Therefore, when serious drought hits Russia, a primary provider of world-wide wheat, and the prices of many commodities such as corn, soybean, rapeseed, barley, jump in the bargain (“Investors fear re-run of great grain robbery”ft.com, Aug 06, 2010), threatening the established supply of these basics, and causing panic and the threat of significant starvation, it is time to pause and ask what really has the global food, beverage, and agricultural industry done for the good of humankind?

Being run as a global business means that at every phase of the supply chain compromise has to be made and costs have to be assumed by the locality or region within which that supply chain phase exists. Starting from growth of the essential raw materials, we see increasing instances of ecosystems, complex forests, marshlands, amongst other natural habitats that have been built up over millennium and are embedded into the very fabric of life often in ways that we do not completely understand, being wiped aside in favor of regimented and for that locality unnatural growth of crops. This has huge costs to the soil and natural life in the locality, the environment, the surrounding community, the economy, and future generations. Destruction of ecosystems destroys ecosystem-services provided to humanity, such as water and air filtration, carbon sequestration – essential to counteract climate change, flood control, enrichment of soil, destruction of species – with their effects such as creation of food, pollination, provision of medicinal compounds, amongst others. None of these tremendous costs are ever considered as costs. They are taken for granted and externalized to the other entities unfortunate enough to be the context for that phase of the supply chain.

Further down the supply chain where there may be a processing plant, a whole new level of costs that are usually not considered come into being. The first order of costs is usually environmental. Hence, if water for the plant is needed, of even if water is a key ingredient in the food or beverage, then tube-wells may be sunk and the underlying water-table seriously affected. This has huge effects on the lives of communities in the vicinity. If the plant has bi-products then these are often spewed into the atmosphere, sunk into the earth, or offloaded into a water supply or flowing body of water in the area. This too has serious effects on surrounding communities, and are often not considered in the statement of cost. The agricultural sector is the highest user of water. Hence it becomes very important for it to be used most efficiently and responsibly.

In the processing itself often additives and preservatives and other questionable chemicals are employed that create a food filled with subtle poisons. Our current approach of assuming otherwise until proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is biased toward the the big corporation that we have to remember is motivated primarily by maximizing its profit, often at any cost.

Further, is the whole issue of Genetically Modified Foods (GMO). Nature and its output have been created over millennium. There is an inherent wisdom in the array of compounds that constitute any single herb or plant, and there is a long-built up equilibrium in which each herb or plant exists in harmony with everything else around it. To modify the genetic structure of such a construct, without considering or comprehending the huge number of interrelationships that are being changed as a result of that, is to load up the dice in random ways and hope for the best when they are thrown. One simply cannot maintain long-established equilibriums in such a manner. As Einstein has said, “God does not play dice with the universe.’ Further, we really have no clue as to how the GMO is going to interact with human bodies, and what the effects on the cells is going to be. This is an irresponsible approach to production, and potentially creates a whole slew of problems in its wake.

At several points in a supply chain large work forces are often employed. Often times in order to minimize total cost of production migrant workers are employed and human rights issues compromised. Women and children are also often exploited. Employees are overworked, not subjected to decent working conditions, have fewer rights than the normal citizens of a country.

The point of view that an agricultural company or a global food company is doing humanity a service by providing food or beverages globally is flawed. It counteracts the very need for growth and creation of food to become a community-strengthening activity. Contact with, nurturing, and respecting the land is essential in the scheme of things. When I was Managing Director at BSR, a leading non-profit sustainability consulting firm, one of our clients who shall go unnamed retorted when we approached them to assist with their CSR situation, “We provide grains to people all over the world: if that is not CSR then what is!!”. A community or a country that loses touch with its land has lost its sovereignty. Sooner or later it becomes entirely dependent on external flows and then easily can succumb to one of many external or global threats. Today’s global agricultural and food industries promote loss of contact by individuals, communities, and countries with local lands. This is a huge cost that is never considered in the simplified, short-term mathematics of asset and liability that animates business today.

Every piece of land is essentially creative. The very fact that all life emerges from this matrix is proof enough. Sometimes the secret of its creativity needs to be teased out, and in working to make this happen communities can be built and strengthened. Creative land lies at the basis of strong local cultures and economies. A vast range of products and services that are today artificially created through remote processing can be localized. Livelihoods can be enhanced through mastering the creation and exchange of these products and services. In today’s push to create profit, often at any cost, today’s global agricultural, food and beverage industries continually negate all this possibility.

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We now need to turn our attention to existing theories and tools that drive trading activity today. Once we understand these in relation to which phase the stock market is in it will become easier to factor in corrections into the redesign of the stock market.

