Mankind as a whole seems to fall into two large groups - the progressive and the retarded. The progressive ones are those who have deprived Nature in particular of any mythology and instrumentalized it as a means to their grand aims. We are replete with food, fridges buzz day and night, cars are waiting in traffic jams. The fact that the psychiatric profession (clearly indicating the raging senselessness) is thriving seems to be a minor evil when compared to a march to the next source lasting for days.
The Occident, rational as it is, plans. Nothing is left to accident. It pursues a strategy. A strategy is the projection of a future state onto the present decision making. In doing so the projection generates a feedback element: the decision will effect the imagined future. So it depends on the quality the decision has how the future will turn out.
This might not be too impressive yet; after all it is possible to act from the guts and to declare the action a masterly performance in strategy, a conscious choice between alternative decisions later upon inquiries keeping at it. How that works can be watched at any press conference after a First Division match. High-grade strategy can only characterize an action which is based on complex, ramifying decision making. In that case strategy is the path leading to a decision as an output by gathering as much information as possible.
The Occident, rational as it is, plans. Nothing is left to accident. It pursues a strategy. A strategy is the projection of a future state onto the present decision making. In doing so the projection generates a feedback element: the decision will effect the imagined future. So it depends on the quality the decision has how the future will turn out.
This might not be too impressive yet; after all it is possible to act from the guts and to declare the action a masterly performance in strategy, a conscious choice between alternative decisions later upon inquiries keeping at it. How that works can be watched at any press conference after a First Division match. High-grade strategy can only characterize an action which is based on complex, ramifying decision making. In that case strategy is the path leading to a decision as an output by gathering as much information as possible.
For the sake of illustration all we have to do is imagine two different kinds of giving reason for action. In case 1 the person asked what made him decide to perform an action: No idea. Somehow I was in the mood for it. My astrologer agreed. In case 2 the person answers: Take a look at my information input. (nonchalantly pointing to a very long filing cabinet). Case 1 leaves us the choice to classifiy (dependent on temper) the actor either as an intelligent genius (on condition it has worked) or as a muddlehead, case 2 compels us to regard him a rational strategist.
The military origins of the term strategy play moreover appeals to the latently martial cravings all those (project) managers have whose authority to issue directions as it were builds the small general's hillock upon which the coolly calculating thinker's head has an elevated look into future. And it is typical we keep wanting to optimize things for rationalization's sake; a strategy can always be improved.
And here lies the problem; if a strategy is meant to be improved, if the decision making is intended to be as ramified as posiible, it must become its own topic, an end in itself. By that it will like it or not become the focus of attention, when its original intention is to establish an outlook for a difference between unsatisfactory present and promising future. That is why the need for information becomes insatiable. Today's strategists are information junkies. The more they have, the less they will have to deal with the unsettling paradoxy any strategy implies: forming the unformable material future. For strategically comparing present to future will fix it. But that act of fixing is an unconscious, uncontrolled intervention in the present. By fixing the present strategy changes it. This change may be minimal, even without strategically defined consequence, but this will have no impact on the fact a small amount of uncertainty will remain - and the more elaborate the strategy, the more tightly it couples the imagined elements, the more destructive it might turn out. After all, the vernacular saying knows it is the details that are vicious. The most elaborate strategies can solve every problem - except that one of their own existence.
Of course strategies are related to their einvironment. By optimizing them, we will sever them from that, since the environment is in a constant flow and will not do the strategy the favour of waiting till it is conceived. Children photographers know what the author is talking about. And a detached, closed strategy is basically crossing your fingers, file cabinets or endless internet research or no.
Business strategists have paid lip service to flexibility long since. Strategies must be loosened up if we want to avoid jumping to the opposite extreme and praying to the force of nature. But they have to face the insolvable dilemma which demands the most rigid system, the organization to be flexible. That system, which above all intends to bring time to heel will be bound to surrender to the favour of th emoment: opportunity.
An opportunity is an irritatingly fickle thing. It works along the medium of maybe - maybe not. But there is no serious planning that way. Ancient Greek mythology was so impressed with the moment's incalculability that it assigned its own official in charge of it, the god Kairos. Contrarily to Chronos, who guarantees the constant flow of time, Kairos, the right time, is a truly spectacular persona; his forehead is graced by a curl he can be seized at; in return, the back of his head is bald, offering no sure grip. So no matter what one intends, everything depends on grabbing his hair. In short: The most elaborate and sophisticated plan will fail if Kairos turns his head.
