The Flower Chronicles: A Radical Approach to Systems and Organizational Development

Albert Einstein has stated - "When the Solution is Simple, God is Answering." There is in fact a simple answer staring at us from all facets and corners of life, regardless of the question, regardless of the problem. This answer is summarized by a flower and captured in the journey that a seed makes in becoming a flower.

In this journey there are 3 stages - the seed or physical state, the stalk or vital state, and the flower or mental state. Any sustainable organization or system will be found to have traversed these stages. Any organization or system that is floundering or facing challenges, will be found to be stuck in one of these stages.

Hence, the state of an organization or system can be understood by chronicling the stages of the flower journey it may have gone through. Its road to fulfillment can be envisaged by foreseeing the stages of the flower journey it has yet to go through.

This simple truth is true regardless of the scale or complexity of the organization or system. Hence it is true of the person, of a team, of a corporation, of a market, of a country, or of a global system.

The Flower Chronicles will elaborate this simple approach through reflecting on many classes of practical organizational and system problems we are confronted with daily. These reflections will be from the realms of personal development, organizational development, industry development, market and financial development, political development, and global development.

The book consists of 8 parts.

In Part 1 - The Flower Philosophy, the radical approach to organization and system development will be simply laid out. In Part 2 - Individual Development, the key role that an individual has in bringing about ground-breaking change will be explored. In Part 3, Organizational Design & Development, some organizational basics will be laid out, an interesting case-study on the 500-yr old architectural masterpiece, Machu Picchu, will be explored, and some experiments over the course of three years in the application of the Flower Chronicles conducted by the author at Stanford University Medical Center will be discussed.

Part 4, Industry Development, will explore the future of key industries such as Food & Agriculture, Energy, Retail, Internet, Software, Healthcare, and Consulting, from a Flower Chronicles perspective. Part 5, Financial Rebirth, will look at how to shift our global financial environment by changing the way markets function, again by the application of the Flower Chronicles paradigm.

Part 6, Global Political Development, will in look at some global lessons from the 2012 Presidential Election in the USA, and study some of the issues discussed from a Flower Chronicles perspective. Suggestions for creating a safer, more peaceful world will naturally emerge from also looking at macro- and micro-level developments that need to take place in various regions of the world. Part 7, The Nth + 1 Wave of Sustainability, will examine the deepest drivers of sustainability and provide some insight into how to promote these. The role that Human Resources can play in making this real will be examined. Finally, Part 8, Paradigms for the Future, will examine a flower-based framework of future development, some paradigms to move us along the phases of this framework, and a possible future were the journey to the heart of the flower to be successfully completed.

The answers are simple, and are always staring at us in the face. The real issue is whether we have the courage and will to execute what is being suggested. This too is a certainty, but like every other journey, has to go through stages before it culminates in the reality of a flower.