistic mindset hasn’t worked in the long run and that this worldview is failing to provide the most rudimental, social-economic answers to make a sustainable living on this planet.
Now humanity is haunted by the fallout of this paradigm, its ailing social-emotional spirit has corrupted our individual ‘soul’ and contaminated our entire collective psyche.
A closer look reveals the mutation of a social being into an incongruent species.
According to many aboriginal observers, and most prominently C.G. Jung, 70 years ago,
our species is now dealing with a severe ‘mental disease’.
This fundamental Psychosis is highly underestimated or conveniently & intentionally ignored
and, if untreated, will end our existence as we know it.
Interestingly Paul Levy calls this a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind
and addresses this issue in his much-acclaimed book ‘Dispelling Wetiko‘
This ‘mental disease’ adapts & mutates like a virus or a meme, it is highly contagious
and commonly transmitted throughout any kind of social interaction.
Now, this mental pandemic spreads or goes viral, not only horizontally in all sorts of social media,
religious or political organizations, but also vertically thru our communities.
Many of the mental illnesses this virus is causing are handed up & down from generation to generation,
passed-on thru arts, science & education and are now growing exponentially with our technological advancements.
This vicious cycle, which affects not only the entire population of this planet, equally & collectively,
but also our entire existence as a whole, can only be ‘broken’ or healed on a ‘different Level of Thinking’,
– as Einstein put it.
So, any attempt to change our perception of life and to ‘Save Our Souls’
has to find this different level of thinking.
It only requires some logistic corrections and a few perceptual adjustments
and ‘all things will fall into place’ from there on !
Let’s not forget that the minds of our early ancestors were at the culmination of Homo Sapience
social-emotional-intelligence which gave them the ability to form healthy & resilient communities
with incredible dynamic social infrastructures.
It was their highly adaptive neuroplasticity, in combination with a collective will & effort, which made these indigenous civilizations exponentially effective and eventually propelled them on top of the ‘food chain’.
The early ‘social engineers’, shamans, priests and other visionaries, not only knew about interpersonal dynamics
and how to form thriving communities, but were also quite familiar with the synergistic effect they have on their habitat
and the reciprocal benefits that people can evoke from ‘Mother Nature’.
Their psycho-logia was deeply submerged in wHolistic thinking and embedded in a broad spiritual landscape. Sustaining this dynamic synergy of interaction & cooperation with the environment
was everything that mattered.
It took centuries of knowledge & wisdom to form our individual & collective consciousness,
and to shape our entire psychosomatic identity [9], so deeply & profoundly.
By the time the written word, especially via the ‘Holy’ books, had taken control of knowledge & education,
our civilization had started its race into the ‘DEAD-END’ zone.
The altruistic nature of humanity was compromised & altered
by the absurd ethics of monotheism,
its social behaviour replaced or governed
by the convoluted ‘Law & Order’ of modern society.
Then, just 100 years ago, we entered a new era of mental manipulation, the study of the ‘unconscious’ mind,
the psychoanalysis, paved the road for the reconditioning of the human mind. This became the dawn of
political propaganda, the ‘engineered consent’ of the masses and the ‘tailored’ neuromarketing of today.
Psychology became the perfect instrument to redesign human nature,
to create ‘happy‘ & docile societies,
where the individual is emotionally isolated and the Selfie is just a figment,
living its very own illusion of freedom & liberty ! [10]
Taking all the above into consideration, we can see that any real correction or change of the way we think,
or better, – shift the paradigm, needs to be at least equally comprehensive,
interdisciplinary, multilateral & synthesizing in its approach.
This begins with a new philosophy of Constant Change & Nonlinear Dynamic [11]
which recognizes the co-dependencies & inter-connectivities of everything;
this is not another School of Thoughts but a New Way of processing our thinking.
