Hi Listers<br><br>Here is a longish abstract of the article cited by Tonne in Holland earlier.<br><br>It might save members from reading the whole tract of the 83 year old author.<br><br>Cheers<br><br>Kerry<br>Edinburgh<br>
<br><h1 class="entry-title">Extract from ‘Empathy, Socioperception, and Anticipation’ by Author ALAIN DE VULPIAN</h1>
<div class="entry-meta">
<span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Publié le</span> <a href="http://transversalys.com/blog/socioperception-and-anticipation-by-author-alain-de-vulpian/" title="23:20" rel="bookmark"><span class="entry-date">12 juillet 2012</span></a> <span class="meta-sep">par</span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://transversalys.com/blog/author/admin/" title="Afficher tous les articles par David Rault">David Rault</a></span> </div>
<p style="text-align:justify">I chosed to quote and reflect this
article because I believe it is a fundamental thinking about the
evolution of organizations and systems in the XXI’ century. The Author <a title="Alain de Vulpian - textes choisis" href="http://www.solfrance.org/publications-et-ressources/alain-de-vulpian/" target="_blank">Alain de Vulpian</a> is a respected academician and actively contributing in the <a title="SolFrance" href="http://www.solfrance.org" target="_blank">SOL france group</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">_______________________________________________________________</p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><em><span style="text-decoration:underline"><span style="color:#800000;text-decoration:underline">Extract : </span></span></em></p>
<p style="text-align:justify">« A new <a title="Socioéconomie " href="http://www.unige.ch/ses/socioeco/institut.html" target="_blank">socio-economy</a>
of meaning and self-directed adjustment emerged Beginning in the 1980s
under the impulse of a number of socioperceptives, a socio-economy based
on meaning and self-organized adjustments began to emerge, in synergy
with the de- velopment of the society of ordinary people. <strong>This
new socio-economy sought to lead the structures of the old economy
toward the future. Made up of small, often networked units, like living
organisms, it produced efficiency and vitality from the hopes and
aspirations of entrepreneurs, collabora- tors, customers, and society
itself.</strong> <span style="text-decoration:underline">These
included start-ups working in the fields of information tech- nology,
biotechnology, and nanotechnology, as well as new services in
partnership with associations, NgOs, consultants, individual
entrepreneurs and their networks, think tanks, and nonprofits</span>. Such organizations have proliferated widely over the past 30 years.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">During the early 2000s, <strong>a new type of hybrid organization emerged that tries to combine “nonprofit” with “for profit.”</strong> These entities are often <span style="text-decoration:underline">known as “<a title="Social Business" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_business" target="_blank">social businesses</a>.”</span>They
work on a socially oriented rather than profit-seeking basis, but
differ from most charity groups in that they generate sustain- able
revenues and are not reliant on philanthropy. They retain and reinvest
revenues rather than distributing them to shareholders.<br>
The emerging <strong>socio-economy is profoundly marked by the new society of people, its sensitivities, and its values.</strong>
It responds to this group’s expec- tations, offsets its
insufficiencies, takes care of its problems, supports its development,
and enriches its interactions.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Field research carried out in france and the united States during 2000 shows that <span style="text-decoration:underline;color:#0000ff"><strong>these new, organic forms share the following characteristics</strong></span>:</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">• All participants are involved in their development.<br>
• Added meaning is more important than added value.<br>
• Strategies arise from the collective intelligence of the entire social group.<br>
• Organization is transversal and heterarchical, that is to say, the leadership circulates.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify;padding-left:30px">These organizations <em><strong>start
out as little groups of people who perceive possible channels of
emergence and are intensely motivated by the mission of promoting a new
service or idea.</strong></em> They often struggle to work their way
into standard institu- tional forms. Some find themselves ill treated or
even strangled by investment markets, but they are warmly welcomed by
the society of ordinary people.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Old-fashioned businesses became blinded
by the champions of hyper-financial capitalism Between 1990 and 2000,
large, traditional companies were subject to a double pressure. The
emphasis on short-term financial profit forced them to tighten every
available screw and close their eyes to society’s shifts.
