Mountain Redesign: What "Davos Man" Should Be Doing

Originally published in The Huffington Post on January 28, 2009.

The Economist has published an essay on the World Economic Forum in Davos entitled "Mountain Reboot", which says, in part...

It is generally agreed that the system needs rebooting. The Davos agenda, entitled "Shaping the Post-Crisis World", is laden with soul-searching discussions about the mess, from the brainstorming session on "What Happened to the Global Economy?" and an "interactive dinner" called "36 hours in September: What Went Wrong", to CNBC's debate, headlined "No Way Back".

... and sums up this year's event as follows:

Mr Schwab (the World Economic Forum's founder) is likely to be delighted that this year's Davos will feature a record crop of heads of state and politicians. This marks the latest stage in the evolution of the World Economic Forum from a gathering of European businessmen trying to figure out how to get more trade liberalisation into the leading talking-shop for the global elite. Although it is not a decision-making body, the true test of the Forum's value will be whether the week's chatter will lead to action. Having led the world into its current mess, will Davos Man and Woman find a way to lead it out again?

The essay's title -- "Mountain Reboot" -- implies that the system that has crashed just needs to be restarted, like an old computer. This is the wrong metaphor. We don't have a system that needs to be restarted. We have an obsolete system that needs to be redesigned!

I wish the organizers of Davos had invited some engineers and architects to lead the "What Happened to the Global Economy?" brainstorming session, because when something collapses on its own -- as capitalism has -- engineers and architects know to look at the principles used to design the system in the first place and see which of those design principles are the reason for the collapse. Replacing those principles with new principles that work... that will prevent a future collapse... is what they do. (I used to be a civil engineer. That's why I know this.)

Taking this approach, I see that the current system was designed when the world consisted of separate, independent nations that could survive in an environment in which they competed with each other for dominance of the world (putting aside that some of them would be destroyed during the occasional war). "Balance of power between nations" was the catch-phrase. The current system was also designed when "never ending consumption and growth" (including never ending growth of profits) was an essential part of the business world's foundational beliefs.

We now know that "competition for dominance" and "consumption / growth" are obsolete principles.

Why? Because we truly are now in an interdependent world (both economically and regarding the challenges we face, like global warming). And because sustainability -- (the wise use of what we have, including the free energy supply from the Sun) -- has replaced never ending growth and consumption as how we now know we need to live.

It is time for our economic system to catch up with our physical, technological, and sociological realities. The gross mismatch between a competition and growth driven economic system -- functioning in a world that knows we are one human family that needs to live together in peace (and finally has the technological ability to do so) -- is why capitalism has crashed. Capitalism as currently designed must be replaced, not "fixed"... not "rebooted".

Just as you must switch from a car to a boat when you begin traveling on the ocean instead of dry land, our world's leaders must organize around designing and implementing a new economic system appropriate to this totally new world. This is what Kofi Annan knows we need. He has written "At Davos, our business and political leaders must show they understand that our world has shifted for good and that we have to change with it or perish."

Perish we will, if we think using an obsolete system will enable us to travel in the new, "one world" waters we find ourselves in now.

Celebrating Capitalism's Death? Not so Fast...

(Originally published on The Huffington Post on 19 September 2008 as a follow up to an essay entitled "Capitalism Is Dead. Now What Do We Do?" which was published on The Huffington Post on 17 September 2008)

Welcome to our brave new post-Capitalistic world.

Today our leaders in Washington announced (all the details to come later) that the Federal Government is going to rescue the financial system from total collapse.

You can read the story as reported by The New York Times here and, of course, more details of this plan will come out in the hours and days ahead. But I want to address the very first part of The New York Times' report: the reaction of the markets around the world...

Stocks shot wildly upward Friday morning after the federal government moved to try to restore confidence in the financial markets.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose more than 400 points only moments after the opening, and later settled up more than 300 points. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 was up nearly 3.5 percent. Markets in Europe and Asia also traded significantly higher, with stocks in London and Paris up more than 8 percent.

There is a celebration going on. This doesn't surprise me. But I'd like to raise the following point from the world of Systems Thinking:

Just because you stop something old that is bad, doesn't mean you will automatically start something new that's good.

Our government has stopped something it considers to be bad. It saw the collapse of the economic system coming. The action it has taken has -- and this is me talking, not our government, of course -- ended Capitalism here in America.

Actually, its not just me talking. Here's a report from The New York Times on what financial leaders in the rest of the world think about what we are doing here. They know America is no longer a Capitalistic society either. From this September 18th report...

"I fear the government has passed the point of no return," said Ron Chernow, a leading American financial historian. "We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams."

The bailout package for A.I.G., on top of earlier government support for Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has stunned even European policy makers accustomed to government intervention -- even as they acknowledge the shock of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

"For opponents of free markets in Europe and elsewhere, this is a wonderful opportunity to invoke the American example," said Mario Monti, the former antitrust chief at the European Commission. "They will say that even the standard-bearer of the market economy, the United States, negates its fundamental principles in its behavior."

