Thursday, May 2, 2013

The GLIA Revolution--A New Beginning

We are at a transitional point in human history. After a spectacular 200 year run, the Industrial Revolution is running out of steam. Along with all the institutions and theory that supported the mechanical age. Characterized more now by entrenched bureaucracy, rampant greed, wealth and power concentrations, corruption, centralized authority over capital flows, incompetent political oversight, overzealous security, ideological divides, erosion of ethical standards, and a continual decoupling of the skills we have rather than the skills we need, while macro factors such as climate change, growing population, and demographic shifts hover over an entire planet, for a growing number of us, it is obvious the organizational models that got us here, are completely inadequate for civil society in the 21st century.

Change Management is not the answer. It doesn't work, it hasn't worked, it is not going to work. We need more than change, we need a revolution.

GLIA is an Operating System for such a whole scale revolution. An OS for a new beginning. GLIA was conceived and developed to address the shortcomings of the industrial era organizational models, and to fully take advantage of the enormous opportunities that lie ahead.
With our rich pools of social and intellectual capital, and the networks that connect this capital, we have everything it takes to rapidly seed and grow this next era of the social-business enterprise.
GLIA is a system that connects this knowledge and capital into the products and services the socially conscious sustainable citizen needs for a healthy and prosperous life.

Key Characteristics

--Glia is an Organizational Operating System
--a synthesis of biological modeling, human development, organizational theory, complex adaptive systems, networks, pull learning, cloud technologies, mobile computing, managerial theories, social technologies and social networks, social media. (a biblography will be forthcoming)
--as a organizational model and operating system, it is highly agile and adaptive. 
--leadership in networks
--the "one percent" and stakeholder ownership model
--valuing social, intellectual, ecological and financial capital
--the purposeful creation and distribution of social, intellectual, ecological and financial capital
--decentralized. No centre. 
--high trust, highly connective social-business network of the Glia Stakeholders
  -->stakeholders being: customers, businesses, production people, leaders, investors (investors being of social, intellectual/knowledge, ecological and financial capital), supply web, technology vendors, research and development, incubators, digital citizens. 
--an entire eco-system of products and services a healthy, productive, secure, free, sustainable person and their chosen lifestyle would require in the 21st century. This can and will cover everything from handcrafted locally made goods, and foodstuffs, to the most advanced technological, transportation, health and learning services. 
--to disrupt and replace the unsustainable remnants of the industrial era, and the incumbents that want to retain the  power and wealth that goes with it. 
--a deep regarded consciousness of the health of our customers, their support systems and their ecological environment .
 --the intellectual and spiritual buy in of the "one percent" model and how it creates and distributes the four core sources of capital. We are a movement that will change how the world experiences and views its socio-economic life. 

As such, Glia is an EcoSystem of Companies. The Glia Group of Companies. 

This is a big hill, and we are at the beginning. 

To be sure, this is an enormous challenge. With such lofty challenges come enormous opportunity. Glia is for two types of people.
--Those that know deep in their hearts and minds that "business as usual" is more likely than not a near fatal choice of path for humanity, and our fellow species. 
--Those that want to pioneer, that want to face head on the challenges society faces, and share in the rewards of what we believe to be an era of unprecedented opportunity of continually solving those challenges. That want to be part of developing and distributing the next generations of social-business organizational models and operating systems. 

Phase One--Forming the Glia Nucleus

Like all living systems, the future of Glia and its ability to realize its potential, and more importantly, our potential, depends greatly on the nucleus that is formed now. 

We need now a further definition of who and what the Glia Nucleus requires. 

1) Business Entrepreneurs. Those that want to build the kinds of businesses that will provide the products and services needed for a vibrant, healthy, 21st century citizen, and have those be the building blocks for the next generation of socially conscious capitalism. 
These may already being operating, or be start-up entrepreneurs. 
Where ever the business is in, in its lifecycle, complete buy in to the Glia OS and philosophy is a must. 

2) Operating System Orchestrators. Those that are part of an ongoing web of orchestrators that learn and appliy the Glia OS to the social-business enterprises in the Glia Ecosystem. 

3) Community and Network Developers and Managers. Community development and management is unquestionably one of the core functionalities of the 21st digital networked world. With Glia's roots in the Google Plus network, and community, this is a natural for the next phases. 

4) Mavens, Connectors and Salespeople. Those special types of people that can connect and build relationships between Glia, and the world out there.   

5) Social Technology. What will be the backbone upon which Glia runs, Glia requires a pretty advanced group of people who can build and manage this backbone. 

6) Financial Operations. We have what we believe is a pretty advanced, and very cool model for wealth distribution. That is, how we divide the pie the eco-system creates. As such, we need people that have a solid understanding of finance, yet with the open mindedness and desire to develop the Glia OS "One Percent Stakeholder" model. 

7) Stakeholders. The first wave of investors. Glia is not for the traditional venture capitalist. Nor is it quite for the kickstarter crowd-funding style investor either (although individual start-ups within the ecosystem can go the crowdfunding route).
What we are looking at is a $1,000 dollar stakeholder investment. This can be thought of as a 'share', but will be different than the corporate shareholder model. The B-Corporation is possible, but I am not entirely clear on this. 
What I am completely convinced of, this will be the best $1,000 dollar investment anybody could make. It is much much more than a financial investment, it is an investment in our socio-economic future, and how we organize and operate our future. 

Initial Combustion

Finding and launching the nucleus. We need the combined operating capital of all the seven components. 
While I firmly believe that being part of this nucleus is very attractive, it will not be for everybody. This is going to be challenging, and it will be unquestionable a big stretch for all involved. 
Learning and executing the Glia OS is going to take a lot of learning, it is going to take making mistakes, it is going be letting the business leaders a lot of room to run, and it is going to take a concerted effort by the OS orchestrators to keep up. 
For the nucleus, this will be one of most invigorating and exciting times of our lives. We're seeding and growing a global enterprise that will reshape how we organize our socio-economic environment. 

This is going to take real leadership, a new evolution in leadership. Learning, mentoring, creating and doing all at the same time. We will be doing this because the world needs us, and needs Glia now. 

We can form some of the early 'gases' on our social networks, but to get to combustion, I believe we will have to gather in a central place. To keep this simple, we will make that place Vancouver. 
When? Summer at the latest. We have no time to lose! 

In our next post, I will connect us to some of the social and intellectual capital Glia has attracted so far. 

To close, I believe with an absolute certainty we have all the pieces to this next evolutionary development of our socio-economic future available. We only need now the will, the desire, to organize and distribute it.