Sacrificing vision for sight
Beware a rant.
I was in a conversation today with a friend of mine who is a true visionary. He is an artist who works with metal, rocks and even entire landscapes. He is a project manager and has overseen some of the biggest developments on our island, and some of the biggest ones in the Lower Mainland. He cares deeply about our shared home and sees all kinds of potential for Bowen Island to become a true innovative leader in the world. he knows the municipal tools inside an out, and looks at our official community plan and sees a joke. As an artist he sees our island in three dimensions, he sees our social landscape in terms of centuries, he sees possibility oozing out of every patch pf land, and every land use decision and every corner of the landscape, possibility that includes food production and long term restoration of old growth habitat and community cultural creativity and the chance to make a good, but modest living here.
Yet he isn’t bitter – on the contrary he is full of possibility AND he has a pretty good idea of how to get there. He understands chaos and complexity and living systems and how to create change without succumbing to control. As I listened to him speak about the small but very very deep shifts it would take to make our island truly self-sufficient, it occurred to me that without my friends visionary thinking and novel way of seeing, we are doomed as a culture. And the problem is that the kinds of tools that are available to us to plan and govern our futures are not about vision, they are about seeing.
Think about it. Most municipal governments are reluctant to say “let’s set aside that 200 acres of land for 300 years so that there will be old growth forest there in the future.” It seems pollyanna-ish. It seems like the kind of thing that is a good intention, but how could you ever do it, and what about the pressing needs of our people now? Never mind that it is actually easy and possible and wise, it is simply easier to look at what is around you now and manage what you have.
What does it take for organizations, communities and societies to recognize that a worldview based on vision is the way to secure a future, whereas one based on seeing is simply the one that got us to this mess in the first place. I note that the Liberal leader, positioning himself for an election victory, has chosen to make his campaign about restoring economic growth. With everything happening in the world right now, with the demand for leadership that takes us beyond the worldview that has mired us on the brink of economic and environmental catastrophe, Michael Ignatieff’s postion is that he will restore something that is bound to come around sooner or later in a cyclical capitalist society.
The reason he does this is because the mind set of measurable, observable short term results is king in this society. No one is going to get elected talking about stopping rampant economic growth and stopping the more is better mindset. Even if we are engaged in long term projects, someone always wants an indicator to know that we are on the right path. The management mindset has trapped us in the ever present short term. We are like a cigarette smoker dying of lung cancer who keeps having one last butt.
What does it take to do something with no expectation for gain, recognition or results? Just to do it because it restores more life to the future than we have now. A basic principle: leave more for the future than you took for the present. Could we be that mature? How much longer with this childish obsession with consumption and instant gratification go on?
Dear Chris,
I pray that this is a “rant” and not a eulogy. The business as usual mindset personified in all three mainstream parties breaks my heart.
Thank you for this elegant statement of reality — and for your ongoing work to help us make other choices.
Beverley
Saturna Island
Conservatives trumpet “growth” and “freedom of choice”, then unwittingly hunker down against the ensuing complexity and change effects. These are angry and confusing times for many. You’re allowed the occasional rant 😉
A guess, you were talking to Stacy? And just last night was watching the documentary on ‘who killed the electric car?’ while reading reviews on Michael Moore’s latest film…
If this were the standard for rants, they wouldn’t have such a bad rap.
Excellent argument. You articulate beautifully some of the key things that make me so cynical about the official political process and the general standard of political debate these days.
It is also further evidence of why I have subscribed to your feed. Thought provoking content all the time.
At the root of the management mindset is an interest in using scarce resources wisely, with money as the measure, right? So maybe your problem is with the idea of money as a representation of scarcity and not with the idea of being responsible with limited resources.
People want jobs. Economic growth — particularly after shrinkage — provides this. What is so strange?
One good point buried in there in the subtext is the idea that the way business dealings proceed can affect the way we deal with each other. And then can… when you spend so much time at the office, and then so much free time engaged in consumer transactions. You can only be told that what you thought was a favour and “included” will actually cost extra before you start measuring your own effort in the same terms. But you shoulder some of the blame, too… you have a mind of your own.
Also, business doesn’t always strive for observable results in the sense that they are sometimes capable of accepting corporate knowledge in lieu of business result. Many large companies have their own research divisions that don’t generate profit.
The dot-coms didn’t give much consideration to results. They had faith that anything IT-related would be seen as valuable in the context of a world that was going to be web-based. US mortgage lenders also didn’t give much consideration to results. They assumed that house prices would continue to increase and so that credibility of the borrower didn’t matter so much because the house could always be flipped for a profit if the loan went bad. So, it’s not always the answer.
How can you stand to have so many commenters that agree with you? Have you been passing around your business card on some kind of hippie commune?
Matt…the issue for me in the utter and unquestioning domination of that world view in every decision that humans undertake. (it’s a rant after all!)
dot-coms, mortgage lenders all gave lots of consideration to results, exactly the kind I am bemoaning…short term gain without due consideration for the consequences. No doubt the management geniuses in those companies were dazzled by double figure quarterly increases.
It’s all about a balance…and I think that “management” isn’t always the way to deal with scarce resources, especially in living systems. Management destroyed the cod on the east coast, and I fear for the salmon. I have no answers, but past results suggest that we need a fundamental reworking in how we think about the earth and the things we share it with. Including each other.
As for the echo chamber…you should see the comments that have been coming on on my Van Jones posts. Not everyone here agrees with me, and not everyone expresses disagreement with as much consideration as you do.
Also, check the post on the Great Canadian Homework Ban. Mostly no one cares about this blog, until suddenly people do.
I remember the homework ban… it was a good discussion 🙂
Can management ever be good at managing scarce resources? Maybe management can work, but we just haven’t got to where we need to be with our ability to manage yet? i.e. http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12253181
You ought to read Henry Mintzberg on teaching management. I think the problems is that management has become a profession, rather than a practice. It has it’s place, but once you make it a profession and strt turning out professionals, all you have is a hammer and all you see are nails. And this from a guy that made a meager living writing case studies for his management program back in the late 1980s.
As for fish, it’s a complete heresy out on this coast, but I think ITQs have a chance for fisheries, especially if they are not allowed to be monopolized. I’m no libertarian, but there ISN’T a free market now, so loosening it up especially for small time fishers and coastal communities might work. Monopolies and industrialized fishing are a big problem with fish on our coast. A little competition, stewardship from fishers themselves, combined with some regulations on gear that leave by catch fish alive rather than dead might go a long way to saving our salmon.
(And getting rid of fish farms, and cooling the oceans and protecting spawning grounds and enhancing habitat…at this point NOT fishing them at all may be the only chance these fish have.)
Well, I can’t disagree on the “professional manager” syndrome. It seems to have taken the soul out of a lot of offices, replacing people who had substantial experience in the profession they were managing with people who have no clue — and don’t need to — because they’re just worried about the books. The idea that managers “don’t need to know — you just need to know who knows” is widespread.
Whenever I find a place to work that still has knowledgeable managers that care, it seems I arrive just as that character is on the way out.
Things like fishery quotas seem to be in a different category, though. You can still fish however you want, as long as you stick to the agreement… I assume. It sounds like there is still plenty of autonomy involved.