I’ve attended Dave Snowden’s Sensemaker sessions – very valuable. I wish that the blight of thoughtlessness you identify was a rare disease existing in some remote part of our social landscape. It is not. I am encouraged, however, to find more and more nodes where people are learning how to combat the problem, complexity theory thinkers, mavericks, malcontents, and contrarians among them.

The balance will tip as short-term immediacy fails to meet the challenges of the day and more thoughtful and informed long-term strategic insight better prepares us for the unknown dynamics of the future.

Milton

What I see in my practice, is that we are entering a period in which we need to make our individual and collective ways of working more effective (in particular for knowledge wrk). Being able to understand when a company needs “deep thinking” and when to combine individual deep thinking with the “wisdom of crowds”, and being able to organize to provide the environment in which deep thinking and wisdom of crowds can flourish are among the new capabilities that our companies need to develop.