Bill Drayton argues that rigid, siloed organizations can't survive accelerating change. The future demands fluid teams that constantly remix talent worldwide, with every person becoming a change-maker. He cites Detroit's decline as a warning for regions that miss this shift.
Chapters
All through prehistory and up to very recently, the game was efficiency in repetition. That's what human organizations were designed to do. And we learned how to have efficiency at bigger and bigger scale and gain tremendous wealth out of that. So think the assembly line or the law firm. And how are these organizations characterized? You've got a few people who choreograph everyone else, and what you want is everyone else to have a specialty that they're really good at and they practice and do a lot, and you want them to stay within those walls and, you know, A fits B because they keep doing the same thing. We build up very complicated structures with finer and finer stovepipes. Universities are not exactly immune to this problem. Well, this doesn't work very well as you go up that curve of exponential change. What is the environment like now? Well, each piece changes and bumps everyone else. So you have to constantly change who you're working with if you're going to do a good job now of serving in this new environment. So instead of stable, bewildered institutions, now you have to have a fluid no walls, because you have to constantly be putting together new combinations of people and resources from all over the world to be able to do a good job of serving the opportunity that's there today but will be different tomorrow. So you can't have walls so fluid open is obvious. You have to get the best ideas anywhere in the world. The best inputs, the best relationships, the best access. So open, so fluid, open teams of teams. Now, the word team is very precise. You don't have a team if one person is telling everyone else what to do in a team. Everyone is a player. In a world where everything is changing and the game is contributing to change and contributing to the constant rearrangement that is associated with that. You better be a change maker, because people can't afford to have you on their team if you aren't. This is very stark and it's happening very quickly. One of the things that happens when you go up an exponential curve, what took 50 years ago now is taking 10 years. So Detroit, in this country was the top of our technology pride, not to mention hubris. The big tail fins, the whole thing 50 years ago, and you know where it is today? They missed out. They missed entirely. Well, that could happen to the country or it could happen to any metro area or to any ethnic group or any other group. If anyone misses this historic turn, they don't have a lot of time to miss it. So everyone has to be a change maker. This is Ashoka's goal Now in everyone, a change maker world, helping people see it, helping everyone get there. Now this phrase is very radical. We mean everyone, everyone, no middle reservations, not including all those people, they can't do this. They can if we structure society so that they can. And a change maker, that's the most powerful thing you can be. So everyone, really powerful, everyone having the gift that everyone in this room has of being able to give at a significant level, to express love and respect and significant action, that is what brings everyone, all the prophets and scientists tell us this. Health, longevity, happiness. Well, we have that. It's not right that other people don't have it. So we're saying everyone has to master a set of skills so that they are change makers so they can really contribute and play in this game. And you have to organize in ways that make that work. So what is the standard of success in this new world for any group or any team of teams? What proportion of your people are change makers? At what level of skill of change making? And how good a job are you, City, country, whatever it is doing in helping people work together in this fluid, open way? We're living right here in this valley at an epicenter and you can see how quickly the things are moving in that direction. Well, it's going to be much faster once people see this, then it's going to be really quick. There's huge leverage in helping people over the awareness tipping process and we think we're very, very close. That's a quick summary of this change in the strategic.
