Are music festivals and doofs - a social experiment - solving the need for jobs? A precursor to the new kibbutz?

My daughters (22 and 25) love going to music festivals, (what they call "doofs" ) 

Are these festivals / communities , a social experiment that will be a base for a "new way" of connecting / adding value / living - creating for their community , a sense of self worth / finding ways to spend your day in a positive motivating way. Is this a better way than the "establishment - 9-5 work week - (for most) doing a job to survive, so they can feed and educate their family, and take 4 weeks a year annual leave - ( they say that job stands for "just over the breadline").

Is this a precursor to the revival of the "kibbutz" ?

Bellow, Katz Kiely talks about a potential new way of a connected community - finding meaning by taking out "the establishment" . 

From katz kiely

Katz Kiely

Founder and CEO 

Kiely & Co

Skype:  katzkiely

Twitter: @katzy

I was lucky enough to be invited by the founders a couple of years ago. I may not have accepted (“I’ve got work to do”) but Dan Ariely explained that I, with my passion for organisational transformation and behaviour change, should experience it.   

I now see Burning Man as a social experiment, exploring what happens when money and brands are taken out of the equation and volunteerism, creativity, collaboration and empowerment are put centre stage.

Participants come from all sorts of sectors: arts, media, finance - you name it. While there are elements of “pagan” festival, many of the activities are less widely understood. 

Contrary to the popular conception, I see the playa as a prototyping engine: with a wide variety of workshops, innovation camps, conferences, unconferences. The level of conversation and debate at Burning Man are, from my experience, exceptional. 

A couple of take aways to share a couple of experiences relevant to this discussion:

I had to visit the onsite hospital last year. The hospital, like everything else on the playa, is managed and manned by volunteers: professional nurses and doctors. I asked why they had given up their precious holiday time to volunteer. Each and every one said the same thing. At Burning Man the paperwork is taken out of the equation. They get to do what they signed up for : help people get better.  The service was impressive, and efficient, but human. The relationship between professional and patient is very different than in your typical hospital. The patients are genuinely grateful. The endless bureaucracy and paperwork is taken out of the equation. Most said they come back to volunteer year after year.

Impressed, and Infected by the volunteer spirit, I did a morning shift at the coffee centre the next morning. I brewed coffee for 4 hours. We served thousands of people. It could not have been a more menial job - but is one of my favourite memories of Burning Man. Why? Because of the work environment. We were working  together to support a connected community. Our efforts were respected and celebrated by those we served. Our playfulness did not get in the way of our work, but made the team more empowered and efficient. Empowerment leads to productivity.

In some ways the playa may have been an appropriate platform for Tuesdays meeting. Maybe next year :) 

Katz Kiely

Digital Strategist & Transformation Agent

Twitter: @katzy

How Institutions can change into an Innovation Entity

John Hagel - on how institutions can  change and disrupt themselves into an innovation institution

Jordan - You're absolutely right - the transition is going to be the challenge.  I suspect the bulk of the transition will come from new entrants who pioneer and innovate around the scalable learning model and use this as a basis for unseating the incumbents who hold on to the scalable efficiency model.  This will likely lead to a painful and tumultuous transition with great potential for backlash as incumbents mobilize to use regulation and other weapons to try to block the new entrants from undermining their position. 

On the other hand, as an optimist, I believe it is possible for existing institutions to transform themselves, but not through the classic top down, "big bang" approach to transformation that has proven to have a very high failure rate.  Instead, I have been a proponent of a different approach to large scale organizational change that I call "scaling edges" - http://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/center-for-the-edge/articles/scaling-edges-methodology-to-create-growth.html  A few of our existing institutions will be able to navigate through the changes using this approach.

Thanks for the heads up on Dans ted Talk

Just checking you have seen Dan's TED talk what really motivates us at work 

Here's as TED overview if you haven't  got time:  http://ideas.ted.com/what-motivates-us-at-work-7-fascinating-studies-that-give-insights/

Social Media disrupting the Established Economy

David Nordfors sites an example of radical innovation disrupting the economy:-

The media - mainstream- is becoming irrelevant in the social media communication Eco system. More people listen to the small movements than we might be aware of. People are looking for and finding new ways to relate to their environment through all the new channels available .

This blogging/ messaging/ visualizing ,new Eco system will not change legacy institutions,but will help build other options. If you examine education and the

New available materials in many formats,you have an opening for creative self actualization and enhancement. Innovative self education is already happening for millions. Mooc and Khan are just the beginning.
David

Innovation and economics - radical innovation needs radical change

A question by Curt Carlson 

 I can’t imagine that a society where 85% of the people don’t work would be a good thing.  Work is at the heart of being human — ones identity and self worth depend on it.   It seems unstable and likely to collapse from terrible policies that the 85% would impose on the 15%.  How do you think about that?

