[0:00][Applause] good morning Namaste there's a tiny strip of land in Eastern
[0:11]Europe that runs from the Baltic Sea at the North all the way down to the Black Sea at the South and from Russia on the
[0:21]East all the way to Central Europe on the west it has spawned an unusually large number of
[0:31]innovators this is what I've discovered recently looking into it and the question is why and the answer seems to have something to do with the fact that this
[0:42]piece of land which has been inhabited particularly from the 14th to the 20th centuries early 20th Centuries by many many different people from different
[0:51]cultures religions and civilizations and that the the cross-pollination that took place seems to have created some kind of
[1:02]phenomenon that has spawned Innovation and innovators like Bob Dylan Albert Einstein Leonard Cohen and many many
[1:13]more most of the people in this land during those 500e period lived in very small towns settlements really and many
[1:22]of them would live their entire lives without ever leaving their own settlement it was a very tightly knit community and they seem seem to be able to live very well in spite of their
[1:32]poverty they seem to have have very rich inner lives they also were frequented from time to time by these Travelers the people who had no permanent
[1:44]settlement these were the gypsies the minstrels the storytellers the songwriters The Poets the scientists the philosophers who traveled and spent
[1:54]their life on the road sometimes out of necessity sometimes uh out of desire for new ideas for they were searching for something and so
[2:06]these traveling Searchers would travel through the towns and once a month in some of these towns from what I'm reading the town
[2:18]leaders and the religious leaders would invite one of these travelers to speak to the congregation on a Saturday or or a Sunday depending on what their religion was because it was felt not that they
[2:29]had any form education most of them did not but it was felt that by virtue of having traveled a lot both geographically and psychologically
[2:40]traveling also in the world of ideas that they might have learned something and they might have something of value to say and something new ideas to bring into the community so you had this
[2:51]phenomenon of cross-pollination cohesive communities on the one hand cross-pollination and connection to the outside world on and the
[3:02]other I come here today in that same Spirit as a traveler not with any particular knowledge I'm not a member of any profession never have been I have
[3:12]spent a lot of time in school you know Mark Twain They once asked him when did you receive your education and he immediately replied he said throughout my entire life except
[3:24]for the years when I was in school so except for those years in school which slowed me down a little bit
[3:33]I think um I have spent much of my life struggling with the two big questions how can I live a good life and a rich life for myself while simultaneously
[3:44]being a Force for good and for change in the world and so one thing that I've concluded recently is that I think we as
[3:54]a global Community right now um facing big challenges in terms of how we live on this
[4:05]planet that we are are in another kind of Crossroads and it's a Crossroads of ideas it's a Crossroads between what I'd
[4:14]like to call 20th century thinking and 21st century thinking and I'd like to explore that idea with you just just a
[4:23]little bit and take a quick look at how we approach those two big questions how to live well and how to be a force for change how those questions were
[4:33]approached with a 20th century mindset and how they're now being approached by the Next Generation with a 21st century mindset so in the year
[4:44]1910 a guy by the name of fedick Taylor published a tiny little book it's about 90 pages long you can still buy it for $7 it's a blue book and it was called
[4:55]Principles of Scientific Management it laid out what became the basis for the modern production line Henry Ford Andrew Carnegie and it was
[5:06]the idea that you take a big complex problem you break it down into little pieces you train people to execute each of those pieces and then you let the
[5:16]whole process flow sequentially and it became our habitual method of solving problems not just manufacturing problems but problem solving in general for the
[5:28]20th century standardize simplify specialize streamline and sequence the process and it is impossible to
[5:38]overstate the effect that that mindset has had on everything we do and how we live and how we think and how we approach problems in the 20th century
[5:49]and for some for some things it's worked absolutely beautifully mass production economic efficiency Wonder drugs the Miracles of science and
[5:59]technology that we've seen in recent years and so forth it also has some limitations which we are which we are slowly finding out
[6:09]it turns out that sometimes systems are sufficiently complex that when we solve when we break a problem down we solve one part of the problem it creates a
[6:18]problem somewhere else so we create a we create jobs in one part of the world with uh with fossil fuels if I can pick that one we create a problem for
