[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 30min]

Some interesting ideas by Roger Martin here on how management education can be improved. First he mentions in his assessment of the MBA that most programs tend to be very shallow versus deep. Students are taught a variety of models, theories, and approaches but what remains unexperienced is the ability to decide which should be applied to a particular circumstance. Roger is rightly critical of standardized approaches when he discusses an financial options valuation formula that is applied to every conceivable options type.

Second, he discusses how MBA programs teach subjects individually with very little overlap of other disciplines. This narrow versus broad approach doesn’t allow for people to appreciate how other business functions can have an impact. Also, the philosophical approach of current management education is based on looking after one self, reminiscent of Milton Friedman’s ideas on business’ responsibility. Very true. Ethics, CSR, and Sustainability are definitely elective courses. Shouldn’t social and environmental values in addition to self-interest be integrated into all courses? Beyond what’s merely lawful or customary. What about having courses on other kinds of business models like social enterprises and entrepreneurships?

Lastly, he criticizes the approach of having students analyzing the here and now, then choosing among a set of existing options. Thereupon people are called to calculate the internal rate of return, forecast probability based on past data, and things of the like. In other words, students aren’t being challenged to imagine and create new options. Ultimately we should be more dynamic versus static-oriented.

He goes on to describe how management education can be improved by becoming more deep, broad, and dynamic. By going beyond inductive and deductive logic which refine and hone that which exists, to incorporating abductive logic which explores what can be.

Enter Design Thinking, a balanced orientation to administering business by being analytical (seeking 100% reliability on one end), and intuitive (seeking 100% validity on the other). And that’s how management education should be taught

Sustainability is a vast field covering multiple topics in operations, marketing, design, innovation, and new business models. While articles, books, and conferences (if you have the budget and time to attend) can be great, nothing beats having professionals giving you the inside scoop.

The creators of the Sustainable Brands Conference, with whom I work as their community engagement manager, are organizing an online training seminar for 13 weeks. In order to help further this movement along, we’ve recognized many smart business people need to get up to speed - and we’ve done so by getting some of the world’s leading practitioners to teach the subjects they’re passionate about for 90min - available live and on-demand for a very affordable price.

If you’d like to learn more, go ahead and check out the speakers, session descriptions, and dates here. I’ve included the titles of the sessions here for you to see. P.S. - I’ll be speaking on the last session in February on public relations and social media

1. Introduction to Opportunities in Sustainable Innovation
2. Innovation Opportunities in Response to Today’s Environmental Hot Buttons: Climate Change, Water & Waste
3. The Changing Consumer Marketplace
4. Organizational Models for Integrating CSR with Brands
5. Building a Balanced Sustainable Brand Strategy
6. Sustainable Product Design – An Overview of Prevailing Approaches
7. Building Collaborative Supply Chain Partnerships
8. Transforming Your Company Through Sustainability – and Engaging Your Customers and Employees in the Process
9. Introduction to Life Cycle Impact Assessment
10. Business Metrics: Dashboards, KPI’s and other strategies for Goal Setting and Measurement
11. Building Credibility/Avoiding Greenwashing
12. Designing Communications that Resonate
13. PR/Social Media and Alternate Community Building Strategies

[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 21min]

Highlight clips put together from the documentary “Blue Vinyl” - http://imdb.com/title/tt0303307/

I put this together because the story needs to be told to a larger audience. It was originally produced in 2002, before the era of YouTube. Right now it’s collecting dust in distribution neverland.

The documentary film discusses the history of vinyl and its toxicity in the context of investigative journalism, with the backstory of the director’s parent’s decision to use blue vinyl siding for their house. Remarkable story in all, but what it shows us is the danger this plastic holds within its entire life cycle. Consumer exposure to vinyl & PVC in a solid, fabricated state is relatively benign. But what about when babies or pets are putting PVC toys in their mouths and chewing on it? Ewww! Secondly, the vinyl chloride presents a health and environmental hazard in its production, fabrication, and end-of-life scenarios. Recycling options are practically non-existent. The big evil byproduct are Dioxins.

The father of Green Chemistry and EPA Research Chief Paul Anastas, has been quite vocal about supporting its elimination and calling for innovating practical alternatives. Let’s look at the practical steps for achieving the solution:

• Chemical innovation and funding for developing substitutes for the applications in which vinyl & PVC are currently used
• Designers and Engineers seeking alternative materials first
• Consumer education about the issues, and practical advice on how they can adjust their purchasing habits
• Retailer pressure to avoid purchasing items with these materials and/or category managers expressing avoidance preferences (vocal/written) in new-item RFPs (request for proposal) and during presentations
• Groundswell support for companies using safe alternative materials; developing effective marketing copy and social media campaigns that stress product benefits first, human health & social responsibility second, price third, environmental benefits fourth.

