Turning to One Another

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And what was first seen as a problem for each organization (or country) to solve individually has become a problem that can't be solved alone. What does it matter how compliant and ready you are if your suppliers lag behind, or if your employees can't get to work or don't have food, or if power plants fail? What good does it do you to be prepared if your neighbors aren't?

Complex Systems Require New Collaborations

Complex systems require new approaches to dealing with their entangled interdependencies and inherent fuzziness. Complex-system failures cannot be solved alone. They require collaboration, participation, openness, and inclusion. These new problems force us to dissolve our past practices of hierarchies, boundaries, secrecy, and competition. In a systems crisis, the more we cling to these past practices, the more we deepen the crisis and prevent solutions. Y2K insists that we come together in new ways, that we turn to one another.

We already know how to be together in transforming and effective ways--we see it on TV every time there's a disaster. Disasters often illuminate what is best in humans: our heart-opening willingness to come together, to use whatever is available to rescue and save other human beings.

Whenever disaster strikes, we read many stories of extraordinary, superhuman responses. Those who have been in these relief efforts speak about the importance of trusting relationships. Just a few weeks prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, community agencies had been together in a civil defense preparedness drill. No one was practicing for a bombing, but as they worked on other contingencies, they developed good relationships that facilitated working together when confronted with the bombing horror. However, one key player had not participated in the drill, the FBI. Many people in Oklahoma City still speak with resentment about being pushed around by 'the Feds,' who excluded them from rescue operations. As Elizabeth Dole, president of the Red Cross, has said, 'The midst of a disaster is the poorest possible time to establish new relationships. . . . When you have taken the time to build rapport, then you can make a call at 2 a.m. . . . and expect to launch a well-planned, smoothly conducted response.'

It is important to note that past practices of leaders, where we rely on secrecy or evasion, create more risk rather than less. Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine has written about his experiences with crises and gives one rule for information: Tell the truth and tell it fast. Secrecy feeds the problem, not the solution. And secrecy sets in motion some powerful dynamics that end up destroying capacity. People who learn they've been kept in the dark, or fed misleading information, quickly lose confidence in others. In the absence of real information, they fill the vacuum with rumors and fear. And whenever people feel excluded from involvement, they withdraw and focus on self-protection. They no longer believe anything or anybody. As the veil of secrecy thickens, the capacity for collective solution-finding disappears.

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