Wisdom and the Emerging Future
Wisdom, it has been said, is learning from the emerging future. Developing that capacity is a challenge worth reflection. How might we do it? Why would we?
For Profit?
Well, we might want to do it for profit. Imagine it is your job to create the next most desirable or most collectable toy/ training shoe/ lifestyle gadget.
For Personal Satisfaction?
We might want to do it for personal satisfaction. Imagine knowing that you saved a species from extinction, or even that you wrote the next best-seller.
For Love?
We might do it for love. Imagine you could predict accurately and in good time, where people should leave to avoid a flood and where they should go.
Profit, personal satisfaction, love. Different from each other, and not necessarily mutually exclusive. How does this apply in organisational life?
The Wisdom of Organisations
Research into the psychology of wisdom has developed a variety of viewpoints and has, perhaps unsurprisingly, confirmed what many of us have experienced: wisdom can come with age, but not necessarily! Certain behaviours, on balance, seem to help; others hinder.
Corporate wisdom is another issue, and it’s one we take seriously at Irving Allan. Far less research has been undertaken in this arena. So we are working with volunteer participants whose role it is to take change forward in their organisations. And we are finding out what wisdom means in organisational contexts and what is required to support its emergence.
Our reasons? Well, maybe for profit. We work with changing organisations and the people that constitute those organisations – enabling change that brings many benefits, including to the traditional bottom line. Maybe for personal satisfaction. We are delighted to become trusted partners through change and we get satisfaction from creating the leading edge as well as delivering in a very pragmatic way. And perhaps also for love. We’re not talking hearts and flowers here; we mean compassion for the situations faced by people every day inside and outside organisations. We care about the difference that we can make.
The Work Ahead
So, wisdom and the emerging future. Maybe a bit esoteric? We don’t think so. Our work with change tells us that an either-or story won’t work any more. We must offer pragmatic and practical ways forward and we must be fully inclusive of the less tangible. It’s a very exciting task of our time.
If you are part of an organisation that could support our research in return for privileged access to the emerging wisdom about corporate wisdom, please contact Julie@irvingallan.com to arrange a conversation.
We continue to enable high quality, successful change in organisations through pragmatic, proven processes. Please contact Kirstin@irvingallan.com for more information or see Case Studies.
