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Blog Suspended

Barry — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:25:00 GMT

Dear Gentle Reader:

Due to my increasing responsibilities working with doctoral students and advising congressional candidates for the upcoming election, I am suspending my writing at this time. I do expect to return in November.

Thank you for understanding.

The Connections We Make: General Systems Theory and its application to Sustainability

Barry — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:46:00 GMT

After two computer crashes, the long holiday break and re-assembling all of my research, I can finally get this new blog out to you, gentle reader.

You will remember that we finished last year and our last blog by introducing Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his treatise on General Systems Theory or GST. And, we also mentioned John Muir’s prescient counsel of how when you pull on one string, you find everything else connected to it. So what does this inform us about systems dynamics and sustainability?

I was first introduced to GST in graduate school nearly four decades ago. Surprisingly, few if any textbooks were discussing the role an organization plays in society and how an organization is emblematic of a living creature, i.e., an organization is born, develops and dies. In fact, General Electric predicates much of its business strategy on how an organization goes through these stages. Jeff Immelt, currently CEO of GE, said "I didn't learn (systems thinking) in school. I have learned it through experience and getting comfortable with ambiguity. I don't know all the answers, I often don't know how things are going to turn out. What I do know is that 21st century leaders must be systems thinkers; they must be good at solving problems."

In our latest textbook, Organizational Communication: Perspectives and Trends (Papa, Daniels and Spiker, 2008), we introduce the theory of organizations to the reader, metaphorically, as an adaptive organism, rather than as a machine. We contrast the more mechanistic accounts of economic exchange in scientific and classical theories of satisfaction of social needs in human relations theory and then to self-actualization and participation in human resource development (p. 104, 2008). All of these theories offer prescriptions for how management should operate in creating more effective organizations. The first such theory that we introduce is system theory.

In our text book we said, “System theory is the product of work begun in the field of philosophy during the nineteenth century and expanded by many scholars in various fields during the twentieth century. Much of the formal elaboration of system theory was presented in Ludwig von Bertalanffy's General System Theory (1968), first published in the 1950s. Bertalanffy, a Canadian biologist, wanted to develop a set of concepts and principles that would apply generally to any type of system (hence, the label, general system theory).

The perspective that Bertalanffy and other early system theorists developed soon was adapted to the study of organizations in works by March and Simon (1958), Katz and Kahn (1966), and Huse and Bowditch (1973). The influence of system theory in the study of organizational communication also has been substantial. For example, Farace, Monge, and Russell (1977) developed a structural-functional model of organizational communication that is drawn directly from systems principles. Even before publication of Bertalanffy's major works, Chester Barnard had presented some systems principles in his theory of organizational structure (Dessler, 1980; Littlejohn, 1992). As Monge pointed out, ``Organizational communication has predominantly been studied from the viewpoint of system theory'' (1982, p. 245).

System theory provided a new analogy for the study of organizations and organizational communication--the living organism. While scientific and classical scholars regarded the organization as a machinelike object operated by management control, system theorists stressed the point that organizations are more like living creatures than machines. Organizations experience birth, development, and death. They are dynamic entities that act in purposeful ways. System theory relies on several important concepts in order to explain the organismic characteristics of organizations. These concepts include wholeness, hierarchy, openness, and feedback” (pp.104-105, 2008).

With that bit of background, where do we go from here?

Perhaps you have heard the expression, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts? Said another way, the whole is different from the sum of its parts. And, we need to ask some basic questions, such as, how do those parts relate to the overall system? How can parts of the system be mapped? Are there patterns to the parts operating within the system? What is the context for this system to operate in? In short, these are the very same questions we need to ask when we view the world through the lens of sustainability. Here are some questions we might ask when we study systems relative to sustainability.

· How do we describe an event, i.e. who does what to whom? What happened?

· Are there discernible patterns, perhaps of behavior, over a period of time?

· What structures can be observed? How are the parts organized? How do we get feedback from the overall system?

· What “world view” or mental models help or inhibit how we see the interaction of patterns and structures and events?

Think back to our recent blog, titled “Operation Cat Drop” that we did about the Island of Borneo in the 1950’s and how the UN assisted in killing the malaria carried by mosquito’s—that was a great example of how a system should have been examined and how all the parts of the system are interrelated.

