Compass

CEO Brief

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 21:32:05 GMT

Why "Getting New Things Done" Attempts Fail

After It Starts Working

CEO Briefing:

The uncomfortable truth:
Most change initiatives do not fail because the idea is bad.
They fail because leadership does not change as the system matures.

The Pattern We See Repeatedly

Across industries and geographies, the same failure pattern appears:

Early promise leads to internal excitement
Proof of feasibility leads to pilot success
Growing traction leads to unexpected resistance
Momentum stalls leads to initiative quietly deprioritised

At this point, leadership often concludes:

“The idea wasn’t right after all.”

In reality, the leadership model was no longer right for the stage.

From Signal to Scale: The SRL Journey

Every successful innovation follows a predictable journey – from weak signal to market tipping point.

At each stage, progress is blocked by a different set of “yes, but…” constraints:

Yes, it’s interesting… but is it real?
Yes, it works… but does it fit?
Yes, it fits… but it threatens something.
Yes, it launched… but will it last?

These are not technical problems.
They are leadership capability mismatches.

Why Leadership Strengths Can Become Liabilities

Most senior leaders are strong in two or three phases of this journey. Usually the ones they have personally lived through.

That is normal.

What is not normal – but increasingly common – is assuming that:

The same leaders should lead every phase
Execution excellence equals innovation readiness
Scaling skill implies discovery skill

It does not.

In fact, applying the wrong strength at the wrong stage is one of the fastest ways to kill momentum.

NEPTUNE: A Practical Leadership Diagnostic

The NEPTUNE model identifies seven necessary and sufficient leadership capabilities that become critical at different readiness stages:

Navigator – sensing direction before certainty
Empath – understanding human and societal impact
Plate-Spinner – managing multiple fragile experiments
Transcender – resolving contradictions rather than trading them off
Umbrella – providing political and reputational cover
Ninja – removing obstacles decisively
Elephant – stabilising and institutionalising success

No individual has all seven in equal measure.
No organisation has them all present at the right time by accident.

The Question CEOs Should Ask First

Before launching any major “innovation”, “AI”, or “transformation” initiative:

Which NEPTUNE capabilities do we actually have — and which will the next stage demand?

This single diagnostic question:

Reduces execution risk
Prevents premature scaling
Avoids political ambush
Increases the odds of reaching true tipping point success

The 1%er Advantage

1%er leaders are people who:

Recognise which stage they are truly in
Change how they lead as readiness evolves
Bring in complementary capability before the system demands it

They do not confuse activity with progress. Or launch with success.

Bottom Line for CEOs

Getting new things done failure is almost always a misalignment between readiness and leadership capability.

Before asking:

“What should we build?”

Ask:

“Are we equipped to lead what comes next?”

That question alone separates signals that fade from systems that scale.

2026 Part Two

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:50:52 GMT

It's 2026. Part Two

The Leadership Capabilities Each SRL Stage Demands

If you haven't already read part one of this series, check back to the BLOG and give it a glance.

The critical insight behind SRL is that leadership itself must evolve as readiness evolves.

The behaviors that make progress possible at one stage actively block progress at the next. This is why so many initiatives stall: leaders keep applying yesterday’s strengths to today’s “yes, buts”.

The NEPTUNE model allows leaders to see – in advance – what kind of leadership the system is asking for next.

What follows is not a checklist, but a diagnostic lens.

SRL 0–1: Signal to Hypothesis

Dominant NEPTUNE: Navigator, Empath

At the earliest stages, nothing is proven. There is no business case, only weak signals, anomalies, frustrations, and unmet needs.

The core “yes, but” here is:

Yes, this feels important… but we don’t yet know what it is.

Navigator capability is essential to sense direction without data
Empath capability of empathising with customer/consumer unspoken needs is critical to avoid solving the wrong problem

This is where organizations most often kill opportunities prematurely, because they demand certainty before direction.

SRL 2–3: Concept to Proof of Possibility

Dominant NEPTUNE: Plate-Spinner, Transcender

Here the question becomes:

Yes, it sounds good… but can it actually work?

Multiple experiments run in parallel. Fragility is high. Failure is information.

Plate-Spinner leaders keep multiple options alive without forcing premature convergence
Transcender leaders reframe contradictions rather than trade them off

This is where incremental thinkers often over-optimise a weak idea instead of allowing a stronger one to emerge.

SRL 4–5: Prototype to System Fit

Dominant NEPTUNE: Transcender, Empath

The system now says:

Yes, it works… but does it fit the real world?

This is where second-order effects appear , organisational resistance, user friction, ethical concerns, unintended consequences.

Transcender capability resolves conflicts between technical success and human reality
Empath capability ensures adoption rather than mere functionality

Many “successful” innovations die here because leaders confuse working with belonging.

