Socratic Design – Enlightening the dark matter

By Canay Atalay, officially published in the Harvard Business Review Turkey, November 2017.

Canay Atalay’s journey of enlightening the dark matter within companies using Socratic Design. “Philosophy is not only to theorise about the world, but also to change it. Purpose of philosophy is to articulate the real problems that exist, but have not yet been articulated. (…) True transformation seeks to destroy false conscience, and articulates something in the present that beckons the future.”

After working for almost two decades with small and big companies, universities, impact organisations, municipalities and governmental bodies -defining their goals, strategies, services, communications, business models and digital transformations-, I noticed a dead end for each change program, what I like to call ‘Dark Matter’; an epidemic unknown zone where people- regardless of their rank, background, gender and role- show different levels of resistance to change and collaboration for innovation. This resistance sometimes came from individuals for example; a CEO refusing to act on a new roadmap, instead distributing responsibility to executives without authority, or from a collective group such as a technology department not delivering the promised developments to the marketing department, during a disruptive digital transformation program in a highly competitive environment.

On paper, everything looked good in our processes and methods; we were designing together with decision makers in the companies representing all the involved departments- in design thinking workshops, think tanks, and meetings with world-class designers and strategists using human centric methodologies. Participants were agreeing on the outcomes and setting the KPI’s together with immediate approval of the decision makers. Still the dark matter was in place. The main question I had was why were people not collaborating on their own designs and desired futures? After reflecting on it, I realised; what typically happens is that business people will want to talk about their products, their delivery systems, and their profitability models. But what tears businesses apart aren’t necessarily those kinds of things. What tear them apart is people that don’t get along with one another; they have different values, addictive thoughts and beliefs that create separation rather than collaboration.

In 2016, I came across a robust and coherent philosophical model, the Socratic Design Method. It was revolutionary in my quest to enlighten the Dark Matter of human’s individual nature, how we influence each other, how we collaborate or fail to do so. According to model creator, physicist and who is now my philosopher Humberto Schwab, Socratic Design’s mission is to free people and organisations from the burden of unproductive or even destructive procedures, unclear language, old thoughts, silo thinking and wrong assumptions. After all, to create new futures based on strong new values, we must be in a state of virginal thinking, not as a stand alone, but as a hyper creative collective. Since my encounter with this practical and very effective method, I have been getting philosophical training from Humberto to become a Socratic Designer, acting as a global ambassador of Socratic Design and applying it to my business as well as to my life.

How does philosophy apply to business?

For too long, philosophy-bashing has been keen to follow the mantra of ‘too much talk, not enough action’ in the field of business (remember ‘Don’t philosophise with me’ saying in our culture). This is not, however, surprising if you approach philosophy with the same instrumentality that dominates business. Philosophy pursues questions rather than answers them. In this sense, the responsibility of philosophy is not so much to answer our questions, but to question our given answers. Philosophy is not some kind of recipe or precept. Nevertheless, the placement of the concept of morality or justice under an investigative lens can help us move beyond the confinements of prevailing knowledge. This is the essence of the discipline of philosophy – it teaches not what to think, but how to think. It examines the enduring fundamental questions concerning human life, society, ethics and knowledge, just to name a few. Whereas, the business discipline represents a definite ordering of the world through the fabrication of concepts, methods and models as a way to reduce complexity, philosophy explores its conceptual framework and developments. A generic framework of business for problem-solving speed up the process of finding a solution, but it is at the expense of autonomous thinking. In this way, philosophy can help articulate the blind spots of business by looking behind its assumed certainties and theoretical preconditions. By pondering the questions which are beyond the scope of business, philosophy can broaden the reflectivity-horizon of future business leaders to help them manage complexity and make sound decisions, not only in the purview of good business, but also in accordance with the needs of society.

We are facing a singularity point in our culture and in our economy. Some of the main reasons driving this change are; exponential technological development (impossible to master by human linear thinking), big data explosion, end of the coal and steel era, end of classical hierarchical organisations, change from industrial forces to informational forces, demographic changes, geo strategically ruptures, revolutions in sciences with impact on the human self image, collapse of classical pillars in economical approaches, deep change cultures and values, change in paradigms of personhood and personal life…All these changes are mostly trying to be addressed with classical approaches which mainly contain the assumptions of the old world, that we want to leave behind. People think that they need to think deeper and better, in think tanks, brainstorm sessions, retreats and so on. But the problem lies in our thoughts and deep convictions; it is a wrong approach of the possibility of thinking. We all are reproducing the same addictive thoughts over and over again and projects these as reality. A lot of meetings and think tanks will result in producing the same old stuff in new clothes, costing time, energy, money and opportunity.

Only when we can think “from scratch” we can create new horizons, new futures, new plans and new goals.

Any company wants to leave behind as quickly as possible its old strong approach which is now a burden in disguise. We want companies to be young and fresh, flexible to the tsunami of change. These can only be realised when we transform the people involved in a deep dive of collective transformative thinking, in which we do not solve problems (that are reproductive), but in which we create new lines of meaning and understanding of the missions that can be implied in our activities.

With Socratic Design we do not transfer step-by-step from the old problems to something new, we radically change the way we communicate, dialogue and think together.

Socratic Design for innovation

In Socratic Design, we observe 3 common problems most of the organisations have that are the biggest barriers in front of innovation, all around the world;

1-Fragmented organisations

Many organisations are fragmented by separate departments, different disciplines of thinking, values and procedures or just non-communicative transactions. In order to create new products, services and apps we need a strong-shared base of common intelligence. We all want fast and strong new innovations, but being on the surface of these super speed currents, bears the risk of a speedy disappearance.

2-Thoughts instead of thinking

When we have a thought, we have the sensation that we really ‘think’. Unfortunately we are just ‘rehearsing’ the same thought over and over again. These thoughts are addictive and provoke a release of endorphin. This is also the main reason why we cannot listen to other people; we transform the thoughts expressed into our own familiar thoughts.

3- Fragmented personalities

In order to create real quality for good life practices, we need to be in a state of ‘clear mind’. But not only our surroundings are fragmented, we have incorporated these fragmented ideas and thoughts. We mirror our surroundings. When the car forces us to put on a safety belt, we will act like responsible drivers. When the workplace radiates distrust by cameras, electric gates, and checkpoints, we feel more distrustful and possibly act like it. Our mind is full of ‘environmental & cultural assumptions’, such as; ‘People are selfish’, ‘Man is to another man a wolf’, ‘Academics have more wisdom’, ‘Manual labour is lower then brain labour’, ‘Men are rational beings’ and ‘Abstract things are more truthful then concrete stuff.’

Coherent Communities Create Coherent Futures

We need to architect our organisations and institutions for flexibility and adaptability. Existing incentive models in business focus heavily on short-term indicators like quarterly earnings and are not set up for long-term changes. Almost all of our leadership globally is set up to manage an incremental, predictable, status quo, linear world designed by few for the benefit of the few. But we’re entering a totally unknown era; and we need to architect completely new institutions.

With Socratic Design, we first form a collective mind; this mind generates new perspectives that connect with deep human needs, in a highest neo cortex level of collaborative thinking. In this context different silos and departments can come together in a new value landscape and a pristine way of thinking. When the group is at its best it creates new concrete practices for the company and for clients. These practices, products and services will also change the people living with it and make businesses future proof as ‘Art of Social Businesses’.* (See diagram below)

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