Hack
Hack: Kahatika - It Pays to Communicate
by Greg Stevenson - Owner at Primesoft NZ Ltd
March 4, 2012 at 5:04pmContribution Summary
Summary
- The World may well be on a trajectory which alters it's environment such that it is prematurely unsustainable for human-kind to exist. (In four billion years the sun will have enveloped the Earth, we need to be off this planet by then)
- As a species we are meant to adapt such that our species endures.
- We are one of the few species that uses tools.
- Business is a tool and for all of recorded history has dominated change within our world.
- To avoid our species' premature extinction business must adapt and put the world on a different trajectory.
- The direction of that trajectory is all important, It is not enough to "Change the World". That is passé
- Literally it must "Save the World"
- Kahatika is that Adaptation
Moonshot(s)
Problem
Saving the World takes an integrated approach. Impacting three moonshots is not sufficient. Gunter Pauli shows how this is done with thought to physics and engineering at TEDx Tokyo. We need to do it with thought towards psychology, anthropology and philosophy in business management.
How do we attain alignment of Purpose? The purpose of the individual is not aligned with the purpose of our Species. Our individual short life-span in comparison to the potential life-span of our species creates conflicting motivations. The idea that the rapture will occur tomorrow, doesn't help.
Years of a trajectory towards reduced trust and increased fear require us to use transitional management technology to alter that trajectory. There are real reasons to mistrust; there are real reasons to be fearful. We need systems that inspire courageous actions from the not so courageous. The opposite of fear is Love.
All of our language is human, so I guess we must strive to make our language more humane. The language of compassion, treating one's fellow human beings in words and action the way we would like to be treated ourselves. The realities of Trust and Fear above have driven this language out of the business environment. The problem is how to embed the language of Love into our organisations.
Our divided loyalties create internal conflict within individuals with respect to the higher purpose. This makes embedding any ethos problematic. See: Episode 11- Justice with Michael Sandel
The means of control in society is through Debt. This is not going to change in a hurry and if it does, it will be associated with a lot of bloodshed. For the immediate future we are stuck with a form of institutionalised slavery. Debt relates to fear and the opposite of fear as mentioned above is Love. Love is integral in reinventing control.
The problem is perceived expectation of a given individual to be creative. Pigeon holing begins at birth. How do we reverse a lifetime of expectation? It is difficult to make someone creative, so alternatively, how do we make the opportunities to be creative, obvious?
One of the problems is how to ensure passion is not misdirected. The NAZI community of Germany in the thirties were indeed passionate. The problem is how do you get a passionate community to introspect to stay aligned with the higher purpose?
Capture the advantages of diversity
Take the work out of work
Make direction setting bottom-up and outside-in
Capture the advantages of diversityYou need to capture the advantages of diversity not only in the present but keep using what was learnt through diversity in the past. Mining collective wisdom over the ages is difficult but not to do so is a waste and does not honour those that have gone before. “We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants” ~ Bernard of Chartres, made famous by Issac Newton
If play is regarded the opposite of work then our task is to introduce play into the business environment. Games are an aspect of play. How do we introduce a game with rounds and outcomes. Something we can all play which as a consequence improves our businesses? Jane McGonigal produced the game, UrgentEvoke, on behalf of the World Bank in an effort to "Save the World" . It can't be that hard.
Communication is the key, but how do we get the most truthful feedback?
How often do you play the game? The trick is that the tangible benefits should always outweigh the costs. If not, there should be a whole bunch of intangible benefits. The name of the game "More with Less"
Markets are distorted and manipulated. Players in the Oil markets are currently in American Civil Court charged with not playing fair. This may well progress to criminal charges. We must strive to be fair but accept that we never can be.
Data is usually the way management systems attempt to get over biases when reaching a decision. Multiple variables have a tendency to confound, and produces either indecision or decision based on bias. Analysis of soft data drawn from the grass roots of an organisation often contributes to good decision making. How do we get this analysis in an efficient and timely manner.
Breaking demarcation lines is problematic because it often means loss for certain individuals. How do we produce systems that breakdown the barriers but mitigate the loss for individuals?
E-Learning will not go away, so how do you get everyone to engage in it. How do you make it fun and relevent? How can it be made part of routine tasks in such a way that the participant is oblivious that they are participating?
What is for Public Consumption? Are we ready to walk naked? Perhaps we need an intermediary step as we progress to this fully transperent world?
There is a phrase "Fake it until you make it". Can an individual feel Love by participating in an action that could be regarded as loving? Laughter Yoga, the process of laughing even when you don't find anything humorous, seems to indicate this is possible. If so, the problem is in finding a loving action we can all participate in.
