The teachings of Aristotle by Michael Sanders via Harvardjustice.org cite the absolute neccesity of being involved in politics in a journey which persues virtue. Thirteen minutes into the video below we learn that in this regard practice is all important. Big business is entrenched in Politics. Many years ago I got out of big business because I believed that the politics wasn’t for good, and that I wasn’t in a position to change that fact.

Aristotle believed to live outside the politics you either had to be a god or a beast, I’m neither. But how do you turn business politics back to their original purpose? For the Good.

In aquiring any skill, albiet the skill is the art of virtue, requires practice.
Take swimming for instance. The first practice lesson could be throwing a toddler into a swimming pool and pulling them out if they looked like they are about to drown. That’s one way to get them to practice. Another way may be to encourage them to play in the shallows, building their confidence, practise water skills, play successively more swimming like games. Finally the child learns to swim.
Why is Business Politics so much like being thrown in a swimming pool as a toddler?

Dave Meslin’s talk reminds me somewhat of the sentiment of Edwards Deming’s proclamation that 96% of of all business problems are created by the system. Individuals want to do a good job, the system provides barriers to stop them.

#4 Heros I relate to my blog entry “As if you needed a Reason to Save the World”

I believe what Dave says in his talk is even more applicable to the business community than the greater civic community he speaks of.

Ricado Semler has moved from Maverick Businessman to Maverick Educator in recent years.  Why?

The link below takes you to a 2005 you tube clip about his company Semco, which includes an interview with Ricardo.

The Caring Capitalist

Ten minutes in he states that culture change in business is difficult, time-consuming and expensive and best effected before individuals enter the workforce. Do we have the luxury of not doing both? If not, how do we institute sustainable business practices through corporate culture change in an affordable and speedy manner?

You’re thinking, perhaps Kahatika has something to do with that.

The following TED talk delivered by Bill Gates speaks of his one wish to halve the cost of energy while simultaneously reducing carbon output from the production of energy to zero. He speaks of energy miracles and explains his preference for a particular miracle he favours.

I started to wipe the sweat from my brow. I don’t have to do this “Save the World” thing. Someone else is about to do it. Not only that, it’s  Bill Gates. He has a track record of performing miracles.  He has more resources at his disposal than any other individual on the planet. This will get done.

Then again, if you take note of what Bill has to say 15:20 -> 17:00 into his talk about the 2020 report card. He realises his punt on a miracle may be wrong. To reduce risk, others must also take a punt. We must accelerate innovation in all realms and even he doesn’t have the resources to back all of it.

His releasing fireflies into the audience indicated that we need to think about all ideas as it’s ideas where innovation comes from.

Only a small proportion of the global population regard their individual role as one of Research and Development, yet it’s Research and Development that we hold responsible for innovation. Bill Gates pleads for Government direct investment and incentives for R & D and yet delivery mechanisms will only deliver investment to a small portion of potential innovators.  This is conventional wisdom and doesn’t look outside the box.

Perhaps changing the system of innovation to increase individual participation is the way of meeting our new world goals. Not surprisingly, this smacks of Open Source Philosophy and hence not mentioned in his speech.  What is mentioned in the Question and Answer session at he end of the Talk with Chris Anderson is Bills inability to share detail due to the conventional wisdom of non-disclosure agreements.

At this point I remember that Kahatika is a way of having your cake and eating it too.

According to a new study by Badenoch & Clark, claims that 83% of employees think their employer lacks proper commitment to corporate social responsibility. In fact, 28% dismissed their companies’ efforts as nothing more than a box-ticking exercise.

The case could be made that poor internal communications are responsible for this interesting statistic. The employees just don’t know what is in the heart of their power brokers?
A more probable answer is that the employees are in fact the most reliable source of true understanding of the heart and mind of an organisation.

Either way, a method of measuring that heart and mind that doesn’t require expensive surveys by tiresome consultants but still ties into existing philosophies and systems of improvement would seem sensible.

I found the following video when searching for potential training partners to help with implementing Kahatika.
Again the Video is worth watching all the way through, in fact this clip comes from a cut down two hour interview.
If you are running short of time, skip through to about sixteen minutes in where Dov Seidman talks about individuals and businesses pursuing significance.

Interesting enough his words inspired me to make contact via his Company’s Web Contact form. No reply after over a week. I tried again and still no contact.
Whilst I am still inspired by the words I am at present a little underwhelmed by it’s approach to potential partners seeking to pursue significance.

