The 'Now' Story

The 'Now’ Story of the Cycle of Change represents all aspects of the Cycle that can be observed at a ‘Now’ Point. The ‘Now’ Point is where the perspective and context of the performance of an individual, team or group can be assessed, considered and ultimately influenced.

As we move from a complex world to a world of complexity, constant review and evaluation of the "Now" Story are critical to enabling organisations, teams, groups and individuals to be resilient and quickly respond to ongoing changes in order to enable continuous improvement.

In this article, I share with you how to find the ‘Now’ Point which represents our current reality before exploring the influence and importance of the ‘Now’ Story.

The ‘Now’ Point, where ‘Time’ and ‘Value’ intersect

There is a simple equation that makes sense of the ongoing challenge(s) time puts to

us. The equation has just 2 inputs and they are both common to all of us; whether it

be us as an individual or part of a team or a team within a group, company or

organisation. Or more simply as a collection of cultures rolled up to represent society

as we know it. The 2 inputs are 'Time' and 'Value' viewed in the form of an (x) and (y) axis. Time being the (x) axis and Value being the (y) axis.

‘Value’ being the (y) axis

The function of the (y) axis (Value) is to provide us with purpose, reason, meaning and relativity, which we acknowledge in many different forms such as longevity of life, quality of life, fairness of life, accumulation of control, accumulation of wealth, accumulation of choice, accumulation of material etc. The catch with 'Value' is that it either increases or decreases dependent on our course of action(s).

A very important point to remember about (Value) is we, us, you are in full control of its design, performance, distribution and impact.

‘Time’ being the (x) axis

The function of the (x) axis (Time), unlike (Value) is that we don't get to control it. Time, from our point of view, moves at the same pace as observed by the measurement of what is a year, a month, an hour and a minute with its seconds.

The timeline axis records our past and presents us with our future. We have gained knowledge from time's past history as far back as the 'Big Bang' event and from Darwin's era observations, etc. Looking forward into the future along the timeline, we can see as far as the Sun running out of gas and dying in 3 to 5 billion years.

Point being, time doesn’t seem to have a start or end, it moves at a consistent pace and our existence within it, whilst limited, is highly transformational and full of change.

The point where the (Value) and (Time) axis intersect is where we find the 'Now' point which represents our current reality – our ‘Now’ Story. It is from 'Now' where we can influence and somewhat control our existence and explain our current reality.

As you look at the intercepts of the (x) and (y) axis we see that the 'Now' point exposes the critical relationship between the past and the future and its account on how maximum value, diminishing value and failure for us all evolve over time.

The influence of the ‘Now’ Story on the Cycle of Change

As a point of interest, there seems to be a contradiction to the notion that we can control or influence the pace of time and that in recent eras, the time has exponentially quickened magnifying our vulnerability and exposure to increasingly high consequence events and threats such as pandemics, global warming, globalisation, digitisation and so on.

With this in mind, if we step onto the 'Now' Story we will observe that time

hasn't deviated, the circumstances we are faced with and are dealing with are a

consequence of exponential increases and scaling of our 'Value' aspirations and

generation.

Our Value propositions, strategies, performance and ambitions are quickly

exceeding our ability to control and cope with the accompanying elements of

unquantifiable and unidentifiable change. In this case, if we can't affect time and slow

down - we are left with de-valuing our ambitions or increasing our capacity and

capability to reinvent, change and transform ourselves to increasingly higher levels of

effectiveness in order to keep up.

If we start to look beyond the equation and philosophy of time and value and

introduce the concept of how this affects our existence as a culture represented in the

form of individuals, teams within groups, companies and organisations or more

importantly as a collection of cultures that make up society. Then, we can consider and observe that the ‘Time’ and ‘Value’ equation has a tangible, consistent and continuous effect on us and that history demonstrates it is a repetitive cycle, a 'Cycle of Change'.

The importance of the ‘Now’ Story

From a CubeNorth point of view, the ‘Now’ Story is a key factor of transformation, change management and continuous improvement.

Through our approach, we challenge individuals, teams and groups to stand on the point of ‘Now’ and critique where the entity has come from and where it is yet to go by looking to both sides of the time axis(x). There may not be a definitive or common answer to the challenge. However, a perspective provided by General Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams) is one that resonates well with CubeNorth.

General Stanley McChrystal’s perspective

As a retired 4-star general of the US Army, McChrystal is best known for developing and implementing a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and for creating a cohesive counter-terrorism organisation that revolutionised the interagency operating culture.

Now, General Stanley McChrystal is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where he teaches a course on Leadership. He wrote and co-authored several books about leadership, team engagement and risk management, including a memoir.

If General Stanley McChrystal was standing at the ‘Now Point’ in 2015, he may critique the (x) axis as looking back to recent eras of time being times of industrial revolution with a world divided by regions of geography and philosophy all presented with complex problems on the way.

The approach to navigate the complex challenges of these past eras was largely defined by Taylorism (the scientific approach to management and leading) one that pursued efficiency via defined plans, procedures, and processes to direct the efforts of teams and people at large. To organise and structure effort via a Control and Command method and a top-down approach to authorise activity and action. The Groups, Companies, Organisations who mastered this were the most successful at solving the complex problems of the world ‘The Clockwork Era’.

From a complex world to a world of complexity

Looking forward to the Future from the ‘Now’ point in 2015, General Stanley

McChrystal anticipated that the world was transitioning from a complex world to a

world of complexity.

The difference between a complex world and a world of complexity is the sheer volume of variations to problems that were presented at speed and scale due to globalisation and the rapidly evolving digital era providing instant information enabling people to act or react to circumstances in real-time.

The era of Taylorism methodology to management and leadership would be certain to fail in this newly evolving era. The leadership and management approach required to navigate the next era is one that enables resilience to varying problems, rapid adjustment to ops plans, instantaneous feedback to decentralised command and trust and empowerment commissioned to rapid response teams who are provisioned with enough context and perspective of the big picture to enable them to make changes on the run.

The next era is one of resilience and rapid response, hence the importance of constant reviews of our ‘Now’ Story.

Conclusion

Constant review from the 'Now' Point will provide the context of the past and relevance for the future and needs to be installed as a perpetual starting point for ongoing change.

Our 'Now' Story perspective doesn’t need to be provided by external knowledgeable people. Ideally, the entity should constantly assess 'Now' in their own right and use external knowledge to support or confirm a point of view.

Get a copy of our brochure introducing the CubeNorth High-Performance Cubes and how the “Now” Story fits in…