Simultaneously, new social attitudes and modern mentalities worked their
way into the companies, multiplying the number of change agents within
them and making their top-down management style increasingly
problematic.</p>
<div>
<div style="text-align:justify">
<p>Since the beginning of the 1990s, a hyper-financial form of
capitalism centered entirely on the short term made its appearance in
the united States and spread rapidly. An imperfect laissez-faire policy
that did not take account of moral hazard gave extraordinary freedom to
players in the financial world, who began to take extreme risks in
order to generate extreme profits. The result was a par- ticular form of
capitalism centered on financial speculation and the maximization of
short-term profits – a virtual casino. Financial actors inveigled many
companies into their casino. They introduced a new type of shareholder
into many boards of directors, voracious money men little interested in
the vitality and sustainable development of the business. Many companies
gave overwhelming power to the shareholders and generously rewarded the
senior managers who served them. Finance, once the lifeblood of growing
industries, thus became a parasite on the economy and a source of
sickness for many companies.</p>
<p>In this context of financial and stock-market excess, senior managers
of a good many large, old-style companies focused on short-term
financial profitability rather than on the evolutionary development of
their business activity, markets, social context, or even the health of
the company. managers’ attention and discussions with employees focused
on business plans and quarterly results rather than threats and
opportunities on a three year horizon. Those who were concerned about
the future of the business, the markets, work processes, trends, or the
planet were replaced by financial minds. <strong>No one encouraged the
emergence of new forms of management that could adapt to the changing
character of the men and women working for the company</strong>. For
instance, the car industry produced “fashion-conscious” cars rather than
automobiles that would contribute to making life easier for people.
Managers talked about ecology, making politically correct noises to get
good press and keep the company image bright, instead of seriously
trying to find development strategies that would provide answers to
ecological threats while still assuring sustainable futures for their
companies.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p style="text-align:justify">Many firms chased profits unmercifully,
reducing costs, tightening screws, and cutting quality by automating, in
a desperate search for efficiency. As highly paid consultants
reengineered their organizations, a <a title="Taylorism" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management" target="_blank">Taylorist management culture</a> of hierarchies, centralization, technocratic domi- nation, internal competition, and bureaucracy reemerged.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Parallel to these developments,
modern society was extending its influence into businesses of all sorts,
its networks quietly reaching into the gaps and interstices of
management and organizational charts</strong>. Employees, especially the
younger ones, became more autonomous and anxious to create their own
version of a decent and enjoyable life, while customer and citizen
dissatisfaction grew and the health of the planet continued to
deteriorate. Within companies, unhappiness at work in- creased,
provoking protests and disputes. Active socioperceptives who became
aware of the negative effects of the dominant organizational model
reacted. Some became pragmatic agents for humanistic change, while
others took the path of blockage and protest. <strong>Both groups tended to organize into networks and exerted pressure on their companies</strong>.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Businesses that suppressed socioperception did so <span style="color:#ff0000">at great expense</span>.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Many companies:<br>
• failed to perceive or pursue development opportunities that could have
assured the company’s future and recovery from the crisis;</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">• did not make use of the emergent individual and collective potential of their workforces;</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">• experienced declining employee
relations, accompanied by loss of meaning, stress, disengagement,
development of protest networks, and diminished resilience;</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">• did not develop empathetic or
therapeutic relations with society, or provide care and assistance to
those in need; and experienced a diminished public image, which is the
“soft capital” of large, long-established companies.</p>
<div>
<div style="text-align:justify">
<p>In this context, depending on circumstances, any major company can find itself turned into a scapegoat.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline">Toward a Renewal of Anticipatory Socioperception</span></p>
<p>As outlined above, large companies today face the need to sharpen
their socioperception and anticipation capacities. The dominant winds
are pushing large, traditionally managed companies to adapt to the
evolution of society. At the same time, ordinary people continue to
deepen their sense of empathy and their socioperceptive skills. There’s
been no reversal to this trend in recent years; quite the contrary, the
new socio-economy of meaning and self-adjustment continues to gain
ground.</p>
<p>Since the beginning of the century, the backlash against a focus by
big companies on maximizing profits with little or no regard for their
employees has grown considerably, more so since the eco- nomic crisis.
