What am I creating?

In recent weeks, I've been writing on how organizational development can lead to sustainable prosperity.

Friday and Saturday we participated in a program called The Experience Training in Salt Lake City. Our dear friends and colleagues, Bob Adams and Diane Cole, assisted. In the training, we did extensive reflection and dialogue about our lives, dreams and purpose.

Afterwards, my partner Kathleen and I drove 12 hours from Salt Lake City to Longview, Washington. Below are some rambling "stream of consciousness" thoughts from the drive.

Sustainable prosperity is abundant wellbeing that continues indefinitely. Sustainable means something that continues in perpetuity. While something sustainable may fluctuate in strength, it is resilient. Built into a sustainable system is self-regulation so it can grow and renew itself. It is adaptable and flexible.

The term sustainability is usually associated with the environment. Our dependence upon autos and industry appears to be causing global warming. If so, these behaviors are not contributing to a sustainable environment.

Nature has been sustainable for tens of thousands of years. Imploding meteors may have triggered global climate change and the end for dinosaurs. This was perhaps the latest in a succession of explosive episodes in the earth’s history. Nature has been quite stable until the last 150 years. Beginning with the industrial age and accelerating with the atomic age, our modern culture has resulted in unprecedented rates of environmental change.

I have learned that the effects in nature we see today are caused by events which took place 50 years ago. This has been called the “butterfly effect:” Small changes can have large consequences. A butterfly in China flapping its wings results in storms and high winds far away in the United States. Weather is a complex adaptive system. Simple causality is not adequate to explain today’s reality. Perhaps a better way to express this is our complex understanding requires sophisticated explanations.

A report on global warming released in England earlier this year, calls for dramatic changes by governments and industry to avoid huge economic shifts 50 years from now.

Another recent event is the success of the film and book “The Secret” about the “Law of Attraction.” Newsweek and others have criticized it as simplistic, wishful thinking. Positive thinking, affirmations and new age philosophy are denounced in the popular press.

This is a volatile time. War in Iraq and Afghanistan has been longer than World War II with three thousand American troops dead, hundreds of thousands wounded and ten times those casualties and dead for the local people.

Congress and the president are at war over the direction of our government.

Perhaps we need some “wishful thinking.” In conversation with a dear colleague and old friend, he suggested that a more thoughtful criticism for positive thinking is it doesn’t take into consideration the place of tragedy in human life. Instead, it covers over or ignores it.

I say there is no “unified field theory” for life. There is no single explanation or methodology to guide us despite the appeal of such an idea. Perhaps the closest I have come to it is the only moral decision is to do good. The Buddha’s final words, “Be a lamp unto yourself.” Shakespeare said, “To thy own self be true.” Jesus, Mohamed, Patanjali , the Sikh gurus and all the spiritual teachers have aphorisms we can live by. These guiding principles have profound meaning. From their work we have elaborate systems, codes, rules and laws.

These very beliefs have us at war with Al-Quaeda and some Islamic leaders. Their idea of heaven and ours contradict. Yesterday within a hour I heard two dramatically different news items that reflect what is so. A vanload of people in Iraq belonging to a minority religious sect, presumably was killed by another sect. An American woman, raised in a large Catholic family, converted to Islam and has been elected president of the American or North American Islamic Society. This is the first time for this society to elect as president a woman, a convert and a non-immigrant. There was an extended interview of her on NPR’s “Speaking of Faith.”

Today it is one week since a lonely Korean attending Virginia Tech killed 32 on that campus. In this event are stories of tragedy, evil, heroism and good. Horrible and glorious events are unfolding all around us. Our stories to understand them follow. We are awash in communications, adrift seeking meaning and direction.

A fundamental question is can we learn to live together? Can we serve another while caring for ourselves? I suppose an answer is that we are, it’s not always pretty, polite or comfortable. Can we do better? Obviously and we are. This is a process.

Population is increasing, therefore as a species we are succeeding. What is the price of this success? What is the quality of our lives? Each of us must ask and answer this question or face ongoing depression and confusion.

My reply is, “I create meaning and beauty in the face of temporality.” I am choosing to consider what is balance and harmony in my life experience? How may I serve, live simply and prosper. How may I sustain prosperity? My reply is what I think, speak and do. Today, my partner and I will visit her 29-year old niece that the doctors say is dying of cancer. Today she is alive. She’s happily married with two small children. They are a happy family. Her time is apparently quite limited. Today she is alive. Is this a tragedy? Is it stupid and crazy that this could be true? Her immediate and extended family is in deep grief. Everyone is hurting. Today she is alive.

Today I am alive. What will I do? What am I creating? Can I find balance? How may I contribute more than I consume?

I am creating my today and thereby my tomorrow. I live in a complex circumstance. This is life, my life, our life. I chose to serve small businesses improving their sustainable prosperity.

To create business models which are sustainable and prosperous is the goal of small business to support families of owners and employees while serving customers and their broader community.

Salt Lake City - Experience It!

Salt Lake City - Experience It!
Today we arrived in Salt Lake after a midnight blizzard in Southern Idaho. It was white-out, blowing snow last night on I-84 east of Boise. Packed snow on the signs prevented us from knowing exactly where we were.

Stopping at midnight for gas and directions, we were told the weather would be worse for the next 100 miles. We decided a warm bed was the wise choice. It was!

This morning the sun was bright and except for packed snow and ice on portions of the highway the roads were clear. Like yesterday when we crossed the high deserts of eastern Oregon, the drive to Salt Lake was spectacular. Broad expanses of wide, open country that make me take a deep breath looking at the fields, mountains and open prairie.

We're here for visioning with Bob Adams and Diane Cole, the Be Cause Team tax strategists, about the challenges facing businesses and how they might actualize sustainable prosperity using organizational development.

Bob and Diane typically find $2,000 in additional tax refunds in 60% of the prior year tax returns they review. They look at tax returns for the three prior years at no charge and with no obligation.

Most wage-earning people (80 million Americans) are aware of only three basic
deductions: dependents, mortgage interest and education. This is part of the two tax systems of America. Fourteen million American taxpayers have businesses and can start with 157 possible deductions.

What is possible for organizations? What can we create?

We are considering questions:
1. If you had all the money, education, resources and abilities you would like to have or feel you need, what would you spend your life doing?

2. If you were suddenly told you have a year to live, what would you do?

3. If the doctor said you have a month to live, what would you do? Who would you communicate with? What would you say? What important dreams have you wanted to accomplish? What would you do?

We invite you to answer these questions and email your thoughts to us. For the next two full days, Kathleen and I will be in an "Experience It" training here to presence new possibilities we can bring to our "research and development team." We are organizational developers for sustainable prosperity!

Creating New Possibilities

Lots of new learning at the International Association of Facilitators Conference March 7 - 10 in Portland with 400 participants from over 60 countries. Sessions I participated in were:

Eye of the Storm: Advanced Facilitation Skills
Boundaries of Facilitation
Web 2.0 for Facilitation
Virtual Teams

Kathleen's sessions were:
Effective Facilitation
Tools for Decision Making

Then I took a 2 1/2 day Communications Course: Access to Power in Seattle offered by Landmark Education March 31, April 1 and 5th.

New books are:
"Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything" by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.