Response by Jordan Greenhall 

The key to creating an effective innovative economy is to get legacy systems and legacy habits out of the way while making people feel secure that their needs will still be met!

This can be done only with effective communication, connecting and collaboration! 

Changing the mindset and creating an innovative economy starts with education - and changing the way our education system links in with our economic institutions. 

These linkages make it nearly impossible to radically innovate in jobs without also radically innovating in education.   

Human beings don't need work.   They need more fundamental things like agency,  creativity,  community,  a sense of material safety,  etc.   Mileage will vary,  but my go to here is Max Neef on human needs.   

As it turns out, our civilization model has pushed a great number of these needs into "work".   Increasingly so over the past four centuries.   Indeed,  a big cause of the modern ennui is the fact that work is a poor satisfier for many of the needs that are being piled upon it.   Even really creative work,  but particularly the kind of stuff that usually goes under the heading "work". 

Now,  clearly,  we can not simply delete work.   85% of the population "just sitting around"  is a disaster.   What we must do is innovate entirely new satisfiers.   Optimally satisfiers that meet human needs much more effectively than our legacy approaches and do so much more efficiently.   Neef calls the best of these "synergistic satisfiers".   

Obviously a challenge for the ages,  but my sense is that we are very well positioned to meet it.   To me,  the hard part is doing it in the face of and in the midst of the broad institutional dysfunction that is characteristic of the current environment.   

For example,  take education.   When nearly every child,  teacher and parent is fully tapped day in and day out by the legacy system,  there isn't a lot of room for innovation.   Let alone radical innovation.   

But, if by some circumstance,  the entire educational system shut down all at once and,  as a consequence,  got out of the way; we would develop a dozen new models that are at least as effective in months.   And in a year we'd be well on our way to a set of satisfiers that are 10x more effective.   

In general,  a move like this is unwise.   New is usually a dangerous choice.   But as i believe that a decomposition of the legacy system is coming one way or another..... To create a radicL innovative economy one needs radical innovative ideas and action! 

Response by David Michaelis

We need to redefine WORK and its meaning. The writing of Hanna Arendt in the Human Condition might be relevant to this challenge. 

Arendt theorizes that the "human condition" is tri-partite, that is, composed of three dimensions: labor, work, and action.  To reduce the human condition to labor (as Marx did) and/or to work (as capitalism does), she argues, is to deny the fundamentally significant work that human beings can engage in, namely, action.  Understanding this, she believes, makes it possible to understand better how this allows political and economic systems to enslave human beings. 

 best

david

Innovaton and Economics

Kiely Katz talks about the need to shift to a people based economy in order to maintain and sustain jobs in an innovation driven economy. A radical mindset change is needed 

A successful shift to a more sustainable employment model needs to involve significant changes in traditional mindsets, attitudes and behaviours. Embedding behaviour change is notoriously difficult. The more deeply embedded the behaviour, the more difficult to shift.

We have worked within the similar operating norm for a very long time. Work is not “life” but the thing people do to “make a living”. For 9 hours every day. Those lucky enough to be employed spend more time with their work colleagues that with their loved ones. Employers expect employees to wear a cloak of the “professional persona” during working hours. Most expect employees to stick rigidly within the confines of their role. Stepping outside these rigid “job” walls, even to share knowledge to help colleagues, is often regarded as disruptive behaviour: and thus a massive chunk of skills, knowledge and experience are kept locked firmly away to avoid upsetting the status quo. Frustrating and bad for productivity - but “that just the way things are.

A shift to a ‘people centred economy” has to start by understanding what makes people tick.

Lets look at this norm through the lens of the the way the brain is wired.

People are most receptive to change (and most productive) when they are in “reward” mode. In this mode, we do our best, most creative thinking, we are open to collaboration and feel secure enough to try new things. 

There are six key triggers to this reward state:

Respect: People feel that their opinions are valid. They feel part of decision making processes and that their voices are heard.

Certainty: When there are no unexpected surprises. As an example, Zappos make all of their live data open to everyone across the whole organisation all the time. Nothing is hidden. Everyone knows what is happening. There are no board room secrets.

Autonomy: They don’t want to be watched and micromanaged. People are most productive and most collaborative when they are trusted to do the right thing - especially as part of a community working toward a shared vision.

Connectedness: We are social creatures. We are at our best when we part of connected communities - where we feel safe to share, to give, to be involved. We are most empowered when we are connected by a shared vision or collective mission.