At a future point in this blog, I will share with you elements of our business plan that we wrote over a decade ago that was to develop a sustainable, no, actually make that a regenerative community that would draw up the body, mind, spirit and emotion to build a model place that people could see, touch, hear and taste what life could be like in our very near futures. In essence, here is how we leveraged aspects of ourselves as humans in order to live in community through a sustainable philosophy.

Our bodies would be used to create and build sustainable, then regenerative, places in our communities. We would follow the environmental practices of “reduce, reuse and renew” and use tools and practices that were smart uses of energy and resources.

We would think critically and examine our lives and those around us from a systems perspective. We would not just sustain an ecosystem, but regenerate and rebuild a community from these key principles. We would practice a form of conscious capitalism and examine the world around us, while becoming more creative practitioners of innovation. We would look over the horizon; see the future that we wanted to be a part of and communicate to our community around us how we could participate together.

Our sprits would be used to wonder, to see the truly awesome aspects of all living things and to see ourselves as good stewards of the planet and teach others our stewardship as well. We would respect and appreciate the role of place and understand the bond that others have in their own place.

We would reach out to and respect all living things and see them as diverse while knowing that different perspectives are necessary in describing a problem and its possible solutions. We would practice goodwill in all of our interactions with one another. And we would seek to understand other’s perspectives first before promulgating our own perspective. In short, to understand sustainability, we would use a set of lenses that allow us to see the world from multiple perspectives.

And, that is very difficult for nearly everyone to do.

Next blog: Creative destruction.

Operation Cat Drop: Unintended Consequences II

Barry — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Operation Cat Drop

You will remember that I promised to continue our discussion and examination of unintended consequences when we have an idea and want to solve a problem. You may have heard the following story—it is not an urban myth! It is true and in many ways, unbelievable.

It was in the 1950’s in Borneo—a tropical island with a terrible outbreak of malaria. To the “rescue” comes the United Nations World Health Organization. To eradicate the mosquitoes carrying the malaria, the WHO used what many all over the world had been using—DDT.

The WHO sprayed the DDT, killed the mosquitoes and the outbreak of malaria disappeared. But soon, the roofs of the homes of the people of Borneo started to cave in. The DDT also was killing parasitic wasps that kept caterpillars under control. With no wasps, the caterpillars were now out of control, so they ate the thatch of the roofs and the roofs caved in! Back came the WHO to repair the roofs with tin. Now, the caterpillars could not eat tin, and people had trouble sleeping for a while, but by and large, the problem was solved. Until another health crisis hit Borneo.

This time it was an outbreak of typhoid fever and the plague. It seems that the DDT killed more than just mosquitoes and wasps—it killed many other bugs. Those now dead bugs were being eaten by lizards, which were being eaten by cats. The DDT now made its way “up the food chain” and killed the cats. With no cats, the rats took over. And of course, rats carry disease—like the plague and typhoid fever.

Now, the solution (again) to the lack-of-cats problem--The UN enlisted the support of the British Royal Air Force who strapped parachutes on 14,000 stray cats and parachuted them into Borneo (except of course the cats that missed dry land and ended up in the ocean). But the problem was eventually solved—some would call it genius, others, well PETA may object.

And, as if that was not enough, a story circulated a few years ago that the state of Chihuahua started posting messages in newspapers requesting cats to be donated for a remote farming village. You guessed it—rats had ingested rat poison, the cats had eaten the rats and the cats ended up dying. So, with a shortage of cats, rats began to take over, and the state requested that cats be donated to the small farming village to deal with the rat infestation.

You may recall my last blog entry, where I articulated the pluses and minuses of growth. This of course has been going on for many years in a lot of communities, and in no way do I have any problems with folks whom have opposing views—in fact, without those views, we could not have this debate. It is in the quid pro quo of the debate that we uncover what and where we might find “common ground”.

