"If you're in a bad situation, don't worry, it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry, it'll change."
-- John A. Simone Jr.
Somatic Sustainability
Human, we are complex open systems interwoven into other complex open systems, themselves interwoven as well. We are in constant inter-action, inter-relation, inter-connection with the people, things and systems with which we live. Separate and all part of larger wholes there is constant tension; a desire simultaneously pulling us to separate and connect.
We locate and make sense of the world through our selves, our bodies. Our bodies hold us, contain us, some people would say-restrain us. Our histories as humans are etched in our bodies: scars, a limp, one hip higher than the other, tight shoulders, nervous energy, fight or flight. Our lived history lives on within us and…the body never lies.
The next time you think about sustainability think about how you sustain your self, your body. What is your relationship to this living vessel of skin, blood and bone that sustains you? How aware are you of this body that is keenly aware of you and the world around you? What memories and emotions are living in that knot of muscles in your shoulders? How did that knot get there? What would happen if that knot came undone?
Separate from and together with our bodies, our selves.
By the time we acknowledge and say we are “stressed” our bodies have known it for a long time. By the time we acknowledge and say the oceans are getting warmer, the oceans have known it for a long time. Just ask the coral. Just ask your body. Complex open systems: always in motion, in continual response to other systems. Like dancing.
Something compels us to move, to talk, sing, run and eat, to write. We know more than we think. We know. Just ask your body.
Tags: somatics, sustainability
A Simple Truth
Found an opinion piece from the Washington Post called “Wake Up, America. We’re Driving Toward Disaster.” Some of you might think some of the news items cited in this blog are overwrought gloom and doom prognostications. And, it may be true that some of the predictions the authors make may tend toward extreme extrapolations of our current situation.
However let’s look at a simple truth: any disruption in the supply or availability of oil will affect all aspects of our lives. The article by James Howard Kunstler cited above states this clearly:
The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the “peak oil” story. It’s not about running out of oil. It’s about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:
The way we produce food
The way we conduct commerce and trade
The way we travel
The way we occupy the land
The way we acquire and spend capital
And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.
As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending. These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis.
The current rise in oil prices may be due more to speculation than shortages or supply issues but, really, it doesn’t matter. As a world we are now in a situation where the strands of commerce, trade and production that interconnect us (imagine a mandala of rubber bands all stretched taut) are getting pulled pretty tight. Any little vibration resonates throughout the entire interconnected system. This situation will not ease anytime soon. In fact, the stress on these strands will most surely increase due in no small part to the ascendancy of China and India.
The question is, are we going to wait for conditions to force us to make changes in the way we produce food, the way we conduct commerce and trade, the way we travel, the way we occupy the land, the way we acquire and spend capital, etc. or are we going to embrace the opportunity to proactively re-design the way we engage these activities.
In his article Kunstler chides Americans for their child-like attachment to wishful thinking. Americans are optimists and recently that optimism has revealed itself in some pretty shallow practices like those arising from the escapist idiocy being stoked by the The Secret. Still, that optimism, if grounded in an understanding and acceptance of the complex and dynamic systemic realities confronting us can, I believe, still be quite magical. As Kunstler says:
We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it — by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don’t figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works.
We can still have hope, still dream and wish for better times but we can’t stop there. We have to let that intrinsic desire to be and live well manifest itself in informed, well-timed and thoughtful action. The logic behind that action is also key.
We have to evolve our understanding of the world from one of linear cause and effect that can be controlled to an understanding of the world of interconnected open, complex systems that can, at best, be influenced. And, we’re going to have to learn to live and act lightly, coherent with the systems that support and sustain us.
You want a simple truth? We’re not in control, never have been, never will be. Deal with it and remember the rubber band mandala.
Tags: capacity evolution, leadership capacity, peak oil, sustainability
Room to Read
My partner, Chad, and I have been providing Room to Read, a non-profit organization, that is doing an outstanding job of bringing literacy and education to Southeast Asia and Africa with pro bono consulting services. However the chapter in Tokyo that we are supporting is such a dynamic and exciting group of people, we often find ourselves doing more than just consulting.
John Wood, the founder, left a very promising career at Microsoft to start this venture. I highly recommend reading his book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. If not only provides a template for how a non-profit could and should run, it also is a simply inspiring read.
We just came off a big event with John, here in Tokyo in which we were able to fund the building of multiple schools, several reading rooms, thousands of books and over 300 years worth of scholarships for young women in Asia and Africa.
