Everything shall perish
Humans too
Our brief existence have been consumed with the desires of material gains propagated in a society that has moved so far from what it truly means to be human. We have become so disconnected to our true purpose since the commoditization of our needs has taken us further to what simply is providing us for sustenance. The challenges we face as a society has become increasingly complex through the systems that we’ve created in our selfish pursuit for economic progress.
In my pursuit to make sense of this new world we live in with the advent of technology, I begin to take interest in understanding how we can work better with each other in a time where information is open and easily accessed by everyone. I became fascinated by human and group behaviours in a digital age where everyone has an opinion. And in my pursuit to learn, a recurring pattern that is evidently clear in order to navigate through the complexity is to define a meaningful purpose.
In his concept of the Golden Circle, Simon Sinek shared the need for leaders and organizations to start with why in order to create a compelling value proposition and inspire action. Why you do what you do? The purpose, cause, or belief that inspires you to do what you do.
The Responsive Org movement calls for us to rethink how we work and organize in an unpredictable landscape by valuing purpose over profit. A new reality that shares similar sentiments with Frederic Laloux views on the future of management as organizations move forward along an evolutionary spectrum towards self-management, wholeness and ultimately having a deeper sense of purpose. And what’s amazing in this evolutionary shift is that in order to navigate in today’s complexity, he describes it with a simple guiding metaphor of a living organism.
Fluid, responsive and adaptable. Independent as each cell operate with a specific function yet in perfect harmony, they serve a bigger purpose. Something that we’ve taken for granted within nature itself that might be the answer to how we can rise to today’s global challenges together. These are few of the many examples that sets the imperative to rethink how collaborate, co-create and even co-exist.
It might be a no-brainer to begin with the very intent in each of our pursuits but it just shows how far we have grown apart from our real purpose. Even though led by good intentions, the systems that we’ve created with the rise of the industrial age has dehumanized our society to become by-products of an operating model that we blindly accept as it is. It’s time we clarify our true intent and take action.
“The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology, but because of an expanded concept of what it means to be human.” – John Naisbitt
So what does it really mean to be human?
21 Dec 2016