Interestingly enough Dov is in good company. I also tried contacting the Case Foundation through their web contact form with no response.

There are a couple of other contact point’s in the world of  “I really want to make a difference” whose contact systems I’ve tried that are such that they are the equivalent of ignoring someone at a party who had just said “Hello, I’d like to help”, to you. Earning respect and building reputation also needs to be built into the systems you present to your community.  You will never know if the person who has just said “Hello”  has the capacity to save the world unless you engage. “Thanks, but no thanks”, is better than no engagement at all.

Perhaps Kahatika could be integrated into their systems to provide consistency between rhetoric and action?

When I speak of my “Save the World” goal I don’t mean saving the planet. After all, the known life cycle of the sun dictates the ultimate demise of our planet. Saving the sun is not on the agenda.

So when I say I want to save the world I actually want to save our species, or more correctly I want to save our species long enough for it to evolve into it’s next revision.

In the long term there appears to be only three alternatives for that to happen.

• 1. God rewrites the physical world laws to reveal a new reality that our species can survive in.
• 2. A more advanced extra-terrestrial life-form than ourselves takes pity on us and facilitates our escape from our doomed planet.
• 3. Our science and technology develops sufficiently for us to escape.

Both 1. and 2.  I can only hope and/or pray for, and as I really don’t want the responsibility of saving the world, would be really cool alternatives.

Unfortunately in my reality, three is the only alternative that I can take action on.

OK,  now that we are all convinced that without science and technology advancements we are eventually doomed. We being us and all our plant and animal friends. We necessarily can only use conservation and sustainability measures as a means to delay premature destruction of our planet long enough for our species to get off it. It seems logical to use science and technology as a means to advance conservation and sustainability to give us that time and as a byproduct keep our hand in; High tech conservation and sustainability techniques are sure to aid our escape.

I guess that means that only some of us will have the luxury of going back to a simpler less technology driven lifestyle, and only then, for a few billion years.

Some of us will need to carry on pushing the envelope of science and technology and converting our new findings into something useful using the change agent of business. This is where Kahatika fits in.

P.S. Yes I know about the “Big Rip” Theory.  If it is real I guess I’m working to give us enough time for us to develop technologies that will enable us to pass to another universe. i.e. I’m on the road to the multiverse.

The following is a TED talk by Dan Pink.  Sixty years ago Edward Deming understood the strange counter-intuitive results of experiment Dan explains and railed against the motivational techniques being used in business. Are we finally coming of Age?

Twelve and a half minutes minutes in he speaks of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.

The business tools to to help proceed down this new path are being invented now.

Kahatika is that tool.

Thought I’d take a few minutes to answer Seth Godin’s survey to see if I could get more clarity on what I’m doing with Kahatika.

From his latest blog 8 questions and why we get

• Who are you trying to please?

  • Myself
    Why? – Highest in the hierarchy of needs, Self-actualisation
    

• What are you promising?

  • To “Save the World”
    Why? – Seemed like a fun problem to sink my teeth into. Better question; Why not?
    

• How much money are you trying to make?

  • Trillions
    Why? – Because money engages peoples interest. Vast amounts of money will have them asking why?
    

• How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?

  • Not much now, as I get older more and more
    Why? – Life is a journey not a result and I have a plan that makes a large loss of freedom unnecessary
    

• What are you trying to change?

  • Business
    Why? – Because it’s the most powerful card in the deck
    

• What do you want people to say about you?

  • He gave it a go
    Why? – Hope that they may emulate
    

• Which people?

  • All people
    Why? – Everyone has something to contribute
    

• Do we care about you?

  • Probably not yet
    Why? – You, as of yet, don’t have an acceptable, safe way to practice compassion
    

Watching the World Debate on the BBC last night I noted co-winner of the Nobel prize for physics 2009 Willard Boyle’s take on the internet.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

Like him I often find the Internet Plaghh!

His idea of entrusting organisations to distill information for human consumption is a little bit like entrusting a government formed through representative democracy.

None of us have time to sift through the vast amount of information to come up with an informed opinion on science. Take climate change science as a case in point. In the end we have to trust the system. Deep inside all humans we search for love and truth and therefore, unfettered, the scientific process will eventually deliver something closer to the truth than we previously had.

Now if I could just figure a trustworthy method of distilling the wisdom inherent in our most powerful change agent, business.