And maybe ‘lean is a way of thinking, not a list of things to do.’ – Shigeo Shingo
This process, in its nature a linguistic undertaking,
requires a psychosomatic analysis of our ethics, logic & rhetoric,
and a complete ecologic rejuvenation of our economic thinking.
By adding this ecotherapeutic, ‘Green’ component to our thinking
and by changing our ‘social engineering’ accordingly,
we can make this eventually a ‘Lean, Clean, Green Thinking’ process.
This shift to a different level of consciousness can only be achieved in relation
to our social & cultural environment, and in context with our ecological habitat.
In any case, we have to recognize that the precondition of our Social Emotional Intelligence
is either compromised or completely missing; this Intelligence is just a remnant of our original mental capacity.
I strongly believe that it is our social responsibility to point this out whenever the situation,
or an encounter with our fellow men, allows.
Our society has given sociopathic & irrational behaviour plenty of political & economic motivation as well as spiritual & legal support.
Unless we recognize the fact that all members of society are somehow, somewhere ‘damaged goods’,
we will continue to believe in ‘junk economics‘[12] with its foolish ideas of consumerism,
Quantitative Easing, fiat money & ‘sustainable growth’.
– Noting that the world population has grown by 40% in the last 20 Years; now 7.6 billion people
share this globe and a record debt of $ 217 trillion, which is an insane 327% of the world’s GDP !
Our corporate culture is obese and addicted to growth, a socio-pathological phenomenon
that has infested all our social associations and the entire ‘globalization’ process of our planet.
After serfdom & enslavement, a new kind of debt bondage has turned humanity into a parasite,
an imbecile senselessly killing its host, our habitat !
Now to the essence of my analysis.
Old wisdom tells us that ‘a chain is only as strong as its weakest link’
and that it is our social responsibility to take care of ‘the weak’;
– sounds Christian but is actually what our empathy neurons [14]are designed for,
and it’s one of the oldest wisdom of our species, the homo-sapiens – the men-of-wisdom.
Now, an orchard with contaminated soil and dwindling numbers of insects
is unable to produce a healthy & sufficient crop.
When applying this metaphor, any true ‘slimming’ of our thinking has to begin with a detoxification of the water, soil & air in our ‘gardens‘, the operation we call our business, workplace or social engagement.
Any endeavour or enterprise which is solely or ultimately valued by its profit margin
and capital growth, is social-economically corrupted, mentally & emotionally
contaminated[15] and highly contagious in its context of human ethics & behaviour.
Any business, corporation or organization which is based on resource extraction and/or labour exploitation,
in any way or form, is toxic and rotten from within.
I think that there is enough evidence that the ‘orchards’ of these organizations are socially & ecologically depleted & impoverished,
they are hopelessly entangled in the natural process of cultural decay, if not on the verge of extinction.
To subordinate ideas of ‘green thinking’ to a sick, capitalistic ideology
is just masking or applying makeup over an ugly face of opportunism & social exploitation,
putting-on some green camouflage, covering up the ecological ignorance & impertinence
which has devastated & ravished our common-wealth for ages now.
The introduction of lean, clean, green thinking
to the ‘waste-site’ of uprooted & ludicrous ‘economics’
simply means – ‘casting pearls before the swines’ !
So are the ideas of social networking, cloud computing & swarm-intelligence – if put in context with the algorithm of linear, hierarchic thinking – a complete nonsense !
On the contrary, asymmetric clouds & swarms symbolize the dynamic of nonlinear motion and non-hierarchical structure.
As long as we refuse to realize
that our entire civilization
is based on the misconceptions
of an outdated belief system,
we will continue to mutilate our habitat
and eventually, eradicate our own species.
We need to understand that straight lines &
hierarchic structures are just abstract concepts
which have deceived our sense of reality and
became our ultimate authority of reason & rationality.
This rigid, authoritarian foundation is constructed on the quicksand
of deception, based on the dysfunctional principles of Law & Order
or the morality of reward & punishment
Just as political- & theocratic-authority rests ultimately on force,
so is the authority of ‘the market’ ruled by the regimes of private property.
