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Category Archives: Change


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What goes up must come down

Stimulated by reading something in a discarded newspaper by Jonathon Porritt, standing down this month as chairman of the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, I dug out their report “Prosperity without Growth“.

It’s long, over a 100 pages, and could do with a bit of editing. I think it was Greg Dyke who when faced with a difficult decision would ask “What would it mean for my mother?” My view is that if a bit of technical writing can’t be presented clearly and simply, then they may be a waste of all that brain heat.

I only managed the summary (pages 6-13). But the frustration and confusion leaps off the page. The author (Tim Jackson of Surrey University) seemingly can’t understand why others simply don’t get it, and he isn’t happy about it.

His point is that economic growth, in the way we commonly understand it now, is completely at odds with living on our planet in a way that gives all 6 billion or more of us a decent life.

The current macro-economic model doesn’t work socially (letting us all be happy people), environmentally (keeping our ecosystems alive), and economically. Economically it fails when it peaks and troughs, leading to the kind of financial “meltdown” we have experienced recently; but then neither does reversed growth, leading as it does to increased unemployment and so on.

I don’t pretend to understand the complexity of all this – I am no economist. But I do think it’s sad when minds are closed, as Porritt suggests they are, at some of our leading institutions.

Porritt claims that, in the Treasury, for example, there is “no readiness to interrogate the macro-economic model”.

I sometimes come across businesses who aren’t ready to interrogate their own local economic models. But after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, the realisation comes that without a sustainable economic model, the business won’t be around long. There simply has to be some kind of effective balance between what goes in and what goes out.

Anybody can see that, especially my mother. And I don’t want to live in a world with a broken economic model.

Maybe Porritt’s plan is to embarrass the Treasury into change. Whatever it is, I’d rather hear the news that all the intelligent people out there are working together, facing the facts, doing a bit of brainstorming, and coming up with some new, practical ideas about creating a new model that really does work.

I know it takes courage to challenge the status quo. But people are full of courage. So come on.


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Asking the right questions

A friend of mine asked me the other day “What is strategy?”.

It’s a great question. It’s a question I remember asking one of my mentors over 20 years ago. We were working for a consultancy and together we had just completed a fairly significant strategy exercise for our client, one of the big six accounting firms. We were in the pub having a quiet drink to celebrate. Perhaps I was asking the question a little late?

And I admit now I didn’t understand his answer. Maybe I just wasn’t ready.

Now, twenty years later, I think I understand what he said. I think he was saying that strategy is in three parts:

  1. finding direction – developing vision, and mission, that sort of thing;
  2. choosing the route you are going to use to get there, and steering;
  3. doing it – implementing the strategy.

The first and last are relatively easy to understand, even if they are not easy to do. But the middle one is, in my opinion, the really tricky one.

Tricky because it requires different skills. Skills of analysis, connecting things, and seeing the big picture, to name but a few.

And even if you have access to these skills it requires something else, something that is sometimes in short supply in organisations: courage and confidence.

Courage and confidence to trust one’s instincts and ask what strategy is. Know that what other people call strategy probably isn’t. It may be tactics. It may mean simply blindly following a vision, without making any difficult choices.

Courage and confidence to stop whatever habitual busyness you have, and take a long cool look at yourself, your world and what is happening in it.

Courage and confidence to see clearly, despite the pressure that social systems put on us to conform and ignore reality.

Courage and confidence  to work with others and trust others, in such a way that a shared choice can emerge. The world is so complicated I really doubt whether strategy can be done alone.

Courage and confidence to go it alone. Effective strategy is usually a lonely path. You (and your colleagues) won’t be following the crowd.

Courage and confidence.

Setting direction takes courage and confidence too. It’s not easy to be what we most want to be.

Implementing your strategy takes courage and confidence too. To take the first steps. And the next steps, and the next. This requires tremendous effort – to overcome the inertia and resistance that exists in organisations of any size.

So maybe that is what strategy really is: courage and confidence?


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Rivers and lakes

I posted the other day that I was thinking of changing the name of this blog to “Happiness is over-rated”.

The reason for the change was that I was getting fed up with the focus on happiness – just about everywhere I look everyone seems to be talking about it.

I have probably read more books on happiness than most sane people (something to do with being burdened with a negative outlook). I agree that it’s a worthy topic. But there’s something about the word that annoys me.

Don’t get me wrong. I am overjoyed that the discipline of positive psychology now exists. When I was at Uni it all seemed to be just a big battle over whether rats had minds.

But life is complicated. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad.