The state of New Hampshire has been debating growth recently. In fact, there was a wonderful series that was on New Hampshire Public Radio just a while back (http://www.nhpr.org/node_neighbors/9269) citing various towns and communities all over New Hampshire that were targeted to be limited or “downsized” in their growth. And here is one thing you will discover—when folks in New Hampshire wanted to pass ordinances to limit growth, the unintended consequence was a steep rise in affordable housing. Also, taxes increased and costs of all sort started to get out of control. But you will hear few people willing to discuss this—it is discussing the un-discussable!

Here, then is the basic story: when we begin to work on one problem, for example around sustainability, unless we have the many and necessary minds and vision to look beyond and over the horizon (much like a chess player looks three moves forward, or a billiards player looks three shots out) our initial reaction to that initial problem can put ourselves into additional problems. A case in point with respect to global warming: everybody is saying that global warming is a fait accompli, that the “Science is settled”, and that man is causing it (i.e. anthropogenic global warming). I am not going to address recent news reports about the release of emails that indicate otherwise—let’s wait and see where the data takes us. But, if we do accept global warming as the problem (and, do all kinds of things to make the earth cooler, put cap and trade programs in place, increase taxes on all sorts of carbon users, etc.), then find out later that we are actually going into a period of global cooling, well, we may very well be out of luck—the proverbial horse has left the barn, the water is over the dam, etc. (i.e. unintended consequences).

Solving what we think is the problem, leads us into discovering even greater problems. So, getting enough of the right people (a bunch of minds) into the right place at the right time to work on the right problem is what is required. The downside appears that there may be too many entrenched interests in order to do that. The ongoing debate over global warming, for example, is not as robust as it should be (except perhaps, in dueling academic journal articles). It depends on what you read and whom you listen to. Clearly, from this writer’s perspective, the global warming issue must be urgently debated openly and clearly with more than just a few hundred or even a few thousand scientists.

Another Example

The corporate world has many such stories as well. When Delta airlines laid off or “downsized” thousands of its mechanics to cut costs, mostly the mechanics who had served a long time, it soon found out that it had to hire back a large number of those mechanics at a premium! Delta airlines thought they were solving one problem, but in actuality created much bigger problems for themselves as a result of what it had done initially. Another thing we have learned is that in this current age, individuals need to take control of their careers for themselves. No one is really going to look out for you.

As a management consultant, I have seen a multitude of such actions taken to cut costs, improve performance, increase revenues, etc., but it nearly always is a short-term fix. Very often, a handful of decision-makers will see only part of the “elephant in the room”. If we are going to work on the really big, intransigent problems around the world, I’m not sure that we will ever be able to say, “The science is done”! There must always be planning for contingencies, a welcoming of on-going debate, a delimiting of partisanships and demagoguery, and helping to bring in the light of day with all perspectives to how we examine a problem, how we coordinate meaning from the discussion of the problem and how we prepare others for the changes that solving a problem will inevitably bring forth.

There are many such stories like this in nature and in organizations where attempts to control one thing ends up leading to another even bigger and more expensive problem—an unintended consequence. If we are going to solve the big intractable problems of the world, it is going to take a lot of people working together. One needs to remember the prophetic words of John Muir—“when one tugs at one thing in nature; he finds it attached to everything else”! For my next blog, we will pick up on that particular theme—how everything is connected to everything else. It started (academically speaking) with Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his wonderful treatise on General Systems Theory.

Unintended Consequences: A response to those who believe that growth is bad

Barry — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:52:00 GMT

I first want to say how appreciative I am for those of you who responded to our blog. Without your response, we would be left to debate the global issues that we are facing amongst ourselves. And, as a former college debater and debate coach, I must say that I always learn so much whenever I look at the many sides of an issue. Reading your posts catalyzed me going out on the web and reading about the many issues surrounding economic growth and development. And what I gleaned from many anti-growth web sites is that as earnest as all seem to be, as professionals, we must agree to disagree. Here is why.

In one such web page, David Gardner talks at length about “our misguided quest for prosperity”—in fact it is in the name of his upcoming documentary film. Throughout his web site (http://www.growthbusters.com) he quite understandably criticizes “more”, e.g. “more jobs, increasing income, bigger companies, (and, sic) more revenue”. Obviously he was not moved by the film “Wall Street” where Michael Douglas played Gordon (the lizard) Gecko who said “greed is good”. But somehow implied on his web site and stated rather poignantly to me earlier, “Only those making millions off the labor of others stand to benefit (and financially only) from continuing to increase population and production in our finite environment.” Now, I like David and what he is doing—I welcome the debate and honor what he is doing. But, it might be time to examine some economics-the third leg of the three legged sustainability stool.

