Evolutionary Provocateur

Political Change and a New Level of Leadership

World-wide yesterday all attention was on the U.S. election. Parties were planned right across Canada preparing for Obama's victory. There is a lot at stake in Canada. Last time when Bush got in, there was a massive exodus north. With U.S. foreign policy impacting all countries in the world, it is natural to be paying attention. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, former Prime Minister of Canada and one who is well remembered as a true leader once said that living next door to America is like a mouse sleeping next to an elephant. Even when the elephant means no harm, everytime it rolls over the mouse has to watch its ass. Obama's victory is being hailed by Afro-America's as their recognition. True... and it is more than that. It recognizes that the world is made up of diverse thinkers, perspectives and visions. Only by recognizing that diversity can we learn from it.

Here is the copy of an email I received from my friend Wayne Turmel, host of the Cranky Middle Manager and Working Weekly show.

Hi everyone. The house is quiet because everyone else is still asleep. We didn’t get to bed til 2 because we were part of the crowd you saw on the news last night in Chicago’s Grant Park…. 250,000 people, not usually my scene since I hate crowds but I wasn’t going to be this close to history and not see it for ourselves. We drove to the airport and took the EL (the subway here) to the park. We stood in the non-ticket holders area with people of all ages and colors basically watching CNN on television together.  

 http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-081104-obamarally-panorama-html,0,2489411.htmlpage

It was the warmest November  night on record. Clear, warm and beautiful. A few drunken yahoos but they were happy drunks… it was the most amazing experience…young, old, black, white… every cliché you could think of. I saw a Muslim man in full dress robes  and his 10 year old son standing next to tattooed young white people, flamboyantly gay men hugging old church ladies and everywhere African Americans of all ages just wanting to be there for the moment. There were smiles and tears all around. It was standing room only and claustrophobically tight but we made room for one older African American woman who had to sit in a collapsible chair. She kept apologizing but said she had a bad hip. Later she was pushing closer to the screen- I asked her if she wanted us to make room for her chair- she said “I’m too excited to hurt”. 

 The crowd cheered every projected win and booed every projected loss… and at 10:05 they came back with the news that we had a new president.

 For the most part it was subdued, like in church.  Everyone sang the Star Spangled Banner along with the woman on the stage before B O spoke. A few people booed McCain but everyone shushed them up and for the most part listened respectfully.. when Obama spoke you could hear a pin drop… even though most people couldn’t see well and we were packed like sardines… you could hear the occasional sniff of stifled tears, but mostly if you looked around you saw smiling faces, almost rapturous.

 As soon as the speech (I told N that years from now her kids would be studying that speech in school)  was over we turned and walked a mile back to the train station. The streets were full of people… singing chanting, “Yes We Can” and just bubbling over with happy energy.  While the more paranoid about us looked for signs of trouble, there were none. The crowd poured into the streets, cops and riot police stood by laughing and talking to the walkers. We got home about 1:30.

 I have to download something from the internet now. Months ago I promised Nora that if Obama won I would take out my citizenship because a country that would elect him is the country I moved to, not the paranoid, frightened, scary place we had become. Next presidential election my daughter and I will both cast our first votes together.

 Just wanted to let you all know what was going on in our world…. Now the world spins again and we get on with our lives but this night was something special and I’m so proud and honored to have been part of it….  Off to get coffee and start another (new, freakishly beautiful) day.

For those angry about Obama's win, it might help to know that anger is an expression of fear. Fear is how we, globally, entered into wars that cannot be won. It appears that we have the opportunity for a higher level of leadership - one based on a more conscious and compassionate view. Moving from seeing the political regime of the day as protector versus leader will require all to be vigilant about their view of the world.

Politics, Curiosity, and Adaptive Systems

Last week my daughter and I went to hear Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister of Canada. Kim was the first female to hold the highest office, speak at the University of B.C. Kim was elected as the first female PM of Canada in 1993 and the first PM to hold office at all three levels of government (federal, provincial and municipal). Circumstances dictated that an election be called immediately and her party was subsequently defeated. Our loss; the U.S. gained as she now lives south of our border.