So these clips constitute 21.4% (21min of 98min total). Under “Fair Use” for the purposes of review and citizen journalism, I hope that these curated segments will be not only legal to show, but also interesting for viewers.

Related Posts:

• Green Chemistry and Environmental Health
• The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry

About 7 weeks ago, I received a review copy of “Rules of Thumb” by Alan Webber as a gift from their agent. Instead of making a comprehensive book review, I thought I’d break down the 52 rules on life and business into various posts, using a bit of Alan’s writing and personal perspective as I read through it. That way it’s helpful to us all

“When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Relax”

Alan recounts being an associate editor for the Harvard Business Review in the early 80s, and describes a live interview opportunity he’d received with then German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt. Now this gent was apparently known to be a bit “better-than-thou” with people asking questions, so Alan had good reason to feel a bit nervous. Before Helmut walked in, he wrote a couple key reference phrases at the top of his pad, along the lines of

“Relax! Smile! This is a blessing, a treat, and an honor. It’s not a punishment to be endured.”

That’s the key. When we’re in situations where there’s great opportunity, we all can tense up, and perhaps think of all the things that can go wrong. If we dwell on them, a little whirlwind or slight breezes of negative thinking can hinder the best in us from coming out, reaching out, and giving our best - unconsciously, naturally. I liken such scenarios to black-or-white thinking: a dangerous pool to be wading in even if we’re looking on the extreme bright side of things, because overconfidence may hinder us from great interpersonal interaction, while also inflating expectations and potentially setting ourselves up for a big letdown, which may result in lame emotional reasoning. I think you get the point.

Alan further expands on this by mentioning W. Edward Deming’s 8th point in total quality management:

“Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.”,

but stresses that the starting place lies within US. In addition to the aforementioned reasons, having a relaxed composure and confident attitude ensures that we’ll have a good time - no matter what the outcome is. After all, things may not go favorably, predictably, or easily for a variety of reasons. Given that, isn’t it then worthwhile to ensure you at least made the best of it and smile?

“Don’t let fear undermine your chance to do that one thing you’ve wanted to do…Take a second and smile. Enjoy the trip.”

[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 2.5min]

What a video! The elements that make it powerful is the invitation to imagine/remember childhood and the piano music.
Interestingly missing is the traditional pomp & triumphal imagery and glorious music meant to celebrate the individual, meant to unconsciously promote objective selfishness. Instead, the communication is focused on the process of actualizing, the benefit that entrepreneurs can bring to society, the potential within us To Lead. To Start. To Innovate.

And that’s a deeper message underlying the entrepreneurial spirit: Hope + Creativity + Action
In essence, one doesn’t need to start or own a business. It’s about the capability to have a vision and see it through.

If we can change the map of how we see the world and our place in it, then it’s very possible to progress to a revitalized vision of what we truly want to see happen. For us. For ourselves. For what matters most to us.

Last night I was considering the communications process from a Taoist philosophical perspective, considering the Subjective (listening, inspiration, stories, advice), and Objective (inquiry, theory, case studies, directives).

Both leaders and followers, organizations and consumers, will switch between both frames depending on their conscious/unconscious state of participation. For greater effectiveness in interpersonal communications, it is helpful to be cognizant of which frame we’re using and perhaps switch back and forth.

To take the concept further, we could also add the dimension of participation levels: Active/Proactive v. Passive/Reactive

What do you think?

To Be Sustainable Organizations Must Balance Empathy and Power - Karl Long

[Slideshow Link for Email/Other Subscribers]

Karl brought up an interesting subject which you can see from the slideshow above, and from his (and his readers’) thoughts in the link above. After posting this to an online Innovation & Design forum we belong to, here are some quotes from fellow list members:
- - -
Greg noted:

I participated in a workshop last summer at the Shambhala Institute Summer Program called  “Solving Tough Problems in Practice: The Language of Power and the Language of Love

It was hosted by Adam Kahane and friends. We drilled into this issue of the requirement for organizational leaders to carry both love (empathy) and power to engage effective leadership. Kahane is currently writing a book on the subject, and here is an excerpt from his recent paper on the subject:

“… the words power and love are defined by so many different people in so many different ways. For many people they connote, respectively, oppression and romance. But I am using two particular and unusual definitions, from theologian Paul Tillich, that in my experience explain a lot of the dynamics of social change. Tillich said power is “the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.” So power in this sense is the drive to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow. And he said love is “the drive towards the unity of the separated.” So love in this sense is the drive to re-connect that which is whole, which is one, but which appears fragmented.Power and love are two orthogonal axes that together delineate the space of social change. If we want to be able to understand and address tough social challenges, then we need to be able to recognize and work with both of these vectors or poles.”