SRL 6–7: Pilot to Organizational Commitment

Dominant NEPTUNE: Umbrella, Ninja

Now the challenge is political, not technical:

Yes, it works and fits… but it threatens something important.

Legacy systems, incentives, power structures, and careers come into play.

Umbrella leaders provide protection, legitimacy, and air cover
Ninja leaders remove obstacles decisively and without theatre

This is where most large organisations lose nerve. And where external 1%ers are often decisive.

SRL 8–9: Launch to Operational Reality

Dominant NEPTUNE: Elephant, Plate-Spinner

The system now asks:

Yes, it’s launched… but can it survive contact with reality?

Scaling introduces new fragilities: reliability, supply chains, regulation, reputation.

Elephant capability integrates, stabilizes, standardizes, and embeds
Plate-Spinner capability keeps adaptation alive during growth and ensures the myriad tasks needing to be done are done on time, on budget and on specification

Many organisations mistake launch for success. It is not.

SRL 10: Tipping Point to Enduring Success

Dominant NEPTUNE: Elephant, Navigator

At tipping point, the question shifts one final time:

Yes, this is successful… but what does it now enable – or endanger?

This is where moral, social, and systemic implications crystallize.

Elephant leadership ensures durability and legitimacy
Navigator leadership looks beyond the current S-curve to the next and keeps a look-out for a need for appropriate ‘Plan B’ pivots

True getting new things done leadership does not stop at success, it anticipates what success will break.

Here’s how the relative importance of the seven NEPTUNE elements will shift over the course of a typical SRL0-10 journey. Note that at no stage does the need for any single element drop to zero: getting new things done demands the continual presence of a viable system and the seven NEPTUNE elements define viability.

The Final Leadership Insight

The SRL journey is not a test of intelligence.

It is a test of situational leadership maturity.

Most leaders are excellent at some of these stages.
Very few are excellent at all of them.

That is why NEPTUNE is best used first as a diagnostic:

To understand which capabilities you already have
To anticipate which “yes, buts” will soon appear
To decide whether you need to develop, re-balance, or bring in missing leadership capacity

Before you try to get new things done, know what kind of leadership the system will demand next.

That is how 1%ers think.
That is how tipping points are reached.
That is how signals become scale.

Why 2026 Organizations Need a New Way to "Do New Things"

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:35:56 GMT

It's 2026. Part One.

For decades, Aerospace has used the Technology Readiness Levels to ensure missions didn't fail catastrophically. They made uncertainty visible before betting billions and risking lives. That discipline kept astronauts alive.

Modern innovation with AI faces similar stakes. Universally all organizational survival is up for grabs. Yet most companies lack any comparable readiness framework. That's were "System Readiness Levels" comes in.

Senior leaders across every known industry are asking a deceptively simple question:

“How ready are we?”

Is the idea ready for investment?
Is the system ready for scale?

Are we ready for AI?

Is the surrounding market ecosystem ready for us?
Is the organization ready to absorb the change?

Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale has been a way of bringing discipline to innovation risk.

The now-familiar 1–9 scale tracked a journey from basic scientific principles through to an “actual system proven in an operational environment.” (Ask AI if about TRL if you haven’t heard of it before now. E.g., “Explain Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) in business terms. I'm a leader evaluating the readiness of my organization to do a new thing. What is TRL, why was it created, and why should I care about it for my organization?")

TRLs worked because they did something leaders desperately need, they made uncertainty visible.

Over time, TRLs escaped aerospace and defense spreading into energy, pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing, and eventually into boardrooms. Today, many executives can roughly locate a project on the TRL ladder, even if they’ve never formally used the tool.

But there’s a problem.

“Technology Readiness” is no longer enough.

Modern innovation is no longer primarily about technology.

AI systems, digital platforms, business-model innovations, regulatory shifts, and social or ethical interventions are systems, not products. Their success depends as much on behavior, trust, governance, narrative, and timing as on technical performance.

This is why we propose a subtle but important shift in language:

From Technology Readiness Levels to System Readiness Levels (SRL)
From Signal to Scale

The change matters. “System” signals to leaders that readiness applies to:

Organizations, not just products
Markets, not just labs
Humans, not just code

The Scale Needs a Level 0. And a Level 10.

In practice, most breakthrough initiatives begin before TRL 1 ever exists. They start as weak signals: hunches, anomalies, customer frustrations, regulatory noise, or moral discomfort with the status quo.

This pre-project phase is where insight is formed, but it is invisible in the traditional TRL model. Hence the need for SRL 0: the phase of sensemaking, pattern recognition, and problem reframing.

At the other end of the scale lies an even more consequential gap.

TRL 9 is typically defined as: “Actual system proven in operational environment.”

That is a necessary milestone, but it is not innovation.

