The Hockey Stick of Human Development
For millennia and more, in A Very Short History of the World, humanity preoccupied itself with survival, migration and dominion in an effort to justify residency of the earth against natures harsh untamed environment. The very challenge of existence was driven by a search for God and meaning, religion, customs and tradition that evolved into cultures that governed the lives of a people in their perspective of the known world. Indeed, a true story is only as good as its perspective. Up until the middle of the second millennium A.D., humanity labored long and hard developing The Origins of Political Order to create community, society and government. Humanity paced itself on a gentle incline with the locus of development isolated in independent Babelous ethnic kingdoms, cultures and civilizations dotted on continents around the world. Nonetheless, When We Ruled, became a mantra for the epitome of human achievement in philosophy, arts, science architecture, trade, government and supremacy of military campaign as kingdoms fought for dominance and control of wealth and resources in their limited interaction with their neighbors. However, as sea travel and empire building took center stage, the world, as a globe, began to gather a collective momentum of renaissance learning and change in the formulation of a global culture. The writing of The Evolution of Management Thought, captures the migration of the European agrarian economy between 1400-1700 AD to the industrial revolution driven by factory production and capitalism in the 1800s. The dramatic change to centralized institutional enterprise created the “corporation”, the “worker”, the “entrepreneur”, “investors”, the “manager” and the “business executive”. At the time, The Wealth of Nations, the signature tune of capitalism, coincided with the declaration of independence of the United States of America from its colonial legacy. America rang the bell of freedom and shipped the seeds of globalization around the world. Africa provided free slave labor to the agrarian revolution in the foundry of capitalism and supplied valuable raw material to Europe at negligible cost of administrative and military occupation during The Scramble for Africa. Organization designers, Henri Fayol, Alfred Sloan and their peers supplied the leadership thinking that enabled unprecedented levels of human production. The hockey stick of human development took a dramatic turn after two intra-European ethnic conflicts, World War I & II, enjoined intercontinental participation in in the early 1900s. From then on, the race for global dominance was on. But it also signaled the death of parochial empires in the worlds’ east, west, north and south. However, with the installation of global socio-economic architecture provided by the League of Nations, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, gave rise to global corporations. In other words, poverty became a product of dysfunctional human development. And the earth suddenly became a very small place. It became impossible to remain isolated or even independent, one had to be “aligned” to some direction. The earth suddenly became a very small place. It became impossible to remain isolated or even independent, one had to be aligned. But then too, it became practical that an isolated event in one part of the world could catapult major change in another corner of the globe. The age of technology and communication coupled with advances in health and education steeply changed the trajectory of human development as the rate of the rate of change became exponential bringing with it, on a massive scale, hitherto unknown phenomena such as pollution, deforestation and rising sea temperatures. These effects were engineered by the capability humanity has developed to disorient, displace and destroy at a rate much faster than nature has the ability to replenish. The hockey stick of human development suddenly became complicated by the character of human engagement with nature. By the time Carson was writing the Silent Spring in 1962 it was clear that nature was hitting back. Paradoxical as it may seem, in addition to celebrating the complexities of achievement brought on by technology and socio-economic advancement, humanity must now pacify nature for continued tenancy of the earth. However, the nature of the leadership challenge is no longer localized it is globalized. The study of Leadership to find models beyond the sufficiency of big man theory, trait and charisma to lead the world out of this new crisis, developed intellectual models such as path to goal, situational analysis and transformational leadership theory, behavioural, situational, contingency, transformational, adaptive and systems theory to help manage the complexity and chaos of our present world. Even though the world has entered turbulent and disruptive periods of change where organizations are challenged to find ways of Delivering and Sustaining Breakthrough Performance, the next phase of human development calls for leaders who will conscientiously evaluate the costly impact of short-term expediency versus long term survival to set organizations and humanity on a course to ethical, sustainable, socio-economic enterprise. The challenge is not partial to the east, the west, the north or the south. The costs are no longer local. Consequences are global.
Allan Bukusi, Nov 2023
Excerpt from Leading Transcendent Change Scheduled for March 2024
