Great Thinkers – Page 4 – Lorne Mitchell's Thursday Thoughts

17/11/201120/04/2012

Eco Systems, Efficient Thinking and Complementary Currencies

Slightly more than three years ago I was part of a worldwide team of volunteers within IBM researching the implications of climate change across every major industry sector on the planet. I led the Telecoms stream and discovered that although the Telecoms sector accounts for about 2% of man’s carbon footprint, this negative aspect was balanced by the associated benefits of reducing the impact of other more carbon-gulping industries such as Travel and Transport.

Yet through the whole study, IBM framed the study not in terms of carbon reduction – but in terms of sustainability. The pursuit of sustainability has confused me somewhat since then for a number of reasons. Firstly, nothing is sustainable for ever. Everything changes. Secondly, the whole carbon reduction movement has been (and continues to be) over-ridden by the world’s financial crisis. And thirdly – and perhaps most importantly – I had never taken the time to look into the principles behind sustainability so that I could explain it to someone else with clarity and simplicity.

All that changed last week. From my research into the future of money, I came across an excellent TED Talk – and website by Bernard Lietaer – a German Professor who specialises in another of my interests – Community Currencies. Lietaer’s pursuit for different models for money in the TED talk took him to ecology and a rather splendid discipline of “Ecological Economics”. Made sense to me (and the bees) – so I researched further.

Lietaer’s ideas originated from some earlier research from Robert. E. Ulanowicz – a Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. He defined sustainability as a state between efficiency and diversity – elegantly shown by a green ball in balance at the top of a convex curve:

Lietaer further shows in his joint paper with Ulanowicz and their co-author Sally Goerner that this model is as equally valid in organic, biospheres as it is in economics. Lietaer proposes that the reason for the financial crisis is that the system became more and more efficient at the expense of diversity. Makes sense.

So the challenge is to move from the (left-brained) obsession with efficiency and cost-cutting and move to the right by encouraging diversity and communication (right brained stuff). Also makes sense.

So to get out of the current economic crisis we need – complementary (or local) currencies that build diversity back into the system. And quickly.

You can read more on Bernar Lietaer’s ideas on his website. And below is an abstract of the paper:

I’m off to see another lecture on the future of money at the RSA next Thursday. So next week’s Thursday Thought might be a hat-trick on this subject. Even if the authorities have removed the tents from StPauls by then!

Keep thinking!

03/11/201103/11/2011

What Really Motivates You?

As a keen watcher of the RSAnimate series, I was surprised I had not posted on the most popular animation yet – Dank Pink’s brilliant exposure of what really motivates us. With nearly 7 million views, it is an insightful analysis of what really motivates – and the answer is not obvious. The story takes us on a journey to uncover what really does give us the motivation to do more than just get us out of bed every day and go to work.

Before you watch it (even if you have seen it before), write down what you think really motivates you – and then compare it with Dan’s three motivators at the end of the video. Even it if you get all three correct, the exercise will certainly make you think!

13/10/201114/10/2011

What Makes a Good Story?

I have always been fascinated by what makes up a good story and the effect that is has on the way we think about the world and our place within it. I have only recently came across the work of Joseph Campbell and his seminal work “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. In the book he explores the underlying pattern of the heroic struggle from each of the great myths from around the world. He then goes on to uncover an underlying sequence of typical “hero-actions” which are embedded in each of these stories.

George Lucas (the creator of StarWars) was so impressed by Cambpell’s work that he wrote the StarWars epic using his ideas. We are very fortunate that a series of six programmes summarising Campbell’s work and his ideas were recorded just before he died. You can see the first (and subsequent) videos on the (rather whacky) internet site below – though it is obviously much better to buy “The Power of Myth” DVD on Amazon or elsewhere and watch it legally:

Campbell neatly summarises one of the heoric struggles with phrase early-on in the six-part documentary:

“where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world”

The orphan archetype is possibly the most common storyline that Campbell uncovered. Moses, Romulus and Remus, Cinderella, Oliver Twist, Mowgli, Tarzan, Superman, Annie, King Arthur, Frodo Baggins, and yes, Harry Potter – as well as Luke Skywalker.

As Terry Windling so succinctly puts it:

“The orphaned hero is not, however, a mere fantasy cliché; it’s a mythic archetype, springing from some of the oldest stories of the world. This archetype includes not only those characters who are literally orphaned by the death of their parents, but also children who are lost, abandoned, cast out, disinherited by evil step–parents, raised in supernatural captivity, or reared by wild animals.”

