2014 Tilting The Tipping Point: The Netherlands In Transition

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Last week me and my fellow ‘flexible professional’ participated the first ‘Tilting: the Netherlands in Transition’- meeting. These so-called ‘war room’ meetings are initiated by Jan Rotmans, transition expert, and Ronald van den Hoff, owner Seats2meet and author of Society 3.0. They invited call to action initiators that all in their own way contribute in (speeding-up) the transition in the Netherlands.

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The transition
Through evolution and revolution we shift from a post-industrial society towards a technological society through exponential innovation. In the post-industrial society people are in service of vertical governance structures, the economy is of primary concern for welfare, where the industrial revolution endowed us in the role of either consumer or producer and shared a symmetrical relationship. Whereas in the technological era, Society 3.0, people rebuild governance structures into horizontal governance structures, where the ecology is of primary concern for well being and consumers and producers simultaneously share the same role, in Dutch defined as ‘fabricenten’ and ‘procudenten’.

Lost in transition
The big elephant in the room that everyone sees it, and knows how to define it, however has a hard time mobilising it. I briefly summarize the elephant on macro level: the transition to sustainable energy can not keep up with climate change, financial sector floating on air; on liquid that does not even exist. Healthcare and education become more expensive every year, meanwhile houses and pensions lose value. In the meantime technology changes so fast that the average person cannot keep up with the impact of these changes in workstyle and virtual possibilities in his or her private life.

Of course you could argue, this immense disruption of our systemic society is part of our Darwinistic evolution. However me personally, I am more determined in understanding the role of reciprocity when it comes to global commons. During an online ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ experiment, while studying Sociology, for me it clearly pointed out that people may adopt strategies of conditional cooperation, where more others contribute to the public good, the more they will contribute themselves.

Isn’t it our duty as human beings to avoid as much collateral damage as possible and become more resilient as a society as a whole. Rotterdam is making its city adaptive for the rising sea level, we as human beings should start collective action to prepare ourselves for the overflow of financial, environmental, political and business change. We see the big elephant in the room, which is on macro level and feels like ‘too big to fail and too big to change’. What are our call to action initiators tilting the tipping point’ concrete next steps to not feel lost in translation in facilitating organizations and individuals. How to activate and facilitate the immense knowledge we have (big ideas 2014, public pioneers, P-nuts awards, TEDx) into pragmatic and scalable results.

Questions that were raised during the meeting: how can we call this transition upon us? How can we point to this ‘spirit of the age’ to the average person that acts out of fear to let go of the old – habitational – economy? How can we provide servant leadership that facilitates, inspires and guides, that strives for the purest and for a collaborative approach. In the end, we are all leaders building on a new identity of the Netherlands. Where and how can we find these ambassadors and brokers that advocate and demonstrate with us how to step out of the conventional and feel supported?

The challenge: how to encourage and mobilise ‘the’ 20%?
Transition manager Jan Rotmans advocates that – according to business strategies – we need to mobilise 20% of our society to pass the tipping point, the other 80% will follow and we will speed up for 5 or 10 years, before the damage is overwhelming and leaves us lost in translation. We need call to action inspirators as Trendrede, Trendbox, TEDxAmsterdam; public pioneers as the Singularity University, Ambtenaar 2.0, Operationa Education and Drift, Society 3.0 facilitators as Seats2Meet in order to pass impactful knowledge, expertise, networks forward to various organization or individual.

After a brainstorm we all agreed that we need to continue inspire, connect and share the knowledge how they can become part of this society 3.0: where can they find the knowledge what to do next, what are the alternatives, how to start an own business? How to unravel the pioneer in each one of us?
1. inspiration through multimedia techniques (such as TEDx, multimedia online academic paper the correspondent);
2. knowledge sharing (society 3.0 facilitates through more than 70 S2M locations and an online toolkit, including a publishing tool incl apps, magazine/blog);
3. make the call to action initiators  ambassadors of the asymmetric network. The Trendrede could do this through its expertise and start multiple Trendrede’s and TEDx through mainstream programming so my family can also keep up! Multimedia could manage this through internet television, Seats2meet, throughs.

Toolkit 3.0 to empower individuals, teams and organizations
Me, myself and I, take my part by founding JoinedGenerations and provide a toolkit for collaboration and communication skills that empowers professionals to seize the opportunities in Society 3.0. These are skills that stimulate your grow-mindset – embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, taking risks, fail fast and learn from mistakes – and make you act your way into a new way of thinking. Turning these notions into practice, empowers you to be the engine of personal development and social innovation in your team and organization.

Internalizing all that I have seen and experienced for the last couple of years entering the job market. Including my misfit in society 0.0. At this stage I feel empowered and recognized by others: I feel I am a hell of a lucky woman who always wondered why I had this drive connecting various people, re-distributing abundance of social capital, giving social events a deeper meaning and go beyond.

By seizing opportunities in society 3.0 we are tilting the tipping point for transition!

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http://www.knowledgeactivator.com/news/2014-tilting-the-tipping-point-the-netherlands-in-transition/

1 COMMENT

  1. As someone who has worked at the international level, both as a civil servant and as an environmental lobbyist, I realize that’s it is not inly important to try to improve structures and systems, but also practice what you preach at the local level. I now find fulfillment in working together with my neighbours in nature conservation projects in and around our village Norg, in Drenthe, The Netherlands. Not only is nature preserved, but the social spin-off of these projects is considerable.
    Ernst. R. Klatte

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