The work Room to Read is doing doesn’t stop at increasing literacy and education levels, though. They are investing in the capacity for sustainability in the students and their countries and regions. Simply, as these children come of age they, by virtue of their education, bring with them greatly enhanced potential to reduce poverty, stabilize population, innovate sustainable food production and water use and land use practices as well as research and implement alternative fuel and energy generating plans.
All of that potential for less than a new car. Talk about Return on Investment.
Tags: capacity evolution, room to read, sustainability
On the Subject of Gas Prices…
Another C+C News Update. Found this while browsing links from the Wall Street Journal article referenced in Shifting the Focus Away from Oil. Called AP IMPACT: What makes up the price of gas?, it starts off as a fairly linear description of the crude oil refining process and its impact on prices. However it quickly digresses into a number of vignettes on the other elements of price people are paying at the pump. One interesting story sheds some light on the non-rational, non-linear elements at play:
Kelly Bosley, who manages Rutter’s, doesn’t even have to look across the highway to know when Sheetz changes its price for a gallon of gas. When Sheetz raises prices, her own pumps are busy. When Sheetz lowers prices, she has not a car in sight.
She calls Rutter’s headquarters to report the competition’s new price and wait for instructions.
“I call a lot of times and say, ‘They went down, hurry up! Hurry up! Call me! Call me!’ Or it could be where theirs goes up, and I’ll say, ‘Take your time! You know, I like being busy.’ But I have no control over that.”
You think you feel helpless at the pump?
The point is its not poor Ms. Bosley who’s responsible or the greed of the oil companies or the oil producing nations. It is a constellation of interlinked, inter-related phenomena that inter-influence each other. Ms. Bosley, the oil companies, oil producing nations, increase demand for oil in China and India, car sales in those nations and others, the fluctuation of the dollar against other currencies, unemployment rates, etc. are all to “blame”. A cause becomes an effect and vice versa. Linear reasoning in this wicked mess will only up our frustration and sense of powerlessness in the world.
We need to take a few steps back and see that we are dealing with a complex system of relationships. It is the interaction of these relationships that affect the price of gas.
Try this: put all the causes in the article in different areas on a piece of paper and start drawing lines between them as you think of connections. You have just made a crude map of the system. As you can see it is definitely not of the linear, cause and effect family of problems. The next step is studying the nature of the connections between these diverse elements. From there it is possible to design an entry point for an intervention to alter the system. More on influencing and affecting systems later.
Tags: complexity, gas prices, oil prices, systems thinking
Shifting the Focus Away from Oil
Here’s the latest installment of the C+C News. There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal called If $4 Gas Is Bad, Just Wait. The gist of it is that, in the US, gas has gone up and over $4.00 a gallon. Prices in Japan are averaging over $5.00 a gallon and as the graphic from the article suggests, prices are going to continue to rise with Goldman Sachs predicting an upper limit of somewhere around $200 a barrel.
I don’t think we should “just wait.” Wait for what? For things to get so bad that travel becomes simply untenable? C’mon we are smarter and more capable than that. These rising oil prices are a glimpse of a future (and the reality of our present) in which petroleum powered travel and petrochemical manufacturing become non-sustainable. There’s nothing evil or malicious at work here. Oil and oil production are not inherently bad. I’m not suggesting some Luddite shunning of technology either. We are simply entering into a period of transition away from a century of fossil fuel dominated industry and development. Let’s acknowledge it, get over and get on with it.Just waiting, now, would be about the worst thing we could do. We are being presented with an opportunity to expand our individual and collective capacities to engage the world. We, now, have the opportunity to radically re-imagine and re-create commerce, communities and lifestyles in ways that support our mutual, inextricably inter-related short and long term futures. Forget oil, forget the new “war” on global warming. Let’s stop trying to fix what’s irretrievably broken and shift our attention awareness, intention and attention to a more eco-systemically coherent, resonant and sustainable way of living, working and playing together. Imagine a future where oil dependency and carbon emissions are no longer a concern. Let’s plan and design that.
Let’s recognize “now” for what it is. It is a gift, the opportunity to change change and respond with a proactive vision of a future we want versus the future we will get if we “just wait.”
Tags: climate change, gas prices, global warming, peak oil, sustainability
We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us
Was reading the newspaper this morning when I came upon this article: On Climate, Symbols Can Overshadow Substance. It begins with a description of the “Earth Hour” campaign:
The idea was to get 2 million residents in Sydney to turn off all the lights in their homes for one hour. The campaign generated wide publicity, but the energy saved was small — the equivalent of taking about five cars off the city’s roads for a year.
