Competing in The Lotus-Economy
Published by Toby Coop April 4th, 2007 in Learning, Perception, creativity, global economy, human talent, Lotus-Economy, Leadership, imagination, communication, divergent thinkingAn old story tells of a young man who keeps hearing about a wonderful tailor, Zumbach, whose suits can make anyone look handsome and stylish. One day the man goes to Zumbach and asks him to make a suit. So Zumbach takes his measurements and tells him to come back in a week.
A week later the young customer eagerly goes back for his suit and has the man try it on. It looks wonderful – except that one sleeve is longer than the other, the buttons do not match up and the trousers are too short. So the customer complains. Zumbach, deeply affronted, says with great indignation, it’s not the suit. The trouble is the way you are wearing it. If you crook your left elbow just a bit, the sleeves will be perfect. And if you hunch forward and raise your right shoulder, the buttons, match up splendidly. Then if you’ll just bend your knees a bit, you’ll see the trousers are just right.” The customer tries it and, lo and behold, the suit fits like a glove – and it’s gorgeous.”[i]
The tailor is the set of internal principles which shape and cut your experience. The tailor and the suit exist within our mind. Unless you realise that experience is organised into pre-established emotional patterns, then habit, conditioned by language, social conventions and shared concepts, will custom-tailor your experience.[ii] Personal transformation is about understanding the nature of this principle experientially.
The Lotus-Economy Quadrant describes the paradigmatical suits available at the shopping mall of thought. Understanding the logic of how lived experience is conditioned, that is the science of the first person singular, is a strategic imperative for those individuals and organisations who wish to break out of the pernicious nature of habitual thinking and compete in the Lotus-Economy.
[i] Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy, How The Mind Can Heal the Heart, Rider, 2001 p102.
[ii] It is important to understand that thought is not universal in the way it governs our experience. Reality is based on the cultural paradigms that have conditioned our mind. Our perceptions, our rules for living, are DIFFERENT. This understanding has major implications for how businesses design their organizations and work globally. And anyone who thinks that the current western business paradigm will continue to dominate the global economy had better think again: “… the assumption that the world’s cultures will be assimilated to those of the West is an illusion bred of myopia and ethnocentricism. The societal differences are sufficiently great that future international conflicts will be more nearly cultural in origin than economic or political as in the past. Islam, the East (especially China), and the West are on divergent cultural paths and the relative influence of the West, because of the economic advances of the Far East and the demographic growth of Islam, is going to decline. The world is not necessarily going to be safe for democracy or free markets. …By 2007 the most common language used on the internet will be Chinese and the prediction by some economists is that within a few years as much as half the world’s international air traffic will involve travel through Pacific Asia.” Richard E. Nisbett, The Geography of Thought, Free Press, 2003, p.222-224.Tags: Personal transformation, habits, thinking, business stories, thinking culture
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