A Tentative Manifesto for the Future of Organizations — 2
This is a follow-up to the first part of this article. This is a further exploration of a very tentative manifesto.
It is nothing short of a miracle how a single celestial object can be host to so many landscapes, life forms and ecosystems. We live in a “world of worlds”, all of which coexist within this barely noticeable, lonely rock revolving around itself in an otherwise dark, cold, silent infinity of emptiness. ~Planet of the Narcissists: Orbiting Towards Unconsciousness by George Tsakraklides
Manifestos are defined as a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer.
This somehow feels very final, and pedantic. Therefore, let me state at the outset that there is nothing final about this essay. It is an exploration, an envisioning, a hopeful imagining. It is also a call to action to those who, like me, feel the brokenness of the system, grieve over lost species and bleached coral reefs, and yearn to live in a vibrant planet abounding with all life forms. It is a plea to organizations to pause, breathe in, and take a deep look within. To slow down. It is ultimately an aspiration for our collective future.
The times are urgent; let us slow down. ~Bayo Akomolafe
Slowing down is thus about lingering in the places we are not used to. Seeking out new questions. Becoming accountable to more than what rests on the surface. Seeking roots. Slowing down is taking care of ghosts, hugging monsters, sharing silence, embracing the weird. ~Bayo Akomolafe
I invite organizations to Slow Down! Pause. Breathe. Look Within.
These are perhaps the most provocative and inflammatory words to say to a business in these times of uber-productivity and AI powered mega-tech solutions. The old narrative of separation and growthism wants us to move ever faster with increasing thoughtlessness, vacuity, and frustration towards an unknown and unreachable destination that lies just beyond the horizon. See, you are just one car away from everlasting happiness. One vacation home; one more designer dress; the latest i-whatever. You get it. The survival of this narrative depends on keeping humans addicted and lured with vacuous promises to get them to be complicit in their own death spiral.
Phew! Let’s step off the treadmill, take a deep, nourishing breath, and look around us. The world offers its abundance and enchantment for free. The beauty of a dewdrop on a stem of grass. The magic of ‘a host of golden daffodils.’ Wordsworth knew what true wealth meant. This is the abundance that the hubris of humanity (just a handful of them really) is trying their utmost to obliviate.
The triad of human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism, and logocentrism that characterizes separability is the basis of the different forms of narcissism of the human species (from a handful of cultures) that manifest in different ways in the various phases and contexts of modernity/coloniality. ~Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (the insert in parenthesis is mine)
Having embarked on the path of separation, human arrogance could only move onward on the path of destruction. Mistaking a very partial understanding for the whole, universalizing and imposing one cosmology and ontology on a pluriversal planet, eliminating the wondrously diverse in a bid to standardize and homogenize (e.g., factory-style monoculture), humans forged ahead in their hubristic folly.
Now, after more than five centuries of endeavoring to penetrate the mystery of life, control nature, and rule the world, this hegemonic cosmology has brought us to the brink of extinction. The laws and policies, rules and regulations, systems and algorithms — all created to augment and propagate the economic monomyth of growth — have become binding tentacles squeezing the world in their crushing grips. We have reached the end-point of Necrocapitalism.
Subrata Bobby Banerjee developed the concept of necrocapitalism defined as contemporary forms of organizational accumulation that involve dispossession and the subjugation of life to the power of death.
This prioritization of extreme profit and control at the cost of planetary and human human wellbeing has led to what Aimé Césaire called ‘thingification’ — a word he used for the commodification of the colonized. Today, the economic monomyth has colonized and commodified all aspects of life and living, resulting in a disregard for the consequences of our actions on future generations. In necrocapitalism, everything is reduced to a transaction that can be monetized.
We have created a society where if something is not sellable, or doesn’t get any monetizable “air time”, then it is absolutely useless. Values such as dignity, compassion, equality, healthcare, environmentalism, are often red alerts for our system: they are loss-makers, extremely risky areas for our capitalist society to “invest” in. ~Planet of the Narcissists: Orbiting Towards Unconsciousness by George Tsakraklides
Industrial Era organizations with their focus on predictability, planning, and profit have always sought to simplify complexities, render everything knowable and manageable, and eliminate all the messiness, uncertainties, and ambiguities. This endeavor has of course failed and decades of stupendous effort and hyper-technology have been harnessed in the service of managing the unmanageable.
This has resulted in the atomization of work to the point of meaninglessness in true reductionist style. Under these uber-efficient edifices lie broken dreams, lost passions, and wasted creativity. Humans have become resources. Creativity has been productized as ‘innovation’. The joy of collaboration is marred by competition and constant surveillance. Today, algorithms have replaced micro-managers making every move visible and trackable. The Machine has taken over. Productization of the Planet is the goal.
