Unification for a Future: L7 Choices
Predictions in an Endeavour
Cooperating aims to generate something in the future and therefore depends on a grasp of current trends and assumptions about the future. Key features about the future should be made explicit and used to unify the group. Predictions must get deliberately incorporated into the group's consensus.
More on seeing the future.
The future is broadly determined by social forces relevant to the particular endeavour—such forces may be technological, demographic, political, cultural, sector-based &/or economic drivers of change. Both current plans and operations may be affected. If the Participants can appreciate the ongoing evolution of their environment, they will see the new potentials, some of which will seem like opportunities and some like threats in regard to their Shared endeavour.
Because different joint endeavours tap into the same realities in different ways, different groups will see different potentials. So predictions differentiate communalist choices.
Review Reality-centred Principles from a purely personal perspective.
Tension in Cooperation
Does L7-Prediction imply a Participant focus or a Shared-endeavour focus or both?
Emerging potentials and predictions about the future, based on social forces and factors in the situation, are wholly impersonal. What is identified must be relevant to each Participant, or the notions will be ignored or rejected. The predictions must also be developed in a way that is relevant to the Shared endeavour.
That means L7 is a Balanced Centre.
At L7, both poles of the Participant v Shared-endeavour duality are activated simultaneously and must be fused, so this Level has a Balanced Centre with the formula: L7B.
Prediction is Hard…
…especially about the future (attrib. Niels Bohr, Piet Hein, Yogi Berra, et al).
One of the reasons is that few Centres feed directly into prediction (and vice versa). Choices for the joint endeavour related to the emerging realities have no natural direct influence on harmonious intra-group relations (L5), nor with specialist expertise (L3), nor maintaining power (L2), nor working as individuals (L1).
Influence of future predictions on all those Centres needs to be indirect and mediated via the 3 remaining Centres: analyses of implications (L6) and development of consensus (L4).
Explain the Picture
Generation & Clarification: L7 ↔ L6
The tidal flow of events surrounding any group endeavour cannot be controlled, but it can and should be perceived, accepted and joined.
Accepting the inevitable and identifying potentials often demands taking new perspectives seriously and learning about what is happening. This can force radical thinking, which in turn generates predictions. Sometimes the process of adaptation and innovation starts with new ideas that open up new potentials given the existing social trends. We therefore label the Channel: Generation (L7B ↔ L6P).
Social forces may be obvious, but potentials are rather general and predictions are inherently uncertain. So any perceived potential or prediction, rather like a radical idea, requires careful and systematic investigation and analysis to clarify its importance and increase certainty about options. The reverse process also occurs. Often inquiries and functional analyses produce results that cannot be appreciated or implemented effectively unless wider social forces are brought into the picture. We therefore label the Channel: Clarification (L7B ↔ L6S).
Guidance: L7 ↔ L4
Unity around stark realities releases a powerful force for cooperating to generate an effective response. Consensus on goals, means and timing (L4) are directly and beneficially shaped by the group’s evolving awareness of how events are unfolding—always assuming unity on the prediction. Conversely, consensus-driven decisions guide observations about the social system and focus predictive efforts. We therefore label the Channel: Guidance (L7B ↔ L4B).
Limitation
There are no further Levels required or possible. The map of cooperation for results is now complete. The time has come to see what has been constructed in these webpages.
Originally posted: July 2009