Brexit Ushers in a New Age? The Power of You

As an English immigrant to the USA, when the votes for Brexit seemed to favor remaining in the EU I was surprised that I felt a little sad. My head, steeped in a career studying organization, told me that objectively Britain should remain in the Union. My heart, however, was telling me a different story. There was something else happening, something much larger and more exciting, something that Britain’s move would make clearer. So when the decision was made to leave, I felt relieved but still anxious to see if I could discover why.

Undercurrents That Swamp Traditional Power Structures
I believe that the Brexit-type crises in Europe and the USA—and the many more that will follow—are trying to make the organization of the information age more responsive to the needs of all people. They are the birth pains of a new age that is beginning to transform our institutional landscape.

#1. Disruption: Individuated Purpose Meets Global Realities

 Fareed Zakaria of CNN’s GPS broadcast on June 26 noted:

The central reality of our times is a world being reshaped by globalization and technology…the most disruptive influence of all has been the migration of people, which has produced an emotional backlash against immigration, refugees and the entire idea of globalization…. Economic issues affect the head; identity issues hit the heart. This is the new divide in the Western world. On the one hand, there will be those who view an open world of globalization and technology change as broadly beneficial; and there are others who will regard these forces as threatening and destructive…. The new politics of our age will not be left-versus-right but open-versus-closed.

#2. The Certainty Myth
The information age has given us the expectation of certainty; with the right data and the right algorithms we can solve any problem. We can use our knowledge and information for control. We should always be smart and know how to get the right answers—no matter how complex the problem.

#3. Heroic Leadership and Complexity
Fear of the unknown is biologically hard-wired into human interaction. The leaders, who claim to provide us security by knowing the answers, by always being in control, help us maintain the myth of certainty. We create perfect conditions for idealized projections of safety by strongman leaders with oversimplified solutions.

The Power in Purpose
Is there a larger perspective that helps us transcend the limits of organizing in the age of information? How would it help us understand and seize the opportunity side of the crisis of the Brexits? What could it look like? Martin Luther King, a master at understanding and using norms of power, stated, “Power is nothing more than our capacity to achieve purpose.” This concept of purpose takes us to the next level.

The chart above summarizes the dynamics impacting Brexit-type situations. The vertical rows illustrate Zakaria’s point about open purpose—capable of accepting new ideas, new technologies and globalization. Closed purpose is the focus on the realities at the working level. The horizontal columns reveal the means by which we implement our purpose—whether we are “left wing” and give more emphasis to subjective human values or "right wing” and give more emphasis to logical objective values.

Open Possibilities Versus Closed Realities
Bridging the gap between open and closed purpose provides the most powerful impetus for addressing uncertainty and fear about the future. We join with the sources of fear to co-create the future, and we find ourselves accomplishing seemingly impossible feats.

1. Our most open and highest level of purpose is manifest in our spiritual, philosophical and scientific values (top row). Future possibilities live here. This level of purpose links us to all humanity. It generates the power to transcend differences at the lower levels. If we get this right, we create the most valuable of all human relationships: TRUST.
   If Britain and the EU were able to create conditions that demonstrated appreciation for their respective members’ belief systems at this highest level they would be able to create the trust that would enable them to deal with the conflicts inherent in the lower levels.
   Judgement without appreciation is the primary cause of this lack of trust in the design and emphasis of our current organizations.

1. Our most closed level of purpose is manifest at the working or operational level in our organizations (bottom row) in our aesthetic, authentic and economic values. For these values to be meaningful they have to be infused with the higher values from the first row. For example, at the operations level in resolving issues of our product designs, we run up against the cost of aesthetic considerations versus the economic cost of such aesthetic sensibility. We can’t really resolve this if we don’t have a governing philosophy about why we are producing our products. This philosophy allows us to be more authentic in our decision-making.
   If we incorporate the higher values, people experience us as authentic and better able to balance competing values at the operational level.

1. The middle row should mediate between the two extremes of higher purpose, with open possibilities, and lower purpose, with closed realities. However, the lack of emphasis on higher-level values also makes both lower levels weaker. This middle level should mediate equally between all values, however in practice it tends to use its influence for control. It emphasizes the blue triangle, the control values, and the short-term concerns of the operational level.
   To be effective we have to use influence both for control and appreciation. To engage both objective and subjective values in the context of future possibilities and past experience, all are required.

 Means Versus Ends
One of the consequences of not paying attention to the open, higher-level values is that the means by which we choose to implement them become more important than the purpose they were meant to achieve. For example, our political parties become more interested in the success of the party than in service to the country. Our executives become more concerned about their own control and welfare than the health of the entire company and its community. Unions similarly become more concerned about control over membership than they do the productivity and health of the whole.

Notice in the chart that each of the three levels requires an equal combination of values from the left and from the right, and each also needs a mediating process. Each requires the use of appreciative, influence and control power. The criterion for mediation in the center is what is best for the whole in this unique time and place under this particular set of circumstances. Philosophical values provide reason in circumstances in which beliefs differ from the science. Politics based on philosophy help decide when social and technical values collide. At the third level we have already shown how authenticity grounds all three levels.

There was a time when this mediation took place through war and conflict. Even at the personal level value differences were sorted out by duels. The growth of democracies has largely reduced this kind warfare to economic conflict, and improvement in the legal system has eliminated duels. But economic conflict and failures of our legal system still produce huge casualties. If we can extend the value system we use in designing and running our institutions beyond our emphasis on economics—to include all values—we will reduce these casualties.

The Way Forward
The centrality of the concept of purpose is being recognized. Aaron Hurst, in his book The Purpose Economy, has recognized that its implications are so huge that it will usher in a new age that gives its title to his book.

Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) and Ben Casnocha, in their book The Start-up of You, tackle this problem of over-emphasizing the closed boundries of control. They suggest that the only real boundaries are around the self. Everybody can have the flexible, permeable boundaries of influence to negotiate for work; each can find their own boundary-less area of appreciation in which they can freely establish their unique identity. Such respect for the purposes of every individual—inside or outside an organization—and the effort to create the conditions that will bring this about will eventually utilize the full power of our humanity as we tap into James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of the Crowd.

How will you make a difference?
We need a way of describing our future age with a word more consistent with our opening up beyond the limitations of our past and the boundaries of control. I would like to see us centered in the flexible, porous boundaries of influence with complete access to boundary-less realms of possibilities represented in appreciation that links all of humanity.

1. Looking at Brexit, beyond the crisis of transition, what do you see?
2. What does your head and heart tell you?
3. If you see the emergence of a new age what would you call it?