thestoryofmeaningfuluse
A Magazine Capturing the Story of Health- For People, Environment, Economy & HabitatArchive for Capacity Building
Taking the Bite out of Apple – Defining the Future Inquiry
Taking the Bite out of Apple TSOMU Series -Part 3 of 3
This 3 part series looks at 3 perspectives of the cost to people in the manufacturing of Apple Products
• Accountability for What? Constructing the 3rd Pillar – Social Sustainability
• Steve and Laurene Powell Job’ Legacy
• Defining the Future Inquiry
By Lavinia Weissman
@wecarehealth54545454545454
New York, New York
Community Solutions
“Is there some mystical reason why an innocent person becomes the target of evil? Of course not. People who talk about the karma of victims as if some hidden fact is bringing down the rain of destruction are speaking from ignorance.”
Deepak Chopra
Steve Jobs, in his life-time, had personally mastered the vision of living a life of life-long learning. He translated his vision into the design and manufacturing of products that can be adopted as the most power enablers to make this possible.
By large, as a society of people of any means, we cannot move beyond ignorance if we cloister ourselves from the world of learning. Jobs constructed a vision of the ICloud so that from anyplace, anytime with any device people can synch and learn to solve the problems they face everyday at home and for what they do for work.
Recently, Sustainability, CSR and Accountability experts have focused on the cost to humans of how Apple products are manufactured; it is an interesting direction in my mind to see that the Jobs technical legacy has constructed a technical platform that is so critical to creating a framework for the human interaction that can embed social sustainability in society and culture today.
This platform enables the publication and production of media that works in a cloud where individuals can shape their personal learning by vocation or the way they live to take that learning and solve problems with others that can be formed into community solutions of any kind. Laurene Powell Jobs, during her husbands final days, guided him to find the peace that he had not found inside himself and with others before his death by supporting him to articulate this vision.
Walter Isaacson, Job’s biographer, provided a most complete story capture of conversations with President Obama, Bill Gates (Philanthropist), and the technical leaders of Silicon Valley global companies, in just a few conversations that could create a picture of this vision for these leaders to act on, if they chose.
The story that Isaacson offers is fundamental in my mind to launching a new thought leadership in practice. I see this story line as part of a briefing for launching a learning community that focused on creating the educational framework from which people can build a system of response to heal poverty and economy of debt and lack, I don’t see how we will create the system by which to full benefit of the power of this technical platform.
Basic to forming this kind of learning community, the convening team that sorts out the launch, the invitation and to convene the community needs to an economy model and hub to support its formation and translation into local scale that mentors the participants into a form of knowledge and emotional intelligence that can translate vision into action and lasting form.
This community can become a forum or hub that represents and attracts the attention of leading educators that I have written about that include John Sexton, President of NYU and Freeman Hrabowski, President of UMBC. Sexton and Hrabowski are calling for the formation of a new educational format where portals of learning provide the architecture to the students all around the world to solve problems drawing from the best of humanities, science and technology that inspires a new experience of thought and engagement for anyone who joins in this form of learning that is sustainable.
How does this fit with Jobs Vision?
In Jobs final days of conversation with his biographer, Walter Isaacson, Jobs noted that Apple was a great company like HP, Intel, and Disney, because it was built to matter and live beyond simply a purpose of the founders developing an IPO to go public so the founders can leave and cash in. The literature shows that HP, Intel, Disney and Apple have lasted out and emerged from failure out of learning and a commitment to make a difference.
Jobs went on to say that when these companies get off course, that is the real cost. Inn my opinion the cost to humans associated with these companies. This is about a from of sustainability that respects profit and people in balance.
At present, the complexity of engagement and the state of the world economically and the perpetuation of poverty, building companies to last in this way is not sufficient to insure a health global economy for people, planet and profit. In a consumptive society, the production of products, organization of services and innovation are often developed with a regard for building the most attractive product features and benefits.
Jobs talent for doing this in a very Zen like manner resulted in meeting the needs of talent beginning with the graphic design community with the launch of the Mac and reshaping and defining a “Mac Lifestyle” by 2004, that had the Apple products represent and associate with a lifestyle of promise rather, distinguishing Mac from Windows based products that have been tools of productivity.
Facebook and Linkedin.com have entered the global market affording a market of communication that is accessible to millions of people for free, supported by the sale of apps and advertising. However, these global gathering social media complexes do not have the substantive architecture that is basic to reshaping local economies of people where the needs of the people in local community are put ahead first so they can move beyond poverty and learn within their communities to sustain.
Talking on a platform does not provide the financial resources that insure the health and success of these projects to sustain.
I believe the forthcoming generation of learning and inquiry has to expand beyond the view of business as usual from a community and local economy perspective beyond the limitations of institutional views.
Who Belongs in this Inquiry?
In the tradition of view of economic development projects have always been like Microsoft organized as a fragmented vertial channel to solve a problem, e.g. foster more innovation to create more jobs; bringing costly pharmaceutical treatment to 3rd world countries. The problem identified to solve is in some regard a task.
- The first step is to invite local communities to join in regions where there are problems associated with global companies that foster human injustice, e.g. Shell Oil in Nigeria, BP Gulf Oil Spill, Apple Human Costs to Manufacturing in China;
- Begin by convening and analyzing the most basic needs of people impacted by this harm and providing them a stable infrastructure from which they can learn , work and live is a new form of inquiry that will begin to create a new form of mastery of quality of life for people in the locales through which they live and work;
- This implies participation from the companies and governments in these locales where other distinct problems can be solved like the lack of industry or any sustainable economy, similar to what has been shaped for Rancho Petacal in Mexico by Roberto Vargas Marciel, Maher Ashram in Pune, India by Sister Lucy or the Honey Bee Network led by Anil Gupta, the first Pew Research Fellow;
- Critical to the success of these projects, funding sources need to come from all sectors of participation, philanthropic foundations and where possible contributions from the local communities of people, who build these community by building a local economy of goods and services that aligned with the culture of location.
Taking the Bite Out of Apple
Accountability experts in sustainability and corporate sustainability have been steered over the last 3 decades since the issue of the Brundtland Commission Report in 1987 to continue the norm of how investors and corporations approach markets using a vertical channel approach.
It’s ironic at this time that Steve Jobs, founder and leader of the most successful company, Apple – in his final year of life called on great leaders to outline his integral view of life drawing on Edwin Land passion for integrating humanities and science to integrate into technological development.
Spiritual Leader J. Krishnamurti who inspired Physicist David Boehm from this view as well. Boehm in his writing pointed to the value of inquiry and dialogue as the path to creating a culture that embedded the most fundamental respect for what it means to be a human being.
At this years World Economic Forum gathering global leaders and private citizens from around the world left the meeting challenged to address the growing harm of poverty and harm to people.
This opens the door to the greatest challenge accountability experts have ahead for them – shifting accountability to defining and measuring sustainable metrics that serve people and local economy.
The 1984 launch of Apple Computer was in synch with the creation of the Brundtland Commission. How ironic that Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder has left a legacy to solve the most challenging and controversial problems associated with Apple by gathering with a small group of leaders, mostly personal friends to define the opportunity that technology implies to education and the change that this implies to all our approaches to education from how we educate children in schools to higher learning to the restructuring of how adults learn life long to sustain within their communities local economy.
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Author’s Bio: Lavinia Weissman is sustainable leadership coach, health advocate, capacity builder, and publisher/editor-in-chief of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com.
For More information on Lavinia’s Coaching, Workshops and Presentations or to obtain an invitation to Monday Circle or Prayer Community Conference,
Contact Adriana Hill in the US by phone 516.204.6791 or at mydestinyjourney ampersand gmail.com.
Taking the Bite out of Apple – Steve and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Legacy
Taking the Bite out of Apple TSOMU Series -Part 2 of 3
This 3 part series looks at 3 perspectives of the cost to people in the manufacturing of Apple Products.
- Accountability for What? Constructing the 3rd Pillar – Social Sustainability
- Steve and Laurene Powell Job’ Legacy
- Defining the Future Inquiry
By Lavinia Weissman
@wecarehealth54545454545454545454545454545454545454545454545454
The Wholistic View
“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in every thing. That is how the light gets in.”
If one looks outside of Steve Jobs leadership and performance at Apple as CEO, and follow a very complete story of his life, work and his final days, I believe the picture painted if very different than what is described in the business press.