[6:29]somebody else somewhere we solve the tobacco problem but we have a new obesity problem we solve we solve problems with antibiotics but then we create
[6:39]antibiotic resistance and so on so in the 1960s we began to discover what's now being called systems thinking the idea that yes it's great to be able to
[6:50]focus on one part of a system and to solve one problem um but we got to also be able to think big because we got to remember we may be solving one problem
[7:01]here for one group of people while creating a bigger problem somewhere else in the system so the question is where does
[7:12]that leave us today I suggest that it leaves us with many problems that have been solved in the
[7:23]20th century and the ones that are left some by our own creation some some simply because they were too big we're now left with some really big problems you all know what they are I don't have
[7:34]to talk about what they are you know climate change um inequality chronic illness and so forth uh many of you in this room are probably engaged in uh
[7:44]Building Solutions to those problems so the question is where do we go from here and how can we begin
[8:00]without throwing out everything that we've learned in the 20th century Building Solutions to our 21st century problems they're characterized by three things one is a large number of
[8:11]variables many many many factors number two is that the factors are interdependent they constantly interact
[8:19]with each other and so those two factors combine to create this kind of complexity where the problems are very very hard and many of us feel
[8:30]overwhelmed and so um has anybody here in this room not felt overwhelmed by thinking about climate change it's a really really really big
[8:41]problem it's so big that often we don't want to think about it or we'd like to break off a piece I'm going to suggest to you that each of us has the potential to be part
[8:52]of the solution and so if we start looking what we need to do is we need to look carefully at the nature of the problem and one of the most important
[9:02]parts of 20 21st century problems is that they involve many stakeholders and they require many many different types of knowledge to
[9:14]address many many different types of knowledge so there's basically only two ways to address that one is that you can have a large number of Specialists what we did in the 20th century we created
[9:26]all these Specialties professions and sub Specialists and so forth and you know when you asked in the 20th century what do you do the ideal answer would be
[9:36]I'm a you know pediatric neurosurgeon you know highly highly specialized and that was the model for
[9:46]the 20th century one way is we can have groups of cooperating Specialists it turns out that can rapidly become very very
[9:56]difficult um because suppose 30 different types of knowledge are involved it's really difficult even with our Technologies so we need people that
[10:06]can Bridge the gaps that can speak the languages of two Specialties or three Specialties or multiple Specialties that can fill in what they sometimes call
[10:16]managing the white space between the silos and we need people that can create these Unique Blends of knowledge that are precisely what's needed to solve a
[10:28]specific problem and I I think that each of us has the capacity within us to actually do that
[10:37]and so the idea is by drawing upon different types of knowledge starting with the knowledge we already have
[10:45]figuring out what knowledge is needed to solve this problem and what we need um to learn ourselves this is where the future is
[10:57]going to be in the 21st century it's not like we're going to throw away the Specialties the Specialties will continue but we're going to need an increasing proportion of our Workforce
[11:06]to be these integrating roles so I want to just talk about a couple of examples best example I can come from coming as somebody who's now in in my early
[11:18]60s um there was a book came out recently uh it was called the day Dylan went electric anybody read this or heard about it there was a special on CBC where they interviewed the author the
[11:30]other day it was a book the entire book was written about one day at the Newport Folk Festival where Bob Dylan who had basically been embraced as a folk singer
[11:41]that was his specialty as a folk singer went electric and the world immediately the world within a few months Mr
[11:51]Tambourine Man had been released as a uh what was become folk rock called as Folk rock Simon and garun released Sounds of Silence and they completely completely
[12:02]changed what was possible in music and quite frankly the MU the world of music I don't think has ever been the same so he took the folk genre of Woody gut
[12:12]popularized by Woody guty he took the rock and roll sounds of Chuck Barry and The Beetles and he took the old blues and country and rhythm and blues and he drew all these different things together
[12:23]and initially people hated it particularly his fans and you know the story he was booed many many times but he remained true he remained confident
[12:34]to his art and he he remained true to his vision and within two years the whole world went in that direction and it's it spawned everything that we're hearing today in music so folck is one