Mr. Monti said that past financial crises in Asia, Russia and Mexico brought government to the fore, "but this is the first time it's in the heart of capitalism, which is enormously more damaging in terms of the credibility of the market economy."

We no longer have a "market economy" here in America. Capitalism is dead.

But what are the people on Wall Street and other financial centers celebrating? The end of something bad. But -- I assert -- not the start of something new that is good.

Our government literally sees that the Titanic is sinking. And it is using its extraordinary power to raise the Titanic out of the ocean, shake all the water out of it (literally bailing it out), and place it back in the ocean hoping it will then sail on.

But the Titanic cannot sail on.

That's because the Titanic that is our global economic system is fundamentally flawed. It is based on a belief that we are still sailing in a zero-sum world, a world of scarcity, a world where there will always be too many people chasing too few resources. The sustainability scientists... and those schooled in advance social and managerial sciences as well... know this is no longer true. They know an abundance-based world is what we live in now, from an objective reality point of view. They know that the only thing in the way of that becoming the reality we all live in is the design of our political-economic system.. because it is still a scarcity-based design.

The American government's effort is very impressive in scope... but not in sophistication. It is an 800 pound gorilla approach, involving a huge willingness to throw money at the problem. But, intellectually speaking, it is "the blind leading the blind". It is "experts in the past" attempting to solve a problem whose root cause they cannot see. None of them has ever even heard of - as best I can tell - that scarcity is an objectively obsolete way to view the world. None of them has ever seen what is at the foundation of the work of people such as William McDonough, Amory Lovins, or the late Buckminster Fuller.

It is a tragedy in the making, because they are missing a huge opportunity to truly do the right thing... to take a sophisticated -- rather than 800 pound gorilla -- approach to this crisis.

A sophisticated approach.... one led by people who know how to work with the fact that the present is different from the past -- i.e. designers -- would address the fundamental fact that our economy is based on a zero-sum mental model in a global reality that is actually an abundance-based world waiting to be born.

As a designer myself, I saw this situation when there was a smaller -- but still very visible -- challenge to the stability of the global economic system. This was in October of 1998. At that time, BusinessWeek published an editorial called "The Age of Uncertainty". In that October 26, 1998 editorial, BusinessWeek said:

In the blink of a summer's eye, the psychology in America has changed totally. People suddenly don't know what to think about the economy, their investments, or their future. Before July, the U.S. had economic nirvana. Now confusion reigns. Volatility dominates markets. Hedge funds blow up. Deflation looms. The Asian contagion spreads. Russia defaults. The dollar plummets. CEOs worry. And Washington fiddles with impeachment. Yet the economy still feels pretty strong. So what is really going on out there?

In response to that editorial, I wrote a letter which BusinessWeek published on November 16, 1998. Here's what I wrote back then:

IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY, ALL PARTS NEED TO PROSPER

"So, what is really going on out there?'' you ask, in ''The Age of Uncertainty'' (Editorials, Oct. 26). For a more complete answer, look to the principles of systems thinking. A ''confluence of events'' is not the only thing masking the true fundamentals of the global economy, creating this ''fog'' you refer to. The ''fog'' is being created by the tendency to see globalization from a perspective grounded in our history of living in a world of separate, independent nations. The world's economy has become one interdependent system, yet we continue to view it through independent eyes.

What's really going on, from a systems perspective, is that a new, single, global system is struggling to be seen for what it is -- a system that can prosper only if all of its parts prosper. It is a single system, one that innately knows that either all of it will make it or none of it will. That's the way healthy systems work. The business world will prosper beyond its wildest imagination once it cuts through this fog and stops viewing the future through ''past-focused eyes.''

I still believe everything I wrote almost ten years ago.

The business world will prosper beyond its wildest imagination once it sees the future for what it can be. Some businesses will have to change more than others to take advantage of this new opportunity, but that's what the best businesses do, right? (Weapons manufacturers will have to change the most, as war is finally seen as the obsolete "international development tool" that it is. But that's okay. The skills of those corporations can easily be used to study, analyze, and produce constructive solutions -- especially highly scientific ones -- to our sustainable development challenges.)

This business world mindset is why the business strategy book Blue Ocean Strategy has been a global best seller since its release in 2005... because business leaders are always looking for the "blue ocean" of "no competition"... the economic landscape where they can operate first.. offering new products and services that do and offer things that no other business is selling.

Well, there is a huge blue ocean available to all the world's businesses now. It is the post-scarcity, post-zero sum Capitalism world that is waiting out there.... just waiting for us to reach out for it.

I hope at least some of our business and political leaders are in enough of a shock that they will look for new ideas and new answers such as those I am talking about here.

We don't have to settle for 800 pound gorilla thinking. We can innovate our way out of this crisis, with our eyes completely open to the true nature of the challenge we face... open to understanding the root cause of the challenge we face. And by understanding the root cause of the crisis we are in - that we literally see fighting as the "first principle" of living when cooperation and collaboration should be the first principle -- we can design our way to a better future... to an economic system that will provide all businesses -- and all the people on Earth - with more prosperity than they ever believed possible.

