I find that this subject is one of the more revealing issues of our time. A place that requires us to reshape our understanding and meaning of ‘environment’. Read this great article on the link between our human psyche and the Earth.

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The terms in which ecopsychology pursues this admittedly ambitious goal are steeped in the field’s countercultural beginnings. Ecopsychology emerged in the early 1960s, just as the modern environmental movement was gathering strength, when a group of Boston-area graduate students gathered to discuss what they saw as the isolation and malaise infecting modern life. It had another brief period of efflorescence, particularly on the West Coast and among practitioners of alternative therapies, in the early ’90s, when Theodore Roszak, a professor of history (he coined the word “counterculture”) published a manifesto, “The Voice of the Earth,” in which he criticized modern psychology for neglecting the primal bond between man and nature. “Mainstream Western psychology has limited the definition of mental health to the interpersonal context of an urban-industrial society,” he later wrote. “All that lies beyond the citified psyche has seemed of no human relevance — or perhaps too frightening to think about.” Ecopsychology’s eclectic following, which includes therapists, researchers, ecologists and activists, still reflects these earlier foundations. So does its rhetoric. Practitioners are as apt, if not more apt, to cite Native American folk tales as they are empirical data to make their points.

Yet even as it remains committed to its origins, ecopsychology has begun in recent years to enter mainstream academic circles. more …

Here’ an important message to our leaders and decision makers:

Assume that your truths and beliefs are an Illusion.

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Consider how our brain works …
Watch what happens to your belief system as you stare at this image.

1-Follow the moving pink dot: What do you see?
2-Look at the middle black cross. Now what do you see?
3-Now star for a few seconds at the black cross. What happens?

This should be proof enough that we don’t always see what we think we see.

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, the dots will remain only one color, pink. However if you stare at the black ” +” in the centre, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black ” + ” in the centre of the picture. After a short period, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see only a single green dot rotating. It’s amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot , and the pink ones really don’t disappear.

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I love it when somebody is able to synthesize the incoming data into a meaningful message. Watch this video and understand how the world economy works … I mean is ‘not’ working. Sustainability should go to another level of understanding for you after you watch this 4 minute clip.

The primary principle of innovation is this. It is being able to consider and change our ‘notions’; our so-called facts of our experiences; our factual claims; into something new that goes beyond our own individual reality. The statement of this work is at the foundation of collaboration and discovery. He speaks of science and the evolution of values. Excellent.

Watch this video …

I’ll say it again:

The future of innovation and technology has already been figured out by nature one million years ago.

Watch this TED video …

I got this video off of Charles Lemos’ site and was referred to it by Ben Roberts’ Facebook conversation. Derek Sivers gave this presentation at the TED Conference this week and got a standing ovation. It’s pretty brilliant in its takeaway. The video below is a healthy perspective on the collective’s role in leadership, especially the ‘first follower’.

Here’s the transcript, with bold notes made by Charles. Thanks to Charles and Derik.

If you’ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.

Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a movement!

As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed, they won’t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let’s recap what we learned:

If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

Be public. Be easy to follow!

But the biggest lesson here – did you catch it?

Leadership is over-glorified.

Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:

It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

There is no movement without the first follower.

We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

Be a follower, join a movement. That’s how change happens.

Is it possible for us to manifest a better world? One filled with more peace, well being, and harmony? Yes, I believe we can. We just have to remind each other – often.

Watch this amazing video below.

The Empathic Civilisation, by Jeremy Rifkin

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g[/youtube]

Our wellness influences what we create as human beings and how it either supports or depletes the world’s complex ecology of life – a planetary well being, so to speak.

Our individuality is made up of a physical body, mind(fulness) and thoughts, emotions and attitude, and spiritual connection with something greater than us. The interactions between sustainability, leadership, collaboration, and innovation (my favorite subjects) start inside ourselves. That is, how we treat the inward effects the outward. Each then, are tightly connected to other bodies, thoughts, emotions, and spirits that make up a collective of creativity, and the outcomes of our innovation and creativity start with you and me feeling whole as individuals. Keeping our bodies attuned within a now toxic environment becomes very important. To be global change agents, we must recognize that all four areas of inner being affect the same four aspects of an outer being that is realized within our communities and the earth as a whole. This is why some people call the earth ‘Gaia’, because it better represents our planet as a living being made up of an intertwined ecology of living things. This way of thinking is in fact at the source of all human development within the context of understanding a deep ecology. Let us come to recognize that giving credence to our individual wellness directly influences the next generation of innovation, and will be the result of a more conscious, collaborative, global design process.

That said, the outline below suggest some ways to use supplements to keep our bodies well. Everything below comes from a body-wellness perspective and is based on three key points …

1-Clean the colon (the ‘inner’ toxic environment)

Plain and simple: 90% of all human disease starts in the colon, so a clean colon is will prevent most of the stuff that’s killing or making us sick.

2-Alkalize the body (an acid world is an angry world)

pH balance is the best indicator of human health. Our body organs regenerate and rejuvenate when alkaline and get sick when acid. For example, cancer can not live in an alkaline body but thrives in an acid one. Also, a balanced set of healthy bacteria help to keep bad micro-organisms from passing further into your body, including one that seems to be prevalent in today’s highly food processed world known as candida.

2-Assimilation of nutrients (know how to take in the good while shielding ourselves from the bad)

I have found that, just because you take supplements does not mean that your body is taking in the ingredients. The body’s ability to break down and utilize supplements is as important as the supplement ingredients themselves. Laboratory-made ingredients usually are far less capable of assimilating properly than supplements made from natural sources because their molecular structure is often too large to pass through cell membranes and often do not have the carriers that help with the exchange processes in the body. So be sure that you consider this as part of your supplements selection process.

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My solution:

This is not, by any means, a perfect solution – there isn’t one. I’m posting this because I want to share what I know through my own studies, hoping that it will encourage more of you change agents to build your own wellness solution.

1-Alkalize the Body

(a) Alkalize the body with pH drops

Drink lots of water throughout the day with drops in it. Try Cell Power pH drops and/or try Phion pH drops.

(b) Drink raw lemon juice

Lemon juice with touch of B grade syrup as lemons are a great alkalizer to the body and makes my stomach feel good. It cuts my apetite so its easier to eat way less food during day, which is very important. This program is called the Master Cleanse which uses just lemon juice. I’ve gone 10 days with just this and no other food – It was great, but takes will power I don’t have right now.

2-Cleanse the Digestive System

Clean out the colon and keep it that way. I like using Dr. Schultz 5 or 30 day bowel detox system, or something similar. Listen to his lectures on how he describes the interaction between a healthy colon and overall wellness – his approach is wise and sound.

3-Add Highly Assimilable Nutrients

(a) Nutraceutical
s

Vitamins do not get into the body due to size of dissolved particles, and our diets (even if healthy) no longer have the nutrients they once did due to destroyed soils. New vitamin products are called ‘Nutricuticals’ help get those needed extras, especially ingredients that get lost during food processing, such as aminos, enzymes, healthy bacteria. These are the two I use: IntegraMax and sometimes Eniva Vibe. Try both and see which one works for you.

(b) Superfoods with Juicing

Make lots of juices with live fresh vegies and fruits and add super foods. Top superfoods are seaweed, raw honey, wheatgrass juice, and whole crushed flax seed. Add Dr. Shultz superfood to your juice. Also, go get 2 to 4 ounces of wheat grass juice from a local juice bar a couple times a week. It is one of the highest forms of nature-made nutrition on the planet. Also add seaweed to your diet as it contains the macro and micro minerals that our diet does not provide anymore. And when you can, use raw honey in green tea and or just by the spoonful. The tea is high in antioxidants and the honey is high in enzymes, which are normally heated out of most all of our foods but essential for nutrient breakdown and assimilation. I often add all or any of these into my juice concoction, plus dark greens, carrots, raspberries and blueberries. All are extra high antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Mix up a juice to satisfy your taste buds, but just get it into your body.

(c) Probiotics and Fish Oil

An unbalanced flora allows the bad bacteria to populate and they generate major acid. Plus omegas help to reestablish cell membranes thereby reducing irriation. Take Jaro probiotics or Blue Rock probiotics (mix of 4 to 7 billion healthy bacteria types), along with a balance of omegas that come from clean fish oil pills that have total of 1000mgs of dnl and hcl (see backs of bottles).

4-Exercise to burn off stress

My stress level has been chronically off the charts for too long and is main reason for my acid reflux and stomach problems. Exercise helps but I still don’t do this one enough, but am walking now very often. It helps a lot. Looking forward to things has also has helped to calm down my anxiety. (Special note: I have also recognized that taking too many supplements causes stomach problems – more is not better. Monitor the quantities that work for your body.)

5-The ‘Magic Nine’ Foods For Wellnes

I have added eight foods into my diet that combine high levels of the magic that the body needs to run well. Note these foods are either ‘raw’ or properly ‘processed’ to retain their magic. They are: Fish Oil (omegas) Seaweed (minerals), Raw Honey (enzymes), Wheatgrass Juice (vitamins/minerals), Whole Flax Seed (omegas/fiber) [ground at time of intake], Blueberries (vitamins/antioxidants), Green Tea (metabolism/antioxidants), Cayenne Pepper [metabolism and circulation], and a Superfood Blend (vitamins/minerals) [best ‘processed’ combo I’ve found is from Dr. Schultz.

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Note: I’m a believer in the products I’ve listed here through my own research and experimenting. I suggest you try them, but by all means, find the ones that work for you! In principle, emphasize prevention or cure solutions, and the use of earth-grown substances instead of lab-based pharmaceuticals. And recognize that BOTH supplements and pharmaceuticals have their place in wellness and well being.

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If you have any suggestions regarding this list, please email me and let me know.

Vic Desotelle

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, watch this moving picture video as it unveils the U.S. economic decline from the perspective of the unemployed. It doesn’t slow down a bit since 2007. What is this telling us? Who is responsible for this decline? How are you and I being held accountable for taking the necessary action to stop the bleeding? How can we learn as an evolved community, and begin to make choices that can sustain our well being for the long haul? And when will we get serious about the relationship between sustainability and economics? I say that sustainable innovation aligned with a triple bottom line economic system is the way into something new. How about you?

Welcome to UnCoachMe.com
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Coaching For Coaches, Executives, and Managers

Professional coaching is not what it once was; it’s purpose and intent has changed. As a coach for others, or as an executive or manager, your own leadership or coaching abilities will improve and become more meaningful to you and others once you revisit the notion of coaching itself. When you work with me, you will find that your own values, identity, and sense of authenticity will be considered based on a non-formula coaching approach. To understand what it means to be a leader today, you must be ‘un-coached’ away from traditional methods. Why? Because each one of us is unique. Thus, leadership consulting and coaching formulas only work to a point. Then what? How do we address your own one-of-a-king personality?

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We all are more effective when we have a coach

First of all, from my wealth of experiences, I have found that we see ourselves best by reflecting off of others. That is, your ability to be truly who you are will come when others can empathize with you and then share with you how you are seen. This is at the essence of coaching. But, no matter what category you place yourself into – whether as a leader of others, as an executive, a manager, a life coach, or as someone looking to improve your own inner leadership – you will want a coach to help you see through your own forest of experiences and day-to-day trials. So, what is coaching? What are the benefits of coaching? And how do you find a leadership coach, life coach, career coach, or professional coach? Here are some things to consider …

My approach to coaching is different

There is a difference between leading and leadership; between directing as a manager and managing as a mentor. There is also a difference between practicing formulated exercises to create personal change, and experiencing deep transformational change through self awareness. In, what I like to call leadership ecology, leadership quality is transferred to another through a shared awakening process. This is done by first empowering yourself as a leader in your own right based on your interests, capabilities, and passions to realize your unique authentic identity. In this way, instead of your leadership being placed upon another by ‘leading the charge’, you rather consciously follow and look for opportunities to ‘catalyze the charge’. That’s right: I said ‘follow’. By following team members and watching for their own ‘yellow brick road’, you inject power into the group’s journey, one individual at a time – starting with yourself. In other words, you evolve an ‘ecology of leadership’ by positioning yourself to see others, rather than them seeing you. Thus, my coaching approach is somewhat opposite of run-of-the-mill coaching. It comes more from a place of ‘guiding’ than it does from a traditional ‘leading’ coaching perspective. To emphasize this different perspective, I call it ‘uncoaching’.

To uncoach means that, together we first reconsider what it means for you to be coached. We will also reevaluate your objectives and plans, not as much by driving forces, but instead based on hidden motives, not just apparent ones. It means aspiring to a more evolved way as a leader. With me as your un-coach, you will actually be able to support your team and organization more effectively with good leadership. The other part of my uncoach approach is that you will not find a written formula or flow chart of prescribed objectives to follow. Instead, I rely strongly upon both your and my intuitive instincts, which has rarely – if ever – failed me. The challenge here is to be able to help you listen deeply into yourself. Notice that I did not say that ‘I’ need to listen deeply. Although this is the case, my motive is not to only tell you my aha’s as a coach, but more importantly to help you move into that aha space and see them when they occur. Again, this rarely can be done without others involved in your own awakening process. In this way, I effectively help you move more effectively toward the root of personal problems, difficult situations, and character behaviors that are personal to you rather than to someone’s standard. Thus, you awaken to a more authentic transformational change that will affect you as well as those around you.

Here’s where the ‘hit-the-bulls-eye’ model changes

I like the metaphor of the arrow hitting the bulls-eye, but for a different reason than you may assume. What if leadership no longer means hitting the center of a target? What if a leader’s best shot is when the arrow lands in the furthest outer ring? Curious idea, isn’t it? In leadership ecology, you want to target the outer ring, not the center. From the outer ring you have a very different perspective on leadership. By targeting the outer ring, you are in the best position to move others into the center. It also challenges your own authenticity as a person, which is so important as a leader. Because people can feel your truth – it is not as hidden as you may think.

By realizing your own authentic identity, you move to a place of compassion and empathy for others in your team or organization. Rather than you being isolated at the center, your influence radiates based on your ability to partner with others. Rather than being a director who oversees your subordinates, (which comes from a destructive form of ego that encourages others to see you at the center of the target), you instead see an ecology of interactions from the periphery of the target – a place where you are more a part of the interactions with others, and also risk the edge of expectation. Yes, the periphery of the target is not as safe as the center, is it? Yet, it’s where your true power will be realized. Once you get comfortable with this new perspective, your actions and your direction of others, will come from an empathic place, which is the first step in empowering others to their own leadership. That is real leadership, and marks the beginning of optimizing your organization (and dare I say the World) toward new forms of collaboration and innovation.

Imagine how your executive team would behave

Whether you’re a coach, executive, or manager, does your ability to coach others focus on authority-based leadership or authenticity-based leadership? What would it mean in terms of your team’s productivity and success if you acted as their unCoach, rather than as their director? Shift your ‘I’m in charge’ thinking. Go from being an authoritative director to being an authentic leader and watch what happens. Move yourself and your company toward creating sustainable innovation and develop a learning organization (I’ll talk more about these things later) by aiming at the outer perimeter instead of the center of the target – GET THERE WITH AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP COACHING.

how to find a life coach inside yourself … Start here:

1- Consider taking this free online personal leadership assessment, which addresses your own personal authenticity and inner truths.
2- Also consider this excellent personal values assessment (you must request an invitation), which I use to align individual values with team directives.
3- Also see related group facilitation solutions that take coaching into a team perspective.
4- Review client praise for my coaching work. You may also want to review my background in business startups incubation, technology, and innovation.
5- Then contact me Vic Desotelle (831-454-8046) for a personal inquiry together – our first meeting is free.

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Consider coaching with me online – It works great.
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Victor-Victim-Villain … Your life is more dependent on these three ‘V’s than you probably know.

Our ways of thinking shape our world, and whether we know it or not, there are formulations of ideas that are controlling how we see the world and how we make choices. Think for a moment: How might these these three intertwined subjects relate to the ongoing nightmares in your workplace or your home-life? Then consider that most, if not all, of our decisions and actions emerge through this underlying “3V” culture-making archetype.

I’m wondering this morning, what might be another model that could work just a bit better? If we could become conscious myth-making creatures, then maybe we could design something different as a model dynamic? We have become the result of  it designing us, rather than us consciously using the model to create a collective intelligence that supersedes the interplay within the subjects of victor, victim, and villain themselves.

Here’s a possibility to consider … All models have rotation or spin. Thus each subject within a model becomes one of the others. The victor-villain-victim archetypal interaction has (like all models) a dynamic movement that moves each subject into becoming one of the others. In this case, the the victor becomes the victim, the victim becomes the villain, and the villain becomes the victor. Have you ever noticed that in the movies? How the good-guy and bad-guy overlay each other’s light and dark sides? Batman and Iron Man are to good examples of this interplay. I’ve noticed that, in our society, there is often more attention placed, not on the hero, but on the villain. And because of this, the villain ends up being the real hero. This is the archetypal rotation in action.

Now then, in a (w)holistic view, do we need to allow the time it takes for each one of us to become the other? If so, then this must be a conscious act, does it not? Otherwise each of us (too often) gets unconsciously caught migrating from one identity to another, and then falls back again, creating a polarized oscillation of bouncing back and forth to and from the identity we had for ourselves previously … and previously … and so on. Rather than moving to the next identity in the mandala-like triad within the archetypal configuration, we instead get kind of stuck.

An Open Conclusion: What if we had an archetype for this dynamic – an archetype of archetypes (or archetype-squared)? Would this allow humanity’s failing displays of destructive expression to be able to move downstream into other realms of possible life, form, awareness, and consciousness? Right now, I’m writing a book on ‘cultural misfits’, and it’s just coming to mind that this may be its charter – to transmute “objective isolated acts” (static) into “subjective interdependent actions” (dynamic); at least in terms of how we think about models and their influence on our beliefs, choices, actions, and overall way of life.

And what does this all have to do with COLLABORATION? (Or the lack there of?) Call me and let’s have a dialog 831-454-8046, or email me below, or make a comment.

Vic

the mistake we continue to make is about how we learn and make Decisions

Taking action on our future is less about ‘what‘ we know and ‘who‘ is in the room, than it is about ‘how‘ we come together to learn. We’ve had this wrong for a long long time.

