Look Before You Leap, Part 3

Decision Points in Making the Leap

Perspective

Ten Steps For Turning Attitude Into Action:

1. Understand the Power of Attitude
2. Take Control of Your Life
3. Practice Self-Awareness
4. Re-Frame Your Bad Attitude
5. Find Your Purpose and Passion
6. Be Pre-Active
7. Discover How to Motivate Yourself
8. Build Supportive Relationships
9. See Change as an Opportunity
10. Leave a Lasting Legacy
Keith Harrell in Attitude is Everything

According to Harrell, for each of us, our attitudes drive our belief systems. In turn, our beliefs shape how we look at the world. In turn, our perceptions become a means of shaping the reality we live in. In that sense, city leaders on the cusp of making important decisions about broadband are driven by their collective attitude about their future. Perspective, how a city looks at these issues, will drive how they decide on the changes they face.

1.1 Looking Forward or Looking Backward - One of the first choices a city leader has is between a primary orientation around which direction motivates their thinking: conservative or progressive. Either one can be a valid strategy if it is chosen consciously. City leaders can make a perfectly rational choice to focus on preserving what they have, reminiscing about times gone by and looking backward. Preservation of something that makes the city unique can be a valid strategy. Others can focus on looking forward as a strategy.

The challenge we all face is that the world at large is moving ahead, and cities are being asked to make a choice, either actively or passively. Denying change and doing nothing, while passive, actually involves making the choice to stay the same. But choosing to look backward, thinking that is the "safer" path, paradoxically is not safe - it actually involves taking the risk of getting left behind and losing relevance.

When the game changes and new tools are put down in front of you, you can choose to learn to play the new game, to wait, or to deny the changes you see. Looking forward involves gathering information, growing in awareness of your city, forging consensus around a plan and strategy, and taking some calculated risks to adapt to a changing environment.

The first element of Perspective then is whether the decision-makers give more credence to preparing for the future or preserving the status quo. For a more in depth analysis of this particular duality, I recommend this post from Nov 15, In Assessing Change v. MOTS, Start with Putting Consensus Ahead of Coercion.

1.2. Static to Dynamic - There's no doubt about it, we're living in a faster world today than the one we faced a generation ago. If the world is moving faster, we need the tools to adapt. Product life cycles are shorter. Information that is immediately available puts a premium on processing and making decisions. The key element here that confounds leaders is uncertainty about the future. Planning cycles have shrunk from 10 years to 5 years to 1 year. How can you plan for the future with so much change?

The answer is to build in flexibility, to make the system and processes agile. That way, whatever the future throws your way, you can react more readily. We can no longer expect with any certainty that the future will be a lot like the past. But the challenge is in determining what is important and what isn't, what will stay the same and what will change. I believe that there are principal aspects of life that remain the same such as the fundamental nature of the world and human behavior. Our options and tools may change, our environment may change, but our principles, for instance, remain steady.

The second element of Perspective, I would argue, is whether those making decisions about change believe that the future is truly remarkably different, requiring a different approach, or whether the future will be about like the past, which removes the sense of urgency to take major steps to prepare for change. This post offers more insight into this element of change: When Complexity Overwhelms, Is It Finally Time for a Change?

1.3. Moving from Control Hierarchies to Smart Networks, from Top Down to Bottom Up - I think of three things when I think of this shift from planned organizational hierarchies focused on control to spontaneous smart networks - Networks, Emergence, and Collective Intelligence (see With Broadband Internet, is Traditional Government Becoming Irrelevant?).

Networks are the dominant way that nature organizes complexity, whereas hierarchies are an old way of organization that human societies came up with. Networks are flexible and fascinating - it pays huge dividends to get well versed in Network Science - the fastest route I know to get smart on networks is to read this book: Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means. For further discussion on how the shift from an information society to a network society affects us, see Cities as Complex Ecosystems: Mother Nature Knows Best and E Pluribus, Unum: From 300M to 30K to 3141 to 50 to 1.

The concept of Emergence digs into how ideas seemingly arise out of nowhere, rather than being passed down from on-high. It's really quite fascinating, and a better understanding of this concept is helpful, because modern communications technology facilitates emergence. As above, I think the most enjoyable way to better understand this concept is to sit down and read the very readable Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. My recent analogy of Government as Layer Cake opens the door to understanding how local governments can play a more powerful role than the federal government, if they only recognize how empowered they truly are and take the initiative.

Finally, the principle of the Wisdom of the Crowds describes how smarter decisions are actually made by larger groups of average, but well informed people than by smaller groups, but much better informed people. In other words, it's the openness and group dynamics that determine the wisdom of what is out there, not the superior intelligence of the group. This concept flies in the face of conventional "wisdom" - there's that word again - that says that Think Tanks are the way to go if you want good decision-making. The bestseller The Wisdom of Crowds should be considered essential reading, IMHO. (see also The Wisdom of Crowds, the Safety of Numbers and Playing Roulette with Your Broadband Future for more discussion.)

Nothing complicated here, eh? The third element of Perspective, then, involves a basic belief in how organizations and societies should work - like a machine, with well-ordered roles and lots of control? Or like a jungle, with systems in balance and flexible role playing, but nary a hint of top-down control, other than what the system exerts as a natural consequence of the actors and their actions? Making this leap in perspective is perhaps one of the largest and most difficult of all, but it carries with it a huge change in perspective. Tolerance for chaos and ambiguity goes way up, which is likely to prove very hard to grasp for those in political leadership roles.