What HAVEN’T you noticed lately?

Does it seems that despite creating systems, complex organizations and supporting social media and communication systems to acquire and manage knowledge, we often miss something.

There is always something of which we are unaware. No matter how much knowledge we have of our organizations, our customers, our markets, our competitors, there is always more to know.

So perhaps we’re going about it all wrong.

In trying to capture as much information as we can possibly find, we may be undertaking an exercise in which, like the Red Queen says in Through the Looking Glass, 'it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.'

Perhaps we should ask a simpler question. Like … 'What haven’t you noticed lately?'

say it - 'What HAVEN’T I noticed lately?'

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to achieve the requisite awareness of what we haven’t noticed while we are immersed in a comfortable, or at least accustomed, environment. We are all subject to the ground-rules, that is, the rules and unperceived effects that govern our ground or context.

It is like asking a fish to suddenly become aware of water.

One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in. It is only when it is pulled from the water that the fish becomes acutely aware of its former environment.

The challenge in achieving the awareness to notice the formerly unnoticed - what is called 'integral awareness' of the total environment - is to create an appropriate 'anti-environment.'

Simple. Change. Now.