Philippe Baumard: Denial: uncertainty in economics and strategy — do not abandon thinking in favor of ideology

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
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Philippe Baumard
Philippe Baumard

No words can express the sadness we all felt after the attacks that targeted France on 13 November. Facing the irreparable, and more than ever, the strategic vacuum the question arises. I am pleased to participate in a conference whose objective is to encourage the study and practice of the strategy, as part of this collective initiative that was the Encyclopedia of strategy.

A strategic vacuum is a situation where the economic models, societal, “strategic” cease to provide relevant answers to a crisis involving the sustainability of a company, of a political, economic or military. It is, in mirror, a window of opportunity for those who exploit the lack of direction, the confusion of beliefs, the vulnerability of a social or economic fabric prey to superstitious beliefs, or dismayed by the repetition of peoples empty.

I have already discussed at length in the essay of the same name, the terrible mechanism that brought our globalized world with such empty situations: loss of view that the concept of strategy means “the art of governing” and not not that of advantage or generate competitive advantages, asymmetries, without questioning the forgotten purpose of the strategy document. The celebration and fascination for deeply destructive economic models basic human balance has accompanied the creation of such a strategic vacuum. Models that instrumentent and pervert the founding mechanisms of human societies are not “key strategies”. They are tactical models, parasitic systems that defeat the very long and difficult construction of a human society. It is undoubtedly necessary that we stop to celebrate, if we want one day to have the hope of restoring a sustainable strategic plan:

These are the models that enclose cynical farmers in intellectual property rentier economy, its binding nature scarification on the merits of a permanent asymmetry. These are the business models of the digital economy that make these companies stowaways companies they are hosts, without ever wanting to assume the social and societal responsibility attached to their presence. This is the “subprime” crisis of 2008, when the tactical performance of the financial instrument took precedence, globally, just on the human consideration of debt situations they generated.

In 2012 I used the term “disembodiment” Strategic done, and today we suffer in our flesh. The distance we have grown to separate the “strategist” of society and men, put us offside strategic paradigm that we have installed. While uncertainty has never been so well controlled systemic perspective: our predictive algorithms, engines of this tactic economy, know what we want to consume, our passengers as well as deep aspirations. And yet, our future has never been more uncertain.

We have lost much to rid ourselves of ideological footprints, which were substituting the strategy of submission to a construction beliefs. How could we forget what we collectively cost the abolition of this deadly embrace, to let us embrace a more powerful vacuum that all doctrinaire systems? In answer to the only question that can get us out of this impasse, and that is: “where do we want to go together? “We have made every artifice, any form of cognitive manipulation, blindness distributed Smartphone, and never have to answer to such a question.

Uncertainty is vital to any human organization, as it is essential for freedom. An economic system which organizes the uncertainty is a cartel and its logical continuation is the suppression of individual freedoms, and its second logical result is the emergence of a superstitious and vulnerable society. We need to inject more quickly, in our societies, these basic forms of uncertainty, which I want to talk to each other, which I have to give meaning to each of my interactions, which exist a sustainable company that knows the hazards, because we do not hide it. The strategic vacuum is not a situation of uncertainty: it is a situation where we refuse to question, where economic models of society, dry human relations and intermediated to automatic mechanisms.

Let me conclude by encouraging you to read The Encyclopedia of strategy, and paying tribute to all our colleagues who have contributed and continues to ask questions. The strategic vacuum which we collectively are facing is not based on anything. The uncertainty manufactured and manipulated it produces can be denied. It refuses by voting, by the long-term thinking that is attached to each of our daily actions, by the absorption of the strategic choices made in our, policy makers, friends, family members or society. Expressing disagreement and claim self-determination to choose the form of uncertainty with which we wish to build our lives, our economic future, our future defense, is the first decision of any strategic thinking.

DOC (3 Pages in French): Denial and Uncertainty Beaumard

VIDEO (15:07 in French: https://youtu.be/Odj9fO1gOm0

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