Helene Finidori

Engaging For the Commons - Global Pull Platform

 

 

In january 2011, The Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon, called for revolutionary thinking and action to ensure an economic model for survival. A year later, the Global Sustainability Panel he created to this effect published its recommendations report for Rio+20: Resilient people, resilient Planet, a future worth choosing. The vision of the GSP as expressed in the report revolves around choice, influence, participation and action, and calls for a political process "able to summon both the arguments and the political will necessary to act for a sustainable future."…

Whether one agrees or not with the principles of political economics put forward by the UN, "activating" human agency and political will and addressing the root causes for power unbalance and resistance to change is at the heart of tomorrow's paradigm shift.

This has been my research subject during the past year which led me to draft an action-oriented strategy and process methodology for generating engagement, accountability and outcomes in the political, economic, social and environmental spheres, which may contribute to enable this activation. Inspired by Elinor Ostrom's "Governing The Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action", the objective is to turn around the tragedy of the commons by empowering individuals and communities, nurturing public wisdom and collective debate, helping push issues onto public agendas, and influencing policy and corporate behavior in a systemic and dynamic perspective. 

A group of us is now working to pull together the best elements available or in the making on the web to create a global pull platform to engage for the commons  and enable a form of evolutionary activism as part as of an emergent collective response in the context of a citizen/actor network and peer to peer commons of knowledge. 

The principles of the platform.

The platform is structured around commons, issues of social, environmental, economic nature, such as those included in this framework for reliable prosperity, treated as social objects: the nodes around which social networks are created, conversations and repeated interactions are initiated, new territories explored, meaning and intents shared, learning achieved.

People subscribe to individual issues then designate (ping, invite & follow) the actors who they think may have an influence -positive or negative-  on the status of an issue. This ‘pinging of actors’ by ‘citizen-followers’ creates a pull dynamic. Bringing together the parties susceptible of impacting progression on an issue and those to whom they are accountable will yield conversations, knowledge flow, and feedback loops beneficial to learning, progress visualization, and evaluation. The goal is to create a context favorable to collaboration, exchange of ideas and know-how. The pull dynamic is intended to stimulate political action and on-the-ground response, and ultimately advance the governance of the commons
 

The process consists in letting people/organizations:

• Select, follow, learn as a 'citizen' about the causes, issues, commons they care for and the actors involved
• Keep informed and track progress and status of these issues
• Self assign actor role and communicate/report on self-activity and impact and status of issue. Self assignment is a declaration of engagement at various possible levels (governance institution, activist, champion, observer, kow-how or knowledge resource)
• Share practical solutions, proposals for tasks and collaboration, volunteer for tasks and collaboration
• Find solutions and potential collaborators for action
• Select or refer designated actors to acknowledge or request their engagement and action at various levels (governance institution, activist, free rider, champion, observer, kow-how or knowledge resource ).
  
• As a selected or designated actor, participate in the conversation, report on activity and impact (or if not, become the object of the action...)
  
• As a citizen-follower evaluate and rate activity/impact of and trust toward actors' activity, impact and progress.
• As a citizen-follower organize for collective action
• As a an actor, garner follower participation
• Initiate and participate in conversations, debates, deliberations

The ecosystem is composed of:

• Common’s spaces: carefully curated knowledge base, space for learning, evaluating, debating, deliberating, and planning collective action, crowdsourcing solutions. This would include planetary as well as local commons or issues.
• Common’s graph: shows network of followers and stakeholders, possibilities for collaboration, critical mass, power structures and possible leverage points for grassroots action or civil participation.
• Progress & Impact or Situation Dashboard: shows activity, status, impact and progress. Informed by reporting from stakeholders and evaluations by followers, as well as real time indicators provided by independent observers.

Graph, space dashboards of various commons can be combined at various levels for bigger picture views.

The platform creates a context for the following:

• Curate the knowledge flow and increase learning about issues, and physical as well as political solutions through visibility of activity and impact
• Connect and interrelate people, stakeholders, issues, and knowledge.
• Help situate an issue in its physical, metaphysical, political and social space and its network of interdependence and navigate within.
• Define boundaries of an issue/common through its graph of followers and actors, and help define the natural levels of governance or stewardship of a common or issue.
• Help situate self and others in the multidimensionality of an issues’ space (geography, graph, stakes, interests, roles, positions, possibilities…) and navigate within.
• Identify roles and interdependence between actors and issues.
• Visualize the emergent bigger picture, and adopt systemic or transversal approaches.
• Communicate and discern expectations, communicate and evaluate outcomes, identify and act upon gaps
• Discern patterns of possibilities and leverage points, as well as who can generate best impact for specific challenges.
• Stimulate stepping up to task, collaboration between stakeholders and collective response.

