From Ego-system to Eco-system – Leading from the Emerging Future!

The problem with capitalism originates between our ears!
– by Otto Scharmer of Theory-U and Presencing Institute brings the best-ever overview of requirements of the Transition Narrative (ecoNVERGE / @ Econologics) for humanity to evolve to a new Paradigm Shift.

The root cause of today’s global crises originates between our ears

 

Profound personal, societal and global renewal is not only possible; it is crucial for our planetary future. What is needed are change makers willing to lead from the emerging future; leaders who are willing to learn about and practice the journey from ego-system to eco-system economies. We have the places, living examples, frameworks and tools in hand. Now what we need is the co-creative vision and the common will to bringing it into reality.

10 insights from our new book Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-system to Eco-system Economies

We live in an age of profound disruption. Global crises, such as finance, food, fuel, water, resource scarcity and poverty challenge just about every aspect of society. Yet, this disruption also brings the possibility of profound personal, societal and global renewal. We need to stop and ask: Why do we collectively create results nobody wants? What keeps us locked into the old ways of operating? And what can we do to transform these root issues that keep us trapped in the patterns of the past?

1) The root cause of today’s global crises originates between our ears — in our outdated paradigms of economic thought

A structural disconnect between:

• the infinite growth imperative and the finite resources of planet earth;
• between the Haves and the Have Nots;
• between the financial and the real economy;
• between technology and real societal needs;
• between institutional leadership and people;
• between gross domestic product (GDP) and actual well-being;
• between governance mechanisms and the voiceless in our systems; and
• between actual ownership forms and best societal use of property.

 

Three Levels: Symptoms; Systemic Disconnects; Paradigms of Economic Thought

2) The blind spot of modern economic thought can be summarized with a single word: consciousness
3) The evolution of the economy and of modern economic thought mirrors the footprints of an evolving human consciousness

The stages of economic development that come with them:

• 1.0 Organizing around centralized coordination
• 2.0 Organizing around decentralized coordination
• 3.0 Organizing around special interest group driven coordination
• 4.0 Organizing around commons

4) To paraphrase Einstein, the problem with today’s capitalism is that we are trying “to solve problems with the same consciousness that created them”
5) Helping stakeholder systems shift their way of operating from ego-system to eco-system awareness is the central leadership challenge of our time
6) The shift from ego-system to eco-system awareness requires a journey that involves walking in the shoes of other stakeholders and attending to the three instruments of inner knowing: open mind, open heart, and open will

 

Theory U: One Process, Three Instruments (Open Mind, Open Heart, Open Will)

 

The effectiveness of accessing these three instruments depends on the ability to deal with the sources of resistance (“three enemies”):

• VoJ (Voice of Judgment): The VoJ shuts down the Open Mind by habitually judging self and others. All creativity techniques start with somehow suspending the VoJ.
• VoC (Voice of Cynicism): The VoC shuts down the Open Heart by offering an easy alternative to making oneself vulnerable. The problem with that easy exit is that it does the same thing as the VoJ: it blocks one’s opening process for accessing the deeper sources of creativity.
• VoF (Voice of Fear): The VoF tends to shut down the Open Will by not letting go but holding on to old identities, ideologies, and Us vs. Them belief structures.

7) Addressing the current global crisis at its root calls for a 4.0 update of the economic operating system through reframing eight “acupuncture points” of the global economic system

They are:

1. Nature: Close the feedback loop of production, consumption, reuse, and recycling through “earth-to-earth” or closed-loop design.
2. Labor: Close the feedback loop from work (jobs) to Work (passion) by building infrastructures that foster and ignite inspired entrepreneurship.
3. Capital: Close the feedback loop of capital by redirecting speculative investment into ecological, social, and cultural-creative renewal.
4. Technology: Close the feedback loop from technology creation to societal needs in underserved communities through needs assessment and participatory planning.
5. Leadership: Close the feedback loop from leadership to the emerging future of the whole through practices of co-sensing, co-inspiring, and co-creating.
6. Consumption: Close the feedback loop from economic output to the well-being of all through conscious, collaborative consuming and through new well-being indicators such as GNH (Gross National Happiness).
7. Coordination: Close the feedback loop in the economy from the parts to the whole through ABC (awareness-based collective action).
8. Ownership: Close the feedback loop from ownership rights to the best societal use of assets through shared ownership and commons-based property rights that safeguard the interests of future generations.