Sincere, solution-oriented thinking is analytical, eclectic & perspectivistic.
By applying the multilateral orientation of the social-emotional-intelligence,
we introduce a non-linear, meta-heuristic approach.
This ‘organic‘ thinking uses the whole available spectrum
of collective-perception & -knowledge,
to launch a synergetic entourage effect.
This thinking flourishes on the more healthy & fertile grounds, the ‘common ground’ of humanity,
where the common sense repeals the dialectic of the hierarchic, linear paradigm and begins to foster & cultivate
all the social associations corresponding with a more conscientious way of life.
The management of our ‘house’, – our ecosystem, should follow the eco-dynamic guidance system
which the natural evolution of our planet has prepared for us.
But, in order to understand or read the ‘Shiny’ needle of this ‘compass’,
we have to know how our socio-ecologic-psyche really works or properly functions;
– unfortunately something we have not adopted in any of our curriculums !
Since all of this is rather an integral-organic process of human-resource-management, the whole undertaking requires the complete incorporation of the individual autonomy as well as the social & environmental responsibilities of the entire structure.
The purpose of this rationality is the well-being of each individual member of society which,
hopefully we have learned by now, is only achievable within the reciprocity of a healthy environment.
All this taken under consideration, a ‘Lean, Clean, Green Management Strategy’ seems to fit the idea
of self-help groups, nonprofit associations or social organizations, as well as co-ops
and other employee-owned companies, just perfectly.
Any collective or group, small or large, presents an opportunity to revive our
social-emotional-intelligence and to introduce a new ‘Lean, Clean & Green Thinking Method’ to the mix.
In any such group setting, the interpersonal dynamic of emotions & intellect can either recondition & reinforce
old habits & behaviour, or correct & change the attitude and social conduct of the participants.
This is where we distinguish the ‘just-Lean’ thinking from a ‘Lean, Clean & Green’ thinking,
and it is of dire importance that we are aware of these differences.
Whenever two or more people come together, some kind of psycho-analytical group therapy is invoked,
– the Kaizen Spirit gets evoked.
Our indigenous ancestors rightfully considered these human communions to be a sacred place in our life/psyche,
– the birthplace of community and the ‘groundworks’ of any collective achievement.
Social groups can be remarkably smart & knowledgeable when their averaged judgments are compared
with the judgments of individuals. Already in 1907 the English scientist Sir Francis Galton found evidence that the estimate of a group can be more accurate than the estimates of an expert.
If an association of intrinsically motivated individuals share their resources and work together
in a Collaborative, Innovative Network–(COIN), the result is usually very impressive;
– this can be incredibly fruitful or strikingly destructive.
Carl Rogers described such ‘encounter groups’ as
“...the most significant social invention of the century.” [16]
Groups could provide a sensible and truly intelligent way to propel our collective consciousness to this different ‘Level of Thinking’ Einstein was talking about
Philosophers & scholars of our culture tend to be anthropocentric,
they see economics & politics as a tool to understand & manage our societies;
– but isn’t society merely a component of the natural world,
and wouldn’t it be more sensible to use an eco-psychological approach
to respond to the socio-ecological challenges of today.
I strongly believe that any group- or team-activity
– especially when claiming to be socially or economically motivated –
should commence with the analyses of their own Social-Dynamics
together with its Synergetic-Entourage-Effect on the wHole –(orchard)
Only in the collective we can heal the individual and our common environment !
Against all popular belief,
there is no individual accomplishment or success!
Everything is a collective achievement,
all things are obtained from the abundance of our common habitat !
Each of us is just a small but viable part of a vast, living organism,
a more or less conscious participant of life !
Just our Social-Emotional-Intelligence is able to recognize
the constant presence of an eco-dynamic synergy out HERE.
Only the sapience of a mature mind is responsible enough
to engage & cooperate with the environmental challenges of NOW.
… to be continued ~
