Neither Either Nor Or

Kevin Kelly is one of my intellectual heroes. His thinking is so clear and far-reaching that I always learn something from him.

In this post, Kevin uses controversy concerning the taxonomy of life by biologists to shed light on questions of technology. He writes:

I venture further to suggest the same thing will happen in our classification of technology. At the moment, a phone is a phone is a phone. But already we see phones and cameras melding in the future. We see computers and TVs converging. We see computers and film falling into each other. We see cars becoming entertainment theaters, and shoes becoming health monitors. As technological devices and services become more complex, their boundaries of identity will blur and overlap.

Eventually, the distinction between living species and technological species will also be primarily one of convenience and habit, as genetically engineered organisms accomplish what machines used to do, and machines do what biological organisms used to do.  We'll end up identifying a device as a probability index. It is mostly phone we say, with a little bit of photosynthesis bacteria. Or this notebook is kinda of alive. It is para-living, in that 50% neighborhood of life. 

The splitters will be the last to acknowledge artificial life, or AI. While the lumpers think that both are already here, but lumped into a group we don't yet have a name for.

The problem? The either/or mindset. I've written about either/or thinking here before. The need for clarity and simplicity drives our desire to achieve "The Answer."  Efficiency rules; effectiveness be damned. Bathing babies, prepare to be tossed. Parsimonium uber alles!

Particularly in times of crisis (no, this is not a regurgitation of the faulty "crisis = danger + opportunity" meme) the seduction of parsimonious choices is practically irresistible.

Resist it.

One way to do so is to read Roger Martin's recently published book, The Opposable Mind, which illustrates ways that successful business leaders transcend this lose/lose mindset through what he calls "integrative thinking." Simply put, Martin found that leaders like Procter and Gamble's A.G. Lafley and Red Hat Software founder Bob Young consider more problem features to be salient, resist the temptation to ascribe simplistic causality to systemic effects, approach decisions holistically, and creatively resolve tension among opposing ideas. And, they use this mindset relentlessly, because, as Lafley put it when asked about a P&G plan that achieved both cost cutting and innovation:

We weren't going to win if it were an 'or.' Everybody  can do 'or.'

Another way? Give us a call...we can help.

Comments

[Johnnie Moore]

Thanks for this Tom, I'm buying The Opposable Mind now, it sounds very interesting.

[Paula Thornton]

We are on a common wavelength...all points on my path as well. Make sure your path also crosses "The Future of Management". Catch up with you again soon...:)