Jobs contact with people outside the context of running a company contains within it the legacy Steve left behind supported by his wife Laurene Powell Jobs, that are an interesting foundation for building a “social sustainable agenda” described in Part 1 of this series. Time will only prove if this vision can translate into community solutions aligned with Laurene Powell Jobs current vocation.
Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute, was selected to by Steve and Laurene Powell Jobs to be Jobs, biographer. The book, simply titled, Steve Jobs. Completely atypical of Jobs, he and Laurene both gave full control over the book and the content to Isaacson. Jobs in his final days asked for final say on the artwork for the cover.
This book is a composite of the story of the history of Apple as Jobs and others crafted it, the products that resulted from Jobs vision, the meanderings of Silicon Valley ups and downs influenced by the MBA Venture Community and ultimately how Jobs as a visionary and innovator powerfully drove his agenda to build Apple as the strongest multinational company based headquartered in Silicon Valley.
Jobs informed Isaacson, “I think you are good at getting people to talk.” This is why Jobs selected him as his biographer. Steve and Laurene wanted the book to relay the real story that included Steve’s failing and success. They wanted the truthful story. Even Steve in his candid conversations with Isaacson saw his own personality flaws, which may have been unnecessary.
For fans of the history of Silicon Valley from a technical view, you will have to read the book that captures a rich history of all companies that sit side by side with Apple and the influence of the cast of characters from Larry Ellison of Oracle, Gil Amelio of NEC and Apple, John Scully and more. Isaacson true to form studied the man, the culture that surrounded the man and the family from which he grew and in the end helped him make peace.
The Silicon Valley and Apple Corporation that I knew emerged to be number 1 after my downsizing research in the late 80′s predicted it would be Apple, Sun or IBM.
Unlike Sun Microsystem and IBM, Jobs crafted with his products a vision of creating an Apple lifestyle, but in the final chapter of his legacy with his wife he began to create a global lifestyle through conversations with his wife Laurene and his final conversation with Bill Gates in May 2011 before his death in October.
Isaacson’s talent for asking “the why after the what,” helped me make see this new form legacy that is socially sustainable, that Laurene is now making her focus.
While the business press offered consistent final reports, e.g. Thomas Friedman, that when Obama inquired about bring back jobs to the US for IPhone and other Apple products, Jobs replied, “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” Friedman was one of many that reported this based on secondary research.
Isaacson captured 40 interviews with Jobs, dating back to 1984, when Isaacson was at Time Magazine and drew from more than 115 people and interviews and secondary research for this book. This is where the story behind how Jobs meeting with Obama in Silicon Valley’s story behind the story begins to open inquiry on the legacy that Jobs crafted in the final 10 months before his death.
Hidden in this story is the non technical legacy that Jobs could see that integrated a view of humanities and science with his genius capacity to design the leading technology and thought that captured Apple’s market today.
Laurene’s Added Spark
In 2010, Laurene Powell Jobs joined the White House Council for Community Solutions. At the most recent, State of the Union Address, by President Obama, she was introduced as the founder of Emerson Collective which she has directed to focus on underserved communities to better lives and in her role with the White House Council for Community Solutions she advises the President on how to mobilize and involve each sector from a true capacity building point of view on how to concretely address specific community needs.
Fall 2010, Laurene advised her friends at the White House that include John Doerr, Venture Capitalist and then at a meeting for President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board that Obama needed to hear Steve Jobs point of view on why the US had lost its edge. With help from the Jobs son, Reed, who was attending Stanford, Laurene was able to convince Steve to join Obama in a private 45 minutes meeting in October 2010.
No Holds Barred
In his book, Isaacson reported that Jobs told Obama at their private in October 2010, that Obama had to become morbusiness friendly and make it easier for business to open factories in the US over China that he was headed for a one term Presidency. Here is was indicating a need to reduce regulation and unnecessary costs. Jobs then asserted that even bigger obstacle was the American education system as antiquated due to unionization of workers and teachers. There was a need to revamp the entire system, beginning with defining the role of the teacher and improving the status of teachers.
By the end of the meeting, Jobs offered to put together a group of 6-7 CEO’s together to converse with Obama and examine how the US government was obstructing innovation. Jobs idea was to create this as a dinner and conversation. The White House almost derailed the meeting, trying to turn it into a major event of 20 ore more CEO’s, including GE’s Jeffrey Immelt. Jobs made clear his terms and the agenda and format were recovered and given Jobs assumed control.
Over a dinner at Palo Alto’s Greek Restaurant, Evita of 12 included Carol Bartz (Yahoo), John Chambers (Cisco), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Reed Hastings (Netflix), Art Levinson (Genetech), Eric Schmidt (Google) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) with Obama, Jobs and White House Staff, Valerie Jarret and John Doerr.
Isaacson writes that Jobs began the dinner conversation by stating, “Regardless of our political persuasions, I want you to know that we’re here to do whatever you ask to help our country.” While this prompted proposals and suggestions, starting with John Chambers idea for a tax proposal. Zuckerberg was heard to lean over to Obama’s aide Valerie Jarret and point out they were all there to help the President and wanted to know from him, what he needed.
John Doerr and Jobs returned the discussion to the focus and Jobs indicated that America had to educate and train more engineers. In China today 700,000 workers are need on site support from 30,000 engineers and Apple simply has no resources of that talent to hire here in the US.
This pointer caught Obama’s attention and while Jobs was in the final phase of his own journey, he pointed out if America (Obama) can train the engineers Apple would bring back manufacturing to the US.
Isaacson’s ability to interview and capture the full story is quite different than the business press reporting the short sentence. Yes it is true, at the present time, Apple cannot bring manufacturing back to the US. And yes, if America addresses its most critical problem – our educational system’s inability to produce enough engineers, Jobs committed to bring manufacturing back.
While this is a story capture of Isaacson’s book (in red) that are taken from the book. Pardon me with breaking from the tradition of footnoting with the limitations of blogging.
Isaacson has opened the door to integrating a story that values all 3 pillars of view for sustainability that can not be constructed without opening a conversation and inquiry that examines issues from the 3 perspectives that Jobs drew from his study of Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid; these persepctives are about creating a balance of view drawing from humanities, science and technology.
From my studies on dialogue and inquiry, I learned something similar from the perspective of David Boehm, Physicist. Boehm often pointed out based on his studies with spiritual teacher, Krishnamurti, that he learned that building trust to innovate change and evolve culture cannot be built without building into our conversations practice that appreciate these 3 elements (humanities, science and technology).
This invites my readers to join me for next and final post. This poises the question of how we alter our view of education integrating the vision and forecast for education that Steve Jobs shared with Bill Gates before he died.
Stay tuned for Part 3 – Defining the Future Inquiry that describes this opportunity and a history of dress rehearsals that failed. Is it time to launch this as a community of practice within the UNGC?
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Author’s Bio:
Lavinia Weissman is sustainable leadership coach, health advocate, capacity builder, and publisher/editor-in-chief of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com.
For More information on Lavinia’s Coaching, Workshops and Presentations or to obtain an invitation to Monday Circle or Prayer Community Conference,
Contact Adriana Hill in the US by phone 516.204.6791 or at mydestinyjourney ampersand gmail.com.
Taking the Bite out of Apple – Accountability for What?
Taking the Bite out of Apple TSOMU Series -Part 1 of 3
This 3 part series looks at 3 perspectives of the cost to people in the manufacturing of Apple Products.
- Accountability for What? Constructing the 3rd Pillar – Social Sustainability
- Steve and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Legacy
- Defining the Future Inquiry
By Lavinia Weissman
@wecarehealth545454545454545454545454545454545454
Earlier this month, Apple filed its first 2012 Supplier Responsibility Report, Elaine Cohen, an expert on sustainability reporting gave her attention to this report immediately in her CSRWire TalkBack column, ITransparency: Is Apple Catching Up, praised Apple for the quality of disclosure reflected in the report. And at the same time with her tongue and cheek humor, Is there an App for That? Asking if there is a solution to the years of complicity in a host of human rights abuses and violations within Apple’s supply chain.
Charles Duhigg and Charles Barboza captured in detail the story of these abuses and an overview of the complicity between Apple, the small manufacturers and the multinational corporations that comprise the Apple supply chain in their NYTimes article, In China, Apple and Human Costs are Built Into the IPad .
This article portrayed up close and personal the harm to ordinary people, with normal motivations, e.g. working to have a family, buy a home and live in a society what workforce practices are dictated by the supply and demand for labor based on expertise, where product demand exceeds what is humanly possible to produce and where occupational and safety standards and wage regulations are ignored.
