Jo Green: Women did not invent the Pyramid.
Tue 07 June 2011
, LEAP editorial office , LEAP
The LEAP New Leadership Event: The Values on June 6 is fast approaching. For those of you who don’t know our keynote speaker Josephine Green, an expert on social foresight and innovation and former Senior Director Trends and Strategy at Philips, here’s an introduction.
Josephine Green is a well known speaker who inspires audiences with her thoughts and insights on change and leadership in the 21st century. The essence of her pyramids to pancake story boils down to this: in the 20th century the world was organised in a pyramidal - top down, command and control - structure. However in the 21st century the world is increasingly complex and flat as a pancake. See Jo’s speech, http://www.vimeo.com/10056864, at our event in March 2010 for a longer explanation.
Jo's keynote speech ‘Beyond Hierarchy’ on June 6 will focus on the challenges emerging from the P2P model, especially that of complexity, highlighting new values, behaviours, societal and organizational paradigms needed to prosper and flourish in the future.
LEAP: How do we control chaos and complexity?
Josephine Green: “In the pyramid era the world was something we believed we could predict and control. But that’s changed. New science based on chaos and complexity, shows us that the world isn’t at all predictable. Consequently we are moving from a machine metaphor to a biological metaphor. An example is Nature. It has a few simple rules. From them emerge incredible complexities. Nature replicates continually and while it replicates it experiments and adapts. And that’s how complexities work. You cannot control them. And you shouldn’t want that either!”
LEAP: Are we ready for the pancake world?
JG: “Absolutely! People are very clever. They’re inventive and enterprising and experimental and they know how to give meaning to their lives.”
LEAP: Do they really?
JG: “Not if you give them a context of dependency and hierarchy. If you do that they’ll abdicate responsibility to the hierarchy. Here’s an example that will explain it right away. Women! They come out of the universities with PhDs and more degrees. But as soon as they get into the corporate arena it’s as if they become dumb. Women don’t get to the top so they must be stupid, right? We all know that’s not true.”
LEAP: So why aren’t women climbing to the top?
JG: “Because the context is not suited to them.”
LEAP: Then why don’t they change the context? They’re smart enough.
JG: “The pyramid context is incredibly subtle in its ability to conform and control. It’s mechanisms are subtle and it’s rules and behavior are too often hidden and very much developed in the image of man. Women did not invent the Pyramid which is why I believe that women, and the new generation of digital natives, are ready for the pancake world.”.
LEAP: How do we control chaos and complexity?
Josephine Green: “In the pyramid era the world was something we believed we could predict and control. But that’s changed. New science based on chaos and complexity, shows us that the world isn’t at all predictable. Consequently we are moving from a machine metaphor to a biological metaphor. An example is Nature. It has a few simple rules. From them emerge incredible complexities. Nature replicates continually and while it replicates it experiments and adapts. And that’s how complexities work. You cannot control them. And you shouldn’t want that either!”
LEAP: Are we ready for the pancake world?
JG: “Absolutely! People are very clever. They’re inventive and enterprising and experimental and they know how to give meaning to their lives.”
LEAP: Do they really?
JG: “Not if you give them a context of dependency and hierarchy. If you do that they’ll abdicate responsibility to the hierarchy. Here’s an example that will explain it right away. Women! They come out of the universities with PhDs and more degrees. But as soon as they get into the corporate arena it’s as if they become dumb. Women don’t get to the top so they must be stupid, right? We all know that’s not true.”
LEAP: So why aren’t women climbing to the top?
JG: “Because the context is not suited to them.”
LEAP: Then why don’t they change the context? They’re smart enough.
JG: “The pyramid context is incredibly subtle in its ability to conform and control. It’s mechanisms are subtle and it’s rules and behavior are too often hidden and very much developed in the image of man. Women did not invent the Pyramid which is why I believe that women, and the new generation of digital natives, are ready for the pancake world.”
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