Look at the photo below. This is a “climate action”onference. Observe how people in the room are positioned. Notice how one person is actively presenting to a large audience of folks, who are passively listening. The geometry of how they are all lined in rows and focusing on one person is actually how you place people if brain-washing is your goal. I know that seems a bit strong, but it’s actually true when you think about it: One person’s idea being obsorbed by many, with very little or no ability to interact with what they are hearing. My point is this: The process and configuration that we presently use to learn in groups is the MISTAKE that will continue to drive inappropriate choices and unhealthy decisions about our future.

Instead, conferences, meetings, and gatherings, need to advantage of the collective mind that’s in the room by developing a vibrant, dynamic, life-generating, learning-exchange marketplace. In this learning exchange marketplace, a collaborative design process is used to shape an environment from which relationship-building and information-exchange is enhanced to a very high level. In this marketplace, information is traded and moved toward meaning, using a parallel collaboration process that allows for better choices to be created and thereby better decisions to be made. This process is called a CoLab.

A Colab taps into both a community’s collective emotional state, as well as its co-intelligent capacity, to bring out a diverse head/heart knowledge from people that rarely gets accessed in traditional group sessions. A Colab moves individual agendas into group-mind learning and reasoning by combining story-telling and metaphor-making as a key part of the collaboration process, thereby allowing for the intuitive brain to incorporate what the rational brain can not.

Furthermore, a Colab will transform a stuffy-room full of authoritative egos into a dance-hall of fun-loving folks who are sharing a diversity of ideas, morphing them into a consensus of choices, and turning them into an intelligent, strategic plan that can be rationally assessed and moved toward solution-based action. All this is done in a fraction of the time of traditional approaches (as seen in the picture), with an increased density of content being shared, received, and absorbed more easily by the majority (rather than the minority) of folks in the room. The result of a Colab process is that – rather than folks feeling frustrated, adversarial, and dreading the work ahead, I have found that more people leave feeling charged, accomplished, participants that are ready to act. Now THIS is how to move ourselves into a future that works!

For more on Collaborative Design, see how to create your own Colab.

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This is the article that triggered me to write this post …

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: Investors Representing $13 Trillion Call for Climate Action Now

NEW YORK, New York, January 14, 2010 (ENS) – The world’s largest investors today issued a statement calling on the United States and other governments to “act now to catalyze development of a low-carbon economy and to attract the vast amount of private capital necessary for such a transformation.”
The U.S., European and Australian investor groups, who together represent $13 trillion in assets, called for “a price on carbon emissions” and “well-designed carbon markets” to provide “a cost-effective way of achieving emissions reductions.”

Investors urge governments to address the risks of climate change. (Photo courtesy Ceres )
The statement was announced at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk, a meeting of 450 global investors at the United Nations that includes U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern, billionaire investor George Soros and former Vice President Al Gore.

The investors said while some progress towards a global agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions was made at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December 2009, “we cannot wait for a global treaty.”

“Policymakers made only incremental progress in Copenhagen, leaving a great deal of work to be done to address the risks that climate change presents to the global economy and to investments,” they said. Anne Stausboll (Photo courtesy CalPERS )

“U.S. leadership is critical in this regard, including U.S. Senate action to limit and put a price on carbon emissions,” Stausboll said.

“What investors need most from national and state legislatures are transparency, longevity and certainty,” said Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Asset Management and member of Deutsche Bank’s Group Executive Committee.

“Until the U.S. Congress passes climate regulation, America will be at a competitive disadvantage in the development of renewable energy and other climate change industries,” he said.

The Investor Statement on Catalyzing Investment in a Low-Carbon Economy was endorsed by four groups representing more than 190 investors – the Investor Network on Climate Risk, Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, IIGCC, the Investor Group on Climate Change, and the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.

“Given that Copenhagen was a missed opportunity to create one fully functional international carbon market, it is more important than ever that individual governments implement regional and domestic policy change to stimulate the creation of a low carbon economy,” said Peter Dunsombe, chairman of the IIGCC, a network of European investors.

“Time is of the essence and world leaders from both developed and developing countries need to act now to compensate for the lack of progress at an international level,” he said.

In their statement, the investors observed that the costs of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are “both affordable and significantly lower than the costs of inaction,” but said developing a global low-carbon economy will require “substantially increased levels of investment from the private sector.”

The UNFCCC Secretariat estimates that more than $200 billion in total additional investment capital for mitigation is required each year by 2030 just to return greenhouse gases to their current levels by then.

The International Energy Agency estimates that additional investment of $10.5 trillion is needed globally in just the energy sector from 2010-2030 to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at around 450 parts per million, the investors noted.

Mindy Lubber (Photo courtesy Ceres )
“This equates to roughly 0.1% of the total value of world financial assets and approximately 0.23% of the total value of debt and equity securities, so this is certainly an achievable level of investment – and one that would yield returns in terms of energy savings, energy security, reduced capital expenditures for pollution control, and avoided climate damages,” they said. “But it is also well above current investment levels.”

“As powerful as these investors are, they can’t underwrite a clean energy transformation at the critical scale needed without clear rules only government can provide,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a U.S. coalition of investors and environmental groups, and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk.

“Government policy can make clean energy cost-competitive by leveling the playing field with fossil fuels,” Lubber said. “Only government policy provides the long-term certainty that can turbo-charge private investment in clean energy, address the climate change threat and protect our planet.”

Click here to download the Investor Statement on Catalyzing Investment in a Low-Carbon Economy.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2010. All rights reserved.

—— End of Forwarded Message

I often like to dabble in the abstract. There, I am taken to transitory state that help me feel closer to the Creative Source. For example: below consists of two intertwined trinity models, of which I like to play with when considering the architecture of ‘whole systems‘. These models help us to both ‘look at’ and ‘participate in’ (w)holistically oriented organizations and communities: “structure-pattern-process” and “principle-practice-policy“. Note the principle of ‘three’ shows up in my work a lot, because I believe it helps us to expand our consciousness, while at the same time providing a simple framework to contain the complex nature of creativity and innovation. You will see more discussions relating to these concepts from me over time. Let me know what comes up for you when you read through it. For now, soak your mind on this draft concept and see what comes up for you …

Transformation (deep innovation) occurs through a three phase evolution:

I’ve been thinking about the potential for progressing toward a global mind: My experiences with group emergence have noted that a majority of efforts collapse before the desire is sustained and self-propelled; a progression toward the vision that initiated the group in the first place. I propose the reason for this is that there is only a one or two level strategic plan in place made up of immediate context without the anticipation of collective content; a synthesis from which the incredible happens.

What if we instead provide a guiding framework that allows group migration into deeper forms of connection with each other? Eventually this connection moves into behavioral forms of change and action. I believe this can be done using a 3-phase framework for processing together; thereby allowing a group to consciously see itself go through deep transformation. This would mean for each phase of processing together, there is a SYNTHESIS of its content – a summarizing of what has been done. This would occur as a part of all three phases; thereby generating a thread of synthesis that allows integration.

These three phases are as follows, which can be noted in the 8-gate group alignment map diagram:

1- Establishing Group Intention:
This phase’s nature is chaotic. It is expressed by conversations of desire and passion which drive an unfolding *PROCESS*. A focus on creating +PRINCIPLES+ based on diverse values, which opens of new level of awareness; thereby setting the stage for a loosening of existing physical *structure* and allowing change to occur. Vibrational activity is dissonant (unconscious) and non-geometric.

2- Building a Value Network:
This phase’s nature moves from chaotic to chaordic. It is expressed by individuals linking and clustering around collective ideas – a virtual *STRUCTURE* emerges. A focus on creating +PRACTICES+ sets the stage for individual changes in behavior and an early forming of group identity to occur. Vibrational activity is recognizable (awakening consciousness) but not stable.

3- Experiencing a Community of Practice:
This phase’s nature moves from chaordic into order. It is expressed by the emergence of community (collective) identity PATTERNS to be realized and an acceptance of participatory-oriented activities are in place. A focus on creating +POLICY+ is empasized; thereby a change of governance occurs.

More on this concept later …

Vic Desotelle

Have you ever noticed how video ratings get very close but rarely hit “5” as an average? Well, these 3 videos hit that big ‘5’ rating, with the first two presently around a million views, and the third ‘hugs’ video having over 57 million. Why do these videos have such huge ratings and viewings? I propose an answer:

In these views videos, our humanity is spoken to. Not our processes, or our procedures, or someone’s organizational goals or strategic plans. But instead, these videos move us at the deepest core of our human nature.

I bring this forward because I believe that our discussions and planning about collaboration, and innovation, and the future, and ‘changing normal’, are not spiced with enough of a very essential ingredient, which is this: We are each passionate, passionate people simply awaiting to be amazed by the next moment of ‘awe’ that comes with a sunrise. Each of us – no matter what our situation, crisis, gain, loss, have, or have-not – is deeply in love with life.

I guess what I’m asking here is that you watch these 3 videos and allow yourself to ‘fall in love’. Allow yourself to feel the welling of your own emotions as they arise within you. And then, THEN let us ask as a collective: What is collaboration and innovation? What is community? And, why in the world are we wanting to ‘change normal’?

1-The Gift of an Ordinary Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSyCLJU3O0
2-Helsinki Complaints Choir
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATXV3DzKv68&feature=player_embedded
3-Free Hugs Campaign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

In Spirit,
Vic Desotelle

Religion? A barrier to collaboration? Who’da thought? One must stop for a moment to deeply consider why I have placed this subject here in the category of ‘barriers to collaboration’. Read on …

Religious positioning may in fact be the essential obstacle that stands in between a healthy human(e) collaboration. If there is a place to claim ‘wrong-ness’, it would be a religious wrong that we all share as a humanity. A wrong that has been the foundation for every war ever fought on this planet. For my God is the right God, and yours is not. Such fear comes up to consider that my beliefs are not the higher truth, that we will kill to keep the belief alive.

Thus, a need for deep dialog and collaboration across God-belief boundaries is crucial to realizing effective collaboration. Because within the religious pedals that secure the seeds of our beliefs are also a deeper more hidden truth that can allow for the rebirth of our collective God-nature. A morphing DNA that will actually bring us into an evolved state of being alive – a transformation in consciousness.

So, it is time that we put down our strategic modeling minds just for a moment and allow our compassionate hearts to step into the center of the collaboration circle. Because no strategy can sustain unless our heart will allow each to be with the other, even if our minds choose to disagree.

For more on this subject, see my friend Jean Houston’s discussion on ‘The Future of God Debate, where she embraces religious, spiritual, and scientific paradoxes, and stakes new claims for what (and what isn’t) our spiritual nature within an emerging globally-conscious world of peoples seeking something more that is beyond each of our present beliefs and mythologies.

Also see James Carrol’s film called Constantine’s Sword, because it covers many mis-assumptions, misguided education, individual, group and collective denials, and indirectly addresses the ultimate the huge lack of collaboration across human societies due to the endless battles between higher-power religious belief systems.

These are my thoughts for today. What comes up for you?

Vic Desotelle

A story of conflict and healing in human interaction & collaboration

With compassion in his voice, he said (something like) you can be too sensitive. The energy with it was almost as if the conflict was not that big of a deal, and more in your mind; as if it wasn’t real enough. Since there are some similarities between you and me in the area of ‘sensitive’: Do you think we are too sensitive? In what ways? How might we blow things up bigger than they really are? Or how much of this is others projecting the unseen ‘white elephants’ that arise in the room and shoving them onto our backs? Hec, I usually just want to return her to her herd.

It’s hard giving up something that one likes, but I’ve been here before and things don’t change, so I end up alone – either while in the group, or because I feel a need to choose a lesser of two evils, to leave the group. Usually it’s about this white elephant that no one will acknowledge. I love the white elephant. It’s a misunderstood soft but wounded feminine energy that this elephant represents … And it’s a dark feminine energy that rides her. Ahhhh, there’s the conflict.

And this elephant just wants the weight off her back. She just wants to play (participate) and be reclaimed/accepted by her community, but is guided by the reins of her unconscious master. I wonder where her herd is that she longs for? And where does the rider belong; certainly not on this white elephants back.

Somehow she keeps getting lost in the safari, or is it abandoned?, misguided?, forced to leave? (by others, by self?) In that vulnerable place she is bridled. Or when lost on her own, the poor animal gets surrounded by a mash-up of uninitiated bulls that have clustered together from other elephant tribes. Desperate to claim their masculine nature, but un-fathered – their energy is abusive, manipulative, and of war.

If you look closely, you will see a few unusual elephant warriors that seem to be of this turbulent tribe, but are merely seekers who journeyed into the group as they crossed paths. Afraid of this stranger, they know not who the real leader is, and project their dark masculine force in all directions, suppressing the needed insight that arises, seen in reflection through the new one’s presence. Then, when the dark feminine rider smells this musk energy on the rise, she pulls on the reins of her white elephant and leads it into the culminating battle. The pubescent masculine force becomes a gathering of wimps, confused by the intertwined light and dark feminine that overpowers with rage, killing the masculine acts.

In rage, the rider and elephant reach the looking glass. Wonder if the white elephant can see her own reflection in Alice’s mirror? No. She can not see herself. But the rider does. Although it’s too late, as the white elephant stampedes through (rather than step into) the mirror, and shatters it. Too late now for reflection. The rider bleeds to death as the bulls stand silently, and ignorantly helpless; longing and waiting for silence to return.

Ongoing emergent metaphors and questions arise that I’d like to dialog with you about, maybe next time we talk. The story is not clean nor perfectly clear, yet helps me to express my sense of it all better than a summary or review. And it holds its own healing for me, as I weave myth and act into a story to share – a potent potion that helps to return a realm of self and group identity that’s too often hidden – lost within the human psyche.

WHAT COMES UP FOR YOU ABOUT YOUR OWN ‘REAL’ INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS WHEN YOU READ THIS STORY?

For more on the subject of human interaction and collaboration,
go to http://tinyurl.com/FractalContinuums

Vic Desotelle

My twine.com webbed a good one today. Although extremely simple, this video triggered a BIG insight for me.

Imagine a new definition of government. Rather than provider of fixes, it becomes a convener of ‘we the people’ and we generate our own solutions. This act shifts a STATIC ‘government’ institution into a DYNAMIC ‘governance’ system. The governing body becomes a manager (or governor) of the ecology of interactions that happen by us the people. Collaboration then becomes the vehicle that acts as this governor, as it enables the flow of action and change. In this way, collaboration and governance become almost synonymous.

What does this do? Well. We no longer have to wait for government to get on board to see the change we want. Instead the governing body builds the infrastructure that allows connection and decision-making to happen. Decisions are no longer made by them. Instead they are made by us and they merely create tools and processes (many via the internet) that allows everyone much more access to the learning and decision-making process. This then becomes a healthier form of control. Rather than government directing and making the decisions, it instead becomes an enabler and ‘governor’ (as it was meant to be) by acting as policy makers but with a different understanding of the meaning of ‘policy’. Now, government monitors rather than polices the outcomes that occur when publicly induced design occurs. Government evolves along with the society by being entwined in the overall feedback system. They become watchers of the difference between consciously derived guiding principles and actual applied experiences that occur in communities of practice.

This diagram shows how the interaction between PRINCIPLE, PRACTICE, and POLICY. It shows that none of these three can sustain the system on its own but each must instead act interdependently with the other two. Here, the policy box is government, or in other words, the convener of a dialog between principle (which is generated out of desire, need, vision, and design possibility) and practice (which is how the design is experienced in the real world). Policy becomes a way to keep the FEEDBACK going between these two subjects the same way a governing value acts on a pipe – too much or too little puts the system into instability. The people inside the government do not make the decision to adjust the flow of choices. Instead, they create and maintain the channels (or policing) that allow the collaboration process to INFORM itself. This is a self-generative behavior and occurs via the interactions between the engagement of the people involved in each of the principle, practice, and policy domains.

Yes, Collaboration “IS” the New Government.

Ethics? Values? Who cares!? “YOU” better care. Did you know that each person’s underlying values and beliefs systems are what drives their actions? Those actions are how things get done by your team members. By linking individual values with your company’s principles, practices, and policies, your world becomes a happier place, with more sustained commitments from staff to get the work done. So, take a journey with us from personal meaning, to group awareness, and into enterprise value creation.

Call us about Discovery Fuel’s ETHICS WORKSHOPS to see if they are right for organization.

The primary principle of innovation is this. It is being able to consider and change our ‘notions’; our so-called facts of our experiences; our factual claims; into something new that goes beyond our own individual reality. The statement of this work is at the foundation of collaboration and discovery. He speaks of science and the evolution of values. Excellent.

Watch this video …

I got this video off of Charles Lemos’ site and was referred to it by Ben Roberts’ Facebook conversation. Derek Sivers gave this presentation at the TED Conference this week and got a standing ovation. It’s pretty brilliant in its takeaway. The video below is a healthy perspective on the collective’s role in leadership, especially the ‘first follower’.

Here’s the transcript, with bold notes made by Charles. Thanks to Charles and Derik.

If you’ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.

Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a movement!

As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed, they won’t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let’s recap what we learned:

If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

Be public. Be easy to follow!

But the biggest lesson here – did you catch it?

Leadership is over-glorified.

Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:

It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

There is no movement without the first follower.

We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

Be a follower, join a movement. That’s how change happens.

Is it possible for us to manifest a better world? One filled with more peace, well being, and harmony? Yes, I believe we can. We just have to remind each other – often.

Watch this amazing video below.

The Empathic Civilisation, by Jeremy Rifkin

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g[/youtube]

Can Collective Intelligence Save the Planet?

By Thomas Malone

Published May 05, 2009

[This article is part of a series of interviews from the MIT Sloan Management Review published on GreenBiz.com. It is adapted from "All Together Now (or, Can Collective Intelligence Save the Planet?," an interview published by MIT Sloan Management Review in April 2009. The complete interview is available here. © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009. All rights reserved. To read all of GreenBiz.com's interviews with MIT thought leaders, visit http://greenbiz.com/mitsloan.]

MIT Sloan School professor Thomas Malone addresses the mental models that impede management progress, the role of collective intelligence in solving climate problems, and his view of how wrong people are about what business is for. An MIT Sustainability Interview by Michael S. Hopkins.

