It is a fact that the speed of the digital world is only accelerating. The sensation that time is passing by faster nowadays is very real from the subjective point of view. Time is faster because the perceived context is simply more intense, expansive, and complex than a human being’s cognitive capacity to process so many structureless pieces of information can handle.
As technology advances faster in the form of intelligent algorithms and digital automation, artificial intelligence becomes more ubiquitous and imperceptible. Gigantic amounts of data are being generated and integrated, whilst the biological capacity of the human brain is becoming increasingly obsolete in these synapses.
The apocalyptic vision would suggest that humanity’s days are numbered. Personally, I still believe that nature does not tend to move forward in leaps, but rather it is slower than technology. It does, however, remain consistent over time in its organic process of adaptation at the same time as it maintains the stability of the living organism. Humanity, in my view, will ultimately win out on this journey, but it will certainly not do so in its current form.
But what is the fate of organizations in the singular future?
It is already common to say that companies need to be increasingly innovative, connected to ecosystems, and adopting business-oriented models to achieve streamlined performances.
However, the psychosocial phenomenon inherent to a company’s process of cultural formation does not occur in a flash. In my most recent book, ANTHESIS, I had the chance to present the most diverse aspects of the development of the organizational essence from its beginning until its possible end, from its crystallization through to its eventual transformation. I stated that the organizational dynamic is necessarily a political and semiotic interaction coordinated by dominant leaders to ensure group cohesion on a shared purpose.
It is true that the process of organizational development is not as slow as the evolutionary process of nature nor is it, very possibly, as slow as the process of change in governmental and institutional paradigms. It is easy to compare the speed of a fast-food company with an Amazonian biome or Christian beliefs – this is a comparison of years or decades with millennia or centuries.
On the other hand, this same process of organizational development is not as fast as the cycles of transformation being directed by technology and science, nor even the fleeting cycles of fashion. It is here, therefore, that the real challenge facing organizations lies.
How can the integrity of a company’s culture be ensured in the face of such volatility?
The culture seeks its integrity in the stability of the internal organism, protecting it from the external dynamics of the environment and, at the same time, ensuring the permeability of the organism by means designed to sense and decode these external dynamics. The organizational culture of a group concerns the way this group of people are, think and act in the pursuit of common objectives and shared principles.
The organizational culture – and consequently, the social culture - is an essentially human phenomenon, there being nothing technological about it. It resides in the social interactions, cerebral human feelings, and cerebral synapses. It is not susceptible to automation by algorithms in a cloud or to the fashions of the time.
The essential challenge seems to lie precisely in this dichotomy between the slow psychosocial dynamics of organizational culture and the fluid rapidity of the digital contexts. The social organism will never reach the digital speed, just as nature has never reached the organizational speed. Nature and organizations are both subject to pendular and cyclical shifts – they are never in perfect static balance, but nor are they capable of indefinitely speeding up their adaptability to external shocks. There are limits to the speed an internal organism can adapt to external shocks - and when these limits are constantly surpassed, the organization loses its vigour, thus compromising its own survival in long term.
We therefore have these paradoxes of culture in the digital world:
1 Integrity versus flexibility
2 Consistency versus agility
3 Rigid patterns versus openness
4 Institutional versus transience
5 Coordination versus complexity
The critical reflection to be addressed in the scope of shareholders, board members and managers seems to be exactly these digital cultural paradoxes.
It is a fact that humanity has already witnessed other moments of social unrest and scientific-technological revolutions. Let us imagine, for example, the impact of the industrial revolution on the appearance of large businesses between the 18th and 20th centuries. Innumerable changes in the patterns of enterprise occurred over the course of this time and keep occurring due to the continued changes in the external context.
However, we are here dealing here with the intensity and extent of the phenomenon. From such a perspective, what we are experiencing in the new digital context seems to be truly incredible. The organizational construction of the 20th century is therefore in check.
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Daniel Augusto Motta, PhD, MSc
Founder & CEO BMI Blue Management Institute
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