Future Design Inquiries. October 2024
Hello from your friends at enso, a future design company. Futures happen by default or by design. Here are some things we think push past the default. And we welcome your reactions, additions, and suggestions – reach out news@enso.co.
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What we’re reflecting on
These nuggets are curated by enso partners Hanna Siegel (HS) and Sebastian Buck (SB).
How we win (part 2)
Joy is trending. Which means that it was out of favor for awhile (roughly since late 2016?). The fact that it feels like joy is coming up everywhere highlights just how little we as a society were feeling it before. But perhaps the fever is breaking. And yet, is joy a reliable strategy for success? It turns out history has some lessons that say it is. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes, joy has actually been part of successful anti-authoritarian political strategies pretty recently. Turkey in 2019 was an authoritarian state, with about 39,000 people who had stood trial for alleged insults against the president (!). Yet opposition candidate Ekram Imamoglu ran for mayor of Istanbul with a campaign that centered on optimism and radical love. His campaign slogan was “everything will be fine…if there is hope.” And he won. Under Pinochet, Chileans had lived in a brutal authoritarian state. Yet days before the 1988 election, the opposition held a March for Joy, with positive ads saying things like “Joy is coming”. It all helped contribute to the dictator’s historic defeat. In other words, under the worst of circumstances, the Chileans bet on joy and it turns out, joy won. Obviously, there were other factors at play in both of these cases. But too often, we focus on the power of fear – it’s time to remember and harness the power of joy. (HS)
Circular humanity
Recently, I was reading about time banking, a concept pioneered by Sweden, but slowly spreading to other parts of the world. Faced with a growing older population (just like the rest of the world), the Swedes designed a program where young people can volunteer to help older citizens and deposit the time spent into a ‘time bank,’ that they can access and cash in later when they need help. A similar program in Beijing gives 1 coin for every minute spent volunteering; 10,000 coins earns you a spot in a state-run care facility when you reach a certain age. What I find most fascinating about this idea is that it’s a policy designed to solve a problem without any money involved. We all know intellectually that time is valuable; but rarely are programs or policies designed on the premise of that fact. But what if we tackled our societal challenges with this approach? For example, young families need childcare now. But when the kids are older, they may be able to babysit, or work in a daycare. What if we looked at different groups of people and asked ‘what do they need?’ and ‘what can they offer?’ and designed based on participatory matchmaking instead of budgets available? (HS)
Beyond atomization (part 1)
It probably goes without saying that a big, good life does not arise from a brain filled with noise. Whether you subscribe to the concepts of presence, purpose, persistence, virtue or spirituality, or most other aspirational things, they aren’t benefited by constant distraction. Culture critic and music historian Ted Gioia wrote a fascinating ‘state of the culture’, where he shares a taxonomy (food chain?) of art, which is consumed by entertainment, which is consumed by distraction, which is consumed by addiction.