 

The design map above gives an idea of the types of modules that would be integrated together. The platform requires the integration of the best existing networks, tools, process methodologies and user interfaces in terms of learning and action research, curation and issues framing, evaluation and moderation, trustnets, debate and deliberation, e-government/governance, collaboration, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, collective action planning, data collection, visualization; with a focus on wisdom and integrity stewardship...

Such an ecosystem would need to be open source and supported by legitimate institutions willing to forward civil participation.

From a Systemic and Dynamic Perspective

In systemic terms the dynamics at play are the following:

Power Dynamics: users -citizens > pull (designate) stakeholders -actors- > seek accountability/evaluate status > push activity > visualize progress > identify gaps / form expectations : a dynamic + feedback loop >> increase learning & informed action >> building engagement culture >> engagement to participate

Action Dynamics: stakeholders -actors > entrusted & challenged to act by users -citizens> acknowledge expectations & gaps > pull & pool resources & solutions to act > report action & progress: a dynamic + feedback loop >> increase access, community & capability >> building a mindful action culture >> empowerment & enablement to act

 

From a user perspective.

A Pull Network emerging from Connecting Citizens, Issues & Stakeholders

The Citizen

• As social entities, individuals or groups, the users, 'citizens', designate the issues, topics, commons they care about and wish to follow -i.e. that they would like to learn about and where they would like to see some action engaged, some progress made, with various degrees of engagement on their part. By doing so they become a follower of this issue. Selected issues can be quite diverse, in domain or geography:  they can be very global, such as the pollution of oceans or poverty or obesity worldwide or very local such as the preservation of a river or biodiversity or traditional seeds in one particular area, or the economic insertion of a disenfranchised community in a particular suburb...

The Actor

• For each issue, the citizens also designate/refer and thereby ‘follow’ and 'ping/invite to the conversation' the actors that they believe can have an impact, whether positive or negative, on the progress of the issue or the governance of the common. By doing so, they bring the actors into their community of followers to create an Issue/citizen/actor network.
  • This designation/referral works at the level of stimulating an actor to rise to meet a challenge. It is at the very heart of the pull dynamic. Designated actors such as governments, corporations, governance institutions, NGO's, activists, social entrepreneurs, free riders, champions, independent observers are challenged and entrusted by their 'citizen-followers' to deliver outcomes and produce impact and subsequently become accountable for their actions and results.
  • Citizens have the ability to  self designate as actor to indicate their presence/activity as an actor and share resources, ideas and know-how. An expected effect of this dynamic is to unleash ‘agency’ and turn an increasing number of citizens into actors by providing them with access to possibilities and capacity in the areas that they have chosen and that they care for the most.

The Social Graph - Visualizing & Navigating the Network

• By this dual followship process, each issue/common has a network of followers and actors which can be visualized in the common's social graph. The scope and variety of the followers and actors show the reach (from the local to planetary) and depth (possible various ramifications and interdependences) of an issue. It outlines its boundaries: the natural levels of governance or stewardship of a common or issue and the possible perimeters for pooling resources. The graph shows the critical mass of followers & actors, its density and diversity. The entities who appear in the core represent key constituencies, others interact or watch, and can further be pulled in. The ‘proximity’ and interdependence between the players, the potential for synchronicity and synergies, the insights on power structures and possible leverage points create a context for action to emerge and for negative reinforcement loops to be inverted.

• The aggregation of issues produces a Global Graph that enables to visualize further interrelations and interactions, to navigate between the issues, the various players, and the various levels of intervention from the smallest local level to the planetary, see how some players are involved in several issues and can be 'activated' as such, and ultimately undertake action of a more systemic nature.

The Dashboard - Reporting, data collection and visualization

• Designated actors become entrusted or accountable of their actions toward their 'followship' of citizens. They are encouraged to work on outcomes and to report on actions engaged and the general progress of an issue.

• Informed citizens evaluate the impact of the actors they selected and their level of confidence in outcomes.

• This ‘internal’ reporting and evaluation informs a common's Progress & Impact or Situation Dashboard, and participates in the documentation of the issue.

• External indicators from independent sources also feed the dashboard.