Happiness, by contrast, seems to me to mean a “state” (a way of being) that is just good. Happiness is something we admire, something that is better than what we have. Something to strive for.

And all that striving after getting better can be exhausting.

As a friend said the other day, it’s important to distinguish between lakes and rivers. Surely life is more like a river than a lake?

I am not talking about flow, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Flow sometimes seems even harder to attain. Great if you’re a top athlete or top musician. But what about me?

I just mean living life, with all its ups and downs. From beginning to end. Through the rapids, the eddies and the calmer bits too.

Accepting the rough with the smooth seems, to me, a better route.


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The politics of business

One of the programmes I most hate on the radio is Any Questions on BBC Radio 4.  Of course, I don’t really hate it. I hate it only in the sense that I enjoy listening to it so that I get many opportunities to loudly prounounce “What an idiot!”.

The brilliant idea of bringing together people into a setting where whatever they say is bound to cause offence to other participants or those in the audience pre-dates reality TV by many, many years of course. And it’s really entertaining in a true sense: it’s diverting and holds my attention.

Yesterday’s episode was set in Londonderry, Northern Ireland and inevitably some of the discussion was about the political situation. In particular the recent comments by Martin McGuinness describing dissident republicans as “traitors” came up.

Someone made the point that language is important, and so it is. And so is the context in which language is spoken.

The word traitor sits in a historical, political and broader context. Just as dissident does. Just as Ireland does. Or any other term we use.

That context affects the way meaning is drawn from the word.

I know little about Northern Ireland. But it seemed positive to me that the speakers seemed to be agreeing that, in 2009, the context has changed.

And that probably as a result of the “peace process” there is a new way of looking at the world which is held by the majority of people. In that context, the words traitor and dissident and even terrorist mean quite different things from what they did in the past.

Agreement amongst the participants of a panel show perhaps doesn’t create quite the kind of entertainment the editors are seeking. So the conversation moved on.

But I was struck by how much business in 2009 needs a new context. Our  language needs updating, of course. But for me, meaning is what counts. And it is often context that determines meaning.

I commented on an Umair Haque post on the Harvard Business site earlier in the week. Umair seemed frustrated that some people are just disguising old (really old) business models in the language of the new. He’s quite right of course. Just changing the words and calling it “Business 2.0” doesn’t change anything.

The shift to Business 2.0, or whatever you want to call it, is a contextual shift. It’s a change in the way we look at the world. A shift in the principles that underpin why we do business, what it is for. These are things we don’t often talk about in business – we’re usually far too busy discussing the how.

But to achieve the kind of seismic shift that has been achieved in Northern Ireland’s politics, we’ll surely need as deep and as far reaching a discussion as has been held there. And with all that is going on in the economy and the wider world isn’t it just a brilliant time to be having this discussion?

Umair is just one of the many people showing the way; all strength to him. I’d love to hear of more like him.


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Lifestyle blogging

My friend Nigel of Nigel’s Ecostore (provider of all things eco) gave me a Christmas present this year: 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. As a huge fan of Ricardo Semler’s Seven Day Weekend I was intrigued but sceptical.

It is fairly easy to rubbish the author’s approach: basically he suggests stopping deferring the good life life now for the fantasy of a great life later.

For him this means jacking in the day-job, setting up a business selling anything (“nutritional supplements” in his case), and automating the running of the business so that you can take advantage of disparities in global incomes and live at South American prices, pay a wage bill in Indian Rupees, and earn income in US dollars.

It’s easy to rubbish because I guess we all hope that disparities in global incomes are temporary; and hence this New Rich lifestyle is not really sustainable, unless you keep hopping from poorer to poorer countries. He puts a complete ban on the whole African continent by the way; too scary perhaps?

Because while Ferris does suggest longer stays than most travel writers (months, not days or weeks) there’s undoubtedly a lot of carbon-generating international air travel involved in the process (who am I to talk: I work with a business travel company amongst others).

And mostly because, while there’s a section at the end about giving something useful back to society, for Ferris that’s a step to take after having lived it up and made your money – it seems to me that’s another form of deferral. Why not get on and do what seems most worthwhile right now, and let money and lifestyle find you?

But that all said I did like the book (so thanks Nigel). Yes, you could say it’s shallow; but then so am I sometimes. It’s well crafted, his youthful enthusiasm is infectious, and it’s full of ideas and practical suggestions. Is it a bad thing that he won Wired Magazine‘s “Greatest Self Promoter of All-Time” prize in 2008? If he uses it to generate money for charities through his LitLiberation project?

