20 09, 2009
20 09, 2009
Awakening to the possibility of a sustainable, equitable and healthy humanity in our lifetimes!
I’ll admit it, I spent more than two and a half decades depressed about the lost opportunities to create a renewable energy economy that would spare us from the environmental disasters attendant on burning fossil fuels. Once Ronald Reagan ripped the solar panels off the roof of the White House and our government abandoned serious improvements in transportation fuel efficiency standards and pretty well killed off renewables R&D, I lost a big part of the hope and optimism of my youth. Year after year, we failed to make even the least sensible steps toward converting away from fossil fuels, and I got more and more resigned to the prospect of looming catastrophe.
20 09, 2009
Diversity and inclusion is much more than bias and privilege, continued
I’ve been proud to be part of an extended team that has embodied a commitment to honoring the individuals we work with, believing we have as much to learn from each of them as we have to share. Often, the real challenge is in helping the organizational sponsors raise their sights above the level of “minimum acceptable behavior” to envision a workplace where employees are eager to learn about others and to discover their own gifts in the process. Facilitating that kind of climate is the work I love. I’ve come away spiritually deepened and enormously optimistic about the potential for the human race.
My disappointment is, in part, seeded by anticipating working with big organizations who could do so much better for their employees and communities than they are aiming for. Some of these organizations have a lot of pain inside and dragons at the gate. They are missing an opportunity to do well while they do good, and I always have hopes for such organizations to achieve their highest potential in that regard.
Truth is, in a healthier economy, I didn’t respond to such RFP’s. We had as much work as we could properly handle and our clients shared our vision of corporate citizenship and human potential. Today, I’m taking time to look at those kinds of requests I could pass on before, and I’m really saddened to discover how many organizations are still operating in a mindset reminiscent of the late ’70s and early 80’s. At some level, I had come to believe we’d made more progress. Finally, I guess I’m also coming to grips with the fact that there is so much more to be done and the length of time we may still need to work to bring our vision to fruition.
Ah well, no rest for the wicked!
20 09, 2009
Too many Diversity & Inclusion initiatives are stuck in bias and privilege
Too many Diversity & Inclusion initiatives are stuck in bias and privilege, rather than helping people envision and enact an ideal workplace culture. I recently responded to a disappointing Diversity & Inclusion RFP that was stuck on bias and privilege, when it should be focused on helping people envision and build a workplace culture that encourages and empowers their highest possible individual and group contribution. The operating assumption, hearkening back to the ’70’s and ’80’s, seems to be that we just need to get people to stop being jerks. —-
If we can’t reach for something higher than that, we should all just go home.
Diversity and inclusion work should be inspiring; it should facilitate us in drawing on all of our individual and group resources to learn how to make extraordinarily positive teamwork the new norm, and then build upwards from there. Instead, too many organizations are treating D &I trainees like kids in detention– drilling stale definitions and business case arguments into them, pushing them to own up to their biases and then wondering why people try so hard to avoid the classes. Almost makes you wonder if they actually want their initiatives to fail. More likely, someone has made the assessment that the people in their company are so dense, so retrograde that getting them just to be nice to people is the best you can aim for. And, in some cases, the desire to get majority group members to pay for their oppressive behavior/unconsciousness/privilege leads to training designs that are basically punishing.
I’ve never worked with a group whose members couldn’t hearken back to a time when they had a really good experience working with someone different than them. They not only can remember such a time, they can identify what made that experience work out so well and can name ways to apply that learning to their present workplace. They want a healthier work climate, they want to have positive, productive, even fun relationships across difference. Now THERE’S a change objective we can all get behind.
20 09, 2009
CAFE Standards
I’m pleased to see the Obama administration proposing large increases in fleet fuel efficiency standards. In my mind, we’ve squandered nearly thirty years of potential economic efficiency and national security through egregious foot-dragging by hidebound Detroit executives and a dangerously near-sighted Congress. 35 miles per gallon would be easy to reach, if not already the norm, if we had simply stayed the course we began on in the late 1980’s, on the heels of the first gas crisis.
Now, with nearly insurmountable climate effects added to the drag on our economy and risks to our security associated with dependence on far too much foreign oil, we have to bite the bullet and get on with it. As usual, it’s a case of “Pay me now or pay me later”, and many of those who scream about our “drastic” intervention in the market are the same pundits who opposed sensible, gradual improvements when they could have been far more painless.
At this point, Detroit, the Pentagon, and ardent environmentalists all agree that this move to greatly increase CAFE standards is essential. Let’s just accept the fact that the bill has come due for three decades of self-delusion about the urgency of the energy efficiency crisis, raise the standards, and get on the rest of the challenges facing our country.
20 09, 2009
Is U.S. healthcare debate solely about politics…or something else?
I was recently asked that question, and having just come from a really stimulating presentation on recent insights about the brain (Thanks to Ginny Storj0hann), here’s what I’m thinking today about the emotional content of our national health care conversation.
The current phenomenon of healthcare debate seems to me to be made up of several overlapping and interacting elements, some of which are explained by brain-based change research, U.S. culture and political maneuvering:
1. Fearful reaction to having a Black President and all the changes in status that implies for a great many people (If People of Color are going to take real leadership positions, then the old order in which Whites, no matter what their position in the world, were always socially superior, is shifting).
2. A strong sense that the world is changing in ways that are unpredictable, uncontrollable, and potentially painful.
3. Fear that the government (or any other source of identifiable authority) will dictate important aspects of our lives at a time when many are feeling especially powerless
4. “Katie bar the door” polarity thinking that believes that any cooperation or compromise foretells eventual utter defeat
5. A U.S. cultural bias, rooted in our majority Euro-American heritage, toward individuality that leads many to be innately suspicious of new programs for collective assistance, believing that we are morally responsible to take care of ourselves, rather than falling back on help from others to meet our needs.
6. A resurgence in the long pattern of cynical and historically successful race-baiting and commie-calling by political operatives that oppose progressive change and loss of profiteering freedom.
All of these elements, and more, are weaving together to greatly intensify the natural debate on this complex topic. I think this is likely predictive of the reactions we will face as we confront many more big challenges, such as global climate change, economic restructuring, population shifts, etc. I’m not looking forward to the arguments, invective, and panic behavior we may experience, but it does seem like part of the process of hospicing the old ways and midwifing the new.
Myself, I’m hoping to stay centered on my belief that humans can find our way to ingenious collaborative solutions that will take us beyond the turmoil of these “interesting times” and into a new, more sustainable pattern of living on Earth and with each other.