Analyses suggests that stock market is in the vital phase. The vital phase is characterized by the principle guideline “reality as determined by assertiveness and the myriad play of energies”. The emphasis is on the assertion of energy. Organizations in the vital phase are absorbed in dynamic activity. In this dynamism there is interaction of energies. Some energies overpower others. Some express themselves in harmony with others. All seek to grow in whatever way they can. It is hence, assertiveness and energy that dominates. This is Darwin’s interpretation of evolution, and the basis of much of today’s interpretation of competitiveness. The energy of each seeks to assert itself, often at any cost. All seek to gather more energy by any means and to establish its rule over other forms. There is experimentation in this phase, but it is not driven by order and thought. It is driven by the primal impulse to assert oneself and grow at any cost. Greed is the law. Fear ensures that greed can continue to live, if not today, then tomorrow. Hence there is a devouring to devour and a conquering to conquer, and it is the strongest and longest-lasting energy that appears to triumph in the end.

There is no rationality in this phase. This is the phase of irrational gains and losses. This is the phase of irrational bubbles followed by irrational bursts. This is the phase of stock market rise and fall. This is the phase in which recessions are caused overnight, where governments lose control of their economies, where brainwashed people are sent to their death to secure resources that never belonged to them in the first place, where innocent people suffer starvation because of irrational speculation, where accelerated destruction of everything we value and accelerated destruction of the body of the earth are the norm.

The transition to the vital phase was solidified in the early 1970’s with the shift from the gold to the oil standard. Creation of market funds, index funds, and mortgage-backed bonds, and the easy availability of credit formed bricks and arches around this foundation stone. But at a deeper level, at the level of the root of the fractal the driver of all this loosening and shifting was greed itself, and the expectation that the quick-buck could be made by trading on the stock market. It was the force of greed-driven speculation that unleashed all the consequent changes. And this force has come to be, in large measure, because of the existing theories and tools in place that have led from one wrong choice to the next.

At the vital-level what we really need is a set of tools that show clearly how greed is the prime driver of trading. No trader cares for the value proposition behind what is being traded. Reality is that all they care about is appropriating or at the very least skimming margin on a deal. Theories and tools must deal with this reality: greed-fear interaction, herd mentality, fractal effects, monopolization effects, resulting stochastic variance. This is what needs to be in the portfolio of decision-makers. This is in stark contrast to what is actually driving decision-making: variations of efficient market hypotheses, portfolio theory, index modeling, algorithmic trading. These latter tools belong to the mental-phase of the stock market, and we are simply not there yet. These latter tools have also tended to drive decision-making in the physical-phase. But this was the wrong choice and has strongly contributed to the global financial crises playing out today. For the physical-phase is driven by the guideline – “reality is determined by what the eye can see”. This really did require another set of tools. We will come to this later.

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For some time I have been contemplating a contribution that gets to the root of dysfunctional culture, primarily in the corporate sphere. I have finally decided to take about 10 years of developmental work and package it in the “Architect Change, One Pattern at a Time” program. This program is aimed at helping individuals reconnect with what really matters.

The root of many of our problems – whether globally, nationally, regionally, or locally – is that there is a disconnect between the common meanings and purpose we ascribe to key components of our lives, and the meaning and purpose that the truth of our reality demands. And these common meanings are embedded in dysfunctional patterns that keep us viewing and interpreting ourselves and the world in limiting ways.

Such limiting patterns mean that as individuals we end up supporting efforts that are counter to our own health and sustainability. Many examples exist, ranging from destruction of rainforest and other vastly rich ecosystems, to exploitation of people and resources the world over, to a simplified asset view of life where all exists to prop up the often self-destructive engines of business.

The Architect Change One Pattern at at Time program is an approach to manage such patterns and allow more powerful and sustainable patterns to emerge in their place. Such re-patterning will allow individuals, teams and organizations to more fully mirror the truth of reality, and ascribe a more accurate meaning and purpose to their efforts and framing contexts.

This means we will live a more meaningful life using our energies to support things that matter.

This program is free. Use it. Ask others to use it. There are many individuals the world over who are part of a dysfunctional or a mis-directed organization. Many of these individuals feel locked into their way of life because they are bound by financial constraints. They support or do work that in reality often destroys the very foundation on which all work depends. But the only way the dysfunctional or mis-directed organization will change is if these individual people begin to subscribe to new patterns of perception and ways of being that gives them power to alter their circumstance.

