Category: General Learning

One of the writers that I like to peruse here and there is Dave Pollard. I met Dave seven or eight years ago. He came to a leadership conference some friends and I were hosting. We shared a cab together on the way out.

Dave himself has a most interesting story. He shifted from high level corporate work to a level of walking out. Packing up the bags, getting rid of several of them, moving to the west coast. His writing is clear. Often on complex things. Not usually quick reads, but “settle in for a cup of tea” reads, making sure to have a marker in hand.

I read Dave’s post this morning: It’s Not Peak Oil, It’s Peak Affordable Oil. It’s his ability to think systemically that I appreciate. I’m not sure I completely follow all that he is saying, but it takes skill to work with that level of landscape that Dave writes about.

Here’s a passage that caught my attention:

What this conclusion misunderstands is that it’s not about running out of oil, it’s about running out of oil that our economy can afford to extract. If oil cost a million dollars a barrel to extract, we would never have mined most of it, the industrial revolution would have stalled a century ago, and human societies would quickly have reverted to a subsistence local agrarian existence with a much smaller human population and much, much less industry and technology.

Oil was a remarkable discovery. Each barrel replaces the equivalent of about 6 person-years of unassisted manual labour. Our industrial economy and global civilization have been built on the ability to employ cheap oil to do the work of billions of people for next to nothing. We continue to depend on that. Our GDP growth correlates precisely with the consumption of oil, and has essentially nothing to do with innovation, technological ingenuity, economies of scale or ‘doing more with less’. When we run out of affordable oil, the game is up.

Enjoy the full read. But get some tea, or coffee. Or better, book an hour during the day to give it full attention to engage with a friend.

Some simple wisdom from colleague and friend Ria Baeck, who lives in Belgium.

“In daily life the point is not so much about being present, but the clue is always how to become present (again) when we have fallen into our default way or reacting; or how do we widen our perception and become present to more of what is going on in life.”

It is the “present again” part that really catches my attention. When the wobbles come. When we are late for a meeting. When someone else shows up late. When people disagree vehemently. When outrage is the default game. When triggers are activated.

Thanks Ria, someone whose thinking and presence I often enjoy virtually, and, when we were last together in person, for her birthday celebration with friends on a warm Belgium summer evening in her gardens seen above.

In the mid 1990s, a few of the statements and questions that most formed me were spoken by my mentor and friend, Margaret Wheatley. Meg was inspired often by the beauty of the red rock areas of the American southwest (this photo is from a trip I took in 2011).

Organizations are living systems.
Living systems have a capacity to self-organize.
If we knew more about how living systems organized themselves, how might it change the way we organize human endeavor?

I didn’t really know it then, but Meg was creating a narrative, the kind of narrative that can change not only how we think about ourselves and each other, but also, what we are even able to see about ourselves and each other. At the time, and I believe largely still true today, these statements and this question challenged the much defaulted-to narrative of command and control that proclaimed and instilled, “the more we get better at controlling people and systems, the better.”

Perceptual psychology has long taught us the principle that “what we see is what we know.” The command and control paradigm is one example of that. Early organizational theory was heavily influenced by military and religious models that advocated and imposed a kind of hierarchical control. That’s what we saw. That’s what we knew. That’s what we tried to do. That’s what was smart.

It’s been 20+ years now. I love how there are many people and organizations that have accepted this living systems narrative, or are trying to practice it more fully and more deeply. People are learning more ways to turn to one another. People are engaging each other in inquiry and in story-telling. People are welcoming a different kind of efficiency that comes through clarity of purpose and timing. It’s great to see.

Recently, a local colleague, Kinde Nebeker, and I, completed offering a 3-session series called The Inner and The Outer of Evolutionary Leadership. Each week Kinde and I offered 2-3 resources as pre-reading or pre-viewing. For the third session, we offered the three resources below that I believe, further encourage the narrative, and the ability to see, a living systems paradigm.

• A 9-minute video about Princeton microbiologist Bonnie Bassler and her surprising work with bacteria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eml3K2-EdhY&list=FLzJVX7zkTZj-HRFCrR2ULSw&index=1. Even these simple, simple bacteria “talk” to each other. I love the principle that they light up when communal in a way that they can’t when they are alone.
• A short, but full article about new discoveries on the many ways that plants ’talk’ to each other: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38727/title/Plant-Talk/ Go figure. Plants are smart. There is communication, seemingly invisible to us humans, both in the soil and in the above ground part. Plants warn each other of invading species or stressful conditions in a self-organizing way.
• A blog on the “Mysterious We-Space” (Kinde wrote this in 2013 in response to her experience co-guiding a wild nature retreat in Colorado): http://www.newmoonritesofpassage.com/importedblog/the-mysterious-we-space. Kinde gives great attention to the unseen that is the “we” that is so difficult to see from a hierarchical paradigm.

Maybe changing a narrative takes 20+ years. I suppose I’ve wanted to believe it is much faster than that. True for some. Not for others. Changing the narrative of a people, as a group, is even more involved.

But stories like those above, quirky as they sometimes can feel, are helping. I’m glad for bacteria and the Bonnie Basslers of the world, the plants and the Dan Cossins of the world, the Kinde Nebekers of the world that are helping this narrative and way of being take further root.

White privilege is a bit painful to learn and see in oneself. I write those words as one who is white. The blind spots are a bit embarrassing. There is a kind of shame that many of us feel. There is an awakening that needs to be encountered individually, yet I find, experienced communally.

Awareness of white privilege pops the bubble of many mythical stories that I’ve grown up in, yet didn’t know about. I didn’t grow up in intentional malice or prejudice. We were and are good people. But therein lays a seduction and distraction — a blindness to “othering” and to categorical privilege.

I’m learning. I’m grateful for big-hearted friends, particularly those honest enough to explore a shame and kind enough to know there are many layers of undoing.

Last night I saw this clip from Macklemore, the American rapper and songwriter, as he appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. This song is a collaboration with Ryan Lewis. It features Jamila Woods. This goes well with another song from the same album, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made.

There is a lot that I love in this song. That includes the honesty and truth-telling that seems prerequisite to any level of societal or personal change.