This -admittedly a little irrational - image can be explicated grammatically, too; strategies always express a direction coupled with a conditional: IF situation X THEN do Y. So strategies will fail if IF is not the case. And it is particularly bitter or tragicomic when IF will be denied just because the corresponding action has already been signalled. This means any strategy demands another which precedes it in terms of the future projection which defines the conditional scope of possibility which makes it strategically relevant in the first place. And so on. In other words: We plan what we will plan as soon as we have grabbed Kairos's curl. Which presupposes we plan how to grab his curl. Which presupposes we get to see him in the first place. And at the latest here we cannot plan anymore. This is a matter of inspiration - something completely unknown to organizations. That is why it has to conceive inspiration (as a way of abandoning a strategy) as a strategy itself. And the more elaborate, the harder it is to dispense with it. Apparently the only way to do so without a bad conscience will be to shut down the organization - because its cozy routine did not realize the sign of the time.
Constant strategy optimization is more useful than successful, though; anyway it absorbs time, and at least for a while it is worse to be bored than to fail.
The military origins of the term strategy play moreover appeals to the latently martial cravings all those (project) managers have whose authority to issue directions as it were builds the small general's hillock upon which the coolly calculating thinker's head has an elevated look into future. And it is typical we keep wanting to optimize things for rationalization's sake; a strategy can always be improved.
And here lies the problem; if a strategy is meant to be improved, if the decision making is intended to be as ramified as posiible, it must become its own topic, an end in itself. By that it will like it or not become the focus of attention, when its original intention is to establish an outlook for a difference between unsatisfactory present and promising future. That is why the need for information becomes insatiable. Today's strategists are information junkies. The more they have, the less they will have to deal with the unsettling paradoxy any strategy implies: forming the unformable material future. For strategically comparing present to future will fix it. But that act of fixing is an unconscious, uncontrolled intervention in the present. By fixing the present strategy changes it. This change may be minimal, even without strategically defined consequence, but this will have no impact on the fact a small amount of uncertainty will remain - and the more elaborate the strategy, the more tightly it couples the imagined elements, the more destructive it might turn out. After all, the vernacular saying knows it is the details that are vicious. The most elaborate strategies can solve every problem - except that one of their own existence.
Of course strategies are related to their einvironment. By optimizing them, we will sever them from that, since the environment is in a constant flow and will not do the strategy the favour of waiting till it is conceived. Children photographers know what the author is talking about. And a detached, closed strategy is basically crossing your fingers, file cabinets or endless internet research or no.
Business strategists have paid lip service to flexibility long since. Strategies must be loosened up if we want to avoid jumping to the opposite extreme and praying to the force of nature. But they have to face the insolvable dilemma which demands the most rigid system, the organization to be flexible. That system, which above all intends to bring time to heel will be bound to surrender to the favour of th emoment: opportunity.
An opportunity is an irritatingly fickle thing. It works along the medium of maybe - maybe not. But there is no serious planning that way. Ancient Greek mythology was so impressed with the moment's incalculability that it assigned its own official in charge of it, the god Kairos. Contrarily to Chronos, who guarantees the constant flow of time, Kairos, the right time, is a truly spectacular persona; his forehead is graced by a curl he can be seized at; in return, the back of his head is bald, offering no sure grip. So no matter what one intends, everything depends on grabbing his hair. In short: The most elaborate and sophisticated plan will fail if Kairos turns his head.
This -admittedly a little irrational - image can be explicated grammatically, too; strategies always express a direction coupled with a conditional: IF situation X THEN do Y. So strategies will fail if IF is not the case. And it is particularly bitter or tragicomic when IF will be denied just because the corresponding action has already been signalled. This means any strategy demands another which precedes it in terms of the future projection which defines the conditional scope of possibility which makes it strategically relevant in the first place. And so on. In other words: We plan what we will plan as soon as we have grabbed Kairos's curl. Which presupposes we plan how to grab his curl. Which presupposes we get to see him in the first place. And at the latest here we cannot plan anymore. This is a matter of inspiration - something completely unknown to organizations. That is why it has to conceive inspiration (as a way of abandoning a strategy) as a strategy itself. And the more elaborate, the harder it is to dispense with it. Apparently the only way to do so without a bad conscience will be to shut down the organization - because its cozy routine did not realize the sign of the time.
Constant strategy optimization is more useful than successful, though; anyway it absorbs time, and at least for a while it is worse to be bored than to fail.
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