The ExxonMobils, Citigroups, Pfizers, ADMs, Dow Chemicals, McDonalds, Monsantos, Walmarts of the world are part of a global system that compels them to act they way they do. It is only if another voice becomes active from within, only if there is change from the inside-out, that the balance of decision-making focused on short-term profit, often at any cost, will change. This will benefit not only the individuals, but the mis-directed organizations they are a part of.

Hence, some program that allows people to reconnect with more sustainable and deeper patterns is important. I hope that Architect Change, One Pattern at a Time will be such a program.

There is a beauty in life which we catch sometimes in a silent hour. Our habitual tribulations cease and we are as if face-to-face with something that seems to be the fount of every positive energy we may ever wish to embody. Love, harmony, courage, self-forgetfulness, peace, wisdom, amongst many other possibilities, are aspects of it. In those moments we seem to become other than our usual selves, and are animated by a sacredness that makes every trial seem insignificant.

Or we may see this beauty in the way the wind tosses the leaves of a tree on a summer day, in the swaying of the branches, all dancing around the essential solidity of the central trunk. Or in the compelling color and shape of a small flower, that seems to bring into being a corresponding response of joy from our hearts, or in the way a flowing river freely pursues its course, all the while reflecting in diamond-like bursts the light from the noon-time sun high above.

There is such splendor in life. We breathe with ease in the presence of such grace, and even become part of a harmony that far transcends our small view of things.

Everything around us, from the smallest to the largest – the worm, the bird, the trees, the person, the family, the village and town, the corporation, the economy, the country, and so on – is a construct of the underlying beauty and possibility spread luxuriantly around us. And these constructs being a creation of that possibility, ultimately bring unique faces, contours, details of that possibility to the surface. This is the purpose of the constructs, to bring the truth of their essential nature and of the infinity of essential possibility into dynamic expression.

Business too is a construct of Nature, but unlike many other constructs that have established their essential natures and already entered into a harmonious equilibrium with the fabric of life, is still very much a work in progress and definitely needs more time to work out the possibilities that perhaps lie pregnant within it. The established beauty we see around us, and its implicit harmony with life has had millennia to work itself out. Business is a relatively recent construct, and rather than finding its own essential nature, has reflected the unrefined vital nature of the stakeholders in and around it.

There is dynamism, mutuality, harmony, opportunity implicit in the nature of business. There is the chance that the sum of two and two will be greater than four. That unique qualities of people will have a chance to flourish. That these qualities will not just be traded, but will build circles of living possibility around them, and alter the fabric of life in repeated and organic movements that will make life richer for all.

Business must exist in harmony with its deeper nature to amplify and enrich life for all. Business must become a repository, an index, a dynamo, for the wisdom, the power, the sense of service, the harmony that lies embedded in the nature of possibility. This is its purpose, and there is no other. To imagine that business exists to enrich the few to the detriment of the many, that business can freely exploit resources from the material to the intellectual in pursuit of a selfish smallness, that business is the be-all and end-all of existence and all other possibility submit to it in an act of unquestioning awe, is to buy in to the short-term dysfunction that is in process of working itself out. It is to forget the essential reason we are here for, that all constructs of Nature are here for, that business and corporation are themselves here for – to bring into expression and progressive equilibrium that splendor that lies embedded in seed-form in the recesses, caves and very substance of life.

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In examining global funding over the last couple of decades one can see the massive increase in share trading volume. From a level of US$ 55T in 2000, volume has increased to US$ 120T in 2006 (source: World Federation of Exchanges, Time-Series Share Trading Volume). Such a massive increase can easily result in breakdown if the system that is the recipient of such flows is not ready for it. In this instance it has resulted in the global financial crises. The situation is much like massive flows of water being forced into pipes and reservoirs that are not quite ready for that flow. The pipes and reservoirs were made for another reason: to facilitate a predictable, efficient market type, rise in funding. The rise in funding has been anything but gradual. Stoked by the vital-dynamic of making it rich in the short-term, often at any cost, the source of funding from would-be millionaires has increased dramatically.

But this rise has not occurred in a vacuum. The expectation and the possibility of such an outcome, of making it rich the quick-way, has been built over decades. John Authers, in his insightful book, The Fearful Rise of Markets, has traced the milestones that have made such a reality possible (ft.com extract from Fearful Rise of Markets, May 21, 2010). Starting from 1954, in the US Stock Market recovery from the Great Crash, post-Depression regulation forced commercial banks to be covered by deposit insurance. Commercial banks were barred from investment banking. Fixed exchange rates were linked to gold under Bretton Woods. There was a clear division in the financial playing field with banks dominating finance and investment dominated by individuals using their own money. As Authers reinforces, mainstream investors had no access to investing in commodities, foreign exchange, credit default risk, or emerging markets. However all these conditions that in effect held irrational speculation at bay changed over the last 50 years, to create the conditions for unrelated markets to overheat and move as a synchronized bubble.

