An excerpt from the book Homo
Imitans by Leandro Herrero:
Mr Sapiens and Mr Imitans live in different
places, but though they should build bridges between them and
then use them every day, they should also be very mindful of
their different worlds. World II objectives cannot be achieved
in world I territory. Social infections (world II) are
not created by posters. Revolutions are not announced. Well, not
usually. Social movements and cultures are not created by
training.
Communication (world I) is not change.
As the figure on the previous page illustrates,
the maths of world II could not be more different from the maths
of world I. Attrition is to world I what build/scale-up is
to world II. World II effects start small, often unnoticed, with
selected behaviours being practiced by a small number of individuals.
These are then copied by people in their
immediate circle of influence and create ‘clusters of new behaviours’: true new critical masses, copied and spread by others like an
infection, eventually generating ‘new norms’.
Let’s look at the differences between world I
and world II in some real-life organizational examples. Note
that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the contents
of world I, but its main problem is poor scalability and
sustainability, for which it needs the help of world II as we will see
later on. When you look at the highlights in each column, you may have
lots of questions.
Don’t worry, as the rest of the book will
hopefully answer all of them. For now, it’s enough to simply
appreciate the differences or perhaps increase your awareness of which
world you spend most of your time in.
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