Executives serving a public company, a large non-profit, or a university, are habituated to think in terms of upcoming board meetings, quarterly reports to investors, school year and lesson plans and annual audits--as they endeavor to lead an organization with ongoing operations.
Some executives might have experience working on multi-year scenarios with managers.
The Share-Capital Foundation timetable for executing its agenda is useful for appreciating how it defines opportunity.
200 years. This is the horizon we have adopted for our mission of education. In simple terms this means no one associated with the commencement of the Foundation will be present at the conclusion of its first installment of 200 years of activity. We could actually think about planting redwoods if it suited our purposes and not worry if they are slow or fast growing.
Our timetable allows us to distinguish between planning and designing.
Designing is a skill informed by trial and error. Sweat, blood, tears, inspiration and information--and other forms of capital help make design trials possible. Capital markets adore the designer, especially the designer with a track record. Capital, on the other hand, is a little suspicious of the planner.
The Share-Capital Foundation began in 2008. One of the first actions taken by the directors was to adopt a time frame of 200 years to address its mission of cross-cultural Education.
200 years.
When we consider what has happened around the planet since 1808, the order of change accommodated by 200 years is transformational (on every level--housing, mobility, medicine, energy, media). To imagine what will be the mainstream in 2208 is probably beyond comprehension, save for one assumption: times, language, fashion and tools change, human nature (and Nature herself) not so much.
To make the point, consider this question: How many nation states in existence in 1914 have not had their form of government changed by violent means?
Answer: "There are today [1991] only eight states on earth which both existed in 1914 and have not had their form of government changed by violence since then. These are the United Kingdom, four present or former members of the Commonwealth, the United States, Sweden and Switzerland. Of the remaining 170 or so contemporary states...the most frequent factor involved has been ethnic conflict."
Daniel Patrick Moynihan spoke these words as he delivered the Cyril Foster lecture at Oxford on 29 November 1991. [Oxford University Press published the speech in book form as "Pandaemonium, Ethnicity in International Politics."]
In Moynihan's illustration of dramatic change the starting point is 1914, less than one hundred years ago.
Is 200 years, in human terms, a ridiculous construct?
In human terms, once one becomes a parent, god parent, aunt or uncle, and begins to experience adult children moving into their twenties and thirties, it becomes easier to consider several things once upon a time considered abstract and imponderable: 1) one's mortality, and 2) 200 years.
I am in my late 50s. My grandmother lived to be 104. She was born in 1896. I have a personal reference, thereby, for 115 years of "humanity". I once met a great uncle born in 1888; and visited the gravesite of a great grandfather born in 1867.
One of our daughters, while attending high school in the early 1990s, came home one evening and reported she had attended a lecture at her school presented by Randal Hume Keynes.
The subject of the lecture was conservation.
"By the way," she offered, "Randal Hume Keynes is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin."
In that moment my life, through one of our children, was connected to the veritable Charles Darwin. When was Charles Darwin born? Ans: exactly 199 years before the founding of the Share-Capital Foundation [in 1809]!
200 years is not a scary idea.
In 200 (actually 198) years we want to create a new class of insider, fully respected by the culture of capital--reminiscent of the successful designer.
198 years to go and counting...There is much to learn. Time is precious. Even 200 years has a sense of urgency to it.