These stories make the corporate way clear, if an employee cannot step up to the demands of an employer at the cost of their health – mind and body, , the solution is to simply let this human cost go by and fill that job with others waiting in line for the job. Employers show no understanding of the principle of “do no harm,” described in the Earth Charter’s Principle 6, the Precautionary Principle.
Absent from these reports is a view of issues that merit attention from a societal view on what it means to be human and build a practice of sustainability embedding the missing 3rd pillar, social sustainability.”
The Implied Hope of Social Sustainability
The Brundtland Commission Report in 1987 ignited the csr and sustainability movement offering the framework of the 3 P’s – People, Planet and Profit along side the framework of the 3 E’s – Environment, Economy and Equity.
Attention to people and equity have become a missing pillar of the sustainability movement. In 2002, the Johannesburg Conference stressed that the integration of 3 dimensions could only be built out from a foundation of humane equitable and caring global society at the present time and for future generations.
Recently the Swedish Government and Sodotorn Univeristy funded Magnus Bostrom, Department of Life Sciences, Sodertorn University and his colleagues to ascertain the state of challenge to embedding social sustainability into society and culture. Bostrom’s summary report, A missing pillar, Challenges in theorizing and practicing social sustainability, is the introductory article to the Winter 2012 issue of Sustainability, Science, Practice and Policy, a global journal based in Washington DC.
According to Bostrom there are two obstacles to embedding social sustainability in sustainability development.
- By nature of the theory and thought leadership is fluid and falls behind the concrete approaches to repair the environment and economic agenda;
- In practice, social dimensions attract less attention and are far more challenging to operationalize and incorporate into projects and planning.
Bostrom identifies the substantive and procedural aspects of social sustainability which present another layer of complexity in terms of adoption and governance which is very aligned with the challenges outlined in the 2010 10 year review of the UN Global Compact by the UN Joint Inspection Unit in Geneva, Switzerland. This report identifies the challenges ahead for its 7700 members to address through its own governance and applying what is learned with a much greater impact beyond the current penetration of
The Brundtland Commission Report in 1987 inspired the hope that the world leaders would embed an agenda people with the promise of recognition of human needs addressed in a kinder way. Three decades of focus on the sustainable agenda have pushed these issues to the back burner, resulting in teh acceleration of poverty and injustice as the wealthy 1% control the economy without regard for the other 99%.
Is there a different approach to addressing this agenda taking form outside the engagement of institutions focused on practices of accountability, governance and transparency.
Could it be in his final six months of life, Steve Jobs inspired by his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs created the legacy to spark and innovate a social sustainable agenda through personal conversation with friends?
Stay tuned for Part 2 - Steve and Laurene Powell Jobs Legacy to Apple and the World
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Author’s Bio:
Lavinia Weissman is sustainable leadership coach, health advocate, capacity builder, and publisher/editor-in-chief of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com.
For More information on Lavinia’s Coaching, Workshops and Presentations or to obtain an invitation to Monday Circle or Prayer Community Conference,
Contact Adriana Hill in the US by phone 516.204.6791 or at mydestinyjourney ampersand gmail.com.
Women’s Secrets on the Economic Battlefield
A Systemic View
By Lavinia Weissman
@wecarehealth54545454545454545454
New York, New York
“We seek only to give words
to those who cannot speak
(too may women in too many countries)
I seek only to forget
The sorrows of my grandmothers
Silence”
- Anasuya Sengupta, India
Last week, I offered a post (part 1) in a private subscribed conference, Monday Circle of Prayer, Walking About Rather than Walking From. It focused on a more personal experience with respect to how women cope with the realization they have no choice but to walk away from dysfunctional employment and other related activities and what that implies.
This article is a second installment to that reflective inquiry from a more systemic view of women’s participation in the workforce.
Part 2- A Systemic View – When Walking Away is Your Only Alternative
It has been 30 years since, Gro Harlem Brundtland, M.D., launched the sustainability movement by convening the Brundtland Commission Inquiry in cooperation with the United Nations. One of the worlds most remarkable female leaders, Dr. Brundtland is the former prime minister of Norway and former Executive Director of the World Health Organization and continues her work out of the United Nations community to this day.
What is happening for women in the economic system in which the work of the Brundtland Commission dialogue was to influence change?
A company culture that embeds corporate social responsibility implies that this culture has worked or is working on issues of transparency and materiality that invite an end to secrets. To assure acceleration of the women’s agenda in the workplace, this is a solid beginning but one has to ask why with such remarkable leadership among women, is this movement so slow to accelerate?
Conditions for Women Today
A few years back, I came to recognize living a life of spirit and faith was also key and not engaging dysfunction. As the economy became more challenged, I found myself on a battlefield of toxicity for work that has brought me to a downward spiral that many health people share with me.
On an ongoing basis, I am reminded of how exceptional women have been good at retaining secrets from public view, e.g. health, marital abuse and discrimination in the workplace to a degree of complicity that underlies why there is so little progress for women in a country that has complicated the lives of so many now by the cost of education, the diminished number of jobs available and the increasing number of jobs available for a wage that no one can live on, let alone support children.
Somehow in the United States, women forgot to speak for and in support of their peers. The spiritual movement in the US grew into a focus of self-care and personal intention and the issues that trapped or harmed so many were forgotten that can compromise any woman’s health or access to education. We make people personally responsible to heal the obstruction and wounds that have been imposed on them that they did not cause.
Living and working in this kind of environment can result in the adoption of behavior that is dysfunctional when we feel all we can do I fight back on the battlefield by declaring war or simply protest. Some woman cannot free themselves for socio-economic reasons and need access to constructive options of employment, education and housing, especially if they have children. They need a form of protection that can overcome the harm they had to endure personally or to their children if they speak up or make the “secret known.”
For me this week, I can own the cost of freeing myself from walking away from systems of obstruction and not looking back to my Sodom and Gomorrah.
For many years, more than I care to think, I have found the courage to walk forward with my wisdom and my eyes to in minutes note an elephant in the room that is not right. I like many offer compassion and no remedy and keep walking or support as I can. This week, I became very clear, I will not perpetuate or enable anymore secrets and I will not engage in any conversations that bring me into a form of triangulation that perpetuates the secrete. Yet as women in this country we continue to perpetuate secrets and to me this has become as harmful as keeping the secret.
Over the past 3 decades there emerged a new set of systemic challenges at a rate of acceleration that the Earth Charter and UN Global Compact Principles have been designed to counter act all this.
These systemic challenges have form into many secrets that can become the ground of a battlefield of tension and obstruction we cannot speak about in public. For a few who experience this they have the protection of wealth, position or marriage to reduce the harm, but the wounds from these battles can be life long. I know this personally and discovered I was not alone in this experience in a very pronounced way in 2004.
The Hidden Story
In 2004, I attend a private by invitation meeting in Boston, attended by over 200 women who had MBA’s and worked successfully in the Financial Service industry. Success in this instance is equated with title and financial success. Most of these women were graduates of a top 10 MBA programs. This particular program by 2004, had over 900 female graduates working in industry.
As a journalist and business writer my invitation was extended with a strong request for non-disclosure. This group wanted my participation and I had to promise not to report any panelist personal story or report on the overall event to a public audience.
What I can say now is that the meeting focused on report from Catalyst, a non-profit established in 1962 that conducts research on the progress for women in business. The 2004 Catalyst presentation focused on the question, “Why fewer than 7% of women had advanced to C-level positions in the Fortune 2000?”
This report has popularized and been presented to a public view over and over again. What I did not expect was to listen to testimony of female leaders in the financial industry that offered “secrets.” These secrets included that 85% of the panelists suffered from chronic illness and had compromised life circumstances that led to the deterioration of their own health when they are parents, elderly caregivers, or witnessed first hand corruption.
A panelist at the time of the conference was working in venture capital investments. She reported that she had witnessed when employed by a securities firm of fame, an “indiscretion.” Her husband’s response to her was, “Resign immediately. I am glad I can support us and assure your resignation with dignity because you don’t have to work.” She also indicated her resignation was just on time to see her husband through his own health challenges while caring for her young children at home, which she was not anticipating and needed the freedom of her own company. She ended her presentation stating, “I do not know what single women did to protect themselves from this kind of association by employment?”
The most dramatic presentation was last from a woman of status and achievement in the financial service industry, who announced that she let her career destroy her life – marriage, relationship with her children and friends. This is not news. How many articles and reports have there been through the years on women who sacrificed a “life” for “career.I found comfort in recognizing and end to my ongoing feeling of an isolated experience. I had just met women like me who had lived through similar experiences.