Listening to Kim’s reflection on the state of politics in Canada and the U.S. took me back to my own time in Ottawa (Canada’s version of D.C.) during the early 90’s when I worked with the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology staff on rolling out a nation wide public consultation process. The bureaucrats, political staff and Minister went to communities, asked key questions and listened in a round table style format. At that time, the premise underlying the intiative was good government equals good politics. When the party lost in 1993 and the bureacracy buried the community work (or so I am told), the legacy of the process was carried on by communities who had redefined their economic future on their own terms. This spring, I facilitated public consultation in two communities on the revision of

Canada

’s health care act… an outdated piece of legislation entering a new societal context. The political style was totally different and a throw back to a style of politics where telling the public what they want to hear could buy you time, not withstanding the need to clear away fact from fiction; interpretation from intention.

So why do I raise this now?

Kim observed in her talk that the most important quality a politician can have is curiosity. Curiosity is an intrinsic quality; one that comes from an insatiable appetite for understanding what is going on in society today. What are people thinking, feeling, and seeing? Curiosity is not typically present when fear has gripped the mind with a preoccupation to survive at all costs. Those committed to democracy must retain a vigilant sense of curiosity or fear can wind up running the show:  fear of loss, fear of losing control, fear of fear…

Which brings us to the current election(s)… as the speed of change accelerates, institutions mired in the fear of change rely on structures that worked during the time of their conception but lack the flex to adapt. Cracks are showing and widen daily presenting the signal and the opening for the necessary adaptations to be made. If they go unnoticed, then breakdown occurs. The media are another institution under pressure to change particularly media who feed the public a menu of fear, victimization and Chicken Little (the sky is falling). While many things can be said to logically explain why the markets melted down, or why politicians are facing a crisis of leadership, there is a sense that there is more to it than that.

Educational leaders in B.C. about ten years ago had the option of applying Whole Scale Change to the system to redesign it to better fit the times. The prevailing view was that it took more energy to create a system that worked for the times, than it did to carry one that was completely outdated, leaving progressive educators and administrators to carve out a path in spite of the systemic beliefs that held things in place.

What all the institutions under siege right now seem to have overlooked, missed the train on or just plain don’t know, is that they are living systems – networks of living systems which need nourishment from the outside to thrive and survive. The conscious oversight to see when the system needs attention is guided by curiosity and a capacity to witness from a deeply detached yet caring place. Living systems are complex, which might be why politicians take the easy route, yet they are not that complicated and operate on pretty simple principles. My friend Carol Mase on her blog, Organizations as Organisms does a wonderful job of explaining just what that means to the U.S.

right now as she explains the current U.S.election as a complex adaptive system. Pop on over and have a look.

 

 

Interconnectivity and Economic Turmoil - Fear and Consequence

As a member of the Mensan Canada network, discussion can cover all sorts of territory. With the permission of one member, Canon Bryan, I am posting his recent observation of the near crash of global financial markets because it does a wonderful job of revealing how everything is connected, including things that don't seem to be. For example, the war in Iraq and the near collapse of world markets. Here is a word from Canon...followed by more words on corporate awakening from me.

First off, I can't help but think that 90-95% of the population has no concept how close we came, or how close we still are even at this moment, to a scenario that is practically unthinkable.

As of now, the plan is that the US Congress will approve legislation that will allow $700 Billion from the US Treasury (to be paid for with future income tax revenue) to be spent to purchase assets that are currently collateralizing spoiled debt. The debt is spoiled because those underlying assets have lost most of their value. Much of the asset base is real estate. The reason for the real estate collapse is simply the bursting of a great bubble which had been forming for about
10 years. A lower dollar, due to an erosion of foreign investor confidence (perhaps due to 5.5 years of war costing $1B/week), leading to an increase in rates, would certainly be enough to light that tinderbox.

But what is really at stake?

If this government bailout does not occur, this is the likely scenario:

Several household name banks have already failed, been bailed out, or sought survival in a merger. Once again, this occurred because the assets supporting their mortgages had lost such enormous value. Even if the banks foreclosed on everybody, they are so deep in the hole that they could never expect to come out. The risks of these mortgages were spread far and wide in the global financial system, effectively multiplying the disaster, and setting up a game of dominoes.