Many systems reach TRL 9 and still fail. They launch, technically work, and then quietly disappear. Others limp along, consuming capital without ever becoming self-sustaining.

Which brings us to the missing level.

SRL 10: The Tipping Point

True innovation only exists once a system has passed its tipping point on the overall S-curve: when adoption becomes self-reinforcing, legitimacy is established, and the system begins to scale faster than resistance can stop it.

SRL 10 is not a technical milestone.
It is a market, social, and ethical one.

Reaching it implies:

The market believes the system works
Users trust it
Stakeholders tolerate (or endorse) its implications
The system can grow without extraordinary protection

In the AI world, this distinction is already explicit. Models are not considered “ready” simply because they function. They must also pass thresholds of safety, fairness, governance, and public acceptance. In other words, system readiness now extends beyond performance into legitimacy.

This is why SRL 10 matters. And why leaders – not engineers – own it.

From “Yes, But…” to Breakthrough – The Readiness Journey as Contradiction Resolution

Most leaders are deeply uncomfortable with contradictions.

They prefer trade-offs, prioritization, sequencing, and compromise. These are all valuable skills, but they break down when organizations face genuinely novel challenges.

Yet contradictions show up in leadership conversations every day, usually disguised in a far more familiar form:

“Yes, but…”

“Yes, but we don’t know what customers actually want yet.”
“Yes, but this would destabilize our current business.”
“Yes, but the technology works and the organization doesn’t.”
“Yes, but the market isn’t ready.”

Each “yes, but” is a signal. It marks the boundary between the current state and the next level of readiness.

Seen through this lens, the System Readiness Level (SRL) journey is not a linear execution process, but rather a sequence of ‘yes, buts’ that must be resolved without retreating into compromise.

SRL 0 to 1: From Signal to Concept

Goal: Articulate a meaningful opportunity.
Yes, but: “We sense something is wrong or changing, but we can’t yet define the problem or the system.”

At this stage, the contradiction is between intuition and legitimacy. Leaders feel something matters, but cannot yet justify action. Premature analysis kills insight; overconfidence kills learning.

SRL 1 to 3: From Concept to Credible System

Goal: Demonstrate feasibility.
Yes, but: “We can describe the idea, but we don’t know if it can actually work.”

Here, leaders face the tension between exploration and proof. Too much rigor too early freezes progress; too little invites fantasy. The contradiction is resolved by disciplined experimentation, not opinion.

SRL 3 to 5: From Working to Relevant

Goal: Show the system solves a real problem.
Yes, but: “It works, but not in the real world we operate in.”

This is where many initiatives stall. The system functions, but not under real constraints: users behave unpredictably, incentives clash, edge cases emerge. The contradiction lies between technical success and contextual fit.

SRL 5 to 7: From Relevant to Scalable

Goal: Prepare the system for growth.
Yes, but: “If this succeeds, it will break something else.”

This is a classic leadership moment. Scaling exposes conflicts with existing structures, power bases, revenue streams, and identities. The contradiction is between local optimization and system-wide impact.

SRL 7 to 9: From Launch to Legitimacy

Goal: Prove the system in operation.
Yes, but: “Just because we can launch doesn’t mean we should.”

Ethical, social, regulatory, and reputational tensions dominate here. In AI especially, this phase reveals whether trust has been designed in. Or merely assumed.

SRL 9 to 10: From Adoption to Tipping Point

Goal: Achieve self-reinforcing momentum.
Yes, but: “This is live, yet it could still fail.”

The final contradiction is between existence and inevitability. Passing the tipping point requires alignment across technology, narrative, incentives, and values. It is where markets, not organizations, make the final decision.

Why This Matters for Leaders

Every failed innovation attempt can be traced back to a “yes, but” that was managed rather than resolved.

Leaders who succeed are not those with better answers, but those who:

Recognize the real “yes, but” at each stage
Resist false trade-offs
Create conditions for contradictions to dissolve rather than harden

Different stages of the SRL journey require very different leadership capabilities; most organizations systematically over-invest in some while neglecting others.

That is where the NEPTUNE model comes in.

Why New Things Fail, And Why 1%ers Are Different

One of the most consistent patterns we see across organizations is this:

Most leaders – and most innovators – are genuinely strong at only two or three stages of the Readiness journey.

That is not a weakness. It is a consequence of education and experience.

Some people thrive in ambiguity. Others excel at execution. Some are natural system integrators; others are exceptional at scaling, protecting, or institutionalizing success. Very few individuals have personally navigated all stages from signal to tipping point.

That is why 1%ers are rare.

A 1%er is not defined by intelligence, creativity, or charisma.

A 1%er is defined by having repeatedly crossed Readiness thresholds, and survived the “yes, buts” that derail most initiatives.