We must not just stop something old that is bad. We must start something good that is new.

Addendum: Saturday the 20th, 8:45am

To give people hope that society can continue to evolve (mature), I invite you to watch the opening of this landmark TV series "The Day the Universe Changed", hosted by James Burke, which first ran in the late 1980's on PBS. Mr. Burke went on to host the similar series about this history of human progress, "Connections", "Connections2" and "Connections3". Mr. Burke's current work can be found here.

Capitalism Is Dead. Now What Do We Do?

(Originally published on The Huffington Post on 17 September 2008)

Capitalism is dead.

And I'm not surprised.

I'll explain why in a minute, but first here's Capitalism's obituary. It's the New York Times' lead story on the bailout of A.I.G....

WASHINGTON -- Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.

The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank's history.

With time running out after A.I.G. failed to get a bank loan to avoid bankruptcy, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened a meeting with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain the rescue plan. They emerged just after 7:30 p.m. with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke looking grim, but with top lawmakers initially expressing support for the plan. But the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.

Hmm... "...the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with."

Controversial? No. Not to me. Confirmational. That's what it is.

It confirms that our nation is not willing to let Capitalism be Capitalism, except for us little guys of course. But here's the thing. If Capitalism isn't Capitalism for the Big Guys, then it isn't Capitalism for the little guys either.

Just like there's no such thing as being a little bit pregnant, there's no such thing as having a little Capitalism over here and a little Socialism over there. You can't have two economic systems operating in one country at the same time, at least not if "all men are created equal" is written in that country's founding documents.

Sorry, my friends. You either have Capitalism or you don't.

And here in the USA, we no longer have it. It's dead.

Think about this. Our government has just decided -- without asking any of us, including our Congressional representatives -- that $85 billion more of our money should be used to cover the actions of (and pardon the unsophisticated language here) stupid, greedy, criminal people. Stupid, because they didn't have a clue that what they were doing would have such negative consequences. Greedy, because all they could see were short term dollar signs in front of their eyes. Criminal, because they just robbed you and me of $85 billion dollars by holding a "we're too big to fail" gun to the head of the US government.

They should have let A.I.G. fail, because -- if that had brought about the collapse of the global economic system -- that would have just sped up our journey to a point of systemic collapse we are destined to reach anyway. I say destined to reach not because it's God's will but because no system can continue to function when its fundamental design is flawed. You see, the current global economic system is based on a fundamental assumption that -- while it was true when the system was first set up -- is no longer true today.

Let me give you another way of thinking about this. If a car that is designed to handle any road condition at any speed suddenly finds itself traveling across the water, it will quickly sink below the surface even as its wheels keep spinning. And, if the driver remains oblivious to the fact that there's no longer a road under his or her car, that driver will die.

We are no longer on land, my friends. We are in a car when we should be in a boat (or maybe an airplane). The global reality has shifted, but our political leaders are largely blind to this reality. They think we're still on dry land.

More about all this in a minute. But first, back to the US economy...

The funny thing is, I've known that a significant portion of the US economy is Socialistic for years. "What are you talking about?", you ask? "The Military Industrial Complex," I answer.

You do know that all military weapons are purchased using "cost plus" contracts, in which businesses are guaranteed a profit, don't you? And that literally every weapons system comes in over its original budget... and that those cost overruns are absorbed by the government, not the arms manufacturer? There is no Capitalism in the Military Industrial Complex. It's all Socialism, justified by the concept that these weapons are so important to American security that the companies that manufacture them have to be guaranteed a profit, so they don't accidentally go out of business. (By the way, I worked in contracting years ago at the Army Corps of Engineers. So, I know something about how military contracts work.)

Now, getting back to the death of Capitalism in America as a whole, don't be so sad. You know the expression: "From every emergency, there's a chance for something new to emerge."? Well, that's where we are.

We are in one hell of an emergency. And - if you'll step back for a minute - you'll see it's the opportunity of a lifetime.... the opportunity to stop using what no longer works and figure out what does.

And now I'm going to surprise you by (partially) agreeing with John McCain. He says we need a Commission to study the problem. And I agree. But we don't need a Commission of the kind John McCain suggests we have. His Commission would consist of financial experts. And that won't do. Because financial experts are experts in the past.

We need to bring specific, outside of Washington expertise to the party. But they must be experts in the future, not the past.

And what kind of people are experts in the future?

Designers. That's what kind.

Designers know how to envision what's possible from the best of what we know how to do today. They know how to take a clean sheet of paper approach to figuring out how to fulfill a particular need.

Designers know how to take a system that no longer works... determine what assumptions (or design principles) used to build the system are still correct and which are incorrect... substitute new assumptions or principles where necessary... and develop and implement a new design appropriate to the reality of today.

We need people like that... people who know that a tipping point has been reached... that the ground on which our old economic system has stood has disappeared... and that, as a result, the old system is totally dysfunctional. But at the same time, these experts must know how functional - how elegantly functional - our new economic system can be!

