Our challenges

We are currently in the midst of another shift equal in magnitude to the one created by the printing press. Today's new technology not only makes individual interpretation possible but it calls for -- even demands -- such interpretation. Technology lends itself to interaction in such a way that individual communities can -- and will be called to -- develop their own interpretations and share them with others. Everything spawned by the printing press had a common referent which required that we start with the authorised and interpret from there. Today's technology, however, supports the creation of multiple interpretations and the sharing of those interpretations publicly. We are invited to create social expressions that need not pay homage to formal structure, authority, or even authors. The very nature of the technology itself invites us.

The linearity of text is vanishing. And with it the authority of authorship. When someone authors an idea, what shape it will take at any point is beyond their jurisdiction. Control of meaning is rapidly disappearing and dialogue is being freed from constraints of time, place, and authority.

What is being presented to us is the possibility of becoming active creators of our own social realities. The awesome responsibility that goes with this is unavoidable because the structure of the future has been altered. The future that will now emerge will bring with it a pressing need for the managers and executives of tomorrow to understand and be proficient with language, dialogue, meaning, and interpretation. In the past, the unassailable structures of authority have screened us from some of the more authentic attributes of leadership and responsibility within our organizations.

To date nearly every attempt at corporate change has been led by those holding the reins of authority and their change efforts naturally include preservation of the fundamentals of the structure that maintains their authority. This way of doing things, which we inherit for our life as a human being, gives us very little freedom. Even though the technologies of groupware, hypertext, Internet and networked communication are introducing new possibilities for how we organise, if we are to participate effectively in any corporate change process we must have an understanding of language, meaning, and communication that is consistent with a world of complexity and intelligent entities.

We are being called to develop our capacities of interpretation and dialogue as never before. What is proving to be authentic leadership in today's world is the ability to provide structures of interpretation, meaning, and relationship which call forth those capacities in each and every person. What we are able to accomplish together without force is becoming of paramount importance.