Thomas Malone photo © Donna Coveney, MIT News Office.

The Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Thomas Malone focuses on both information technology and organizational studies. He is founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. Malone’s most recent book is The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). He also has been a cofounder of three software companies, and before joining the MIT faculty in 1983 was a research scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

How do you define sustainability?

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I have what you could call a larger, more ambitious notion of sustainability. Businesses can be used to accomplish a very wide range of human goals, not just making money. Business is a human enterprise, not just an economic one, and if we lose sight of that fact, we run the risk of undermining what businesses could do for us.

What are you working on now in the area of sustainability and its implications for business?

We have a big project in the Center for Collective Intelligence on global climate change. We call it the Climate Collaboratorium. The starting premise is that many people would say that global climate change is one of, if not the most, important societal problem we face. And if ever there was a problem that needed the most collective intelligence we can muster, this would be one of them.

So what can we do? How can we harness the collective intelligence of thousands of people all over the world and whatever computational resources they can take advantage of to help us humans figure this out?

Why do you think harnessing collective intelligence can be so powerful in tackling climate change?

To solve the climate problem, we need a huge range of expertise. We’ve got to know things about the physics of the upper atmosphere and the chemistry of the oceans and the psychology of consumers who are making decisions about when to drive versus take public transportation. Collective intelligence mechanisms are ideal for bringing together those diverse kinds of knowledge.

Part of what we’re trying to do with the Climate Collaboratorium is what we call radically open computer modeling, to bring the spirit of systems like Wikipedia and Linux to the problem of global climate change. We want thousands of people all over the world to be able to discuss and modify models of the social, economic, and physical systems related to climate change. We want them to be able to see and change real quantitative plans for what we could do and what is likely to happen if we do these things. And, finally, we want them to be able to collectively decide which plans seem the most promising.

In a sense, we want to combine a kind of Sims Online for climate change, a Wikipedia for controversial topics, and a form of electronic democracy on steroids!

Imagine I’m an executive, interested in understanding how my organization is going to need to function differently in the fast-coming future as the result of growing concerns about sustainability. What should I be prepared for?

One thing, I think, will be a reconsideration of the “centralized mindset.” The idea is that if there’s a problem to be solved, we should put someone in charge of it, and if things are not well organized, that’s because there isn’t strong leadership. This mindset is very pervasive in our world.

But organizing things this way is becoming less useful in many situations. There are now more decentralized ways of organizing things that are becoming more desirable. In Linux, for example, a loose band of programmers, with very limited top-down control has developed an operating system that rivals Microsoft Windows. Sometimes, the best way for a leader to gain power is to give it away.

In addition to the belief in centralization, what other assumptions will need to change?

I think the heart of the answer is that managers and especially executives will need to serve the interests of a broader range of stakeholders. Serving the interests of stockholders is only part of the job. Managers also need to worry about serving the interests of their employees, their customers, their suppliers, and society in general. That’s another mental barrier that I think people need to get past.

This is an interesting avenue you’re taking — thinking about the larger possibilities for business reinvention that be found in the course of addressing sustainability…

[Businesspeople] often think of sustainability as a constraint rather than an objective. In this way of thinking, the goal of business is to ‘maximize profits subject to the constraint of fulfilling your obligations to society.’

But what I’m saying here is that you can flip that around. You can say there’s no reason at all why a business cannot maximize its contribution to society subject to the constraint of producing a reasonable financial return.

http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2009/05/05/can-collective-intelligence-save-planet#ixzz0ku236da7

Read more …

Victor-Victim-Villain … Your life is more dependent on these three ‘V’s than you probably know.

Our ways of thinking shape our world, and whether we know it or not, there are formulations of ideas that are controlling how we see the world and how we make choices. Think for a moment: How might these these three intertwined subjects relate to the ongoing nightmares in your workplace or your home-life? Then consider that most, if not all, of our decisions and actions emerge through this underlying “3V” culture-making archetype.

I’m wondering this morning, what might be another model that could work just a bit better? If we could become conscious myth-making creatures, then maybe we could design something different as a model dynamic? We have become the result of  it designing us, rather than us consciously using the model to create a collective intelligence that supersedes the interplay within the subjects of victor, victim, and villain themselves.

Here’s a possibility to consider … All models have rotation or spin. Thus each subject within a model becomes one of the others. The victor-villain-victim archetypal interaction has (like all models) a dynamic movement that moves each subject into becoming one of the others. In this case, the the victor becomes the victim, the victim becomes the villain, and the villain becomes the victor. Have you ever noticed that in the movies? How the good-guy and bad-guy overlay each other’s light and dark sides? Batman and Iron Man are to good examples of this interplay. I’ve noticed that, in our society, there is often more attention placed, not on the hero, but on the villain. And because of this, the villain ends up being the real hero. This is the archetypal rotation in action.

Now then, in a (w)holistic view, do we need to allow the time it takes for each one of us to become the other? If so, then this must be a conscious act, does it not? Otherwise each of us (too often) gets unconsciously caught migrating from one identity to another, and then falls back again, creating a polarized oscillation of bouncing back and forth to and from the identity we had for ourselves previously … and previously … and so on. Rather than moving to the next identity in the mandala-like triad within the archetypal configuration, we instead get kind of stuck.

An Open Conclusion: What if we had an archetype for this dynamic – an archetype of archetypes (or archetype-squared)? Would this allow humanity’s failing displays of destructive expression to be able to move downstream into other realms of possible life, form, awareness, and consciousness? Right now, I’m writing a book on ‘cultural misfits’, and it’s just coming to mind that this may be its charter – to transmute “objective isolated acts” (static) into “subjective interdependent actions” (dynamic); at least in terms of how we think about models and their influence on our beliefs, choices, actions, and overall way of life.

And what does this all have to do with COLLABORATION? (Or the lack there of?) Call me and let’s have a dialog 831-454-8046, or email me below, or make a comment.

Vic

I often like to dabble in the abstract. There, I am taken to transitory state that help me feel closer to the Creative Source. For example: below consists of two intertwined trinity models, of which I like to play with when considering the architecture of ‘whole systems‘. These models help us to both ‘look at’ and ‘participate in’ (w)holistically oriented organizations and communities: “structure-pattern-process” and “principle-practice-policy“. Note the principle of ‘three’ shows up in my work a lot, because I believe it helps us to expand our consciousness, while at the same time providing a simple framework to contain the complex nature of creativity and innovation. You will see more discussions relating to these concepts from me over time. Let me know what comes up for you when you read through it. For now, soak your mind on this draft concept and see what comes up for you …

Transformation (deep innovation) occurs through a three phase evolution:

I’ve been thinking about the potential for progressing toward a global mind: My experiences with group emergence have noted that a majority of efforts collapse before the desire is sustained and self-propelled; a progression toward the vision that initiated the group in the first place. I propose the reason for this is that there is only a one or two level strategic plan in place made up of immediate context without the anticipation of collective content; a synthesis from which the incredible happens.

What if we instead provide a guiding framework that allows group migration into deeper forms of connection with each other? Eventually this connection moves into behavioral forms of change and action. I believe this can be done using a 3-phase framework for processing together; thereby allowing a group to consciously see itself go through deep transformation. This would mean for each phase of processing together, there is a SYNTHESIS of its content – a summarizing of what has been done. This would occur as a part of all three phases; thereby generating a thread of synthesis that allows integration.

These three phases are as follows, which can be noted in the 8-gate group alignment map diagram:

1- Establishing Group Intention:
This phase’s nature is chaotic. It is expressed by conversations of desire and passion which drive an unfolding *PROCESS*. A focus on creating +PRINCIPLES+ based on diverse values, which opens of new level of awareness; thereby setting the stage for a loosening of existing physical *structure* and allowing change to occur. Vibrational activity is dissonant (unconscious) and non-geometric.

2- Building a Value Network:
This phase’s nature moves from chaotic to chaordic. It is expressed by individuals linking and clustering around collective ideas – a virtual *STRUCTURE* emerges. A focus on creating +PRACTICES+ sets the stage for individual changes in behavior and an early forming of group identity to occur. Vibrational activity is recognizable (awakening consciousness) but not stable.

3- Experiencing a Community of Practice:
This phase’s nature moves from chaordic into order. It is expressed by the emergence of community (collective) identity PATTERNS to be realized and an acceptance of participatory-oriented activities are in place. A focus on creating +POLICY+ is empasized; thereby a change of governance occurs.

More on this concept later …

Vic Desotelle

Have you ever noticed how video ratings get very close but rarely hit “5” as an average? Well, these 3 videos hit that big ‘5’ rating, with the first two presently around a million views, and the third ‘hugs’ video having over 57 million. Why do these videos have such huge ratings and viewings? I propose an answer:

In these views videos, our humanity is spoken to. Not our processes, or our procedures, or someone’s organizational goals or strategic plans. But instead, these videos move us at the deepest core of our human nature.

I bring this forward because I believe that our discussions and planning about collaboration, and innovation, and the future, and ‘changing normal’, are not spiced with enough of a very essential ingredient, which is this: We are each passionate, passionate people simply awaiting to be amazed by the next moment of ‘awe’ that comes with a sunrise. Each of us – no matter what our situation, crisis, gain, loss, have, or have-not – is deeply in love with life.

I guess what I’m asking here is that you watch these 3 videos and allow yourself to ‘fall in love’. Allow yourself to feel the welling of your own emotions as they arise within you. And then, THEN let us ask as a collective: What is collaboration and innovation? What is community? And, why in the world are we wanting to ‘change normal’?

1-The Gift of an Ordinary Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSyCLJU3O0
2-Helsinki Complaints Choir
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATXV3DzKv68&feature=player_embedded
3-Free Hugs Campaign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

In Spirit,
Vic Desotelle

Religion? A barrier to collaboration? Who’da thought? One must stop for a moment to deeply consider why I have placed this subject here in the category of ‘barriers to collaboration’. Read on …

Religious positioning may in fact be the essential obstacle that stands in between a healthy human(e) collaboration. If there is a place to claim ‘wrong-ness’, it would be a religious wrong that we all share as a humanity. A wrong that has been the foundation for every war ever fought on this planet. For my God is the right God, and yours is not. Such fear comes up to consider that my beliefs are not the higher truth, that we will kill to keep the belief alive.

Thus, a need for deep dialog and collaboration across God-belief boundaries is crucial to realizing effective collaboration. Because within the religious pedals that secure the seeds of our beliefs are also a deeper more hidden truth that can allow for the rebirth of our collective God-nature. A morphing DNA that will actually bring us into an evolved state of being alive – a transformation in consciousness.

So, it is time that we put down our strategic modeling minds just for a moment and allow our compassionate hearts to step into the center of the collaboration circle. Because no strategy can sustain unless our heart will allow each to be with the other, even if our minds choose to disagree.

For more on this subject, see my friend Jean Houston’s discussion on ‘The Future of God Debate, where she embraces religious, spiritual, and scientific paradoxes, and stakes new claims for what (and what isn’t) our spiritual nature within an emerging globally-conscious world of peoples seeking something more that is beyond each of our present beliefs and mythologies.

Also see James Carrol’s film called Constantine’s Sword, because it covers many mis-assumptions, misguided education, individual, group and collective denials, and indirectly addresses the ultimate the huge lack of collaboration across human societies due to the endless battles between higher-power religious belief systems.

These are my thoughts for today. What comes up for you?

Vic Desotelle

A story of conflict and healing in human interaction & collaboration

With compassion in his voice, he said (something like) you can be too sensitive. The energy with it was almost as if the conflict was not that big of a deal, and more in your mind; as if it wasn’t real enough. Since there are some similarities between you and me in the area of ‘sensitive’: Do you think we are too sensitive? In what ways? How might we blow things up bigger than they really are? Or how much of this is others projecting the unseen ‘white elephants’ that arise in the room and shoving them onto our backs? Hec, I usually just want to return her to her herd.

It’s hard giving up something that one likes, but I’ve been here before and things don’t change, so I end up alone – either while in the group, or because I feel a need to choose a lesser of two evils, to leave the group. Usually it’s about this white elephant that no one will acknowledge. I love the white elephant. It’s a misunderstood soft but wounded feminine energy that this elephant represents … And it’s a dark feminine energy that rides her. Ahhhh, there’s the conflict.

And this elephant just wants the weight off her back. She just wants to play (participate) and be reclaimed/accepted by her community, but is guided by the reins of her unconscious master. I wonder where her herd is that she longs for? And where does the rider belong; certainly not on this white elephants back.

Somehow she keeps getting lost in the safari, or is it abandoned?, misguided?, forced to leave? (by others, by self?) In that vulnerable place she is bridled. Or when lost on her own, the poor animal gets surrounded by a mash-up of uninitiated bulls that have clustered together from other elephant tribes. Desperate to claim their masculine nature, but un-fathered – their energy is abusive, manipulative, and of war.

If you look closely, you will see a few unusual elephant warriors that seem to be of this turbulent tribe, but are merely seekers who journeyed into the group as they crossed paths. Afraid of this stranger, they know not who the real leader is, and project their dark masculine force in all directions, suppressing the needed insight that arises, seen in reflection through the new one’s presence. Then, when the dark feminine rider smells this musk energy on the rise, she pulls on the reins of her white elephant and leads it into the culminating battle. The pubescent masculine force becomes a gathering of wimps, confused by the intertwined light and dark feminine that overpowers with rage, killing the masculine acts.

In rage, the rider and elephant reach the looking glass. Wonder if the white elephant can see her own reflection in Alice’s mirror? No. She can not see herself. But the rider does. Although it’s too late, as the white elephant stampedes through (rather than step into) the mirror, and shatters it. Too late now for reflection. The rider bleeds to death as the bulls stand silently, and ignorantly helpless; longing and waiting for silence to return.

Ongoing emergent metaphors and questions arise that I’d like to dialog with you about, maybe next time we talk. The story is not clean nor perfectly clear, yet helps me to express my sense of it all better than a summary or review. And it holds its own healing for me, as I weave myth and act into a story to share – a potent potion that helps to return a realm of self and group identity that’s too often hidden – lost within the human psyche.

WHAT COMES UP FOR YOU ABOUT YOUR OWN ‘REAL’ INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS WHEN YOU READ THIS STORY?

For more on the subject of human interaction and collaboration,
go to http://tinyurl.com/FractalContinuums

Vic Desotelle

Ethics? Values? Who cares!? “YOU” better care. Did you know that each person’s underlying values and beliefs systems are what drives their actions? Those actions are how things get done by your team members. By linking individual values with your company’s principles, practices, and policies, your world becomes a happier place, with more sustained commitments from staff to get the work done. So, take a journey with us from personal meaning, to group awareness, and into enterprise value creation.

Call us about Discovery Fuel’s ETHICS WORKSHOPS to see if they are right for organization.

How to Create a ‘Sustainable’ Business Plan

AN ONLINE WORKSHOP

.Join Vic Desotelle from DiscoveryFuel.com for an ONLINE collaborative sustainable business planning workshop series.

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I have been asked to clarify the difference between ‘debates‘, ‘discussions‘, and ‘dialogues‘ (note wikipedia incorrectly clumps discussion into the same definition as ‘debate’). Below is a first attempt at trying to evolve our understanding of these three primary communication processes. I ask for your feedback, and also for your own insights on this matter.

The intent here is to help organizational change processes be more conscious and more effective by becoming aware that how we communicate with each other strongly effects meeting outcomes, as well as how well thsoe outcomes sustain the desired changes. In short, this is all about how we make conscious decisions that influence positive change.

Our world is in dire need of evolved decision-making techniques that can provide us with a better way for sharing and choosing solutions that are healthier for ourselves and the planet. Effective communication is the glue that allows for real, sustained change to happen. Note that communication colors all levels of organizational development, including its methods of leadership, its ability to learn, team work and collaboration, and the sustainability of innovation itself.

DEBATE = Language is manipulated with the intent to cripple other viewpoints (argumentative). Change is hard to come by with this approach. However, it is useful for keeping an existing systems in place. Energy comes from the lizard mechanisms in the brain, which attempt to protect and defend. The person with the most power over another is seen as the best leader. This process is not good for creating change except at conscious predetermined places in the process where challenge generates a different thought process that can bring clarity and assurance on choices that have been made.

DISCUSSION = Questioning each other comes from a predisposed positioning (having an agenda). Change is possible but usually can not be sustained due to the process being based on a questioning process that makes each feel someone has to win. Others often loose their identity to consensus. It’s based on a sudo-democracy process whereby everyone unconsciously assumes that there is a best answer, thus only one viewpoint is ultimately chosen. Occasionally discussion moves into dialog, but usually it moves into debate.

DIALOG = Collaborative inquiry with an openness to possibilities beyond each others own beliefs and views. Communication about communication happens allowing the creation of a safe environment; a place where the unexpected and insight can happen more freely. Everyone’s viewpoint is allowed whether or not others agree with it. All work to wear the shoes of the one speaking and seek to integrate diversity rather than extract the best answer. It stands for the power of the question is valued more than answers. The challenge for creating change is that too often dialog does not move toward decision-making and action.

TRILOG = Ideally, all three forms of conversation are useful if used in tandem with each other. Dialog is to be used during the early envisioning stages. Discussion during the goals and strategy-making stages, but only at the point when decisions have to be determined. Debate is useful to challenge a new system against an old one. It must be used very consciously however, because otherwise power over can destroy all previous efforts. Dialog should again be used to close a group’s process because it brings us back to our humanity and to what’s most important, which are the relationships. They are as important (or more) than the outcomes generated by the group, for it is what becomes the foundation for sustaining the determined change.

About Room Geometry = One final point to make here is this: Be aware of the geometry of the room in which people gather. If shared views are the choice, be sure to stage the room with multiple small circles in mind. If one person’s opinion is to be impressed upon the group, then line up the chairs in straight lines without breaking up the group. I for one almost always choose to use circular geometries because it seems to appease the need for all to feel like they are participants rather than merely receivers of information. A room’s geometry needs to be considered at all levels of a community’s decision-making hierarchy including company meetings, town hall meetings, city council meetings, board rooms, and living room gatherings.

