GREENE REPORT FAILED TO LAY OUT TRANSFORMATIVE PLAN

“(W)e are witnessing the birth of a new economic system that is as different from market capitalism as the latter was from the feudal economy of an earlier era… The new information and communications technologies, by contrast, are cybernetic, not linear… The new nonhierarchical and collaborative way of thinking among the younger generation is beginning to slowly penetrate the interior of organizations and the management style of some of the world’s global companies.”

--- Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization, 2009

While the Premier’s Economic Recovery Team’s April 2021 Big Reset report has identified many of the province’s problems (and opportunities) and has included recommendations that need to be analyzed and carefully considered, the desired outcomes however cannot be achieved in the absence first and foremost of transformational thinking. Only from such thinking can the kinds of governmental and other organizational structures — reflecting this emerging, real world, 21st century, holistic/cybernetic way of thinking — result.

On this front, and while the Big Reset, with its focus on technology and transparency, at least skirts the perimeter of this relatively new and emerging way of thinking and collaborating, from a practical and results-focused perspective the report has largely failed. Worse still, there is no evidence that government even recognizes this failure, and as a frequent contributor (Philip Earle) to The Telegram has often said “you first have to identify and understand the problem before you can properly address it.”

Transformational outcomes cannot be achieved in the absence of both transformative thinking and the creation of cohesive organizational structures that reflect this 21st century, holistic and emerging collaborative revolution.

What the report has failed to recognize and what it needed to do (or now government must do) is to design and to lay out the kind of cohesive, collaborative, results-oriented organizational framework/ structure and the creation of a strategy that can transform the way that government functions.

Merely selling off assets, increasing taxes, cutting services, “investing” (spending) on new/ large projects will only exacerbate an already dire situation and is akin to doing the same thing, over and over again and expecting a different result.

Maurice E. Adams

Paradise