Another way to look at this is to equate each bubble, and the global synchronized bubble, as similar to atomic bombs. At its basis the atomic bomb breaks the bonds at the atomic level to destroy the fabric of matter-based development. When atoms are split then atom cannot combine with atom to form molecule. Molecule cannot combine with molecule, and therefore the entire basis of creation is toppled. In this way of seeing, the atomic bomb helps us to understand the effect of modern-day finance. For just in the case of the action of an atomic bomb, where complex matter is reduced to coarser and simpler denominations of it, in modern-day finance all value and development is reduced to a simple denominator in which value and development effectively lose their meaning. When completely unrelated markets that have a different meaning for existing begin to synchronize their movements, it means that the meaning, the value, the raison d’etre, has been stripped away, and something baser, of lesser value has become the means for moving those markets. In effect those markets have been standardized or atomized. And the very fact that today the movement of even what should be fundamentally different markets – such as emerging markets on the one hand and developed markets on the other – for example, move in synchronized manner means that money is not being used to develop the market in accordance with the opportunities and challenges there, as it should be, but is being used to develop something entirely different – the myopic and selfish need of an even distant speculator.

This has to be the case since speculators do not care how they are making money. They just care that they do. Since money is the end-result, the common denominator, it is immaterial whether that money comes from the construction or destruction of culture and civilization. It is immaterial if they are supporting the funding of the social destruction of an innocent people so long as a multinational now has access to raw-materials it may need and therefore is able to maximize its profit and the speculator’s in the bargain, or if they are supporting the destruction of complex ecosystems such as rain-forests, wetlands, marshes that provide numerous and irreplaceable ecosystem-services, so long as they pocket money in the end. In the atomic bomb analogy this is like reducing beautiful scenery, intricate richness, and profound architecture to a coarser and valueless denominator of itself by breaking the bonds that hold matter together, and then imagining that we have gotten richer in this deal because now we have the stream of particles or other such denominators from which all is created, in our possession. If this were true, then there would be value in destroying everything with atomic bombs. This is clearly not true. The basis of modern-day finance is therefore perverse and it is necessary to alter it immediately. Let me reemphasize – it is perverse because the very reason that money exists – to engender beautiful creation, is being reversed, and the beautiful creation that should be the end has now become the means to amass the intermediary – money – whose meaning is, in the final analysis, lost when it does not support meaningful creation.

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A secret knowledge will continue to remain a secret so long as one does not look in the right place for the answer. And so long as one does not look in the right place for an answer the behavior and potential behavior of markets, the very DNA of Markets, will remain a mystery.

Financial prophets, gurus, analysts have come up with potential models that explain markets some times. At one end of the spectrum is the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), which itself comes in different shades. But the bottom-line is that prices on traded assets reflect information about that asset. Hence, financial markets are informationally efficient. On the other end of the spectrum are models that define financial markets as stochastic. Mandelbrot has been a big proponent of this model. Then there are models that define price behavior as a function of human emotion, and hence predictable within boundaries. Elliott/Prechter have built models based on this supposition. Thus, we have models that define financial markets correctly, within their prescribed limits, but fall apart when those limits are transcended.

The great secret to understanding market behavior, however, is reflected in the diagram on The Fractal Ladder. I will not go into all aspects of this just now, but looking at the lower portion of the diagram, there is a DNA of organization that is revealed, with strands (physical, vital, mental) that combine together differently to create different behavioral paradigms for markets. Each of the three market-models referred to above are a function of how these basic strands combine together. With the purer vital a Mandelbrot-type Stochastic model results. With a combination of physical and vital the Elliott/Prechter model comes into being. When the mental strand tends to lead then EMH comes into being. Continued misapplication of these models during real-time decision-making will exacerbate dysfunction and result in crises – of the type we continue to experience globally now.

But also what the diagram reveals is the DNA of Progress – that is of sustainable progress: and that is the key to understanding market behavior and what the conditions must be for us to correctly apply either an Elliott/Prechter or a Stochastic or an EMH type model. That is also the key to moving out of the financial mess we are in globally.

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I will have a lot more to say about this subsequent posts.

There is concern that even after prolonged stimulus in US, with interest rates being near zero for 18 months, and the government pouring $787B of stimulus funds in the economy, (The US Recovery, June 11, 2010, ft.com), that there has been a dip in retail sales and building materials in May (US Census Bureau News, June 11, 2010) .

