vesterberg.se

Who could imagine that my dog would find such a little fellow one morning? It is April, 30th and about 8 degrees Celsius in the morning. The snow is barely gone.

It isn’t a poisonous snake and it was very dull, but I reacted quickly as you can understand.

Later, my dog found another unexpected fellow in the woods…

Songs from the wood; wonderful tones from flute and birds. The hat is mine and the young man is very familiar. He’s a great guy.

Last weekend I read The Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski. I found the book through recommendations on Amazon and it was surely food for thought. In his book, Jaworski gives a very personal and reflective description of his own journey as a leader. He shares both the good and the bad, both successes and failures. Jaworski was a successful lawyer, but after a divorce and a personal crisis, he took a break and reevaluated his life and began a search for true leadership. He founded the American Leadership Forum and has also worked as leader for the scenario planning for the Royal Dutch Shell Group of companies.

If you play an instrument it is important that you are fully present in what you are doing. There is a state, which we call awareness, in which you can tap into a flow of music. The flow comes from the inside. If you are playing in a group, you can connect together and there is a collective flow in the music. There are of course other important factors also. The flow is sometimes called “the groove”.

In his book, Jaworski talks about a collective flow in a dialogue. A discussion can be shallow, because people hold on to their opinions. Often we unconsciously have assumptions that we defend with great emotion. They block honest heart-to-heart communication. But we can also have a deep dialogue, where people are willing to share, to be changed and to see things from different perspectives. Awareness, listening and empathy are important ingredients. This form of dialogue can be very creative as people connect together. Jaworski shares from his experience about this phenomenon, how his understanding of it was formed and how he began to practice it.

I have a number of friends with which I often have a deep and personal dialogue. Sometimes I marvel over what is happening and what is being said; understanding is enlarged and things unfold in a flow from the heart. I have written about it in a post earlier. This state may seem unexplainable, but I sense that it can be cultivated and nurtured. I really want to learn more. A deep, personal dialogue is very precious in a family, in project teams and between friends. It can also be an indispensible tool when resolving conflicts. Dialogue is one of the cornerstones in ALF, the American Leadership Forum, The organization is intended to be a national network of diverse midcareer professionals. Jaworskis vision is to contribute to a new generation of leadership.

Jaworski believes that through dialogue you can have a collective leadership. He thinks it is possible to go beyond the coalition model where separate individuals have to make various kinds of trade-offs and deals. He believes leaders can think collectively and shape the future, if they choose to serve something beyond themselves.

We have been taught that nature is a place of competition and that different species must struggle for existence. Darwin wrote “All nature is at war, one organism with each other or with external nature.” Man is supposed to be the one which has climbed the highest and now dominates nature. Obviously we have exerted dominion. But Darwin’s ideas were influenced by the prevalent classical, mechanical view of nature. He considered each species in isolation. Darwin’s theory was an insufficient explanation of what was going on in nature, a limited model.

Many scientists are reevaluating Darwin’s model today. It is evident that there is a lot of cooperation going on. The fact is that nature is a web of life where the species cooperate and need each other. There is no waste. Everything is reused. All organisms are dependent on the others for the completion of their life cycles. Each one has found its own niche.

During the last three decades a revolution has occurred in the life sciences that has enlarged the framework for understanding the dynamics of evolution. In this view, the relationship between parts or individual organisms is often characterized by continual cooperation, strong interaction and mutual dependence.

For example, the fossil records indicate that the temperature and composition of the Earth’s atmosphere have been continuously regulated by the whole of life during the last million years, even though the intensity of the Sun has changed quite much. The least discrepancy would have resulted in catastrophe and a sterile planet. We have millions of species interacting by complex feedback loops. Here diversity is a necessity and key to survival of life on planet earth.

We are surrounded and composed by microorganisms, bacteria, germs and they are indispensable to every known living structure on Earth today. These tiny fellows are not way down on the evolutionary ladder. They are the building blocks of life at this instant.

The more diverse a system is, the more resilient it is and the more able it is to withstand stress. This is the way the world operates. Obviously we should join its way of operating. Yet man has fought diversity through colonialism and industrialization. In the spirit of old Darwinism we spread out and conquered the world, ignorant of our true dependency of own environment.

If the Darwinian model is the ultimate model; we are at war, and our hope to stop this craziness is in vain. But the more I realize that the nature is cooperation and that diversity is actually a strength, the more hope rises in me. Life is all around us. Man ought to realize his place in the web of life and begin to cooperate.

As you can understand from my blog I am thinking and reading a lot along these lines. There is always a personal application also. As I was out walking with my dog today, I meditated over being part of the web of life. Fascinating. A responsibility.

The internet has changed our world and we have taken advantage of the new possibilities. The change is profound, like a paradigm shift and we need to adapt our mental models to fully utilize it. We have never before been able to reach so many and still communicate on an individual basis. I read an interesting article by Chris Anderson in Wired about the new economic model for the media and entertainment industries.

He talks about the long tail business. The tail is the titles that never became a hit. In the traditional economy many titles never make it to the stores or cinemas, because they have to reach a certain level of popularity to carry its own cost. Retailers will sell only content that can generate sufficient demand to earn its keep.

This means that people have less chance to find out about non-hits. It also means that many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually the results of poor supply-and-demand matching. Businesses think that if something isn’t a hit, it won’t make money and so it won’t return the cost of its production and distribution. We assume, in other words, that only hits deserve to exist. It is tempting for the producers to stay with a popular concept or repackage hits over and over again.