• Visualizing data enables to:
  • show ‘evolution in the making’ how small 'local' actions add up to create large impacts, how big goals can be carried out from very small distributed initiatives.
  • acknowledge status and evolution of issues as much as possible in real time contributing to learning and informed action.
  • help actors engage into more effective political participation and on the ground solutioning.
  • highlight the gaps between expectations and outcomes and detect deceptive action
  • push things further onto political agendas

The Learning & Action Space

• The Common's Learning & Action Space is the environment where the density, diversity and synchronicity of the network can be valuably exploited, where the data, actors, resources that will have been pulled together to generate optimized outcomes can be put to work. These spaces will need to be widely and wisely moderated and curated in order to avoid oversimplification or hijacking to the benefit of special interests...
• Citizens and actors learn from each other and from the knowledge base, discuss the issue and undertake individual, collaborative and collective action. This is a space where exchange, dialogue, deliberation, facilitation takes place at the practical, social and political level; where users-citizens are able to design their discovery/learning/action journey; where actors can share know-how on solutions on-the-ground; where they are able to find parties to exchange, discuss, negotiate with; where resources can be shared; where solutions can be spread and diffused, co-created or crowd-sourced; where civil participation to policy making and governance can be garnered... informed and bootstrapped by all what is described above.

WE. Inspired. Empowered. Enabled. Building For a Better World.

 

 

Are we really all Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace?

Creating better futures can’t be reduced to solving the world’s problems with the same type of thinking and behavior that created breakdowns in the first place - to paraphrase Einstein like everyone does these days... What we are now seeing is a startlingly rapid growth in the complexity and intricacy of the problematiques facing us – manifestations of interconnected dysfunctionality caught up in meta-systems - which old school types of thinking and action and even systems thinking are incapable of tackling. No matter if we are hoping for the whole system to be modeled and redesigned by ‘those who know better’ or whether we expect some natural order to replace old hierarchies and man-made chaos – or even if we’re waiting for Gaia to exact her revenge and destroy humanity, many of us feel powerless, helpless or doomed. The forces that impel us toward fulfilling our rational self-interest and our immediate selfish desires, or that were meant to liberate us from all forms of political and religious servitude, have led to our surrender to “The System”.

Adam Curtis explores this topic in ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’, a powerful and unsettling three part documentary broadcast in June this year by the BBC. He identifies three key strands of thought that have helped shape the 20th century ethos. Briefly put, these are that:

• market stability enabled by technology will liberate us from all forms of political control and help us become Randian heroes in control of our own destinies;
• old hierarchies will be replaced by (eco)systems that can organize themselves ‘naturally’;
• we are all soft machines driven by the impulses of our genes and therefore not responsible for the unforeseen consequences of our acts.

Such ideas have caused us to embrace a fatalistic philosophy that sees human beings as cogs in a mechanistic system or as computing machines in their own right, helpless and disillusioned in the face of those in power, with no idea of what comes next or of how to challenge and change the status quo. Isn’t this a great excuse for our political failure to change the world?

We are not ants!

But this is not the discourse we want to hear! No, we are not cogs in machines ...we are not ants either. And we are certainly not doomed or pre-determined – or at least it is healthy to presuppose we are not! One of my favorite quotes from Goethe offers an antidote to such deterministic thinking and shows a way forward: “If we take man as he is, we make him worse. But if we take him as what he could potentially be, then we make him capable of becoming what he can be.”

We need to hang on to our belief in mankind and our ability to change the world for the better! As Maturana and Varela point out in their “The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding”, while machine systems or biological organisms restrict the individual creativity of their component parts because these parts exist solely for the organism itself, human social systems, on the contrary, amplify the individual creativity of their component parts because the system exists for these parts. However, we are not selfish components in the system. As components of a social system, we are both a whole (an individual self) and a part (co-determined by our relationships with others and our environment) at one and the same time. In other words, we do not solely exist so that the system can thrive; the human social system exists for the parts to thrive, individually and collectively, in all their vast networks of interactions and relationships. We can only survive and thrive if we uphold both our “wholeness” and our “partness”. This notion of ‘agency in communion’ as Wilber calls it, or allocentric individualism is a leap beyond the polarization of individualism and collectivism that has underpinned 20th century thought and given us the idiocentric objectivism of Ayn Rand, the post WWI collectivist and totalitarian regimes and the communal ideologies of the 1970s.

Agency is our capacity to make choices and act. Our increasing ability to author, connect and share through communication technologies has made it easier to keep our human individuality and interactions independent of the infrastructure and the system – even if we are still to ensure that this remains so. At the same time, our individuality and our interactions are not separately determined. As much as we can influence and even create our social and natural environment through our choices and decisions, we are shaped by what is around us and by our interactions with our peers.

