The highly innovative and successful organizations’ DNA
11 September, 2018We’re running towards an unsustainable future. Is it fair dad?
13 September, 2018
Please, close your eyes and try to bring to your mind any image of High Middle Ages society. I’m sure that most of you will have visualized a lot of poor, hungry, dirty, scary, stupid, sick and ugly people. All these things together. And all of them for almost everyone in almost any place in the known world. It’s simply astonishing how such great polymaths like Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, or Copernicus could appear after centuries of filth, superstition, famine and despair. These people, also called "erudite" or "renaissance men", dominated different philosophical, artistic or scientific knowledge branches, putting all their inventions and contributions at humanity service helping to man and society evolution. A mere trifle…
According to Castiglione, a courtier at that time had to have an individual attitude, to be carefree and fresh, to speak well, to sing, to recite poetry, to have a proper bearing, to be athletic, to know the humanities and classic works, to paint, to draw and to possess many other abilities. Always without flashy or boastful behavior, with what he called "sprezzatura". To be clear, people with an insatiable curiosity and an inventive imagination, able to paint the Sistine Chapel, throw to the toilet the way you imagine how universe works or invent things that seemed pure science fiction at that time.
I’m sure these wonder men were branded as rare bugs, transgressors, dissonants, charlatans or just nuts. Thanks God society in 2017 is totally different. Or so it seems. We’re not so poor, we shower and eat regularly, we have enviable health, we do running compulsively and we’re able to implant strange things in our body just for not to look so ugly. And we also got our polymaths. They’re those who perfectly fulfill the 5 digital renaissance man mantras.
First mantra: Mastery of technology. They’re able to talk to you about trendy technical aspects (Big Data, IoT, Blockchain, Data Analytics or any other new term invented by Gartner) without choking or getting blushed. They’re not opportunists who play by ear. By contrast, they know exactly the essence of what they play with. They also are able to make the ideas comes down from the cloud in such a way that they guide those around them to success, to a tangible and valuable result. And they do it by applying common sense based methodologies and not just for pure pleasure to design a plan and execute it correctly as a goal.
Second mantra: Constant search for innovation. They’re people who question everything. May we do it better? More efficient? Is there a different way to proceed? To do that? Why do we have to be done like this? What matters to them is the value they can get by changing everything and finding the simplest and easiest way to get the desired result. They’re the new indefatigable inventors who never rest in a continuous loop of value generation. And always beside the users, learning and enjoying along the process with them…
Third mantra: Craziness about experience. They only understand one way of doing things: researching, emphasizing, understanding, touching and sharing everything. They’re the crushing common sense people. They’re the people against the ones who say "why it’s always done that way." The eternal hunters of problems that could be solved in simple and imaginative ways, just because they’ve chosen to apply different POV. Just by changing the game rules and focusing on the problem rather than the solution.
Fourth mantra: “Sales” orientation. They’re people who sell every day. Professionally or not. Communication and persuasion to bring the result obtained to the maximum audience are their better weapons. And I'm not referring to marketing cracks that simply want to market their product. I’m referring to those who fight denormally for saving the world by generating and contributing to society every day with the courage to achieve it.
Fifth mantra: Collaboration, collaboration and collaboration. They’re people who know the power to share things. They know that they will never be able to embrace all the knowledge they need and therefore share their ideas, resources and hopes. They’re comfortable among people with different points of view, many different disciplines and different expertise than him. And they always seek consensus. Because they know success is to obtain a valuable result for someone and not only to take credit for the other’s work.
Something good that incredibly is happening nowadays, is that these mantras are becoming the new norm, allowing the proliferation of a new race: the knowledge workers, also called learning workers or Knowmads. Creative people, without fear to failure, obsessed with action... who uses the brain to differentiate themselves from robots and machines that today are replacing human workforce from routine and repetitive jobs.
But I regret to tell you that there’s too much fake modern consultant who, repeatedly and treacherously, uses the enormous amount of information, opinions and value that these new digital renaissance men are leaving to humanity. And they do that to perpetuate the feudal way of doing business. A way based on lies, superstition and fear. The experience based on consultancy projects and technical assistances does not make you a digital superhero. If all those projects, all that work haven’t reached any valuable result or haven’t served to change minimally the world, or simply have failed, they serve absolutely for nothing. It’s so easy to recommend and predict the digital future when it plays in your favor. A message for these gentlemen: The future is something that is not written. Something we can change together.
The good thing is today anyone can be a renaissance man. The multiple available knowledge sources as MOOC for instance, converts attitude in front of deep challenges and resolution to use their valuable time to achieve big things as the only characteristics that differentiates them from the rest. I could speak here about multiple and very varied competences that loves a lot the new "talent managers" like leadership, self-learning or frustration tolerance. But I’m not going to do it. I believe that, as it would surely happen with the original renaissance men, we need only five minutes’ conversation to identify them. It's the kind of people Spanish Speaker Victor Kuppers portrays so well in his lectures. People you just can say "Wooooooooooow!!!! Right on!!!!" For me it's simple. The digital renaissance men are creative, collaborative and positive. The digital renaissance men will be the ones who help the machines to help humanity. Not others.
But I regret to tell you again that, despite the great advances differentiate us from the Middle Age like shower or cosmetic surgery, a large proportion of our “modern” society still lives in the Digital Middle Age. They’re the same ones that refer to our new polymaths as rare bugs, transgressors, charlatans or crazy. People who despite be showered and capable to read and write behave like those furious Luddites who attacked the first mechanized looms fruit of a diabolical invention: the steam engine.
As at the end of the Middle Ages, the change is coming. And it seems that it’s much deeper than centuries ago. It’s in our hands to behave like Luddites to stop it or open our mind and try to be the new digital renaissance men. I repeat the concept to emphasize the call to action: The good thing is today we’re in better position than then. Collaboration and technology are reducing dramatically the learning curves to make it just a matter of attitude and effort. Let us then cease to be digitally poor, hungry, dirty, fearful, stupid, sick and ugly. Let us embrace the four mantras and save the world. I'm already on it. Would you like to accompany me?