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest company. It is using its considerable influence to force their many suppliers to go “green”—in one major Board decision in 2005(see http://www.social funds.com/news/article.cgi/1844.html) they have done more to combat global warming than any nation on earth. GE, the 2^nd largest corporation in the world, has launched Ecomagination. There are debates about “peak water” the “finite” limits of our water supply, yet GE is producing desalinization plants that are now producing 3 cubic meters of potable water for less than 50 cents! Try to buy a gallon of reverse osmosis water at your local store for less than $2.00 a gallon, let alone the cost of 50 cents to produce 3 cubic meters. Both of these companies are responding to a very demanding customer base that is very serious about energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. Plus, by creating innovative and new technologies, more (yes, more) and different kinds of jobs are created, many of which are “knowledge workers”. And, finally, aside from creating new jobs and more revenue and more earnings for their stockholders (who, like many of us, reinvest in other worthwhile, community causes), there is the increased salaries and taxes that go directly into other businesses, the community and of course the state tax coffers. But I should mention one other item, in case one did not read the manifesto for Billion Ready Minds. Last year, the United States contributed nearly $300 billion dollars to global non-profits. And, companies like Wal-Mart and GE (and their thousands of employees) gave away profits (and time) to philanthropic organizations because it was and always will be the right thing to do!

Now, I could end this blog posting here, but allow me to cover a little bit of history (cultural, social and economic) that has been missing from the sustainability argument. I start with that old document, “The Declaration of Independence”, where some very smart and rebellious men addressed why they no longer could be a part of the nation of Great Britain. You may remember the words that Jefferson penned: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It seems to me, that if I wanted to go to college (instead of working in the coal mines of West Virginia where I grew up), took out student loans (made available through our local bank’s profits, which I paid back) and worked my tail off, saved my money, gave it away to my university for scholarships or any other kind of non-profit, then I should be able to do that, i.e. “the pursuit of happiness”! Those things, gentle reader, are the unintended consequences of what won’t happen if we go down the road toward what has been labeled as “Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity”!

But prosperity at any cost—no, I think not. Again, when you read our manifesto, we call for a balance of ecological, social and economic change in and around the globe. It is because of our global growth problems, our lacking of clean air and water, climate change and the widening gap between “haves and have nots”, that sustainability is taking hold in our corporations, schools, governments and communities. But it calls forth for “systemic thinking”, looking at the whole and not just the constituent parts.

The United Nations Human Development Index, developed in large part by Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in 1998, has shown the empirical linkage between income growth, higher life expectancies and higher population levels. You quote Ansley Coale of Princeton whose book on population growth and development in 1958 has informed much of the misguided thinking, policy formation and research agenda that you articulate on your web site. It might have made sense back then, when the “baby boomers” were booming (also contributing to Erlich’s mistaken assumptions) but understand that fertility rates are dropping globally and that the annual growth of the human population had dropped from a high in 1990 of 87 million people per year to the now low of 75 million people per year. And, sadly over ½ of the world is made of nations with sub-replacement rates of fertility. This is all according to the United Nation’s Population Division and the United States Census Bureau.

Sen writes in his best-selling book, “Development as Freedom” (1999) that “global markets are inevitable but that does not mean they are inherently damaging”. He calls forth the need, like we do at Billion Ready Minds, for citizens to become educated and trained with new skills so that they can take part in the global economy. And, that leaders must ensure that citizens have enough information, education and freedom to make reasoned choices in the public sphere about how they want their societies to change. In other words, inculcate a sense of dialogue and participation. And for my readers, I would welcome your participation, your inputs and I would honor them. You may disagree with my statement, “The planet is facing another problem, a severe decline in the growth rate of the population, so much so that it will impact global productivity and a decline in economic growth”, but it is factually true! We are going to be facing this issue. I am not saying that is a good thing or a bad thing—it just is, what it is.

