A Change Highway

You are driving a car along a road and encountering many curves along the way. The safe speed for that road is posted at 35 mph. As long as you are traveling at a relatively "safe" speed, even though the road is quite curved, you have sufficient long-range vision providing plenty of thinking, reaction and planning time. You feel in control and comfortable.

Suddenly, the car moves into high speed. The speedometer reads 60 mph and is climbing. You are no longer in control of the car -- but you are still behind the wheel. You are responsible for the behavior of the automobile, for the well-being of yourself and your vehicle as well as for the safety of others in your vicinity. Yet, your ability to respond and react to road conditions and the environment has dramatically diminished due to the rapid increase in your rate of movement through space and time. You are faced with the reality that previously successful methods of navigation no longer guarantee safe and effective passage from one place to another. You need help.

You need the help of someone who is able to see far enough ahead to alert you to what is in your path. You need a person who can communicate with others in the vicinity so that you may work together for common well-being, and you need someone in charge of the map in order to know what directional options you have so that you may reach a desirable destination. Additionally, you and these helpers must be able to work together effortlessly and naturally. Each of you must trust him/herself and the others. Each of you must know what your responsibilities are and must be able to learn and assimilate new information quickly, on a continual basis. And you must have a common purpose -- that being to arrive safely at your desired destination, having caused no damage to anything or anyone else along the way.

Individuals involved in today's business and governmental organizations and institutions find themselves in precisely the same situation as the driver in the story above. Many currently used methodologies, processes and structures cannot and will not support the kinds of learning environments, relationships, innovation and creative interactions necessary to positively carry organizations, governments, societies or individuals into the 21st Century. Our "vehicles"-- our organizational, institutional and governmental structures and processes, as they are currently constructed - are not capable of adequately, safely navigating the "road" at the accelerated speeds of the present or the greatly increased speeds anticipated in the near future.

The speed with which change occurs will increase, not diminish, in the years to come. Our ability to move safely through this acceleration depends upon our ability and willingness to become far more innovative, imaginative, relational, and creative. Multiplication and utilization of the fruits of these attributes depend upon organizational installation of process and structures that foster and nurture them. The ability of organizations to multiply and utilize these attributes also depends upon executive recognition of the need to install and promote new methodologies. Clearly, individuals who are responsible for "driving" business, educational and governmental organizations and institutions into the new millennium must be willing and able to change themselves. They must transform their domains into collaborative learning environments that are capable of carrying organizations and human beings safely from one "destination" to another, quickly able to proactively chart an appropriate new course, and respectful of the environments through which they travel and the different cultures and life forms they encounter along the way.

The quality of our future depends upon our willingness to learn and to grow ever-more creatively intelligent and mature.

© 1997 Institute for Business & Social Architecture International, Ltd. 
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