Earth Hour, Earth Day and the Miss Earth beauty pageant — “saving the planet, one pageant at a time” — generate lots of publicity, but they also tend to prompt people and companies to choose what looks good over what works
Not what we would call a raging success. As Rod Williams states on “A Disgruntled Republican” blog:
We don’t need another Al Gore Earth Aid concert. We don’t need another self-indulgent celebrity showing us how much they care by flying their “green” car around the world so they can be seen driving “green.” We don’t need another company selling phony carbon offsets. Enough already of the “green washing.”
Another very interesting aspect of the article comes later:
While the idea that people who are emotionally committed can change their behavior in ways that help the planet seems appealing, a growing body of research suggests that this is not the way large-scale changes in behavior occur. The behavior of individuals, companies and nations is largely determined by structural factors, not personal choices.
“Some people react to ethical and environmental concerns, but a vast majority of people react to price,” Flomenhoft said. “The biggest effect on people’s behavior is price. When gas reaches $4 a gallon, everyone talks about hybrids.
“We are not going to solve this problem with voluntary measures — it is a problem of externalities,” [Borenstein] said. “It is true of pollution and the way we use oil. We address tailpipe emission problems by asking people to make sure they meet emission requirements — we actually check. We have found voluntary approaches don’t work when it comes to pollution.
Take a good look at the message of hopelessness in the above statements. To restate: people will only change when we force them to change. Behavior must be regulated, motivation must be extrinsic. Is there another way?
Here are several more open (and definitely loaded) questions. What would it take for us to live and work in eco-systemically coherent ways? What changes would we have to make in the ways we perceive our selves and our relationships with the eco-systems into which we interwoven?
Where are our individual and collective leverage points to catalyze a paradigm shift where a carrot and stick approach is no longer necessary and appropriate? How do we develop the intrinsic motivation to be sustainable and the wisdom to act effectively?
I have some ideas. How about you?
Tags: capacity evolution, global warming, leadership, sustainability
Integrity
This is the redux of a post I wrote awhile back in a previous blogging incarnation:
There are a number of models for integrity: honesty, fairness, being faithful. They honor standing for truth, standing for justice, standing for and keeping a promise.
Fundamentally, integrity is often seen as a matter of unity. Do you do what you say? Do you say what you mean? Are you walking the talk? Do you say “yes” and mean it? Do you stand for what you believe?
Often, people we see as having integrity are those we feel we can trust, those people who (we believe) aren’t going to bad mouth us when we leave the room, the politician who (we believe) will actually do something about health care. They stand for something, we believe in it and they inspire us to also believe in them.
There is something about integrity that grounds a person for us, makes them dependable, makes them someone we want to follow or be with. There is something about a show of integrity that moves us. Remember this:
Another example is this stirring recount from Old School by Ellis Amdur of Kino Shizue, then head of the Higo-ryu naginata, a true warrior on the floor of the Tokyo Budokan stopping the “show” for her match with Abe Toyoko, head of the Tendo-ryu (another naginata school):
It was 1982, at the All Japan Seniors Competition, featuring kendo, jukendo, and naginata. Kino Sensei fought first with an eighth-dan kendo teacher. Using Higo Ko-ryu techniques, her stances were low and solid, and she aggressively attacked throughout. Her most effective attack was to fake a cut to the head, then sweep into a cut under her opponent’s arm when he responded to the feint. Though this is not considered a “point” in either kendo or atarashi naginata, it was one of the few unarmored places open to attack in ancient warfare. At one point, her opponent cut at her head. She sidestepped. In a move typical of modern kendo, he continued his movement past her, exposing his back. She simply turned and struck him three times before he could turn around.
At the end of the shiai, the announcer decided that enough time had been spent on the “old folks” matches, and tried to move the program to it’s next segment, an exibition of atarashi naginata done in unison to music. However, there was another individual waiting to engage Kino Sensei, already dressed in protective armor. The announcer breezily apologized for the lack of time over the loudspeaker.
Kino Sensei shook her head and walked out to the center of the Budokan, a huge performance hall, perhaps a third as big as a baseball park. All alone she stood at the center of the floor, with the butt of her weapon planted firmly on the wooden floor.
Silence.
The young women who had fluttered onto the floor to do their performance, looked at each other and drifted back to the sidelines in small groups. Nervous laughter went through the audience.