I noticed by the end of the event that women, I respected the most was no longer employed in industry, but served industry. These women structured their businesses so they no longer had to personally absorb or perpetuate harmful corporate behavior they could not control.
Forbes journalist, Meghan Casserly wrote, Millennial Women Are Burning Out by 30, Great for Business. This is truly not news. Casserly points out more women are becoming entrepreneurs and starting their own companies as an alternative. In my experience the women succeeding are doing that with the education and knowledge of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. What does that imply to women today?
As someone, who has worked at the frontier of sustainability and csr, for nearly two decades, I have seen the freedom that these woman claimed that was across the board empowered by family and friends. It was clear to me if you did not have that kind of support, it was a long hard road with no guarantee for successful outcome.
Is Change Possible?
Elaine Cohen, a recognized authority on HR and corporate reporting in the movement of change for Corporate Social Responsibility, recently reviewed Women and the New Business Leadership by Peninah Thomson with Tom Lloyd.
Thomas and Lloyd reported that one mentee interviewed pointed out
” Women tend to want to get everything on the table, because they
believe it is only when all the sometimes painful facts are on the table
that the truth of the matter can emerge “
This fits with my view that “women rarely want to disregard the “elephant in the room.” Yet we have appeared to often organize our view of the most “difficult,” as a secret.
I believe until women find a spiritual foundation and new form of strength that has them begin to see strife as strife of many rather than getting lost in their own strife to intend a miracle of repair. This is critical as a principle of uniting and forming a credible movement of change from which to claim their power and influence the acceleration of change.
I do not see this happening as rapidly without women learning to weave networks in which they can safely claim their power and also generate solutions to generations of abuse and harm to their health and economic status and social position that no one asks to be imposed on them.
Margaret Wheatley, a leadership thought leader and change agent, points out how critical it is for any change agent (man or woman) to exercise perseverance. In her book titled Perseverance she writes:
“Perseverance is a discipline—it’s a day-by-day decision not to give up. Therefore, we have to notice the moments when we feel lost or overwhelmed or betrayed or exhausted and note how we respond to them. And we have to notice the rewarding times, when we experience the joy of working together on something hard but worthwhile, when we realize we’ve made a small difference.
A Personal Action Plan
I know many competent, leadership quality women, who did not chose the adversity that was imposed on them. Often the only solution for them was to accept roles of care giving, patient or simply walk away from a job to protect their health. They wisely recognized that to envision repair and change for a scale of outreach that goes beyond what they can know personally and it implied now walking away, but walking in a high degree of uncertainty with perseverance to form something new for which there was no guarantee of outcome or assurance of a happy ending.
My chemical and environmental sensitivity and chronic illness has pushed me to care about the impact on this to people because so many men, women and children suffer more than me. Drawing from this perspective I learned how to formulate ideas that assure lasting social impact. I did not ask to live life with this challenge and at the same time, this challenge has pushed me to integrate a spiritual practice and take on life in forms that are ordinary but not anything that anyone could teach me.
And I have created my own form of empowerment and remedy:
1. Formulating a course the redefines network so anyone person can benchmark and define their personal social network and its assets;
2. Gathering group of women and men in my life that I can interact with virtually on a daily basis to empower me to overcome the obstacles that I and many of my peers and colleagues face in challenging economy.
3. Shaping my presentations and coaching to inspire this change, for which I can speak with passion, credibility and spark engagement between women in local community.
Every person in my sustainable reflective prayer community knows a variation of challenge. The question remains in taking care for yourself and those you love, how you move from hero, heroine or victim to claim a life of repair and solution with other women to accelerate that change and claim our power?
I regret in 2004 with this alumnae group of women with Wall Street related careers, we did not follow-up with another meeting to look at these questions.
While articles like what Meghan Casserly wrote for Forbes portray a bright picture for the millennial women, we have millions of other women, who are able to step up to learn a new way that I teach that can empower and accelerate a global economic change that has not been fostered by the traditional institutions and industries where women continue to burn out or wait for a pink slip and then what?
Come to one of my programs or host one for your community through a local “green” incubator.
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Author’s Bio:
Lavinia Weissman is sustainable leadership coach, health advocate, capacity builder, and publisher/editor-in-chief of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com.
For More information on Lavinia’s Coaching, Workshops and Presentations or to obtain an invitation to Monday Circle or Prayer Community Conference,
Contact Adriana Hill in the US by phone 516.204.6791 or at mydestinyjourney ampersand gmail.com.
Will 2012 be the End to Denial and Obstructing Change?
When Personal Change is not Enough
By Lavinia Weissman
@WeCareHealth4949494949494949494949
At the end of the year, I take some time for reflection. First, I identify people, who have influenced change in my own thinking. But this year, I have taken stock of people, who have drew me into a conversation that in my opinion is changing the neural landscape in which I live which has been filled with denial. This form of denial is not my own, it is the pervasive denial that is obstructing change that more and more people want for health that will impact people, environment, economy and habitat.
This trend in my thinking began when I met Peggy LaCerra on Facebook, through Joan Borysenko. Peggy is a evolutionary neuroscientist that introduced me to the idea of “neural landscape,” back in June 2010. It has taken me more than a year of time to even feel like I grasp what neural landscape is, since I wrote this post, Changing my Neural Landscape.
Joining Peggy LaCerra in reflections of the heart and brain
Sometime last August, when I was first contacted by James Schwinn from his outreach on Linkedin.com, something began to deepen in my understanding of a neural landscape after a few weeks of chatting in brief bits and bytes and sharing writing with James, that resulted in my writing, Can Sustainable Venture Repair the Social Fabric of the Global and Local Economy?; followed by What Do People want after OccupyWallStreet.
James pushed me my thought in such a way that it brought me to the door of a new neural landscape. This landscape began to come to life in the way I related. At the time, I did not realize the impact on me personally and how I was about to face one of the most challenging changes in my own life. It came to life for me inside very loudly and with great difficulty that I simply could no longer work the pattern of education and career that I had grown out of in the institutional world of non profits, government and commercial enterprise.
What grew inside of me was a level of rejection that was pushing me to walk away from doing anything as usual. This happened while I was in Boulder, Co. Day be day it got more difficult and in some ways horrifying and hair curling. I am a person of courage and strength. This was not a soup opera or drama , I was completely altering how I think, who I related to and more important redefining myself in many different ways that was bringing into my life many new people who fostered great respect in me.
Learning with James Schwinn
Then through James Schwinn, I met his business partner Charlie Randall. Charlie and I sat in Boulder over tea a few times and he had an impact on me that was different from most. Our conversation was very personal and quiet; grounded in a form of humility and heart that I cannot describe and maybe few could view and observe. I left these conversations accepting how difficult life was and just recognizing the painful nastiness that seemed to be growing around me and making my life difficult on a daily basis at an accelerated scale over 5 months time.
Yet, in between honoring my own pain and suffering, I continued to sort through the muck and meier of it all and start to grow a new pattern to find my way out of the other side and slowly come back to life again experiencing some faith and hope, and refusing the same form of courage and strength that got me through so much difficulty from my experiences in the past.
Exploring Life from a New View with Charlie Kendall
I have for many years now no matter how bad it gets , get up each day and follow my cues and now after a few months of upheaval, I just got up with less suffering and continue to work my life, my path and follow the rapid appearance of some new cues.
Before leaving Boulder, Co, I met Andrew Lange, N.D and I spent a lovely day with him that included meeting his life partner, Barbara, a nurse and somatic therapist.
This was an experience I could not translate rapidly. While I am still absorbing the conversation that Andrew, Barbara and I shared, Andrew is bringing to life with real time hard work, everything medically that I believe in and value that can transform health as we now know it. He is creating changes in practice that address the complexity of the environment, habitat, economy and all that is challenging people today for personal health.
More important, Andrew has shaken out a form of offering lab tests to people at significantly lower cost through his company, Save on Labs for as much as 60% saving on tests directly organized with patients.
This has moved a legislative activity into action in Rhode Island, where Internet related legislation blocked use of this site to Rhode Island citizens.
Why is this a change to my Neural Landscape?
On Friday, December 24, 2011, President Obama told Barbara Walters that he had not fostered an understanding of just how bad the American economy is with the people in this country. It has perpetuated a form of denial, which obstructs change.
The pervasive denial in this country is a neural landscape that has obstructed and made it difficult for any change agents or capacity builders like myself to do the work we intend.