This is how evolution unfolds, and why we have been able to witness some progress in the history of mankind. So even if we can't do much more than anticipate, minimize impact and maximize recovery in the event of natural catastrophes, we can still influence everything that can be affected by our own choices and decisions and by our interactions and relationships.

We need not just sit around, do nothing, and wait for evolution, destiny, god, nature or the invisible hand to take its inevitable course. The fatalist outlook makes the mountain seem so huge that everybody despairs and gives up any attempt to climb it. Yet there are pockets of awareness out there, determination and possibilities to tap into, cracks to slip into and widen to help the world find meaning and purpose and move in the right direction. Great people are around, great things are being done everywhere and every day. They are waiting to be shared and snowballed – and taken together they create tangible transformation.

Opening up a world of possibilities and thrivability

Opening up a world of possibilities and thrivability is what Jean Russell suggested at the opening of Gathering11. She urged us to start looking at and talking about breakthroughs and the thrivable world that is emerging while this old industrial order breaks down. To tell ourselves stories of what actually works, to open up possibilities and co-create something new. We see many things happening at the edge, and we_magazine pays tribute to them. We see a whole generation of Millennials who refuse to embrace the world the way it is and have the determination and courage to change it. Many of us have become aware that things need to change, only we don’t know where to start. Many of us know we are on a treadmill going nowhere fast, but we don’t know how to jump off or indeed where we might land.

Yet there are ways to catalyze and accelerate the emergence of change, to become actors of transformation. For John Hagel, co-author of ‘The Power of Pull’, this can happen in creative spaces, where a critical mass can be achieved, where interaction and flows of tacit knowledge can be leveraged to achieve a greater potential, and where what is created can be used to boost effectiveness. It’s a similar type of phenomenon to what happens in cities where proximity to fringes, diversity and knowledge accelerates opportunities and creates further attractiveness – only it’s amplified because it’s purpose-based. The main idea is to increase the flow of possibilities and the level of consciousness so that each and every one of us can participate in the emergence of new mindsets and ways of operating by circulating ideas or putting them into application. We must refuse to be intimidated by the tyranny of problems and enter the world of possibilities, multiplied by the collision of ideas and our bootstrapped initiatives.

We must make the very best of what we have, map our assets, talents and resources, and see what they can spark. Donnie MacLurcan opened his Gathering11 talk by observing that there were enough talents in the room to save the world. Gunter Pauli, who spoke at the Amplify festival, and his Blue Economy
Foundation have enough projects and inventions under their belts to reforest, power, irrigate and feed the whole world and make it self-sufficient and thrivable. And there are yet many more assets, talents, resources, projects, and inventions to explore, make visible and put to work.
We need to interconnect and connect the dots. We need to channel the sense of common purpose, and accelerate emergence. And we need to inspire by sharing significance and possibilities, to empower by transforming knowledge and possibilities into intention, and to enable through concrete examples and tools that can transform intentions into actions.

The documentaries are not accessible anymore for copyright isues, but this is a trail that has been put together afterwards. Here is also a very interesting radio interview of Adam Curtis where he outlines the message of the documentary: the challenges of self-organization in the context of political power, and the need for inspiration, greater vision and leadership.

This article was written for the Australian edition of We_Magazine in July 2011 after I watched the documentary, and was released in November. The published article and the magazine can be found here.

An Ecology for Transformative Action

This project initially started with The Living WE, an article I wrote for Gathering 11 in Melbourne last June, with a name and unifying concept inspired by We Magazine and several of us have been discussing how to bring it to life. A few projects are under way, the latest is the launch of a multistakeholder discussion around global governance powered by a Greater WE as laid out in the new Thrive Magazine. 

I had been focusing on good practices, change, and action, and the triggers/motivations thereof for several years, and spent almost a year in research and conversations on several social platforms virtual or in presence, struggling to find common ground among people who seemed to be animated by similar purposes or a shared attraction but couldn't quite agree on the best way to do things. This lead me to start to outline the characteristics and ingredients required for transformative action to be inspired, empowered and enabled in order to evolve our current paradigms, systems, processes and practices in a coordinated yet self-directed way. I would like to bring this further. The idea is to leverage the dynamics of emergence and the whole dimensionality of the "political" or action space, from the individual to the planetary with a view to political action and civil participation. This involves that the actors know the position of an issue in this space and from which position in this space they are acting.

