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My perspective of Tom Petzinger's The New Pioneers,
—————————-March,
1999, SIMON & SCHUSTER 1st edition, 261 text, 302 total pages.
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30Mar1999
Doug Renselle
Acronyms:
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CR |
— Cultural Relativism |
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FUD |
— Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (ultimate Micro$lopt 'tool') |
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MBO |
— Management by Objective |
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MoQ |
— Metaphysics of Quality |
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SOM |
— Subject-Object Metaphysics |
About five weeks ago, I received an urgent message from a good friend of mine who works for a classical, mature, old-line, stagnant Fortune 200 company with a purely cathedral MBO structure. He said, "Hey Doug, 'Have you read Petzinger's Front Lines article in 26Feb99 WSJ?'" I said, "No, why?" My friend explained that Petzinger wrote an article about his new book, The New Pioneers. The article described some of the book's material. My friend continued to explain that Petzinger wrote words akin Pirsig's MoQ. My friend said Petzinger describes a new ontology he and I pondered at length over many years: Pirsig's new philosophy, the Metaphysics of Quality.
I thought, "Wow, I have to check this out."
I did, and this review is the result.
Our Review:
Having just read The New Pioneers, now I know that Petzinger, without explicitly saying so, describes MoQ being applied now at the end of Millennium II.
If you desire enlightenment about an imminent massive tsunami of workplace changes and evolution toward the virtual workplace, this is a book for you.
The ramifications of Petzinger's disclosures are enormous. They say our Western workforce intuits a Pirsigean ontology for the workplace! They are saying, "Dump the classical cathedral, dump classical Aristotelian/Newtonian models for organization!"
Prior to Petzinger's well-documented case histories, I assumed we would have to teach a new ontology first in order to commence the epochal emergence into Millennium III. But no, as Pirsig said all along, it is just intuitive. If someone is using FUD on you, they are wrong. If you leave work unhappy everyday, you probably are working in a classical workplace. Petzinger's book lists countless emergence phrases which neutralize many ills of Aristotelian/Newtonian organization and its workplace. We will show you just a few here.
So it should be clear to you reader that our choice of a subtitle for The New Pioneers might be, 'Pragmatics of Pirsigean MoQ.'
Anyone who works in a classical business organization, now in the last year of Millennium II could use, and probably actually needs Petzinger's input.
On our Quantonics site we describe voluminously a new epochal shift imminent for Millennium III, and Petzinger shows us it is already commencing.
Petzinger captures a multitude of iconoclastic case histories which shatter the classical management cathedral. The case histories list countless examples of workers dumping the old Aristotelian/Newtonian truth over value legacy in favor of the new Pirsigean value over truth ontology.
Those who intuit value over truth vis-à-vis truth over value, and also intuit apropos corresponding behaviors will experience an easier ride on The New Pioneers' tsunami of change through Millennium III's first decade. All of us, who want to pioneer epochal changes demanded by Millennium III, need new intuition to adapt, alter, and even dispose most classical doctrine currently in place.
Watch for Petzinger's, et al.'s emergence phrases like, "Fewer rules," "Cells replace assembly lines," "Commingle (quantum commingle, i.e. become one with) your tools," "Don't study business, study people," "Dump MBO," "Morality/ethics unequals truth," and "Business is moral, never amoral."
And here, reader, you see a glimmer of an approach we want to take in this review. The New Pioneers as a text, is mostly a sequence of case histories. You may choose to read those carefully at your leisure, but we want to just corner the essence, extract the phrases emerging from the mouths of The New Pioneers. Below you will find a list of our favorite phrases, ones which find harmony here in Quantonics. Appended to some phrases we add our own comments as apropos. If you just want a quick taste of The New Pioneers, scan the phrases.
Many of you probably have read Maslow. There is a lot of Maslow in The New Pioneers. Too, Tom avers other writers, philosophers, and business critics unfamiliar to us, like Mary Parker Follett, who have been preaching and cajoling the essence of an MoQ-like ontology both before and since Pirsig.
Bottom Lines :)
To a SOM (Aristotelian/Newtonian, classical, cathedral organization) mind, this book will appear as one huge paradox. It enunciates verbosely countless case histories which demonstrate implicate Value in nature's own Quantum Reality: individual autonomy with global cohesion. To a SOM mind this is paradice! To a SOM mind it is unreasonable!
