Business Analysis ideas from Chronicles from the Future
Cronache dal Futuro is a recently published book, Italian version of Chronicles from the Future of which I’ve been in charge for the translation. I share the story with you on the Business Analysis Blog. In fact, from the photo of the evolution of our society proposed by Chronicles from the Future, some reflections can also be drawn on the Business Analysis of the future, even the near one.
History
It is 1921 and Paul Amadeus Dienach, a Swiss-Austrian teacher with poor health, falls into a coma destined to last a year, due to an attack of “Lethargic Encephalitis”, a neurological disorder that had spread in Europe in the 1920s.
The awakening in 1922
When he woke up in 1922, knowing that he no longer had much to live and hoping that a warmer climate could improve his conditions, Paul moved to Greece. Here he begins giving French and German lessons to a group of students. Two years later, a few months before his death and without revealing what it was about, he handed over his memoirs to his favorite student, George Papachatzis. Papachatzis would later become an eminent Professor of Law, as well as Rector of the Panteion University of Social Sciences in Athens.
Translating, Papachatzis immediately realizes the incredible story told by his teacher. In fact, Dienach’s consciousness, during his coma, found itself inexplicably projected into 3906 AD, incarnating in the body of another man, Andrea Northam.
And the Memory of 3906 AD
Almost twenty centuries of future history are thus told, from the nightmare of overpopulation to the World Wars. From globalization to the revolutionary system of planetary organization, from the colonization of Mars to the new evolutionary stage of man.
Today, a century later and for the first time, this unique and controversial Diary has been carefully analyzed and translated into multiple languages, to make it available to all.
It is not a science fiction story and was not written in the hope of being published. It is rather the diary of a normal person who witnessed our future!
Andreas Northam is the man from 3906 in whom Paul is ‘incarnated’ (?): he is an accomplished researcher who lives his time perfectly inserted into an ideal society that has defeated wars, ignorance and poverty.
A New Society
What Dienach lives is without a shadow of a doubt an experience bordering on the fantastic, he experiences not only the life of the distant future, he also has the possibility of knowing it in depth – thanks to his friend Stefan who stands by his side, like a new Virgil with Dante – the way of thinking and acting that led to that form of atheistic religiosity at the basis of an almost perfect society.
Ideas from the Future
What are the main ideas, associated with the world of business, that we can take from this original story?
Work as a tool for personal fulfillment
First of all, the men of the future seem free from work, understood as a form of sustenance or even survival. In fact, all fundamental material goods (but also many superfluous ones) are produced by machines. The goods are totally sufficient for everyone’s life, thanks to an organization managed on a global, planetary level. The message is clear: man will be able to choose to work for his own pleasure, to complete a personal project or implement an idea. Work appears to be an instrument of personal pleasure, certainly not an obligation to survive, as often happens today. From the Diary we perceive that this will have a great meaning for society as a whole: free from obligations, every individual is free to be creative and of added value. Everything mechanical and repetitive is done by machines, in a broad sense.
A conflict-free society
Furthermore, apparently restrictive laws (except for the far from negligible one that regulates births), instead lead to liberation from bureaucracy. People can thus enjoy nature and art without time limits. They are also free to pray, meditate, follow the lessons of the most illustrious masters. In short, we clearly perceive a climate of cooperation at all levels and a substantial cancellation of conflicts, at least at an organizational level.
Is this perhaps the asymptote to aim for? In all organizations, from the family to the company, to society as a whole, conflicts are actually due to egocentric manifestations. They happen between people who instinctively see their own personal interest, and do not have the ability to glimpse the common good. If everyone rows in the same direction, however, a constant win/win condition is created at multiple levels.
The more well-being is created, the more everyone enjoys the same well-being, it is a virtuous circle
it self-regulates, when everyone accepts the underlying organizational structure, noting its undoubtedly satisfactory results.
Beyond utopia: the realism of Chronicles of the Future
The society described by Dienach is essentially the one we would all like to live in. Absolute equality, mutual respect, care for the environment and very high quality of life. Opportunities for personal and collective growth, altruism taken to the nth degree. Paul witnesses all this and his feelings go from the perpetual impostor syndrome to
wanting with all his strength to be an active part of what surrounds him. Thanks to the chronic insomnia he suffers from, but above all his innate curiosity to know, he doesn’t do anything miss the opportunity to fully understand the logic of the society in which he awakened.
With his diary, he wants to be able to bring on his return journey – if there ever is one – what is beautiful and good that the 3906 can offer. Chronicles from the Future is a novel that contains many and that tells of history, faith, philosophy but also of a society that evolves hand in hand with the improvement, including genetic, of the human being. Our brain changes, and one day it will be able to perceive something deeper and higher at the same time. He will be able to recognize the existence and good of others, with all the noblest consequences.
The author has recreated in every detail a world that is fantastic only if you don’t have the courage to dare. It would be nice if at least this time utopia didn’t rhyme with unrealizable, and who knows if at least something of the world imagined by Dienach could come true in the future.
Business Analysis of Chronicles from the Future
The idea of reducing the time dedicated to work is very relevant even today. Automation, for some time now, and more recently artificial intelligence, have represented a concrete challenge for increasing productivity for all companies today. A challenge for Business Analysis at the service of digital transformation, in Italy and in the world, that of today and not just that of Chronicles from the Future!
A further point of great reflection is the potential beneficial effect of a world order that avoids wars and struggles: it is an organizational issue that transcends companies and impacts states and supra-national organizations. Here the challenge for all of us may be to be able to bring part of Utopia into the present. Few of us will be able to act at the level of supra-national organizations. But most will still have the opportunity to bring improvements to the organizations in which each works. And often these are organizations of no small size. Multinationals with impacts on hundreds of thousands of families of employed workers and millions of customers served in different markets.
Finally, the importance of Soft Skills in the profession of Business Analysts is often underlined. In this context, without reaching the evolution of the human brain represented by Chronicles of the Future, we can set ourselves a realistic objective. That of ‘evolving’ the work activity. That is, reduce more operational activities and concentrate one’s efforts on relationships and on improving one’s emotional and relational intelligence.