Being a hero or heroine is not my idea of way to live. Ultimately, people you relate to what help you form a new neural pattern in your unconscious from which you can respond with ease and filter as intuition without “talking about it.”
The truth that I have been pushed to learn and see through all my experiences with downsizing, death and dying and illness is not the life I had planned. But while I could see this truth, I continued to work in the way American told me I had to work and with people who did not have the sincerity to create the change we need.
These past 6 months have pushed me into a very painful leap that is now calming down to foster relationships and create a neural landscape with others who are working to create the change with need out of sincerity and by fostering the right approach.
I feel gifted to know all of them and draw the inspiration I need to build The Story of Meaningful Use and all I do into a platform of change that will move millions of people from the denial we are living with her in America and other forms in other parts of the world. It will take this scale of change in our unconscious brains to weave a systemic change that will bring to life around the world the discovery of change that so many want and need.
Happy 2012 to all. I welcome your comments and want to hear from you in how I can serve what I believe in with all of you to continue to expand this new neural landscape of change.
_______________
Author’s bio: Lavinia Weissman is an sustainable market leadership coach, journalist, and publisher of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com.
As a speaker, she describes the new emerging patterns of markets shaped by sustainable market leaders and the social networks they work with and employ.
As a coach, Lavinia works with all her clients to inspire professional development that assures a person the opportunity to embed sustainability as a leader into the network and culture of people they work with. She has a private practice where she works with women to embrace the experience of chronic illness that challenges their livelihood and form of work.
Is Sanofi Aventitis Moving Beyond the Challenges of Pharma?
As a global health leader will Sanofi Aventis create new sustainable markets of value for health?
By Lavinia Weissman
@WeCareHealth5252525252
Original date of publication on CSRWire Talkback, June 8th, 2011
Greenbiz.com, recently published two important reports by its Chairman and Executive Editor Joel Makower. The first report is an article titled, Green Marketing is Over. Let’s Move On. And the second is a video of Joel’s presentation on the State of Green Business 2011.
After reviewing the report and video, I decided to return to my study of Sanofi Aventis and ask, “Is Sanofi Aventis moving beyond the pharma business model; and will this create new sustainable value markets for health?”
To get at some answers to these questions, I captured a “quick and dirty short list” of Makower’s observations as a framework from which to assess the current state of Sanofi Aventis.
Makower observations:
1. For the most part business is still treading water to build a sustainable economy with out any remarkable progress.
2. While business is treading water, Greenbiz Group doubled its membership, approached by companies they did not know asking to become members. Greenbiz Group now has more than 50 members; Makower sees this as an indicator of hope.
3. Green marketing is in need of makeover. Green marketing initiatives and stories focus primarily on the consumer and what the consumer can buy rather than how companies can create new markets of impact.
4. The key to building new markets is about building new markets for healthy people to live in a healthy world.
Next step: I conducted a quick updated review of Sanofi Aventis to look at their progress over 2010 and what has occurred since the April 2011 completed acquisition of Genzyme. (Links to three previous Talkback posts).
My findings in brief:
With the publication of Sanofi’s 2010 Annual Review, CEO Christopher Viehbacher announced a change to Sanofi’s mission from “to improve the health of as many of the 6.8B people walking the planet as we can” to focus on a new mission “to becoming a global health leader.”
Viehbacher has outlined three areas of strategy from which to balance its profits with sustainability by focusing attention to resources that:
1. Increasing innovation as an approach for research and development. September 2010, Sanofi signed a partnership agreement with Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s Belfer Center for clinical trial research. Sanofi has committed an investment in this collaboration of $33M to DFCI over three years. With this investment, Dana Farber gains the right to preclinical, clinical and commercial milestone payment and royalties from sales of commercial products developed by Dana Farber with Sanofi Aventis.
2. Adapting to future challenges. The company is focused on adapting to the change implied by ongoing translational research and new formats of health education to move beyond the structure of delivering OTC drugs to patients for common ailments and creating new responses to people who suffer from chronic and life threatening illness.
3. Pursuing external growth opportunities. Sanofi has set a goal to explore outside the pharmaceutical framework new forms of treatment platforms that are more affordable and accessible to patients, which opens a broader potential for them beyond the innovation of new drugs.
Sanofi has in recent months introduced a new generation of social media reporting for its Annual Reviews, Sanofi TV and links to Facebook. Within this media constellation, Sanofi offers regular updates on the company, health, professions, responsibility and what is new cross culture, country – and in English and French. Reports update followers from the perspective of all stakeholder interests in CSR, regulation, research, business and advancements for populations of people with specific health needs.
Sanofi through Chris Viehbacher’s leadership has bounded its investment in clinical trials, freeing funds to formulate new platforms of prevention, health education and the development of new, affordable products for the patient that can be easily accessed.
Is Sanofi building a new sustainable market that helps people to be healthy and live in a healthy world? Are they breaking the barrier to the idea that big companies have less success with innovation?
Perhaps Sanofi forging ahead of Novartis, which has accelerated its capability and success with clinical trials or GlaxoSmithKline who is addressing health and poverty in an old format of giving by returning a percentage of profit back to the country in which they do business for a total of $5.4M.
About Lavinia Weissman
Lavinia Weissman (@wecarehealth52525252494949606060) is a sustainable market capacity builder, coach and publisher/editor-in-chief of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com. As a speaker she describes the new emerging patterns of markets shaped by sustainable market leaders and the social networks they work with and employ. As a coach, Lavinia works with all her clients to inspire a culture of change that builds healthy practices for people within healthy markets.
Talkback Readers: What do you think? Is Sanofi creating new markets for healthy people who want to live in a healthy world with sustainable value? How would you measure this? Weigh in on Talkback!
The Tear in the Fabric
More Fray & Tear or Repair Beyond Imagination
By Lavinia Weissman
@WeCareHealth56
For the last 3 months, I have lived at the tear in the social in ways I have not seen before. I have met local to me and virtually other social entrepreneurs, who in their own right have intimately learned about that tear in a variety of ways and from numerous perspectives.
What is even more astounding is that most of the people who have in this flow of synchronicity come to my door are a balanced group of men and women with a diversity of background personally and professionally would surprise most! They are the change agents responding to the state of the world and its global financial collapse.
These people have worked beyond limitations that most people cannot imagine.
Numerous of these people have had to go through their own personal healing in ways not many Americans know to do. Here is a list of some of the synopsis of those experiences:
- A divorced women leaving an abusive marriage and living out of her car has now transformed into a successful entrepreneur who can rely on a base of product sales to keep her steady and constant;
- A former investment banker and venture capital person, who got such a bad taste in his mouth from how he was being successful, he traveled Europe and Canada to learn more about life and reshaped his business orientation as a social entrepreneur;
- A long time sustainability entrepreneur who found out about the stripping loss emotionally and financially that leads man with life threatening illness to be stripped of everything. He has now returned to his former work with a new pragmatism and recognition that business in this arena can be financially viable, serve and take care of him and his family.
- A man raised in a format of poverty that obstructed his education when he was trapped by his extended families socio-economic boundaries, who found a network of encouragement and practical and concrete support to complete a Ph.D. and marry a remarkable woman and build his own stable life woven into the fabric of a legitimate academic institution of reputation, now ready and able to make a difference. There are more and others, and then there is me.
Through recent experiences, I have been able to renew my courage in a time of great uncertainty by remembering my grandmother’s walk across EU to the US with her six year old brother after they were orphaned; and my memory of a good deed my father carried out during the depression that came back to reward him financially with a job in the last decade of his ability to work where he made more money perhaps than he had made all his life.
The other side of the experience is a deep emotional reminder of the cost of bitterness and hatred that weaves into people who are victims of pograms in Poland and the Holocaust, like my mother. It makes me think of the some of the political actions today and how good people become victims of a system of politic that strips them of engaging in life feeling like years of hard work is taking care of them, like this man,
- click on photo to read the text-
Yet what I know is needed is to form social networks of imagination and community that inspire experiences like this one; where by a young man, Jason McElway, a basketball manager (water boy?) as a special ed student in his high school. Jason lives with autism. In the last 4 minutes of the game and the last game of the season, Coach Johnson let Jason suit up and play.
Watch this amazing broadcast, Because Jason is autistic, he is use to feeling different, but as the broadcast reporter, Steve Hartman pointed out never this good. Jason shot 6 3 pointers, 20 points total.
Why was this possible? One Word, Imagination !
In a local community, people can take what others perceive as a risk, because to the person that takes the initiative, the idea is not high risk; it is offered out of a history of relationship, value for the other person and care.