Mostly, The New Pioneers is whole (only detected a single typo on page 188, 1st para.), however, Tom unfortunately refers both Senge (The Fifth Discipline) and Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People). Senge's loops are essentially rational, cause-and-effect classical processes (platypi), and Covey castes principles (truth) above values which centers him deep in SOMland legacy. Also, Tom appears to emphasize humanism as he conveys his cases. In Quantonics we know humanism/anthropo/centrism/Earth-chauvinism are just other contrived SOM ISMs. So reader, you still have to read with care, and hopefully continue your visits to Pirsig's MoQ and our Quantonics web site to look for better potential alternatives.
Finally, before we disclose our preferred list of emergence phrases, we want to comment on Petzinger's use of a quanton symbol. To our delight, he uses a quanton symbol on his title page, beginning each chapter, and as a separator between chapter sections. It is a wave tunneling what appears a Casimir plenum. It is a symmetric quanton. It shows both complementarity and openness. It shows both change and interpenetration. When your reviewer saw it, he knew this was going to be a book about MoQ!
Here is our tabularized list of emergence phrases from The New Pioneers. Some are verbatim quotes, but many are paraphrased to enhance their MoQ memes.
Emergence Phrases from Tom Petzinger's The New Pioneers:
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| Reality/work is relationships and interactions | We call these, "Quantonic/MoQ complementary interrelationships." |
| Quanton(cooperation,competition)=Coopetition | Aside: What are your business quantons? Better, what are your largest quantons of opportunity? |
| Intermediaries will not be driven out | Instead of this blanket statement Tom needs to consider classes of intermediaries, e.g., negentropy, zeroentropy, posentropy. Most of the old intermediaries, e.g., bookstores, newspaper delivery, sales agents, etc., in their classical, inefficient forms must be driven out. |
| "Digital technology is infinitely scalable" | In our opinion, Tom misses the point that digital technology is intrinsically Newtonian. It too will be replaced by quantum technology which is certainly not digital, yet it is infinitely scalable where digital technology is inherently NOT. |
| There are no rules |
We suggest comparison of SOM, Cultural Relativism, and Pirsigean Metaphysics of Quality:
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| Form, create change, then disband | Tom describes team problem-solving behavior — vis-à-vis — SOM's: form, create stasis, then remain. The SOM team develops systemic rationale to maintain its own existence. The New Pioneer team disbands after it solves a problem. We call it the right way to run teams: organizational apoptosis. Very quantum-biological. |
| Synchrony nurtures [static] economy | And we would add: asynchrony nurtures dynamic harmony — we need both quanton(synchrony,asynchrony) and quanton(economy,harmony). |
| Focus on doing simple things | |
| Insist on brain work | |
| The search for answers is self-organizing | |
| Be free to search for answers | |
| Grow your brain | |
| Self organization costs less and is more efficient | |
| Force self-reliance and drive out fear | |
| Both listen and act on ideas | |
| Adopt spontaneous local control, not central control | |
| Freedom is harmony with nature | |
| Corporations are totalitarian regimes | |
| Humility acknowledges what we do not know | |
| The [SOM] illusion of [absolute] knowledge is the greatest obstacle to discovery | SOM declares anything it has not observed, "nonexistent." Until the 19th century, when they were discovered, platypuses did not 'exist.' The first platypus captured and observed by scientists was declared, "...a contrived, absurd chimera." |
| Complete candor preempts corruption/politics | In Quantonics we see politics and corruption as a complementary interrelationship. |
| Choose emergence | |
| Quality is freedom to change | |
| Creativity is poised on paradox | Only because current Western culture is SOMitic. |
| SOM: drive ambiguity out of organization | Clearly, the purpose of The New Pioneers is to drive SOM out of the organization. |
| MoQ: accept ambiguity as an agent of change | Simultaneously adopt MoQ as a new ontology for the organization. |
| Forget prediction and control | Why? SOM is analytic. Reality is not analytic. |
| Dynamic systems poise twixt order and disorder | |
| Stay near the edge of chaos where neither freedom nor control reigns | |
| Adopt communications which adapt twixt too much and none; | dense communications -> lock the system up, sparse communications -> random behavior. This is similar to the rule on rules: choose few, not none or many. |