Eight Acupuncture Points of Transforming Capitalism to 4.0

 

8) Shifting the system to 4.0 requires a threefold revolution

Inversion means turning inside-out and outside-in:

• Individual inversion means to open up thinking (open mind), feeling (open heart), and will (open will) in order to learn to act as an instrument for the future that is wanting to emerge.
• Relational inversion means to open up communicative relationships from downloading (conforming) and debate (defending) to dialogue (reflective inquiry) and collective creativity (flow) in order to tune as groups into the field of the future.
• Institutional inversion means to open traditional institutional geometries of power from 1.0 and 2.0 forms of coordinating and organizing — centralized hierarchy and decentralized competition — to 3.0 and 4.0 forms of coordinating around co-creative stakeholder relationships in eco-systems that generate well-being for all.

The Matrix of Social Evolution (all system levels, all structures of attention)

the three transformations for the individual (column 1), the relational (column 2) and the institutional inversion (column 3 and 4) in the form of a Matrix of Social Evolution that integrates all system levels (micro-meso-maco-mundo) and all structures of awareness (1.0 to 4.0).
9) We need new types of innovation infrastructures in order to build collective leadership capacities on a massive scale

These infrastructures will include:

• Co-initiating: Creating spaces for convening stakeholders around a shared eco-system
• Co-sensing: Going to the places of most potential and observing with one’s mind and heart wide open
• Co-inspiring: Creating spaces for connecting to the sources of creativity and self
• Co-creating: Creating spaces for exploring the future by doing (prototyping)
• Co-shaping: Creating spaces for embodying and scaling the new through practices

10) The shift from an ego-system to an eco-system economy requires a global movement that needs to be supported by a new leadership school. That school should create collaborative platforms across sectors, systems, and generations and work through integrating science, art, and the practice of profound, awareness-based change

Such a new leadership school would be a home base for the emerging global movement of 4.0-related transformation journeys. At the same time, it would prototype a 21st century action university that integrates three forms of knowledge:

• technical knowledge (know-what),
• practical knowledge (know-how) and
• transformation knowledge (know-who: self knowledge).

 

An Ego-2-Eco Transformation Leadership School—A Set of Global Acupuncture Points

 

Set of principles that are essential for this type of school and which are designed for global-local replication:

1. Engage systems at all levels and states: Engage systems by using the entire Matrix of Social Evolution.
2. Engage all levels of intelligence: Integrate open mind (IQ: intellectual knowledge), open heart (EQ: emotional and relational knowledge), and open will (SQ: self knowledge).
3. Systems Thinking: Integrate methods and tools derived from 30 years of organizational learning research and practice. 
   
4. MOOCs: Use massive open online courses that combine course delivery with interactive personal, small-group dialogue and the presence of a global community of change makers that effects transformative change.
5. Deep immersion: Use deep dive learning journeys and generative listening practices in order to connect communities and places of most potential.
6. Science 2.0: Use scientific methods that let the “data talk to you.” The challenges of this century involve extending the concept of science beyond looking exclusively at exterior data (third-person view). We need to bend the beam of scientific observation back upon the observer in order to investigate the more subtle levels of experience of the second- and first-person view.
   
7. Presencing: Use practices that allow leaders to sense and actualize the emerging future and to clarify the two root questions of creativity: Who is my Self? What is my Work?
8. Power of Intention: Focus on the capacity to connect with the deeper intention of one’s journey, connecting us more deeply with one another, the world and ourselves.
9. Prototyping: Link head, heart, and hand in order to create living examples and prototypes that allow us to explore the future by doing.
10. Power of Place: Complement the massive expansion of online learning with an equally massive global network of vibrant entrepreneurial hubs that focus on activating co-sensing and co-creating as a gateway for unleashing entrepreneurial potential. Great innovations happen in places. Learning how to design and hold spaces for reflection, generative conversation, and system-wide transformation is a mission critical capacity today.