This essentially captures what organizations have been reduced to under the old narrative of power, profit, and privilege. Technology with its myriad promises and potentials seems to have lost its way in the corridors of power.
What is our work? What are we meant to do? Who do we choose to be?
In this necrocapitalist world, I see Wayfinders as organizations that have dared to step-off the artificially enforced construct of endless growth, hyper-competition, uber-productivity and the ensuing meaninglessness. These organizations eschew the old narrative and are willing to step into the pluriversal and entangled world of our ineradicable interconnectedness and profound relatedness.
Wayfinders strive to go beyond the space of anthropocentricity towards biocentricity. They aspire to move from human-centered designs to life-affirming organization designs.
These organizations are willing to Slow Down!
Slowing down in the true sense enables deeper sensemaking and a holding of space for the future to emerge. It is about connecting to the source of wisdom within. It is about viscerally appreciating our entangled, more-than-human selves. It is about a profound sensing into our ineradicable interconnectedness. Slow down; times are urgent. It is about presence, sensemaking, and listening at a generative level to each other, to the planet, to all sentient beings. These are essential capacities that Wayfinding organizations will have to build to eschew the old narrative.
To renounce the old narrative, it is important to first recognize it for what it is — a fabricated and contrived construct arising from a lust for power and privilege by a few. It has enforced conformity and complicity through the devious use of force, spurious legalities and regulations (e.g., by enforcing austerity measures and IMF/World Bank-driven structural adjustments to compel opening up to free trade), and manipulative use of technology (e.g., surveillance tech). You get the drift. All of these scaffoldings of the old narrative have to be dismantled. These are huge tasks that are not the work of single organizations.
It sounds almost impossible given we still exist in this necrocapitalistic world and are dependent on it for our daily bread. Most of us. And that is precisely the kind of helplessness and futility the old narrative strives to impose to keep everyone in its clutches. Nevertheless, in spite of the seemingly overwhelming odds, it is possible to take small, local actions. In an essentially quantum world, no action is too small to have an impact. Remember, a butterfly’s flutter can set off a tornado.
The journey will not be easy; there is no beaten path. It is going to be a case of ‘making the path by walking’. But those organizations that choose to become Wayfinders will be harbingers of the new civilizational narrative(s) waiting to be ushered in. The narratives already exist; they have existed for centuries. They were brushed aside, rendered invisible, excluded, and exterminated.
Let me clarify that I am not talking about diversity as practiced today in multinationals as a form of tokenism. And even when otherwise, it becomes a score to keep, a checkbox to tick off. None of this remotely ruffles the underlying status quo or is even permitted to.
I am talking about listening to the unseen, unheard, unacknowledged voices, to the cosmologies and ontologies other than the Eurocentric one. It is also time to acknowledge that the Western epistemology is merely one of many and has its place within the plethora of other ways of knowing, being, and doing. Accepting pluriversality is to accept that the world we exist in is an entanglement of many cosmologies interconnected and interwoven in the complex dance of Life.
Slowing down means not having answers but staying with the questions. Questioning the questions.
- Where are the questions arising from?
- What assumptions are being made?
- What is the state of being giving rise to the questions?
To reclaim meaning, purpose, and passion, it is imperative to accept that organizations are not about processes and technology. Organizations are about relationships and communities. Wayfinders strive to decolonize their imagination from helpless addiction to the old narrative, and concur that there is no master plan of a global design. What this means is to accept the contextual and experiential nature of all knowledge, letting go of the desire to play the ‘god trick’ that Donna Haraway warned against. She described it as the way that ‘universal truths’ seemed to be generated by disembodied scientists who can observe “everything from nowhere”.
Wayfinders are here not to productize the world or to act upon it. They are here to engage in a ‘becoming-with,’ creating sanctuaries and safe spaces for the unfolding of possibilities. This requires moving away from the growth paradigm to an entirely different paradigmatic state where ‘regeneration is about equilibrium, enough-ness, interspecies harmony, and a heartfelt recognition of our entangled interconnectedness’.
Wayfinders act as weavers, creators of fearless imagining, narrative builders, and connectors. Acting contextually and locally, they build the necessary capabilities to become planetary citizens and stewards. Imagine multitudes of organizations dotting the planet like interconnected nodes and communities collaborating with Life. They are not mere observers or agents. They recognize their power to shape and to be shaped by the environment. Just like any other life form, they are in symbiotic relationships.
This recognition is crucial in shifting the underlying paradigm of control to one of continuous and dynamic co-creation.
To be continued…
