Three elements that allow the best CO-CreACTion to occur

Jan Vos asked me to write the introduction to his latest book “Co-CreACTion Spaces” . I share three concepts from his book that have captured my attention as we search and aim to create more certain futures than the uncertain ones in which we operate now:

• Co-creation of spaces
• Collective knowledge
• Female Leadership

1. Co-Creation of Spaces

In an intense world, each day more intense, creating space is essential.

Spaces where to pause, reflect, where to empty ourselves of the tension, polarization and confusion of the daily grind. In these physical and virtual spaces, the best conditions can be created to give life to the co-creation and collaboration that we so badly need.

If you think of an open space, the mind relaxes, curiosity and innovation spread, your mind is unlocked and freed from our daily struggle of our running after objectives and deadlines that many times should not be the most urgent thing to pay attention to.

In these spaces we can enter alone, create our rhythms, but we can also find many other people with whom to understand, create, dream, make happen what we would never achieve alone.

In fact, in my experience, the most effective collaboration occurs when we really know who is by our side in these new spaces. The better we understand what limits and what frustrates the people around us but also their motivations and aspirations, and the better the quality of our interactions and the likelihood to achieve successful outcomes will be.

2. Collective knowledge

The differentiating element between those who are going to lead and the others who are going to be left behind is our ability to connect with collective knowledge. Getting to understand what is really relevant, how to take advantage of this knowledge, promote it, take it to the team members who need it most, when they need. That is key.

The information at our disposal has increased exponentially: in the palm of our hands, on our mobiles, we have access to more information in a minute than what those who have lived only two generations ago have been able to accumulate in a lifetime.

But all this information is useless, in fact it is doing us more harm than good: we are overwhelmed with information. The information, often distorted, confusing, becomes something harmful that gives us too many contradictory signals. It can influence us and make us take the wrong decisions or it can have a paralizing effect due to an excess of options.

Our ability to create knowledge, useful, relevant, what is necessary but not more than what is necessary is the sweet spot, it is the goal.

To achieve this, a lot of hope is being placed on Artificial Intelligence; But the ability of the human being to understand the cause-effect relationship, to really understand and to appreciate subtle elements of relationships with other human beings, the ability to create united teams capable of incredible results — these cannot be replaced by any AI.

AI right now has solutions limited to the information that is offered to it and not in the experience of a lifetime of a human being: evaluate if this object that is moving in front of the car with autopilot installed is a child or a balloon in the shape of a child. This banale task it is almost impossible for AI and totally obvious for a human being.

The winners will be those who know how to co-create this collective knowledge, who know how to generate it in the most useful way for projects, companies, organizations and for the ideas that we need to develop so much. Especially connecting this knowledge with human beings who will have to use it.

This collective knowledge is what can only be developed in co-creation spaces and is developed in a much more profound, useful and effective way when female leaders are involved.

3. Female Leadership

Never in the history of humanity has there been an era where feminine traits have been so useful to overcome and also learn from the crises, urgencies, uncertainty that surround us.

News and academic studies are filled with data and statistics that show how much better nations, organizations and groups led by women have overcome crises and improved their results.

Studying why these traits are so important today, having the ability to invite female leadership to give their best is what will allow us to be successful.

Right now the companies and economic systems that have been created by men for men. They do not allow the full expression of women’s capacities and all they can bring to the organization. These male-centred organizations are structured and operate in a very sub optimal state.

But there are many organizations that have already understood and managed to integrate the new ways of being, structuring, exchanging, governing and making decisions where these feminine capacities can emerge.

Your success or your disappearance depends on your ability to understand, foster, take advantage of these three elements with which Jan, throughout her decades of experience, has managed to experiment,