Human systems are actively self-conserving - so changing the fundamental design thinking behind them can take a revolution.
That's where we're most likely heading, led by the likes of Germany and China - towards a Third Industrial Revolution.
You wouldn't think it to look at the latest sexy, leading-edge technology products - but the design thinking underlying the systems s that deliver our smartphones and EVs is still largely stuck in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Today's supply chains are still largely 1-way mine-make-use-dump based on extracting natural resources and exploiting human systems. They've left us with challenges from ozone depletion to species loss.
Jeremy Rifkin's take on this is fascinating:
“How do you grow ... when your businesses are plugged into a second industrial revolution infrastructure of centralised telecommunication, fossil fuel, nuclear power, internal-combustion transportation for roads, rail, water and air transport, and we know that the productivity in that infrastructure peaked, and all the major industrial countries over the last 10 to 15 years?”
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jeremy-rifkin-interview-2017-6
Rifkin proposes than a Third Industrial Revolution is on its way - one where we’re moving toward a planetary digital interconnected platform. He sees three global "internets" developing and converging: the communications internet, an expanding distributed "energy "internet", and a "mobility internet of Electric and Autonomous Vehicles.
At it's best, we could be heading for a complete transformation of our economic models - one where everyone connected could potentially engage in social entrepreneurial networks to form a global economy.
But the problems with revolutions tends to be that they sneak up on the majority of us. The existing status quo with its existing power structures fights for survival, and lots of assets, businesses, careers and individuals get stranded when the dam breaks and the flood arrives.
Economist Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics provides a great visual explanation of smarter economics, where the economy is more accurately sited as a circular system supplied by both the communities and the ecosystems it inhabits.
The most powerful place to change a system is in the mindset that created it - and whether the label is Doughnut Economics or Cradle to Cradle Innovation, Circular Economy or Biomimicry, the mindset shift is the same.
The shift is in the fundamental paradigm - that business exists outside ecosystems and communities. The fallacy that "the environment" is the domain of governments and charities is increasingly glaringly obvious.
The paradigm shift - which as been happening since the 1970s - is to re-designing the human systems we call "business" and "the supply chain" so that they protect and regenerate the ecosystems and communities that business needs to flourish.
We have the solutions - catalogued by Project Drawdown. They're actionable today - in all levels of human systems - through action lists such as those of Project Regeneration and WorkForClimate.
The solutions are scaling, their efficiency and their financial benefits are increasingly quantifiable - to all sizes and types of organisation.
There's much more fun to be had delivering solutions - along with business, career and community development opportunity.
Are you missing out?
"...as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself". NUDGE, 2008. Richard Thaler with Cass Sunstein
Richard Thaler's 2017 Nobel Prize for Economics "nudged" me into finally reading the New York Times Bestseller NUDGE on the illogical nature of many default human behaviours.
Thaler proposes that those of us interested in changing human behaviour and systems should learn how to re-engineer them so that it's easier to make good choices - a process he call "Choice Engineering".
Supermarket designers apply choice engineering all the time, from putting chocolates at the checkout to displaying high-margin items at eye-level while budget brands languish at floor level.
Subscriptions that automatically renew and using a habitual parking space at work are other examples of automatic behaviours that we simply repeat without conscious consideration.
Traditional economics regarded humans as logical decision-makers, who make the best possible decision on the information they have available.
A more up-to-date understanding of human perception, human decision-making and human emotions is that we are busy people struggling to cope in a complex world - a world in which our brains cannot afford the energy to think deeply about every choice we have to make.
For example:
Thaler's books offer examples of systems changes that can ethically nudge people in the direction of choices that will improve their lives.
For anyone interested in sustainability, it's worth asking how we can ethically nudge people toward better environmental and social choices:
In one NUDGE example, food waste in canteens was reduced simply by removing trays - so people were limited to what they could carry on a plate.
In a recent UK trial, initial studies indicate that buyer behaviour is changed more when a small extra fee is charged for a disposable coffee cup than when a discount is offered for BYO mug. (Loss avoidance trumps benefit.)
Recycling rates are substantially improved by matching the shape of lid of the recycling bin to what's being recycled, such as small circles for cans and bottles, slits for paper.
Project Drawdown published the first ever research into reversing global warming and shifting to an economy that consumes greenhouse gases using current technology in April 2017.
How could we engineer better choices that shift us towards more beneficial Drawdown actions? What would contribute to better refrigerant gas management, reduced food waste, educating girls, the take-up of silvopasture or eating more vegetables?
If economic decisions were rational, the financial benefits of being sustainable (such as Interface's $393,000,000 savings) would have started a major industry shift to a regenerative economy decades ago.
Maybe it's time to try:
WHAT
AM
I
MISSING
OUT
ON (W.A.I.M.O.O) instead ?
After all, there are savings of $74 trillion over 30 years identified by Project Drawdown and private sector opportunities of $12 trillion estimated from delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals. But "look at the opportunity" could be less powerful that "what are you losing in 'status quo' thinking?"
Read Nudging: A Very Short Guide for a quick introduction to the subject.
Watch Thaler speaking on the subject here: Richard Thaler on Behavioral Economics: Past, Present and Future
Talking TO someone is just so much better than staring at myself in a video screen. (Great change from writing, too). When they ask real questions too – so I have a better sense of what interests THEM and what THEY want to know about – it's even more fun.
It’s much easier to explain what you do / why you do it in an audio recording where you're talking TO someone – especially with a good listener like Mark Spencer of Climactic.fm His questions get me out of my habitual patterns, reminding me what a crucial communications skill LISTENING is.
I sat down to talk with Mark about "the how of the how" of reversing global warming - getting smarter at innovating the human systems that underpin the delivery of the products and services we use every day.
Despite what 20th century thinkers will tell you, global warming is something we can all act on. Our individual actions compound into worthwhile results when they’re based on good information – especially when we multiply them with skilled innovation delivery.
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/climactic-657824/episodes/leigh-baker-hacking-human-syst-33670527
