1. We need to make a SHIFT
2. We need to approach Potential ,Performance, the WHY and How  of  the potential performance gap, simultaneously
3. We need to take an informed position and be our SELF
   
4. We need some simple metrics to be certain that we are on the PATH

• Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
• It is such a headache to think, know, understand

The Game

The decision compass (DC) is the first of a series of frames which together form the First Discipline Framework.  Mastery of the DC frame is achieved through accelerated learning and competency development work shops by simulating a high performance work environment.  The participants work together (play ) with specific roles corresponding to the levels and functional expectancies of the DC. The duration varies from 16 - 40 working hours for an introductory workshop.

Participants: 50 - 60.  

Learning Aids:    Deck of 60 cards in VIBGYOR. Red cards are six in number and  green four. Other colours are ten each.   Red and Green represent governance and sustainability issues and are external to the organisation. The organisational groups are positioned at the centre and at the centre of the four quadrants. They change positions anti-clockwise after each round of discussions and presentations.

Time:  16 - 40 hours in 2 to 5 days.   

Round  1.

Step 1- Pre process metrics

Step 2. The facilitators explain the DC (60 minutes)

Step 3. Each participant picks up a card. In case total number of participants is less than 60, some participants may have more than one card. These participants will perform the additional roles implied by the extra cards. Each participant on his/her own prepares and presents a brief understanding of his /her role. The facilitators supplement clarifications if necessary. As the process picks up extent of facilitation comes down. At the end the learning from round one is summed up and shared (45-60 minutes)

Step 4. Participants group into each colours and assume their roles.  They work towards connecting the learning from the exercise and its strategic implications.  Presentations follow at hourly intervals. Further clarifications are provided by the Facilitators at the end of each presentation (4-5 Hours)

Step 5 . Post metrics. Further briefing with organisational data or using data  from sample case studies

Round  3.

Step 1. The groups work with organisation specific / case study related information to demonstrate the application of the model and the implications

Step 2. Summing up

Step 3. Post metrics

More rounds will be required in the case of new recruits. The rounds are repeated till the facilitators are certain that the participants have reached the required level of proficiency  as reflected by the metrics, quality of the presentations and proficiency with the language of sustained high performance.

(IITs, Indian Institutes of Technology. IIMs, Indian Institutes of Management) 

Shillong, 25, 26, 27 August 2009.

I am anchoring a workshop on Accelerated Learning in one of the b- schools when the reports appear in the media.

Toyota recently announced the recall of 688,314 vehicles produced in China though no injuries or accidents have been linked to the recall. The recall amounts to more than a year's sale of vehicles.  

Dream:  I am waiting in front of my b-school which I graduated from in 1981. There is a huge crowd of alumni waiting for registration. The b school has a great reputation and have discovered that there have been some major glitches in all their graduates throughout the school's history. The graduates have been responsible for systemic failures of grave dimensions affecting the very survival of the planet. They  are waiting to register for a remedial programme. Their licences to practice have been revoked.  I wake up from the dream with the fear of losing my job to realise that I do not have a job to lose. Thank god, it is only a dream.

We share our dreams and news in the morning. The general consensus is that we need to have rewards as well as punishments. The Toyota quality issue is insignificant in comparison to what the top of the pyramid does to the bottom. (It is part of their programming to think of the world in terms of pyramids, or sometimes as a flat one reflecting their own inner landscapes. They perceive themselves to stand on the apex of the pyramid and from where they are rest of humanity is down there). They don't just leave it at that. More questions follow: What is Indian about the Indian institutes of Management? Are they B-schools or M- schools? If they are catering only to business why are they called management institutes? Is business not capable of meeting their own demand for managerial talent or otherwise?  Why should government indulge in this business where it has no competence to talk about? Do US seeds germinate and take root in the Indian soil? Can copies be better than the original? Which Indian academic in management working in India has the highest recall rate? Why is it that we don't even have a single technology or management breakthrough of world class scale and size in proportion to the scale and size of the country? Why are we so hung up on numbers and blissfully unaware of quality? You said quality, quantity and time goes into setting of standards and that standards though essential can also breed conformity and compromise on outstanding achievements when you don't have any standards of your own?

Is there a moral to the story? Accelerated learning and making people to ask questions is a tightrope walk? One cannot indulge in it without taking a position on some of these issues.  