They have:

Felt the loneliness of SRL 0–1, when insight exists without permission
Endured SRL 3–5, when “it works” still isn’t enough
Managed SRL 5–7, when success threatens existing power structures
Navigated SRL 9–10, when reputational, ethical, and systemic risks dominate

Crucially, they have learned when to change how they lead as the system matures.

Most organizations fail not because they lack talent, but because they deploy the wrong strengths at the wrong stage.

NEPTUNE: A Leadership System, Not a Personality Model

This is where the NEPTUNE model becomes indispensable.

NEPTUNE describes seven distinct leadership capabilities that, although always present (NEPTUNE is a system!), become more or less dominant at different points in the SRL journey:

Navigator – sensing direction before clarity exists
Empath – understanding human need and unintended impact
Plate-Spinner – managing multiple fragile experiments
Transcender – reframing contradictions into higher-order solutions
Umbrella – providing cover, legitimacy, and protection
Ninja – removing obstacles quickly and decisively
Elephant – institutionalizing, scaling, and stabilizing success

Every SRL stage privileges different NEPTUNE capabilities.

The mistake most leadership teams make is assuming:

Their strongest leaders should lead every phase
Excellence in scaling implies excellence in discovery
Operational mastery equals innovation capability

It does not.

The Diagnostic Question Every CEO Should Ask First

Before launching any major “new things get done” initiative, there is a single foundational question leadership teams should ask:

“Which NEPTUNE capabilities do we actually have, and which ones are missing?”

This is not about labels. It is about risk awareness.

If your team is rich in Plate-Spinners and Ninjas but lacks Navigators, you will execute brilliantly on the wrong opportunity.
If you have Transcenders but no Umbrellas, bold ideas will die politically.
If you scale without Elephants, success will be squashed by the market ecosystem.

You must know where you are before you move.

The SRL journey is unforgiving of self-deception.

You cannot skip stages.
You cannot outsource missing capabilities forever.
And you cannot will your way through “yes, buts” that require different leadership muscles.

The role of senior leadership, therefore, is not to have all the answers.

It is to know where the organization truly is, understand what the next readiness threshold demands, and ensure the right NEPTUNE capabilities are present before crossing it.

That is how new things get done.

2025 Making Business AntiFragile Part Two

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 15:47:54 GMT

2025 Making your Business Antifragile Part Two

2025 Businesses living in a whole new world. Find your business in the graph and begin your innovation journey.

First, a perspective:

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
Mendel's laws of inheritance and principles of genetics, published in 1866, were largely ignored by the scientific community. His work was rediscovered around 1900, 16 years after his death, becoming the foundation of modern genetics.

Alfred Wegener (1880-1930)
Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift in 1912, suggesting continents had once been joined. Geologists ridiculed his theory for decades. Only in the 1950s and 1960s, long after his death, did plate tectonics confirm his core insight.

Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920)
Many of Ramanujan's mathematical formulas and theories were so advanced that mathematicians couldn't fully understand them during his lifetime. Decades after his early death, his notebooks continue to inspire new mathematical discoveries.

Emmy Noether (1882-1935)
Noether's theorem, connecting symmetries in physics with conservation laws, was not widely recognized during her lifetime, partly due to gender discrimination. Today, it's considered one of the most important mathematical theorems relevant to physics.

W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972)
Following this pattern of visionaries whose insights were not fully appreciated in their time, Ashby proposed a principle that was always true but not fully understood: "Only variety can absorb (manage) variety."

Translated to today's business context: 2025 businesses require a complex operating model sufficient for handling the complexity of the environment they operate in.

Ashby's Principle and Modern Business

Ashby, a psychiatrist and pioneer in cybernetics, warned against the appealing but ultimately ineffective promise of simple solutions to complex problems, while offering a path forward through embracing necessary complexity in our response systems.

In today's context of climate change, technological disruption, global pandemics, and social polarization, this principle illuminates the requirement for systems thinking rather than reductionist approaches.

Ashby's work was particularly influential during a time when systems theory was emerging as a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding complex systems, from biological organisms to social organizations and mechanical systems.

Ashby explored how adaptive behavior emerges in complex systems. His work focused on understanding the mechanisms that allow a system (like a brain) to be both stable and adaptable. He was influential in the emerging fields of cybernetics, systems theory, and in artificial intelligence . He approached the study of the brain not only from a biological perspective, but as a system with particular properties that could be understood through mathematical and logical analysis. His work predates current neuroscience research. Recent neuroscientific findings now validate many aspects of his framework, long after his death. (Reference 1)

The Ashby Line

The Ashby line, also known as the Law of Requisite Variety, is a fundamental principle in systems theory. This principle states that for a system to be stable and effectively controlled, the controlling system must have at least as much variety (or complexity) as the system being controlled. In other words, "only variety can absorb (manage) variety."