Charged Up – How the Fracking Industry’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future!

 

February 2013 report by retired geo-scientist J. David Hughes and published by the Post Carbon Institute which claims to debunk the possibility that unconventional fuels might turn the United States into an energy-independent petro-state.

The report forms the foundation for Heinberg’s new book, Snake Oil: How the Fracking Industry’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future

 

He talks about the implications of a fracking-fueled petro-boom from North Dakota to Pennsylvania that’s got U.S. energy executives crowing about abundant fossil-fuel-derived energy to last the next century or two.

It’s a claim that directly flouts the concept of peak oil—the point at which global petroleum production goes into terminal decline—and Heinberg’s assertion that growth (as we know it) is headed into irreversible decline.

“We’re really being sold a bill of goods,” Heinberg says, handing over a copy of the Hughes report, “Drill, Baby, Drill: Can Unconventional Fuels Usher in a New Era of Energy Abundance?” Using data provided by a Texas company called DI Desktop, which analyzed production data for 65,000 fracked wells from 31 shale plays, the report examines natural gas as a commodity. According to their findings, production rates at many of these sites are already in decline. Operators then must drill more and more to keep overall production steady, and with that comes increased energy needs, making the whole endeavor more expensive.

Aside from fracking, methane hydrates—the trapped natural gas molecules currently being scouted by Japanese research vessels and found in abundance on the sea floor—have been heralded as the next frontier. The speculative fossil-fuel goldmine forms the basis for Charles C. Mann’s May 2013 cover story for The Atlantic with the headline that declared, with the impact of a lightning storm in summer, “We Will Never Run Out of Oil.”

But then there’s the problem of net energy, Heinberg points out. “The vast majority of those resources we won’t burn for economic reasons,” Heinberg says, “because it just costs too much—not only investment capital, but it costs too much energy to get the stuff out of the ground to use it.” It’s a concept defined as EROEI—energy return on energy invested.

 

 

“As time has gone on and as I’ve studied the data, I’ve come to realize that it’s more of a process, not just falling off the cliff,” he explains.

Part of the process, for those not involved in the higher echelons of government and society where policy decisions are decided, is to live consciously.

Heinberg looks to be a man in his element, negotiating a careful balance between the heavy realization that life as we know it is headed for irrevocable change, and the simple joy of everyday living.

If humans look honestly at the crisis at hand, begin sharing, using less, being nice to each other, there’s no reason we can’t have a perfectly acceptable future, he tells me. But that means facing facts. To make a true transition, the technical piece would be relatively easy, he explains; it involves building lots of solar and wind, prioritizing electric rail and redesigning cites for walking and bicycling. Heinberg mentions his admiration of the Transition Town movement, which started in the United Kingdom and uses permaculture concepts to build resilience in communities to weather gracefully the coming economic and environmental upheavals.

 

Of most concern is whether the “fossil fuel” industry is successful in making people believe that there’s enough oil and gas to keep us going for another century, in the style in which we’ve become accustomed, he emphasizes. The oil boom in North Dakota (and elsewhere) is going to be short-lived, but it’s bought us some time—a few short years—to get to work on renewables.

“If we use that time—maybe it’s five or 10 years—to really invest in renewable energy and conservation, than so much the better,” he says. “But if we just take those five or 10 years and delay what we ultimately have to do anyway, at the end we’ll be in a much worse position than we already are.”

 

[Econologics]: Changes required for a sustainable future!

 

“Sustainable development implies a revolution in the way we now do business.” – Bill Ruckelshaus

 

– a resume of the Brundtland Revisited – 25 years after the Brundtland Commission presented its landmark report on sustainable development, its lead author reflects on what has happened since.

– by Jim MacNeill

 

Our Common Future serves notice that the time has come for a marriage of economy and ecology, so that governments and their people can take responsibility not just for environmental damage, but for the policies that cause the damage. Some of these policies threaten the survival of the human race. They can be changed. But we must act now.