 A three tier transformation

To get a critical amount of people and organizations to change their ways or create new ways there needs to be a favorable environment or context, propitious conditions for synergetic collaboration, conflict resolution, co-creation, innovation, experimentation, enterprise etc.... that is as open and non directive as possible.There also needs to be room for diversity of perspectives and paths to get to the same destination.

Transformation also needs triggers at several levels with some form of scaffolding... one level leading to and reinforcing the other.

• Inspire - First is the realization that something needs to be done. This realization -call it also awareness or consciousness- is spreading, can be inspired further to reach critical mass but is not enough to lead to actual transformation.
• Empower - Second is the formation of an intention. Transformation needs a conviction that something can be done, and that each of us can have an impact. It needs some resolve. This is unleashing and channeling human agency, the willpower to go one step further, with more or less involvement. But here again, intention alone does not lead anywhere.
• Enable - Last and critical to the outcome is the partaking in the transformation, by being or doing. That's the ultimate trigger, making the first steps, starting the transformation, entering a transition stage. And this needs to be enabled.

This constitutes a three step process of transition: inspiring, empowering and enabling change, transformation, metamorphosis, evolution, however you may call it, the seeding at the various stages of a fruition process, that can be undertaken from the specific place each of us or our organizations and communities hold in the greater whole, with an awareness of our location and role and impact within this whole and beyond.

Configuring oneself for transformation

Our system of systems is made of parts that we could consider as coexisting in a milieu, an environment that is not just a container with properties greater than the sum of the parts, but that has a substance, a density, a richness. Something exists "in between" the parts, from which the parts get some "nutrients". Many metaphors can be used, call it a field of possibilities and potentiality, a collection of intangibles that would precipitate serendipity, attraction, connection, exchange, osmosis… and finally lead to a metamorphosis.

This ecology would strive to increase the richness of this field, this "in between" that would inspire, empower and enable people and organizations to "configure themselves" for transformation. Think of an operating ecosystem and API that would help form and channel realization, intentions, possibilities and transform them into outcomes and achievements by bootstrapping human agency and collective capability one step at the time in an exploratory and visible learning process. An extension of what I have described in this Shared Intent & Purpose for Action - Bridging the Gap between Micro & Macro article.

The idea is to design something scalable and reproducible and very tangible that can make this possible.

Don't hesitate to surf the map and share your thoughts. And drop me a note if you are interested to participate further. I would like to finalize the map as a blueprint, and then find or build the necessary tools.

In my dreams… the Living WE… accelerating emergence…

In my dreams I see a Living WE, a matrix, a womb... where WE, each of us and all of us, inspired, empowered and enabled, give birth to a caring, meaningful and purposeful future. Where WE coalesce to co-construct new rules, reproducible ventures, and concrete positive outcomes. Where WE converse, tell stories, exchange experience, examine possibilities, learn, research, evaluate, create, invent, modelize, experiment, adopt, practice… Where WE initiate and LIVE the change we want to see…

The Living WE is a global laboratory of thought and actions, taking multiple paths. Where WE, each of us and all of us, have a role to play, each with our diverse talents, sensitivities, passions and energies to achieve better futures... It gives us a voice, stimulates our choice and transforms our activity into achievements…

The Living WE is purpose centered and allows the purpose of each of us to be a center of organization and action, while converging towards an overarching purpose. It creates an appreciative connection between each of us and our environment, between all of us and our ecosystem…

The Living WE is based on our shared idea of why change must occur, on a shared direction towards our converging purposes with a compass to guide us along the way, a few virtues and philosophical principles as the stars and planets of our expanded horizon that we use to navigate…

The Living WE gathers human trust and harnesses commitment. It absorbs, channels, aggregates, debates, integrates, enriches, acts upon and renews an ever-evolving flow of tacit knowledge and experience. It provides the substance, tools, and practical examples that enable us to bridge our macro and our micro perspectives and dynamics, to transform our big ideas into small local actions and combine our small actions into large outcomes. It inserts our local independence in a global interdependence, and bridges our virtual and physical worlds…

The Living WE encourages self-organization and evolves organically. It grows by contagion, through interaction and influence, P2P. It snowballs ideas, innovations and practices and expands consciousness. All in ways that enable us to see evolution in the making and the transformative impact of each of us and all of us… 

The Living WE adds up the small power and influence of each of us to move mountains. It is a legitimate counter and balancing power against any new world or national order or superpower. It keeps us safe from accelerating pace of life and protects us against collapse & singularity…

The Living WE is humanity as custodian of our ecosystem…

The Living WE is US. It is the framework, the platform I dream to build at Gathering 11…

Many thanks to Ulrike Reinhard who inspired me to put a name on my dream! I hope you will succeed in crowdfunding the launch of WE Australia!