We have a chance for something new... something beautiful... to emerge from this emergency! But to do this, we need people who understand how to take a culture through a Great Transition... a transition based on recognizing we're no longer on dry land, as I mentioned above.

So, if we are no longer on dry land, where are we?

Well, the "dry land" of the past is the zero-sum, fixed pie, scarcity of resources based economic model that has existed since the beginning... since the time when two groups of cave dwellers fought over a watering hole that contained enough water for only one group to survive. Humanity has been on that "dry land" for a long, long time. But science and technology - including the power to capture limitless amounts of energy from the Sun - has progressed to the point where we can live in a society based on an economic systems based on abundance (not scarcity).

A world where it's possible for all survival needs to be met. That's where we live now. Call it water or air, it's definitely not the dry land of the past.

And that's why Capitalism has died. Because it is a system that is compelled to try and make more and more money based on Darwinian principles that are no longer true. They were true when Capitalism was created, but they are obsolete now. This death was inevitable, because the mismatch between the world Wall Street thinks exists and the world that really exists is so fundamental... the methods needed to continue making money in a world of the past had become so complicated... that self destruction was only a matter of time.

If the universe is a giant clock, you can only last for so long if you don't work the machinery the way it's designed to work. You will blow up the clock if you don't change what you're doing.

"Oh, but humanity can never learn to stop fighting with itself," some people might say. "That's a fundamental part of how things work too."

"Really? Is a baby born wanting to fight? Is it born wanting to kill others of its own kind? No, fighting is a learned response," I say in return.

A big job? Yes, making this change will be a big job. But with the death of Capitalism, we have been given a great opportunity to take the first steps.

And with the choice of Barack Obama -- a man who knows cross-cultural, systemic, and bi-partisan issues and who does not see the world through warrior eyes as John McCain does - we have the opportunity to take a huge step (politically) in the direction of making this change.

But it's going to take more than electing Barack Obama to support the rise of a New Economics from Capitalism's grave. Barack has said this election has never been about him. And he is right. We must all contribute to this process, by learning what a post-scarcity-based world can be like, including the interpersonal skills of "interdependent living" such as those in the classic book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey.

Beyond the personal, I suggest you study the works of two masters of large-scale systemic change: Drs. W. Edwards Deming and Russell Ackoff. They developed much of the management theory needed to organize such a transformation. Dr. Deming's last book was called "The New Economics". And Dr. Ackoff's recent book "Idealized Design" is the other book I would start with as.

In the popular jargon of my friend Renee Mauborgne's book "Blue Ocean Strategy" (co-authored by W. Chan Kim), what I am suggesting is that the death of Capitalism gives us the opportunity to develop and implement a Blue Ocean Strategy for America's sociopolitical economic system.

This will be a sociological change as much as it is a financial system change. Humanity has lived in a "you or me" world for many, many centuries. Changing to a "you and me" world (as Buckminster Fuller used to call it) will be the great adventure of the 21st Century.

Thanks to the death of Capitalism, that adventure is an idea whose time has come. Let's look for leaders who understand the need to figure out how to live in this new world. Leaders like Barack Obama. And leaders (hopefully) like the person you see in the mirror every morning.
---------------------
Addendum: 10:30am Eastern

As I think about AIG saying "We're too big to fail" to the Feds, I am reminded of America's long-standing policy not to negotiate with terrorists. Well, it sure feels as if the Feds have just agreed to the demands of certain financial terrorists: people who threatened to destroy our way of life if they weren't paid $85 billion. Disgraceful... and further proof that the America we think we live in... an America of ethical, Capitalistic principles no longer exists. If AIG needed $85 billion, they should have held a big charity event and asked the American people for the money... not taken it from us by using threats of the harm they would create if they didn't get it.

Addendum 2: 12:15pm Eastern

While I responded right after a specific comment, I'll state it here so it's clearly visible to everyone. I am not advocating Socialism replace Capitalism in America. I say Socialism already exists in portions of our society, but that does not mean I think it is the solution. The solution I am advocating is a New Economics designed by people who know how to take a "clean sheet of paper" approach to problem solving.. and who will develop an economic model appropriate to an abundance-based (rather than scarcity, zero-sum based) world view. This new economic model has no name because it has not been invented yet. The closest thing I've seen to what this might look like is the concept of Developmental Economics as described by systems thinking experts such as Dr. Russell Ackoff.

I hope this clarifies things for you all.

How on Earth can we have fun living together?

I am writing this on the opening day of the 2008 Tallberg Forum, which takes place in the resort village of Tallberg, Sweden each year.

The overarching question created by those involved in this forum to date is "How on Earth can we live together?" The status of the ability to answer that question was stated (at the end of the 2007 Forum) as follows...

"Do we know what to do? Probably yes. Will we do it? Probably not."

"We know how to be economical, to live in harmony with those closest to us and our community. We know how to cultivate our lands to sustain nature's ecological balances. We know how to stay out of trouble and protect our homes and livelihoods."