Another source of Kahane’s inspiration is from a speech by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change … And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites - polar opposites - so that love is identified with the resignation of power, and power with the denial of love. Now we’ve got to get this thing right. What [we need to realize is] that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic … It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.”

The insight for change makers is that to be effective, our approach to complex problems must be tempered by both assertive action (power) and empathetic listening (love).

- - -

Marc Rettig of Fit Associates, and known as @mrettig on Twitter noted:

Greg’s quotes from Kahane and King were both appropriate and powerful. Thanks for those. I would like to add one other observation, first called to my attention by David Whyte in his wonderful book, “The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America.”

It’s this: I find it is relatively rare to encounter *individuals* whose normal way of being is skewed toward the coercive/oppressive expression of power. Even in companies that are outwardly perceived as being um, soulless. The imbalance of “drive to express one’s purpose” with “drive to reconnect the whole” is an emergent characteristic of
the typical corporate culture, in which people perceive that it isn’t safe to express the “love” side of themselves, where people hide their demons and never talk about them, where people feel leashed to someone else’s dream. Organizations are full of people who feel constrained by imaginary boundaries, frustrated by the disconnect between their work and Who They Really Are.

The original question had to do with the idea that an empathetic approach and a power-based approach to transformation are often at odds. Bridging from Greg’s quotes, I’ve decided I believe that is a false dichotomy. Working for change puts us face-to-face with the challenge of making it safe for people to reconnect with their own impulses toward empathy, and to express them in their work as a group. (What a relief for everyone involved!) This is one reason why I’ve found the “Theory U” material to be so helpful — it provides one example of a “how to” guide for exactly that transformation,
prerequisite to any other transformation in the organization or its offerings. (And, as an aside, for the same reason I’m excited that Lauralee Alben is writing and speaking about her Sea Change Design model. See albendesign.com for bits and pieces.)

- - -

What do YOU think?

Once again, Mr. Farber has applied his classic business novel/parable style to his latest book: “Greater Than Yourself”.

It’s filled with characters who although are laid-back, friendly, and humble, they’re also beaming with confidence and an in-the-moment lifestyle based on values, giving, and interpersonal development. Again Steve here has inserted himself as the apprentice who although smart, is a bit wary and joking at first, yet becomes ever more intrigued and committed to the GTY applied philosophy. Combined with a good foreword, real third-party stories of GTY, and a summary process framework, the book makes for an excellent read.

The diagram you see above is my own illustrated summary of the Greater Than Yourself process. Within each of the steps are particular instructions for which you’d really need to read the book to understand and gain valuable insight. Also see the Greater Than Yourself website which has videos and other free resources (with email signup). If you haven’t read Steve’s “The Radical Leap”, do check out some earlier posts of mine for quick goodies:

• On Fear and Leadership
• The LEAP
• LEAP: Vision, Love, and Energy

[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 18min]

Last year, I saw a presentation from film producer Patrick Gregston, who was granted the opportunity by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to make a documentary on climate change. After recently speaking with Patrick, the movie will be coming out in select cities and venues this year. So what I’m bringing you today is an 18min compilation of clips he has on his YouTube channel, in addition to his presentation’s notes, which he kindly provided to me last summer.

Public Discourse is Confused

• Bipolar reduction of possibilities
• The science is not understood
• Most likely possibilities not discussed nor acted upon
• Awareness is not matched by prioritization

So this is the challenge for storytellers in most basic and polite terms - more accurate descriptions use rude vernacular. Most media on the subject, and yesterday’s news was a great example of this, focus on the opposite ends of a line. On one end you have enviro-extremists who say that unless we radically reduce our consumption, the planet and species are threatened. On the other you have the enterprise institutes and some senators who say that this is a hoax perpetrated by people who want to destroy our economy and your way of life.

While both of these seem polar opposites from a content perspective, they do have unique facets in common. First is that they are negative propositions. Second, regardless of what your opinion is, or which of these camps you are closer to, you don’t understand the science or how it is arrived at, or what it actually means.

Climate science, both observed and predictive, describe a range of possibilities, with each possibility having a probability attached. These two are the least likely outcomes. This means that the most likely possibilities, those in the middle of the curve, are not being discussed, much less acted upon.

Despite this mess, social science reports a high level of awareness that the climate is changing and acknowledgment of man’s role in it. As yet, they don’t give this priority. Security and prosperity trump climate concerns by big margins.