Coupled with this, massive bets that these banks stocks would go down perpetuated their downward spiral, and virtually all banks and pensions and other managed funds are invested in these bank shares.

Without the bailout, other banks would have been failing all over the landscape. This sort of effect always accelerates as it goes forward. The ultimate result, likely within a month, would have been the failure of the United States Federal Reserve -- the US Central Bank. 

 

The entire

United States of America

would declare bankruptcy.

 

Imagine you and everyone you knew had deposits at banks: checking accounts, savings accounts, investment accounts, life insurance policies; and one day, all these account balances were rendered at zero. One day, you and everyone you knew would have zero. No savings, no cash to draw out, all credit cards canceled.

This zero-balance effect would be coupled by super-hyper-inflation.  Gasoline would go from $4.00/gallon to $4,000.00/gallon within days, and then to $4,000,000.00/gallon within a few more days. As would the price of bread, eggs, clothes, electricity, and other necessaries.

This would of course not only affect the United States, but would spread around the globe, creating terrible conditions everywhere, since the US is the world's largest debtor by far, and all that debt would be in default.

A financial nuclear winter would likely persist for a period of months or years. And to think, all this may still happen if the US Congress does not pass this legislation within the next week.

It is truly frightening, and so it is probably best that most people do not understand the implications fully. (posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2008) by Canon Bryan, Managing Director, ACB Analytics Inc. [cbryan@acbanalytics.com or 604.329.1210.

Whether you agree or not with Canon, the scenario he presents here reveals an underlying dynamic that strings together one decision to a series of consequences with global effects. Lest anyone be tempted to minimize the notion of interconnectivity, the results are evident. Many corporations wander down the same addictive path, where addiction to a narrow or rigid train of thought or belief system may well be the cause of the breakdown that must take place before the breakthrough to a higher level  of leadership, where contribution as a definition of profit and compassionate care for employees is achievable. I prefer to hope that wiser minds will prevail so the course can be turned before more innocent lives are lost to hopelessness, dispair or a debilitating sense of powerlessness.

With my thanks to Canon.   

2010 Olympics and Performance

On March 14th I attended a sport, culture, sustainability dialogue program hosted by students in the Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue for Simon Fraser University in  Vancouver, B.C. It touched a number of points for me that signal a time to move beyond old modes of we-they and power-control dynamics. Several assumptions were at work:

Assumption #1. Athletes represent the elite of athletes, therefore they must also be the elites from society.

Jeff Adams, ParaOlympian and Olympian pointed out that athletes are not born with silver spoons in their mouth. Many have overcome huge levels of adversity to get to where they are.

The opportunity from this reality is to use the athlete's  journey as a way to remember that is it not what life gave you but what you make from the life you have that truly counts. Those who would point to the disadvantaged as the disempowered and victims can use the inspiration that many of the athletes offer to elevate their own position to a stronger and better place of contribution.

Assumption #2: That VANOC or the Government should do what must be done...or nothing will happen.

This apparently ignores the incredible innovative thinking that governments are rarely capable of. The institutional framework was not designed to embrace and support innovation. Working with multi-levels of government has been an interesting enough journey as jostling for lines of authority and power interspersed with how much accountability and responsibility any level of government either can or are willing to accept.

The opportunity is to insert the BIG WE...what can WE collectively do together with each party playing a role. Up until Wednesday, I knew what VANOC was, but not what it has been doing. What i do know is that no agency can uplift victims, carry the disempowered and disenfranchised. This is the time where a collective effort with out of the box thinking is the only kind of thinking that will truly create sustainable results. It commands every ounce of self-leadership capacity dormant in each individual to come out and play. The legacy then, becomes the contribution of each person’s highest level of leadership in the process leading up to and during the games.

Assumption #3: Not really an assumption but the question was raised on the idea of combining the ParaOlympics with the Olympics. Once again, Jeff brought forward information that really indicates the energetic driver for what the experience is all about.

The motto for the Olympics is: Faster - Higher - Stronger

The motto for the ParaOlympics is: Mind- Body-Spirit

Athletics is a vehicle for elevating the disadvantaged to a higher level of achievement. Which motto do you think will truly inspire the highest level of human potential?