Who knows what he’ll do next? The combination of promotional skills using social media and charitable inclinations is probably a good one.

And at least reading the book has made me question some of my assumptions about these things and others, and that is surely always worthwhile.


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Begin at the bottom

Lewes, where I live, is a Transition Town. The Transition movement led by Rob Hopkins and Ben Brangwyn and based in Totnes in the UK  is a very interesting movement.

It’s different from some environmentally focussed groups in that it’s not a protest group – it’s not against anything. Rather it’s focussed on creating positive solutions in response to climate change and “peak oil“.

It’s different because it’s local too, and is really more about community, and community resilience, rather than looking at the world top-down or from a global perspective. Instead, it’s a truly bottom-up way of looking at the world.

In fact, I’d argue it operates from the real bottom – me. My perspective and my behaviours as a member are the first and most important place where things can change.

I also like the way the Transition network is structured. It is a network not a hierarchical organisation. Each Transition Town, Village or City can choose how it operates locally, as long as it at least considers following the network’s broad principles.

Being involved leads to some interesting local debates, which I believe have resonance with the broader world too.

Firstly, we have debated whether it’s better to take a positive or negative view of global trends, particularly climate change and peak oil. Is changing our lives as a result of these things bad or good? I, for one, think a world with less oil where we care for the planet more could be a lot better, and in lots of ways.

Secondly, there’s an argument about resilience in the face of change. Who is more resilient, us in wealthy surburban Britain? Or people in developing countries who haven’t forgotten how to live simply. I realise there are shades of grey in this debate, but still can’t help wondering what all the real fuss is about for us more wealthy folk.

Thirdly, there is an argument about hysteria, about getting people into a state of panic. Plenty of the rich world’s population appear the opposite – almost frozen and immobile – in the face of the things that are happening to us. Ecosystems in collapse, species (including our own) under threat, and we continue to shop, drive and so on. As if there was no tomorrow.

I am sure there is a place for hysteria in getting people to sit up and take notice. For jogging people out of their comfort zones. But ultimately I think, as the story of the boy who cried wolf suggests, it’s really not constructive.

The world is simply too unpredictable. Anyone who uses hysteria to garner action risks becoming simply unbelievable.

So, what other strategies might there be to shake people from their immobility? A psychologist, and friend of mine,  Ben Fletcher, has a suggestion: Do Something Different.

Ben’s suggestion is that people stay the same largely because of habits. Because of habits people behave incongruently with what they believe. For example, we know we should recycle more but we don’t because it’s not our habit.

So randomly and consistently breaking habits should allow us to behave more congruently.

Then all the publicity and knowledge and “facts” which fly around about the environment should properly drive us to take corrective action.

Does it work? Yes, I think so, from having tried one of the DSD programmes. It seems to have the same kind of results as behavioural disputing – where our actions can prove that thoughts we hold to very dearly aren’t actually correct.

Changing our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes allows us to move on – to change our behaviour and create the world anew. That’s a bottom-up change. Something transition is all about.


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Live more simply…

Thanks to my friend Oliver, I just finished reading Ervin Laszlo’s 2006 book The Chaos Point. Probably the best book I have read since  the last amazing book I read. They seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment.

We are always busy so my wife asked me to summarise it in 30 seconds. Here goes:

  • The world is in a terrible state, and getting worse.
  • Doom is not, however, inevitable.
  • Changing our own consciousness – personally and as a group – is the answer.

This goes a long way to answering one of the major riddles I struggle with. If you believe the world is a complex system (as I do), and that we can’t predict outcomes with any certainty (even though scientific, economic. and political dogma suggest we can), why isn’t it OK just to live and let live?

It will all work out for the best won’t it? The trickle-down will work. Technology will fix the climate. Crisis will be averted, yet again. Everyone will be happy.

Laszlo’s point is that we humans are both the problem and the solution. We are destroying the planet and in danger of destroying ourselves. But we have the power to change our thinking. And changing our thinking allows us to change the framework by which we all live. Our future is not predetermined. It depends on that framework.

Our ingrained liberalism suggests live and let live. But we can, for example, choose a better morality, summarised by Ghandi’s “Live more simply, so that others can simply live”.

How do we change our morality, change our consciousness? Another riddle: it’s not easy, and yet it is. One clear way forward is to work on oneself. To try to understand oneself better, mind, body and soul.

My wife liked that bit. She’s an example to me. Someone who takes personal development very seriously. And I must go and read another book.


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Typecast

Why do we have it in for sales people? In my book, good sales people do a really useful job. They help me find out what I need. They arrange for me to get it. They make me feel good in the process.