Christopher Volger (in his book The Writer’s Journey) created twelve distinct stages to a good story:

1. Ordinary World

2. Call to Adventure

3. Refusal of the Call

4. Meeting the Mentor

5. Crossing the Frist Threshold

6. Tests, Allies and Enemies

7. Approach

8. Ordeal

9. Reward

10. The Road Back

11. Resurrection of the Hero

12. Return with the Elixir

So there you have it. The twelve stages to telling a good story based on Campbell’s “Monomyth” – or common pattern for all good stories. Try it. It really works. Whether you are narrating an important case study that is being used as an example to help you sell a product or service at work, or giving a bed-time story to children, the underlying drama always touches a chord. And it is fun to hold the attention when only you know where you are going to end up! Ah, yes. That is the other trick. It is important to know where you are going to end up (roughly) – though I find some of the fun of story-telling is that the story itself can unfold in unexpected ways. The Hero always finds his or her way through, though!

Oh, and by the way. Steve Jobs was an orphan. Which is probably why his real-life story has touched us in so many ways in the past week.

Makes you think, anyway!

Other References:

Joseph Campbell Foundation – for a lot more resources

Joseph Campbell Foundation on YouTube – for some other great videos from Campbell

Windling, Terry.

06/10/201106/10/2011

Steve Jobs RIP

I cannot mark today’s Thursday Thoughts without a tribute to Steve Jobs. He became a legend in his own lifetime and he has surely changed the way that we work, play and think. He will be sadly missed having made a unique contribution to those who live beyond his untimely death.

Before he died, he expressed his philosophy on death with simplicity and elegance:

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Steve Jobs, Rest in Peace.

29/09/201129/09/2011

Predicting and Influencing the Future for the Better

Last night I had a fascinating dinner with a few friends at the Frontline Club where we discussed how you influence the future. We ended up designing a system of brainstorming panels which had 3D glass shelves and used 3D icons that could change colour and show pictures and movies – all hitched to a reconfigurable database the cloud! By 10.30 my mind was totally boggled and we headed home!

The conversation was triggered by last week’s post where we explored the idea of Presence as being a better paradigm to describe effective organisations and trying to show that the current obsession of process reengineering is so lacking as an organising idea for the new internet era. This week I intend to look at whether or not we can predict the future – and we can influence outcomes at an individual, organisational and world level.

To start with, I love the quote by William Gibson: “The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.” Since the beginning of recorded history mankind has held in some sort of reverence (or equal cynicism) those who say they can see the future. The oldest book in the world is based on the stories of the ancient prophets. Seers and clairvoyants have always held a deep romantic fascination for me as guides to some sort of futre picture (whether good or bad) and they seldom seem to be accountable for whether their predictions happen or not. Just as Gibson observes, seers and prophets might actually be in the future and are describing things that most of us can’t see yet because we are stuck in the past (perhaps tied up in processes that were invented by someone else long ago ;-)).

If you fancy your clairvoyant skills, then there is even an Australian website where you can enter them – and it keeps track of whether or not they come true! Here is a list of War on Experts’ top 10 best predictions. There is also an interesting podcast from Freakonomics on why we just love trying to predict the future and how louzy we are at it.

In my work, I find the basis of “back-to-front” thinking an absolutely critical tool when trying to find the best courses of action to achieve objectives. You can’t really be successful unless you know what success looks like – and you can’t get there unless you have worked out how to get there back-to-front. So, in many ways, the predicted (reinforced) path to get from where you are now to where you want to get to requires some sort of prediction and willing yourself into the future.

There is some fairly extraordinary research being run at Princeton University into human consciousness that records how the human race reacts to specific events around the world. With the help of correspondents around the world, events that can be expected to bring large numbers of people to a “shared or coherent emotional state”. The following is a partial, illustrative list of criteria and examples:

Suddenness or surprise. Terror attacks, especially where they are not usual.
Fear and compassion. Large natural disasters, typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes.
Love and sharing. Celebrations and ceremonies like New Years, religious gatherings.
Powerful interest. Political and social events like elections, protests, demonstrations.
Deliberate focus. Organized meetings and meditations like Earth Day, World Peace Day.

There seems to be evidence that human consciousness actually changed a few seconds BEFORE any jet was rammed into the Twin Towers with the monitoring of these”eggs” placed round the planet by Princeton University which generate random numbers.

