Lessons from Afghanistan – Realizing Better Outcomes

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The Taliban have done horrible things in the past, when they had an opportunity to govern. The things that most stand out as signatures are their brutality, intolerance, misogyny, among other things.

They came in to restore order, and in the midst of institutional failure, delivered on some basic promises of stability and order.

Their vision however cannot create a flourishing, vital society – one that can grow beyond whatever traditional models of world-making they have in mind.

Yet, the models they offered, won against the alternatives that the Western countries had to offer – in Afghanistan as a whole, not just in the pockets of Kabul.

Why? Why did the institutions people abhorred, that created a vacuum into which the Taliban stepped, not create alternative institutions?

That is our learning #1.

The deeper archetypes that inform such structures remained latent and their corruption is also their weakness – they cannot even defend their own pathologies (I mean In Afghanistan. In North Korea, they have mastered that, and in a number of countries that are in between and soon becoming like their polar extremes above).

The Taliban will eventually die, and they will most likely take the society and nation down with them. Because, what they have to offer is not generative – nothing based on their ideology can be generative except in a medieval world.

Accelerating that inner breakdown is a priority for the world – for they cannot become exemplars of failing order elsewhere, but we must also have better alternatives to offer – Not just Visions, but practices for realizing better futures.

What kind of an attractor can the world create that Afghanistan and many others like them will find compelling. Clearly whatever we have is not working.

Strategic Design – Shifting the Locus

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When we think of Strategic Decision-Making in complex social situations, which I think of as synonymous with Strategic Design, we tend to see body of decision makers – people in positions of authority. In the case of civic services, the idea of decision makers, merges with the agencies providing the services.

A post on social media by Benjamin Taylor, who runs a group called ‘Systems Community of Inquiry’ got me thinking about this issue, and in particular the question of where the locus of decision-making should ideally be.

This is his post – Benjamin Taylor Post.

As decision makers, civic agencies are constantly challenged to keep up with evolving needs. These services come in a large variety of forms, and the more complex the society they serve, the more complex the corresponding portfolio. How then should these be designed so that they are in some sense ahead of the needs curve?

I think of the role of these services as creating a design platform for society to engage in its own acts of world-making. The ecosystem of service providers then can include a number of different entities in the Value Creating Ecosystem (VCE), including private and non-governmental agencies. In fact, citizens themselves are also a part of this VCE, in fact central to it. 

When seen in this manner, clearly the VCE exists to serve the Citizens, and it is they then who should be empowered to make strategic choices – the implication of the idea behind the notion of ‘everybody designs’. This is a shift in the locus of strategic decision-making.

Clearly this is non-trivial and not all citizen bodies are capable of making such complex decisions. But, as the complexity of society increases, I believe that this is essential and inevitable. 

This is also the idea perhaps in the notion of a p2p commons, where increasingly citizens would take responsibility for designing and defining what they need for their world-making.

My final thought therefore is the need to separate the idea of governance from that of providing civic services, or ecosystem services in general. The Governance of the VCE has the task of designing the platforms and keeping ahead of the curve. It must therefore also take on the responsibility for building such capabilities and practices that can steer this complex Living Enterprise to realize better futures on an ongoing basis – to shape it evolution.

MetaDesign – Transdisciplinary Practices beyond disciplinary simplicities

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There is an urgent need to address complex societal challenges, and while each discipline makes valiant efforts to rise up to the task, they are bound to find themselves inadequate.

The Complexities of Social Challenges cannot be understood at the level at which they were created, nor can they therefore also be solved by the disciplinary thinking that created them. It is necessary to follow Einstein’s admonition and find a vantage point that goes beyond any particular disciplinary boundaries.

There is a tendency to appropriate this vantage point as a redefinition or renaming of one’s own favorite discipline – Design aspires to become strategic, as does Foresight, or Innovation, or Systems Thinking, or Technology. Who does not wish that the impact they make on the world to be anything less than strategic – disruptive, Game-changing?

However, it is also natural, that while they appropriate some of the Methods, Tools and Techniques from the other disciplines to address the gaps, these efforts eventually turn out to be simplifications – the same broader challenge of narrow disciplinary focus that contributed to the situations in the first place.

Richard Normann in a business context and in his book ‘Reframing Business’, called for the use of a Crane – a metaphoric device that lifts you out of the debris of the current landscape to find that other vantage point.

I personally have no preference for one or the other discipline.

In my professional career I have tried to sincerely change the world through Technology, Innovation, Systems, Foresight and Design among other things and I have always found them individually wanting in some way of the other.

So, when I term this new vantage point, MetaDesign, I am using the term Design in a much broader sense – as the act of Intentional Change-Making, as a verb rather than a Noun.

It is the act of and the Practice of Making Better Worlds and Realizing Better Futures, a continually evolving effort, just like the Complex Evolutionary System that Living Enterprises are. And if Systems Thinking is the art of synthesis, then MetaDesign is the causality that makes better futures, and the trans-disciplinary synthesis that puts you on that trajectory.