The traditional entertainment economy has been much of a push-model with its limits: not enough shelf space for all the CDs and DVDs produced, not enough screens to show all the available movies, not enough channels to broadcast all the TV programs, not enough radio waves to play all the music created and not enough hours in the day to squeeze everything out.

In the internet economy on the other hand, you have the possibility to offer much more. You can reach the masses and distribute the goods much easier, especially if it can be completely digitalized and downloadable as music and pdf-documents. You might think that people would keep buying only the hit-music if they were offered a greater variety. But no, they don’t. More than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Amazon earns money from the tail. This is a pull-model. The consumer has the initiative and the consumer likes it.

Internet has made possible a market for books, music and films at low volume per title. Variety is possible. Amazon is not only selling form the tail, the head is also represented. They have both the hits and the misses. The hits are an entry point for many.

The consumer needs some help. You can feel quite helpless standing before millions of titles. Amazon and similar e-businesses guide the customer by following the contours of theirs and other buyers likes and dislikes, easing their exploration of the unknown. They process real-time information about buying trends and public opinion. They use recommendations to drive demand down the long tail. It is a win-win situation. I buy a lot of books and music albums and this is precisely what I appreciate. I want to explore and I want to be help to do that.

Amazon recommendations based on other customers, helps us to develop our tastes and can fan interest in a book long after it was published. Cultural diversity is increased. Customers helping customers is also a prerequisite for scalability.

What I find interesting with this is that if you offer people a variety of titles, they begin to choose from among the variety. There is obviously a market for cultural diversity. People like to explore and leave the main stream. Not all, but many. Another interesting thing is that also low volumes can find a market. The trend has been towards larger volumes and units and this way can only lead to decreased diversity. I believe cultural diversity is important for our society and the internet can help variety from being swallowed by mainstream.

- He says it’s a lot of fun
- But he ain’t jumping around
- He is smiling
- But he ain’t moving much
- I believe he enjoys it
- Bah, I want some jumping and shouting
- Perhaps he does it on the inside

My youngest son Albin, discussed with me the other day the fact that stores all over Sweden are beginning to sell ecological alternatives. What is the real motivation behind, he asked me? Is it because they are concerned about our environment or is it because people are asking for these kinds of products? If you are in business, you look for opportunities to sell. If there is a demand and you have the capabilities, you want to offer products accordingly. In the last year things have changed in Sweden. Customers are looking for eco-products and small and big stores are competing to offer the soundest alternatives. There are many more or less defined labels; for example eco-something and fair-trade.

Hopefully, the definition of the labels will not be diluted. When something becomes mainstream, not every offer is what you think it is. When we have reached one level of fair and ecological trade, there is a danger that we as customers relax because our conscious feels better. Likewise, businesses relax because they continue to make money feeling somewhat altruistic. The motivation is still centered on ourselves and on our needs, on the consequences for ourselves. A bad conscience is a weak force. A relief means that we stop moving forward and true innovation stops.

I believe we need a deeper conviction, a persuasion that has become an inseparable part of us. Even if the consequences turn out bad at first, we insist because we believe. Passionate conviction is powerful. Conviction mixed with passion means that we will not be mere spectators, but become involved. To believe in something is really to act.

We can be thankful for the people in history that believed passionately in democracy, in women’s rights, in children’s rights, in poor people’s rights. They did not stop; they pushed on, because of their conviction. They were creative, they found new ways, and they conquered governments and continued in spite of oppression.

Think about this being in us also. In the small things; we might choose a more expensive alternative because of ecological or fair trade reasons. We might choose a different kind of lifestyle. Business might choose less return of investment because of sustainable reasons.

In a bigger perspective; I have a feeling that creativity can be unleashed because of our persuasion. We can reach a new level of innovation and start to find new ways of solving our problems. Egocentric innovation is not as powerful as collaborative innovation. Monocultural innovation is not as powerful as multicultural. If we are convinced we will press a little harder, we will endure a little more and we will strive a little longer. I believe, we will discover that taking responsibility for air and water will not drain our economy in the long run. Taking responsibility pays back.

Those motivated by conviction took the first step. The others followed. Who is going to take next step? Those motivated by strong conviction.

How can I develop this passionate conviction, I said to myself? The answer that came to my mind was; “touch the reality”. Touch the reality by nakedly facing the fate of the earth and the daily lives of the majority of the people of the earth. It can be a fearful encounter. But it can also be powerful. I will challenge myself to touch other countries and other cultures. Shifting the center from my world to the outside world. Ouch!

What if connections between objects are more important than objects? What would happen if you during a day prioritized connections? There are possibilities in each person, we know that. We exercise, we study, we work on our career and we spend time on our outward appearance. But think like this … what if there are possibilities in connections to other people? Unnoticed, undeveloped possibilities. Have your met people temporarily and felt like you have known each other for ages? Have you considered that you might have missed one or two of these connections, or perhaps a whole bunch of them?

What would happen if we for a day when doing our business looked around and noticed the people around us? If you are like me, your mind is most often wandering around and we don’t see when we are looking. We behave like a night train moving across the country. We have preconceived ideas of people we meet and our ideas immediately take control and hinder us from being curious and open. What if there are undiscovered treasures passing by today? New friendships? People, whom you can give something that they really need?

What if connections between objects are more important that objects? What would happen if we, for a week, put as much energy and effort in developing existing relationships as we do to develop ourselves. Do we give up too easy on relations? What you have together with your friends might be much more valuable than the sum of your separate values.

I’m sitting here in my working room at home and thinking. Discovering things about myself. Challenging myself. Some questions, aren’t they? What do you think?