The Ashby line represents the minimum complexity needed in a regulator (business operating model) to effectively manage a given system. If the regulator (business operating model) has less variety than the system it aims to control, it will inevitably fail to handle all possible states or disturbances the system might encounter.

Ashby Line Graph - Where is your organization positioned in this graph? Where do you perceive the complexity of your environment to be positioned?

Organizational Complexity vs Problem Complexity

The Ashby Line (red diagonal) represents the minimum organizational complexity required to effectively handle a given level of problem complexity
Two zones:

Green zone (below the line): Where organizational complexity is sufficient to manage the problems faced
Red zone (above the line): Where problems exceed the organization's capacity to handle them effectively

Organizational structures along the spectrum:

Simple hierarchies work for routine, predictable challenges
Functional organizations handle standard operations with moderate complexity
Matrix organizations manage cross-functional projects and competing priorities
Network organizations address market disruptions and rapid changes
Holacracy and other highly adaptive structures tackle global, interconnected challenges

Many traditional organizations struggle with today's rapidly changing, interconnected problems – their business models simply lack the requisite variety needed to respond effectively to increasing environmental complexity.

What Failure Looks Like

So, what does it look like when your organization is NOT modeled to manage the environment; when your organization is unable to change the strategic direction necessary to meet the environmental complexity requirements?

Loss of Control

Old operating business models failing to identify unique customer complaints, and early warning signs of trouble
Surprising declines or stagnation in revenue, without a clear understanding of why
Traditional quarterly planning cycles unable to respond to rapidly changing consumer preferences
Centralized decision-making structures where individual contributing employees see problems but lack authority to address them or they lack a process to inform senior leadership

Over Simplification in Strategy

Companies restricting which markets they operate in to maintain control
Overly strict policies that eliminate exceptions in an effort to maintain the costs in a business
Refusing to adopt new technologies but instead maintain familiar processes
Artificial constraints on product offerings to reduce operational complexity

Over Indexing on Complexity (without a clear model)

Organizations stuck in perpetual restructuring as they try to match environmental complexity
Rapidly expanding management layers and committees
Explosion of specialized roles and departments
Increasing technology investments without corresponding organizational changes

Case Studies

Six Sigma organizations and General Electric

GE developed increasingly complex management structures, including the notorious "rank and yank" performance system and Six Sigma implementation across all divisions. While initially successful, this extreme internal complexity eventually created a bureaucratic organization that struggled to innovate. By focusing on process optimization and complex control systems, GE lost its ability to respond to market disruptions. The company that was once the world's most valuable eventually faced severe decline, losing over 80% of its market value by 2018. The system failed to take advantage of the optimization wins and then pivot to take advantage of the next innovation.

Microsoft under Steve Ballmer

Microsoft created a complex matrix organization with competing business divisions that required extensive coordination. The company became infamous for its "stack ranking" system that forced managers to rate some employees as underperforming regardless of actual performance. This organizational complexity generated political infighting rather than innovation, causing Microsoft to miss major market transitions to mobile and cloud computing despite having the technical capabilities.

Conversely, Microsoft's transformation under Satya Nadella successfully transformed from a Windows-centric company to a cloud and services provider by fundamentally restructuring its organization. Nadella eliminated the competitive divisional structure, created cross-functional teams, and implemented a curious culture. This increase in internal complexity matched the increasing external complexity of the tech ecosystem.

Apple and Sony

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he famously reduced the product lineup by approximately 70%, focusing on just four products. While this appears to contradict Ashby's Law, it actually demonstrates intentional management of complexity - simplifying customer-facing elements while building complexity where it mattered (in design and user experience).

On the other side, Sony in the 2000s responded to increasing market complexity by creating an extremely complex organizational structure with hundreds of subsidiaries and business units. Different divisions developed competing products (VAIO computers, PlayStation, phones, and tablets all had separate operating systems). This overamplification created internal competition rather than collaboration, decision paralysis, and inability to create integrated products to compete with Apple's simpler but more effective ecosystem approach.

Summary

Contrary to past logic, businesses succeeding today aren't necessarily the largest or best-funded—they're the ones whose internal complexity enables them to sense, respond to, and shape their environment. The question isn't whether your environment is becoming more complex—it is. The question is whether your organization is evolving to match it.

If you are interested in the operating system of the future, sufficient to manage the complexity of the environment, see our blog post on FutureProof™.

Reference 1: For a list of the innovators and scientists who have used Ashby's work as a foundation in their work, consult (ask AI about) additional resources on systems theory. His work has been influential across multiple disciplines, and his ideas have been cited extensively in:

Systems theory and cybernetics literature
Organizational science
Information theory
Complexity science
Artificial intelligence and robotics
Management theory

FutureProof™

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 15:14:50 GMT

FutureProof™ Decoded

When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things.