From my perspective as a student of three of history's greatest Systems Thinkers (Drs. R. Buckminster Fuller, W. Edwards Deming, and Russell L. Ackoff), I believe the complete statement of the challenge humanity faces can be found by looking at what is missing in the statements above.

What is missing is this:

By saying we know how to live in harmony with those closest to us, what is left out is that we do NOT know how to live in harmony with everyone on planet Earth. In other words, the global "human family" does NOT know how to stop fighting with itself. It is a family at war... a condition that strikes family members even within what we traditionally define as a "family". And - just as traditional families benefit from reconciling their differences - the "family of man" would benefit tremendously if it were to finally reconcile its differences.

I do not know why the Tallberg statements from 2007 leave out the need for the human family to come together as one... to stop the fighting... but this is a Critical Need is we are all ever going to "... learn to live together."

What is also missing from these 2007 statements if fun. That's right... fun.

I will update this essay later on that last topic and more, but it is time for the formal program to begin.

If any of you who are reading this are also at Tallberg, please look for me. We've got a lot to talk about! :)

And if you're not here in Tallberg, please contact me if you'd like to talk about this too.

Six Years After 9/11: What Have We Learned? What Could We Still Learn?

Six years ago I watched the World Trade Center's collapse from my Brooklyn apartment. I went out to vote that day (an election that was ultimately re-scheduled) and the smell of burning plastic filled the air even though I lived miles from the site. From this picture taken from Earth orbit, I can see why...

The wind carried the smoke right over my part of Brooklyn.



I had lived with the WTC ever since 1976 - when I got out of college - because I worked in lower Manhattan at 26 Federal Plaza and my office windows faced South. In fact, each fall my office mates and I would wait for just the right days when the path of the setting Sun would take it right between the twin towers... an amazing thing to see.


A beautiful image that combined the best of the natural and man-made worlds.

After living in Brooklyn for 15 years, believe it or not I was scheduled to move back to Manhattan on September 15, 2001. I give my moving company (Shleppers Moving & Storage) a lot of credit for making the move happen on the originally agreed upon date despite all that had happened (and with needing to find a route from Brooklyn to mid-town Manhattan that was passable). Here's a picture of lower Manhattan that I took as I crossed over the East River on my moving day. You can see the smoke from the still-burning World Trade Center site.



In the weeks after the attack, as all Americans struggled with "What do we do now?" questions, I was fortunate to have my thoughts on the subject published twice as letters to the editor of The New York Times (something I've been able to do about 10 times over the years).

On September 27th, I wrote that our capitalistic society - starting with the philosophy for redeveloping lower Manhattan - should aim to put compassion at the center of a re-imagined core.



And on November 19th, I wrote that plans for redeveloping lower Manhattan should help people think clearly about the nature of the world both before and after 9/11.



So, what have we learned since 9/11? And what could we still learn?

Well, I'll invite you form your own opinion about the plans to redevelop lower Manhattan by helping you visit the site for the planning organization, "RenewNYC.com". You can visit RenewNYC.com here. The memorial itself has as its theme Reflecting Absence and is described this way:

"Reflecting Absence is the memorial to honor the 2,979 heroes lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993. The memorial will ensure that future generations will know where the towers once stood and will never forget each individual life taken during those tragic days. The memorial will be a place for families and friends to remember, a final resting place for those who have not been identified, and a place where thousands will come to reflect upon and share our personal and collective loss.... The memorial will not only remember those killed, but it will celebrate the heroism that prevailed following the attacks, and the resolve of our nation to overcome."

The phrase "the resolve of our nation to overcome" is appropriately therapeutic but misses the critical element that to truly move on from tragedy one needs to commit to a purpose that is future focused. Perhaps one that respects the lives of those who died by reflecting what they wanted to accomplish in their lives, but still one that is future focused. Without that, one remains psychologically "stuck" in the past forever.

This is something that Mayor Michael Bloomberg apparently recognizes himself. You can read about how Mayor Bloomberg is - in the words of The New York Times - "(playing) an essential if more subtle role in nudging the city to gradually let go of its grief. It is a challenge the mayor has handled sometimes clumsily and sometimes with great sensitivity and eloquence, as he charted the path away from the concrete events of 2001. Now, as he works to imbue the city with optimism for the future, he even hints at a day when remembering may not mean reading the names of all the dead." here.

This article also quotes Mayor Bloomberg as saying (after the first 9/11 anniversary) "I think the Jews do it right. They have a headstone unveiling a year after the funeral, and that’s sort of the time that you sort of stop the mourning process and start going forward. And the 9/11 ceremonies, what I’m trying to do is that in the morning we will look back, remember who they were and why they died. And in the evening come out of it looking forward and say, ‘O.K., we’re going to go forward.’"

"Go forward." If only those redeveloping lower Manhattan knew this concept well enough to make "Ground Zero" and its vicinity an area that called to all Americans... and the people of the world... to make capitalism more compassionate. Well, I'm an optimist. Perhaps that will happen some day. (Read on for how I believe that can happen.)