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To bring in more of a trilog approach (with an emphasis on ‘dialogue), use this collaborative design tool during your next meeting: Create a ‘Learning Exchange Markeplace‘. For more information, contact Vic Desotelle at DiscoveryFuel.com

Learning Exchange Markets uncover hidden innovation which is often at the fringes of an organization. Within a Learning Exchange Market, a shift of emphasis occurs between the participants from debates and discussions to generative dialogue, which must be in place for true forms of sustainable innovation to emerge. During the learning exchange process, multiple conversations – both strategic and envisioning, are allowed to occur at the same time. This approach actually accelerates results toward action-oriented activities while also empowering the individuals who will become responsible for the deliverables. It works miracles for companies working on becoming a learning organization. And your idea can’t get bagged or pushed aside!

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One of the primary tools applied to Learning Exchange Markets is called ‘Open Space’ …..

The ‘Open Space Technology’ Concept

(as described from Co-Intelligence Inst.)

” In my experience open space is based on the belief that we humans are intelligent, creative, adaptive, meaning- and fun-seeking. It sets the context for such creatures to come together knowing they are going to treat each other well. When this happens there is no limit to what can unfold.” Alan Stewart

Open Space Technology was created in the mid-1980s by organizational consultant Harrison Owen when he discovered that people attending his conferences loved the coffee breaks better than the formal presentations and plenary sessions. Combining that insight with his experience of life in an African village, Owen created a totally new form of conferencing.

Open Space conferences have no keynote speakers, no pre-announced schedules of workshops, no panel discussions, no organizational booths. Instead, sitting in a large circle, participants learn in the first hour how they are going to create their own conference. Almost before they realize it, they become each other’s teachers and leaders.

Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion or activity, writes it down on a large sheet of paper in big letters and then stands up and announces it to the group. After selecting one of the many pre-established times and places, they post their proposed workshop on a wall. When everyone who wants to has announced and posted their initial offerings, it is time for what Owen calls “the village marketplace”: Participants mill around the wall, putting together their personal schedules for the remainder of the conference. The first meetings begin immediately.

Open Space is, as Owen likes to say, more highly organized than the best planning committee could possibly manage. It is also chaotic, productive and fun. No one is in control. A whirlwind of activity is guided from within by a handful of simple principles.

[For managers with concerns for loss of control, the principles below will seem ridiculous, and the Open Space approach may drive you crazy - but only for awhile ... Once you see how much work actually gets done, and how happy everyone is while doing this process, you'll never have a (so-called) normal meeting again!]

The ‘Open Space’ Principles:

1. Passion & Responsibility: The most basic principle is that everyone who comes to an Open Space conference must be passionate about the topic and willing to take some responsibility for creating things out of that passion.

2. Whoever comes are the right people.
3. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
4. Whenever it starts is the right time.
5. When it is over it is over.
6. The Law of Two Feet (see below):

“If you find yourself in a situation where you aren’t learning or contributing, go somewhere else” (or move to another level of awareness and participation). This law causes some participants to flit from activity to activity. Owen rejoices in such people, calling them bumblebees because they cross-pollinate all the workshops. He also celebrates participants who use The Law of Two Feet to go off and sit by themselves. He dubs them butterflies, because they create quiet centers of non-action for stillness, beauty, novelty or random conversations to be born.

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Open space conferences can be done in one day or less, but the most powerful go on for two or three days, or longer. Participants gather together briefly in the morning and the evening to share experiences and announce any new workshops they have concocted. The rest of the day is spent in intense conversation. Even meals are come-when-you-can affairs that go on for hours, filled with bustling dialogue. After a few days of this, an intense spirit of community usually develops that is all the more remarkable considering that participants are all doing exactly what they want.

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Open Space conferences are particularly effective when a large, complex operation needs to be thoroughly re-conceptualized and reorganized — when the task is just too big and complicated to be sorted out “from the top.” On the assumption that such a system contains within it the seeds of everything that needs to happen with it, Open Space provides it with an opportunity to self-organize into its new configuration. For this to work, however, the system’s leaders must let go of control so that true self-organization can take place.

Open Space Technology is also a delightful, useful tool for any group of people who are really interested in exploring something that they all care deeply about, and is one of the simplest, most brilliant combinations of order and chaos that I have yet found. It has been applied in thousands of meetings around the world with between five and one thousand participants. It can be effectively used by virtually anybody. Owen has provided excellent instructions in his books, below.

• Resources: H. H. Owen and Co., Open Space Institute, The Co-Intelligence Institute

• Books: Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, Expanding Our Now: The Story of Open Space Technology, Harrison Owen, The Millennium Organization

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HOW TO CREATE A LEARNING EXCHANGE MARKETPLACE

(by Discovery Fuel)

Download Discovery Fuel’s Design Packet For Creating Your Own Learning Exchange Marketplace

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Learning Exchange – SCHEDULE

(3 1/2 hour evening sample)

6:15 Check Bulletin Board for Announcements
6:30 Mission Statement
6:40 Brief Introductions
6:50 How It Works
7:00 The Exchange Market
7:30 1st Period Sessions
8:00 2nd Period Sessions
8:30 Share Learning
9:00 End

Learning Exchange – PROCESS

1. Write Down Session Proposals

2. Questions are as Appropriate as Answers

3. Verbally Announce Your Session
4. Post Session on Schedule Wall

5. Combine Proposals, Negotiate Times

6. Period A Sessions Begin, Take Notes

7. Integrate Notes into One Report

8. Period B Sessions Begin, Keep a Log

9. Integrate Notes into One Report

10. Note Sessions A and B may be Merged

11. Group Reporting of Sessions Begins

12. Bulletin Board To Post Ideas, Notices

13. Info Exchange meetings are bi-weekly.

14. Results Incorporated at Bi-weekly Strategy Meetings and Continued at Next Info Exchange Meeting

Learning Exchange – PRINCIPLES
· Whoever comes is right. Whatever happens … happens.

· Leave personal status outside. Bring ideas and knowledge inside.

· Be passionate about the topics. Take responsibility for creating things out of that passion.

· Law of Two Feet: If you aren’t learning or contributing, increase participation, or move to another session.

· Stay focused on topic

· One person talking at a time

· Shift ‘Yeah-But’ responses to ‘YES-AND’

· Listen with empathy, suspend judgment

· Encourage & build on the wild ideas of others.

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Download Discovery Fuel’s Design Packet (pdf file) for creating a Learning Exchange Marketplace. For more information contact us for a chat.

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I find that this subject is one of the more revealing issues of our time. A place that requires us to reshape our understanding and meaning of ‘environment’. Read this great article on the link between our human psyche and the Earth.

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The terms in which ecopsychology pursues this admittedly ambitious goal are steeped in the field’s countercultural beginnings. Ecopsychology emerged in the early 1960s, just as the modern environmental movement was gathering strength, when a group of Boston-area graduate students gathered to discuss what they saw as the isolation and malaise infecting modern life. It had another brief period of efflorescence, particularly on the West Coast and among practitioners of alternative therapies, in the early ’90s, when Theodore Roszak, a professor of history (he coined the word “counterculture”) published a manifesto, “The Voice of the Earth,” in which he criticized modern psychology for neglecting the primal bond between man and nature. “Mainstream Western psychology has limited the definition of mental health to the interpersonal context of an urban-industrial society,” he later wrote. “All that lies beyond the citified psyche has seemed of no human relevance — or perhaps too frightening to think about.” Ecopsychology’s eclectic following, which includes therapists, researchers, ecologists and activists, still reflects these earlier foundations. So does its rhetoric. Practitioners are as apt, if not more apt, to cite Native American folk tales as they are empirical data to make their points.

Yet even as it remains committed to its origins, ecopsychology has begun in recent years to enter mainstream academic circles. more …

Here’ an important message to our leaders and decision makers:

Assume that your truths and beliefs are an Illusion.

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Consider how our brain works …
Watch what happens to your belief system as you stare at this image.

1-Follow the moving pink dot: What do you see?
2-Look at the middle black cross. Now what do you see?
3-Now star for a few seconds at the black cross. What happens?

This should be proof enough that we don’t always see what we think we see.

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, the dots will remain only one color, pink. However if you stare at the black ” +” in the centre, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black ” + ” in the centre of the picture. After a short period, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see only a single green dot rotating. It’s amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot , and the pink ones really don’t disappear.

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The primary principle of innovation is this. It is being able to consider and change our ‘notions’; our so-called facts of our experiences; our factual claims; into something new that goes beyond our own individual reality. The statement of this work is at the foundation of collaboration and discovery. He speaks of science and the evolution of values. Excellent.

Watch this video …

I got this video off of Charles Lemos’ site and was referred to it by Ben Roberts’ Facebook conversation. Derek Sivers gave this presentation at the TED Conference this week and got a standing ovation. It’s pretty brilliant in its takeaway. The video below is a healthy perspective on the collective’s role in leadership, especially the ‘first follower’.

Here’s the transcript, with bold notes made by Charles. Thanks to Charles and Derik.

If you’ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.

Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a movement!

As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed, they won’t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let’s recap what we learned:

If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

Be public. Be easy to follow!

But the biggest lesson here – did you catch it?

Leadership is over-glorified.

Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:

It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

There is no movement without the first follower.

We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

Be a follower, join a movement. That’s how change happens.

Is it possible for us to manifest a better world? One filled with more peace, well being, and harmony? Yes, I believe we can. We just have to remind each other – often.

Watch this amazing video below.

The Empathic Civilisation, by Jeremy Rifkin

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g[/youtube]

The role of emotions in our lives continues to gain more and more acceptance. This TED video powerfully captures the role of women in EQ. And it is VERY (if not even more so) appropriate for men as well.

In this passionate talk, Eve Ensler declares that there is a girl cell in us all — a cell that we have all been taught to suppress. She tells heartfelt stories of girls around the world who have overcome shocking adversity and violence to reveal the astonishing strength of being a girl.

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Professional coaching is not what it once was; it’s purpose and intent has changed. As a coach for others, or as an executive or manager, your own leadership or coaching abilities will improve and become more meaningful to you and others once you revisit the notion of coaching itself. When you work with me, you will find that your own values, identity, and sense of authenticity will be considered based on a non-formula coaching approach. To understand what it means to be a leader today, you must be ‘un-coached’ away from traditional methods. Why? Because each one of us is unique. Thus, leadership consulting and coaching formulas only work to a point. Then what? How do we address your own one-of-a-king personality?

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We all are more effective when we have a coach

First of all, from my wealth of experiences, I have found that we see ourselves best by reflecting off of others. That is, your ability to be truly who you are will come when others can empathize with you and then share with you how you are seen. This is at the essence of coaching. But, no matter what category you place yourself into – whether as a leader of others, as an executive, a manager, a life coach, or as someone looking to improve your own inner leadership – you will want a coach to help you see through your own forest of experiences and day-to-day trials. So, what is coaching? What are the benefits of coaching? And how do you find a leadership coach, life coach, career coach, or professional coach? Here are some things to consider …

My approach to coaching is different

There is a difference between leading and leadership; between directing as a manager and managing as a mentor. There is also a difference between practicing formulated exercises to create personal change, and experiencing deep transformational change through self awareness. In, what I like to call leadership ecology, leadership quality is transferred to another through a shared awakening process. This is done by first empowering yourself as a leader in your own right based on your interests, capabilities, and passions to realize your unique authentic identity. In this way, instead of your leadership being placed upon another by ‘leading the charge’, you rather consciously follow and look for opportunities to ‘catalyze the charge’. That’s right: I said ‘follow’. By following team members and watching for their own ‘yellow brick road’, you inject power into the group’s journey, one individual at a time – starting with yourself. In other words, you evolve an ‘ecology of leadership’ by positioning yourself to see others, rather than them seeing you. Thus, my coaching approach is somewhat opposite of run-of-the-mill coaching. It comes more from a place of ‘guiding’ than it does from a traditional ‘leading’ coaching perspective. To emphasize this different perspective, I call it ‘uncoaching’.

To uncoach means that, together we first reconsider what it means for you to be coached. We will also reevaluate your objectives and plans, not as much by driving forces, but instead based on hidden motives, not just apparent ones. It means aspiring to a more evolved way as a leader. With me as your un-coach, you will actually be able to support your team and organization more effectively with good leadership. The other part of my uncoach approach is that you will not find a written formula or flow chart of prescribed objectives to follow. Instead, I rely strongly upon both your and my intuitive instincts, which has rarely – if ever – failed me. The challenge here is to be able to help you listen deeply into yourself. Notice that I did not say that ‘I’ need to listen deeply. Although this is the case, my motive is not to only tell you my aha’s as a coach, but more importantly to help you move into that aha space and see them when they occur. Again, this rarely can be done without others involved in your own awakening process. In this way, I effectively help you move more effectively toward the root of personal problems, difficult situations, and character behaviors that are personal to you rather than to someone’s standard. Thus, you awaken to a more authentic transformational change that will affect you as well as those around you.

Here’s where the ‘hit-the-bulls-eye’ model changes

I like the metaphor of the arrow hitting the bulls-eye, but for a different reason than you may assume. What if leadership no longer means hitting the center of a target? What if a leader’s best shot is when the arrow lands in the furthest outer ring? Curious idea, isn’t it? In leadership ecology, you want to target the outer ring, not the center. From the outer ring you have a very different perspective on leadership. By targeting the outer ring, you are in the best position to move others into the center. It also challenges your own authenticity as a person, which is so important as a leader. Because people can feel your truth – it is not as hidden as you may think.

By realizing your own authentic identity, you move to a place of compassion and empathy for others in your team or organization. Rather than you being isolated at the center, your influence radiates based on your ability to partner with others. Rather than being a director who oversees your subordinates, (which comes from a destructive form of ego that encourages others to see you at the center of the target), you instead see an ecology of interactions from the periphery of the target – a place where you are more a part of the interactions with others, and also risk the edge of expectation. Yes, the periphery of the target is not as safe as the center, is it? Yet, it’s where your true power will be realized. Once you get comfortable with this new perspective, your actions and your direction of others, will come from an empathic place, which is the first step in empowering others to their own leadership. That is real leadership, and marks the beginning of optimizing your organization (and dare I say the World) toward new forms of collaboration and innovation.

Imagine how your executive team would behave

Whether you’re a coach, executive, or manager, does your ability to coach others focus on authority-based leadership or authenticity-based leadership? What would it mean in terms of your team’s productivity and success if you acted as their unCoach, rather than as their director? Shift your ‘I’m in charge’ thinking. Go from being an authoritative director to being an authentic leader and watch what happens. Move yourself and your company toward creating sustainable innovation and develop a learning organization (I’ll talk more about these things later) by aiming at the outer perimeter instead of the center of the target – GET THERE WITH AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP COACHING.

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1- Consider taking this free online personal leadership assessment, which addresses your own personal authenticity and inner truths.
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4- Review client praise for my coaching work. You may also want to review my background in business startups incubation, technology, and innovation.
5- Then contact me Vic Desotelle (831-454-8046) for a personal inquiry together – our first meeting is free.

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the mistake we continue to make is about how we learn and make Decisions

Taking action on our future is less about ‘what‘ we know and ‘who‘ is in the room, than it is about ‘how‘ we come together to learn. We’ve had this wrong for a long long time.

Look at the photo below. This is a “climate action”onference. Observe how people in the room are positioned. Notice how one person is actively presenting to a large audience of folks, who are passively listening. The geometry of how they are all lined in rows and focusing on one person is actually how you place people if brain-washing is your goal. I know that seems a bit strong, but it’s actually true when you think about it: One person’s idea being obsorbed by many, with very little or no ability to interact with what they are hearing. My point is this: The process and configuration that we presently use to learn in groups is the MISTAKE that will continue to drive inappropriate choices and unhealthy decisions about our future.

Instead, conferences, meetings, and gatherings, need to advantage of the collective mind that’s in the room by developing a vibrant, dynamic, life-generating, learning-exchange marketplace. In this learning exchange marketplace, a collaborative design process is used to shape an environment from which relationship-building and information-exchange is enhanced to a very high level. In this marketplace, information is traded and moved toward meaning, using a parallel collaboration process that allows for better choices to be created and thereby better decisions to be made. This process is called a CoLab.

A Colab taps into both a community’s collective emotional state, as well as its co-intelligent capacity, to bring out a diverse head/heart knowledge from people that rarely gets accessed in traditional group sessions. A Colab moves individual agendas into group-mind learning and reasoning by combining story-telling and metaphor-making as a key part of the collaboration process, thereby allowing for the intuitive brain to incorporate what the rational brain can not.

Furthermore, a Colab will transform a stuffy-room full of authoritative egos into a dance-hall of fun-loving folks who are sharing a diversity of ideas, morphing them into a consensus of choices, and turning them into an intelligent, strategic plan that can be rationally assessed and moved toward solution-based action. All this is done in a fraction of the time of traditional approaches (as seen in the picture), with an increased density of content being shared, received, and absorbed more easily by the majority (rather than the minority) of folks in the room. The result of a Colab process is that – rather than folks feeling frustrated, adversarial, and dreading the work ahead, I have found that more people leave feeling charged, accomplished, participants that are ready to act. Now THIS is how to move ourselves into a future that works!

For more on Collaborative Design, see how to create your own Colab.

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This is the article that triggered me to write this post …

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: Investors Representing $13 Trillion Call for Climate Action Now

NEW YORK, New York, January 14, 2010 (ENS) – The world’s largest investors today issued a statement calling on the United States and other governments to “act now to catalyze development of a low-carbon economy and to attract the vast amount of private capital necessary for such a transformation.”
The U.S., European and Australian investor groups, who together represent $13 trillion in assets, called for “a price on carbon emissions” and “well-designed carbon markets” to provide “a cost-effective way of achieving emissions reductions.”

Investors urge governments to address the risks of climate change. (Photo courtesy Ceres )
The statement was announced at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk, a meeting of 450 global investors at the United Nations that includes U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern, billionaire investor George Soros and former Vice President Al Gore.

The investors said while some progress towards a global agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions was made at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December 2009, “we cannot wait for a global treaty.”

“Policymakers made only incremental progress in Copenhagen, leaving a great deal of work to be done to address the risks that climate change presents to the global economy and to investments,” they said. Anne Stausboll (Photo courtesy CalPERS )

“U.S. leadership is critical in this regard, including U.S. Senate action to limit and put a price on carbon emissions,” Stausboll said.

