| By
mid 1974, I had become completely unemployable. It
had taken nearly 18 years of dedicated, hard work
to reach this state. |
| I
had steadily developed a radical view, not only of
architecture itself, but the purposes to which it
should be put. I knew enough to question almost everything
- technically, ethically and organizationally - but
did not have the “social” skills to be
part of any organization that I had experienced since
my building
days [link] in
the 1960’s. I had found only one [link] organization
that, in any way, created the organizational space
for growth and creativity - and this only in one
narrow field of work. |
| Because
of my past work and my ideas, it was easy for me
to get projects or assignments but any organization
that I worked for was quickly driven mad by my approach
to work process as I was by their methods of decision,
their ethics and work standards. I had no idea, at
the time, that I represented a revolution in the
work place - the emergence of the Knowledge Worker.
I thought that I was simply the odd man out. |
| Until
1974, I had not focussed on what the larger issues
of management might be. I had simply fought every
organization I worked for by insisting on running
my projects another way. The company [link] that
I did not have to fight was a brilliant, curous exception.
When I succeeded in keeping ”control“ of
my projects, I often brought them in at 30 to 40%
less cost and in over 50 to 60% less time. This performance
gave me a certain immunity - but not always. Once,
I built a small hotel (40 units) in 6 weeks (instead
of the 6 months the ownership considered a great
push goal) and under cost. This enabled the hotel
to open in season instead in the annual down cycle.
The resulting difference in the ROI was enormous.
After the project, I was fired for going against
the General Superintendent’s orders although
nothing I did lead to any adverse circumstances for
the company. My blunt and abrasive personally, of
course, contributed to their dislike of my methods.
I thought he was wrong and told him so - I also told
him to let me run my job or fire me. He did both
by firing me after the result and got satisfaction
two ways. Ah, the lessons of youth! |
| Throughout
the 50s and 60s, I continued my random eclectic reading
habits reading on average one book a day. I read
in almost every field, architecture, design, philosophy,
biology, psychology, engineering mechanics, future
studies, art, education, computer science, humanities
- and so on. |
| Now,
with real time on my hands, I really got into the
program. |
| For
two years I did almost nothing but read. Several
books a day - several subjects simultaneously all
leading to new subjects leading to others and on
to others. It was a repeat
of my
time [link] in
the Philippines a quarter a century before. It was
glorious. I built a library of several hundred
carefully selected books that, together, produced
a synthesis that “contained” my experiences
and produced a way of looking at the future.
|
| My
method was derived from “How To Read A Book” a
classic written by Mortimor Adler the developer of
the “Great Books of the Western World” and
the design of Britannica III. He called this “Syntopical
Reading” [link]. |
| One
of my source documents was the Whole Earth Catalog
and I paid particular attention to the recommendations
of Steward Brand and Jay Baldwin. I also read a great
deal of fiction of all kinds but science fiction
slowly become my favorite. Writers like Heilein,
Asamof and Dirk seemed to me to be among the few
that could even imagine a future different
than the ONE we lived in. Out of all this - and out
of my experiences of building (both positive and
negative) - slowly emerged a different world-view. Something was
happening! Or trying to. What
was it [link]? |
| Still
lurking, in the back of my mind, was that strange
encounter that I had at the construction project
in New York City, in 1961, where I stumbled on to
the question of increasing rate-of-change and complexity
[link]. |
| Before
this period, I did not have a container in which
to put my experiences and reading. I was seeing,
however, that many ideas that went back to my earliest
thinking were beginning to emerge, not only for me,
but sporadically on the fringes of intellectual thought
and technology [link] development.
A new model was taking shape and the perceptions
that I had developed in New York about the growth
of change and complexity were showing signs
of proving out. Toffler had published “Future
Shock,” Bell, “The Postindustrial Society” and
Herman Kahn was promoting a radical notion of the
future from the Hudson Institute. His basic view,
which fell under much criticism at the time, was
that humankind was able to solve the problems
facing us and that the near future was going to be
benign. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives
liked this point of view. |
| It
was at this moment that I read two people that, together,
provided a Basic framework. One was Thomas Kuhn [link] and
the other was Bucky Fuller [link].
Kuhn wrote a book called “The
Copernican Revolution” in which he traced the
phenomena of paradigm shift. Bucky wrote a
stack of books but the ones that impacted me the
most at this time were “Ideas and Integrities” and
Utopia or Oblivion.” From Bucky I got the idea
of “Anticipatory Design Science.” This combination
of Kuhn and Fuller created a framework: great shifts
have taken place before and they had a pattern -
now was no exception only things were moving at a
faster rate. Decades not centuries. The appropriate
response is to design alternatives and put
them on the shelf for humankind to choose from
when needed. “Change the environment - not
people!” |
| Personally,
I was broke, unmarried, at a dead
end [link] with
my career and had few prospects. In other words,
I had nothing to lose. This was a great
opportunity. I had to reinvent myself [link] so
why not start with the society that I lived in? Most
of the ‘60’s
revolution passed me by because I was too busy building
things and it did not fit my intellectual style.
Now, some of these ideas started to work their way
into my awareness and thought processes. I looked
up and scanned the larger landscape of Human Experience.