You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles – generally three to twelve of them – that govern the field.

The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.” John T. Reed

One of the final contradictions requiring consideration before the FutureProof™ manuscript was finally – finally – dispatched to the printers involved how to present the seven principles upon which the FutureProof™ story is built. On the one hand it felt like a good idea to introduce each of the principles according to their relevance to the overall story. On the other, it also felt like a good idea to present them all together in one place. Both options had their merits. That’s why we call it a contradiction. Printers, on the other hand, have little or no interest in contradictions. They just want to know how we want the damn book printed. Which ultimately meant a resolution where, in the book, the principles are featured at the appropriate time in the book’s flow, and anyone that just wants to see the principles can come here to the BLOG.

We knew a long time ago that for an organization to become FutureProof™ would require the presence of ‘a system’. That in turn meant that the Law of System Completeness would need to be obeyed. As it turns out, on several hierarchical levels. At the level of the overall organization, though, we knew that meant that there would need to be the usual six elements, plus another one concerning itself with the overall context (market, economy, geographical region, culture, etc) in which an organization finds itself operating. That in turn set us wondering whether each of the elements could then be represented as a fundamental underpinning principle. It turns out they can.

The next challenge was to try and find a meaningful acronym to make the seven principles eas(ier) to remember. Ideally with each word being evocative of the intended function of the relevant principle and not be (too) contrived. And in the right order.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad as the song goes. Enter ‘DECODED’.

Discontinuity. Coherence. Direction. Ecosystems. Duality. Orientation. Evaluation.

Here are the seven DECODED principles in FutureProof™:

Discontinuity – Discontinuity comes from our Stone Age brain misconception that the world is linear. We arrive at the workplace with that bias built-in. If change happened at all in the Stone Age, it happened slowly. The tasks that a person was made responsible for when they first became an adult were the same tasks they were performing at the end of their lives. Now we live in a world in which change happens ever more quickly. The data clearly tells us the world is very non-linear. It is s-curve shaped. The s-curve is universal. It applies to all systems and how they evolve over time. We’ll struggle a bit at first, then we’ll work out how to make big improvements, then we’ll start to encounter a period of diminishing returns – more effort in for less system improvement out – until, if we’re knuckle-headed enough to keep going will eventually involve putting in infinite amounts of effort to make precisely zero improvement. When we reach the top of the curve and determine that we still need to do better, that’s when the discontinuity happens. A jump to another, new, curve. That’s what innovation is all about: the successful discontinuous jump from one way of doing things to another.

From one system to the next, failure to recognize the periodic need for these jumps sits at the core of the fragility of most enterprises on the planet right now. Failure to successfully navigate through the awkward, netherworld-like vacuum between one s-curve and the next. FutureProofing™ starts with developing capabilities, mindsets, processes and procedures that enable the right discontinuous jumps to be made at the right time, for the right reasons. Forget about organizational resilience for a second, if every individual knew about s-curves (discontinuities) we’d all be a step less fragile.

Coherence – if Discontinuity will get us through most things in life, the second principle will get us through pretty much everything else. Coherence is about systems. The world is a system. A meta-system full of sub-systems, sub-sub-systems, and so on. Systems all the way down. Systems get things done. Every system needs to follow the Law of System Completeness. When it does, coherence is achieved. Here’s what the overall FutureProof™ system of principles looks like in Law of System Completeness (see image below) :

Direction – in true ‘if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there’ fashion, a significant futureproofing challenge in most organizations is that they indeed don’t know where they’re going. They might have revenue and profit targets. Or EBITDA goals. None of which have anything to do with the ‘future’ part of the futureproofing objective. Far more meaningful in this regard is that the organization understands that futureproofing first means increasing value, and that value is defined by customers. And then that the customer value North Star is ‘free perfect and now’. Always has been, always will be. TRIZ calls it ‘Ideal Final Result’, Steve Jobs called it ‘insanely great’, both ultimately unobtainable, but that shouldn’t impede efforts to move – via discontinuous, s- curve jumps – in that direction. Within the organization, direction has been defined more recently as ‘antifragile’ following the 2012 book of the same title by Nassim Taleb.

Ecosystems – here’s the Engine part of the FutureProof™ Principles. While you are busy working on problems you thought were unique to you, someone somewhere already solved your problem, and most likely those successful solutions are outside your industry. We’ve been calling this principle ‘Horizontal Wisdom’ to help make the point that the 20th Century saw industry evolve into a million vertical specialist silos, the walls of which are now so high that almost no-one can see what’s happening on the other side anymore. Including situations where the other side of the wall is another department inside our own organization. Use of the word ‘ecosystem’ is also intended to remind leaders that the rules of behavior when we recognize we’re all part of an ecosystem (actually rats-nest of multiple ecosystems) are somewhat different to the traditional rules of a capitalist economy. Win-win is a nice to have in the corporate world of the 1980s, now it is increasingly the only way to play. It is already the only way to have a hope of achieving FutureProof™ status.