“What investors need most from national and state legislatures are transparency, longevity and certainty,” said Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Asset Management and member of Deutsche Bank’s Group Executive Committee.

“Until the U.S. Congress passes climate regulation, America will be at a competitive disadvantage in the development of renewable energy and other climate change industries,” he said.

The Investor Statement on Catalyzing Investment in a Low-Carbon Economy was endorsed by four groups representing more than 190 investors – the Investor Network on Climate Risk, Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, IIGCC, the Investor Group on Climate Change, and the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.

“Given that Copenhagen was a missed opportunity to create one fully functional international carbon market, it is more important than ever that individual governments implement regional and domestic policy change to stimulate the creation of a low carbon economy,” said Peter Dunsombe, chairman of the IIGCC, a network of European investors.

“Time is of the essence and world leaders from both developed and developing countries need to act now to compensate for the lack of progress at an international level,” he said.

In their statement, the investors observed that the costs of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are “both affordable and significantly lower than the costs of inaction,” but said developing a global low-carbon economy will require “substantially increased levels of investment from the private sector.”

The UNFCCC Secretariat estimates that more than $200 billion in total additional investment capital for mitigation is required each year by 2030 just to return greenhouse gases to their current levels by then.

The International Energy Agency estimates that additional investment of $10.5 trillion is needed globally in just the energy sector from 2010-2030 to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at around 450 parts per million, the investors noted.

Mindy Lubber (Photo courtesy Ceres )
“This equates to roughly 0.1% of the total value of world financial assets and approximately 0.23% of the total value of debt and equity securities, so this is certainly an achievable level of investment – and one that would yield returns in terms of energy savings, energy security, reduced capital expenditures for pollution control, and avoided climate damages,” they said. “But it is also well above current investment levels.”

“As powerful as these investors are, they can’t underwrite a clean energy transformation at the critical scale needed without clear rules only government can provide,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a U.S. coalition of investors and environmental groups, and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk.

“Government policy can make clean energy cost-competitive by leveling the playing field with fossil fuels,” Lubber said. “Only government policy provides the long-term certainty that can turbo-charge private investment in clean energy, address the climate change threat and protect our planet.”

Click here to download the Investor Statement on Catalyzing Investment in a Low-Carbon Economy.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2010. All rights reserved.

—— End of Forwarded Message

Religion? A barrier to collaboration? Who’da thought? One must stop for a moment to deeply consider why I have placed this subject here in the category of ‘barriers to collaboration’. Read on …

Religious positioning may in fact be the essential obstacle that stands in between a healthy human(e) collaboration. If there is a place to claim ‘wrong-ness’, it would be a religious wrong that we all share as a humanity. A wrong that has been the foundation for every war ever fought on this planet. For my God is the right God, and yours is not. Such fear comes up to consider that my beliefs are not the higher truth, that we will kill to keep the belief alive.

Thus, a need for deep dialog and collaboration across God-belief boundaries is crucial to realizing effective collaboration. Because within the religious pedals that secure the seeds of our beliefs are also a deeper more hidden truth that can allow for the rebirth of our collective God-nature. A morphing DNA that will actually bring us into an evolved state of being alive – a transformation in consciousness.

So, it is time that we put down our strategic modeling minds just for a moment and allow our compassionate hearts to step into the center of the collaboration circle. Because no strategy can sustain unless our heart will allow each to be with the other, even if our minds choose to disagree.

For more on this subject, see my friend Jean Houston’s discussion on ‘The Future of God Debate, where she embraces religious, spiritual, and scientific paradoxes, and stakes new claims for what (and what isn’t) our spiritual nature within an emerging globally-conscious world of peoples seeking something more that is beyond each of our present beliefs and mythologies.

Also see James Carrol’s film called Constantine’s Sword, because it covers many mis-assumptions, misguided education, individual, group and collective denials, and indirectly addresses the ultimate the huge lack of collaboration across human societies due to the endless battles between higher-power religious belief systems.

These are my thoughts for today. What comes up for you?

Vic Desotelle

A story of conflict and healing in human interaction & collaboration

With compassion in his voice, he said (something like) you can be too sensitive. The energy with it was almost as if the conflict was not that big of a deal, and more in your mind; as if it wasn’t real enough. Since there are some similarities between you and me in the area of ‘sensitive’: Do you think we are too sensitive? In what ways? How might we blow things up bigger than they really are? Or how much of this is others projecting the unseen ‘white elephants’ that arise in the room and shoving them onto our backs? Hec, I usually just want to return her to her herd.

It’s hard giving up something that one likes, but I’ve been here before and things don’t change, so I end up alone – either while in the group, or because I feel a need to choose a lesser of two evils, to leave the group. Usually it’s about this white elephant that no one will acknowledge. I love the white elephant. It’s a misunderstood soft but wounded feminine energy that this elephant represents … And it’s a dark feminine energy that rides her. Ahhhh, there’s the conflict.

And this elephant just wants the weight off her back. She just wants to play (participate) and be reclaimed/accepted by her community, but is guided by the reins of her unconscious master. I wonder where her herd is that she longs for? And where does the rider belong; certainly not on this white elephants back.

Somehow she keeps getting lost in the safari, or is it abandoned?, misguided?, forced to leave? (by others, by self?) In that vulnerable place she is bridled. Or when lost on her own, the poor animal gets surrounded by a mash-up of uninitiated bulls that have clustered together from other elephant tribes. Desperate to claim their masculine nature, but un-fathered – their energy is abusive, manipulative, and of war.

If you look closely, you will see a few unusual elephant warriors that seem to be of this turbulent tribe, but are merely seekers who journeyed into the group as they crossed paths. Afraid of this stranger, they know not who the real leader is, and project their dark masculine force in all directions, suppressing the needed insight that arises, seen in reflection through the new one’s presence. Then, when the dark feminine rider smells this musk energy on the rise, she pulls on the reins of her white elephant and leads it into the culminating battle. The pubescent masculine force becomes a gathering of wimps, confused by the intertwined light and dark feminine that overpowers with rage, killing the masculine acts.

In rage, the rider and elephant reach the looking glass. Wonder if the white elephant can see her own reflection in Alice’s mirror? No. She can not see herself. But the rider does. Although it’s too late, as the white elephant stampedes through (rather than step into) the mirror, and shatters it. Too late now for reflection. The rider bleeds to death as the bulls stand silently, and ignorantly helpless; longing and waiting for silence to return.

Ongoing emergent metaphors and questions arise that I’d like to dialog with you about, maybe next time we talk. The story is not clean nor perfectly clear, yet helps me to express my sense of it all better than a summary or review. And it holds its own healing for me, as I weave myth and act into a story to share – a potent potion that helps to return a realm of self and group identity that’s too often hidden – lost within the human psyche.

WHAT COMES UP FOR YOU ABOUT YOUR OWN ‘REAL’ INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS WHEN YOU READ THIS STORY?

For more on the subject of human interaction and collaboration,
go to http://tinyurl.com/FractalContinuums

Vic Desotelle

My twine.com webbed a good one today. Although extremely simple, this video triggered a BIG insight for me.

Imagine a new definition of government. Rather than provider of fixes, it becomes a convener of ‘we the people’ and we generate our own solutions. This act shifts a STATIC ‘government’ institution into a DYNAMIC ‘governance’ system. The governing body becomes a manager (or governor) of the ecology of interactions that happen by us the people. Collaboration then becomes the vehicle that acts as this governor, as it enables the flow of action and change. In this way, collaboration and governance become almost synonymous.

What does this do? Well. We no longer have to wait for government to get on board to see the change we want. Instead the governing body builds the infrastructure that allows connection and decision-making to happen. Decisions are no longer made by them. Instead they are made by us and they merely create tools and processes (many via the internet) that allows everyone much more access to the learning and decision-making process. This then becomes a healthier form of control. Rather than government directing and making the decisions, it instead becomes an enabler and ‘governor’ (as it was meant to be) by acting as policy makers but with a different understanding of the meaning of ‘policy’. Now, government monitors rather than polices the outcomes that occur when publicly induced design occurs. Government evolves along with the society by being entwined in the overall feedback system. They become watchers of the difference between consciously derived guiding principles and actual applied experiences that occur in communities of practice.

This diagram shows how the interaction between PRINCIPLE, PRACTICE, and POLICY. It shows that none of these three can sustain the system on its own but each must instead act interdependently with the other two. Here, the policy box is government, or in other words, the convener of a dialog between principle (which is generated out of desire, need, vision, and design possibility) and practice (which is how the design is experienced in the real world). Policy becomes a way to keep the FEEDBACK going between these two subjects the same way a governing value acts on a pipe – too much or too little puts the system into instability. The people inside the government do not make the decision to adjust the flow of choices. Instead, they create and maintain the channels (or policing) that allow the collaboration process to INFORM itself. This is a self-generative behavior and occurs via the interactions between the engagement of the people involved in each of the principle, practice, and policy domains.

Yes, Collaboration “IS” the New Government.

Ethics? Values? Who cares!? “YOU” better care. Did you know that each person’s underlying values and beliefs systems are what drives their actions? Those actions are how things get done by your team members. By linking individual values with your company’s principles, practices, and policies, your world becomes a happier place, with more sustained commitments from staff to get the work done. So, take a journey with us from personal meaning, to group awareness, and into enterprise value creation.

Call us about Discovery Fuel’s ETHICS WORKSHOPS to see if they are right for organization.

How to Create a ‘Sustainable’ Business Plan

AN ONLINE WORKSHOP

.Join Vic Desotelle from DiscoveryFuel.com for an ONLINE collaborative sustainable business planning workshop series.

This session will allow you to preview and inquire about the series, which is for small business social entrepreneurs who have dreamed of owning a sustainable business. Learn how to make a viable business plan that moves your green idea from conception to successful execution. Create a sustainable future for yourself, customers, and community through this sustainable innovation learning series. Click here for more details

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In our attempt to be ‘professional’, it seems that our society has become afraid of our own human-ness. Have we lost our sense of how to be with each other in the messiness of our humanity?

<p>I was reading my LinkedIn Groups this morning and came across Mike Smith&rsquo;s &lsquo;Life Back West&rsquo; thoughts on people, teams, organizations, effectiveness and success (thanks Mike!). Now, it may seem that I jump around here a bit, so buckle your seat belt and see if you can stay with me on this …</p> <p>So, after reading his short blurb on leadership that caught my eye, I went to Mike&rsquo;s blog planning to oppose what I anticipated would be a description of an old belief system that suggests, if we are professional, our feelings are to be suppressed in the workplace. Instead, Mike described how his young son has inspired his professional nature to include expression, compassion, and emotion. Having a young boy myself, I can totally relate to how he and I allow each other space for emotional expression. But then, why is it that we are not allowed too much expression at work without being sited as a problem?</p> <p>It seems that our society has become afraid of our own human-ness. Have we lost our sense of how to be with each other in the messiness of our humanity? For me, today&rsquo;s sorely needed emerging leaders can not be likened anymore to the stoic guy on a horse riding off into the sunset after he single-handedly saves the town from Godzilla. Why? Because this guy (usually someone we all aspire to be) rarely shows the kind of emotion that allows for collective transformation. Rather he tends to be about eliminating a problem, along with the people that go with it.</p> <p>What if instead, we began to choose our leaders based (in part) on how well they have learned to express their emotional selves and how well they are exemplars for others by the way they share the messy parts of their humanity and also be able to hold it for others? I propose that we dare ourselves to allow messiness in the workplace by helping to teach and &ldquo;lead&rdquo; groups through spells of negative emotion. Rather than try to find ways to avoid or expel it. Note the key piece here is how to teach groups or teams to hold individuals in their time of need, rather than expecting the so-called leader to do it alone. This is known as collective leadership and I believe that gold can be found within the mines (minds) of our organizations that will generate amazing new forms of innovation. Why? Because the form and function of innovation becomes an expression of&nbsp; the group or company who created it.</p> <p>I think <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3wyCxHtGd0&amp;eurl=http://discoveryfuel.com/team-building-leadership/a-twist-on-the-idea-of-professionalism-in-leadership/” target=”_blank”><object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/r3wyCxHtGd0&hl=en&fs=1&”></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/r3wyCxHtGd0&hl=en&fs=1&” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>Daniel Goleman&rsquo;s talk on TED</a> points to this evolved form of leadership that I speak of. And it often starts with what he called a &lsquo;human moment&rsquo;, which are the times when we are paying full attention to the person(s) we are with. Additionally, he suggests that there is zero correlation between intelligence and the awareness of another (compassion). Yet we hire our leaders and managers almost completely based on their level of intelligence and rarely rate them based on their ability to express, show compassion, or hold a group through troubling periods. Why is that? Interesting to me is that he also correlates the rapid growth of information to compassion. And it makes sense! This begins to define a true ecology of thought and being and I feel that this is where we are headed – a collaboration of relationships that connect as we become more present moment to moment in our lives. Now, this is a bit of a paradox because our increased access to information so often pulls us away from being present with another, right? Well, both are happening. Now, I am aware that my writing is moving in a number of directions, but hang in there with me.</p> <p>I am trying to suggest an <strong>ecology of leadership </strong>and the relationships and awareness that make this up. And that the meaning of &lsquo;professionalism&rsquo; is morphing into something completely different. In ecological terms, this means that even the idea of &ldquo;the leader&rdquo; is old, and that we instead need to consider the possibility of what a collective leadership would look like and how this carried into group dynamics can help to generate a deeper form of authenticity within ourselves and our companies.</p> <p>I plan to write about this later on in my blogging. But for now, let us all &ldquo;re&rdquo;consider and discuss what it means to be a &ldquo;professional&rdquo;, and also reconsider what kind of &ldquo;leadership&rdquo; we really need in this new interconnected world of ours.</p>

Learn more about the author, Vic Desotelle.

I have been asked to clarify the difference between ‘debates‘, ‘discussions‘, and ‘dialogues‘ (note wikipedia incorrectly clumps discussion into the same definition as ‘debate’). Below is a first attempt at trying to evolve our understanding of these three primary communication processes. I ask for your feedback, and also for your own insights on this matter.

The intent here is to help organizational change processes be more conscious and more effective by becoming aware that how we communicate with each other strongly effects meeting outcomes, as well as how well thsoe outcomes sustain the desired changes. In short, this is all about how we make conscious decisions that influence positive change.

Our world is in dire need of evolved decision-making techniques that can provide us with a better way for sharing and choosing solutions that are healthier for ourselves and the planet. Effective communication is the glue that allows for real, sustained change to happen. Note that communication colors all levels of organizational development, including its methods of leadership, its ability to learn, team work and collaboration, and the sustainability of innovation itself.

DEBATE = Language is manipulated with the intent to cripple other viewpoints (argumentative). Change is hard to come by with this approach. However, it is useful for keeping an existing systems in place. Energy comes from the lizard mechanisms in the brain, which attempt to protect and defend. The person with the most power over another is seen as the best leader. This process is not good for creating change except at conscious predetermined places in the process where challenge generates a different thought process that can bring clarity and assurance on choices that have been made.

DISCUSSION = Questioning each other comes from a predisposed positioning (having an agenda). Change is possible but usually can not be sustained due to the process being based on a questioning process that makes each feel someone has to win. Others often loose their identity to consensus. It’s based on a sudo-democracy process whereby everyone unconsciously assumes that there is a best answer, thus only one viewpoint is ultimately chosen. Occasionally discussion moves into dialog, but usually it moves into debate.

DIALOG = Collaborative inquiry with an openness to possibilities beyond each others own beliefs and views. Communication about communication happens allowing the creation of a safe environment; a place where the unexpected and insight can happen more freely. Everyone’s viewpoint is allowed whether or not others agree with it. All work to wear the shoes of the one speaking and seek to integrate diversity rather than extract the best answer. It stands for the power of the question is valued more than answers. The challenge for creating change is that too often dialog does not move toward decision-making and action.

TRILOG = Ideally, all three forms of conversation are useful if used in tandem with each other. Dialog is to be used during the early envisioning stages. Discussion during the goals and strategy-making stages, but only at the point when decisions have to be determined. Debate is useful to challenge a new system against an old one. It must be used very consciously however, because otherwise power over can destroy all previous efforts. Dialog should again be used to close a group’s process because it brings us back to our humanity and to what’s most important, which are the relationships. They are as important (or more) than the outcomes generated by the group, for it is what becomes the foundation for sustaining the determined change.

About Room Geometry = One final point to make here is this: Be aware of the geometry of the room in which people gather. If shared views are the choice, be sure to stage the room with multiple small circles in mind. If one person’s opinion is to be impressed upon the group, then line up the chairs in straight lines without breaking up the group. I for one almost always choose to use circular geometries because it seems to appease the need for all to feel like they are participants rather than merely receivers of information. A room’s geometry needs to be considered at all levels of a community’s decision-making hierarchy including company meetings, town hall meetings, city council meetings, board rooms, and living room gatherings.

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To bring in more of a trilog approach (with an emphasis on ‘dialogue), use this collaborative design tool during your next meeting: Create a ‘Learning Exchange Markeplace‘. For more information, contact Vic Desotelle at DiscoveryFuel.com

Learning Exchange Markets uncover hidden innovation which is often at the fringes of an organization. Within a Learning Exchange Market, a shift of emphasis occurs between the participants from debates and discussions to generative dialogue, which must be in place for true forms of sustainable innovation to emerge. During the learning exchange process, multiple conversations – both strategic and envisioning, are allowed to occur at the same time. This approach actually accelerates results toward action-oriented activities while also empowering the individuals who will become responsible for the deliverables. It works miracles for companies working on becoming a learning organization. And your idea can’t get bagged or pushed aside!

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One of the primary tools applied to Learning Exchange Markets is called ‘Open Space’ …..

The ‘Open Space Technology’ Concept

(as described from Co-Intelligence Inst.)

” In my experience open space is based on the belief that we humans are intelligent, creative, adaptive, meaning- and fun-seeking. It sets the context for such creatures to come together knowing they are going to treat each other well. When this happens there is no limit to what can unfold.” Alan Stewart

Open Space Technology was created in the mid-1980s by organizational consultant Harrison Owen when he discovered that people attending his conferences loved the coffee breaks better than the formal presentations and plenary sessions. Combining that insight with his experience of life in an African village, Owen created a totally new form of conferencing.

