The Synthetic Future

Where this train of thought is carrying me. Why don't you join me?

Observation and Intuition

Anyone who knows me or has read my writing will realize that I don’t follow some grand plan. I am my own person. All that I do is derived from observation, reflection, and intuition. As a result, I see a big picture of the future unfolding. To say that I have figured it out would be misleading. I don’t know anything specifically. Except I do know how to proceed in the future.

I have been writing here at Substack for a year. It has been a great year of watching an audience grow for my leadership content. Over the past year, I have had a 42% growth in subscribers. As I have said before, I am grateful for your support and readership. One hundred and twenty-six long-form columns/essays/posts, amounting to over 200, 000 words. I have never been more energized to write and engage with people who are both writers and readers.

Expanding the Impact

All this effort has been leading somewhere. A year ago, I did not know. Six months ago, it was not clear where all this writing was leading me. I did see a deepening of my understanding of the topics that I have been writing about for over a decade.

Still today, long term, I do not know where this takes me. Short term, it has meant the start of The Eddy Network Podcast and the publication of two books for this year. One is a revision of Circle of Impact for distribution in Africa. Circle of Impact Africa: You Have Everything That You Need will be published this spring in both English and Francophone African French in Africa by Epsilon Publishers of Nairobi and worldwide by Amazon.

The other book has the working title Synthesis: The Future of Leadership from Local Communities to Global Networks of Relationships. I have been playing around with the idea of Synthetic/Synthesis since Thanksgiving. It seemed like a word that has much more depth to it than is ordinarily understood. While I began with the word Synthetic, I am gradually moving over to Synthesis.

The question is what do I mean by this word?

And does a fresh understanding of it illuminate what is coming in the future?

The Synthetic Series

Here are the eight posts that I have written on the topic so far. I have four more in development. But I have a lot of research to do before any of them see the light of day. If you have missed one of these, catch up on what I have written. If you have read them all, jump down to the end of the list to see what comes next.

The Synthetic Network: Why the difference between Institutional Knowledge and Synthetic Knowledge matters.

Synthetic Learning: Everything You Learn You Have To Learn It Over and Over Again.

Synthetic Awareness: Synthetic living is manifested by being situationally aware which requires us to be self-aware. To do so, we must stop placing our own feelings and sense of identity at the center of every situation.

Synthetic Discernment: How Self-Awareness becomes the basis for discerning good and evil.

Synthetic Discovery: What would it look like if we took Hegelian Synthesis and reinvented it to revolutionize, for the future, the cultures of reality and simulation?

Synthetic Generational Relationships: How to talk to Millennials and GenZers about our shared future.

Synthetic Center and Periphery: When the Center cannot hold, the Periphery reforms.

Synthesis in Time and Space: Synthesis in the Life of the Self

Synthesizing the Leadership of the Future

My plan is to write a follow-up to Circle of Impact. It has been five years to the day since I turned in the final manuscript that was ultimately published in September. The book was a product of many people helping me see that which I could not see.

In November 2017, I traveled throughout Europe seeing friends and meeting new ones at the Global Peter Drucker Forum in Vienna. Before arriving for the conference, I visited with my friend Marcos Gaser and his family in Ljubljana, Slovenia. On my first night with them, I gave Marcos a print copy of the 2nd draft of the book. Overnight, he read it and offered his thoughts to me.

“You assume that people already know about the Circle of Impact. Nowhere do you describe it or show how to use it.”

I was taken aback by my inability to see what was obvious to Marcos. Rule #1 for all of you who write, “Everyone needs an editor.” Thanks to Marcos's kind criticism, I returned home to write four additional chapters by the end of January.

How The Book Will Be Created

Having wise and trusted friends to provide their advice is a treasure beyond measure. I have decided to invite you to join me in creating this book on Synthesis. I also understand that it can’t be random or casual. It has to be intentional and deliberate as the book is created to have an impact on the world.

The book will pick up where Circle of Impact left off. Circle of Impact introduced a new perspective on leadership. I rejected the common understanding that leadership is a role and a title in an organization. Instead, I see that …

“All leadership begins with personal initiative to create an impact that makes a difference that matters.”