Duality – ‘a man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.’ (John Pierpont Morgan) Here we get to the nitty-gritty human aspects of futureproofing. Humans are essentially bias machines, everyone thinking in their own ‘truth’. No enterprise has a hope of ‘futureproof’ without putting in place high-EQ humanocracies. Places where we want hierarchies and we don’t; where we want to give people autonomy and keep them under control; where we want to standardize operations to make the more efficient and empower people to do things their own way to make them meaningful. Contradictions everywhere. Knotty human shaped ethical and moral contradictions where there is no such thing as acceptable compromise.

Orientation – in order to get to where you’re going (see Direction, above), you first need to know where you are. This in turn means knowing which of the different zones of the Complexity Landscape Model we’re in. The basis of the model – originating from the Cynefin framework – is to segment the world into domains that each demand a different modus operandi to achieve desired outcomes. Sense-Categorize-Respond in a ‘simple’ system, for example, or, ‘Probe-Sense-Respond’ in one that is complex. Some people become offended by these kinds of prescriptive frameworks, thinking of them as some kind of categorization forcer. Instead of their actual use, which is to dynamically identify where we are right now in order to then plot a course to where we desire to be and then be able to monitor our progress, or otherwise.

Evaluation - is about establishing meaningful measurement feedback loops. Which in turn means measuring what’s important for futureproofing, rather than what most organizations tend to do – measuring what is perceived by them to be important. ‘What gets measured gets done’… so probably best to measure what’s right and helpful.

There it is, our framework "DECODED." Simple. And complex.

2025 Making your Business AntiFragile Part One

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 21:06:40 GMT

2025 Secret to Success Part One

How humans have processed information, organized themselves, made decisions and created perceptions has had a profound impact on our society and our businesses today. A statistically significant amount of new data on the neuroscience of humans is giving us the chance to change our business systems and realize greater gains.

The latest is a plot twist of information is the fact that success in business is better achieved with more right brain. Not surprisingly, those who we consider experts on the topic of Innovation e.g., Clay Christensen, Peter Thiel, our own Darrell Mann and many more, teach/taught methodologies that explicitly engage the right brain functions as well as the left. We are not referring to tools like Design Thinking; we are referring to complex tools used by the most successful innovators on the planet. Those who know the complexity of the tool needs to be equal to the complexity of the environment.

To see evidence of how over-indexing your left brain hinders growth, read the first part of the 1500 page book, The Matter of Things by Iain McGilchrist, (March 2023.) McGilchrist took exhaustive measures to establish the scientific efficacy of his premise. He successfully illuminates the negative impact too much left brain has on our decision making and has had on society at large. His supporting data references is listed in about 27 pages of his book.

The attributes of McGilchrist’s left brain thinking premise include:

· Narrow focus and attention to detail — The left hemisphere excels at focused, analytical attention to specific elements rather than the whole picture.

· Abstract and categorical thinking — It prefers to categorize and label things, reducing complex realities to more manageable abstractions.

· Sequential and linear processing — It handles information in a step-by-step, logical sequence rather than simultaneously.

· Literal interpretation — It tends toward literal rather than metaphorical understanding.

· Language dominance — It specializes in language processing, particularly explicit verbal communication.

· Mechanistic worldview — It views systems as collections of parts rather than integrated wholes.

· Preference for certainty — It seeks clear, definitive answers and dislikes ambiguity.

· Tool-oriented manipulation — It approaches the world as a collection of objects to be used or manipulated.

· Decontextualized thinking — It often strips information from its broader context.

· Reductionist approach — It reduces complex phenomena to simpler components that can be more easily analyzed.

· Time-bound thinking — It tends to fragment time into discrete units rather than experiencing its flow.

· Self-referential perspective — It prioritizes the utility of things to the self rather than their inherent qualities.

Whereas the Right Brain attributes are more consistent with quantum physics, complexity science, and certain branches of philosophy that emphasize interconnection and emergent properties. These attributes have always existed, but were rarely acknowledged or rewarded in our business systems. It wasn’t acknowledged because it wasn’t observed and provable. However, today’s human complexity tool (our brain) requires the characteristics and competencies from both sides of our brains in order to meet the complexity of the outside world.

(Some) of the Right Brain Attributes:

· Pattern recognition — Seeing meaningful configurations in complex data.

· Betweenness — Understanding relationships and connections between things (HUMANS!) rather than isolated entities.

