A systems designer driven to introduce "wholistic" technology applications
for professional and individual use. AND for meaningful Human-AI partnering.
Simplicity is complexity resolved*
Multi-faceted upbringing
Phil's grandmother, of Cherokee descent, was said to have been a medicine woman. Meanwhile, his grandfather, a Texas rancher, (and son of a prominent Flour Miller,) would later in life teach college physics in a Central Texas town known as the cowboy capital of the world.
The diversity in those human realities would find its way into Phil's bones, concealed in the dramas that played out in the life of Phil's father, after Phil's grandparents divorced amid controversial court proceedings that separated the mother from her three children.
Phil responded to his own chaotic upbringing, which included being raised with a fundamentalist belief system, by employing his keen desire to map complex human issues to better understand them and grow beyond them.
He was in his late 20s when his hunger to simplify complexity intersected with an opportunity to join the tech revolution in the early 1980s. Since then, Phil has strategically designed 5 technology systems and worked with teams of programmers to deploy them.
The Magical spherical modelING system
Shows everyday life in context
Phil is the inventor and creator of a highly developed framework and patented process that prompts individuals, partners, corporate leaders, teams, and communities, to see, think, and act, within wholistic mental models.
Deployed, validated
Up to now, in the role of a boutique R&D company, that specializes in human-centered tech, Phil has tested and deployed this framework in many different fields and uses. It has been experienced by tens of thousands of end-users, in different age groups and demographics and several languages, and more than a thousand facilitators/counselors/coaches/HR have used this system with successful results. [See "clients" menu tab for more details]
The role of AI
This began as a boots-on-the-ground endeavor for Phil, and his co-partner Pam, to authentic the core modalities in everyday human scenarios and he's done that thoroughly. Next, it will require AI to scale it, and he has been tracking this potential since they first launched a five-year blog project about "SocializingAI" in 2014. [This framework is integrable with most existing AI systems.]
Scalable, teachable, relatable
What does this work entail?
Phil takes complex issues and dense programs and gives people a snapshot of them in a way that feels comprehendible on a single-page visual conversation map. More important, his system captures the observer’s current baseline viewpoints about the issue, or program, which gives the person a digital voice and a digital mirror for real-time reflecting, storytelling and decision making.
The system offers metrics, demographics, share and compare features, and captures change over time.
why this approach?
Organics versus Mechanics
Humans are naturally adaptive. But we are still in the process of disengaging ourselves from mechanized mental models that are slower and harder, that work for machines but bog down human beings.
Making context our compass restores our organic mobility and switches on wholistic visioning.
Phil's spherical model system introduces contextual reasoning to humans through a wholistic visual learning experience, which accelerates Realtime awareness, amplifies adaptiveness, and boosts human potential. It also creates the opportunity for powerful but practical Human-AI interactions when the spherical methodologies are integrated with machine-processable data.
Be wholed.
Meet Spherical Phil
Journey to The Sphere
Journey to The Sphere
Spherit Co-Founder, Phil Lawson, is an alert, insightful and curious self-made man. He has spent years immersed in the science of systems, chaos theory, integrative complexity, constructivism, data visualization, contextual reasoning, cognitive reappraisal, and quantum cognition, to name a few of the sciences he's studied. Phil has a true passion to shift how people see and respond to life's 'hard things.'
"People are trying to do right with the wrong mindset," he'll tell you.
— — —
24 years ago, Phil created his first sphere-chart. But it would take much longer to authenticate its worth and become the architect of its design and delivery.
He was 44 when he and his wife, Pam, dropped out of the business world (in 1999) and moved to a rustic cabin in the Colorado Rockies to think and write.
Up to then, their enigmatic partnership, that started with a decade of mission work in the Deep South (USA) and included living and working in Hollywood, traveling abroad on business, working in leadership roles at companies, deploying cutting edge online technologies, and launching their own start-ups, had netted abundant life experiences.
But it had also perplexed them.
They realized a.) the world doesn't work the way they were taught it does, and b.) humans, as a species, are not adapting well to the realities of our times.
Technically, the journey to The Sphere began much earlier, in their 20s, but this time in their 40s, Phil and Pam were fully committed
to exploring what mystified them in depth.
Journey to The Sphere
Journey to The Sphere
Journey to The Sphere
For the next five years, Phil researched and co-wrote a book about it with Los Angeles business writer, Rob Lindstrom, while Pam directed the creative cohesiveness of the book inside and out.
During this period, Phil worked as a part-time rural postal carrier, to help with household expenses, while Pam became a community reporter.
Next, Phil turned his discovery into a technology, eventually securing a patent on the process. [The patent, providing a level of credibility, during his journey, that validated the uniqueness of this visualization model.] Then, he tested it with 45,000+ people, in diverse age groups and demographics, in different fields and applications.
Pam, meanwhile, was responsible for their (Spherit) company profile; for product messaging, and translating abstract R&D concepts and protocols into digestable soundbytes, which was not easy. In the early days of Spherit, they were creating a new domain ahead of market needs and people found it difficult to comprehend the value of an online technology that allowed people to troubleshoot deep issues in realtime.
Eventually, they reached the intersection of sociological, technological and economic readiness, as COVID disrupted the market, and consumer priorities shifted. Since then, 'helping humans be better at being human' has emerged as a theme, along with 'sustainable and inclusive growth.'
Along the way, Phil uncovered the sciences behind why and how the Spherit system works and established core methodologies for best results. This was not a tech hack job rushed to market. It was a treasure hunt in search of something precious that was missing from the tech sectors. And he found it. The Sphere streamlines human solution-finding, and boosts human potential while dignifying the human experience.
Custom Applications and Off-The-Shelf
Spherit creates customized situation-specific applications from scratch for organizations, coaches, consultants. It can also do this for mentoring or peer-to-peer programs. Or, clients can make use of certain preexisting applications. Spherit has explored and deployed more than 50 sphere applications in various fields. Some of these (about a third of them) have been in healthcare.
Co-Creators
Phil and Pam Lawson are the co-founders of Spherit, a 17-year-old boutique R&D Company in Evergreen, Colorado, that focuses on using human centered technology for whole human growth.
While operating Spherit, they have had the privilege of interacting with a remarkable collection of people committed to an amazing array of endeavors, whether that be in leadership, healthcare, education, or couple communications, and their role in each of these encounters was to help prioritize and synthesize the expansive information they had available at their fingertips into one single comprehensible visual, to streamline hard conversations about big issues for their clients, students and associates.
[See "Co-Founders" menu tab for more details]