Capacity Evolution?

To give you a sense of what I do, let me explain what we do at Interkannections 

We are a consultancy dedicated to evolution of human and human system capacity to engage the world. It is not just what we do that matters but how we are as well. We explain this as the relationship between “Be-Do-Get.” How we are-how we see, understand and make meaning-in the world determines what we do. The results of our worldview and our actions are the results we get.

There is a lot of energy being directed toward and focus on helping people do better. Skill development, competency improvement and technology all help us do better. There are times, though, when what we need is not a new way to do the same thing differently. At times, we need to evolve a new way of seeing that allows us to overcome the limitations of our current ways of doing. The development of this new way of seeing is a result of deepening our capacity to see. This is what we do. We help people and human systems deepen their sense of their selves and deepen the way they interact-are interconnected-with the world around them.

Recently, we have realized that one valuable way we can be of service is to turn our practice and technologies to the development of sustainable ways of Be-ing and Do-ing. We-the greater human community-need to evolve the capacity to engage the world from a deep systemic understanding. This is not environmentalism, a focus of climate change, green business or LOHAS. It is the capacity to integrate the linear with the non-linear, to see the forest and the trees and come up with a way for the loggers, environmentalists, paper business, bird-watchers, bears, flowers, fish, toads and people living downstream to all benefit from their relationship to that forest. This requires a new way of seeing and thinking and doing. What enables this new way is our capacity to see, think and do. 

Are you ready to change?

 

 

Tags: capacity building, capacity evolution, sustainability

The LimiTaTions of T

Let’s be honest, this whole “I-shaped“, “T-shaped” thing, though, useful is, by itself, a pretty big over simplification of the complex and diverse wholeness of a human being. I have found a number of posts and comments on other blogs that speak to this quite clearly. 

At peterme.com there is a good discussion about this:

Let me step back a bit. I have long had issue with the fetishization of “T-shaped” people for the simple reason that I’m not T-shaped. I’ve never been able to articulate my “vertical leg”. Throughout my career I’ve moved from activity to activity, from web development to interface design to information architecture to user research to product strategy. And I think my success is due to my ability to understand the synthesis across these skills and disciplines, to appreciate how to orchestrate them, to know how these integrate to achieve optimal affect.

And at Ryskamp.org Bob Ryskamp has this to say:

Consider this my plea for the design community to stop using the term “T-shaped people”. It’s demeaning, over-simplistic, misleading, and dangerously-influential, which combined with the prior three traits makes for trouble—that starts with “T”…

There are two problems with this phrase: T-shaped people don’t exist, and having T-shaped traits does not indicate design success…

To refer to them as “T-shaped” ignores all these other essential parts of each designer. That is why I say that calling someone “T-shaped” is demeaning and over-simplistic. People shaped like “T”s just don’t exist.

They’re right. We are much more than than any type or shape. These are just shorthand and simplified attempts at understanding something much more complex-a living, breathing complex, open human system. We are much more and will always be much more than any system of classification can make us. 

What is important is to use these systems as a means for understanding ourselves, understanding others and how we relate to and engage the world around us. At the heart of this is our capacity to do so, of which being “T-shaped” “I”, “H” or “A-shaped” is only one crucial yet incomplete part of a much larger and complex whole.

Tags: A-shaped people, capacity, I-shaped people, t-shaped people

We are What We Eat

My colleague Norio has dug up another stunning article called Eating Fossil Fuels. Based on the book by David Allen Pfeiffer its main point is hard to ignore. Current agricultural production is expending more energy than it is producing. Much of the energy expended is of the fossil fuel and especially the petrochemical variety. Whether you believe in peak oil scenarios or not, what is indisputable is that as the cost of oil continues to increase the cost of food will also soar-unless we drastically change our approaches to food production. Or, as Pfeiffer succinctly points out in the forward:

…without the fossil fuel input, modern agriculture will fail and we will no longer be able to produce the food necessary to sustain more than a fraction of our present population 

 The article makes some other significant points as well:

In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold. Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

Solar energy is a renewable resource limited only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit and used it to increase agricultural production.

Total fossil fuel use in the United States has increased 20-fold in the last 4 decades. In the US, we consume 20 to 30 times more fossil fuel energy per capita than people in developing nations. Agriculture directly accounts for 17% of all the energy used in this country. As of 1990, we were using approximately 1,000 liters (6.41 barrels) of oil to produce food of one hectare of land.

Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.

What used to sound like gloom and doom pessimism is now the emergent results from our inter-related thinking, actions and the way we have been engaging the world. Don’t you think it’s time we tried another way?

(The article can also be downloaded HERE)

 

Tags: food crisis, peak oil, sustainability

What Are You Doing?!

A simple question: Is what you are doing, now, contributing to the sustained existence of the human community, the eco-systems and biosphere that supports us?

Now ask your self: What compels me to do it? What could I change to make what I’m doing more sustainably coherent? Do I care?

Ask your self these questions at work and from time to time throughout your day. Notice how you react. Notice your thoughts. Notice what you do.

 

Be well.

Tags: sustainability, sustainable leadership, sustainable thinking