· Acceptance of paradox — The ability to hold seemingly contradictory truths simultaneously.

· Flow experience — Perceiving reality as an ongoing process rather than as static objects.

· Depth perception — Perceiving both literal visual depth and metaphorical depth of understanding.

· Connotative meaning — Grasping implicit, contextual, and multidimensional meanings.

· Appreciation of the ineffable — Recognition that some truths cannot be fully captured in language.

· Presence and being — Experiencing reality directly rather than through conceptual models.

· Recursive awareness — Possessing self-reflective consciousness that includes awareness of its own limitations.

· Ecologically embedded thinking — Understanding systems as interconnected and interdependent.

In looking at the left-brain attributes, some might see a list of competencies seen on job descriptions and associate them with success. The data indicates however that more success is possible if we incorporate critical data found in right brain competencies. They would inform an even better decision.

Right brain looks for the bigger picture. A map is not the territory. What is known and observable is the map, but not the truth.

The pioneers who adopt tools enabling them to reward humans for "both sides of the brain thinking", will find gold in the future of their business.

The True Cost of Misalignment

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 19:47:00 GMT

The True Cost of Misalignment: How Organizations Can Bridge the Gap

The $8.9 Trillion Problem

Misalignment between a company's goals and the humans working to achieve them costs the global economy $8.9 trillion annually—approximately 9% of the global GDP.

But the human cost is even more staggering: 80% of working humans feel dissatisfied and wish for a different job. This isn't just an economic problem; it's a human one.

As we navigate an increasingly complex business landscape, defining a new framework for human alignment isn't just desirable—it's critical. While reducing economic waste is a positive byproduct, the true goal is creating environments where humans can thrive.

The Misalignment Challenge

Misalignment between humans is inevitable. Each person brings their unique perspective on success, along with their individual biases and strengths. Currently, there's no simple way to visualize how these beliefs align—or don't align—with organizational goals.

The impact? Trillions of dollars in wasted resources and opportunities.

In most organizations, no fixed coordinates or reference points exist. Each employee follows their own trajectory and direction based on their perceptions and mental models. The organization often has little gravitational pull toward the Ideal Final Outcome. (See Misalignment Chart)

Defining Alignment

So what exactly is alignment?

Alignment is clarity in:

The Ideal Final Outcome for an organization (sometimes called Vision, Mission, or Goals)
The challenge we're overcoming first, then second and so on
How a complete system is required to achieve the outcome
The journey for each human involved

Most importantly, alignment lives between perspectives, not in them .

System Completeness: A Framework for Alignment

To achieve the kind of alignment that doesn't waste trillions of dollars, we need to apply "system completeness" to the problem. This framework proposes that any successful endeavor must have all the necessary parts—just as a car without fuel won't move, regardless of how well-designed it is.

The Six Components of System Completeness

Strategic Direction (Directionality) : The high-level coordination between the organization's long-term mission and vision, with a clear understanding of misalignments with market and customer expectations.
Metric Alignment : As W. Edwards Deming said, "The most important numbers are unknown and unknowable," referring to all qualitative human variables that transform businesses from having merely complicated problems to complex ones. We must measure what's important, not just what's easy—defining importance by how useful metrics are in steering the company toward ideal directionality.
Change Alignment : Unlike traditional alignment tools focused on stability through frameworks, modern change alignment addresses the inherent complexity of today's business environment. It identifies change within the business, outside the business, and in the market. This component moves beyond person-to-person alignment toward aligning the broader system, solving meta-level contradictions that often cause organizations to oscillate between solutions that fix one problem only to create another.
Process Alignment : The opposite of rigid Standard Operating Procedures. While SOPs help with onboarding, they rarely create alignment in complex systems. Process alignment creates a way to see and address individual goals within the context of organizational direction.
Employee Alignment : Alignment has traditionally meant getting everyone working together toward strategic goals. However, alignment is inherently about relationships—it exists only when A aligns with B, B with C, and so on. It cannot be achieved in isolation. Measuring the success of these relationships falls under Metric Alignment.
Customer Needs Alignment : This component creates clarity in how to elicit information customers don't know they possess, moving the business from its desire for stability into a customer-centric view that acknowledges the complex and dynamic nature of customers' environments.

Moving Forward

The "complete system" alone won't solve alignment issues. A complete system remains subject to human interpretation, particularly by those with power. However, it can create a pathway to greater clarity and objectivity about desired outcomes and how each contributor can best participate.

If you're among the 80% feeling misaligned, examine the "complete system" to identify where your frustration originates. Is there a missing component—like fuel for a car? In your own way, seek out the missing pieces and consider how you might address them.

References:

Eightfold AI 2024 Talent Survey
The Law of System Completeness, Requisite and TRIZ
Jensen Shannon Divergence, 1991