A 21st Century Global Declaration of Independence

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for individuals to dissolve the institutional bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all individuals are created equal and are endowed with the right to be able to achieve as much of their potential as possible. History, despite periodic setbacks, has been marked by a rapidly accelerating trend towards providing individuals and communities with more and more opportunity to achieve that potential.

We find ourselves now at a crossroads in history. The institutions – commercial, educational, political and civic - that we created in an earlier era in an effort to expand our potential have now become increasingly significant barriers to progress. It is not surprising that our trust in these institutions is plummeting around the world. We see so much opportunity and yet the institutions that are supposed to be helping us are increasingly standing in our way.

In response to this impasse, we are coming together around the world to build a new set of institutional platforms that will help to establish our independence from the institutions of the past. These new institutions bear little resemblance to the institutions they are designed to replace, and they are extraordinarily diverse, but they share a set of common characteristics:

Goals

• They seek to draw out of each of us more of our true potential

• They actively seek to help us connect with our passion and view passion as a key to unlocking increasing opportunity, rather than viewing it with suspicion as something that is unpredictable and resists “getting with the program”

• They seek to connect us in richer and more diverse ways with others – both inside and outside the institution - who can help us to pursue our passion and to achieve more of our potential

Approaches

• They embrace diversity in all of its manifestations and create the conditions for productive friction by challenging us with aggressive performance goals so that this diversity can lead to more creative outcomes

• They nurture the feminine archetype that resides in all of us and encourage us to shed the masculine archetype that has driven our institutions to date

• They create environments where we can be vulnerable and focus on important questions, rather than pretending to always have the right answers

• They encourage us individually and collectively to experiment, tinker and innovate in coming up with new, innovative approaches to the problems and opportunities we see ahead

• They find ways to manage risk so that the consequences of failure are contained, thereby encouraging us to experiment with new and better approaches

• They encourage us to create – and reward these creations with social capital that becomes more and more meaningful relative to financial capital

• They focus on building reputation mechanisms that both recognize creative achievements and contributions and provide a way for others who share our interests to more effectively find and connect with us

Organization

• They adopt modular and loosely coupled approaches to organizing activity to provide the maximum space for creativity and innovation in all parts of the institution

• They decentralize and federate decision-making so that we each have much more ability to shape our local institutional environments

• They focus explicitly and aggressively on building and participating in ever expanding ecosystems of institutions and individuals that can help to leverage their own resources and help everyone to learn faster by working together

Bottom line, these institutions are designed around individuals - to help the people within them and around them to flourish. This stands in sharp contrast to our existing institutions that are designed around standardized tasks and that demand we conform to the institutional “boxes” that have been assigned to us.

We have no desire to confront existing institutions head on. We have no desire to engage in battle unless existing institutions seek to undermine or destroy the new institutional platforms that we are building. We prefer instead to focus on building parallel institutions on the edge of existing institutions and strengthening them to the point where our tired, old institutions will have no choice but to retreat into the dustbin of history.

But, just to be clear, we are declaring our independence from existing institutions. We have too much to lose if we remain prisoners of the outdated institutions that surround us.

Comments

[Gmh_upsa]

While reading articles written by Steve Denning, a contributor to Forbes, I have learned a lot of insights from John Hagel III. In a comment under Mr. Denning's article "Can A Big Old Hierarchical Bureaucracy Become A 21st Century Network?," that doesn't involves Mr. Hagel, I wrote 8 month ago: " Dear Steve Denning Thank you for your view of the current situation that prevent Agile approaches and the change you infer that emerged from the Occupy movement. I guess the promise of e-government may be viewed from a technological revolution or from an information revolution perspective. If the invention of the printing press was what enable in due time the declaration of independence of many states, of which the Constitution of the United States is one of the best examples of a lasting design, I conjectured earlier that e-government will be the result of a declaration of interdependence. By looking at the examples of the nimble networks, presidents will no have the power they [have] today. I know many questions might spring from the conjecture, but the key one might be if it would lead, for example, to interdependence wars?"

In that light, I am testing the following hypothesis: "As Piketty's inequality is due to Feudalism corrupting capitalism, Can we transform capitalism to go for a Golden Age, like Luther reformed Catholicism to get out of the Middle Ages?" So far I have received comments in the Linkedin groups of the SSIT in http://lnkd.in/ehteX6N which right now has 8 comments and of the IEEE Spectrum in http://lnkd.in/diWy8t9 with 2 comments also so far.

That's why I am surprised reading about a Declaration of Independence. I have at least three arguments about Interdependence. While it is certainly true, what is written to support independence in "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for individuals to dissolve the institutional bands which have connected them with another," Isn't it also true when 'connected' is replaced with 'disconnected,' for example, about the disconnected people that live at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

In addition, as the late Steven R. Covey told us: "the greatest human achievements come from people working at the third level, interdependence. This is when people work together to achieve a common goal, and is the level of maturity of many people in a mature society or organization. This is how mankind has achieved things together that no single person could do alone. Interdependence is the state of human development of greatest maturity and power." That's the underlying reason why I wrote, for example, the blog post "Scotland’s independence got around the world before its interdependence got its pants on ( http://bit.ly/522GMH )."

Further, the also late Peter F. Drucker wrote, we are only in the Fourth Information Revolution, on which I understand that very deeply that interdependence is as important, as it was the Third for independence. It is that huge difference that Cartesian thinking of independence let´s us go to Systemic or Peircian (after the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce) thinking of interdependence. That shift is also about the emergence of what I have been naming the systemic civilization that's now doing what the industrial civilization did to the agricultural civilization.

José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.
Consulting engineer on electric sector systems architecting.

[[email protected]]

Awesome!

[Fenia Petran]

John,

This is a visionary approach to replacing our current higher education system.
And it basically extends your smart philosophy from the Edge. Outstanding, really brilliant.

[Martijn Linssen]

De-institutionalisation FTW! Well put John. I especially like the matriarchical touch. Where do I sign?

[Dgeaston]

Thanks John for once again articulating clearly and passionately a new and adaptive set of capacities for individual and collective (institutional)behaviors. I am all in!

[plus.google.com/118233706647557889256]

Please add my John Hancock to your manifesto!

[Joris Claeys]

Fully endorsing the idea to focus our energy on building the new. Thanks John

[Dscofield]

Signed!!

[Kyield]

I essentially did same many years ago John, and have been working towards systems that attempt to do much the same, realizing that many large institutions will be with us for our duration anyway. The only couple issues I see in first scan is that one person's passion can be and often is another's poison--some very destructive passions out there, and feminine qualities are not necessarily better. I support the intent but not the outcomes that still scar in both.

But important message is spot on--and timely as the founding docs are full of such wisdom. We are all born into this world as individuals--rare case of conjoined twins, and we all leave this life as individuals. While our social and organizational relationships are obviously critical, the mutually beneficial relationships (worth keeping) are those that recognize this frankly genius found in the U.S. structure.

As radical as it sounds, you and I both know it isn't--the best managed organizations and leaders embrace much the same philosophy.

I happen to know of a great system that does just this -- Vint Cerf found the misspelled word in the patent, and just this week in WSJ said something like "orgs are finally realizing how important adaptive data can be. NLP & AI may well make the Internet far more of value than it is today".

I first started discussing our R&D with Vint back in mid-90s…

Good work John and nice contribution. I hope the cure is as viral as the disease has been -- we'd really have something to celebrate then.

Cheers,

Mark Montgomery
Founder & CEO
Kyield

[Jon Husband]

I'll sign that. The last sentence is pretty clear.

Does that mean you yourself are getting pretty tired of "business more or less as usual" ?