So why do I, and others, sometimes get upset when thinking of sales people? Is it because we’re really thinking about pressure selling? About mis-selling? About used-car sales men?  But I bought a great used car from real gentleman.

The answer of course is that we are “labelling”. I said the word salesman the other day and a colleague immediately quipped “untrustworthy”. Word association football.

We’re labelling someone as a type, probably before we’ve even really experienced what’s going on. What there is to experience in their behaviour. What’s really happening. Sure there are people who sell badly. But equally there are people who sell well. Why on earth would we clump them all together? That’s faulty thinking.

Labelling’s just one of many “faulty” thinking types, identified by people like Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, the founders of cognitive therapy.

What brought this to mind? My holiday reading, a book by Sarah Edelman. I’ve read this kind of thing before. But this is really accessible and well written. I know it’s probably a bit sad to be reading stuff like this on holiday, but as Ellis said, “fighting irrationality and trying to be happy in a nutty world has great advantages in itself. It’s challenging. It’s interesting. It’s rewarding. It’s self helping… Your very determination to work at it can keep you reasonably happy.”

Can’t say fairer than that.


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Vive la difference?

Someone sent me this paper the other day written by Jane Lorand who runs a Green MBA at a university in the USA. The arrival of many more Green and Sustainable MBAs will no doubt mean we get a lot more of this kind of thing. I am not sure I am looking forward to it.

Lorand argues that “For today’s businesses, there exist two distinct paradigms about what is real and important.” She separates these paradigms and describes the characteristics of each, including the beliefs on which she believes they are based.

For “Business-As-Usual” companies “1) Everything is Separate and 2) Materialism is the Only Reality”.

And for sustainable companies “1) Everything is Connected and 2) Spirit and Matter Co-exist to Form Reality.”

There are things I like about the paper. I enjoy breaking things down into categories. But I think we need to be careful not to be too hard on Business-As-Usual companies.

For one thing, Lorand says that “individuals who work in Business-As-Usual corporations find it very difficult to assert belief structures, identities or methods inconsistent with their corporation.”

She also suggests that Business-As-Usual has a singular goal: “maximizing financial profit for shareholders.”

I worked for a large US corporation during the 1980s and while profit was important as far as I could tell it was never the single goal of the company. The goals were much more diverse.

Wouldn’t it be great if life was that simple and it was possible to set a single goal and then attain it? In real life, we all do our best and and a number of different things result. Often results emerge that we weren’t expecting and didn’t intend.

Reading the paper I started to wonder if every big corporation has its own Stasi – controlling the workers. By contrast, the company I worked for contained such a very large number of “mavericks”, both people and groups, that it would seem absurd to suggest that people were unable to express their own beliefs.

In fact, that company, like all others I’d suggest, was a much more diverse and heterogenous mix of people and ways of doing things than management consultants who focus on ideas like “culture” would have us believe. (In some unkinder moods I’d suggest that if organisational culture didn’t exist, management consultants would have to invent it.) I am of the school of thought that believes that culture emerges fluidly and dynamically from the beliefs and activities of the people who work in a business. It’s not some intractable glue magically imposed top-down or somehow encoded in the papers of incorporation.

Why is this important? Because as we navigate the waters of sustainable business I think we need to be very careful to be inclusive. I think we need to welcome people of all backgrounds and cultures, including those that have worked in “big business”. We need to work with these people, not against them. In my experience, most people who work in large corporations have hearts just as big as those who work in sustainable business.

And we also mustn’t start to think that big business is somehow not open to change. That sounds much too much to me like the kind of thing I might say to my wife!

This approach itself creates barriers to change – it puts people’s backs up (just ask my wife), and it disempowers us – we stop believing in the possibility of change.

Big businesses, like any business, change fast once change starts. There are armies of “catalysts for change” at every level in every decent company – not just a few undercover agents.

The evidence for this is that few big companies would have survived in the turbulent years since I have been working without an incredible ability to develop and grow in response to change. Only the real dinosaurs suppress change – and these typically go the way of the dinosaurs.

I haven’t met Jane Lorand but I feel sure she’d concur.


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Close the loop

On Saturday I saw again the great little animated film The Story of Stuff – “a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns” according to the blurb.

One of the solutions proposed in the film is closed-loop manufacturing, an idea pioneered by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in the early 1990s. Essentially closed-loop manufacturing does what it says on the tin, and you can find out more about their version of it, “cradle-to-cradle” or C2C Design on their website.

Well worth a look.