Change in this country has been difficult to come about within institutional boundaries of hierarchy and spheres of influence that rely on a sphere of wealth, as I described the structure of global financial institutions last week.
There is a growing number of people in this country and in fact around the globe, as demonstrated by the spreading of #OccupyWallStreet to 1039 sites across 87 countries.
This social network lives across jurisdictions and boundaries often described as sectors or vertical channels where life is based on transactions and formulas based on prescribing needs with yes and no questions.
So institutional driven analysis is based on a form of reduction theory that has through the years grown into a formula for collapse.
Can We Avoid Collapse?
Last week, Newsweek published an editorial by Niall Ferguson, America’s, “Oh Sh*t!” Moment.
Ferguson’s analysis provides a real time framework of imagination on how America and Americans can avoid collapse. A collapse according to Ferguson, e.g. the Ming Dynasty or the Soviet Union is sparked by the rulers losing their legitimacy by an overwhelming swelling of a complex social network activity making a statement that this legitimacy no longer has power.
This is not news to the ebbs and tides of success and failure in financial markets, but it is news to a format of medical legitimacy that accelerated in it formation from the mid – 1900’s promising all Americans “quality health care” and the guarantee of the funds they need covered by health insurance or Medicare/Medicaid System.
Obstruction by the Legitimate Rulers
The reality is that America is collapsing because 99% of people without wealth cannot assure ownership of a home, the health care they need with the funding sources of insurance or income.
The system is further collapsed by the cost of education to begin a career with a wage that supports people to raise a family and take care of themselves is chronic or life threatening illness does not configure into the mix of the wage earners personally or their children.
This collapse has been fueled based on the attention of scientists to disease, infection and treatment with antibiotics and anesthesia to enable surgical fix as an alternative to less costly approaches of reducing the impact of symptoms e.g. on the brain or spine by reshaping lifestyle, exercise and modalities of body work that reshape the spine and remove the obstruction of energy and nervous system behavior to restore health or reduce pain.
This is a systemic description of the system that has been harmed by how our political system has selected rulers who are reinforcing a system for jobs, taxes and infrastructure that is perpetuating harm for people because of the failure to adapt new systems and replace old out of date methods so people of this country have their needs responded to.
We are at a all time experience of this harm reinforced by rulers we elected who are not getting their job done for people living in this country.
Altering the Complex Social System with Imagination
Ferguson has defined what he calls the killer apps that have created and reinforced collapse for the American people equating our systems of competition, view of the Scientific Revolution, the rule of law and representational government, modern medicine, consumer driven demand and our work ethic as we act educate for, act in response and live are like software applications that are spiraling all of us into collapse.
The social fabric of our county is torn and lost in a debate or protest with respect to which of these “killer apps” dominate how we live, our practices and our behavior towards each other in communities in the United States, Europe and Australia.
Avoiding collapse, In seeking some ideas about what is ahead of us to discover a new formation of social entrepreneurship that builds capacity between social entrepreneurs, political entrepreneurs and civil society entrepreneurs.
This week I became acquainted with Marriah Star’s, personally and academically. Within Marriah’s research, he examined the phenomena of diaspora. A diaspora is a movement or a migration of people away from their ancestoral home
Marriah’s research reminded me that so many of the 99% are the children of immigrants who migrated to America ad it’s promise for freedom and a future of success for anyone who reached out for it’s golden ring.
I am part 2nd and 3rd generation of an immigrant family, who came here as a result of a diaspora.
Yet here I am today, a citizen who has migrated from the local community that insured me my economic stability, health and sanity after living in a format of a society that stripped itself of the very relationships that insure that and pushed most people to a form of survival and lots of hard work that is not caring for us in the long term.
There is no going back and our institutional practices in business and politics has resulted in a movement of people protesting and asking for something else.
The next stage of formation has to restore an understanding of the value every person can contribute to repairing this tear, rich or poor; it’s going to be a lot of hard work across this country and around the globe.
Right now are people forming into capacity building organizations incubating ideas into a real societal framework of practice that will rebuild local economies and bring people together to begin to relate to each other as if time and what you do is of value; and will also serve to take care of you so that the work you do wisely will insure that you can sustain.
While this stage has grown out of a stripping duress, the next stage is more difficult in that it requires a new form of investment in local communities that to build results that impact local infrastructure, build a wage base that is livable and more important build communities in which our children have the best possible education to move ahead with the foundation we build to achieve full momentum.
If we don’t — yes, there will be a collapse and the question remains out of a collapse can organic renewal give birth to a new formation that will bring life back to the people so deeply in struggle now?
Which struggle do you want to leap?
_______________
Author’s bio: Lavinia Weissman is a sustainable market leadership coach, journalist, and publisher of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com.
As a speaker, she describes the new emerging patterns of markets shaped by sustainable market leaders and the social networks they work with and employ.
As a coach, Lavinia works with all her clients to inspire professional development that assures a person the opportunity to embed sustainability as a leader into the network and culture of people they work with. She has a private practice where she works with women to embrace the experience of chronic illness that challenges their livelihood and form of work.
What Do People Want After #OccupyWallStreet?
Reform Wall Street or Repair the Tear in the Local Economy & Social Fabric
By Lavinia Weissman
@WeCareHealth56
On October 20th, I read Don Tapscott’s exceptional Huffington Post, Three Principles for a New Wall Street - This is Tapscott’s view on what is needed to repair the Wall Street.
No one will argue, that Don Tapscott’s Huffington was an intelligent and educated view.
This editorial, sparked by the movement of #OccupyWallStreet, is a statement of meaning and power. Yet, I found it confusing for the ordinary person without wealth, working hard to survive the mess we are living with in American and what if anything that he proposed would impact the lives of so many torn now?
Don’s opening remarks captured my attention:
“To many it feels like just that. The financial services industry is in desperate need of reform. Many bankers have behaved as secretive corporate titans serving only their own interests, and insist the devastating consequences are not their fault. They are failing to fulfill their obligations to society — in some cases, even to shareholders — and a growing number of critics view the day-to-day behavior of the financial services industry as unacceptable. If the industry doesn’t initiate reform from within then it will eventually have more extreme reform imposed from outside.”
I completed reading this article and found myself as a woman with a lot to say that I have not see written that many women I know do see.
Not many men will speak from our view of how the financial service industry has failed us.
My Synthesis of Tapscott’s Editorial
Don’s editorial it is written from a systemic overview and perspective that the solutions lie within a new formation of integrity and transparency on a global scale. Once again, a leader is pointing out the board room perspective for the big financial service companies and investment banks.
Don’s thesis is based on a financial system of a sizeable deposit mass, larger than the sum of a local community can create.
This creates a senior debt managed as a corporate asset for a core group of economic decision makers and shareholders. The focus become how to leverage returns from aggregation and spiraling consumer banking fees.
Transparency as defined in this context shapes from an issue of checks and balances and compliance reports rather than a source of measurement for how a community and its residents sustain health and thrive from creating sustainable market value that serve a consumer need identified by a social network analysis drawn from people with local voice or exemplary pulse taking capabililty
The Tear in the American Social Fabric from a Woman’s View
The very fabric of our country is torn in many places on the map.
The places on the map are actually not cities, rural areas, counties, states or a very torn apart country served by a broken finance system and politics. Occupy Wall as a movement by today, spread to 1039 local communities across 87 countries.
The tear in the fabric of this country is the millions of broken hearts of people, who no matter what they do, cannot take care of themselves as we have been taught to do and in a way that defines us as Americans. It translated into a Republican view of “the haves and have nots, “ in the late 1990’s post the failure of the Democratic Welfare Reform.
As a woman, I represent so many who have not had their voices heard in bank, law or compliance; our interests for banking and funds becomes even more fundamental.
The tear in the fabric for women is often exceptionally extreme. We are the ones that are often called on first to manage and resource a special needs or chronically ill child or challenged elder. With the rise in chronic illness to 1 our of every 2 people in this country, we are also the first derailed from the economic system that sustains us, especially when we are sole provider for ourselves or children.
As Rachel Qulter reminds us of how she finds this hope through the Myelin Repair Foundation:
We continue to be discounted in the work place as people of value.
The women, i know personally have completed graduate education with significant debt. Many after school have been challenged to obtain jobs in this economy or opted for self-employment. They become more so than men, up until now, burdened with significant challenge to support home and family.