[12:46]example I'm suggesting that you can do these almost everywhere example number two there's a woman down in California she's a family physician she's had a lifelong interest in nutrition she's
[12:57]become more and more uh highly trained in so now she's trained in Medical Nutrition but she's also trained in the culinary arts as a chef and she now
[13:07]calls herself a physician chef and so the idea is by teaching people to cook she can simultaneously teach people to cook while teaching them about health
[13:17]while empowering them to actually make Lifestyle Changes in their own life and simultaneously creating a much more whole experience in her own life we hear
[13:28]from people one of the big downsides that we found with scientific management is that people didn't like to do exactly the same thing every day this were you know assembly lines um the work was
[13:40]repetitive and monotonous initially they kept raising the wages which worked for a while but eventually we got to the point where people would just not do it for any amount so that's example number
[13:51]two and the third example is this kind of Google ised workplace and I know that we have some of these in SAS in Saskatoon now where people are finding that as we get into a a head-based
[14:03]knowledge-based uh workplace um we need to add the pingpong tables and the bean bags and the movement and the yoga and the meditation
[14:13]and so forth because all of us crave using our whole bodies and all of our intelligences not just the verbal and an analytical which were the major ones for
[14:23]20th century so I've got three skills that I'd like to suggest are going to be really critical for this integrating
[14:34]role integrative innovation in the 20th century knowledge brokering is the process of making deals in order to
[14:45]ensure that knowledge travels from A to B and from B to a so I had a colleague about 20 years ago who brought uh or who arranged to have Western medicine
[14:57]brought to China and he simultaneously worked with the Chinese Health minister to bring traditional Chinese medicine to Canada and so that's knowledge brokering
[15:07]knowledge translation is taking the ideas from one field and making them accessible to the other so for example early in the years of it about 30 years
[15:17]ago you would have it people who would train financial planners in Information Technology because that they wanted to know it and they felt that they needed
[15:27]to integrate those ideas into their into what they were uh into their own jobs and into their own roles and the third one is knowledge integration which is like putting it all together taking two
[15:38]bodies of knowledge that were previously thought of as separate cross-pollinating them putting them together and creating something really
[15:47]new so we're talking about new solutions for new problems 21st century skills it doesn't mean we throw out anything that
[15:57]we learned in fact it means that we value and get very clear on exactly what we did learn in the 20th century recognize what worked and what didn't
[16:08]work what we have to add to create a bigger more whole problem solving model for the 21st century and as jny Mitchell says both sides now it's about both
[16:18]sides and it's about now so the basic message then is is that we
[16:30]currently have a misfit between the kind of problems that we're being forced to look at in the 21st century and the kind of solution strategies that were
[16:42]developed for 20th century problems we have a world which is overspecialized over fragmented over siloed and basic principle of
[16:52]organizations the more siloed an organization is the more integrating mechanisms are needed right now we're long on differentiation
[17:02]on specialization and we're short on integration and my message is that each of us has the capacity within us to be one of those integrators and the beauty
[17:13]of this is that by pulling together Knowledge from different sources and we now have it a lot of it on the internet so we kind of have our own personal crossroads right in front of us by
[17:24]pulling together the different pieces of what we already know what we'd like to add we have the ability and the potential not only to
[17:34]create a a a blend of knowledge that's useful to solve a problem in the world but also to create wholeness within our own within our own lives and within
[17:44]those around us throughout history human societies have faced
[17:54]overwhelming challenges like the ones that we're facing today and have continually and suc and often successfully responded by looking
[18:05]outside of their communities by embracing new ideas and by Building Bridges between cultures religions and
[18:16]civilizations in order to create new problem solving strategies that nobody would have thought were possible so I remain
[18:26]hopeful that we as a global Community will find Solutions and that each of us
[18:34]has within us the unique the the innate potential to formulate our own unique blend of Knowledge and Skills that will
[18:44]be part of the solution be the change as they say in the world while simultaneously enriching our own lives so I wish each of you in this room
[18:55]the very best of luck in your own journey toward wholeness and I hope we can continue this conversation when we meet again someday
[19:06]soon at the crossroads thank you