The real concern is that there should be concern over slowdown. As Albert Einsten said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” In essence the intelligent fool is the investor or institution living in the physical-vital orientation, and seeking always irrational growth, often at any cost. It is the intelligent fool who targets money in hotspots thereby causing the phenomena of bubbles.

These seductive attractors seem to promise it all, but inevitably cause much more instability in their wake. Japan crashed in the 90s. The money that the intelligent fool had been pumping in there then had to find other homes. It went into S.Asia and in the late 90s caused a formidable bubble and crash there. In the early 2000s that same drive went into dotcoms, caused a bubble and then a crash there. In 2008 it went into an assorted number of financial products and has caused the global financial crises we are witnessing today.

It is time for the “touch of genius“, as Einstein calls it, and time for the surfacing of “a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction“. It is time to awaken into the mental orientation, so that bold and innovate growth based on entirely new patterns of development come into being. So what if retail sales go down? So what if housing starts go down? That is good. That means that there is a pause in the irrationality that continues to accompany us into the present.

What we need now is a decisive separation from the old way of thinking about business and the economy. We need a complete demonopolization in industry, in the established ways of issuing and handling money, and in our prevalent “intelligent fool” syndrome. It is only then that we will begin to witness a sustainable recovery in the US and the rest of the world.

What the Flash Crash of May 6 really affirmed was how out of touch we are with the reality we have created. In a few minutes the hard-work of hundreds of thousands of people toiling day-after-day to earn an honest living was by some estimates negated because of automated sell orders. In a few minutes the ideals that many hold, high ideals of democracy, equality, fraternity where all citizens are treated equally and have a say in how life should develop came crashing to the ground as the surge of sell-orders, not motivated by a balanced perspective seeking the greater good, but motivated by that same physical-vital consciousness seeking its own selfish gain, played itself out yet once again.

In a few minutes the absurdity of what we continue to create smashed into our fragile order with its massive face of chaos. In a few minutes we reinforced the tremendous price we are willing to pay for a continued physical-vital way of being. Our Karma boomerangs at us with tidal wave like disaster, and like the increasingly powerful storm-systems of Climate Change confront us with the poor choices of our own doings.

Instead of face the question of the absurdity of our global financial system, where we have effectively given up control to an absolute casino-mentality, we seem to be more concerned with creating circuit breakers to avoide future flash crashes (Breaking circuit to halt repeat of ‘flash crash’, June 2, 2010, ft.com). This is no doubt of some practical importance, but unfortunately pushes back the dealing with the real issue confonting the very survival of the ideals we believe to be true and self-evident – democracy, liberty, equality – and that of ensuring a reasoned and sustainable progress of our global civilization.

For in reality, the continually increasing sophistication of technology further increases the power of monopolized flows of money, that are not monopolized by reason, but by an unfortunate and uncaring short-sighted mentality of speculation. The risks are now too large, and the price we will pay for not taking action to reverse the global monopolization of money-power that we have inadvertently allowed to arise out of continuing to live in a physical-vital consciousness, will be the continued economic and even cultural and ideological weakening of larger and larger regions of the world – Greece, Spain, Ireland, Iceland, Japan, USA, the EU – as is already evident.

The signs are clear and action to reverse the inadvertent monopolization of the very power – money power – that has come to drive our progress needs to be taken now.

As I consider the confluence of some recent global business events (Eurozone crises, continued Japanese deflation, rippling stock market depression, BP oil-spill), the conclusion that we are witnessing the death of an old-way of being cannot but be reinforced.

Fractal analyses at various levels reveals that we are at a significant transition between the physical-vital and a more mental way of being. The physical-vital is all about appropriating energy flows to reinforce a myopic perception of self and build it to be even larger, bigger, and become even more aggressive so that it can more effectively do more of the ineffective same. This is the operative mentality that has driven our corporations, markets, and economies.

The short-sighted growth of these constructs has interestingly been driven by a carbon-based energy source, which chemically speaking, is nothing but crushed and pressurized remains of eons-old physical and vital beings (less evolved and even supposedly gigantic plants and animals). So from a symbolical perspective, we have the remains of eons-old physical-vital beings fuelling an essential consciousness that is physical-vital in its manner. That we are approaching or by some estimates are in a reality of peak-oil is in this analyses significant since it suggests that peak-oil too is a sign that an essentially old-way of being is reaching its end.