Around 2004, I was invited as a journalist to participate in a financial service conference for an alumnae group of women at a top 10 MBA program. I was told when offered the invitation, I could not reveal the discussion in any factual way that was launched with an speaker from Catalyst, a women’s research think tank on the status of women’s capacity to lead in corporate settings.
As a skilled pulse-taker, I observed a view that there was no permission to give public audience to. All but 1 of the female leaders who spoke or sat on panels, had a child or a family member chronically ill. One woman, of significant personal resource left her job after witnessing a significant breach of ethic in a financial security firm, that is in public view.
A few women spoke about battle with life threatening illness and the cost of that and the impact on them personally and how they change. A chairwoman in banking ( a hard position to obtain) offered a mea culpa and apology for the cost of her career choice to her daughters, her exhusband and herself.
For me, it has been years of waiting, networking and praying to build a network of women friends, who know this kind of experience like me. The women from the university conference are women who primarily know personal wealth and “buy their support systems,” that most of my friends cannot.
For years I was an outsider in what I call fundamentalist spiritual support groups in economic communities of wealth, where often the teachers, the coaches and others spurned people who lived the circumstance I live has being stuck in a limiting beliefs or having brought their circumstance to their door.
Trust me when I say, no woman (and often husband) selects to give birth to an autistic children or a premature baby requiring neonatal care that can accelerate into the hundreds of thousands and bankrupt a family. No woman that I know wants to ignore her elderly parents with Alzheimer or Parkinson Disease and then has to face the question for how long? And how will I continue to support myself and cope with this?
This is now an all too common examination for women and men.
It translates into a economic, emotional and spiritual issue at the root of challenge to women working in the institutional world. I believe from the perspective of a corporate financial service global firm is unlikely to ever be addressed. Yet when the firm causes harm, watch out, what is not reported in a compliance report is the harm to people who are dealing with the financial stress of chronic and life threatening illness.
What Does this Have to Do with Financial Service Industry?
My own struggle with Tapscotts’ editorial was the cry for more regulation or self-repair by a global industry that has not impacted harm of the “tear in the fabric.”
For years, I have not seen corporation or non-profit institution or government regulation or program repair or alter this tear to impact the health of people who live at the edge of the tear in our social fabric in local communities.
There is a lot of work ahead for all of us, not just the change agents like me. Recently I received an email from a man, who has worked with me to alter my thinking, just as my spiritual support system that I draw on from women like me.
To me successful economic change reaches beyond the peer-to-peer arena that has pre-occupied much of the self-anointed leadership of the sustainability movement and has the potential to move sustainability practice into the hands of the masses – where it has always belonged.
As I welcome in more advice and shift the focus of my own work from the tradition of media and consulting to focus on repair of the social fabric through economic development, I have to thank a few remarkable people, who don’t want to be thanked for showing a new direction for me to guide my own spirit in these challenging times and construct a new view of myself and a view of my work that I can construct with others for more impact.
It requires imagination and a new style of conversation that generates change.
As my long time friend, Bill Shireman, President and CEO of the Future 500, another Huffington Poster recently stated,
If we do not see the world as magical, then we are not awake!”
My response to Bill is,
Magic invites a new form of conversation that unites the practical nature of economic and business with a value that every person you know can sustain and if in the process of working with others, that person makes a real difference, I am happy to see them thrive.”
I am now putting to pen, speech, presentation and media what is in my imagination that can spark concrete local change to infrastructure for health to build repair and a new future for our children. I welcome you to join your magic and imagination with me.
_______________
Author’s bio: Lavinia Weissman is an sustainable market leadership coach, journalist, and publisher of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com.
As a speaker, she describes the new emerging patterns of markets shaped by sustainable market leaders and the social networks they work with and employ.
As a coach, Lavinia works with all her clients to inspire professional development that assures a person the opportunity to embed sustainability as a leader into the network and culture of people they work with. She has a private practice where she works with women to embrace the experience of chronic illness that challenges their livelihood and form of work.
Can Sustainable Venture Repair the Social Fabric of the Global and Local Economy?
Integrating Repair of the Local Economy into Incubation Scenarios for Cleantech or any Sustainable Venture
By Lavinia Weissman
@WeCareHealth56
Boulder Co
Jochen Kleef’s editorial, “Global Clean Tech Challenge: Clean Tech and Innovation – An Issue of Scale” was published in parallel with the start of the Wall Street Protest and Obama’s appointment of Jeffrey Immelt as Job Tsar to the US.
Kleef’s focus in his editorial was on “the challenges for these clean technologies are many ranging from simply the human resistance to change or accepting new approaches, engineering as well as technical hurdles and the running of a business professionally with commercial success.”
Kleef’s perspective is from his examination of launching an incubator and technology platform in Asia and the intricacies of create investment, commercial success and examining the benefits of localization and culture (Asia versus a global approach, e..g Immelt’s EcoImagination).
What happens when you shift the focus of sustainable business venture strategy to repair of the global or local social fabric?
A little over two weeks ago, James Schwinn contacted me. James is an economic development adviser, who has a successful career in international capital markets and venture development.
Schwinn has changed the forum in which he works to take a leadership position – along with his partners, John L. Knott, Jr. and Charles Randall – that is focused the reorganization and redevelopment of its capital resources – financial, physical, natural and human – as the essential gateway to building self-sustaining economies and jobs.
The 3 partners created a chain of strategy and action that is taking root in South Carolina, starting in the Noisette Community of North Charleston. While investigating Schwinn’s success with his partners, I figured out very quickly our conversation was much more than a chat or interview. It was a foundation for a generative dialogue, which few people ever engage with.
Generative dialogue is the 4th state of inquiry and rarely begins in the first conversation where the learning forms creates a path of strategy and action. It is a competency exercised by leaders who know how to do more than inspire change.
The partners build the social network architecture based on what the community needs by creating a geometric scheme of relationships, where learning forms into patterns of activity that form strategic activity that produces results and change.
In this way, the partners of EcoBank, Network LLC insure results that build repair to a social fabric of a local community that requires a change to return to health – that repairs the environment, local economy, habitat and people’s capacity to live. Introduction to this form of thought leadership
Take 24 minutes to review this presentation, Financing Sustainability; James Schwinn, Presenter at the 2010 Gaining Ground Conference in Vancouver.
I watch this video 4 times.
It did not take me long to realize that this presentation was a context for the development of an accelerated learning lab to serve the incubation and repair of sustainable commercial ventures in a pattern of community interaction with local government and citizen forums that united a view and formed an architecture to repair the social fabric of community.
Whether this is organized in a region of Asia or the United States, there are critical activities that I have always viewed important and missing in the movement of business that describes itself as a Sustainable Venture or Corporate Social Responsible Business that I believe does not integrate responses that repair the social fabric of local community and its economy.
Why has Commercial Business and Incubation Failed to Repair Local Economy?
Commercial business and planning historically has been transactionally driven as an exercisse to manage a spread sheet. This spread sheet is used to monitor a capitlization plan with profit and loss that serves a limited group of stakeholders.
This mechanistic approach is fundamental reason that the Wall Street investment engine resulting in an extension of the 2008 financial global meltdown sand cycle continuing to this day.
How Can We Break from this Destructive Pattern?
Local to me in Boulder County, Colorado, I began a very female style of networking that has resulted in a preliminary format from which to build a partnership with the DaVinci Institute
This began in what I perceive to be a best form of women’s networking and generative dialogue. Amanda Johnson, DaVinci Council of Luminaries, my coaching client, asked to shift her relationship with me so I could partner with her and Deb Frey, V.P., DaVinci Institute. Amanda asked DaVinci’s Vice President, Deb Frey to join us.
DaVinci’s founder, Thomas Frey has followed the tradition of structure and organization of some of the most reputable consulting ventures from a futurist point of view, e.g. my colleague Jonathan Peck, President of Institute of Alternative Futures in Alexandria, Va.
Deb joined her husband Thomas a few years back to manage the firm and has been percolating on a vision to translate the assets and brilliant engagement that Thomas has guided to translate into something more meaningful for the community that is taking form around the DaVinci Institute.
Deb has come to recognize that a critical stage for making this vision real and practical is the requirement that the Institute learn to assess and serve the community need to create a fabric of innovation locally in the Boulder County area. Deb is also very aware that most thought leaders or futurists do not know how to build the capacity to translate vision into action.
Deb has invited my leadership and capacity building talent to work with her and Amanda to build this vision into practical stages of real time development.
DaVinci Institute will be the host for my November 12, 20011 program, Foundations of Portfolio work. Watch for next weeks press release with link to a registration page.
