Where Our Values Lead Us

The American Thanksgiving holiday is this week.

During this holiday many people in the U.S. reflect on what they are thankful for and what they truly value.

Perhaps that’s what all holidays are about in a way, a time for reflection on our values.

At Thanksgiving there are many things to be thankful for.

For instance, how it is possible through our hard work and through the many opportunities available to us to pursue and achieve our values in our privileged lives.

Opportunities that most people in the world don’t have, despite their willingness and ability to work hard for values most people in the world share.

Research has shown that values are fairly universal regardless of cultures or global society.

For example, we all value freedom, peace, human rights and a sustainable world we can all live in.

Those are values that require all of us to work together.

Our role is to relentlessly co-create the opportunities to make our shared values happen.

Our shared values around the world will lead us to a sustainable future.

EJ Wensing, US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Our Presentation at AEA 2009 in Orlando

Ecosphere Net member Mallary Tytel, PhD, MBA, and I will be co-hosting a panel discussion/presentation this upcoming weekend in Orlando, Florida at the American Evaluation Association’s annual meeting.

In our presentation, entitled, “A Systems Approach toward Evaluating the Triple Bottom Line” we consider organizational leadership, organizational development and their role in evolving improvement in a company’s triple bottom line. Our perspective will be from that of a complex adaptive system (CAS).  Using tools and language from complexity science and the field of Human Systems Dynamics, we will focus on opportunities for effecting and measuring change in large and small ways. 

“Triple Bottom Line” refers to the objective of focusing not just on the single bottom line of profit, as has historically been the case, but rather on the more socially responsible – and inherently more profitable over the long-term – bottom line of people, planet and profit. 

Among other topics regarding CAS, we consider systems control v. emergence along supply chains from the local to the global.  Today’s management and organizational development leaders are realizing that the complexity of global supply chains precludes their full control. In fact, it’s often better to let organizational development and leadership emerge rather than to attempt to control it.

The challenge in organizational development is to know how much of each is just right in an evolving situtation. How much to let emerge and how much to control in organizational development; and how to optimize organizational leadership within that balance. That is where evaluation comes in. 

Mallary is interested in exploring self-organization in a CAS and its relationship to improving the triple bottom line.  Her focus is in developing simple tools to assist small- and medium-sized businesses and organizations in developing strategic and tactical approaches to sustainability. 

My own focus is on how to identify the characteristics and skills of the individual leaders that are best suited for this endeavor of working within an organization that sees itself, as more and more rightfully are, as a CAS. 

Through our work in research and developing the evaluation of leadership and organizations within the real world corporate context of complex adaptive systems, Mallary and I hope to help move our world closer to a sustainable global future.

More information on Mallary’s work can be found at her website Healthy Workplaces. 

EJ Wensing

US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Saad Khan – Islamabad, Pakistan EN Member Profile

The world can seem like a big place, with problems that can be overwhelming in complexity, and that seem to further isolate us from each other.

Out of this complexity, however, regardless of religion or culture, age or gender and from within the midst of poverty, social and political unrest, and, often at some amount of personal risk, leaders are emerging.

They are adaptive network leaders, social entrepreneurs, positive deviants, leaders for world benefit, CSR leaders, boundary managers and transition managers.

What do these leaders all have in common?

They are all change agents for a better global future.

A future of sustainability and sustainable development for everyone.

They are in action at the community level, at the global level and busy linking those two together both directly and indirectly.

They are, as one author recently put it, engaged in “intentional behaviors that depart from the norms of a referent group in honorable ways”

They are the levers and drivers of cross-cultural positive individual and social change.

Saad Khan - Islamabad, Pakistan

Ecosphere Net (EN) member Saad Khan is exactly such a leader for positive change.

Saad was an integral part of the highly successful internet-based social science research initiative in Pakistan called Social Bridges that explored the interface between corporate social responsibility and sustainable development at both the domestic and international levels.

More recently he has started a blog called Socially Responsible Pakistan in which he continues to pursue a sustainable future for his country and our world.

Most recently Saad has begun writing for the Huffington Post in which he seeks to provide unique insights into the political and social forces emergent in Pakistan.

A sustainable global future is exactly that. A global future for us all.

One connected through a network of collaborative action communities and driven forward by powerful change leaders like Saad Khan.

EJ Wensing

USVI

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Review of Harvard Business Review

Last month’s Harvard Business Review (HBR) included several really great articles and commentaries about business, sustainability, and “being green”.

Several of the authors suggest that instead of simply complying with environmental standards “organizations can turn sustainability into innovation’s new frontier – achieving competitive advantage and influencing economic recovery in much the same way that the breakthrough products and business models of computer companies led the way out of previous recessions.” (HBR, 10/09, p.55)

For example, Ram Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad, and M.R. Rangaswami describe how their research of 30 corporations indicates that smart companies that view sustainability as innovation’s new frontier are yielding both significant bottom-line and top-line returns (p.56).

Other articles highlight how consumers can shape business strategies and how business actions through corporate social responsibility can shape consumer behavior and community action.

All in all it seems like things are starting to go in the direction of a transition toward global sustainability.

EJ Wensing

USVI

ejwensing@ecosphere.net

Sustainability Science and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit

In a 2003 paper published in the newly formed “Sustainability Science” subject category of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS, USA) scholars Robert Kates and Thomas Parris wrote,

“…Perhaps the most powerful lever of change is the concerted willingness of governments, business, and civil society to press ahead with the well understood actions needed to achieve the current 2015 goals of the Millennium Declaration and the World Summit for Sustainable Development.”

More recently, articles have been published in PNAS-USA Sustainability Science that corroborate the need for willingness citing that the effects of innovation of science and technology as well as governance and policy while essential, are not enough (limited in validity and efficacy).

The research is also showing that multi-scale collaborative community networks are the best way to implement innovation in science and technology toward a global sustainable future.

It comes down to an individual willingness to take action and be part of collaborative communities for sustainability.

These are not really new research discoveries nor new ideas.

From Harvard to Nunavut Arctic College.

Pelagie Owlijoot at Nunavut Arctic College, Canada recently published a document on Inuit traditional knowledge that is passed along by community elders. These are summarized as: 

Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (traditional knowledge) 

Innuqatigiitsiarniq: respecting others, relationships and caring for people.

Tunnganarniq: fostering good spirit by being open, welcoming and inclusive.

Pijitsirniq: concept of serving is central to the Inuit style of leadership; each person has a contribution to make and is a valued contributor to his/her community

Aajiiqatigiingniq: consensus decision making. The concept of consensus decision making relies on strong communication skills and a strong belief in shared goals.

Pilimmaksarniq: concept of skills and knowledge acquisition.

Piliriqatigiingniq: working together for a common cause. The concept of developing collaborative relationships and working together for a common purpose. The essential Inuit belief that stresses the importance of the group over the individual.

Qanuqtuurniq: being innovative and resourceful in seeking solutions. The concept of being resourceful to solve problems, through innovative and creative use of resources and demonstrating adaptability and flexibility in response to a rapidly changing world

Avatittingnik kamatsiarniq: respect and care for the land, animals and the environment. The concept of environmental stewardship stresses the key relationships Inuit have with their environment and with the world in which they live.

These eight principles of Qaujimajatuqangit describe old traditions of community living and individual conduct. They are not grounded in any religious beliefs, but rather in the often harsh difficulty of sustainability in its most rudimentary form. They are traditions that we can learn and take guidance from and apply to our shared future.

EJ Wensing

US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net