Clockwise business prophecies?
One of the most horrible personalities is one with a maths and international business degree after a severe culture shock. Well, that is me. Why would this be horrible? The culture shock put my live up side down. It got me into a deep, black personal problem. My marriage broke up, I was left to take care of my two small children, got all kinds of problems with local government authorities, lost my job, my house and was left with a huge debt. Mmmm, that is horrible, but what does it have to do with math or business, for that matter?
When dramatics things occur in ones life we either look for answers or hang our selves. In my case I just wanted to know what the hell had happened? But who cares? Pick up your life, lick you wounds and focus on the future! No big deal. Yeah, but this was different. I had traveled the whole world and lived/worked in many places, including 25 years in Spain! Adn the culture shock happened in my own country of birth! Can you believe it? Holland had changed so much in 27 years that it struck me and my family like lightning. What on earth could make a country go from a warm, social community into a cold, individualistic, complaining, materialistic society? In such a small time frame? I did not feel at home at home!
A mathmetician wants to find logic behind it and an international business man wants to know what risks and opportunities arise. Well first things first. Why did Holland cool down?
I developed a thought, spiritually. I woke up on morning with two lines in my head: a line for the material complexity of our lives, governed by systems, knowledge, organizations and above all: money. The second line refered to the moral complexity, governed by our self conscience of identity, equality, emancipation, trust and higher values. Of course I had to get this insight because I was asked to lecture for Prof. Paul de Blot, university teacher on Business Spirituality. I quickly wrote a book on it and started a new life letting people know what happens to them as it had happened to me. With my model I could predict the course of any organization. Wow, I had become a prophet.
Normal business analyst take key figures and by looking back they try to determine the future. Well, if the future is highly unstable as it is, you can look back as much as you want but your company will go down the drain. Looking at figures is safe for analysts, of course. They are correct, already past and cannot be disputed, just analyzed. Predicting the future means that you have to have knowledge of the outside world, what happens and how you can connect your competences to it. Or find out that you need to change business all together.
My model looks like this:
Human complexities
At the end of 2008 I pushed three little booklets based on my theory and positioned companies along this axes and inside the quadrants. I used 120 different measurement points that I could simply find on internet. With the score on 10 different subitems (s.a. positioning, added value for customers, market definition, etc) and one total score in my hands I could predict the course of the organization by just continuing the clockwork lines of the cycle.
My predictions came true after already one year.
But I am a mathmetician too. What does that have to do with all this? Well, I listenend to Dr Bartlett and his excellent exposee on exponentials, captured on YouTube. His truth is a simple but a generally denied given. If I apply his maths to the same cyclic picture of mine I can prodict the level of sustainability of a multinational, a country or a region. In fact I predict (know for sure) that we are all structurally vulnerable right now and enter crisis after crisis as different sectors move from greed to chaos.
Try to figger it out by yourselves by applying my model to your country or company, using Dr. Bartlett. If you can not do it, ask me, I’ll do it for you.
One just needs one fanatic to upset the world
Through email I received an interesting brief note called: “the German’s view on Islam”. It is a brief explaining that simply states that the fact that 99.99% of all moslims are pacific, hardworking, caring people is beside the point. So were most Germans just before Hitler invaded the world, or the Japanees prior to engangement into WWII, and so many other situations where the sheep had nothing to do with the few wolfs among them. It is not about Islam but about fanatism. It is not about the peaceful mayority but the mayority that let’s fanatism florish beyond control.
The article in fact states that fanatism should be fanatically erradicated by the crowd. But what is fanatism? And what is the democratic right to have a different opinion and shout for it? Is the difference that when you are fanatic you’d be willing to kill for it? And when you have a different opinion you keep your counterparts alive?
In the current society we see two types of fanatics:
1. The ones who advocate the will of God
If God represents our moral inner concience that is challenged by a wise terrestrial, human institution, it would represent a valuable counterpart to our material search. But if God represents a higher power only available to a happy few who use His name to take decisions over everyone, then we start questioning the power they claim. Those who “believe” will become submissive and fearful, those who donot would become the enemy. Now, what if God does not exist, as we were thought already by Confusius? Those who claim to speak His word would become powerless, those who are fearfull would be encouraged and those who are submissive would be asked to stand on their own leggs. Those who donot believe would not be an enemy anymore. What if God is inside all of us, being all the energy that surrounds us, fullfils us and connects us, the sum of us all?
2. The ones that advocate the power of Money
Now if in the above you change the word God for Money, do we not say exactly the same thing? Money for sure does not exist. It is an instrument invented by humans, empowered and unjustly worshiped by humans. But it only represents the energy that surrounds us, that we are composed of and that links us.
It takes one fanatic to upset the world but what if the crowd stops to worship God and Money and starts to care for itself (God and Money is IN us)? No fanatic would ever stand a chance.
One year Obama
Think of it. You are the very first black president of the US of A. And you have also one of the shittiest jobs to do. Fancy a business environment that is controlled only by short term wealth perspectives. Part of your own campaign has been financed by them. It represents the American Dream: get rich fast. You would have to honor your supporters when you are president. Then you have the general public. They want to keep getting rich fast and they use all methods to do so: Credit cards, unjust loans, whatever….. the average citizen lives on a credit debt of a years wage. When that wage falls away what is left over? Disaster.
USA is built on a mentality of disaster. When I moved from Spain (credit mentality of 0ne single month) to Holland (debet mentality, ie you pay with what you have actually got) it took me one entire year to adjust. I had to reserve every month one twelfs of my salary to compensate the transition. It hurt me a lot. Imagine however an entire years salary as backlog? It will take you a life time to work that away. How would you vote?
When America voted Obama, they voted for change but not really to cope with this crisis. NO! They wanted Obama to get things back to times of Reagan and even Clinton. But he cannot do that. The rest of the world understood, except the USA. Nobel Obama is in a split. One legg is trying to solve securities for his people (jobs, housing, Afganistan, and than even health) and the other is trying to improve the competitive position of business world wide for the necessary dollars. When you spread your leggs like that what is in between?
Right. Obama has everything to loose but in the end he will win. He will go into history as the president that started the whole thing, the entire transition that causes so much suffering but also so much new dignity to the American people. He did not start wars for resources but opened up the eyes to common sense. As from now every newcoming president will be measured up against what Obama started, at least for the US. Only three or four presidents from now in the USA will be able to score well four years long. Not now, in these early times of transition.
Others have taken the lead however, and those are the small countries like Holland and Sweden. The transition 3.0 takes a long time, it is dangerous for humanity, but it can be done (words of Obama), but not without the chaos America is facing (and China a little later)
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 