This means that leadership is a function of how we live. The implication is that senior executive leaders, political leaders, religious leaders, and social institution leaders are to be measured by the impact that they create. What difference do they make?

Of course, they don’t like this understanding of leadership because it means that they are no different than you or me. We all stand before the judgment of impact. More than any other reason, this is why our world is the mess that is today. As I described today to a young man who was describing his company as highly resistant to change,

“Your company is the victim of The Peter Principle, where leaders rise to the level of their incompetence.

They intuitively understand this and resist initiatives that will reveal their incompetence.”

In Circle of Impact, I describe the Two Global Forces as forces of centralization and decentralization. If my intuition is correct, we need to find a synthesis of the two, much like I wrote about in Synthetic Center and Periphery. We need to recognize both strategies have their merits and their weaknesses. Unfortunately, in our binary, tribal culture, synthesis is difficult to achieve.

My Plan For Creating Synthesis

I am inviting my paid subscribers to be my content editors. I made this decision because you have shown me your support and respect. Therefore, I trust your judgment. How we proceed, we’ll decide together.

If you are not a paid subscriber, I encourage you to become one. Not only will you have the satisfaction of helping me, but you will develop your own capacity for thought and interaction. You’ll receive a set of initial questions to help me know your thoughts. You’ll receive drafts to comment on and edit. We’ll have a few Zoom calls.

Just so you know, I’ve committed myself to completing this book by the first of May, so I can get it edited and typeset for print-on-demand at Amazon. My goal is for the publishing date of my birthday in June. Yes, a tight schedule. I believe it is doable.

I will prepare drafts of chapters that only my advisory group will have access to. Before then, I will ask questions of them to help me discern what they think I should be addressing in the next book. Much of the content that I will be writing in Substack will be the background for the book.

What will I be offering on Substack during this time? Last year I wrote a post on transition. It did not exhaust what I have to offer about the transitions that we experience. Over a decade ago I did a series on 12 Transition Points. I’m excited about updating them for our moment in time. The experience of transition has been a constant theme in my work and writing for most of my career. Almost daily I speak to someone who sees themselves in transition. The series on transition will begin in mid-February and will be joined during the next few months with a series on self-awareness and posts on various leadership topics that will be helpful in your lives and work.

When the Books are Done, Let’s Party!

My intent is to write this book very quickly. Since I turn 70 years of age on June 23, I decided to host a birthday party for myself. I’ve never done this before. Frankly, it is embarrassing. But this birthday seems like a milestone, so I decided to have a party. And I want my friends and colleagues to come. If you are a regular reader, I would love for you to be here.

The party will be held here in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina the afternoon of Saturday, June 24 at the Copper Barrel Distillery owned by my friends George and Kathleen Smith. Anyone is welcome to come. Send me your contact information to you can receive an invitation.

If you live more than a couple of hours’ drive and want to come, I’d love for you to be here. If there are at least ten people coming from out of state or overseas, then we’ll do a workshop event on Friday, the 23rd my birthday. We’ll make it a weekend in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. If you are coming, let me know soon, so I can make arrangements for rooms at local hotels.

At the party, I’ll have signed copies of my two new books for sale, along with Circle of Impact, and the seven short books that I wrote during the first fifteen months of the pandemic. Ten books in seven years really is something to celebrate.

A Turning Point

I want to make this a special event. Not because it is my birthday, but because by gathering together, we may remember this moment as a turning point in our lives. I believe that our world is changing. The kind of leadership that I mentioned above is going to make the emergence of the next world difficult and messy.

If you come, I promise you’ll remember this as a time of affirmation and hope for the future. Not hope based on the culture of simulation, but hope based on a firm commitment to believe that by your own initiative, you can make a difference in the world.

Thank you for the difference that your subscription and your reading of The Future of Leadership have meant to me. I do not speak with hyperbole. I speak straight from the heart. The past year has been a reward for almost fifty years of service to people, organizations, and communities as a leader for leaders. For that, I am grateful to God for your presence and support.

Please join the advisor group, at least through June. I’ll make sure you’ll not regret it.