 

“You can’t solve problems using the same kind of thinking you used when you created them.” – Albert Einstein

 

We not only failed to catch up with the legacy of the past, but we also could not even keep up with the steady day-by-day increase in pollution and degradation and loss of resource and environmental capital.

 

 

SOCIETY + CORPORQTE WORLD + GOVERNMENTS

 

We leaned heavily on civil society in preparing Our Common Future, but the sector we worked with was a mere baby compared to the giant of today. It is now almost a new estate of governance – a fifth estate, with enormous influence and global reach. With iPods and Facebook, members of civil society today can mobilize thousands in a minute and bring millions onto the streets. Witness recent events in the Arab world. And as a megaphone for Mother Nature, its impact has never been greater.

As for the private sector, hundreds of companies have come on board. It’s a mixed bag, of course. Not all companies, or even a majority of them, are on board. But a growing number are, and that’s progress.

I think I can say the same for governments, although, outside of northern Europe, their numbers are fearfully small. Northern Europe has led the way on Kyoto, on new energy and environmental technologies, and on the politically difficult process of shifting the burden of taxation from income to carbon.

 

Other bright spots can be found in Asia. Take China. It is today a huge new burden on the global environment, soon to surpass the West. But recently, it has also become our largest generator of solar and wind power. My friend Maurice Strong, who spends considerable time in Beijing, recently told me that China plans to build 100 new and green cities, with populations of one million or more, over the next 20 years.

 

 

GROWTH

 

All in all, significant progress has been since 1987, and the pace is picking up. Yet, we are, as you know, in a much deeper mess today than we were then.

 

Virtually everyone hails this growth as good news. After all, it has, as I said, brought a significant reduction in levels of poverty in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. It has also brought new jobs and rising incomes, and, along with that, new dignity, independence, and hope for hundreds of millions of people who never had any hope before. It has also brought education, better health, and longer life expectancies.

Isn’t that just what the commission called for? Shouldn’t we then continue to focus on creating more of it, and then still more?

The commission did, in fact, call for a huge increase in global growth to lift billions in the Third World out of poverty. And, frankly, I can’t think of any other single recommendation in Our Common Future that has resulted in more misunderstanding. Caveats are usually misunderstood – or ignored – and that call came with a large number of caveats.

In calling for a huge increase in global growth, we insisted that new growth must not be a continuation of the resource-consumptive and ecologically destructive model of the past. We insisted – indeed, our whole report insists – that future growth must be based on forms of development that are economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable. If it is not, we said, “our future will be in peril.”

 

 

PUBLIC PRESSURE & BUILDING COMMUNITIES

 

What, then, will it take to enable our leaders to change the unsustainable course we are on?  What will it take to enable them to enact the policy and institutional changes needed, and at the scale needed, to make a difference? Given the race we are in and the speed we are travelling, scale is everything.

 

There are many more political leaders today who have read the evidence and accept that

(a) we are on an unsustainable course and

(b) we are running out of time.

But on their own, they can, and will, change very little.

 

In order to act, they need to feel the pressure of public opinion breathing down their necks and driving them forward.

If the past is any guide, this won’t happen until we experience another huge pressure wave of public concern – a third wave of global scale and significance.

 

If the public cannot be aroused, we may simply have to wait until Mother Nature suffers a massive heart attack, the equivalent of a climate 9/11. Public awareness and fear may then bring people by the millions into the streets and thereby empower our leaders to finally stand up and override the powerful coalitions blocking action and actually implement measures to curb the growth of fossil-fuel production and consumption.

Perhaps it will take more than one shock to the system. We may need a series, each strong enough that to ignore it would threaten a government’s chances of re-election.

 

“we all have a duty to hope” – Barbara Ward

 

When the environmental stars align once again, and the power of an aroused public opinion combines with that of civil society, the progressive business and corporate world, and enlightened political leadership to drive the massive policy and institutional changes required for a sustainable future, the politically impossible could become the politically inevitable almost overnight. It has happened before.

 

full article: Brundtland Revisited