AHA! Again

He’s able to do this because he’s extraordinarily gifted. He’s extremely intelligent, imaginative and articulate. He is an exceptional networker. He has extraordinary self-confidence and an ability to listen and probe for deep understanding of problems. He asks brilliant questions. And he value bills. I’m not sure what he does is replicable or teachable, but I’d love to have him working on an assignment with me.

What endears him most to clients, I think, is his ability to meld progressive values and knowledge with a very pragmatic assessment of situations. Some of his recommendations and ideas might chagrin leftie idealists like me, but they make sense, and they’re very creative.

We met initially with Mark Anielski, who has a new book The Economics of Happiness, and then chatted about Intentional Communities and eco-villages, innovation and knowledge management, sustainability, consulting, social software, open space, improvisation and a bunch of other topics. We spoke about an article (not available for free download) in the recent Harvard Business Review that recapped the qualities of ‘Wicked Problems’ (which I’ve written about before) and then presented a case study on how PPG (the paint conglomerate) addresses strategy using a combination of environmental scanning, scenario analysis, strategic risk/options assessment, experimentation, and non-linear collaborative problem-solving involving all stakeholders, since they appreciate that strategy issues are generally wicked (complex) problems where the understanding of the problem, and possible approaches to it, co-evolve.

It began to dawn on me that I’d seen this model before. Then I realized, I’d designed this model before. It was called AHA! and I described its vision as follows:

I had given up on this model because, in 2005, I couldn’t see that customers would see the value, or be willing and able to pay for, informed, breakthrough thinking that addressed their ‘wicked’ complex problems. Jeremy has persuaded me, by example, that there is a market for this, if it’s approached correctly.

And then we got to thinking about whether, instead of having this Natural Enterprise have to draw its bright and creative minds from all over the world, what if they all lived together in an Intentional Community, such that this Natural Enterprise was the business of the Community? We could spend all our time honing our skills and brainstorming together, instead of commuting or doing some other work (farming comes to mind) that did not match our Gifts or our Passions.

We could travel as a team to our clients, or perhaps get the clients to come to us (if the venue for our IC was sufficiently attractive). Or maybe we could use Virtual Reality technologies to bring our clients to where we were, as if they were right here, immersed in our environment, and immersed, with us, in other virtual environments, some projections of real environments (based on our research), and some imagined scenarios, so we could visually show the results of the recommendations we were, collectively, making.

Afterwards, it occurred to me that if part of the objective of the IC was sustainability and responsibility, perhaps we would need a second, internally focused Natural Enterprise in the IC, working to these ends, a model of sustainable and responsible and joyful ways of living and of making a living, something like what I wrote about as the Sustainable Living Collaborative.

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The Collaborative could determine ways by which the members of our IC could live simply and self-sufficiently, and not have to work too hard to do so, so their energies could be focused on AHA! work, and on play. For example, perhaps the community, instead of farming, could sustain itself through replanting native food plants and plants that support their ecosystems naturally — forest gardens, permaculture, that needed no tending or managing, only gathering. The collaborative could also help us determine optimal geographic locations where this could be done — they could help us find our Home.

Each member of the IC would be a member of one or both Natural Enterprises, depending on their capacities, skills and interests.

In some ways I’ve come full circle from my thinking of 2-3 years ago, except this time, thanks to Jeremy and others I’ve been kicking this around with, the ideas are more integrated, and have passed a feasibility test. There is a need, a market for this. And what a place to live, and make a living!