The Business Strategy Simulation:New University, Udayagiri, TN. Dates: 7, 8.11.12 August 2009, 9 AM- 5.00 PM

Number of participants - 61 including Facilitators, MKR, NP, Sri, San, JM

The System of Profound Knowledge, (Deming) helps us to see how complex organisations work.   Organisations   guided by SPK will be more effective and successful. We demonstrate this using the First Discipline Framework.

We tell stories, about 15 of them. Every community need to tell its own stories and recreate old stories.

We reflect every now and then and the participants develop the game.

Harvard is in agreement with what we do. See  http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6119.html

The Simulation

• How do we fix the true north ( true point)
• The business, transformation of the crowd to a sustained high performance community
• Choose the CEO , prescribe a process, Position him so that he positions the community and make sure that the community is on a path of continuous improvement - sustained high performance
• The CEO selects a custodian of maps, CTO, Facilities Manager, other additional positions as required
• Selection of VPs Marketing, HR , Finance, Learning and Development , timelines
• Position them in the appropriate quadrant by consensus of the group
• The CEO fixes the true north , describes his compass function
• The VP marketing outlines the market potential, BDP and personnel requirements / product/market mix, pricing, targets
• VP HR - translates the business plan and organize the human component
• VP Fin - the controller of weights and measures - Metrics
• VP L&D - his/her business is that we learn continuously
• Other roles: Regulators/industry associations/venture capitalists , external public

In the mornings we recollect our dreams to check whether our unconscious is aligned with our conscious. The process goes on for six days from the beginning to the 12^th evening. Everyone worked on their own during the two holidays in between and continued to add value.  We climbed peaks and took glimpses of the blue ocean space and at times fell down to the valleys like humpty dumpty but managed to gather ourselves together and continue on the journey.

The game continues... but we are back to our respective places of work. Are we back to the same place? Certainly not, we have moved ahead towards true north, 61 of us ... a learning community.

The journey/process is on.  
We hope to meet again

Smoking is injurious to health. Smoking causes cancer. The sun rises in the east.  The coin has two sides, Change is the only constant. Time runs out, Time is money. Death and Illness are essential. It is true or false, yes or no. It is destiny. Oh my God, what the Devil, Black and White. I need 2000- 3000 calories/day from food. Let us vote for change.  Resources are limited and wants unlimited. 

These little programs, cookies, were rejected by the matrix for incorrect logic. The programs reflect the logic of the programmer, the way they are internally organised. These programs were sent back to the recycling facility in Bangalore India. They were bangalored

Programs compete with each other. Every program, good or bad has life and the life-span varies with the quality of the logic. One with better logic prevails over the others. Such programs evolve and coalesce into maps. It appears to us that the sun rises in the east survives over the one which says the sun rises in the east. The one which says the coin has many sides over ‘the coin has two sides'. Resources are unlimited and needs limited take precedence over the old paradigm of scarce resources and unlimited wants. The neo-logic was that the creative intelligence is unbounded, the prime resource which transforms/catalyses the other resources.  The unlimited wants were found to be derivatives of some of the primal survival drive distortions. The realisation was found to have survival value since it appealed to the selfish gene

English > Inglish

COBOL> COPOL (common purpose oriented language)

The logic for the new language was that the syntax of one's mother tongue went against the purpose of connecting - building bridges. It works like an empty parrot's cage or the classic golden mouse trap where rats were extinct for a very long time. The syntax of the mother tongue promoted imperialism (read, version Anglo-Saxon). With an emergence of the syntax of viewing the syntax of text which promoted linearity became redundant

The programs are stacked into levels beginning with maps to Meta systems.

Science is a meta- system. So are art and religion. The matrix holds nothing to everything together.

While all programs have life a very small set of programs (+) have material form.  

The current version of the matrix has been in existence since 1990 (PME 0). A new skin has been added in the version PME 19, the only improvement in 19 years  

The project had begun with a class room discussion during 1981. The case study was ‘IT or MIT'. (MIT, read Misinformation Technology). JJ had taken the position that the critical issue in IT is the issue of standardisation of the observer matrix. Since every observer sees with a different internal matrix the resultant complexity would be unmanageable and IT would turn into MIT. Others stood for the remaining mostly hardcore technological issues. JJ took the position that what they see as hard is really soft and what they see as soft is hard. The entire class went against JJ's arguments. JJ stuck to his guns and walked out of the discussion. The project had begun.

