“Le Danse” – Henri Matisse, 1910
Better Together is a series of e-books aimed at entrepreneurs and managers in private, public and charitable organisations to help them to lead their people and themselves in the 21st Century.
The series will comprise:
1. Engaging Stakeholders
2. Growing Great Teams
3. Creating Communities
3. Practical Complexity
4. Learning to be Authentic
5. Who Are You? (and what are you for?)
6. Being The Way.
7. Sinatra Leadership – “Do-be-do-be-do….”
“Better Together” is also the mission and vision of Humap, a very curious Finnish consultancy that helps people and organisations work and achieve more and better together.
I am part of Humap in the United Kingdom.
Each century provides new challenges to societies. Most people agree that the last century experienced the most change of any time in recorded history. Many disagree whether, globally, it has been change for the better or for the worse. Technology and power connected more of the world more quickly and more directly than ever before, leading to a globe whose dynamic complexity became increasingly obvious and immediate. They also made the world more dependent, consumed increasingly scarce resources and harmed many parts of it.
It is a defining characteristic of dynamic complexity that it is not possible to make accurate predictions about any future state from any existing or past state, but you can make general forecasts with some confidence. Such forecasts may not help decide particular courses of action. They may help you to evolve broad strategies and prepare you for wider volatility than misplaced confidence in predictions will.
The 20th and 21st centuries together may mark a transition to new levels of joy and opportunity, or they may be the stage for the ultimate tragedy of the human race. It is not possible to say yet. It is a feature of tragedy that it begins with desire and hope, continues through a honeymoon, dream stage of apparent success and triumphal union before suddenly and irrevocably ending in utter disintegration and desolation. The early 20th century began with feelings of hope and desire and the 1950s to the 1970s gave many people great –misplaced – hope that science and technology would solve all man’s problems. The 80s onwards saw increasing human division and separation at the same time as increasing global technological connection. So we now see great and increasing divides between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the obese and the starving, different religions and schisms within religions claiming to worship the same gods.
The 20th Century showed many ways in which western society especially lost its way and began to disintegrate. It may be that the problems we have caused in the last century will destroy the world in the 21st, but as Terence said 2300 years ago, “While there is life, there is hope”, so we keep seeking better ways to be, to achieve our dreams.
The essence of this series of books is that we are better together, we do better together, we achieve more together, we are happier together, we are healthier together, we live longer together.
These are strong statements that most would agree with, but what does “Better Together” mean? And if most people would agree we are better togther, why do so many people instead choose to exclude others, to value individual performance over team performance, to separate and privilege themselves. Why, as Robert Putnam asked, do we seem to prefer to bowl alone ?
At Humap, we believe that people are better together because we are social beings. Many pressures in the last hundred years have depressed that humanity and our greatest chance in the 21st Century is to restore and revive our human nature by working, being and doing things together.