Before You Change The World
In order to change the world, you must understand the difference between the things you can control and the things you cannot control.
Each of The Six Environments is an entire University Faculty. The persistence of these Six Environments can be seen in the way Universities organize Information. The purpose of a University is to teach these Environments — but most importantly — how these Environments and their Functions Symbiosize in the Biosphere. A typical university contains the following Faculties: Law School, Business School, Sociology & Liberal Arts, Technology & Engineering School, Physical & Life Sciences.
In order to change the world, you must understand the difference between the things you can control and the things you cannot control. Presumably, you want to make money by understanding the difference between the two.
Whether you’re reading this in a jail cell or in the C-Suite, you have control over your:
Energy
Attention
Time
What you do not have control over, however, are The Six Environments.
What You Can & Cannot Control — Business
Let’s zoom WAY OUT. Fundamentally, what you cannot control is the fact that you live on Earth. The Mystics used to call the Earth The Kingdom. In life, you can control your time, energy, and attention.
In business, you can control your:
GOPST (Goals Objectives Plans Strategies & Tactics)
Intended Target Market
Product
We’ll delve into each of these at a later time. Product-Market Fit occurs when there’s Congruence across Time Between:
Goals Objectives Plans Strategies & Tactics (GOPST)
Product
Target Market Who Finds 10x Value Differential With your Product (Not necessarily your Intended Target Market)
While you can control your GOPST, Target Market, and Product, what you cannot control in your business is called The Six Environments:
Political, Legal & Regulatory Environment
Economic Environment
Sociocultural Environment
Technological Environment
Competitive Environment
Geographic Environment
The Six Environments Framework was created by Professor Richardson, a Professor of International Management (U of T, Seneca). The Six Environments is the precise reason that Professor Richardson is requested for Television Interviews more than his peers.
As a person in business, you respond to The Six Environments by making decisions around your GOPST, Target Market and Product.
As an aside, I believe that the world is in turmoil because we do not have a common language with which to describe and criticize the world.
When we have a common language AND are courageous enough to separate the things we can control vs. the things we cannot control, then and only then can we describe, criticize, and then enact high-impact, sustainable change with a clear view of the Trade-offs. After all, most of the incidents in IT are caused by changes made by IT. :P
Like PMBOK did for PM. Like ITIL did for Service Management Like GVDS is doing for Design Thinking.
What we need is a Minimum Viable Nomenclature to so we can progress from Is -> Ought Debates.
This common language starts with a basic understanding of The Six Environments.
Job Hunting And The Six Environments
I discovered the true value of The Six Environments as a Recruiter. I’ve been a Recruiter/Headhunter/Headhunter Launching Startups and a Teacher for 15 years. Now I’m doing what I used to do on the phone, in public.
As a Headhunter, my job was supposed to be to place Executives in high-paying, high-status jobs. But that’s not the way I saw my job. Not entirely.
As a Headhunter, I saw that my job was to place an Executive in a Job with Earning Power. A Job with Earning Power is a job that — if performed effectively and efficiently — confers the ability to earn MORE MONEY in the future onto the successful Executive.
In order words, a job with Earning Power enables the successful Executive to Earn More Money in the future.
That just left one problem: how could I predict which companies and startups would have the highest probability of conferring Earning Power onto the Executive I placed in a job? To know that, I’d have to predict the future.
More specifically, in order to deliver Jobs with Earning Power to my Executive Candidates, I’d have to forecast the most lucrative Problems Worth Solving, Jobs-to-be-Done, and Functions-Worth-Delivering across the globe. Then and only then would I be able to select the startups and companies who I believed had the best chance at dominating a future that didn’t exist with a Whole Product.
So how did I predict the future? That’s easy. Problems Worth Solving, Jobs-to-be-Done, and Functions-Worth-Delivering emerge as a result of the collision, mixing, and cooperation between the Six Environments across time:
Political, Legal & Regulatory Environment
Economic Environment
Sociocultural Environment
Technological Environment
Competitive Environment
Geographic Environment
Humans — for obvious reasons — have divided the Earth into countries. Humans have divided the Earth into countries primarily on the basis of Geography.
Predicting the Future by Applying The Six Environments
How can Geography help us predict the future?
Geographical Environment
The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fat
Nuff said. (Remember — what IS does not imply what OUGHT — the future can be predicted but it’s better if you achieve the future for obvious reasons).
Sociocultural Environment
There is an important school in Sociology called Functionalism. Functionalism says that everything exists because it performs a necessary Function.
Function is all around. For example, Crime allows Society to Punish the Criminal, thus clarifying and portraying the Rule of Law across the Country.
The Economist David Foote in his breakthrough Boom Bust & Echo proudly stated,
Demography, the study of human populations, is the most powerful tool for understanding the past and forecasting the future. — Foote
To predict the future we must understand the Sociocultural Environment.
Technological Environment
Can you see how an understanding the history and trends in the Six Environments can lead to trillion-dollar businesses?
Economic Environment
Competitive Environment
Many thanks to Professor Rothenberg for pointing me in the right direction. Homospatial Thinking and Janusian Thinking [The Divinity of Number in general via Arthur Koestler] are truly the source of all creativity.
Welcome to Complex Systems. :D
Startups, Sole Proprietors, Corporations, Crown Corporations, Governments, Charities and NGOs like the United Nations — depending on their Goals & Objectives — make money by successfully and continually address Problems Worth Solving, Jobs-to-be-Done, and Functions-Worth-Delivering better than their competition.
Trump VS Clinton (Political), Apple VS Samsung (Technological), Fiat VS Bitcoin (Economic)…you get the idea.
Bonus:
Since Evolution ~ Functionalism | Emergent Radical Biosphere-Direction Evolving Changing Innovation that Diffuses According to Universal Scaling Laws…
…Biologists — where are you?
Types of Symbiosis in the Biosphere
Mutualism: Both organisms involved benefit. ($$)
Obligate: The symbiosis is essential to the survival of both organisms. ($$$)
Facultative: The symbiosis benefits both organisms, but isn’t necessary to their survival. ($ or $$ if Conspicuous Consumption-based! LMAO)
Commensalism: One organism benefits, the other is unharmed.
Inquilinism: One organism uses the other for permanent shelter.
Metabiosis: One organism creates a habitat for the other organism.
Phoresy: One organism uses another for travel.
Microbiota: Organisms which create communities inside of a host.
Parasitism: One organism benefits, the other organism is harmed.
Necrotrophic: A parasite which kills its host.
Biotrophic: A parasite which sustains itself with a living host.
Just Curious — Did each of the Four Industrial Revolutions come about — in Time — in order to allow the Population to experience further and further S-Curves Upwards (14:12) — Super-exponential Unbounded Growth!? The Continual Cycles of Innovation = Four Industrial Revolutions. My current hypothesis is that we came from light → meat and we are traveling back up the meat → light foodchain once again.
Talk about the Mechanical Encrusted Upon The Living (Bergstrom).
Faster and Faster and Faster = Singularity.