Even before then, the intensity of this reaction led a number of
observers to anticipate a tipping point. The tacit contract between
companies and society has been extended and refined. <strong>Today, to be truly successful, a company must attend to the health and well-being of society</strong> <strong>and the ecological equilibrium of the planet.</strong></p>
<p>Resisting pressure from shareholders for short-terms results, a small
number of large, traditional companies have shifted to a culture of
anticipatory socioperception. They could become models for their peers.</p>
<p><strong>A growing number of company managers who had remained attached to <a title="Bureaucracy" href="http://mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy/section6.asp" target="_blank">authoritarian, rationalist, and bureaucratic mental models</a> are now questioning the relevance of this mindset in today’s world.</strong>
The loss of vitality and resilience caused by employee unhappiness and
stress, the development of promising opportunities for a
decarbonized economy, and consumers’ hidden desires and expectations
have now become subjects of strategic reflection for managers. <strong>Many
managers have become sensitive to the presence of change agents within
their companies, as well as agents of blockage and protest.</strong> The
action research for “Ten Years of Organizational Learning” has shown
that they see the usefulness of the former and are inclined to support
them. An idea worth considering is that if a company becomes more open,
blocking agents could become change agents; and if a company remains
closed off, the opposite could happen.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p style="text-align:justify">The oil, gas, and coal lobbies have
considerable influence. They have succeeded, notably in the united
States, in throwing doubt on the validity of forecasts of climate
change. however, stronger legislation in some areas to make polluters
pay is encouraging major oil and chemical producers to bet on
sustainable development.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">The future of hyper-financial capitalism
is still uncertain. Depending on whether it recovers its full strength
or whether it will be tamed sufficiently to serve the economy, short-
term financial pressure on companies will increase or dwindle. But even
if financial forces remain strong, based on their recent experiences,
the ability of companies to resist will probably be greatly strengthened
compared to the years between 1990 and 2000.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Taken together, these changes <strong>encourage me to anticipate the rapid evolution of large, traditional companies in response to social changes.</strong>
They will invent ways in which they can make use of the situation. The
ones that cling desperately to outdated management styles, organization,
and orientation will be negatively affected by the course of events,
unless enough of them persist to tip parts of our society into serious
disorder.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><strong>If they want to facilitate their adaptation, they must become socioperceptive.</strong>To that end, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic forum, published an influential article in <a title="Le monde" href="http://www.lemonde.fr/" target="_blank">Le Monde</a> on January 5, 2010, entitled “It is time for CEOs to change from profit-driven logic to public-welfare logic.”</p>
<div>
<div style="text-align:justify">
<p>Turning the spotlights of socioperception on the company ecosystem and its changes. <strong>The company’s objective is to feel at ease within its ecosystem and to make the best use of it while also maintaining it.</strong></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;color:#333399">Six sectors seem to me to require particular attention </span>(many companies neglect several of them).</p>
<p>1. <strong><span style="color:#800000">The living company and its teams</span></strong>. <strong>Leaders
must be aware of their company as a collection of human beings, a
grouping with its own health, vitality, efficiency, and resilience</strong>. They also need to understand:</p>
<ul><li>which systems in the company produce unhappiness;</li><li>what positive and negative possibilities for change exist;</li><li>what sort of involvement, creativity, and potential have been left unused and what are the opportunities for making use of them;</li>
<li>what organization and power structures will be in synergy with the society of people and be able to take root in the firm; and</li><li>what practices develop a collegial atmosphereToday, <span style="text-decoration:underline">five paths to achievement</span> seem to attract particular attention:</li>
</ul>
<ol><li>free up self-organization, reduce rationalized organization by experts, combine self-organization with top-down organization.</li><li>Take into account individuals and categories of individuals, and show respect for people.</li>
<li>Consider mini-communities and social systems, to reinforce the organic functioning of the company.</li><li>give support to and wisely position empathetic and socioperceptive leaders.</li><li>make use of crises to strengthen cohesion and team spirit.</li>
</ol>
<p>2. <strong><span style="color:#800000">Consumers</span></strong>.