Shared Intent & Purpose for Action - Bridging the Gap between Micro & Macro

The next economic paradigm

Open Collaboration could be defined as the next economic paradigm. Indeed we are seeing various projects emerging and converging around intent and purpose based on open collaboration, from the way things are conceived, exchanged/shared and implemented, to the way they are approached and organized. Many are geared towards new ways of living, consuming, producing, cultivating, participating. We are seeing an increasing number of projects at the edge that are gaining publicity and participation: discussions (Quora, TED Conversations), intention based collaboration (Epic.io,  Bettermeans, Bloomfire), project crowdsourcing (Open Ideo, Challengepost), community creation & project brokering (Nationbuilder, Changents, Transition Towns, Ashoka), movement incubators (Purpose.com, Movements.org), crowdfunding & social entrepreneurship mentoring and funding (Kickstarter, Unreasonable institute), social movements (Avaaz, 38Degrees), practice/idea sharing (wiser earth, we are not ants), sharing goods and services (The Mesh, Collaborative Consumption Hub), not to mention Twitter which has become the number one source for accessing the right people, and exchanging/diffusing information and ideas in real time. Twitter provides a fluid alternative to Facebook -which I currently see as a series of [connected] buckets into which all kinds of more or less desired items are thrown and where meaningful information is increasingly difficult to find other than for fun and entertainment-… Venessa Miemis insightfully lays out the Four trends shaping the "superfluid" economy in her last CNN Global Public Square article.

The value of the many...

Definitely, there is something happening! What we, the crowds, are realizing now, is that just by interacting with our families, colleagues, friends and expanding our networks to other contacts made through affinity of interest, intent or purpose, we acquire new capabilities and capacities for interaction and influence, and we want more! We realize how empowered we are to express ourselves, share with others and ultimately act. We discover the value and richness of the many when we can exchange and unite: the value of agency in togetherness. What started between friends on Facebook or business contacts on LinkedIn has extended to communities of intention, practice, interest that have formed spontaneously. Technology has provided the authoring tools and the diffusion pipes to make it accessible and achievable. The internet revolution –the one that was supposed to sweep up the world in 2000- has taken a little more time than planned to take off, and is actually showing its full measure now.

From formal to tacit knowledge

Players in the field admit however that they are caught in a flow which is hard to follow!  We are realizing that there is no way we can capture knowledge and ideas and “store” them safely for later retrieval. Knowledge and information are in perpetual evolution and cannot be frozen for later analysis. Wikipedia manages to keep formal knowledge alive through perpetual updates from the crowd. Epistemology becomes more important than ever to keep track of how knowledge evolves. Actions, ideas and facts mesh and collide in the flow and this gives birth to new ideas, actions and facts. And in this perspective, securing intellectual property can be seen as an impediment to the flow, and taking advantage through IP of ideas and technologies that are “in the air” and emerge simultaneously in several places, as a form of hording…

The most valuable knowledge turns out to be more tacit (i.e acquired through experience, exchangeable through interaction, p2p) than formal (consultable in a database or library; learnt in school or legitimated by a degree), the likely most valuable skill becomes the ability to integrate knowledge and information in real time and make use of this tacit knowledge to act effectively. The capacity to channel, aggregate, debate, integrate, enrich, act upon and renew this ever-evolving tacit knowledge is the challenge we are facing now.

Bridging gaps

A lot is happening at the grassroots, many projects and stories to share, opening up possibilities, and we are seeing several attempts to gather, aggregate and visualize information in usable ways. Location tracking and mobile technology enable tools for action/crisis mapping (Ushaidi, UN Global Pulse), exponential computation power and visualization tools allows meta or real time presentation of globalized data (Gapminder, Earth Dashboard). What is missing is an intermediary layer that connects the micro and the macro level:

• One that would show how the micro and the macro are related, how each individual action and story contributes to the global outcome or global picture and has an impact; and vice versa, how large transformations, or large outcomes are made of combined individual actions or items.
• One that would draw substance, trends, evolution of significance and outcomes from projects, stories, conversations to build a bigger picture, keep track of directions and status toward purpose... at the smallest project level as well as the various levels of operation.

In order to keep the flow alive and running in line with purpose, we need to be able to see evolution in the making, how we contribute to it, and where it is taking us… we need to keep a momentum that will continue to inspire and empower, providing the conditions for outcome and achievement…Ghandi said we need to be the change we want to see. Seeing the possibility of the change and the change in the making would help us enhance our ability to be the change...

