Category Archives for collective action

An end to change?

Awesome reflection about change by Wendy Farmer-O’Neil entitled Change is dead:

I am proposing that the ever-emergent flow is all there is. Take that into your body for a moment and see if there is a different response.

And how do we respond to that? With self-organization, like we always have. Like there was ever anything else. Only now, we can choose to do it consciously. We can choose to learn and create processes that leverage the power of emergence, of context, of relationship, of questions. So let go of change. It is a concept that no longer serves us or our organizations. It locks us in a jail of false hope and is creating increasingly disastrous consequences. We are simply in the flow of the ever-emergent. We shape our present and future through our collective intention. Might as well step up and start taking responsibility for what you care about and see who else shows up.

Emphasis mine, HT @hnauheimer for sharing.

Leading and being lead

Holger posted a summary of a presentation on Unfolding Individual & Collective Potential in Corporations by Jascha Rohr (@jaschrohr) at the Berlin Hub: We are in the middle of a process of accelerating change that will redefine much of our lives and Jascha’s presentation looked at the implications of this change for organizations. The new type of organization he sees emerging is one in which, “everybody can and will lead and everybody can and will follow in different phases.”

In a post reviewing a new book called Herd, Sean Howard asks why we focus on the so-called influencers or celebrities as role models and leaders instead of realizing that “the reality is we follow the majority and we follow our friends.”  Holger cites an article on Swarm Theory to show that there may be no leaders, but each bee simply copies the behavior of the neighbor. And as Sean writes: “[F]rom this simple copying emerge complex systems or ecologies of behavior.”

Along the same logic, Lewis Wolpert, Emeritus Professor in Cell and Developmental Biology at UCL, insists in the BBC’s The Forum,  that cells do just fine without a command structure, suggesting this seemingly chaotic principle of organizing does not just apply to bee or ant colonies, or human herds, but that it is the fundamental principle of building any complex system, including human beings.

Does this mean that anyone can be the leader at different times, or that there are simply no leaders?

Articles on social capital, networks and learning

Very good review article on networks and learning at the Learning for Sustainability site, called Building networks for learning:

Social capital refers to those stocks of social trust, norms and networks that people can draw upon to solve common problems. But harnessing the power of these seemingly invisible networks to achieve sustainable development goals such as in public health, well being or environment is an elusive undertaking. All too often their power for supporting development is seriously underestimated. However, the downside is that misguided networking efforts can creates relational demands that sap people’s time and energy. So there is good reason to study networks, and determine the best way to manage them. The articles below offer three different perspectives of networking.

A related article I have to yet read fully is Network Capital: an Expression of Social Capital in the Network Society, which introduces the idea of network capital as a type of social capital:

This article deals with an emerging type of social capital which is labeled as ‘network capital’. It is formed from collaborative practices emerging from e-enabled human networks. It is proposed that network capital is a specific type of social capital in the Network Society, and that it holds significant value for the advancement of human development around the world.

Governance 2.0 to Improve Life in Brazilian Cities

A new internet platform is trying to connect citizen’s, politicians, public officials and NGOs to improve life in Brazilian cities. The portal allows users to highlight problems, make proposals and support or comment on problems or proposals made by others.

As of this writing there is not much activity on the portal, but it will be interesting to see if it takes off and who will use the platform.

Check it out at http://www.cidadedemocratica.org.br/.

HT to Henrique.

On creating value

There were a lot of people who were completely complicit in this grand rip-off of the financial system, because they were thinking about capturing value for themselves, they weren’t thinking about creating value.  —Tim O’Reilly in his Keynote at ETech 2009.

The principle he advocates here is Create more value than you capture. Why? because if everyone only thinks about their own return independently of the overall impact, we get system breakdown, as in the financial system, climate system, food system, … Instead we can choose to create community and lasting value!

Collaboration leads to Life2.0?

Research under the framework of the EMUDE project suggests that services created through sharing and local collaboration can reduce the individual’s impact on the environment.

What is a sustainable lifestyle? What will our daily lives become if we agree to change some of our routines? How do we reduce our environmental impact without lowering our living standards? Observations show that growing material wealth and levels of people satisfaction are increasingly uncoupled. Could the pursuit of more sustainable lifestyles also lead to better quality and more satisfaction?

via Sustainable Everyday Project » Collaborative Services; discovered via People and Place and World Changing.

Download the report here.

Policy Brief: Global Green Deal and Sustainable Development

The United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs – Division for Sustainable Development (DSD) has released the policy brief A Global Green New Deal for Sustainable Development:

The Global Green New Deal (GGND) would be part of the broader counter-cyclical response to the crisis and comprise three main elements:

  • Financial support to developing countries to prevent contraction of their economies. (…)
  • National stimulus packages in developed and developing countries aiming at reviving and greening national economies. (…)
  • International policy coordination to ensure that the developed countries’ stimulus packages not only are effective to create jobs in developed countries but that these will also facilitate generating strong developmental impacts in developing countries. (…)
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