Companies often base their strate- gies on superficial views of their
customers. They must become aware of their clients’
unsatisfied fundamental needs, frustrated self-development, or deficits
left by our business activities. This aware- ness could lead to new
products, services, or sys- tems that are not fashion- or trend-based,
and that could enable people to develop the sort of lives that suit
them. These activities, in turn, would feed the sustainable development
of the company.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p style="text-align:justify">What are the social systems that lead
consumers to choose or reject this or that product, or such and such a
brand? Which ones lead doctors to prescribe or ignore a new medicine?
What new pool of potential consumption could open up in the relatively
near future in sectors or regions from which we are absent? We need to
understand which new products or services could contribute to supporting
this or that underlying movement in society’s foundations.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">3. <strong><span style="color:#800000">People and society</span></strong>.
Contributing to easing suffering and curing society’s pathologies is
becoming one of the duties of business (as it is of public authorities
and associations). Companies need to find the sources of distress or
ineffective processes that are currently or potentially connected to our
activities. Understanding their origins and devising interventions or
innovations could reduce these challenges.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">4. <strong><span style="color:#800000">The environment</span></strong>.
The transition to a decarbonized economy and the development of links
with nature and natural processes could increase the prosperity of many
companies and lead to the creation of many jobs. Leaders must sense how
their companies can contribute to restoring and maintaining a
sustainable equilibrium in the planet’s ecosystem, and at the same time
develop innovations to assure the vitality of their organizations.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">5. <strong><span style="color:#800000">The evolving world. </span></strong>Among
the plausible future scenarios of the world, on a horizon of 10 to 20
years, leaders need to identify those that would make a real difference
for the company and understand how to adapt major strategies to meet and
handle uncertainty. By doing so, they will gain an understanding of
which of society’s major un- derlying trends could interfere with the
company’s development and devise a course of action to deal with them.</p>
<div>
<div style="text-align:justify">
<p>6. <strong><span style="color:#800000">The financial system.</span></strong>
Leaders need to survey the evolution of the financial system,
understand the ways in which their company could become dependent on it,
and anticipate the steps neces- sary to escape these pressures.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p style="text-align:justify"><strong><span style="text-decoration:underline"><span style="color:#333399;text-decoration:underline">Insights into the practice of socioperception</span></span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Socioperception is based on a
natural ability of the human brain to locate significant variables and
determine the path to follow or the appropriate action to take when
confronted by extremely complex life situations.</strong> This skill is
imprecise; it involves trial and error and is influenced by
circumstances. It is unequally distributed among individuals.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">A person can cultivate it, allow it to wilt, or even repress it.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span style="text-decoration:underline">This skill implies, as Antonio Damasio has shown, an intimate collaboration between emotion and reason</span>.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><em>Be careful not to overuse reason</em>; when we try to make a detailed, rational analysis of a living system, we often end up creating extremel<a href="http://transversalys.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Sociocratie.pdf">Sociocratie</a>y complex interaction diagrams and “hot air factories,” and can lose sight of the target of our action. <strong><span style="color:#333399">We must constantly seek equilibrium between emotion and reason, empathy and rationalization</span></strong>.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">We awaken socioperception through the
circumstance of daily life, by sensing and perhaps sharing other’s grief
or joy. We feel how our interactions with others are going, and we
foresee how to intervene. We repeat the experience, tell ourselves
stories, create an ad hoc theory of the mind, and observe another
interaction. As we repeat the experience, we are enriched, fed by a
free-floating but persistent attention to events and changes. We make
errors of anticipation and correct them. We take a more or less distant
view of these ex- periences. We test generalizations, noticing that some
people react one way, some another. We eventually arrive at theories
about society, locate evolutionary trends, and sketch out scenarios.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">But <strong>skilled socioperceptives
tend not to remain at the generalization stage. To sharpen their skill,
they focus their empathetic attention on the lived experiences of real
people in their environment, on the micro social systems that are the
bricks of larger systems.</strong> They thus spontaneously repeat the approach followed by <a title="Kurt Lewin" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Lewin" target="_blank">Kurt Lewin</a>
when he developed the field research and techniques of in-depth
interviewing, which amplify the capacity for empathy and socioperception
on the part of the researcher. We have met several socioperceptives who
have greatly benefited from their participation in Rogerian empathy
training sessions. They also think that it is enriching and productive
to exercise socioperception within work groups to encourage the
proliferation of these skills. A sort of “social biology” develops that
examines society not as a thing or a collection of objects, but as a
living entity.</p>
<div>
<div style="text-align:justify">
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline"><strong><span style="color:#333399;text-decoration:underline">Toward a culture of socioperception</span></strong></span></p>
<p>In the 19th and the early 20th centuries, socioperception was suppressed by the dominant rationalist culture. <strong>Today, the dominant mental models in many companies still hold it in check</strong>.