Fairness: People like to know how and why decisions are made. 

Empathy: Even a message saying that leadership understands that change is not easy for anyone makes an enormous difference to how change is adopted.

Check back to standard current organisational operating systems. 

Employees are expected to keep their opinions to themselves and to tow the line. Leaders see knowledge as power and keep it locked away from prying eyes. Most leaders find the idea of employee autonomy uncomfortable and most workers are accustomed to doing as they are told without question. Sharing and cross silo collaboration is not incentivised, if tolerated. Decisions are made behind closed doors and delivered with not even a nod to the people most affected by them.

The gap between organisational norms and more engaged, and therefore more sustainable, operating systems is enormous. Travelling between one and the other will involve significant change.

Therein lies the rub. 

When presented with any kind of significant change, or anything that feels different to the norm, the brain triggers a threat “fight or flight” response.  We become distracted as we try to figure out how that threat will affect us.

Faced with change, people start to see threats even where there are no threats. People are less able to focus or think clearly. Memory and decision making is impaired, the field of focus narrows. They become more emotional and stressed, which further impacts ability to perform.

Unfortunately, the threat response is contagious. When one person starts to behave in a defensive way, the people around them react to the change in their behaviour.

While we considering how to innovate employment through the use of technology, we should not underestimate the challenge of introducing and embedding organisational and systemic change. Throughout the brainstorming process we should imagine what kind of frameworks could support organisations and cities (leaders and employees) through the pain on change into a new more sustainable norm.

Access to affordable and pervasive data, neuroscience, social physics and behavioural psychology provide us with an unprecedented understanding of how humans make decisions, what drives action and how behaviour change can be “nudged.” This research should be kept front of mind as we are plotting

Can innovation disrupt unemployment?

Today, most innovation is about helping people to spend money in meaningful ways. But in an ideal, sustainable economy, people need meaningful ways to earn money, as well—especially as the job landscape continues to change rapidly and dramatically, and certain forms of employment are either reduced or retired completely.

Luckily, innovation is the single greatest driver of job creation, and is propelling entrepreneurial companies to expand, even in a static economic climate. The Internet’s ability to match needles between haystacks enables a new labor market. Jobs may be tailored to fit each individual’s strengths and passions to the right opportunity.

Today, every second person is in the work force. Every fifth cares about their job. Human capacity is our largest underutilized resource.

Agenda
6:00pm:  Registration and Refreshments
6:30pm:  Opening Remarks with Adiba Barney SVForum CEO and David Nordfors, I4J CEO
6:45pm:  Keynote Speaker: John Hagel, Center for the Edge @ Deloitte
7:00pm:  Panel Discussion, moderated by Robin Farmanfarmain, President, I4JEco Summit
7:50pm: Q&A
8:00pm:  Networking
8:30pm:  Program Concludes

Last night we had the interactive discussion outlined below.  It was rather amazing.  Robin, Dave, and John gave opening comments to set the stage.  John made excellent comments about how our mindset and institutions must innovate as well as our technology.  Robin, as always, was the most charming, supportive host.  David's comments were along the lines of underutilized human potential and how new companies are needed to utilize it.  

Vivek ripped off a long list of transformational innovations that will be increasingly disruptive and that will come at a rate society will be unable to adapt to.  

The poster child for this is driverless cars, which can eliminate between 6-10 million middle class jobs.  Uber, for example, is first creating independent agents out of the taxi business but obviously their goal is to run a fleet of driverless cars.  They will be smaller, cheeper, cleaner, and run non-stop (in-between quick charges).  The jobs go away but the value to society goes up enormously.  Curiously the car industry revenue per capita goes down for the same reason — smaller cars shared across society.  

That has been one of the themes of this group:  societal value goes up enormously and corporate value goes down.  GDP doesn’t capture this value.  

Vivek keep up this theme to remind us of the magnitude of what we are facing.  That is critically important.  Some in the audience found this highly disturbing, as they should.  

Chris was more positive about our ability to adapt and argued that these changes will take longer than suggested.  

I stuck to my normal themes:  we can do much better at innovation, US global competitiveness must improve, and educational performance is our biggest weakness.  All three of these areas are under our control and we now have examples about how major advances can be made in all three areas.  Viveck pointed out that I was just making things worse by speeding up the innovation cycle even more!  It was fun.  

David then ran a session with the audience to see how many were engaged in new companies to help people develop new skills, form new initiatives, match people up with new opportunities, etc.  It was a revelation to me that there were so many teams involved in these kinds of activities.