Part of a Series on the Philosophy of Radical Change
“Although the concerns that motivated Understanding Computers and Cognition are, as I have indicated, still live matters, my focus today is on an area in which understanding the constitutive power of language and its servant information technology confuses and thwarts us in our lives and businesses. Indeed, understanding information technology and the constitutive nature of language can exacerbate this problem.”
Fernando Flores (with Charles Spinosa), Information technology and the institution of identity: Reflections since Understanding Computers and Cognition.
Fernando Flores’ Conversation for Action (CfA) has long shaped how leaders think about coordination. Drawing from speech act theory, Flores shows how businesses move through structured language: requests, offers, promises, and declarations that lead to action, results, and accountability.
Once envisioned as a revolutionary response to the atomization of late capitalism, a means of restoring solidarity in an age of unbounded markets and self-maximizing agents, it has, in practice, settled into a rut of accelerating surface-level differences and optimizing productivity. Rather than resisting the system’s entropy, it now mirrors it, reproducing predictability under the guise of change.
But what if the challenge isn’t execution? What if the world calls not for better coordination, but for radical change?
That’s where Collections for Change comes in.
From Managing Actions to Leading Transformation
Today’s greatest challenges—climate collapse, disruptive AI, social fragmentation—aren’t just technical problems. They demand transformation. Not just better tools, but new worlds.
Where Flores’ model emphasizes doing, we focus on being.
Collections for Change is not a communication protocol. It’s an ontological shift: a way of becoming someone whose leadership flows from fidelity to a rupture—a moment, idea, or insight that breaks the old logic and calls a new world into being.
We call that rupture the event.
Events are not Just Another Kind of Postmodern Theory of Change
Events are radical changes that do not depend on small-scale relations or large-scale oppositions. They don’t fall prey to postmodern relativism either, leaving us drifting in a world of fluid meanings and temporary structures, where nothing truly new ever happens, just constant rearrangements.
We think that the Conversation for Action reflects this postmodern mood. Conversations focus on shaping behaviour through ongoing, negotiated commitments, fluid, minor adjustments to how people coordinate and respond. But this isn’t real change. It’s maintenance disguised as transformation. Like postmodern thought more broadly, Flores’ approach fine-tunes the system without ever breaking it. It’s relational, responsive, but ultimately keeps the world as it is.
Collections for Change offers an alternative. Events don’t come from better negotiations or more sophisticated conversations. They break from the system entirely. They don’t climb hierarchies or play off oppositions. They aren’t defined by identity or difference but by radical, indifferent change. Not negotiation, but transformation. Not fluidity, but a clean break.
Five Moves That Define the Change Being
1. Hail the Event
In Flores’ model, a speaker initiates with intent. We start with something deeper: an event. Not a goal or a metric, but a disruption, a moment that redefines what matters. To lead is to name that event and say: This changes everything. I’m with it.
2. Make Impossible Statements
Flores encourages reasonable speech that coordinates action. We do the opposite. From the event, we make impossible claims: bold, unreasonable, visionary declarations that defy current systems. Think: “We will decarbonize everything.” “We’ll give the company away.” These are not talking points. They’re acts of worldmaking.
3. Say Yes, Unconditionally
No negotiations. No deliverables. Just this: Yes. The change being is a yes-being, someone who keeps saying yes to the event, especially when it’s hard, irrational, or off-script. In Flores’ world, language closes loops. In ours, it opens infinite possibilities.
4. Collect Others
Where the Conversation for Action relies on assigned roles and clarity of task, we rely on resonance. You don’t manage people into this. You attract them. The commitment is contagious. Others feel it and say yes too. This isn’t staffing. It’s gathering.
5. Build the Infinite World
Flores’ conversations end when the job is done. But change beings don’t stop. Collections grow. They build an infinite world, piece by piece, yes by yes. Until one day, what was once radical becomes the new common sense.
A New Schema for a New Reality
Let’s look at how Collections for Change reconfigures Flores’ original framework:
| Flores (CfA) | Collections for Change |
|---|---|
| 1. Speaker | Event: the rupture that initiates action |
| 2. Hearer | Subject to Change: those drawn by fidelity |
| 3. Conditions of Satisfaction | Impossible Demands: what cannot yet be done |
| 4. Background of Obviousness | Radically New Context: the event rewrites reality |
| 5. Time for Fulfilment | Infinity: no end point, only endurance |
| 6. Future Action | Saying Yes: the yes is the action |
| 7. New Possibility | New World: not a better option, a different reality |
| 8. Presupposed Ability | Assumption of Collectability: belief draws others in |
| 9. Sincerity | Faith, Belief, Desire: beyond honesty, toward conviction |
| 10. Fulfilment | An Infinite World: the new replaces the old |
Why This Matters for Business Leaders
Flores gave us structure. That’s useful for execution, logistics, and accountability. But when you’re trying to build a category-defining product, shift a broken culture, or lead systemic innovation, you need more than structured talk.
You need ontological leadership, a willingness to commit to what doesn’t yet make sense.
Apple’s “Think Different” wasn’t a marketing slogan, it was a declaration from a world not yet built. Patagonia’s transfer of ownership wasn’t just strategy it was fidelity to a bigger cause. These leaders weren’t coordinating promises. They were saying yes to impossible truths and collecting others into that vision.