There is one thing in RenewNYC.com's plans that does focus on the future - and in a very significant way, too. It is the development organization's commitment to "green" building design and construction principles. That is a great commitment, but it has no direct connection to the question of whether the future we create will be one in which terrorists either stop or continue to attack us. It will, however, save energy and provide a healthier work environment for the people in these buildings. And that's a good thing.

So, one thing we've learned since 9/11 is that those entrusted with formulating redevelopment plans in the face of a national catastrophe tend to do so by looking backward rather than forward. And the result is an increased potential that we will remain emotionally stuck in the past... not a good thing. In my opinion, there is nothing about the redevelopment of lower Manhattan or the World Trade Center memorial itself that will help the public think critically about what type of society we should be building in the future.

Although if Mayor Bloomberg had been in charge, there's at least a chance the memorial would have been forward and future focused.

Now, regarding my call for Compassionate Capitalism, we only have to look as far as Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" to show us how far capitalism is from being what one could even begin to call "compassionate". (If you haven't watched the short documentary made in conjunction with her new book, I highly recommend you do so here.)

"The Shock Doctrine" describes how entire societies have been taken advantage of (one might even call it "cultural rape") by those entrusted with leading them out of danger. Whether the danger is economic or security related, when it strikes there exists a conscious effort on the part of members of the business and political classes to push through changes in "the rules of the game" that make it much more possible for certain wealthy people to get wealthier and more powerful while the rest of us get poorer and less powerful.

When matched against the rules of society, this is serious, immoral and illegal stuff. And to the degree that it is happening in America (and it is, but Naomi Klein's work talks about other countries as well), then those responsible should be tried for their "high crimes and..." Well, you get my drift.

Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that the George W. "we create our own reality" Bush administration cares very little about the Rule of Law. It cares about the Golden Rule ("He who has the gold rules.") And those businesses - and business leaders - who finance and otherwise support the Bush administration's activities and the activities of those politicians (both Democrats and Republicans) who keep this systems in place also live according to this most twisted of "golden rules". As I say, they should be put on trial for their crimes against the system created by The Founding Fathers.

(Can you imagine what it would be like if our nation's business and political leaders - who so frequently refer to their religious beliefs - lived in accordance with the real Golden Rule? Why, we've live in a totally transformed world! But I digress. Sorry.)

John Dean has just written a fascinating new book, "Broken Government", in which - along with many other things - he discusses the role the Democrats play in keeping this illegal, immoral, and dysfunction system going. In an article Dean wrote called "Defeating Dysfunction" to promote his book, he says "Democrats criticize Republican policies, but they ignore the persistent abuses of process that have become normal Republican political behavior. Democratic distaste for addressing process issues first came to my attention following the 2004 presidential campaign, when I spoke to one of Senator John Kerry's top advisers. I was curious why Kerry had not pressed President Bush about the excessive secrecy he and Vice President Cheney had imposed on their administration... Kerry's adviser told me the campaign had not addressed this concern because "secrecy is a process issue." Process, apparently, was an area where the Democratic candidate did not go."

Dean goes on to say that "the current inside-the-Beltway wisdom holds that the public is not interested in process. In fact, empirical data show this is wrong." And he concludes by saying "The vitality of American democracy demands that (the Democrats) once again take up process in 2008."

In saying clearly that "It's the process, stupid", John Dean points to the critical lesson of our time... and the lesson we must learn. For it opens the door to the only way we will ever have the Compassionate Capitalism we are capable of having. This is The Lesson We Can Still Learn. It's not too late.

It is a lesson that will take America down a road which many Democrats may be uncomfortable traveling, but it is the only road that leads to the objective we must reach as a nation: the restoration of our American values. "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" wasn't just something Superman used to say he stood for. It was who we were on our best days and who we sought to be on our worst. It was never what the people we have entrusted to lead us into the future consciously sought to violate.

So, we must deal with the process we are using to get where we say we want to go. The Democrats must deal with the process. Progressive thinking Republicans must deal with the process. Third party candidates must deal with the process. (Ralph, this means you don't get to say that there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans anymore. Read John Dean's book, okay?) And "we, the people" must deal with the process.

Because to not do so is like saying "The automobile I'm driving has gotten me everywhere I've wanted to get to so far. I'll just keep driving it as I try to get to this new destination", as you leave dry land and set off across the water to get to a distant land called Compassionate Capitalism.

See how crazy it is to think this way? We're still in our cars and are trying to drive across the water. We are sinking fast, my friends. We need to get out of our cars!

If you agree with me and are now asking "Okay, where do I go to learn about process? And has anyone figured out what process could get us to this better future?", then I say "Welcome aboard! It's going to be an exciting journey from here forward!"

There are places you can go to learn process. And there are people who are already using the New Thinking society needs to adopt in order to get to this better world.