The Business Case for Sustainability: Part 2 and Unintended Consequences

Barry — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:05:39 GMT

One of my favorite quotes is by Alfred North Whitehead, who said, “The vitality of thought is in adventure.Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.” As I think about what Whitehead said, I am reminded of the thousands, if not millions of ideas that have come and gone with respect for our environment.Think back to the following:

The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. Reid Bryson, Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man, (1971)

The battle to feed humanity isover. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer. Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)

I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000. Paul Ehrlich in (1969)

In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion. Paul Ehrlich in (1976)

This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. Peter Gwynne, Newsweek (1976)

There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. Newsweek, April 28, (1975)

This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken,it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. Lowell Ponte, The Cooling, 1976

Certainly there can be disagreements over what has come before us and what has been projected ahead of us. I “grew up” with Ehrlich, reading his book, The Population Bomb, in my introductory college sociology class. I fondly remember the classroom debates, and the shift that many of us made about getting married and having children. And, today, there are still ardent supporters of slowing the population growth because our planet will not be able to endure much longer. Indeed, you will recall that not long ago, China made it illegal to have more than one child. And today, the planet is facing another problem, a severe decline in the growth rate of the population, so much so that it will impact global productivity and a decline in economic growth. In fact,you can expect there to be a different kind of global war—a global war for talent!But we also predict peak oil, peak food and peak water—that is, we are on a downward spiral for those needs and must change our ways. In future blogs, we will discuss the many studies that have been predicting these trends.

But back to unintended consequences: the State of New Hampshire have put tighter restrictions on development, and it seems to have worked. In the year 2000, 12,000 people moved to New Hampshire, but three years later, that number plummeted by 75%. Yes, it has saved natural resources and conserved land. But it has also had a different effect: affordable housing is more expensive, and property taxes have increased.And, with a slowing population growth and a growing mature workforce, future unintended consequences could be even greater.

But my favorite story of unintended consequences comes to us originally from FY Cheng who in 1963 published a study entitled “Deterioration of thatch roofs by moth larvae after house spraying in the course of a malaria eradication program in North Borneo and retold by Harrison, in 1965, “Operation cat drop”, Animals 5:512-513. You can also read about “cat drop” in Natural Capitalism (1999) on pages 285-286,by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins.

Stay tuned!

The Business Case for Sustainability

Barry — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:16:00 GMT

The Business Case for Sustainability: Part One

Nearly fifty years ago, my two brothers and I would go to our neighbor’s homes and ask if we could rake their leaves. Sometimes we would get paid (maybe a quarter if anything) and sometimes we would not, but in every case, we brought home the raked-up leaves so that our father could lay them over our small garden in the backyard. Our father would then cover the leaves with a tarp and there the leaves would sit throughout the fall, into winter and eventually become “black gold” or organic mulch for the beautiful flowers and vegetables that were harvested throughout the summer and into the early fall. If there was mulch left over, and often there was, we would put the mulch into brown paper bags and offer it back to our neighbors so that they could use the mulch for there own gardens. My father was a big believer and doer in helping others, particularly in the neighborhood where we lived and grew up through grade school, junior high and high school.

Little did I know it then, but was soon to learn in my studies at college, that our family was practicing sustainable practices whereby we would work to balance the social, economic and ecological aspects of our neighborhood. We raked up the leaves, sometimes were paid, put them back into the earth to make mulch, shared the mulch when and wherever we could and the outcome was a bounty of fresh vegetables and beautiful flowers. My father grew so many beautiful flowers that when he entered the chrysanthemum show in the fall, he very nearly won in every category that he entered. After our father died in a car accident at a very early age in his life (and ours) my younger brother took to the land and he grew as many if not more beautiful mums and won award after award. In short, the lessons my father learned were passed down to his three sons, as we all today grow our own home gardens and have taught our children as well. There is something magical and wonderful about learning beside your father (or mother) and then passing that learning down through the generations.

