The Heartbeat of my Embryonic New Book

I have a new book in my gut. Like a lot of “books” today, I don’t know, upon delivery, what it will most closely resemble: a physical or digital book, an online training, a series of booklets, or a course including instructor certification or some other form I haven’t yet heard of.

The concept came when a CEO said, “I am supposed to be a really good problem solver. So far I can’t get this fixed in my organization.” I could feel a flutter in my abdomen. Once again I found myself wondering about our national obsession with problem solving; the approach upon which most if not all of us have built our professional lives and successes one way or another.

The reality of the new book came to me as I did my first two CEO trial interviews. This is getting weirdly real, something I wouldn’t trust until then. I could feel it kicking gently at all hours. My wife, Linda, and my friend Peter both say they both knew I would have a new book idea a year before I did. Apparently, they recognized and trusted the early signs more than I did.

Today I went to an interactive lecture by the eminent Dr. Robert Brent Toplin, a recent colleague and friend of mine. Title: Fake News and Its Impact on American Society, presented by OLLI’s Einstein Circle.  During Bob’s remarks and from the audience’s questions and observations, I realized I was hearing the description of multiple, overlapping, intersecting, interpenetrating magnetic fields. It began to sound weirdly like quantum physics to me, including:
• We have a long national history of information, accurate and inaccurate, being planted to influence our thinking and our voting
• Authority figures declaring truthful information is false
• Authority figures declaring false information is true
• The blurring of the lines between columnists taking a position and reporters simply reporting the facts
• The astounding changes in our source of news and the speed at which it travels
• Our frequent human preference for gossip, preferably salacious,

Instead of looking at this list and using your problem solving lenses, imagine knowing that it cannot be solved in any classical American way. Instead, begin to see as a system of electrical pathways, forces intersecting, diverting, tying themselves in knots and us along with them. What if the capacities of the future require us to be at least as good, if not better, at systems analysis as we are at problem solving?

If you can begin to see this, and how much work we will have to put into it, you can begin to hear the heartbeat of my embryonic new book

I’ve created quite a challenge for myself, knowing where to start but not knowing where I will end up with this nor how I’ll get there. Highly analogous to an extended, worthwhile, After 50 life AND to necessary C Suite wisdom around the world to survive and prosper.

What is your experience with situations that can’t be fixed and moved beyond like a problem that is solved and left behind? Examples? How do you describe these situations to yourself and others? How do you adapt accordingly? Let me know, please. You might even get quoted and credited in the new book, especially if you are giving me business/work examples.