If you are an organizational leader (either for-profit or non-profit), I highly recommend you get involved with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program, which is run by the federal government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This program - which was signed into law 20 years ago during the Reagan Administration - is based on the continuous learning and improvement principles originally developed by such quality management leaders as Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Joseph Juran, the men who went to Japan after World War II and taught the Japanese how to make high quality products.

The Baldrige Program is intense, educational, and the best national program I know of for learning how to view what you're doing in ways that support you in making fundamental change. (Perhaps the US Congress should get involved with the Baldrige Program.) For those who want to "play in the minor leagues before joining the majors", I recommend the state-wide, Baldrige-based programs that function under the umbrella Network for Excellence. (Point of transparency: I am a board member of the Keystone Alliance for Performance Excellence, which is the Baldrige-based organization that covers Pennsylvania.)

Finally, while you may think that Compassionate Capitalism is an idea beyond what anyone dealing with process is talking about, I call your attention to the Corporate Social Responsibility movement. It is an increasingly mainstream corporate strategic focal point - as recognized by Harvard Business School's Michael Porter, in his article "Strategy and Society" which was published last December - AND it includes a focus on process, especially under the umbrella of the work of The UN Global Compact. The Global Compact's Performance Model is a Baldrige-like, continuous learning and improvement based program any organization can use to examine how it is going about attempting to be a good corporate citizen and to improve the processes it is using to do so. The Global Compact is a world-wide initiative that includes a network of USA-based corporations. At the same time, here in the USA we have Business for Social Responsibility, which works in partnership with The Global Compact.

There is hope, my friends. You just need to know where to look for it.

And in the case of our political and business leaders, we who want them to "do the right thing" need to demand that they examine and fix the process! (And learn how to do so first!)

We can get to the better world we say we want. But we can't get there by using the same thinking... the same process... we've used until now. We need to learn how to Think Differently!

Gonzales Is Gone. But The Disease Remains.

At the conclusion of The House Lawyer Departs, its lead editorial on the subject, The New York Times says "Mr. Gonzales, for all of his undeniable deficiencies, merely reflected the principles of this administration. His resignation is a necessary but hardly sufficient step in restoring the nation’s commitment to the rule of law."

Contrast this with the words of President Bush, who - when he went before the cameras to report Attorney General Gonzales's resignation - said "Al Gonzales is a man of integrity, decency and principle. And I have reluctantly accepted his resignation, with great appreciation for the service that he has provided for our country....After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position, and I accept his decision. It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons."

The Rule of Law vs. The Rule of Bush. It doesn't get any clearer than that, folks. President Bush's world remains untouched, unfazed, and undisturbed by the very bipartisan "mud" through which his friend's name was dragged. All that counts are Bush's feelings. Facts? Bush doesn't care about facts.

Having said this, I hope it's clear to you all that we should not really celebrate Gonzales' departure. Why? Because we are dealing with a problem far more pervasive than the work of any one man... far worse than the work, even, of a team led by Bush, Cheney, and Rice... worse, even, than the cancer on the presidency that America cured itself of over 30 years ago.

We are dealing with a systemic condition within our country. For lack of a better term (and with apologies to Walt Disney), I will call it "Living In Fantasyland".

It is a condition that exists in ways big and small throughout our society. From the ENRON Fantasyland of Ken Lay... to the "dog-fighting as sport" Fantasyland of the Atlanta Falcons' Michael Vick... from the "I spent as much time as the rescue workers" Fantasyland of Rudy Giuliani... to the "I was lied to by President Bush" Fantasyland of Hillary Clinton (who chose not to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before her vote).

People we want to trust - with our money, our cheers, the future of our country - are just making stuff up as they go along. Facts? They don't care about facts!

As I said, the cancer on the presidency of Richard Nixon was of limited scope. We were able to contain and eliminate it. And the 93rd Congress - contrary to popular opinion - actually got a lot done while it conducted Nixon's impeachment hearings.

But a lot has happened to the American psyche since the 1970's. The "Greed is good" me generation of the 1980's (and the updated version brought to us by the current Bush administration and today's Wall Street) and the pervasive "you create your own reality" transformational technology personal development trainings (such as est and Landmark Education created by Werner Erhard) launched in the early 1970's are just two of the major cultural trends steering America towards a "You can have it your way no matter what the existing reality tells you is possible" mental belief system.

We know this is how George Bush and his team think, from Ron Suskind's amazing 17 Octboer 2004 article in The New York Times. But what not enough of us seem to realize is that this is a society-wide disease. Al Gore knows the magnitude of this problem. It's the subject of his book "The Assault on Reason".

So, what to do? How can Truth and Facts defend themselves in the face of this very virulent disease? Well, here's my suggestion:

Truth and Facts can become known for being about more than what the real bad stuff is. Truth and Facts can become know for showing us - all of us - the real... honest to God... exciting and adventurous road forward. If I told you that the true nature of what's possible is quite literally "Heaven on Earth", that would get your attention... wouldn't it?