In our later years as teenagers, we joined the Boy Scouts and learned even more about what good stewardship was to mean for the fragile globe we all share today. That stewardship is the essence and outcome of all things sustainable: the protection of our current resources so that future generations could draw from and share and leave behind even better resources for those who would come behind us. We had learned as young boys, then young men what it meant to protect, serve and regenerate our natural environment. As a Boy Scout, I used to be able to drink water out of streams and rivers all over the state of West Virginia, where I camped and grew up. Honestly, today, I do not think I or anyone would dare to drink water out of a river, let alone a mountain stream before we would treat the water with iodine or some kind of a fancy UV or reverse osmosis type of system.

Two of my favorite books came to me from Paul Hawken—Natural Capitalism and The Ecology of Commerce. I had read both books when I was part of a team of like-minded folks when we were drawing up plans to buy, develop and regenerate a ranch surrounded by wilderness and a national forest outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Our plans included all things sustainable: we would develop sustainable ecological aquaculture (high-minded fish farming) along side the wild and year-round flowing Pecos River; we would develop a center for integrative health and wellness; we would develop and employ local artisans, craftsmen, farmers, ranchers and others to help us regenerate the land that once bordered a national park and national forest; we would build a sustainable community—very high tech and yet a very soft “footprint” on the land; all buildings would incorporate local, indigenous materials that were renewable, yet practical in heating and cooling the residences. Finally, we were in conversations with a major hotelier, an organization that would manage and operate our sustainable resort less than 20 minutes from Santa Fe. The restaurant would serve only local, organic and free-range foods that grew and were harvested from our land. And, we would invite folks of all types of backgrounds, ages and demographics to come and "play" in our Regenerative Development Institute and be a part of building our community.

The preceding was a very big vision back in the 1990’s (but not a dotcom), but one that we are seeing, in part, come to light today. In fact, our original development team has reemerged and reconnected to do this again on a different ranch but with many of the same ideas (even better ideas) to be developed today. We believe that the market, what Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson call the “cultural creatives”, consists of somewhere between 50 and 70 million people in the United States who are believers in, and practitioners of, careful consumerism, innovation, integrative health, wellness, spirituality, technology, arts and culture, history, organic food and clothing, music, “green” buildings and homes, nesting and community. In short, cultural creatives want to live in harmony with their community and in alignment with their body, mind, spirit and emotions—a holistic and systemic approach to living! So, clearly there is a market around us for all of the above and people are now just being informed, participating in and taking action to bring all these products and services to bear in the marketplace.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy is the father of General Systems Theory. Born in the early 20th century, he rose to prominence as a Theoretical Biologist who used and studied biological systems as metaphors for organizational and human systems. This “open systems” approach gave rise in the 1960’s to the study of psychological, social and historical levels of organization. In short, if we change one aspect of a system in one place, it will ultimately have an impact on the whole system in another place (remember our earlier admonition of “unintended consequences”). GST is the transdiciplinary study of the abstract organization of phenomena and the principles common to all complex entities. There are many other elements of GST, and out of the study of whole and open systems we find today’s remarkable work in chaos theory and the sciences of complexity. Systems concepts include: system-environment boundary, input, output, process, state, hierarchy, goal-directedness, and information. Applications of system theory can be found across a wide array of disciplines: management, leadership, computing, engineering, ecology, organization design, mathematics, physics, thermodynamics, artificial intelligence, biology, sociology, and political science, to name a few.

In short, it is the study of how everything is related to everything else. We need to be able to stand back and look beyond all the fragmented parts in order to see the whole. As we quoted John Muir earlier in our Manifesto, you find that when we pull a thread to one thing in the universe, we find it connected to everything else. And, to paraphrase Einstein, we must learn to see the world anew. Seeing the possibilities that sustainability brings us, is to see the world in an entirely new way. We must act now. There are many things to do-not try-but do. In my next blog, I will delve deeper into many of the possible business challenges and opportunities around sustainability—seeing, for example, not just the opportunities to create products and services for the cultural creatives, or how and why we should strive to build “green” buildings, or take eco-tourism vacations, etc. but how do we manage in a sustainable way (something I like to call “intra-organizational ecology”) and how do we engage others in the discussion. We need not just keep the earth sustainable as in keeping it from further harm and destruction; we need to think in terms of healing and growth or regeneration so that future generations can see how and why we all must be involved in making a contribution to furthering the development of life on our planet.