Would having no hierarchy at all for a small element of your business lead to the development of more natural hierarchies? If so, how can we produce a system with no hierarchy but is still manageable?
You're looking for "motivate and mentor" in this new world order. Firstly, how much naturally exists within your organisation? Then the problem becomes, how to make use of it?
Democracy of information is equivalent to spread of control ala Semco. Ricardo Semler, the manager responsible for guiding Semco to the Semco Way, found the process, difficult, time consuming, and hard. Are you ready for it?
How do you get an employee to contribute something that comes from deep inside of themselves. That degree of vulnerability is a beautiful but dangerous thing. Take advantage of that vulnerability just once and you have probably killed that creativity forever. There must be a way to protect that vulnerability.
There may be no amount of encouragement that will get honest dissent from the fearful. There must be a way to get their contrary input. It may be the piece that saves the day.
Triple bottom line and other flavours of the day for reporting may be an improvement but not the answer. Boards, whether they know it or not, need a dashboard they don't yet have.
Decisions are made in a context which includes a particular atmosphere. Consider the atmosphere of Enron prior to it's collapse. Individuals were making correct decisions given the atmosphere. Dan Ariely has amazing observations on the subject. The nature of our tradeoffs will be consistent with our culture.
Incentive systems are what caused the global financial crisis. The supposed fix served to concentrate money and power rather than spread it's distribution. We may not survive the next one. We must "Save the World".
Solution
- Kahatika either solves or impacts positively on the above problems
- Kahatika is the Maori word for "Good Power"
- Kahatika is a "not for profit" servicing profit making organisations.
- Kahatika is a system that works with Love and Money at a philosophical level.
- In stark contrast with above bullet point, Kahatika is a pragmatic computer software system which delivers its value via a web or mobile interface through secure networks
- Kahatika is not about the Money
- Kahatika is all about the Money
- Kahatika distributes Money
- Kahatika's inputs are voluntary but users are paid for their input
- Kahatika requires a hundred users or more for any given organisation
- Kahatika is primarily funded voluntarily
- Kahatika is initially an addition to existing systems, not a replacement
- Kahatika integrates with Payroll and Creditors systems
- Kahatika is designed to teach all individuals within the organisation how to love and feel loved
- Kahatika uses the "symptoms of love" to work its magic
- Kahatika requires a leap of faith in human-kind
- Kahatika has nothing to do with religion
- Kahatika has nothing to do with God unless you spell God as "Good"
- Kahatika in neither left nor right either politically or economically
- Kahatika is designed to self replicate within the supply chain.
If I die it's up to you to figure it out.
For you to not ponder on the subject would be doing you a disservice.
I came up with the basic design a quarter of a century ago. It's only in the last couple of years I've researched to find if others have come up with the same solution. No luck so far.There is enough here, and following the links provided, to reverse engineer Kahatika's system design.
The detail will come to those who think about it.
The first person to correctly relay, in the form of a comment, the essence of the workings of the pragmatic software system side of the system I call Kahatika, I'll pay $100USD or donate a $100USD to a charity of their choice.
You'll just have to Trust me on that.
;-)
Practical Impact
Focus the work of management on a higher purpose
All members of the organisation will routinely think about the higher purpose of the organisation. As part of that routine a decision will be made.
Every member of the organisation will think about love and being loved. Through consistent use of the system fear will be reduced with a corresponding increase in Trust. Both trust in themselves and a trust in others.
Humanize the language of business
Routinely all users of the system will be reminded of their responsibility to be compassionate. There are safeguards with respect to this.
Embed the ethos of community and citizenship
As a function of Kahatika’s use thought of entities outside the organisation will be promoted and decisions, with respect to externalities, made.
All users of the system will feel a sense of control. For many this will be the first time in their working history.
An opportunity to be creative occurs regularly and routinely for everyone. The system’s interface will encourage new levels of imagination and contribution.
Expressions of passion are encouraged by the system and an opportunity to join with other’s passion is part of the system.
Capture the advantages of diversity
Algorithmic analysis of soft data highlights diverse opinion. The sooner this is started the sooner time based analysis can be achieved.
The system represents a somewhat slow moving game. It has results and outputs. The interface keeps the user engaged, informed and amused.
Make direction setting bottom-up and outside-in
Input has the greatest probability of being truthful. The longer the system is used the more truthful the input becomes and the more reliable the output to set direction becomes.
Experiment more often and more cheaply
How regularly the system is used is up to the organisation. There is little increased cost of more frequent operation.
Create internal markets for ideas, talent & resources
Outputs will be regarded as fair even though they are as unfair as all markets. All users of the system will have an opportunity to price the market of ideas, talent and resources.
There will be no personal motivation to politicize a decision.