Open Space conferences have no keynote speakers, no pre-announced schedules of workshops, no panel discussions, no organizational booths. Instead, sitting in a large circle, participants learn in the first hour how they are going to create their own conference. Almost before they realize it, they become each other’s teachers and leaders.

Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion or activity, writes it down on a large sheet of paper in big letters and then stands up and announces it to the group. After selecting one of the many pre-established times and places, they post their proposed workshop on a wall. When everyone who wants to has announced and posted their initial offerings, it is time for what Owen calls “the village marketplace”: Participants mill around the wall, putting together their personal schedules for the remainder of the conference. The first meetings begin immediately.

Open Space is, as Owen likes to say, more highly organized than the best planning committee could possibly manage. It is also chaotic, productive and fun. No one is in control. A whirlwind of activity is guided from within by a handful of simple principles.

[For managers with concerns for loss of control, the principles below will seem ridiculous, and the Open Space approach may drive you crazy - but only for awhile ... Once you see how much work actually gets done, and how happy everyone is while doing this process, you'll never have a (so-called) normal meeting again!]

The ‘Open Space’ Principles:

1. Passion & Responsibility: The most basic principle is that everyone who comes to an Open Space conference must be passionate about the topic and willing to take some responsibility for creating things out of that passion.

2. Whoever comes are the right people.
3. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
4. Whenever it starts is the right time.
5. When it is over it is over.
6. The Law of Two Feet (see below):

“If you find yourself in a situation where you aren’t learning or contributing, go somewhere else” (or move to another level of awareness and participation). This law causes some participants to flit from activity to activity. Owen rejoices in such people, calling them bumblebees because they cross-pollinate all the workshops. He also celebrates participants who use The Law of Two Feet to go off and sit by themselves. He dubs them butterflies, because they create quiet centers of non-action for stillness, beauty, novelty or random conversations to be born.

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Open space conferences can be done in one day or less, but the most powerful go on for two or three days, or longer. Participants gather together briefly in the morning and the evening to share experiences and announce any new workshops they have concocted. The rest of the day is spent in intense conversation. Even meals are come-when-you-can affairs that go on for hours, filled with bustling dialogue. After a few days of this, an intense spirit of community usually develops that is all the more remarkable considering that participants are all doing exactly what they want.

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Open Space conferences are particularly effective when a large, complex operation needs to be thoroughly re-conceptualized and reorganized — when the task is just too big and complicated to be sorted out “from the top.” On the assumption that such a system contains within it the seeds of everything that needs to happen with it, Open Space provides it with an opportunity to self-organize into its new configuration. For this to work, however, the system’s leaders must let go of control so that true self-organization can take place.

Open Space Technology is also a delightful, useful tool for any group of people who are really interested in exploring something that they all care deeply about, and is one of the simplest, most brilliant combinations of order and chaos that I have yet found. It has been applied in thousands of meetings around the world with between five and one thousand participants. It can be effectively used by virtually anybody. Owen has provided excellent instructions in his books, below.

• Resources: H. H. Owen and Co., Open Space Institute, The Co-Intelligence Institute

• Books: Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, Expanding Our Now: The Story of Open Space Technology, Harrison Owen, The Millennium Organization

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HOW TO CREATE A LEARNING EXCHANGE MARKETPLACE

(by Discovery Fuel)

Download Discovery Fuel’s Design Packet For Creating Your Own Learning Exchange Marketplace

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Learning Exchange – SCHEDULE

(3 1/2 hour evening sample)

6:15 Check Bulletin Board for Announcements
6:30 Mission Statement
6:40 Brief Introductions
6:50 How It Works
7:00 The Exchange Market
7:30 1st Period Sessions
8:00 2nd Period Sessions
8:30 Share Learning
9:00 End

Learning Exchange – PROCESS

1. Write Down Session Proposals

2. Questions are as Appropriate as Answers

3. Verbally Announce Your Session
4. Post Session on Schedule Wall

5. Combine Proposals, Negotiate Times

6. Period A Sessions Begin, Take Notes

7. Integrate Notes into One Report

8. Period B Sessions Begin, Keep a Log

9. Integrate Notes into One Report

10. Note Sessions A and B may be Merged

11. Group Reporting of Sessions Begins

12. Bulletin Board To Post Ideas, Notices

13. Info Exchange meetings are bi-weekly.

14. Results Incorporated at Bi-weekly Strategy Meetings and Continued at Next Info Exchange Meeting

Learning Exchange – PRINCIPLES
· Whoever comes is right. Whatever happens … happens.

· Leave personal status outside. Bring ideas and knowledge inside.

· Be passionate about the topics. Take responsibility for creating things out of that passion.

· Law of Two Feet: If you aren’t learning or contributing, increase participation, or move to another session.

· Stay focused on topic

· One person talking at a time

· Shift ‘Yeah-But’ responses to ‘YES-AND’

· Listen with empathy, suspend judgment

· Encourage & build on the wild ideas of others.

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Download Discovery Fuel’s Design Packet (pdf file) for creating a Learning Exchange Marketplace. For more information contact us for a chat.

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The future of HUMAN sustainability is directly linked to the models that we have created to manage our social systems. And our inability to connect with exponential growth concepts is about to take the whole thing down in flames.

I highly encourage you to watch Chris Martenson’s ‘Crash Course‘, which covers a slightly different set of 3E’s: economy, energy, and environment. Chris builds a clear and concise description of money and its relationship to the decline of the world’s economies, based on our lack of understanding of how ‘exponential’ growth works. He also ties failing money systems to the earth’s limited resources and energy production. And he talks about how the Federal Reserve’s ‘right’ to freely make money keeps our poorly designed financial system going – until now.

I ask you: How do we best bring this knowledge to our communities so that we can redesign the system before the inevidable collapse? Learn for yourself by watching and learning at the link below. Thank you Chris for a well done program. See http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

Vic Desotelle of Discovery Fuel

I want you to take your business hat off for a minute to read what’s below. I am about to enter the twilight zone and attempt to bring in what some may consider ridiculous or impossible. For me, what I am about to say touches on the profound, and believe it is a critical subject for our times. READY ?!

The Web has reached a level of maturity where it can be viewed as an extension to our interconnected conscious selves. With the Planet now growing its own neural network (i.e. a global brain) ‘Learning’ takes on a new integral role as meta-teacher/student. This perspective brings a new dimension to our idea of ‘global awareness’ and stretches the meaningfulness of ‘Gaia’.

Yes, we have reached a place in our own evolution where ‘Technology’ can be viewed as an extension of our Selves, making each of our inter-connections and collaborations truly ‘Sacred’. Now, together in this Union of humanity, we can reach for a more whole ((w)holy) realization of what ‘gGod’ is. It is truly an expression of Spirit manifesting Itself into Matter; and into what matters.

For practical info on how the web is creating practical forms of collaboration and creativity among us humanoids, go to this page, check out this D.F. community search, and watch these insightful videos on how we are growing a global brain.

Regenerative Commerce is a system based on a broader understanding of what it means to develop technology and business. DiscoveryFuel.com proposes that, using these principles, a region’s economic system can revitalize itself and perform beyond today’s assumptions and expectations. The following represent shifts in awareness of the models we use to create and innovate within enterprise. Note that a ’shift’ means we are including new information that expands existing models and does not mean that we are replacing them.

A Shift …

1:  A Shift From Single -> To Triple Bottom Line Management

Developing Evolved Organizing STRUCTURES

2:  A Shift From Building Mechanistic Systems -> To Growing Living Wholes

Advancing Technological PATTERNS

3:  A Shift From Linear Sequencing -> To Nonlinear Cyclic Closed Loops

An Integration of Value-Web PROCESSES

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DiscoveryFuel.com’s long term objective is to create a global network of innovation learning centers. Each interdependent center will incubate innovative technologies and companies that can work for a our emerging globally conscious community.

The concept, known as ‘Regenerative Commerce‘, will act as an integrating framework for incorporating principles of sustainable innovation for the realization of business products and services that work for a post-industrial society.

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RELATED CONCEPTS

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1- Sustainable Design Techniques
Closed Loop Systems * 7e’s of Strategic Innovation * 7 Elements of New Enterprise * Sustainable Innovation Defined

2- Development Principles for Metabolic Growth
Biomimicry * Ecological Systems * Knowledge Capacity * The Natural Step * Permaculture * BauBiologie

3- Knowledge Distribution Methodologies
Triple Bottom LIne Matrix * EcoManagement * Innovation Mapping

4- Regional Design & Dialogue Frameworks
Tri-Cellular Communities Model * Conversation Word Map * World Dialogue Experiment on Change & Myth

5- Sustainable Enterprise
Ethics & Ethics to Innovation * Values Considerations * Innovation vs Invention * Technology Council * Sustainable Business Planning Guide

6- Networked Communications Modeling
Concentrix Management For Group Design * Collaborative Learning Exchange Markets * Community Domains For Culturally Creative Design

Creating Sustainable Society Based on Conscious Design

In the near future, the PRINCIPLE-PRACTICE-POLICY model ( 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5) will be integrated into the Regenerative Commerce (RegenCom) concept.

Here, the policy body acts as a ‘governor’ that monitors the effectiveness of pre-determined guiding principles via the principle body, and provides feedback to the overall system so that adjustments can be made as the chosenb principles play out in a practical way within the practicing body.

What is missing in today’s model for community design and development, based on this 3P’s model?

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What are you’re thoughts? Blog me below, or contact me directly at RegenCom@DiscoveryFuel.com, or join me and others in collaboratively designing and applying this concept by going to the Regenerative Commerce collaboration wiki (This is a new effort and I need and want your help!).

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I find that this subject is one of the more revealing issues of our time. A place that requires us to reshape our understanding and meaning of ‘environment’. Read this great article on the link between our human psyche and the Earth.

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The terms in which ecopsychology pursues this admittedly ambitious goal are steeped in the field’s countercultural beginnings. Ecopsychology emerged in the early 1960s, just as the modern environmental movement was gathering strength, when a group of Boston-area graduate students gathered to discuss what they saw as the isolation and malaise infecting modern life. It had another brief period of efflorescence, particularly on the West Coast and among practitioners of alternative therapies, in the early ’90s, when Theodore Roszak, a professor of history (he coined the word “counterculture”) published a manifesto, “The Voice of the Earth,” in which he criticized modern psychology for neglecting the primal bond between man and nature. “Mainstream Western psychology has limited the definition of mental health to the interpersonal context of an urban-industrial society,” he later wrote. “All that lies beyond the citified psyche has seemed of no human relevance — or perhaps too frightening to think about.” Ecopsychology’s eclectic following, which includes therapists, researchers, ecologists and activists, still reflects these earlier foundations. So does its rhetoric. Practitioners are as apt, if not more apt, to cite Native American folk tales as they are empirical data to make their points.

Yet even as it remains committed to its origins, ecopsychology has begun in recent years to enter mainstream academic circles. more …

I love it when somebody is able to synthesize the incoming data into a meaningful message. Watch this video and understand how the world economy works … I mean is ‘not’ working. Sustainability should go to another level of understanding for you after you watch this 4 minute clip.

I’ll say it again:

The future of innovation and technology has already been figured out by nature one million years ago.

Watch this TED video …

Is it possible for us to manifest a better world? One filled with more peace, well being, and harmony? Yes, I believe we can. We just have to remind each other – often.

Watch this amazing video below.

The Empathic Civilisation, by Jeremy Rifkin

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g[/youtube]

Our wellness influences what we create as human beings and how it either supports or depletes the world’s complex ecology of life – a planetary well being, so to speak.

Our individuality is made up of a physical body, mind(fulness) and thoughts, emotions and attitude, and spiritual connection with something greater than us. The interactions between sustainability, leadership, collaboration, and innovation (my favorite subjects) start inside ourselves. That is, how we treat the inward effects the outward. Each then, are tightly connected to other bodies, thoughts, emotions, and spirits that make up a collective of creativity, and the outcomes of our innovation and creativity start with you and me feeling whole as individuals. Keeping our bodies attuned within a now toxic environment becomes very important. To be global change agents, we must recognize that all four areas of inner being affect the same four aspects of an outer being that is realized within our communities and the earth as a whole. This is why some people call the earth ‘Gaia’, because it better represents our planet as a living being made up of an intertwined ecology of living things. This way of thinking is in fact at the source of all human development within the context of understanding a deep ecology. Let us come to recognize that giving credence to our individual wellness directly influences the next generation of innovation, and will be the result of a more conscious, collaborative, global design process.

That said, the outline below suggest some ways to use supplements to keep our bodies well. Everything below comes from a body-wellness perspective and is based on three key points …

1-Clean the colon (the ‘inner’ toxic environment)

Plain and simple: 90% of all human disease starts in the colon, so a clean colon is will prevent most of the stuff that’s killing or making us sick.

2-Alkalize the body (an acid world is an angry world)

pH balance is the best indicator of human health. Our body organs regenerate and rejuvenate when alkaline and get sick when acid. For example, cancer can not live in an alkaline body but thrives in an acid one. Also, a balanced set of healthy bacteria help to keep bad micro-organisms from passing further into your body, including one that seems to be prevalent in today’s highly food processed world known as candida.

2-Assimilation of nutrients (know how to take in the good while shielding ourselves from the bad)

I have found that, just because you take supplements does not mean that your body is taking in the ingredients. The body’s ability to break down and utilize supplements is as important as the supplement ingredients themselves. Laboratory-made ingredients usually are far less capable of assimilating properly than supplements made from natural sources because their molecular structure is often too large to pass through cell membranes and often do not have the carriers that help with the exchange processes in the body. So be sure that you consider this as part of your supplements selection process.

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My solution:

This is not, by any means, a perfect solution – there isn’t one. I’m posting this because I want to share what I know through my own studies, hoping that it will encourage more of you change agents to build your own wellness solution.

1-Alkalize the Body

(a) Alkalize the body with pH drops

Drink lots of water throughout the day with drops in it. Try Cell Power pH drops and/or try Phion pH drops.

(b) Drink raw lemon juice

Lemon juice with touch of B grade syrup as lemons are a great alkalizer to the body and makes my stomach feel good. It cuts my apetite so its easier to eat way less food during day, which is very important. This program is called the Master Cleanse which uses just lemon juice. I’ve gone 10 days with just this and no other food – It was great, but takes will power I don’t have right now.

2-Cleanse the Digestive System

Clean out the colon and keep it that way. I like using Dr. Schultz 5 or 30 day bowel detox system, or something similar. Listen to his lectures on how he describes the interaction between a healthy colon and overall wellness – his approach is wise and sound.

3-Add Highly Assimilable Nutrients

(a) Nutraceutical
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Vitamins do not get into the body due to size of dissolved particles, and our diets (even if healthy) no longer have the nutrients they once did due to destroyed soils. New vitamin products are called ‘Nutricuticals’ help get those needed extras, especially ingredients that get lost during food processing, such as aminos, enzymes, healthy bacteria. These are the two I use: IntegraMax and sometimes Eniva Vibe. Try both and see which one works for you.

(b) Superfoods with Juicing

Make lots of juices with live fresh vegies and fruits and add super foods. Top superfoods are seaweed, raw honey, wheatgrass juice, and whole crushed flax seed. Add Dr. Shultz superfood to your juice. Also, go get 2 to 4 ounces of wheat grass juice from a local juice bar a couple times a week. It is one of the highest forms of nature-made nutrition on the planet. Also add seaweed to your diet as it contains the macro and micro minerals that our diet does not provide anymore. And when you can, use raw honey in green tea and or just by the spoonful. The tea is high in antioxidants and the honey is high in enzymes, which are normally heated out of most all of our foods but essential for nutrient breakdown and assimilation. I often add all or any of these into my juice concoction, plus dark greens, carrots, raspberries and blueberries. All are extra high antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Mix up a juice to satisfy your taste buds, but just get it into your body.

(c) Probiotics and Fish Oil

An unbalanced flora allows the bad bacteria to populate and they generate major acid. Plus omegas help to reestablish cell membranes thereby reducing irriation. Take Jaro probiotics or Blue Rock probiotics (mix of 4 to 7 billion healthy bacteria types), along with a balance of omegas that come from clean fish oil pills that have total of 1000mgs of dnl and hcl (see backs of bottles).

4-Exercise to burn off stress

My stress level has been chronically off the charts for too long and is main reason for my acid reflux and stomach problems. Exercise helps but I still don’t do this one enough, but am walking now very often. It helps a lot. Looking forward to things has also has helped to calm down my anxiety. (Special note: I have also recognized that taking too many supplements causes stomach problems – more is not better. Monitor the quantities that work for your body.)

5-The ‘Magic Nine’ Foods For Wellnes

I have added eight foods into my diet that combine high levels of the magic that the body needs to run well. Note these foods are either ‘raw’ or properly ‘processed’ to retain their magic. They are: Fish Oil (omegas) Seaweed (minerals), Raw Honey (enzymes), Wheatgrass Juice (vitamins/minerals), Whole Flax Seed (omegas/fiber) [ground at time of intake], Blueberries (vitamins/antioxidants), Green Tea (metabolism/antioxidants), Cayenne Pepper [metabolism and circulation], and a Superfood Blend (vitamins/minerals) [best ‘processed’ combo I’ve found is from Dr. Schultz.

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Note: I’m a believer in the products I’ve listed here through my own research and experimenting. I suggest you try them, but by all means, find the ones that work for you! In principle, emphasize prevention or cure solutions, and the use of earth-grown substances instead of lab-based pharmaceuticals. And recognize that BOTH supplements and pharmaceuticals have their place in wellness and well being.

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If you have any suggestions regarding this list, please email me and let me know.