Yes, there are truths and facts about Ken Lay's business dealings, Michael Vicks' leisure activities, and Rudy and Hillary's post-9/11 political calculations. But there are also truths and facts about how much better our world could be, if the majority of Americans were to learn what a number of research scientists and international development theorists know. And what is there that the American people could learn? That it is now scientifically possible to build - with the support of enlightened business and political leadership, of course - a world beyond war in our lifetimes.

Now that's something that no pack of lies can give us, no matter how well packaged they are. A world beyond war in our lifetimes can only be the product of the truth.

This brave new world - if we choose to build it - will be built on the facts, research, and hard won wisdom of those on the front lines of the sustainable international development movement. For proof that these facts exist, I invite you to explore the work of Amory Lovins, Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart, Business for Social Responsibility, The UN Global Compact, and The Next Great Transformation conference taking place at The Eden Project in October.

There's more to truth and facts than most people know. It can be a great world in which to spend your time... and it's no Fantasyland, either!

America's Infrastructure Crisis: Are We Really A Developed Country?

In the three and a half years in which I worked in the office of Dr. Russell Ackoff, my mentor in the field of Systems Thinking, he probably talked about one thing more than anything else: the true nature of development. "Development," Russ would say, "increases the capacity of people to manage their own lives. Growth - which is what people usually talk about when they say a community or a nation is getting better - is about the accumulation of greater amounts of things, some of which are beneficial and some of which are not. Growth is not the same as development."

One of the expressions Russ used most often to make this point is If you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach them to fish, they can feed themselves for a lifetime.

When it comes to our nation's infrastructure, I fear that our political and civic leaders have - for decades - been giving us "fish" in the form of lots of roads, bridges, mass transit systems, utility systems, and other elements of what is sometimes referred to as the built environment. We know who these leaders are. They're the people in the photographs taken at the ground breaking ceremonies when new projects start.. and at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies when projects are complete. After that, we rarely hear from them again.

Well, perhaps with the collapse of the I-35 bridge, we will. In fact, we already are... in the personages of Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Chuck Hagel (R-NB). Their National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2007 is an important first step in moving we Americans past our long history of "being given fish" and towards a future in which we learn "how to fish for ourselves" and then act of that new knowledge.

Of course, by "learn how to fish" I mean learn how to take care of what we've got... not just admire it when it's new and then let it fall apart under our very noses.

Russ loves using this fishing analogy to help people understand what true development is. And - because he emphasizes that development involves wisdom that focuses on long-term (not short-term) results - I'd like to start a national dialog on the following question:

Is the United States truly a developed country? Or are we just a "built up" country?

It is common to talk about how our world is divided into the developed and under-developed nations. And the US - based on its GDP and other factors - always falls into the "developed nations" category. But based on my knowledge that to be truly developed is to know how to take care of yourself and what you have - not just to have a lot of stuff - I no longer personally put the USA into that category.

I think - and this seems especially appropriate when you consider how young America really is, in "country years" - that America is in a category that may have never existed before. Neither under-developed nor developed, America appears to be a "proto-developed country". We've accumulated a lot but do not yet have the wisdom to manage what we've got.

Now, having just described the problem, I'd like to suggest at least the beginning of a solution:

Education.

As H.G. Wells once said "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

I almost hate using such extreme-sounding language, but there really is a catastrophe awaiting us if we don't address our infrastructure crisis very soon. Just as the homes we live in will fall apart if we don't maintain them, so will the larger built environment - literally, our national "home". And for this analogy I have Sam Schwartz to thank. Sam was the First Deputy Commissioner at the NYC Department of Transportation when I worked there in the late 1980's. He ran NYC DOT's Bureau of Bridges. (I directed the office in the Bridge Bureau that contracted with private engineering firms to fix NYC's bridges... in my former life as an engineering program manager.) Sam recently wrote a very blunt New York Times OpEd piece entitled "Catch Me, I'm Falling in which he points out how crazy the bridge maintenance financial system is throughout America. I highly recommend you read it, as a first step in educating yourselves about the true nature of our problem. Because, it's only when a problem is truly understood that it can be permanently solved.

Solving America's infrastructure problem starts with understanding the magnitude of the physical challenge (see the report from the American Society of Civil Engineers) and then understanding the financial system challenge... which includes the long-term financial costs which will be incurred as more and more of our infrastructure falls apart.

To some extent, I suppose, this is a painful thing to come to terms with: that we now have to find the money (and fast) to "learn how to fish"... to maintain that which we have. But I also expect this is exactly the lesson America needs to learn in the run-up to the 2008 elections.

We need to ask ourselves - and those who would be our political representatives - if they "know how to fish". We need to find out if they know how to think long-term. We need to find out if they know how to learn to do the right thing - as defined by experts in the field such as, in this case, Sam Schwartz and the American Society of Civil Engineers - when information about a problem is presented to them.

Making sure we take care of what we have. Making sure what we have works and is the best quality it can be. That, my friends, is the hallmark of a truly developed country. And right now, this is not something that is true about America.

But it's not too late. We can still learn how to fish.