The announcer rather patronizingly said that “…we all appreciate Kino Sensei’s spirit! We have to move on now!”
She ignored him.
Finally, he and two officials of the kendo federation went out on the floor to remonstrate with her. She ignored them for five minutes, standing there, a warrior holding a bridge to a more glorious past, all alone. Finally, the officials went back to their seats, and the announcer grudgingly stated that there would be one more match. The hall erupted in cheers, and Abe Toyoko Sensei walked onto the floor.
To lead you don’t need integrity. People will follow or settle for much less. But as a leader, I encourage you to ask where do I stand? What do I stand for? If you reflect on the above, in these times of great change, I hope you’ll know when it’s your time, your place to make a stand.
Tags: integrity, leadership
The Power of Permaculture Principles
David Holmgren in his excellent book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability lays out 12 principles for engaging with the eco-systems in which we live in truly sustainable ways.
For those of you who don’t know about permaculture, the quick and dirty definition is that it is a way of life that provides a low energy, high yield, eco-systemically coherent approach to living with the land. The idea is that by understanding how things work in your particular place you can partner with the systemic dynamics in a way that maximizes utility, output and performance while preserving and enriching diversity.
Holmgren’s 12 principles are as follows:
4. Apply Self-Regualtion and Accept Feedback
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources & Services
7. Design from Patterns to Details
8. Integrate rather than Segregate
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal
12. Creatively Use and respond to Change
These principles work for apartment balconies, small backyards and gardens, and large plots of land as well as providing insight into general living, corporate management and community planning. This may well be the way of the future folks. Learn it, know it, live it.
Tags: permaculture, permaculture principles, sustainability
The Seven Transformations of Leadership
In a landmark 2005 article David Rooke and Bill Torbert outlined leadership stages as defined by the Leadership Development Framework. The framework is a list of the seven action logics and their characteristics. The action logics correspond to the Interkannections system in the following manner:
(X) Opportunist: Wins any way possible. Self-oriented; manipulative; “might makes right.”
(G) Diplomat: Avoids conflict. Wants to belong; obeys group norms; doesn’t rock the boat.
(I) Expert: Rules by logic and expertise. Uses hard data and force of opinion to gain consensus and buy-in.
(T) Achiever: Meets strategic goals. Promotes teamwork; juggles managerial duties and responds creatively to market demands to achieve goals.
(H) Individualist: Operates in unconventional ways. Ignores rules he/she regards as irrelevant. Recognizes value and is inclusive of multiple perspectives.
(A) Strategist: Generates organizational and personal change. Highly collaborative; weaves visions with pragmatic, timely initiatives; challenges existing assumptions.
(U) Alchemist: Generates social transformations (e.g., Nelson Mandela). Reinvent themselves, organizations and communities in historically significant ways.
These are stages of development world leaders and the guy and gal down the street pass through. For a great description of these stages in action in a business context I strongly suggest you download The Seven Transformations of Leadership from the Harvard Business Review website.
Check back for more on leadership stages soon!
Tags: capacity evolution, I-shaped people, leadership, leadership stages, leadership transformation, t-shaped people
People in Glass Houses…
…should throw stones-and lots of ‘em. Browsing Seth Godin’s blog I came upon this post about this sculpture:
It’s a clock, turned off, not ticking, showing no progress, encased in glass.
When you’re ready to make the leap, to commit, to make something happen, you break the glass. The sculpture is ruined. All you have is shards of broken glass. And a working clock. It’s alive and it’s changing and moving forward.
I liked this metaphor because it’s a lot like what happens in capacity evolution. Everything seems to be going fine and then-it isn’t. Suddenly (or slowly) you or your organization realizes that you’ve been living in a world encased in glass. It was a world you thought would never change. You thought you had it all figured out. Now, as you realize you really don’t, the glass case is shattered. There’s a rush of air, you breathe it in and then, you breathe out, ready for action, no longer prisoner to the illusion of stability and permanence that contained you. It’s new, exciting and frightening. Still, there’s no going back and, you don’t want to.
There’s so much more going on than you could ever have guessed. So many opportunities, so much to engage, understand, absorb.
For many of us this only happens once or twice in our adult lives. There’s potential for it to happen a lot more. It means a lot of broken glass, a lot of deep breaths and a lot of learning.
Have you pushed your self lately, tested your limitations and tapped on the glass holding you back. Let me know if you need a hammer.
Tags: capacity evolution, seth godin