Vic Desotelle

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I often like to dabble in the abstract. There, I am taken to transitory state that help me feel closer to the Creative Source. For example: below consists of two intertwined trinity models, of which I like to play with when considering the architecture of ‘whole systems‘. These models help us to both ‘look at’ and ‘participate in’ (w)holistically oriented organizations and communities: “structure-pattern-process” and “principle-practice-policy“. Note the principle of ‘three’ shows up in my work a lot, because I believe it helps us to expand our consciousness, while at the same time providing a simple framework to contain the complex nature of creativity and innovation. You will see more discussions relating to these concepts from me over time. Let me know what comes up for you when you read through it. For now, soak your mind on this draft concept and see what comes up for you …

Transformation (deep innovation) occurs through a three phase evolution:

I’ve been thinking about the potential for progressing toward a global mind: My experiences with group emergence have noted that a majority of efforts collapse before the desire is sustained and self-propelled; a progression toward the vision that initiated the group in the first place. I propose the reason for this is that there is only a one or two level strategic plan in place made up of immediate context without the anticipation of collective content; a synthesis from which the incredible happens.

What if we instead provide a guiding framework that allows group migration into deeper forms of connection with each other? Eventually this connection moves into behavioral forms of change and action. I believe this can be done using a 3-phase framework for processing together; thereby allowing a group to consciously see itself go through deep transformation. This would mean for each phase of processing together, there is a SYNTHESIS of its content – a summarizing of what has been done. This would occur as a part of all three phases; thereby generating a thread of synthesis that allows integration.

These three phases are as follows, which can be noted in the 8-gate group alignment map diagram:

1- Establishing Group Intention:
This phase’s nature is chaotic. It is expressed by conversations of desire and passion which drive an unfolding *PROCESS*. A focus on creating +PRINCIPLES+ based on diverse values, which opens of new level of awareness; thereby setting the stage for a loosening of existing physical *structure* and allowing change to occur. Vibrational activity is dissonant (unconscious) and non-geometric.

2- Building a Value Network:
This phase’s nature moves from chaotic to chaordic. It is expressed by individuals linking and clustering around collective ideas – a virtual *STRUCTURE* emerges. A focus on creating +PRACTICES+ sets the stage for individual changes in behavior and an early forming of group identity to occur. Vibrational activity is recognizable (awakening consciousness) but not stable.

3- Experiencing a Community of Practice:
This phase’s nature moves from chaordic into order. It is expressed by the emergence of community (collective) identity PATTERNS to be realized and an acceptance of participatory-oriented activities are in place. A focus on creating +POLICY+ is empasized; thereby a change of governance occurs.

More on this concept later …

Vic Desotelle

Ethics? Values? Who cares!? “YOU” better care. Did you know that each person’s underlying values and beliefs systems are what drives their actions? Those actions are how things get done by your team members. By linking individual values with your company’s principles, practices, and policies, your world becomes a happier place, with more sustained commitments from staff to get the work done. So, take a journey with us from personal meaning, to group awareness, and into enterprise value creation.

Call us about Discovery Fuel’s ETHICS WORKSHOPS to see if they are right for organization.

How to Create a ‘Sustainable’ Business Plan

AN ONLINE WORKSHOP

.Join Vic Desotelle from DiscoveryFuel.com for an ONLINE collaborative sustainable business planning workshop series.

This session will allow you to preview and inquire about the series, which is for small business social entrepreneurs who have dreamed of owning a sustainable business. Learn how to make a viable business plan that moves your green idea from conception to successful execution. Create a sustainable future for yourself, customers, and community through this sustainable innovation learning series. Click here for more details

CLICK TO SHARE THIS PAGE WITH FRIENDS ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SITES
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I have been asked to clarify the difference between ‘debates‘, ‘discussions‘, and ‘dialogues‘ (note wikipedia incorrectly clumps discussion into the same definition as ‘debate’). Below is a first attempt at trying to evolve our understanding of these three primary communication processes. I ask for your feedback, and also for your own insights on this matter.

The intent here is to help organizational change processes be more conscious and more effective by becoming aware that how we communicate with each other strongly effects meeting outcomes, as well as how well thsoe outcomes sustain the desired changes. In short, this is all about how we make conscious decisions that influence positive change.

Our world is in dire need of evolved decision-making techniques that can provide us with a better way for sharing and choosing solutions that are healthier for ourselves and the planet. Effective communication is the glue that allows for real, sustained change to happen. Note that communication colors all levels of organizational development, including its methods of leadership, its ability to learn, team work and collaboration, and the sustainability of innovation itself.

DEBATE = Language is manipulated with the intent to cripple other viewpoints (argumentative). Change is hard to come by with this approach. However, it is useful for keeping an existing systems in place. Energy comes from the lizard mechanisms in the brain, which attempt to protect and defend. The person with the most power over another is seen as the best leader. This process is not good for creating change except at conscious predetermined places in the process where challenge generates a different thought process that can bring clarity and assurance on choices that have been made.

DISCUSSION = Questioning each other comes from a predisposed positioning (having an agenda). Change is possible but usually can not be sustained due to the process being based on a questioning process that makes each feel someone has to win. Others often loose their identity to consensus. It’s based on a sudo-democracy process whereby everyone unconsciously assumes that there is a best answer, thus only one viewpoint is ultimately chosen. Occasionally discussion moves into dialog, but usually it moves into debate.

DIALOG = Collaborative inquiry with an openness to possibilities beyond each others own beliefs and views. Communication about communication happens allowing the creation of a safe environment; a place where the unexpected and insight can happen more freely. Everyone’s viewpoint is allowed whether or not others agree with it. All work to wear the shoes of the one speaking and seek to integrate diversity rather than extract the best answer. It stands for the power of the question is valued more than answers. The challenge for creating change is that too often dialog does not move toward decision-making and action.

TRILOG = Ideally, all three forms of conversation are useful if used in tandem with each other. Dialog is to be used during the early envisioning stages. Discussion during the goals and strategy-making stages, but only at the point when decisions have to be determined. Debate is useful to challenge a new system against an old one. It must be used very consciously however, because otherwise power over can destroy all previous efforts. Dialog should again be used to close a group’s process because it brings us back to our humanity and to what’s most important, which are the relationships. They are as important (or more) than the outcomes generated by the group, for it is what becomes the foundation for sustaining the determined change.

About Room Geometry = One final point to make here is this: Be aware of the geometry of the room in which people gather. If shared views are the choice, be sure to stage the room with multiple small circles in mind. If one person’s opinion is to be impressed upon the group, then line up the chairs in straight lines without breaking up the group. I for one almost always choose to use circular geometries because it seems to appease the need for all to feel like they are participants rather than merely receivers of information. A room’s geometry needs to be considered at all levels of a community’s decision-making hierarchy including company meetings, town hall meetings, city council meetings, board rooms, and living room gatherings.

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To bring in more of a trilog approach (with an emphasis on ‘dialogue), use this collaborative design tool during your next meeting: Create a ‘Learning Exchange Markeplace‘. For more information, contact Vic Desotelle at DiscoveryFuel.com

Learning Exchange Markets uncover hidden innovation which is often at the fringes of an organization. Within a Learning Exchange Market, a shift of emphasis occurs between the participants from debates and discussions to generative dialogue, which must be in place for true forms of sustainable innovation to emerge. During the learning exchange process, multiple conversations – both strategic and envisioning, are allowed to occur at the same time. This approach actually accelerates results toward action-oriented activities while also empowering the individuals who will become responsible for the deliverables. It works miracles for companies working on becoming a learning organization. And your idea can’t get bagged or pushed aside!

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One of the primary tools applied to Learning Exchange Markets is called ‘Open Space’ …..

The ‘Open Space Technology’ Concept

(as described from Co-Intelligence Inst.)

” In my experience open space is based on the belief that we humans are intelligent, creative, adaptive, meaning- and fun-seeking. It sets the context for such creatures to come together knowing they are going to treat each other well. When this happens there is no limit to what can unfold.” Alan Stewart

Open Space Technology was created in the mid-1980s by organizational consultant Harrison Owen when he discovered that people attending his conferences loved the coffee breaks better than the formal presentations and plenary sessions. Combining that insight with his experience of life in an African village, Owen created a totally new form of conferencing.

Open Space conferences have no keynote speakers, no pre-announced schedules of workshops, no panel discussions, no organizational booths. Instead, sitting in a large circle, participants learn in the first hour how they are going to create their own conference. Almost before they realize it, they become each other’s teachers and leaders.

Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion or activity, writes it down on a large sheet of paper in big letters and then stands up and announces it to the group. After selecting one of the many pre-established times and places, they post their proposed workshop on a wall. When everyone who wants to has announced and posted their initial offerings, it is time for what Owen calls “the village marketplace”: Participants mill around the wall, putting together their personal schedules for the remainder of the conference. The first meetings begin immediately.

Open Space is, as Owen likes to say, more highly organized than the best planning committee could possibly manage. It is also chaotic, productive and fun. No one is in control. A whirlwind of activity is guided from within by a handful of simple principles.

[For managers with concerns for loss of control, the principles below will seem ridiculous, and the Open Space approach may drive you crazy - but only for awhile ... Once you see how much work actually gets done, and how happy everyone is while doing this process, you'll never have a (so-called) normal meeting again!]

The ‘Open Space’ Principles:

1. Passion & Responsibility: The most basic principle is that everyone who comes to an Open Space conference must be passionate about the topic and willing to take some responsibility for creating things out of that passion.

2. Whoever comes are the right people.
3. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
4. Whenever it starts is the right time.
5. When it is over it is over.
6. The Law of Two Feet (see below):

“If you find yourself in a situation where you aren’t learning or contributing, go somewhere else” (or move to another level of awareness and participation). This law causes some participants to flit from activity to activity. Owen rejoices in such people, calling them bumblebees because they cross-pollinate all the workshops. He also celebrates participants who use The Law of Two Feet to go off and sit by themselves. He dubs them butterflies, because they create quiet centers of non-action for stillness, beauty, novelty or random conversations to be born.

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Open space conferences can be done in one day or less, but the most powerful go on for two or three days, or longer. Participants gather together briefly in the morning and the evening to share experiences and announce any new workshops they have concocted. The rest of the day is spent in intense conversation. Even meals are come-when-you-can affairs that go on for hours, filled with bustling dialogue. After a few days of this, an intense spirit of community usually develops that is all the more remarkable considering that participants are all doing exactly what they want.

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Open Space conferences are particularly effective when a large, complex operation needs to be thoroughly re-conceptualized and reorganized — when the task is just too big and complicated to be sorted out “from the top.” On the assumption that such a system contains within it the seeds of everything that needs to happen with it, Open Space provides it with an opportunity to self-organize into its new configuration. For this to work, however, the system’s leaders must let go of control so that true self-organization can take place.

Open Space Technology is also a delightful, useful tool for any group of people who are really interested in exploring something that they all care deeply about, and is one of the simplest, most brilliant combinations of order and chaos that I have yet found. It has been applied in thousands of meetings around the world with between five and one thousand participants. It can be effectively used by virtually anybody. Owen has provided excellent instructions in his books, below.

• Resources: H. H. Owen and Co., Open Space Institute, The Co-Intelligence Institute

• Books: Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, Expanding Our Now: The Story of Open Space Technology, Harrison Owen, The Millennium Organization

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HOW TO CREATE A LEARNING EXCHANGE MARKETPLACE

(by Discovery Fuel)

Download Discovery Fuel’s Design Packet For Creating Your Own Learning Exchange Marketplace

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Learning Exchange – SCHEDULE

(3 1/2 hour evening sample)

6:15 Check Bulletin Board for Announcements
6:30 Mission Statement
6:40 Brief Introductions
6:50 How It Works
7:00 The Exchange Market
7:30 1st Period Sessions
8:00 2nd Period Sessions
8:30 Share Learning
9:00 End

Learning Exchange – PROCESS

1. Write Down Session Proposals

2. Questions are as Appropriate as Answers

3. Verbally Announce Your Session
4. Post Session on Schedule Wall

5. Combine Proposals, Negotiate Times

6. Period A Sessions Begin, Take Notes

7. Integrate Notes into One Report

8. Period B Sessions Begin, Keep a Log

9. Integrate Notes into One Report

10. Note Sessions A and B may be Merged

11. Group Reporting of Sessions Begins

12. Bulletin Board To Post Ideas, Notices

13. Info Exchange meetings are bi-weekly.

14. Results Incorporated at Bi-weekly Strategy Meetings and Continued at Next Info Exchange Meeting

Learning Exchange – PRINCIPLES
· Whoever comes is right. Whatever happens … happens.

· Leave personal status outside. Bring ideas and knowledge inside.

· Be passionate about the topics. Take responsibility for creating things out of that passion.

· Law of Two Feet: If you aren’t learning or contributing, increase participation, or move to another session.

· Stay focused on topic

· One person talking at a time

· Shift ‘Yeah-But’ responses to ‘YES-AND’

· Listen with empathy, suspend judgment

· Encourage & build on the wild ideas of others.

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Download Discovery Fuel’s Design Packet (pdf file) for creating a Learning Exchange Marketplace. For more information contact us for a chat.

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Sustainability as Whole-System Catalyst to New Forms of Innovation

Since the concept of ’sustainability’ is feathered into most future forms of innovation, I’d like to suggest a few pages below that list concepts of “Sustainable Innovation”.

What is Sustainable Innovation
http://discoveryfuel.com/what-is-sustainable-innovation/
Deep Innovation for our future goes beyond ‘technologies’ as mere device structures, but also design integration processes and pattern recognition too.

A List of Sustainability Principles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sustainability_principles
Important to the future are the principles that guide its design.

Concepts of Sustainable Design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_design
Considerations for designing physical objects, the built environment, and services that comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability; otherwise known as the ‘triple bottom line’.

Sustainability System Categories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sustainability
A limited but growing list of categories that link sustainability into an interconnected world community design system.

Appropriate Technologies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology
Usually used to describe simple technologies suitable for use in developing nations or less developed rural areas of industrialized nations. This form of appropriate technology usually prefers labor-intensive solutions over capital-intensive ones, although labor-saving devices are also used where this does not mean high capital or maintenance cost. In practice, appropriate technology is often something described as using the simplest level of technology that can effectively achieve the intended purpose in a particular location.

The future of HUMAN sustainability is directly linked to the models that we have created to manage our social systems. And our inability to connect with exponential growth concepts is about to take the whole thing down in flames.

I highly encourage you to watch Chris Martenson’s ‘Crash Course‘, which covers a slightly different set of 3E’s: economy, energy, and environment. Chris builds a clear and concise description of money and its relationship to the decline of the world’s economies, based on our lack of understanding of how ‘exponential’ growth works. He also ties failing money systems to the earth’s limited resources and energy production. And he talks about how the Federal Reserve’s ‘right’ to freely make money keeps our poorly designed financial system going – until now.

I ask you: How do we best bring this knowledge to our communities so that we can redesign the system before the inevidable collapse? Learn for yourself by watching and learning at the link below. Thank you Chris for a well done program. See http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

Vic Desotelle of Discovery Fuel

I want you to take your business hat off for a minute to read what’s below. I am about to enter the twilight zone and attempt to bring in what some may consider ridiculous or impossible. For me, what I am about to say touches on the profound, and believe it is a critical subject for our times. READY ?!

The Web has reached a level of maturity where it can be viewed as an extension to our interconnected conscious selves. With the Planet now growing its own neural network (i.e. a global brain) ‘Learning’ takes on a new integral role as meta-teacher/student. This perspective brings a new dimension to our idea of ‘global awareness’ and stretches the meaningfulness of ‘Gaia’.

Yes, we have reached a place in our own evolution where ‘Technology’ can be viewed as an extension of our Selves, making each of our inter-connections and collaborations truly ‘Sacred’. Now, together in this Union of humanity, we can reach for a more whole ((w)holy) realization of what ‘gGod’ is. It is truly an expression of Spirit manifesting Itself into Matter; and into what matters.

For practical info on how the web is creating practical forms of collaboration and creativity among us humanoids, go to this page, check out this D.F. community search, and watch these insightful videos on how we are growing a global brain.

Regenerative Commerce is a system based on a broader understanding of what it means to develop technology and business. DiscoveryFuel.com proposes that, using these principles, a region’s economic system can revitalize itself and perform beyond today’s assumptions and expectations. The following represent shifts in awareness of the models we use to create and innovate within enterprise. Note that a ’shift’ means we are including new information that expands existing models and does not mean that we are replacing them.

A Shift …

1:  A Shift From Single -> To Triple Bottom Line Management

Developing Evolved Organizing STRUCTURES

2:  A Shift From Building Mechanistic Systems -> To Growing Living Wholes

Advancing Technological PATTERNS

3:  A Shift From Linear Sequencing -> To Nonlinear Cyclic Closed Loops

An Integration of Value-Web PROCESSES

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DiscoveryFuel.com’s long term objective is to create a global network of innovation learning centers. Each interdependent center will incubate innovative technologies and companies that can work for a our emerging globally conscious community.

The concept, known as ‘Regenerative Commerce‘, will act as an integrating framework for incorporating principles of sustainable innovation for the realization of business products and services that work for a post-industrial society.

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RELATED CONCEPTS

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1- Sustainable Design Techniques
Closed Loop Systems * 7e’s of Strategic Innovation * 7 Elements of New Enterprise * Sustainable Innovation Defined

2- Development Principles for Metabolic Growth
Biomimicry * Ecological Systems * Knowledge Capacity * The Natural Step * Permaculture * BauBiologie

3- Knowledge Distribution Methodologies
Triple Bottom LIne Matrix * EcoManagement * Innovation Mapping

4- Regional Design & Dialogue Frameworks
Tri-Cellular Communities Model * Conversation Word Map * World Dialogue Experiment on Change & Myth

5- Sustainable Enterprise
Ethics & Ethics to Innovation * Values Considerations * Innovation vs Invention * Technology Council * Sustainable Business Planning Guide

6- Networked Communications Modeling
Concentrix Management For Group Design * Collaborative Learning Exchange Markets * Community Domains For Culturally Creative Design

Creating Sustainable Society Based on Conscious Design

In the near future, the PRINCIPLE-PRACTICE-POLICY model ( 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5) will be integrated into the Regenerative Commerce (RegenCom) concept.

Here, the policy body acts as a ‘governor’ that monitors the effectiveness of pre-determined guiding principles via the principle body, and provides feedback to the overall system so that adjustments can be made as the chosenb principles play out in a practical way within the practicing body.