What I saw amazed me. |
| During
this period, I did a few commercial design projects
- including a Bank - that were fun and paid most
of the bills. I lived very simply. Friends helped
me out with room and board from time-to-time and
participated in numerous rants that helped
me formulate and integrate my thinking. No doubt
I was a real pain in the ass to most folks. |
| I
started meeting people who had very radical ideas
far away from the mainstream. I found a rich vein
of alternative thinking and experimentation. I discovered
that for every problem our society faced there were
many, many feasible solutions. Every problem.
The storehouse of solutions was full. The “Solution
Box” - as Steward Brand called it - was populated
with many many viable alternatives to the “future” we
were drifting toward - by default [link]. |
| I
discovered that the problems that I faced, professionally,
were not unique to me but systemic of the
entire way we, as a society, organized our organizations
and society itself. A bigger problem, to be sure,
but one that could be worked on with some prospect
of improvement. Through this, my life experience
merged into a larger framework that provided a useful
context for viewing it all together. |
| Also,
I started to reinvestigate several architectural
ideas that had come in and out of my mind over the
last 15 years. Here my concern returned to the cost
of living and the demands that expensive building
placed on people and the attenuation of options that
followed from this unnecessary expense. Was there
a way that high building costs could be dealt with,
as well as, high energy costs? Were the social alternatives
to how resources were shared? Could the concept of
family housing, itself, be rethought to radically
alter the economics of the situation? Yes - it could.
It turned out that there were many alternatives in
building methods, family organization and agricultural
methods. One design that I developed between 1973
and 1977 was DomicileOne [link]
and idea I first sketched in the 6os when I lived
in Phoenix.
An early sketch [link] was
for a couple of lots where I was living in Kansas
City. This project was never realized but the house
and lot did become the nucleus for the Renascense
Project and served as its Library for several years. |
| A
friend of mine asked me to put my discoveries into
a lecture series to be presented at the Kansas City
Unitarian Church in the fall of 1974 [link].
By then, I was more than ready to do something with
all this
material so I accepted and delivered a 20 lecture
series - 60 hours of material and several hundred
books of reading. It provided a model of what
could happen in the last 25 years of the 20th Century. |
| It
pointed the way to alternatives and proposed a new
paradigm of organization. I called it “ReDesigning
the Future” [link] based
on the premise that the future we were “getting” was
not the product of conscious work... but default.
We,as a society, had a hodgepodge
of left over strategies that were being scaled up
to a domain too large, too dynamic and too complex
for them. The series proposed that here would be
- on a global basis - more change between 1975 and
the year 2000 than had occurred since the middle
ages. It took, in those days, three hours of a carefully
worded argument - and numerous examples - to get
people to entertain this basic notion. |
| This
Lecture Series launched the Renascence Project, brought
me Gail,
[link] and
turned my attention to the question that Gail and
I were to ultimately use as the geneses [link] of
MG Taylor Corporation: “how do you facilitate
individuals and organizations through a transformation
of this scale and scope?” |
| In
many respects, the two years of reading - and the
Lecture series that followed, and the book [link] that
follow that - was the most profitable investment
I have ever made. It was in these two years that
I outlined the basis for “Weak
Signal Research [link]” (although
I was not to get the name for it until 1988). It
was through this
process that I was able to find a personal path and
renew my own quest [link].
The ride that followed these incubation years has
been a long and fascinating one - and now, it needs
to
be entirely
redone [link]. Social reality is now now catching up
with the construct. What was prospect is now fact. |
| I
was 36 years old when I delivered the ReCreating
the Future series - today (2000), as I revise this
article, I am nearly 62. In some ways it seems like
a long distance back. In other ways, like yesterday.
I wonder, sometimes, if all of the effort has been
worth it - if any of it has made a difference. This
is, perhaps, a silly question. What would I do with
an answer? I do know that it is time to document [link] this
journey in a form that can be accessed by a large
number of people. Somewhere out there are those starting
a new innovation cycle. They are wondering about
how to do it. They are questioning their sanity.
They are looking for support [link]. |
| For
ReCreating the Future I abstracted a set of creative “rules” extracted
from my reading of innumerable biographies and my
own experience. Gail and I have subsequently used
these in our Work Shops. These “Guidelines” [link] have
helped me at the time of many derailings: |
Have
strong convictions and a flexible mind |
Know
yourself... goals, motives, roots, methods,
capabilities |
Know
the state-of-the-art |
Be
objective about (the ) idea and self |
Work
from the whole to the parts; then from the
parts to the whole |
Define
and document goals, progress, etc. |
Use
metaphor/analogy, i.e. Synectics |
Ask
why.. why... why... what if... why not... |
Integrate
goals to life... live them |
Ask
how was this solved before, what is different
now? |
Organize
your environment |
Expose
yourself to diverse stimuli, and know when
to walk on the beach, etc. |
|
These
work. They also take discipline to practice. Everyone
of them are embedded in the DesignShop, NavCenter
and other processes we use today. Every time I
get lost I go back to this list and “remember.” |
|
Matt
Taylor
Cambridge, Massachusetts
September 16, 1998
SolutionBox
voice of this document:
INSIGHT • POLICY • PROGRAM
|
|
posted
September 16, 1998
revised
January 30, 2000
reformatted
and editied July 27, 2005
(note:
this document is about 95% finished) |
|
|
