By Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP, Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy

The Second Law of Thermodynamics [SLOT, also known as the law of entropy] is the general tendency of the universe to move from order and structure to lack of order and lack of structure. I believe the Second Law of Thermodynamics partially holds true in societal and business spheres as well. I believe that moments of equilibrium - what Henry Ford referred to as “saner and sweeter” times - are inevitably followed by moments of disequilibrium. H. James Dallas, the just retired Chief Operating Officer at Medtronics, labels such moments “wilderness moments -times when you don’t know what you should be doing but you definitely know that you need to be doing something else.” Wilderness moments are to be expected. Of concern to us here is that following each wilderness moment comes the leadership responsibility of recalibrating governance [i.e., setting in place the processes that ensure that institutions are doing the right things the right ways].

To Effectively Manage the Present, You Must Understand the Flow & Pace of History
David Christian divides the entirety of history [~13.7 billion years] into eight threshold moments.1 Modern historians working on a less grand scale believe that:

…every century or so, our republic had been remade by a new technology:
170 years ago it was the railroad; in our time it’s the microprocessor. These technologies do more than change our habits; they change the way we think. Henry David Thoreau, hearing the trains passing Walden Pond, writes, “Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? 2

Geoffrey Moore, author of Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future From the Pull of the Past argues that wilderness moments arrive every five years. Personally I believe the pace of change has accelerated to the point where every three years one needs to critically assess deeply held assumptions, reassess the way we think and as it relates to governance and think seriously about changing processes.

Governance Universals
While I advocate perpetual vigilance regarding governance processes and mindsets that should change I am no anarchist. There exist universal attributes of effective governance programs. Thomas Jefferson, co-crafter of one of the most enduring set of governance mechanisms to ever emerge from the mind of man [the American system of democracy] sets as Principle #1 “Power to the People” [i.e., self-governance]. The people must take responsibility for the decisions made and the processes whereby they are arrived at. This gives rise to Necessity #1. If the people are to be self-governing, they must be educated. They must understand both the big picture and the local particulars.

Jean-Luc Martinez, the new director of the Louvre is guiding that great cultural institution onto a new path of visitor self-education. Rather than a “tourist location” [3 million visitors in 1989; 9.8 million visitors in 2012] designed to enable visitors to “take a walk” Martinez envisions an environment where art can be appreciated and understood. “If 1% of these people really, truly appreciate a work of art, then that’s a lot.”3

Leaders of cultural institutions and complex multinational companies need – not just a skilled workforce- but an educated workforce, employees, associates and partners who UNDERSTAND the purpose[s] of the enterprise, the context in which that enterprise operates and the technology-expanded set of opportunities available. The first step of governance processes which sustainably enable organizations to do the right things in the right way is an educated workforce.

1David Christian, Deep History [February 2011] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqc9zX04DXs
2Richard Snow, I Invented The Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford [NY: Scribner, 2013].
3Mary M. Lane, “The Louvre’s New Populist Leader,” Wall Street Journal [4 October 2013].