Likewise the system includes no personal motivation to reinforce demarcation lines
Enlarge the frame of management education
Implementation of the system will include a traditional one on many training program. This will concentrate lightly on how, but extensively on why. Use of the system includes e-learning which reinforces what the user has been taught.
Retool management for an open and borderless world
Being a Transitional Technology, Kahatika will get users used to an increasingly transparent world. The system does this safely and securely.
Rethink the philosophical foundations of management
Practice, practice, practice. The system steps the user through an action that emulates the symptoms of Love. The user is encourages to think about the implications of that via the interface.
Build "natural," flexible hierarchies
The Kahatika system has no hierarchies and yet will self-manage to avoid descending into chaos. This will cause the user to question the practical use of existing hierarchies outside the system.
Redefine the work of leadership
The opportunity to show modern leadership skills is inherent in the system. The nature of users input will show the prevalence of such skills within the organisation.
Create a democracy of information
The very nature of Kahatika ensures democracy of information. It provides a safe incremental path to spread of control within the organisation.
Expand the scope of employee autonomy
Individual’s control over their lives are enhanced by the Kahatika system.
Receiving a contrary opinion will not be a problem with Kahatika. There will be no reason not to.
Develop holistic performance measures
Governance is enhanced with Kahatika. Board level dashboards are integral to the system.
Transcend traditional management trade-offs
Over time the culture will improve and be measured. Remedial action can be taken if culture is shown to be deteriorating.
Stretch management timeframes and perspectives
The members of the organisation are exposed to a new incentive system; One that is based on Love not greed; One that will cause all to contemplate their relationship with money and its role in an ever changing world.
Challenges
Finding the right Early Adopter for Kahatika is the biggest challenge. Kahatika is unique and untested. What is more, my prefered early adopter would be in the banking industry. This industry is typically conservative when looking at brave new management systems.
The exact nature of the analysis systems may be peculiar to the initial client. Coding in such a way to make the reporting systems general enough to adapt to any industry sector will be a challenge.
Secure integration with backend financial systems such as payroll and creditors, which will vary from customer to customer, will need to be clever and simple.
We have scalability handled but the technology we have chosen is bleeding edge.
Implementing the security design will be tricky.
The content, style of presentation, and usability of the implementation training will be critical to get correct for any early adopter of the system
First Steps
- Enhance the working prototype such that it uses our chosen scaling technologies.
- This will be used to demonstrate to selected potential early-adopters to get buy in on the concept from one of them.
- Input from that first client will then shape the development for that industry.
- Middleware for integration with that client's Payroll and Creditor systems will then be written.
- External training modules will be designed with input from the first client.
- The first version of the system will be implemented and trialled.
- Ideally the second early-adopter would then be part of the first's supply chain.
Credits
I was inspired to design Kahatika by one of W. Edwards Deming's fourteen philosophical principles and his least followed teaching relating to motivation.
The basic design was penned many years ago but I have only more recently looked for research which may back up my somewhat radical design.
Results of my research can be found, in a fashion, on my Blog
Both work that supports and contradicts can be found there.
Tags
Love Money Motivation Remuneration
Helpful Materials
"That's good to know. In a world that can be cruel and selfish, it's this knowledge - the knowledge that we are inclined to love one another, that we're inclined to do good, to be good - that causes us to take heart. We see with fresh eyes what's precious and so fragile and so important to us. We put aside our petty grievances and our minor disagreements. We see ourselves in the hopes and hardships of others. And in the stories of people like Dean and people like Christopher, we remember that each us contains reserves of resolve and compassion. There are heroes all around us, all the time." ~ Obama on the power of Love
Relevence to Kahatika starts 11:30 in. Take special note of the essence of what is said at 12:50 minutes.
Below shows a video giving one reason as to why Kahatika should start with Banks as early adopters.
Documents:
- No documents at this time
Images:
- No images at this time
Videos:
- Kahatika - It Pays to CommunicateView more webinars from Primesoft NZ Ltd.
Comments
Greg Stevenson
March 5, 2012 at 3:29pm@Ellen
I'd like to think I have.
“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
My solution I believe is truly beautiful.
The trouble is, how many parents think their child is ugly?
My task is simply to expose its beauty to the right early adopter and to have them sold on its beauty.
It's a big market out there. There must be someone who can see what I see.
Thanks for asking.
Greg.
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Ellen Weber
March 5, 2012 at 8:48amGreat post Greg, and thanks for the new insights! I especially enjoyed your notion of integration here - a new concept that would impact growth for capitalism. We often speak of integration in ways that do not get at it's complexities when trying to implement in a siloed organization. Have you found ways around that? Best, Ellen