“Don’t let your illusion become your delusion.”
“Everything tied down is coming loose.”
—Ezra Pond
Poet and clergyman, John Donne in 1624 published his Meditation XVII. Well known excerpts include:
The Mandalan Quest™
a quest for wholeness
“As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.”
—Václav Havel,
Czech playwright
The Story in a Nutshell
Language and concepts used in most organizations today were born in the Cartesian thinking of the 17th Century developed and championed by René Descartes, Sir Isaac Newton and others. It is apparent that organizations, in great number, have failed and continue to fail themselves, their stakeholders and our society. New concepts are available to address our difficulties but there is a price to pay. Paradigms long held sacred must be dismantled and new paradigms and revised language must take their place. IC Excel includes paradigms and language needed to understand our new world of organizational design and change. Einstein said:
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
The Challenge - Changing Concepts and Language
IC Excel began in earnest in 1998 and continues today. The project involves the deep integration of human systems in individual and organizational life. It can be thought of as the SAP or PeopleSoft of human systems. Integrating elements, however, are not departments, functions, data streams, and supply-chain logistics. They are systems, concepts, models, processes, and tools from many disciplines and hundreds of contributors.
Concepts and language used at this site and in IC Excel are presented as “simply as possible, but no simpler.” Another advice of Albert Einstein. There is challenge in understanding. Every effort has been made to ease the journey.
An Enemy Most Insidious - Fragmentation
Segregating what we view in our lives into parts, in order to solve problems and further our learning and its resulting knowledge and wisdom, is a necessary and valuable process. However, when that segregation results in long-term or permanent disconnection of parts from the whole, it becomes fragmentation. Parts lose context with their surroundings and become seen as whole unto themselves opening doors to inordinate self-deception This fragmentation has become endemic in our world today. It is now the greatest danger to our immediate existence and the existence of future generations according to physicist, David Bohm.
I have, until the last few years, referred to the goals of IC Excel in the context of holism. The general idea was to bring wholeness to individual and organizational life. Several interrelated problems were found in this approach. First, the idea of holism was received as idealistic, an impractical state that is interesting, but has little practical value. Second, in seeking holism I struggled to define and relay to others a practical holistic construct. Third, it is difficult to perceive holism when it is found; having no edges and boundaries, we tend to look for something that is there with the lens we have. Fourth, the tasks for creating holism are difficult to define.
The recognition of fragmentation as being the destructor of holism shifted my thinking and language. Fragmentation can be seen and perhaps its effects can even be measured. It, at least, can be understood and addressed by members of a community experiencing that fragmentation. The conversation in this website uses the following convention in considering deep integration of systems, concepts, models, processes, and tools in individual and organizational life.
IC Excel adapts language supportive of the above. Process is stressed over end results. While the “end in mind” is the benefit of more holistic thinking and action by individuals and organizations, the process is one of defragmentation. Thus, defragmentation is referred to a great deal and holism very little. They are in essence two sides of the same coin (considered elsewhere).
Everything’s Connected
Considering any island as independent of the web of life, of which it is a part, is foolishness. An island cannot exist without the mantle of the earth for it to sit upon, The mantle cannot exits without the earth’s core to support it. Mantle and core provide mass to create gravity that holds vegetation in place and pulls rain from clouds to the island; vegetation with the help of the sun creates oxygen to support growth of animals, and on and on in cycles that are not totally understood.
Considering any “parts” we might define, no matter the nobility of our cause, as entire of themselves, is equally foolish. Yet, we have divided our world into parts that are generally treated as “unto themselves,” in our institutions, personal lives, and our mental processes. We think and act, for example, in uniquely defined work/vocations (violinist, therapist, manager, machinist, +), physical differences (ethnicity, color, sex, +), beliefs differences (Christian, Atheist, Hindu, Fundamentalist, Liberal, Capitalist, +), geographic definitions (states, countries, suburbs, inner cities, US, EU, middle east,+), and political differences (republicans, democrats, socialists, anarchists, independents, +).
Traditional problem-solving methodology is a fragmenting process. We peel relationships away from a perceived central cause until we are able to see the offending elements and fix them. Solutions, unfortunately, often find themselves offending the greater systems of which they are a part. It is not unusual for well intended solutions to spawn even greater problems.
Healing fragmentation in our personal mental processes and in our institutional design and function requires a shift in thinking as well as a methodology that integrates existing excellent systems. Understanding the new mental models and the principles, processes, and tools that foster balance in working with parts and whole at the same time, will over time, check and then reverse fragmentation. Done well, individuals and organizations will benefit in the short and long-term.
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less ...
Wholeness can be in great dysfunction and pain but it remains a whole. You cannot find wholeness and bring it to a location; it is already there, no matter how badly damaged.
Fragmentation Corrupts the Whole
The main effort to increase the integrity of the whole is to root out fragmentation.
Wholeness is
Integrity is inversely proportional to fragmentation. Other factors damaging the integrity of the whole, such as duplicity, ignorance, and misdirected goodness are not eliminated by defragmentation but will find the environment less welcoming, even hostile.
Defragmentation Increases Integrity
Copyright - Roger B. Marshall, dba Philemon-Joy & Associated
The Mandalan Quest™, The Mandalan Chronicles™, Mandalan IC Excel ™ are trademarks of Philemon-Joy & Associates
Human Systems Integration
The Quest is the integration of hundreds of peoples work from disciplines relevant to individual and organizational developnment.
—Angelica Huston
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
—Albert Einstein