What is missing in today’s model for community design and development, based on this 3P’s model?

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What are you’re thoughts? Blog me below, or contact me directly at RegenCom@DiscoveryFuel.com, or join me and others in collaboratively designing and applying this concept by going to the Regenerative Commerce collaboration wiki (This is a new effort and I need and want your help!).

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Ethics to Innovation Article (Download a more readable PDF file)

By Vic Desotelle and Michael Kaufman

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Ethics/Innovation Relationship
What are Ethics?
Forces Creating Managerial Dilemmas (Principle Forces Creating Practical Dilemmas)
What is Innovation?
Innovative Wholes and Inventive Systems (Fractal Wholes vs Fractured Parts)
The Emerging Global Ethic
Innovation through Ethical Tension
Sustainability: Bridge from Ethics to Innovation
The New Innovation Strategy
Architecting a Regenerative Commerce
Conclusion

Ethics to Innovation

ARTICLE * CONVERSATION WORD MAP

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Introduction
In today’s business climate there are several forces intersecting in such a way as to create a tension that puts business executives, managers and employees into situations where they face an ethical dilemma. This dilemma could be summarized by the following question:

How do we do the right thing while at the same time balance the needs of all our stakeholders (investors, employees, customers and suppliers)? What is the right thing to do?

The recent events involving Enron, MCI/Worldcom, Global Crossing, Quest, Arther Andersen, and Tyco, (to name just a few) are examples of the negative consequences of actions taken by executives that face this dilemma.

These actions and the resulting surge of policies and public outcry to rebuild the faith in business and business people have created the conditions for what we call an emerging global ethic. This white paper explores the concept of this emerging global business ethic and the link between this ethic and innovation.

Forces Creating the Dilemma
The forces at work to create this dilemma are:

• an increasing quality of life,
• the transformation of organizational cultures,
• the limits of a hierarchic model
• increasing external competitive forces, and
• the short-term demands of Wall Street

Over the past 20 years, a large strata of western society has experienced an increase in personal wealth and an improvement in the quality of life (even though average incomes have remained basically constant during that period). Abraham Maslow pointed out in his hierarchy of needs (in the 1960’s), as people have their basic needs for food, shelter and clothing met they will tend to move up this hierarchy people feel safe, the quality of life improves and people have a tendency to feel the need for belonging and mastery of a task and ultimately the desire to be ‘all they can possibly be’
(self-actualization).

During this same period of time, businesses have been under-going a slow transformation that reflects this rise up the hierarchy of needs by executives and management. Simply put, for many businesses this transformation translates into a desire to bring the corporate mission in-line with the personal needs and values of the practitioners of the business.

This transformation, while desire-able and necessary for the enterprise to support the individual in achieving self-actualization, has a tendency to bump into the operating model of the organization. Most businesses (most organizations) in the west have been structured using a hierarchic organizational model, which, at its essence, uses the underlying operating principles of command and control to influence behavior. The command and control model of organizing conflicts with the rise up the hierarchy of needs and creates an internal organizational pressure that needs to be resolved in some way.

At the same time companies are experiencing tremendous pressures from the marketplace. Competition is increasing constantly and the pressure from Wall Street on public companies for short-term results to produce quarterly numbers (a short-term focus) is immense. Combine this internal organizational pressure with these external pressures and we find ourselves in a business environment where ethical dilemmas are plentiful.

What is Ethics?
Ethics and their underlying values are core beliefs which develop a person’s character and shape their actions. Most often these underlying beliefs are unconscious, unseen and unknown by the individual but make themselves known through their actions. An individual’s ethics and underlying beliefs come from their upbringing and are influenced significantly by their socialization (school, work, church, community, nation, etc.).

Individuals have ethics. Organizations have cultures. When young people come together in groups to accomplish something we call them gangs. When adults come together into a group to accomplish something we call it an organization. In either case, groups themselves don’t actually have ethics or values – they have a culture. This culture is created by a combination of the environment the organization is in, the structure of the organization, what the organization is attempting to accomplish, and the underlying beliefs of its members. Organizational culture can influence individual behavior in significant ways – in either a positive sense or a negative sense. The organizations cultural influence can be reinforcing (uplifting) or destructive and often both ways simultaneously.

The need to examine ethics in organizations has arisen from the complexity of business activities. The golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, could be one way to articulate what has been the unspoken guiding value/ethic for western business. However, the nature of business in the 21st century is complex, global, professionally demanding and constantly changing. Therefore the demands on individuals and groups of individuals (teams, departments, organizations) are much higher and more complex. These demands require individuals and organizations to make a conscious effort to articulate a clear set of ethics/values to guide behavior for success in this kind of climate.

An Emerging Corporate Ethic
Since the advent of the ‘global marketplace’ there is a greater need for developing standards for global commerce. Since ethics are core beliefs, and influence behavior as well as communication, it is becoming increasingly necessary to develop a global standard, a global ethic, that facilitates commerce across many levels – transactions, collaboration, strategic partnering – and provides high quality goods and services for consumers.

In addition to the forces mentioned earlier there are several trends in the business environment converging to create what we call ‘an emerging global ethic’.

• The trend towards product quality and customer satisfaction
• The trend towards greater professionalism, autonomy and responsibility
• The trend for managers to become leaders and facilitators
• The trend of businesses being organized more towards teams, networks, and flatter structures
• The trend towards creativity and innovation for competitive advantage
• The trend towards the globalization of business
• The trend towards co-opetition (companies competing and collaborating simultaneously)
• The trend towards sustainability (triple bottom line economics)

These trends challenge the traditional corporate structure and bring forth the need for organizations to transform their work environments from top down, hierarchic organizations and organizational cultures into more flexible, emerging and self-organizing enterprises that are places of learning and creativity.

This transformation brings with it the need to re-evaluate existing values and define new values/ethics that are in line with and enable global commerce. We think this transformation and these trends set the stage for the emerging global ethic.

At the root of this new corporate ethic is a shift in ‘what a company thinks’ and ‘how it thinks’ which leads to a shift in ‘what a company actually does’.

New Strategies
Once we begin to shift ‘what we think’ and ‘how we think’ we begin to shift what we do. What businesses do is typically articulated as strategy and defined in operations.

The new corporate ethic is at the heart of shifting corporate strategies. These new strategies get articulated into the organization’s operations in the form of principles, policies, and practices. These new strategies also get articulated in an organization’s structure.

Ethical Principles
YES: A set of collectively chosen values that guide the actions of a company
NO: A list of corporate declarations that determine the direction of the company

Ethical Practices
YES: Decisions that are made as a result of managing day-to-day activities
NO: Choosing between the right and wrong thing once an incident has occurred

Ethical Policies
YES: Monitors the differences between chosen principles and actual practices
NO: Determines the legal fate of an individual or group after making improper choices

A company’s operations is a direct connection between its underlying beliefs and its actions. “The purpose of a system is what it does.”

We can always know (or extrapolate) from actions what the underlying beliefs are. In order to be successful in today’s global marketplace beliefs and actions must be in alignment with this new, emerging, global standard. As a consequence of this new, emerging, global ethic, companies are adopting new strategies and business models.

New Strategies include:
• Triple bottom line economics
• Sustainability
• Continuous Innovation
• Co-opetition and Collaboration

Sustainability

Of these new strategies, sustainability has the potential to provide the most far reaching value economically, socially and environmentally. We think sustainability is an important part of the emerging global ethic.

The basic definition of sustainable development was stated in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development’s publication Our Common Future and reads as follows:

“Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The concept of sustainable development does imply limits – not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activity.”

G.H. Brundtland (Chair), Our CommonFuture,
World Commission on Environment and Development, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987.

The Natural Step, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping businesses and governments integrate sustainability to their core strategies and operations has developed four basic principles for a sustainable society:

The Four System Conditions

In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:

1. concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust;
2. concentrations of substances produced by society;
3. degradation by physical means;
and, in that society. . .
4. human needs are met worldwide.

There are many more definitions for sustainable development (and sustainability in business) which is leading a number of organizations to explore the development of new voluntary standards. In the United Kingdom there are several sustainable development standards being trialled by UK companies. These include: AA1000 (developed by the Institute for Social and Ethical Accountability), the Global Reporting Initiative (developed by a wide range of international organizations), ISO14001 (International Standards Organization) and Project Sigma (a sustainability management standard under development by the British Standards Institution, Forum for the Future and others).

There are significant opportunities available to businesses for actively pursuing more sustainable approaches. These include:

• save costs by reducing environmental impacts and treating employees well;
• increase revenues through environmental improvements and benefits to the local economy;
• reduce risk through engagement with stakeholders;
• build reputation by increasing environmental efficiency;
• develop human capital through better human resource management;
• improve access to capital through better governance.

Innovation

Neither of the definitions of sustainability presented above is prescriptive. Both definitions allow for, and stimulate the creativity of practitioners to develop their own appropriate responses and innovate to create the right sustainable solutions in their unique organizational contexts.

In our white paper on bottom line innovation (InnovationLabs, July, 2002) we defined 32 innovation targets (see table on right). If an organization adopts a sustainability framework we can add several new opportunities for innovations to this list. Opportunities to innovate materials, methods, machines, new markets, and new business models can be added. Shifting to a sustainability provides business with a framework to move from a basic problem solving modality to one that incorporates innovation into the very fabric of the enterprise.

Summary

Today’s troubling business climate requires that organizations have a thorough understanding of ethics so that appropriate decisions can be made when dilemmas arise. But ethics is more than knowing what to do once a problem arises. Appropriate ethical action can only be applied when company managers are committed to leading from an ethical rightness based on values, not just the law. And, a broader education on ethics can help to reduce legal action by teaching managers how to make clear decisions early in the process.

To heal ethical dilemmas, organizations must commit to a collective values alignment process that acknowledges the transitional times we are now going through. This values alignment process should take into consideration the emerging global ethic and the shifting to economic models that contain sustainability as part of their framework.

An organization’s culture will reflect management’s commitment to a set of values. If management’s commitment includes understanding and embracing sustainable frameworks, companies will then be in a position to make innovations in strategies, processes, structures, products and services — making innovation a core capability of the organization.

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Further notes to incorporate:

-Sustainability limits create infinite possibilities (fractal behavior)
-During times of great change, there is an emphasis on ‘principle’ over ‘policy’ (‘practice’ is the bridge of activity that is always present)
-[Also see inKNOWvate website for prewritten material]
-3P’s as principle-based foundational model for self-regulating ethical management
-3E’s (trinity) 7Ee’s as principle-based foundational model for self-regulating innovation management
-The 3 archetypes of Regenerative Commerce transfer principle concepts into practical action (Archetypes are a result of primary needs interacting to create an identity (such as Regenerative Commerce set of 3))
-Bringing innovation into an organization as part of a ‘knowledge management’ process
-Today’s ethics management processes are geared around informing of old policy (systemic) without communicating new principles (wholistic). Thus, an acting manager gets caught in a quagmire of existing practices [based on policy measures … coming from existing old myth] when there is a need for new practices [based on principle map … emergent new myth].
-Ethics as catalyst to new ‘forms’ of innovation [note that ‘form’ is more about invention]
-Suggest this in ‘about’? … or have link at where fractal wholes are mentioned? … From fractured parts toward fractal wholes takes us into the discussion of organizational architecture (and later, organizational geometries which is one level beyond org. architecture)
-Relations to Fractal-wholes concept Relations to Fractured-systems concept
heart orientation head orientation
feminine archetype masculine archetype
knowledge management (as in head/heart integration) information management (head only management-result from adolescent brain coming into its own identity realization separation from heart occurs only to return later)
Organizational learning: (learning centrally webbed to entire whole, energy direction is bi-directional to/from teach/student) Organizational development: training (unidirectional and periphery and attached separately to each system)
inclusive of fractured systems non-inclusive of fractal wholes
singular boundary multi- boundaries
spherical relationships vectored relationships
whole can be realized through any part
nonlinear linear
infinite finite
parallel serial
whole/hole interplay
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ABOUT

inKNOWvate and InnovationLabs describe abilities to innovate utilizing ethics as the catalyst to develop the necessary dynamically-adapting learning-based organizations.

Vic Desotelle, Discovery Fuel
Michael Kaufman, Innovation Labs

Download ‘Ethics to Innovation’

ARTICLE * CONVERSATION WORD MAP

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“You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it”, says an economics professor at a local college.

He made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an ENTIRE class.

That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

—

YOU KNOW WHAT ???

This doesn’t feel right to me, but I”m not completely sure why. This report seems to be based on one of those quick conclusions and not enough interaction or detailed data. When analyzed I’m convinced that it would not provide enough evidence to support the writers own (seemingly biased?) conclusion.

But what also comes up for me is a sense of despair: Is this the future of humanity? Does the rich guy really deserve a better life, and the poor guy deserve a struggling life? Or is this written by someone that sees his/her whole life through a money-lens?

But maybe I am missing something? What about you? What comes up for you when you read this? How does the system that is in place now work? How does it not work? What assumptions do we have about ’socialism’, and about ‘capitalism’? For me, it seems that socialism tends toward making everyone ‘equal’ through government process – i.e. financial wealth is distributed so that money is not a reason for someone to have a bad life.

And capitalism, on the other hand, tends toward giving everyone the “opportunity” to create a life filled with financial wealth. And, it’s up to each person to take advantage of this – to make the necessary money to be well-off. Yet does it consider how ones own wealth affects others well-being and the strange chasm between the rich and poor?

For me, neither capitalism nor socialism is a workable solution.

However, there is something in the combining the two concepts that I believe will bring a new economic system that uses money completely differently. One that combines our individual sense of identity and personal power, with a collective ability to allow all to be free from lives that are based in tyranny – which is directly related to one’s ability to access to money systems.

One thing that will be hard to convince me otherwise (but I will stay open!), is that ‘innovation’ as we know it must evolve beyond the conditions and thinking that created the society that has resulted from it so far. Sound familiar? Yah, Einstein said something similar. From my mind, he is soooo right. And that’s why I am a supporter of this new concept called ’sustainable’ innovation, which this website discoveryfuel.com is all about.

RESPOND below, and stay tuned to learn more.

In my mind, the term ‘collaboration’ integrates both individual (capitalistic) and collective (socialistic) needs and desires. Thus, it IS the future. I encourage all readers to study it closely. Do not place collaboration in the category of socialism, for that is incorrect.

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That said: I want to open this up to a real dialogue here (not a discussion or debate) …

What QUESTIONS (not opinions or answers) really need to be asked here? What might be missing? What is totally right on? What underlying emotions make you feel uncomfortable or comfortable about this article? How does it relate to the world’s past, present, and future situations? And how do we learn to evolve toward a way of life that feels more right, or more peaceful? … Or is that even the right question?

What are YOUR questions?

NOTE: When you respond, don’t let your expectations or belief systems play into your comments if at all possible (This is virtually impossible.)  But even more important is: What QUESTIONS (rather than opinions or answers) really need to be asked here? Make no assumptions, be judgmental of nothing, and inquire with a completely open mind. Try googling on the phrase: “you cannot multiply wealth by dividing it”, or click here and you will here many different opinions.

Please remember and experiment with the following point: The ‘question’ is far more powerful than any answer that you think you can come up with in this time of great change. So, what are your questions? Can you do it without bias? It’s really tough to do, but shall we try it?

Let the dialog begin.

Runa: Energy, Sustainability & Innovation from the Amazon

A forefront conservation enterprise, Runa is partnered with native agronomists in the Ecuadorian Amazon to achieve market-driven restoration. The venture will be the first to market read-to-drink Wuayusa tea, a traditional beverage similar to Yerba Mate, that enhances mental clarity and personal energy.

Tyler Gage, Runa CEO, will be holding a WebEx conference to discuss the sustainable model that has won Runa awards from Brown University and the State of Rhode Island.

Date: August 11, 2009
Time: 1:15 pm, Pacific Daylight Time (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)

Please follow these easy steps to join the WebEx meeting:

1) Please note the meeting password: amazanga

2) Click on the link below to join the meeting. ( If prompted for security warning, please select Yes)
https://meetings.webex.com/meetings/j.php?ED=7004492&UID=0&PW=199d41050c4c4a120a5a50

3) Call the teleconference number below if host has selected the teleconference.
When prompted for meeting number enter: 613 050 667
Teleconference: Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada): 866-469-3239
Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-650-429-3300
Toll-free dialing restrictions: http://www.webex.com/pdf/tollfree_restrictions.pdf

If you need help joining this meeting, or would like to set up your computer prior to the meeting, click the following link
http://www.webex.com/go/ppusupport .

We look forward to your participation…

Andrew Mount
Development Officer
Runa LLC / Fundacion Runa
www.runa.org (site under construction)

The Paradox in ‘Sustainable’ Innovations

I want you to click on the picture of the ‘invention machine’ at the left and watch the video. As your watching the video, make a list of the things that (in your mind) make up ’sustainable’ innovation, based on how they describe it to be.

Then, look at your list and consider how they are using the definition of sustainability. In some parts, they show energy efficient light bulbs, etc, suggesting that sustainability truly is influencing our thinking and methods of innovation. Hooray !

But wait a minute.

There’s something missing here. Look at the image above. Notice the direction of product coming out of the machine. Where are these products going? Isn’t a part of sustainability mean that everything becomes food for another system and another and another. Including possibly the system that made it in the first place? Yes. The full meaning of ’sustainable innovation’ means that everything is defined in closed loops, not assembly lines that have no return.

Unfortunately, the way most folks are using the term ’sustainable innovation’ is limited to defining processes that allow the continued production of stuff without considering its RE-production at the end of the product’s usable life cycle.

We are now entering a new age of innovation, and the principles sustainability are directly affecting how innovation is designed, manufactured, used, … and regenerated. The missing link in the video above is REGENERATION. All products, which are an outcome of innovation, must be designed into closed loop systems that do not allow for even the idea of waste to enter the equation.

Either we evolve the meaning of ’sustainable innovation’ or we are merely making green stuff that is more efficient but still unclaimed at the end of an open cycle. This is not sustainable. Closed loop systems that are incorporated at the beginning of the product design process is the answer.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Join “Be The Change!” Twibes Twitter Group /// Participate in the “Be The Change!” Dialogue Project

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