Being Spherical: Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century

In this concise, illustrated work exploring the dynamics of living in the 21st century, Phil Lawson and Robert L. Lindstrom show us how we individually and collectively shape the future - a future no longer dominated by traditional hierarchies and concentrated power centers.
The authors explain why, in this dawning era of interconnection and interdependency, we require a dramatic transformation in the way we see, think and act. Using mythological imagery in the form of The Sphere and an innovative and adaptive vocabulary, they introduce us to concepts and processes for reshaping our lives, our organizations and our world for the better. In addition, they introduce the Spherical Modeling Tool (SMT), a practical hands-on awareness application. BEING

SPHERICAL GUIDES US AS WE LEARN TO:
* Prepare for a future we cannot even vaguely predict.
* Raise our children well in a climate of moral uncertainty.
* Create viable organizations in an era of extreme complexity.
* Come to the aid of an abused and ailing planet.

AS WE LEARN TO SEE THE SPHERE WE:
* Understand why we do what we do and what to do differently.
* Discover creative solutions to longstanding problems.
* Connect and reconnect within ourselves and with others.
* Ready ourselves of quantum leaps in inspiration and awareness.

THE GREATER OUR SPHERICAL INTEGRITY THE BETTER WE:
* Flex with internal and external pressures.
* Adapt to disorienting and accelerating change.
* Respond to unpredictable and uncontrollable conditions.
* Roll through hard times and bounce forward from adversity.

Excerpted from Being Spherical: Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century by Phil Lawson, Robert L. Lindstrom. Copyright 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Spherical Transition

To live well in the world, our expectations, attitudes and behaviors must be in tune with the times.

We can all agree on one thing. To put it mildly, the 21st century is off to a rocky start.

We turned the corner of the New Millennium without the world coming to an end, as some had predicted, but the dawning century has so far failed to bring with it worldwide peace, security, global prosperity, shared wisdom or enlightenment. Despite our ability to see inside atoms, unravel the human genome, knit the globe with the Internet and perform a thousand other remarkable feats of science and technology, despite deep thinking and profound insights into the nature of our own minds, history and societies, the human race appears to be in as serious a pickle as it has ever been.

We face mounting threats and questions that have no clear source or simple answers. A few examples taken from the news of the day:

* Why are both religious and political extremism on the rise?
* Why are we knowingly poisoning our planet and ourselves?
* Why is anxiety the top mental illness in the Western world?
* Why are global financial markets in increasing turmoil?
* Why are global political tensions escalating and expanding?
* Why is white-collar crime a growing epidemic?
* Why is suicide the leading cause of violent death worldwide?
* Why do children shoot children at school?

As undeniably serious as those questions are, Being Spherical is not intended as a ranting sidewalk sermon. We are not prophets of doom and gloom who get their kicks out of scaring people into listening to what they have to say. Our purpose is not to fill decent people with dread and despair--there are plenty of folks doing that already.

We spotlight those and other dangers because it is critically important that, as we begin the process of Being Spherical, we first acknowledge that the human species is not adapting particularly well to the realities of our age. As we enter the new era of interconnection, the outdated picture of the world bequeathed to us by our ancestors remains deeply branded on our psyches where it is stifling our dreams, blighting our planet and killing our spirit. The most serious struggle we face in the 21st century is not any single problem or series of problems. It is the conflict between how we think the world is and what we are discovering it to be.

Being Spherical offers both a conceptual and practical approach to putting ourselves and our organizations into accord with the prevailing reality. Conceptually, we have attempted to extract the essence of The Sphere from nature, science and human experience. We have distilled it, converted it to words and pictures, and evoked both its conceptual and literal meaning. The Sphere depicts our challenges and potentials in context with changes in the speed, obstacles and conditions of life in the New Millennium.

On the practical side, Being Spherical is a process for transitioning our thinking. Using the Spherical Modeling Tool (SMT), a computer based visualization aid, we see a new, more relevant and valid approach to measuring our success, finding our place in life, gauging our performance, assessing our worth and evaluating our decisions. The SMT paints a dynamic picture of people and organizations in action. Think of it as the I.Q. test, the Rorschach test, the profit-and-loss statement, personality assessments, résumés, the scales of justice and the org chart rolled into one.

The Sphere is not exclusionary. While it is applicable to such areas as business, government, healthcare, education, science and virtually any other areas of human endeavor, it is not specific to any of them.

The purpose of The Sphere and the SMT is to help us flex, adapt and respond positively to the changes in our lives and our world. Together they provide a new way to make sense of what is happening, see why it is happening and understand what we can do to influence what will happen.

When we see the true shape of life, we break through our outdated vision of the world and see ourselves and our organizations as complex webs of interrelationships. As we learn to influence the dynamic patterns of our lives and organizations, fear and anxiety begin to lose their iron grip. We manifest the attitudes, traits and behaviors we need to live well and meaningfully. We better understand the source of ideas, inspirations, actions and events. We cope better. We create more. We destroy less.

It all comes down to basically two choices: stay locked in destructive patterns of raw survival, quick fixes and mass delusion, or attempt to reverse the damage, make the most of our talents, maximize the potential of our species and leave the world in better shape than we found it.

To see The Sphere or not to see The Sphere, that is the question.