Results still show that one of the main ways to make the world more peaceful and better place is to get a group together and go into a group meditation. Forget about thinking. Just sit and meditate. So whether you believe we can see the future or not, by changing our own consciousness, it appears that we can actually make the future more peaceful!

As Niels Bohr is famously quoted: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” but I am certain we can influence and make the future happen by our actions in the present and by envisioning the future back-to-front into our lives.

Beautiful day here. Hottest September afternoon in the UK on record, apparently. Off to go and meditate with the bees and raise the level of peace vibes on the planet!

22/09/201125/09/2011

Presence over Process

This week, the bees went to bed for the winter. Fed down with verroa treatment in the hope that most colonies will survive the winter.

I have also had three very different conversations this week about the importance of Business Processes. In each conversation, I came to a different set of conclusions. However, there was one over-riding idea that shone through from each conversation. The obsession with the current process-centric religion in management thinking has actually made many of our service-based organisations less, not more effective and less, not more efficient.

The first conversation came from an experience I had with a US-based hosting company I have used for about ten years. Last year they put SAP into the company. Two months ago the company was sold. The service has been declining for about a year. Coincidence? I don’t think so. The new process involves forcing you to ring a US telephone number which is actually answered by someone in the Phillipines who filters you so they can direct you to the right department. The problem I had involved both Domain Names and Hosting – so I ended up being put through to two departments. In the end I was double-billed and had to ring back a week later to complain – when I went through the same rigmarole – and was sent an email to say I couldn’t reclaim the money because it was against company policy. I rang a third time and finally got through to someone who sorted me there-and-then. Sounds familiar? More like a telephone company? Yes, indeed. I then got hold of the Director for Customer Experience and Process Design on LinkedIn to share my story. He was a Harvard MBA. He saw my profile but ignored me. The company is called Network Solutions.

The second case was with a former colleague whom I had lunch with. He is an aspiring partner at one of the big five consulting practices. He told me he was writing a paper about the importance of process design in telecoms companies. I cited the above story and said that Presence was more important than Process. He looked quizzical. He could not compute. He was not sure how he could implement Presence and make money out of the idea from a consulting assignment.

The final conversation was with an enlightened ex COO of a Telecoms company with whom I had lunch with on Tuesday. He said he was process mad – yet when you listened to his stories of how he managed processes, there was a great deal of practicality and experience blended in with the importance of providing the right information to the right person at the right time to turn customer issues and questions around on the first call.

In the crusade to banish the obsession with Process centricity, I continue to marvel at the bees that I keep. They don’t have crazy processes to waste time. They have developed an approach that balances Process AND Content (or pollen/nectar collection) IN THE MOMENT so that they can respond with far more intelligence than just following a book of rules. Interestingly, the model they use shows that outsourcing is extremely wasteful and makes no sense at all. If you have to hand off, do it only once (not three times like ITIL). The models from the bees also demonstrates the sense of investing in small, agile “cells” of capacity and capability tuned to specific types of demand.

To summarise, I believe it is time to create a new management paradigm based on Presence (modelled much more on the natural world that the bees have developed over 50 million years). It creates a paradigm shift that takes us away from the insanity (or caetextic thinking) of process-obsession and into a new much more organic model based on cells or colonies that can respond to demand of various types a seasonal basis.

Just like the bees do.

I am writing a book on the idea – so expect more like this in future postings.

I have also posted Presence over Process on MIX – The Management Information Exchange – please add comments and vote for the idea there or add your comments here as you wish. Always valuable!

31/08/201131/08/2011

Jobs, Dots and Coincidences

In the week that Steve Jobs gave up as CEO of Apple, I was reminded by a good friend, Cliff, of part of Jobs’ address to Stamford students in 2005:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever – because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

The idea that “dots will connect down the road” is such an interesting one. So many things become obvious with the benefit of hindsight. So it was, whilst on holiday in Sicily over the past ten days, that I was thinking about the importance of coincidences when looking back in life.

How many times in your life have you thought “That’s a coincidence!” – and the event or chance meeting has led to something important developing further down the road?

There is also the famous puzzle about how many people you need to gather together in a group for there to be less than a 50% probability that two in the group will share a birthday. The answer is not, as may would think 183 (or a half or 366) – but it is, in fact, a mere 23! Therefore coincidences are actually more common than we might at first think!