Art < Entertainment < Distraction < Addiction
In other words, the manipulation of our dopamine system leads us away from a big, good life. “If you thought the drug cartels were rich, wait til you see how much money the dopamine cartels are making.” Gioia’s prescription here is twofold: 1. We need to tell the truth about the ‘dopamine cartels’. 2. We need to choose to unplug ourselves more often. David Brooks’ take on this dynamic is we need to ‘elevate people’s desires by giving them access to what is truly worth wanting … the emotional impact of a great film, a great novel, a great concert… it’s more desirable than TikTok’. I’d say all of the above — and an optimism that people are increasingly tiring of the manipulation, and choosing more authentic joy (see: How we win). (SB)
Beyond atomization (part 2)
If there’s one word that can strike fear into any worker’s soul, it may be ‘efficiency’; the innocuous-sounding code for removing care, diligence, craft, passion, ownership and purpose, often through shortcuts, complex org structures and outsourcing. ‘Efficiency dominates management thinking. A magical belief that everything can be done better, faster, cheaper has forced a focus on cost-cutting.’ This is from Margaret Heffernan’s analysis of what caused the Grenfell Tower disaster (where 70 people died in low income housing in London); she points to the remarkable number of contractors and subcontractors tasked with maintaining the building. In theory this atomization delivers utopian efficiency, but in practice it led to an inferno. “Subcontracting atomises responsibility. Outsourcing is a recipe for buck-passing.” I often think about Fred Kofman’s line, ‘to optimize the system you must sub-optimize the sub-systems’ … just as a defender on a soccer team may need to risk contributing to an attack if the team is a goal down. It’s fun when economists find their way around to championing more human ways of being. As sports teams need to focus on ‘the big why’, how about companies at least match whatever time and energy is invested in ‘efficiency’ with that dedicated to their big why? (SB)
Beyond atomization (part 3)
A highlight of this year for us has been working in Kenya. You’re probably familiar with ubuntu, the spirit of interdependence, or ‘I am because we are’. But Kenya’s most powerful idea is harambee, a Kiswahili word meaning ‘let’s pull together’; this idea unified Kenya after independence, it’s the country’s official motto, and it’s a form of community gathering, where elders organize a harambee to support someone or solve a challenge. While ubuntu describes a state of being, a noun, harambee is a verb — a constant process of pulling together. It gained prominence when Kenya’s first president used it in his election day victory speech. “I would suggest we use the Kiswahili word ‘harambee’ to express the mood we want to create; it means ‘let us all work together’. Get up and go!” I’ve always been interested in the ‘brand’ of a country; you can’t move in Costa Rica for someone saying ‘pura vida’, and surely that affects the way of life, informing thousands of decisions every day, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Companies, communities and countries are only as strong as the ‘story of us’ that holds people together; it would be nice to see more countries invest in their brands, not as tourist destinations, but as operating systems for thriving together. (SB)
10 things that made us think, gasp, share and laugh:
- Business leaders have long believed that superior logic leads to superior results (~85% of CEOs come from logic-based backgrounds). But what happens when the world is not logical, and AI makes logic an abundant commodity? Our own Sebastian Buck writes about this for Fast Company in From logic to leaps: a new paradigm for CEOs in the age of AI.
- Will this enlarge me or diminish me?
- Rory Sutherland’s Are We Too Impatient To Be Intelligent about how faster is not always better. And how if we are always optimizing for efficiency, we’ll miss out on the more important things, like joy.
- Alex Garland’s TV show Devs on FX/Hulu about…I can’t explain it in one sentence, but it involves a big tech company trying to solve existential questions about the universe and a woman trying to figure out what happened to her boyfriend who worked there. Part sci-fi, part thriller, entirely fascinating.
- Cunningham's Law, which states that "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
- Artist Austin Kleon’s playlist of songs that inspired The Beatles’ White Album
- Starbucks’ new CEO published an open letter on how he wants the company to reclaim its soul; it’s smart, and a welcome turn away from the ‘accelerate the flywheel!’ commoditization of business.
- A truly beautiful space design for an epic dinner, by Erased Studio
- Curtis Sittenfeld wrote a story; ChatGPT wrote one with the same brief, as an experiment to see which one is better. Verdict: humanity by a TKO.
- The latest chapter of our long-running work on wellbeing, with Indeed and Oxford, was just released. Check out the Work Wellbeing 100 (top companies) and the state of wellbeing. The tie between wellbeing and company performance is clearer than ever. Also shocking: just 22% of people have high wellbeing at work. We all need to change that.
What we’re working on
enso is a small, senior team so that we can work on just a few initiatives at a time. This allows us to go deep on some of the biggest challenges/ opportunities. Recently, we’ve been working on a few main missions with our partners:
- Expanding the pipeline of entrepreneurs: Lowering the barriers to being a small business owner.
- Design The Future book: Distilling wisdom from those actively designing and creating the future, from a wide variety of fields.
- Radical leap stories in Mexico: Uncovering the stories of Mexicans creating and solving with technology.
- Reforming the world of work: Bringing the world’s talent leaders together to build a better world of work.
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