The Macro perspective
If you were to walk into a forest and ask, who is in charge here? Who would respond and what would they say?
“I am!” exclaims the mushroom.
“Noooohoh, its me!!” says the owl.
“Good luck breathing without us!” says the tree
Personification aside, there doesn’t seem to be an internal debate about what exactly or how much each part of the whole is contributing within the forest. Every actor within the system does what they do best like decompose things, hunting and eating things or turning carbon dioxide into oxygen. As each actor is contributing their unique skills, they also seem to understand a unifying purpose that informs each action. Their common purpose may be something simple like ‘maintaining a balance in the system’. If every action I take originates from this simple purpose, a self-organization can give way within each individual actor. Balance is struck as each self-organizing system interacts with one another while fulfilling the same purpose.
Humans do this as well, primarily through unspoken social agreements. Everyone knows adults shouldn’t throw tantrums in restaurants but how do we know? Is it written somewhere or is it against the law? Not explicitly, and yet we have the innate tendency to live according to a common understanding. While our social agreements have given way to a certain level of order, I believe we can achieve more with this innate ability. Can we define or reveal our purpose in a deeper way?
As we dive into an increasingly global economy, I believe our greatest challenge, as a whole human system, will be to uncover a meaningful purpose with which everyone can work from.
The Micro perspective
Lets say that “maintaining the global system balance” is where all human behavior originates and a common purpose has been established. Where do we go from here? I believe that the tools we have for measurement and execution, especially in business, are insufficient if we are to fulfill our purpose.
At the end of the day, all business is driven by money or capital. Marjorie Kelly says we need to make a “shift from capital-ism”, the belief that maximizing capital matters more than anything else. I’m not sure that this is the most effective shift we can make, I see a greater value in re-defining what we mean by ‘capital’. I feel that the true issue lies in how we account and value components both ‘outside’ and ‘within’ the system. Externalities are not a new concept to economists but truly accounting for their value is an exciting emerging science.
Enter Ecosystem Services. David Holzman’s exploration of accounting for natures benefits did an excellent job of explaining some of todays top ecosystem accountants. This is an amazing opportunity for us to value the goods that have been inherently free of charge for so long. Its happening today on a varying scale of complexity. Vietnam for example, invested $1.1 million in mangrove plantings to protect their coastline instead of an annual $7.3 million expense in maintaining man made dykes. Ecosystem services are valued by how much human welfare they can provide and human welfare is directly dependent on the balance within the ecosystem. If this truth was accurately reflected in our capital exchanges, we would be living in a very different world. There is the issue of integrating such an expansive definition of capital, which brings us to the issue of measurement.
“That which can be measured can be monitored”
How are we to value something like fertile soil? by how many crops are yielded from it? by how much life is flourishing with it? by how it protects against erosion? Its hard to quantify things that have such a complex utility but its easy to feel that there is value in something like fertile soil.
Enter Intuitive thinking and the teachings of Roger Martin in the Rotman Design Challenge. He talks about analytical versus intuitive thinking. This is where things get really challenging. Governing between analytical facts and deductive reasoning versus intuitive choices and abductive logic is incredibly difficult. These are not things that have a crystal clear, definitively drawn definition. It becomes an issue of social agreement once again, the unwritten and unspoken yet clearly understood rules that dictate our everyday lives. This inherently brings us back to the macro perspective and our greater motivational purpose of balance.
And round and round we go.
Tatianna, you are drawing really interesting connection between our readings and lectures.Thanks for bringing it all together. I've often wondered what other ways can we measure success and value? Which brings me to the questions that you raise in the beginning of your post "who is in charge here"? It seems to me that when you get the answer to that question you quickly find the answer to "what is success? what is value?" When money is in charge of capital it runs the show and dictates what is valuable. What would happen if, as you say, we redefine capital? We would also redefine value? What if clean air backed capital and we all strove to make air the cleanest? What a different measure of value and success it would be!
ReplyDeleteTatianna, I like how you addressed both common social agreements and the importance of discovering new metrics for incredibly important, but abstract-to-measure variables. It's interesting how non-enforcable social agreements or common understandings can successfully exist like your example of behavior in a restaurant. I agree it seems natural that the same intuition that leads all of us to the understanding that- throwing our runny eggs and stale toast on the ground is not acceptable may also be capable of forming some deeper shared understandings.
ReplyDelete(upon checking to confirm if this posted last week I realized it didn't... trying again 12/9)
ReplyDeleteTatiana, it was so great to get to know you over our second intensive, although I look forward to more one-on-one time too! It's great to explore your thought process more through your blog postings too. I enjoyed your introduction and relating the inteconnectedness of ecosystems to our current economy and leadership styles that we seem to have so naturally adopted. I'd have enjoyed hearing your perspective on the quiet-session we had at Channel Rock. My time perched on the mossy embankment overlooking the bay was incredibly telling to me of how small a role I play within this big, expansive world, yet also how integral and important my role is within this ecosystem (that of Channel Rock then British Columbia, then the Pacific Northwest and then the microcosm of BGI - following the ripple effect and the community beyond). What struck me was the impact that we as individuals truly do have on the environments we live in and travel to. In addition, I heard the chipmunk, bees, flies, and even the wolves (can we talk about how incredible that was?!?!) invite me into their space as one more element that once settled in made a contribution to the environment. Their conversation was not one of who is responsible for what but rather a harmony of sounds that alerted me to the individual's roles they each naturally played which are like the string section of an orchestra. Each reading from their own sheet music, but conducted to play together at the right time and in the right and needed tone. However theirs is much more natural than that of an orchestra. Should it be viewed from a religious lens, God (or the god(s) anyone worships or believes in) could play conductor...I envision it as a the sun and the moon sharing the podium and gently inspiring and guiding the players.
This is my vision for how our economies and governments could eventually operate and exist. I am hopefully that our time at BGI continues to invite us to learn new styles of organizational management and development, leveraging and inspiring our existing organizations and companies that we work within, or those that we'll create, to be self-organizing and creatively efficient. I am frustrated, as we learn more, with the current state of management and lack of ethics involved and invested within our current global business economy. It is clear you and the rest of our cohort is here to learn, explore, open our minds and hearts to new and 'disruptive' ways to turntable he world of business around and I look forward to many more conversations together, redefining what our collective 'Social Agreement' is and how to leverage it to propel our world toward a greater purpose and one that is founded on shared values, trust and respect for our shared Environment.
This is a stellar article. I could help but thinking about finding a global shared purpose and then also examining what it means to assign value to things, like fertile soil, that have true value yet are difficult to encapsulate, difficult to measure and difficult to create consensus around. Fertile soil was a great example of what it means to explore value. Maybe we are simply hung-up on trying to create one simple beautiful equation for value? Could part of the issue is finding shared purpose be that there is not universal shared purpose? Is our shared purpose to coexist? Is our shared purpose to control the planet? Is our shared purpose to love each other? Does having a shared purpose enable us to solve out of our global problems?
ReplyDeleteI think yes. You can put 500 very different people in a room. Place them on teams. They're all total strangers. Now tell them one thing. Tonight, we are going to write a 600 page novel together. Holy cow, that's an overwhelming idea. But how. a scavenger hunt is set up and different article are selected by teams. The book gets written. How is that possible? It is possible because everyone shared a purpose. Finishing a book through collaboration. I participated in this experiment and it really resonated. It was called, "Find the Future." The issue is that we need many shared purposes and goals, not just a single one.