| Fuse design and manufacturing | This is a SOM paradox! Petzinger shows us it is lowest cost most economic approach we know today. |
| Use only portable/movable manufacturing equipment | Another example of a simple rule: avoid rigidity. Adopt change! Flux is crux! |
| If it's rigid, be nervous | |
| Limit procedures to one page | Or less! |
| Use rules against rules | More SOM paradox. |
| Individually autonomous immediate write-around of any rules which deter quality | Allow the workers to change documented rules autonomously. (Imagine classical managements' reaction to this! J) |
| Love customers and value, not structure |
Stay out of the cathedral and jump into the bazaar. In our Loyola Presentation over a year ago, Doug said in his discussion on MoQ's concept of Value over truth (structure),
In his book, The New Pioneers, Petzinger mentions ATT and one of their x-nerds, David S. Isenberg, Ph.D., who left ATT to start his own organization called "isen.com." David explains in his paper, The Dawn of the Stupid Network," why value over truth is the new paradigm for Millennium III. Here is clear evidence that SOM's truth over value paradigm is experiencing displacement now, and will be subsumed in MoQ's value over truth pradigm during early decades of Millennium III. |
| Schedule selves | Individual autonomy with global cohesion = quantum reality. |
| Nothing is impossible | What we have not yet observed (the unknown) exists in vastly greater amounts than that which we observe exists (the known). |
| Approval free action | Individuals have the autonomy to, "Just do it." |
| Self-organization requires continual re-organization | Now let me see...where is that org chart? |
| Experiment, play unsupervised, continuously | |
| Lead the flock where the flock want to go | |
| Group guides leader guides group and both are co-within the other | One of the most difficult MoQ/Quantum concepts. This requires intuition of the quantum epiphany. |
| Create an environment of participants | |
| Let the participants co-evolve | |
| Meaning flu, not meaningful | Memes are a meaning-flu contagion. Get the meaningflu! |
| Make your strange attractor - Value | MoQ's foundational axiom! |
| Give everyone access to all information | We see this edict in all biological forms on Earth. Compound that with implicate quantum communications. |
| Dump your linear mindset | The idea of this is shear nausea to SOM. |
| Compensation models are worthless | Read the example in the book...simply amazing. |
| Individual happiness is achieving what YOU think is important | Well, at least Comrade Clinton sticks to this! |
| Productivity increases when individuals are permitted to finish their work product | Work cells rather than assembly lines. Incremental product design and assembly as concurrent economizers. |
| Individual virtual workers run their own little businesses | We are all entrepreneurs now. Next, all virtual entrepreneurs! |
| Commingle your tools | Become quantum-unified with your tools. |
| Tools shape the quality of culture | |
| Point your phone lines in the Quality direction | Pull, don't push! |
| Bonuses destroy individual creative spirit | Arggghhhh! |
| Work at your virtual home | Got it, dude! |
| Don't study business, study people | Ouch! |
| Keep your best people, even when they move. | They can work well remotely. (Future is virtual.) |
| Ethics unequals truth | Vis. quanton(dialectic,truth) vis-à-vis quanton(rhetoric,ethics). |
| Increase your scope of awareness | Become your quantum being. Become your quantum self. |
| Widen your vision and change | Your context of contexts can never be too big. |
| Became a quantum agent of change, emulate nature | Amen. |
| Recognize the interconnectedness of everything | Dit, dit, dit, ditto. |
| Deliver and recycle: incrementally! | Be responsible for your work product at the end of its life-cycle. |
| Environmentally friendly equals low bid | |
| Efficiency outcompetes inefficiency hands down | This otta get the classical organization person's attention. |
| Business is moral; never amoral | Indeed, business is the evolution of life. |
That's the end of our selected emergence phrases from Tom Petzinger's The New Pioneers. They grabbed our attention. We hope they grab yours!
Petzinger, a new pioneer himself, in my opinion, chronicles a tsunami emergence, an epochal shift from the legacy SOM FUD to a new philosophical reality for Millennium III. Buy this awesome book and change your potential for a better future. Enjoy!
Mr. Petzinger, you have both our gratitude and admiration, Sir!
And thanks to my Fortune 200 buddy! Atoms up, dude!
Thanks for reading,
Doug.
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Doug Renselle
The Quantonics Society
USA
NOFLAMEqtx{at}earthlink{dot}netNOSPAM
Note 1: An intended pun on Tom's Front Lines.
Return
Note 2: Plural of paradox. Return
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