Transition always tends to bring an old way of being vehemently to the surface, if for no other reason than to try to fight an emerging new way of being to prolong its reign. In this perspective the BP oil spill may symbolically be viewed as bringing that old physical-vital energy source and consciousness that flowed unseen in subterranean passages or pipes, vehemently to the surface. This old way now openly spreads its poison and a valiant battle (which does not include throwing golf balls and tyres at it) must take place between the old and the new until the new spreads its wings and makes us soar to new heights.

In this light the Eurozone crises, continued Japanese deflation, stock market depression and crises must be seen as a deep need to want to disengage from a maddening physical-vital way of being. The irony is that our analysts, commentators, regulators, and other economic and public stakeholders continue to see these events in the old physical-vital way of being, and continue to want to resucitate this dying and outdated way so that it may live again.

It cannot be resucitated though. Way has to be given for a new, more mental way of being to come to the surface. De-monopolization of power in all its forms is the inevitable future before us. Realization of this will help all involved to more effectively transition through and manage what is seeking to taking birth.

I was a speaker representing Stanford University Medical Center (SUMC) at the SuccessFactors 2010 conference earlier this week. While I co-presented SUMC’s recent developments in the performance management area, I want to focus on an interaction I had with Lars Dalgaard, CEO of SuccessFactors.

Lars launched the conference and passionately spoke about SuccessFactors’ growth and product plans. It is amazing to see an organization grow as rapidly as his in the course of only 10 years. SuccessFactors today has about 8,000,000 users world-wide.

After his address I walked to the stage and introduced myself to Lars. I felt his focus as I approached him. I had a copy of my new book “Connecting Inner Power with Global Change”, and presented this to him saying, “Here is the future.” I had not planned to say this, but this is what emerged when I met him. He replied saying “I can see the conviction in your eyes. I will read it.”

Perhaps Lars quickly grasped why I approached him. But nonetheless, i will elaborate:

1. SuccessFactors continues to create some powerful tools that are now focused on Business Execution through mobilizing human resources. Goal management, performance management, compensation management, succession planning, work-based collaboration, are key elements of this approach.

2. Effective use of these tools will definitely help an organization more effectively execute on business goals.

3. This does not though, necessarily equate to continued business success. If a business is headed in the wrong direction to begin with then all that the application of SuccessFactors Business Execution tools will do, is expedite the failure of the business. Because now a set of goals, measurements, and actions will be organized much more effectively around the mis-direction to accelerate failure rather than success.

4. The choice of such business direction is in fact the critical issue, precisely because in today’s uncertain times many base assumptions that global business has grown up with are being severely challenged.

5. In my opinion, these challenges are in fact the result/reaction of a purposeful, conscious, fractal-based world-system, that is insisting that economy, business, person cut to the chase and realize that big issues out there have their origin in small patterns in here at the level of the person (hence, a fractal). That is what I present in the book Connecting Inner Power with Global Change.

6. Paradoxically the choice of business direction is more than anything else a function of the consciousness a decision-maker lives in, the result of small patterns of perception, awareness, assumptions, that define that consciousness.

7. Human-resource focused software has to get to this level of granularity of helping people and organizations more effectively manage the base-patterns that create much of the dysfunction we continue to see at every level of organizational complexity. This is what i have sought to model in a series of software tools at Aurosoorya’s Sustainability ‘N+1′.0 Center.

8. Further, there is a direction to the development of the world-system, and hence economies, markets, and industries, that is revealed in the fractal-patterns of progress at each of these levels, and in the base micro-patterns at the level of the person. The micro truly holds the key to the macro.

9. In my opinion the real winners in the ERP/HR software space are not necessarily the SuccessFactors, SAPs, Oracles, PeopleSofts of the world, but those software organizations that are able to bring the fractal-reality of organizational and market dynamics with their underlying links to human-based seed-patterns into focus. It is these patterns that need to be altered for true progress, regardless of level, to take place.

In the intuitional-orientation scenario, deeper questioning and completion of many personal stagnated journeys open one to the reality of Progress. It is in the opening to this reality that a help beyond the present-day physical, vital, and mental capabilities comes to the surface. In the disassociation from these persistent and ever-present dynamics one becomes more of a witness to one’s operations. A freedom from the ordinary allows one to penetrate that which stands behind surfaces and the essence of what one is, in the vaster scheme of things that Progress conceivably holds in its heart, is allowed to come to the surface. Then one may find that what truly drives one is the essential reality of service and perfection, or adventure and courage, or knowledge and wisdom, or harmony and mutuality. In this state, if one turns one ear toward the heart of Progress, and the other toward opportunities that present themselves in the various fields of practical organization, then spontaneous, organic, living, and uniqueness-based manifestations in each of the fields of practical organization can begin to emerge.