The apparent rationality of the authorized version of truth within a
company may easily sweep aside the more intuitive truth represented by
sociopercep- tion. In many management committees, causal analyses and
their accompanying facts and figures carry more weight than strategic
visions that are perhaps pertinent but have not yet been clothed in
rational trappings. <strong>Numerous middle and senior managers who
exercise socioperceptive skills in their personal and family lives do
not do so in their work, because the business culture, work habits,
mental models, job definitions, and evaluation systems dissuade them
from doing so</strong> .</p>
<p>The action research conducted for “<a title="Learning Organisation - Peter Senge " href="http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/24/senge.html" target="_blank">Ten Years of Organizational Learning</a>”
has shown that, in response to this trend, ground-level reactions and
management decisions to correct the situation occur. At the grassroots,
change agents build networks of like-minded individuals, strengthening
their capacity for resistance and their resilience. Some managers break
with the old model by introducing socioperception in certain sectors or
departments and then seeking to extend the experience to other areas of
the company. Others profit from the radically changed conditions of a
crisis situation to encourage a shift. Yet others rely on internal or
external change agents to implement a complex strategy of
self-transformation over an extended period.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p style="text-align:justify">Some businesses have a living culture of
socioperception and anticipation. Their organization is more organic
than rational. They seek to understand and where possible exploit the
processes likely to facilitate or hamper their development and
fulfillment. Senior managers’ activities focus on reinforcing both the
vitality of the company and its ability to rapidly respond to the
circumstances whose dynamics they are trying to control. Socioperception
and anticipation are subjects for recurring dialogue and evaluation;
groups talk about them first, then try to make them work at different
levels within the company. <strong><span style="color:#333399">All personnel are brought into the efforts to anticipate the company’s future.</span> <span style="color:#333399">They experience a collective pleasure in accurately analyzing and anticipating, and in sharing their understanding of errors.</span></strong>
In areas that the company considers to be strategic, it establishes
systems of surveillance and investigation. Socioperceptive senior and
middle managers are numerous and highly valued. The company organizes
structures for collective socioperception (permanent or ad hoc).</p>
<div style="text-align:justify">
<p>In certain companies, many managers and personnel have a <a title="Approche systémique " href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approche_syst%C3%A9mique" target="_blank">systemic vision</a>
of things. They have learned that anticipation is always uncertain and
that accurately forecasting the future is impossible. Instead, they
grope their way forward by approximative actions, characteristic of the
logic of living things. They respect error as a source of experience and
learning. <strong><span style="color:#333399">Rather than folding in
on themselves, these businesses are socioperceptive agents of change
linked to a variety of external networks</span></strong>. »</p>
<p>January 2010</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline">Alain de Vulpian</span> is a socio-anthropologist and the founder of <a title="Sociovision" href="http://www.sociovision.com/index.php" target="_blank">Cofremca</a>, RISC, and <a title="Sociovision" href="http://www.sociovision.com/index.php" target="_blank">Sociovision</a>.
He has dedicated his professional life to conducting action research,
observing the evolution of western societies, and designing humane
interventions. His book <em><a title="Book Towards the Third modernity" href="http://www.amazon.com/Towards-The-Third-Modernity-transforming/dp/0955008190" target="_blank">Towards the Third Modernity: How Ordinary People Are Transforming the World</a></em>, Triarchy Press, 2008, evokes this work.</p>
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