If you have other projects & examples to share or if there are any projects working on this, please keep me posted! I would be glad to join!

Reassessing What Value Means

The New Capitalist Manifesto by Umair Haque

I have been following Umair Haque’s work for a while, and I must say that everything I read from him just hits home. He connects powerful dots and lays out the future of business and capitalism in sharp terms that I profoundly relate to.

For one because I have spent these last 15 years living around the world, literally watching from a ringside seat several bubbles inflate and pop (1997 in Indonesia - monetary crisis, 2000 in Sweden - IT Internet crisis, 2007 in the USA - housing bubble seen transformed in the GFC in 2008 from Australia…).

And also because I have been convinced for many years as a marketer and strategist that the most effective way for a business to make a difference, thrive and grow, is through vision and meaningful interactions based on trust between empowered employees and an organization’s stakeholders, the brand being the expression of the culture that enables it.

The New Capitalist Manifesto confirms that this type of approach spans far beyond the realm of marketing and branding and touches the very essence of doing business.

The end of the industrial era

The New Capitalist Manifesto starts with the realization that the industrial era capitalist model has long lived. We cannot deny that the 20^th century, mining and burning its way into mass production, mass consumption, mass agriculture, has brought some form of prosperity to many areas of the world, and provided access to food, health and comfort to a significant number of people… At the same time it has produced an economy based on what Umair Haque calls thin value: value that has generated unpaid debts of harm to people, communities, society and the natural world, not to mention future generations. This was reinforced by an exacerbated ethic of individualistic self-interest based on maximizing output and expectations that has overidden traditional values of togetherness, empathy and solidarity.

The 20th century industrial era business models hinging on exploitation, command & control, fierce competition, short term profit, leveraged growth, has left climate changed, resources depleted, markets commoditized, infrastructures in ruins, a finance system on the verge of bankruptcy, an unengaged and stressed workforce, and corporations struggling to maintain competitiveness under pressure of accelerating cycles...

Rebooting capitalism

The New Capitalist Manifesto is a call to reboot capitalism and reassess what value means. Because Umair Haque believes that building disruptively better businesses can change economics, he explores new paths for producing, interacting, and competing; striving to create authentic value and quality profit aimed at shared prosperity now and in the future.

He leads us through the design of constructive strategies based not on acquiring competitive advantage or finding unexplored niches, but on authenticity, interaction and mindfulness, the paths to making a real difference. The kind of strategies that help organizations and their whole ecosystems thrive by creating thick and meaningful value for all stakeholders while minimizing losses incurred by the community, society, the natural world and future generations. The old model is shifting while a new one emerges, based upon renewal and regeneration, participation and co-creation, interactions and collaboration, resilience and evolutionary edge, outcomes and meaningful growth. Umair Haque’s endeavor is to accelerate the emergence.

Constructive advantage based on sustainable value

Beyond the whole new vocabulary that makes business as we knew it obsolete, the book provides practical insight and examples: Apple, Google, Interface, Nike, Lego, Unilever, Walmart, Whole Foods, Nintendo… a few of whom have come back a long way from exposed unsustainable practices…

What Umair Haque develops in the book is a productivity and efficiency model based on what he calls constructive advantage and sustainable value. This is achieved through:

• Shifting focus from operational efficiency (minimizing internal costs) to socio-efficiency (minimizing external loss and replenishing resources). This includes the adoption of cradle-to-cradle value cycle approaches which focus on embedding the minimal use/replenishing of resources/reclaiming-disposal of the product at conception, and on moving production as close as possible to consumption.

• Giving up the principle of one-sided value proposition to adopt participation and co-creation, internal and external, involving customers and other stakeholders. The idea is to give a voice and ear to develop responsiveness, and the agility to come up with better decisions faster.

• Moving from strategies of competition and dominance of the market place to an intentional purpose based philosophy enabling the perpetual (re)discovery of value creation, ensuring resilience and an evolutionary edge. (Incidentally, this is what the best brands are made of!)

• Corollary to the previous, developing the capability of expanding the market place through creative disruption, rather than protecting one’s position and market.

• Last, shifting from differentiating products or services (as output) to making a meaningful difference (in outcome) to people, communities and society in human terms, through value that makes people better off. Socio effectiveness is about a shared interest in better outcomes in terms of physical, social, mental, economic wellness.