It is then that structure and technology and process and organization will have meaning, and it is then that society will begin to work in the manner intended. When the forms one creates are expressions of who one is, then there is a living and sustainable quality to them that becomes the basis for a progressive society. In this society citizens are heroes because they have stood up for what they are at their cores and they continue to take actions that are consistent with that core. Since their cores are part of the heart of Progress there is also a more spontaneous and integral interaction and harmony between all the various parts of society. Religion, business, art, sport, education, military, science, and country relation with country, no longer exist at loggerheads with each other. Each of the institutions remakes itself from within so that they become expressions of the deeper drivers at the heart of Progress. With true leaders at their respective helms it is the dynamics of Progress itself that really guides things.

Alternative World-Futures I: The Physical Scenario

Alternative World-Futures II: The Vital Scenario

Alternative World-Futures III: The Lower-Mental Scenario

Alternative World-Futures IV: The Higher-Mental Scenario

At the other end of the mental-orientation spectrum questioning will proceed more independently, and may even at its highest be aligned with deeper drivers that animate the intuitional level. In this scenario each of the “isms” will tend to be truly more enlightened. Having been created through a basis of questioning though, as opposed to a deeper sense of who one is, the questioning will have its limits because it will be all about logic rather than penetrating through experience into the inner uniqueness that animates each person. When that experience becomes the center around which activity is organized, then creation will proceed in a more living, organic and sustainable way. This is the stuff of intuition. In the meanwhile, what will result is a number of parts of society that still function in silos or independently of each other, and not as they should, as integral parts of a single whole.

Society, hence, while objectively surfacing more of the problems that plague life, and even surfacing more of the assumptions that may have led to these problems, will likely still be impotent to solve them, because it has still not penetrated into the heart of Progress so long as it remains stuck in questioning without following or opening to where the questioning leads. Questioning is of course powerful, but still there needs to be a receptivity to something that is beyond the mind, for true change to happen. In the mental-orientation scenario, forms and processes may change as a result of what seems like the logical solution following the questioning. The United Nations Organization and other forms that are new and different may come into being. The extent to which they successfully achieve their missions will still remain in the balance however, so long as there are no true personalities who organize themselves not based on questioning but on what they creatively and uniquely stand for in the scheme of things.

Hence, in this scenario, the world will likely have a burst of apparent creativity where new technology infrastructures, new types of organizations, new processes and ways of connecting people together, new regional and global alliances at least in name, will come into being. This scenario will also result in frustration when it is discovered that all the new structures and processes and organizations have really not made the difference they intended to make. For the difference to manifest, we of necessity must enter into the intuitional-orientation.

Alternative World-Futures I: The Physical Scenario

Alternative World-Futures II: The Vital Scenario

Alternative World-Futures III: The Lower-Mental Scenario

In the mental-orientation scenario, questioning comes alive. This signals a significant progress, for now all existing assumptions, many of which are of an irrational kind, can be questioned and the bases for our living consequently has a more likely chance to begin to be altered. In this scenario raison d’etre has the opportunity to come to the surface. Uniqueness and holism can begin to arise. Hence, the bases for business, amongst other modern-day institutions, can begin to be questioned, and if the questioning proceeds long enough and comprehensively enough, then more enlightened models of business and other institutions can begin to come into being.

Models in which business exists for and is accountable to a variety of stakeholders as opposed to just shareholders can come into being. Hence business would naturally begin to alter the way in which it generates profit to begin to address all costs of its transactions on the individual, social, cultural, and environmental fronts. Similarly other major institutions of the modern-day world can also be questioned and potentially altered to arrive at more enlightened versions of themselves. The often blindly-accepted tenets of religion, usually the creation of the fountainhead prophet or an ensuing circle of disciples can be questioned and affirmed through individual self-discovery. In such a manner the value of religion can be more truly affirmed and become more of a living force in the affairs of life. This same trajectory of questioning can then confirm the possible similarities, synergies, and complementarities of different world-religions. In such a way a more enlightened institution of religion that is also a more living part of life can come into being. Education itself can be similarly questioned, and the value of spawning cogs in a pre-arranged view of life questioned, to perhaps more truly make children and youth develop along lines driven by their own natural curiosities and uniqueness.

