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.
I’ve not posted a new Blog for a while because I’ve been playing an online game called UrgentEvoke. I came across it through following a Linkedin group called Social Impact Games. The objective of the Game was to “Save the World” although I note from their latest Home page they are now purporting to only “Change the World”. Never-the-less the essence of the game is to make positive change by crowd-sourcing support for ideas that impact on issues identified through crowd-sourcing. Ultimately the game wants to inspire its participants to act in the real world by taking action based on ideas. It is run by the World Bank and directed by Jane McGonigal who designed the game.
Given that their were prizes of mentorships and seed capital I thought I would give it a go. Another opportunity to further consolidate and document my thoughts about Kahatika.
I have long since realised that the design of Kahatika could be interpreted as a never-ending slow moving game. In today’s real time communication environment you may observe that the attraction of something that moved slowly might have limited appeal. Like only appeal to those that engage in postal chess. Kahatika has elements in it’s design to ensure engagement and to retain interest between rounds of participation.
I have contributed multiple items related and unrelated to Kahatika over the last Month or so to UrgentEvoke, some of which contain circular references back to this blog. My Profile on UrgentEvoke is the access point for all of this content and can be found here.
As I finale of the game and a mechanism to make yourself eligible for prizes there is a process of submitting a final blog to say what you would do if you were successful in attracting seed capital from the World Bank. Combined with a private email to the game administrators my final submission can be found here.
The content I submitted which relates to Kahatika is as follows:-
http://www.urgentevoke.com/forum/topics/challenge-the-network?comme…
http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/learning-compassion
http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/the-dangers-of-designing-a
http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/more-realistic-look-at-money
http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/we-need-to-make-practical-use
http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/others-also-see-the-need
http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/barry-schwartz-on-the-loss-of
http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/learn5supply-of-money
http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/need-to-open-the-debate-to
http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/act1-shadowing-richard-branson
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/act6-donation-lifespring
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/imagine5-a-new-direction-in
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/act4-philanthropists-need…
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/commitment-four-the-long-…
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/distilling-the-evidence
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/this-social-innovation-game
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/the-little-red-hen-revised
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/the-journey
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/kahatika-1
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/what-motivates-you
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/act1-shadowing-richard-br…
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/learn1-innovate-on-existing
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?
In no particular order I list some quotes that have relevance to the intentions of Kahatika.
- “For it is in giving that we receive.” ~ St. Francis of Assisi
- “All communication must lead to change” ~ Aristotle
- “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” ~ Jimi Hendrix
- “Integrity is the essence of everything successful.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
- “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” ~ W.Edwards Deming
- “Everything is practice.” ~ Pele
- “You (never) change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
- “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.” ~ Buddha
- “When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
- “Love is the gift of life. It’s a human need and a privilege. It’s one of the few energies in life where the more you give it the more you have!” ~ Tony Robbins
- “The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.” ~ Tony Robbins
- “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” ~ Dalai Lama
- “There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” ~ Ronald Reagan
“The truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme; but in both extremes.”― Charles Simeon
The design of Kahatika embeds the essence of these words. Truely we “Stand on the Shoulders of Giants” ~ Bernard of Chartres, made famous by Issac Newton
Is it possible to distill your message down to something that resonates universally?
or is it only possible to continually adapt your message in such a way as to it resonates within a smaller and smaller segmentation of the population?
My interpretation of this top down vs bottom up conundrum is that you try to do both.
The adaption of your message as you progressively segment your audience will ultimately lead you to be talking to one other person in isolation and telling them exactly what they want to hear.
While on the other hand, if you truly believe in your message and you work and work on distilling your message down to the absolute essence of what you are trying to say, the last word, before your message finally disappears in the distillation process, will be, “Love”.
Logically, combining the two approaches, communication will always come from a position of Love.
Sherwin Nuland speaks of hope and the indomitable “Human Spirit”. About half way through he makes the statement “The world will not be saved by the internet, it will be saved by the human spirit”. This is as true now as the day the first humans learned to draw, the printing press was invented, and the first telephone conversation took place.
At the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nikita Khrushchev’s Human Spirit was what “Saved the World”. However, without the technology of Radio, the message that he was ordering the pull out of missiles from Cuba it would never have been delivered fast enough to have had any practical effect.
Without Tesla and Marconi I may not be here to write this blog. This all goes to show that we all have our part to play and communication is the key.
If the role of business is to identify an others pain and offer a cost effective solutions to that pain, one would suspect compassion would have a major role in business.
Should more businesses be embedding, or at least deriving inspiration from a Charter for Compassion when formulating the company mission and standard operating procedures?
Does the profit motive of business explicitly rule business out as vehicles of true love and compassion?
Lets assume for a moment that I have the solution that will save the world and an action plan to implement it.
If you think I have, you might invest in it. If you think I haven’t you won’t.
You’re a hard nosed investor, you’ve got no children to pass the world on to, you’re very self-centred and are only into what it returns to you.
Is the solution something that creates a return on investment?
The short answer is yes. (I think) The financial modeling I have done shows a Return on Investment of under three years.
What proof do I have other than the model it self?
None.
Ok, let’s assume for a moment that you are still interested.
What generates the return?
Increased efficiency is what I think produces the return. “More with Less”
We are talking about Saving the World why are you talking about ROI?
Because if I talk about Love, compassion, giving, family, communicating, justice, I become a “nut job” in your eyes, so I decided to speak your language.
Ah, so you’re starting some wacky religion?
See I told you.