Data is Discrete; Waves are the Future

When Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004 he could not possibly have anticipated that his company’s very fate would hang in the balance of the 2016 US presidential election or the genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

When Oscar Munoz took over United in 2015, or Edward Bastian took over Delta the following year, neither could have had any idea how important dogs would become to their reigns as captains of the sky.

Virtually no China hand of the last two decades could have possibly anticipated that it would be the US which would start an “easy to win” (Ha!) trade war with the Middle Kingdom.

What happened? Has the world truly gone mad? And what does it mean for the future of business, technology, globalism, and, of course, dogs?

The “happened” part is actually pretty simple: the world has gotten much, much smaller. Not physically, of course. But there are more of us and we are connected by technology in ways that even the visionaries of tech could not have comprehended in the beginning.

As a result, the lines dividing our social, economic, and political spheres have been erased, both locally and globally. Our individual identity has been obliterated in the same way that a sand castle on the beach is wiped out by a violently rising tide. Our economy, our politics, and our social identity have blurred in ways no one could have imagined.

Forget about work/life balance, which employers have struggled with for the last three decades or longer. The question now facing all of us is whether or not such compartmentalized thinking isn’t anachronistic in the same way that our social and business institutions of the past are.

But if there are fewer and fewer distinctions in the various aspects of our lives, there are fewer and fewer distinctions between us as well. For better or worse, our individuality has converged. We are far from united, but we are increasingly unified—like it or not. We are all in this together.

For business this presents challenges on two fronts—the employee and the customer—but the challenge is the same—engagement. How do we make them give a darn?

For politicians the challenge is similar. Who is my customer and what do they want?

So, too, for the consumer, employee, and citizen? Why should I care? And what should I care about?

The problem is a fundamental disconnect between our perception and our reality. We continue to see our companies as a collection of employees; our customers as a collection of buyers; our citizens as a collection of political alliances. This is the world of “I”. It is the world of discrete parts in which cause and effect are typically linear and root cause is hierarchical.

Now, however, we live in the world of “we”. The individual is no longer a discrete data point. Each of us is a part of a wave that extends forward and back, up and down. Our world is not defined by either/or. It is defined by and/but. The difference is the distinction between algebra and geometry.

In business that means thinking in terms that go beyond collaborative. Collaboration is no more than coordination among individuals. It doesn’t go far enough. We need to think in terms of movements—the movement of people, ideas, perspectives, and, ultimately, solutions. Don’t give me an answer; give me a perspective with which to understand what’s happening.

Are there millennials? Are there boomers? Yes. But these are conventions. Like time. Like language. Like emojis. Conventions are discrete and discrete is dead. Think waves.

A wave doesn’t die. It dissipates. There’s a difference. Organisms die. Energy is merely converted.

What are the implications? We must stop thinking discretely. We must stop trying to assess discrete performance. There is no discrete performance.

We must stop developing discrete financial plans. Budget and plan as if time did not exist.

We must stop developing discrete strategic plans. There is no next step without a next conviction or belief.

Stop thinking about discrete tasks and discrete outputs and accomplishments. Think in terms of waves. ‘I didn’t accomplish anything specific today, but I started a tsunami.’ Waves, not raindrops. (Or water balloons.)

I call it we-ism and write about it in my latest book, We, Ourselves, and Us. The bad news is that we will lose our individual identity. The good news is that we will lose our individual identity. The important news is that it doesn’t matter what we think. It’s happened.

Sounds like gibberish, right? It is, in any traditional sense. But we have to stop thinking that way. It’s not about the wave. It’s about the way the wave flows over whatever lay beneath.

Why don’t surfers surf in the middle of the ocean? The waves are huge there. But size doesn’t matter; break does. The break only occurs when the energy of the wave tries to ride the immovable land below. The beauty of the ride is not a function of the wave or the beach. It is a function of the interplay between the two.

If you want to master your business, don’t spend so much time studying the world of discrete mathematics and statistics. Forget the big data. Forget the spreadsheets and the algorithms. Our world is defined by the principles of fluid dynamics and the physics of waves.

Don’t just think differently; interpret your thoughts through a very different lens.