The question of course, is at what end of the mental-orientation spectrum will all this questioning proceed at? If it proceeds at the end closer to the vital region, then in many respects it will have the characteristic thrusts that marked the vital-orientation as its accompaniment and context. Then the questioning will likely not proceed comprehensively enough and what will result is a number of biased “isms” that are still anchored to the primary institution that may have characterized the recent vital milieu. Hence, even though there will be greater questioning in each of the institutions of our lives, whether of art, education, science, government, business, military, or sport, each will tend to be interpreted in terms of the recent reigning institution. In our modern-times many will continue to interpret their value in terms of business hence. This same logic will also apply to independence and definition of countries. If USA has been perceived as being the most successful country then its culture and driving institutions will tend to become the standard by which each country interprets its success. The degree to which McDonalds, MTV, and Levis replaces age-old institutions whether of tea drinking, tabla-playing, and dhotis, will be the measure of success of a country.

Alternative World-Futures I: The Physical Scenario

Alternative World-Futures II: The Vital Scenario

I made a presentation at the East Bay Section of American Society of Quality (ASQ) on April 15, 2010 on emerging micro and macro levers of quality.

My summary thesis was:

1. We are going through a fundamental change in the business environment. Small, local actions, whether by business or banks, that for centuries could be ignored, can no longer be ignored. The micro and the macro are now intimately connected. This is evident in macro-phenomenon such as Climate Change and the Financial Crises that have been created by numerous micro-actions, and therefore indicate the changed nature of our business playing-field.

2. Old paradigms are being challenged and even failing as a result of not accurately seeing the intimate connection between the micro and the macro. A new language to connect the micro and the macro is essential. Fractal modeling provides just such a bases for a new language.

3. Further, fractal modeling for progress and sustainability brings to light a dynamic pattern that repeats itself on different scales, the constituents of which are the physical, vital, and mental modes of being.

4. In the surfacing of this, additional levers by which quality is achieved are emerging. For it is evident that the global economy is transitioning from the vital to the mental phase of this macro-pattern. Quality has “grown up” in the vital milieu. Its very bases has to be enhanced by the fact that a new paradigm of envisioning quality that is representative of the mental phase has to come into being.

5. The fundamental issue is still that of removing waste from the system. Only, the limits and the nature of the system are redefined, to in effect allow for the removal of waste for the long-term, as opposed to the current focus on the narrowly-defined immediate and short-term.

6. In this reconsideration an important micro-lever that emerges is that of managing individual stress or stress at the personal level. A resultant macro-lever is that of sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR), which can be thought of as an index of dysfunction that does not need to be.

7. In other words, fractal-based thinking suggests that lack of management of stress at the individual levels ripples out to create major dysfunction at subsequent levels of complexity, leading all the way up to the global macro-level. Externalities are minimized when thinking and decision-making emanate from the mental as opposed to the vital level.

8. This gives rise to implications for management of quality, and even the central place that quality will hold in creating a more sustainable world.

To download the presentation, please click Emerging Micro and Macro Levers of Quality (ASQ).

Yesterday Aurosoorya’s Fractal-Based Stress Management program debuted at Stanford University Medical Center’s Center of Education & Professional Development. This is an important mile-stone in organizational development, and marks the use of software-based tools to begin to manage fractals that emanate from the individual level.

The program itself was based on the fractal-model developed by Aurosoorya, and highlighted in the book, Connecting Inner Power with Global Change, and involved some key web-based tools – StressManager and EmotionalIntelligenceBuilder. These tools can be used by both individuals and units, allowing a penetrating analyses into seed-patterns that are at the heart of dysfunctional team and corporate dynamics. Participants were really interested in understanding the order underlying chaos, which is exactly what fractals and Aurosoorya’s web-based tools allows them to do.

In the fractal-based model the macro is a reflection of the micro, and pressing issues, whether of a failure to fulfil project-based ROI, or of lack of department productivity, can be addressed by changing seed-patterns at the individual level. EmotionalIntelligenceBuilder allows ManifestationByDesign, so that a choice can be made in what is projected out of one’s personal space, into the environment.

The participants were really interested in the core question of the course – “What is the fractal imprint that shapes your reality?”, and what was amazing was the appetite of the participants to know more about fractals and the system-behind-the-system, even though they had not necessarily been introduced to these concepts before. We are surely at some significant bridge-point in the scheme of things, for this appetite to have surfaced.

This course marks the beginning of many similar courses, which will be offered at Stanford University Medical Center, amongst other places. The next iteration at the Center of Education will also focus on another Aurosoorya tool, PowersWithin, which allows a participant to nurture and mobilize deeper drivers within themselves, that often lie hidden behind the veils of common stress. Mobilization of these deeper drivers can and will create a new class of fractals that will alter organizational dynamics forever.