Weisure may be redundant

The word 'weisure' was coined by Dalton Conley, New York University sociologist (and author of Elsewhere, USA: How We Got from Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety) to indicate the 24/7 life where work and leisure interweave. Weisure makes a value judgment and comes across as critical of the way in which many western men and women live 'lesser' lives because of its instant and in-touch nature.  I see the experience as ...

Health or sick reform?

Someone Must Pay for Health Reform is the title of an article by Catherine Arnst in Business Week (June 1, 2009). She says that, "there are only three ways to pay for universal coverage: Raise taxes, cut payments to medical providers, or ration care." How can it be in this era of systems thinking that such a view can prevail? It assumes that the current US view of healthcare delivery is about health, when it is actually about sickness. The whole current argument rages around a sick sy...

Disservice is unsustainable service

Disservice is an act intended to help, that turns out badly. How often do you have a disservice experience? Frequently, I will wager. When disservice happens, I figure it results from an absence of  generosity. If the concept of service is purely one that seeks sales and lacks a genuine desire to serve, then it is unlikely to be sustainable. There is currently a major US TV advertising campaign for a 'service' called xoom.com, that offers to transfer money more economically than ban...

Sustainable Justice

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second. More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state and federal governments about $55 billion a year. Given the poor outcomes, is this expenditure worthwhile? American justice makes a poor job of considering the system of which we are all a...

Worldly Happiness – Transcendent Happiness

We all seek happiness. Most of us want worldly happiness: things, experiences, relationships. At work we want business success. Where does that lead us? In most cases to wanting more. That is why so much of business counts growth as the reward: growth in sales, market share, profits. It produces frustration, stress and suffering. What if we could get ourselves to move on from that repetitive cycle? Where would we be headed? Most probably towards transcendent happiness. In business that may so...

Being and Doing

You can read the graphic many ways. The vertical axis represents the 'given wisdom' about business performance encapsulated in the phrase, "what gets measured gets done". The horizontal axis represents a view of management based on emergence, arising from systems thinking. While in your business either style may predominate, they are not mutually exclusive. I would like to suggest that the successful entrepreneur is able to blend the two, with a slight leaning towards the horizontal axis. ...

TechnoServe: hand up not handout

The latest story from TechnoServe is about Peet's Coffee buying coffee from Rwanda. TechnoServe programs focus on developing entrepreneurs, building businesses and industries, and improving the business environment. Partnering with Peet's they are working on developing a vibrant coffee industry in war-ravaged Rwanda. Peet's have announced that they will sell a special blend of the Rwandan coffees in their 191 cafés and online this summer (2009). Business Week (May 4, 2009) has an article abo...

Gestures and natural language to operate my laptop?

The popularity of the Wii game console that can sense gestures and voices may it seems, be the way of human/computer interaction by as soon as next year. Microsoft and HP are advanced already. HP plans to incorporate more gesture features into its TouchSmart PCs later this year. The TouchSmart tx2z Tablet PC can already do some amazing touch screen gesture recongnition. A system that can recognize human gestures could provide a new way for people with physical disabilities to interact with co...

The Tao of Sustainability

John Ehrenfeld's excellent book, Sustainability by Design, should be the starting point for anyone thinking about sustainability. With his business, academic and scientific backgrounds, he stresses a non-mechanical approach to the subject and talks about the importance of being over doing. Many in the business are starting from the point of view of curing what's wrong, rather than from the point of view of starting from the heart. Here is his view of sustainability in a nutshell (apologies to m...

Sustainability: what’s in the shadows?

In 1989, the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) articulated what has now become a widely accepted definition of of the word Sustainability: "[to meet] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The word is much used these days. In the business context, it is often used as an alternative for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), or even interchangeably with Triple Bottom Line (TBL). In any case...