Sustainable value is one that lasts beyond production and consumption, that creates meaningful and positive impacts on people’s lives, empowering people. This generates greater loyalty, credibility, legitimacy and ultimately is the driver for growth, profits and economic value.  

Umair Haque believes, like me, that the power to act and change the world resides in each and all of us. It is our call to create the future. Let's do it!

How to stop the treadmill and create thick value?

cartoon: http://www.polyp.org.uk/ see animated version

Umair Haque’s New Capitalist Manifesto is all about building disruptively better businesses that create thick value by focusing on social effectiveness based on trust, purpose and meaning: the new levers of constructive capitalism.

The majority of CSR and transformation efforts concentrate on convincing CEOs, boards, marketers. But not much is changing at the coalface. Same old, same old discourse… unengaged employees and executive: no one believes much that corporations can change, or that there is a way out.

Many books, reports are published with a positive note and suggestions of effective solutions with solid rationales, but how do you bring the message to coffee machine and cafeteria conversations in offices, universities, schools?  How do you start one-to-one empowering conversations showing possibilities and achievements?

Please share your suggestions, start the buzz and keep me posted here or @HeleneFinidori   

The Story of Stuff - We can do better!

That's old stuff but... well, at the scale of economic models and management theories longevity, it's still quite a new provocative way of seeing things, and worth repeating here and again. And it doesn't look pretty. It seems that what we have learned as the recipes for success need to be unlearned.

This video is an animated documentary on consumerism and the life cycle of consumer goods. It connects the model of consumption-based growth to a huge number of environmental and social issues, and underlines the absurdity of running a linear process of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal on a finite planet.

It seems that the founders of micro economics, by taking the "economy as a science" route have dehumanized economics, divorcing it from its ethical component and reduced it to a mere triggering and reinforcing the weakest sides of human nature. Imagine our businesses had a conscience, imagine if rather than playing on humanity's weak sides we started looking at how "virtues" create more effective, meaningful and durable value. Look at this animation as a wake up call.

What can each of us in our companies do to stop being the bad guys and continuing this nonsense that is joepardizing the world our children will become adults in? We should know and do better than that!

There are solutions to make things better without putting the whole system down!

The survival of our economic model - Are we finally reaching a tipping point?

Just a year after Seth Godin challenged the new generations to reivent themselves in his manifesto Brainwashed, Harvard Business Revue offers two articles which question how capitalism has evolved, and call for transformation.

The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value

The following is an abstract of the introduction of Michael Porter's last article The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value in Harvard Business Revue Magazine Jannuary/February 2011.

"The capitalist system is under siege. In recent years business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader community...

...A big part of the problem lies with companies themselves, which remain trapped in an outdated approach to value creation that has emerged over the past few decades...

...Companies must take the lead in bringing business and society back together. The recognition is there among sophisticated business and thought leaders, and promising elements of a new model are emerging...

...The solution lies in the principle of shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. Businesses must reconnect company success with social progress."

Capitalism at a Crossroads

Simultaneously, Umair Haque, the Director of the Havas Media Lab announces his new book The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business.

In his HBR Blog article Capitalism at a Crossroads he draws the list of what industrial-age capitalism hasn't been able to achieve in America during the last decade. He calls for a transformed capitalism to "create authentic, meaningful, lasting value for people, communities, society, nature, and the future... to fulfill its promise of being transformative, to continue to help humanity scale greater heights of achievement, discover deeper wellsprings of potential, and safeguard the hard-won spark of an enduring, authentic prosperity, it's time to take a quantum leap beyond yesterday's capitalism..."

He concludes: "The future belongs to those who create it. So what are you waiting for?" For action, please take a look at my previous post...

Grassroots Movements for Change...

Each of us has the power to influence our environment, to demonstrate leadership at our own level, to help spread ideas and put them into practice. Here are some examples of "empowering" organizations, initiatives or manifestos from various backgrounds attempting to create grassroots movements for change. How can they inspire us?

• Social movement thinking applied to organizations such as developed by UK NHS Institute for innovation and improvement

• Community based tackling of issues, such as Transition Towns in the UK

• The Good work project: large scale effort to identify individuals and institutions that exemplify good work – work that is excellent in quality, socially responsible, and meaningful to its practitioners – and to determine how best to increase the incidence of good work in our society.

• The Mix: Management Innovation Exchange, open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. 

• The Conscious Capitalism Institute, spreading the perspective and practices of conscious capitalism to entrepreneurs and organizations worldwide and facilitate the creation of more conscious businesses and organizational leaders.

Which other projects can you think of?