As a filmmaker, I didn’t want to make a MacBeth. For one, there are lots of those products out there. You can tell by titles like “the 11th Hour” that things aren’t  going well. One peer of mine described it this way- your vegetarian friend made you go to “An Inconvenient Truth” and you walked out aware as in “Man are we screwed”.

Share a dream

• Alienating Consumption
• Conscious Commerce

As someone else has articulated very well, and that I will crib and crudely reduce for the sake of time, we don’t celebrate Martin Luther King because he said “I have a nightmare”. The global dream is to transform our economy into one in which all people can live well, forever.
In which alienating consumption, is transformed into conscious commerce.

• Transform the Public Discourse
• In Human Scale, In Human Impacts
• Business and Science is People Making a Difference

Motion pictures are public dreams, and both as a story teller and entrepreneur, I decided that the best product I could produce in this context would tell the story of that possibility that is in the middle of the bell curve, in the most positive terms I could, and in doing so take the public discussion of the subject out of the plane on which that bipolar line lies.

Climate being by definition beyond both the horizon and your lifetime, defies conventional story forms. So the film addresses the subject in terms of now - it isn’t about your children, but your quality of life now, today, your work, your play, your portfolio, your sense of security, and your sense of purpose. Tomorrow and every day into the future. It talks about whether or not you will have to give up your comfort, your convenience, and your sense of security. And it does so by addressing how business and science aren’t institutions or faceless giant agencies or corporations, but people - regular sized and shaped, with families and hobbies, who are committed to service of others.

What is Required of You

• Leadership
• Persistence
• Take risks
• Collaborate

The first is defined by one of the sources in the film as “doing the right thing earl”. You, by virtue of your attendance here are already stepping on that path. This is, as one of you reminded me earlier this week, something that is supposed to take forever.

Being early in the game, you must be willing to fail. And this is the biggest lesson and delta in how we approach everything. A hundred years ago, one person would go out on the ice and find the pole. Henry Ford would build the whole car and factory. Today the breakthroughs happen when teams of specialized knowledge work together. The polar ice person needs the wildlife expert and they both need the satellite resource and super computer folks. Business needs policy, and the government needs firm signals from the electorate, and so on. Talking to your competition is a part of getting the right policy. Everybody needs partners.

- - -

For more information and full-length distribution opportunities, you can contact Patrick and check out his blog.

Following some years in the social media space, I have read many great books on the subject of “the end of business as usual”, online communications, marketing, sociology, and have learned quite a great deal. But one book kept on popping up here and there as the so-called “Bible” of this movement: The Cluetrain Manifesto

Sitting on my shelf now for over 6 months, I finally picked it up a few weeks ago and must say that I haven’t been so thoroughly entertained by a sociology/business book in a LONG time. The entire 95 theses and the rest of the chapters can be found online as well, in case you’re interested.

So the Cluetrain is already 10 years old at this point, and reminds me in many ways of the coming impact Natural Capitalism and The Ecology of Commerce would have on the sustainability movement. Big changes were afoot and still are. A better future was possible and happening right now - Markets are Conversations

While the term Conversations has been used and thrown so often with sometimes vague and happy connotations, and other times with a deep analysis of the underlying societal changes underway, the verb Converse and its nominalized form Conversation, do best summarize the impact of the networked world’s effect on interpersonal communications.

Interpersonal. The brand, the company, the nonprofit — - all are mental constructs for what we’d like to associate with a personality or bag of experiences. Yet, we know they’re made of people, and in the words of Dale Carnegie and countless others including Jeffrey Gitomer, people like to interact with other people. One can be a fan of a brand/org, but to get the best interaction - one needs to connect with another person. Hence the just claim by my pal Alan Wolk that, “Your brand is not my friend”. So if you’re an org of any sort, don’t approach us  and attempt to entice favorable appeal by employing semi-conversational language just so you can increase your friend/follower numbers. That’s just another version of advertising. Use the human voice in your communications, sure. But if we’re going to have some kind of relationship, we’re going to come to you on our own accord.

Is there much more to say other than Be Approachable and Be Personal? Not really, except in Locke and Weinberger’s own 12-step program for internet business success: Relax, Have a sense of humor, Find your voice and use it, Tell the truth, Don’t panic, Enjoy yourself, Be brave, Be curious, Play more, Dream always, Listen up, and Rap on.

Additional Resources:

• Citizen Marketers and Creating Customer Evangelists, by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba
• Personality Not Included, by Rohit Bhargava
• Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
• Secrets of Social Media Marketing, by Paul Gillin
• Valeria Maltoni (see also her discussion of the Cluetrain)
• Seth Godin
• Word of Mouth Marketing, by Andy Sernovitz