We see what we choose to focus on. What we choose to focus on is limited by the program which runs us and the positions we take which most likely has nothing to do with the common good. We could be charging full steam towards our own destruction. This possibility no more exists with the emergence of the matrix which has taken over the collective unconscious. Since the year of the matrix, 1990, 5169 Neos have been trained in the matrix. Somewhere in between, the 100^th monkey effect took over and the program now exists in everyone. The Neos are conscious of the existence of the matrix. Others are not. Some Neos work as teachers and healers, in food and livelihood security, software engineering, and in medicine.

If you come across a neo-doc, s/he is more likely to ask you in his diagnostic foray what your work is or what you do for a living is in sync with your purpose of life. The data shows that this is the MFQ among Neos, what the purpose of the program is.  Another MFQ is about the fabric/quality of community that support our lives or about the quality of relationships outnumbering other questions on smoking,  exercise or number of calories that go into the  system. One is less likely to be asked who your employer is, a question often loaded with the hidden agenda of finding out if he can go ahead with all the diagnostic tests without worrying about your ability to afford

It took eight years for the matrix to fall in place. The cardinal frameworks had to pass the immortality test. The levels and hierarchy were to be assigned.  Example:- Christ is relatively more immortal than Shakespeare.  The matrix went through innumerable tests to pass through all possible contexts, past, present and future.    

Successful centenarians work for over ninety years .Many of them have never consulted a doc. For them work is self-expression. These at the other end of the immortality continuum were studied in the formulation phase of the matrix. The single major challenge they faced for further extension of life-spans was the absence of community, as most fellow travellers had taken the exit route. More than anything else it was concluded that the quality of one's work decides health and life spans and quality follows from the purpose. When one is ready to die for it death will be afraid to approach such.

What are you suggesting?

We are over deterministic in our assumptions and more often than not end up with the wrong diagnosis of our problems. We need a new way of looking, a set of new eyes if we want to craft a new vision

In the matrix trilogy, the Frenchman says, it is my business to know. Yet he wants the eyes of the oracle  

The key maker is a meta- programmer. His business is to architect the meta-program, key to all programs, to make keys for all possible variety of programs

The matrix is a perfectly balanced equation

It is our business to know because knowing is doing. Doing without knowing is not doing

Black and White > Grey

Day and Night > Dusk and dawn, the in-between, gaps to fill, to connect

We have a pair of eyes, but we see as one

Ravana had 10 heads and 20 eyes. Still he could not see, avoid defeat or win the heart of Sita

Dritarashstra, the king, was blind, inside and outside. The queen / advisors had eyes but they opted to keep them shut or could not see the conflicts in the making.  They were myopic blinded by their selfishness.

One can have forty heads- levels - thinking hats/positions, take in 40 different/variant perspectives and bring them together into one vision. Each level has infinite elements that form the class. It is for us to choose the specific ones relevant to our specific context/s. When one is ready to die for what one sees others have no option but to come round to what such people see.  Community is in the making when more and more agree to the immortality of the program. Ideas also follow the norm, survival of the fittest.

Nature is not impatient, in a hurry. For nature time does not run out.

Meanwhile the pearl material accretes around the nucleus. The clusters which continually do this progress on the path reducing the waste in the system, a self improving program, the only metrics being how much of the garbage, waste, has been recycled, transformed to organic manure. Non-physical garbage took priority over the physical.

In comparison with the successful centenarians, most of us squander nearly half a century of our lives. The centenarians do not experience any recessions.

Multiply with the billions to visualise the total waste, the unrealised potential. The list could be pretty long. Add poverty, illness, infant mortality, terror strikes, and wars in the name of peace...........

Quality and Quantity is the count. Quantity without quality is waste

We can go on ad nauseum, but if you got it, you got it - explanations are redundant. If you didn't, ASK

Is this fact or fiction?

It is fact and fiction. Fiction is more powerful than fact.. Myths live on, facts are forgotten. Leverage both, facts and fiction, tell a future story (?) 

Matrix thinking is thinking with nature, co -creating........... no need to go out to fight any wars ............... a  home improvement project,

Let the noise die down

More:
http://firstdiscipline.gaia.com/blog/2008/7/the_first_discipline_framework_abstract_to_concrete
For a very ancient version of the matrix go here:
http://newculture.gaia.com/blog/2009/1/video_merkabah_the_chariot_of_ascension