James Redfield in his book “The Celestine Prophecy” develops the main character with him beginning to notice instances of “synchronicity”, or the realisation that coincidences may have deep, sometimes spiritual meanings.

And, as Einstein charmingly said: “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

To bring me back to Steve Jobs – his creations (or the creations of Apple) have been important at certain transition points in my life – whether they be the first Apple 2 I bought in 1980, or the Macbook Air I ordered today because my MacBook Pro that I got when I set up Objective Designers 3 years ago packed up last week!

Whether you believe these deeper meanings or not, REFLECT ON IT: When have coincidences changed your direction in life – or the decisions you have made? They have for me. Maybe they have for you?

Please think about these coincidences that have turned your life….and, if you think you have a good story, please put it in the comment box below!

11/08/201111/08/2011

Central Banks & Local Currencies

Living in Kent in the UK, I have always been fascinated by local currencies and hop tokens. These were issued by local farmers to the hop pickers who came down from London – and could only be spent in the local village or on local beer (provided by the farmer!). However unfair, this really was localism in action!

So it is, as Europe and the US faces its currency crisis, trying to payoff old debts with a money system that is totally broken, it becomes so interesting to look to history and the so-called Wörgl experiment. This was conducted from July 1932 to November 1933 and is a classic example of the potential efficacy of local currencies in a time of financial crisis.

Wörgl, a small town in Austria with 4000 inhabitants, introduced a local scrip during the Great Depression. By 1932 unemployment in Wörgl had risen to 30%. The local government had amassed debts of 1.3 million Austrian schillings (AS) against cash reserves of 40,000 AS. Local construction and civic maintenance had come to a standstill. On the initiative of the town’s mayor, Michael Unterguggenberger, the local government printed 32,000 in labor certificates which carried a negative 1% monthly interest rate and could be converted into schillings at 98% of face value. An equivalent amount in schillings was deposited in the local bank as cover for the certificates in case of mass redemption and earned interest for the government.

The certificates circulated so rapidly that only 12,000 were ever actually put into circulation. According to reports by the mayor and economists of the day who studied the experiment, the scrip was readily accepted by local merchants and the local population. It utilized the scrip to carry out 100,000 AS in public works projects involving construction and repair of roads, bridges, tanks, drainage systems, factories, and buildings. The scrip was also accepted as legal tender for payment of local taxes.

In the one year that the currency was in circulation, it circulated 13 times faster than the official shilling and served as a catalyst to the local economy. The heavy arrears in local tax collection declined dramatically. Local government revenue rose from 2,400 AS in 1931 to 20,400 in 1932. Unemployment was eliminated, while it remained very high throughout the rest of the country. No increase in prices was observed. Based on the dramatic success of the Wörgl experiment, several other communities introduced similar scrips.

In spite of the tangible benefits of the programme, it met with stiff opposition from the regional socialist party and from the Austrian central bank, which opposed the local currency as an infringement on its powers over the currency. As a result the program was suspended, unemployment rose, and the local economy soon degenerated to the level of other communities in the country.

So there is a way out of the currency crisis – if only we looked to history and suppressed the central banking systems. I cannot see the dollar and euro surviving in their current state for much longer without some re-thinking. Makes you think what we could do if we took localism to the next stage of its natural development.

Main story from Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currency

27/07/2011

Reasons for Encouragement: Keeping the World View

In the week that the US space shuttle programme came to an end, the BBC put a cut-down and edited version of the film “Round the world in 90 minutes.

You can watch the older version on YouTube in five fifteen minute cuts:

Let’s hope that the planetary consciousness that the outstanding programme has delivered will continue to see the world as a fragile ecosystem and not as a toxic dumping ground for consumer madness (per the previous post).

27/07/201127/07/2011

Reasons for the Crisis: Designing for Obsolescence

In a week where the Murdoch media empire appeared to lose its power, I came across this video “The Story of Stuff”- perhaps the most important “News of the World” that Murdoch’s empire was at the heart of ignoring.

Even if you have seen it, watch it again: it will make you think again about how the world works.

It is interesting how, with the launch of Apple’s Lion operating system we are still seeing “Design for Obsolescence” as one of the main design principles from what many say is the best design company in the world. It’s time for Apple (and the rest of us) to re-think design for the 21st century so that we can close the circle, not keep pushing the 99% waste down the pipe. Designing for Pull has to be a major factor in this redesign philosophy – and something I will come back to in future posts.