How is This all Helping Me to Change my Focus into More Productive Energy that Implies Progress?
Since arriving in Colorado and working with a few consultants in this community, it has been eating at me how deep our denial is in the US. My conversations with James Schwinn have validated my intuition.
I am certain this is true in other places, e.g. Asia, as well. In the fractured economy, commercial business is conducted on a transactional basis.
Companies as shown by the UN Global Compact performance report are continuing even as enlightened leaders of CSR and Sustainability to perpetuate that which is broken and re-enforce the systems that have are obstructing job creation, the building of healthy investments and platforms of economic development.
To build the new infrastructure, we need to repair the health of the environment, people, economy and habitat. But any form of press shows how many people are joining for protest and well intentioned “flittering,” that goes now where.
Where Does the Word Flittering Come From? And What Do We Have to Do to Stop this Pervasive Behavior?
Over coffee with a friend “Samantha Weston”, I learned a new word,“flitter.”
Sam has followed her career in bio-pharm and finance with a new passion for oil painting. She said when the paint splatters all over the place, that is called flittering.
Conditions today for me are like a map of flitter splatters; we have not gotten down to the serious work of change by assessing the needs of the people and children they love to find the resources needed from which to assure stability for themselves and who they care for.
Amanda Johnson, Deb Frey and I have pulled together our work with that view. Schwinn and his partners have had the financial and resources of scale they need to impact and step up to do the job and have the impact they can have.
This is also based on the notion of performing social network analysis that forecasts the need of people or the community formation they wish build for economic impact.
For years the transactional approach has obstructed the voice of community need after downsizing and investment harm. Schwinn captured my attention and put sparkle to my eyes when in his presentation he outlined that responsible planning and engagement plans for cycles of progress and cycles of decline.
I know no man that has put into a sentence more of what is natural to women when they care for their families or lead through cycles of change in the community where they live or the vertical commercial venture that employs them.
This was a value core to many of the men who have mentored me; but not often translated into a leadership platform in government, commercial business and the non profit sector by economic core groups of decision makers.
If you are aligned with repairing social fabric of a local community that serves the needs of people, subscribe to this blog and watch for more stories of meaningful use that serves the needs of people for generations moving forward.
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Author’s bio: Lavinia Weissman is an sustainable market leadership coach, journalist, and publisher of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com.
As a speaker, she describes the new emerging patterns of markets shaped by sustainable market leaders and the social networks they work with and employ.
As a coach, Lavinia works with all her clients to inspire professional development that assures a person the opportunity to embed sustainability as a leader into the network and culture of people they work with.
Can Sustainability Sustain?
A New Wave and Format for Stakeholder Engagement
By Lavinia Weissman
Boston MA
Last week, I attended the web-located press room briefing by George Kell, Executive Director of the UN Global Compact. George presented an overview of the UNGC’s 2010 Annual Review. What I heard did not surprise me.
The conclusion in my opinion was not new news. Of the 6,000 Global Compact members surveyed, there is not sufficient global adoption of sustainable measures. The 6,000 UNGC members represent less than 8% of 80,000 companies that need to embed sustainability.
The additional summary points were not new news.
- CEO awareness is high. Execution and implementation is low;
- Beyond the corporate headquarter of the UNGC multinational members adoption is low in subsidiaries and the small to mid-size enterprises that comprise the “supply chain;”
- The excuse for low adoption continues to be insufficient resources for implementation.
From my perspective this analysis perpetuates “embedded sustainability” as a practice of risk management or compliance and not innovation.
Yet the global citizen voice reflected by its leaders and ordinary people are asking for the “discovery” of “embedded sustainability” as a response to problems inherent to how economic decision makers from all sectors have led us into the resulting harm of global warming and poverty and the resulting harm impact on rising incidence of disease, unemployment and declining conditions of habitat and local economy.
What I have learned….
Inadequate resources imply not enough money and more importantly, not enough educated people to perform the jobs of sustainability. My downsizing research across numerous Fortune 2000 companies consistently showed that when corporate leaders downsized, they were also unwilling to support the retooling and education of a workforce with out of date skills.
In a downsized culture, motivation becomes a practice of survival and protecting one’s job. It is only when a catastrophe occurs, e.g. the BP Oil Spill that the economic decision makers release resources to repair harm and then offer the public a view of the company will now adhere to compliance and regulation.
The culture of response to a “catastrophe” becomes a culture of accountability in response to liability and wrong-doing. The leadership drivers are shaped top-down and across a hierarchy of organization where people are told what to do and when they cannot do it, they blame the organization for lack of training and skill.
In contrast, virtual team and innovation research showed that when creativity and imagination are fostered extraordinary results are discovered through the learning of sound science and applying that science through the adoption of tools (technology) that invites high performance of teams and people across networks of expertise that learn to cooperate in service of building outcomes for sustainable value.
In a culture of innovation, high-performance brings investment rather than proof of concept because no matter the landscape of diversity (culture and expertise), the people anywhere within the network shaping sustainable value are aligned on building capacity for the purpose of producing sustainable value.
Within the picture is a dilemma…
Traditionally investors and economic decision makers want to hedge their bets and invest in something that has been historically proven sustainable value. Yet the need to learn sustainable value is a response to a burst in society that has led to economic upheaval from how investors of any kind and motive (business, philanthropy and government).
To deliver sustainable value, investors have to learn a leadership value for recruiting and facilitating an organization of people that recognize failure is part of the cycle of building successful sustainable value and organize investments that prompt societal responses to what we have to address for global climate warming, poverty, disease, water and energy in a incubator of learning where there is less overall risk to one investor and the discovery of great impact for a even a network of competitors.
For example, on the numerous occasions of investigating the projected harm of non-ionizing radiation, I have wondered what would happen if the companies that rely on non-ionizing radiation for defense, telecommunications and medical equipment would invest in an organization to investigate forms of reducing risk of impact on the “growing proof” that non-ionizing radiation is resulting in a rise in cancers, e.g. Leukemia and brain tumors?
Instead over the last two decades or more, we have seen a heated debate in the press between the scientific community, regulators and commercial lobbying groups.
What is interesting to me if I look at the perspective of what it will take to engage stakeholders in a world of early adoption is most likely to occur if a system of accelerated action research is organized into a collaboration that is strategic, purposeful and engaged by deliberate design.
In my studies of how that occurs that can lead to multicultural adoption, I have witnessed and studies for sometime the behavior, culture and outcomes delivered by 3 capacity building organizations unique to specific issues of sustainability:
- ChemSec.org from the get go gave exceptional performance in service of its mission to build a world free of chemical harm. Chemical Sec had a unique beginning in that the initial investors were through an investment fund created by other non-profits.
ChemSec engages corporate stakeholders in the exploration of substitutes for harmful chemicals and serves a bridge of advocacy for the citizen voice that has suffered harm from chemicals that needs to be substituted now.
ChemSec is an European organization that has been invited to present in the US and become a hub of learning for a , Stanford doctoral candidate in the Green Chemistry network established through an alliance between faculty at University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University.
- EDF.org was founded in 1967 in the United States at a point in time, when non profits environmental groups refused any association with corporations out of what was defined a clear conflict of interest.
EDF’s mission is to find market-based solutions based on sound science built from unlikely partnerships and non-partisan policy. EDF’s best practice fellowship program resulted in 51 MBA students generated for EDF’s corporate partners, “$350 million in net operating savings over the projects’ lifetimes. 400,000 metric tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions. More than 650 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year.“
- MyelinRepair.org – As recently reported in the New York Times by David Bornstein: While the US Food and Drug Administration approved 21 drugs for use in 2008, in the same year 800,000 medical research papers were published exploring the cure for disease.
In contrast, the Myelin Repair collaboration out of a combined investment of $80M formed for MS research by Scott Johnson, Founder and President
1. Identification of over 150 novel potential targets;
2. Development of 24 new research tools for broad application to other neurological disease
3. Filing two US patents and applied for 16 more;
4. Publication of 50 peer review articles;
5. The launch of broader collaboration with pharma companies;
6. Extending this research base for benefit to 70 other disease categories.
What do these organizations share in common?
None of these 3 NGO’s are lost in the “muck and myre” of protest and conflict. They are focused on purpose that as uniting principle through which people can form an agenda and guide themselves to learn to innovate change.
Perhaps one of the most costly uses of donations and grants has been to fuel conflict and protest. As Jochen Kleef, founder and CEO of Ecopoint.Asia recently reflected to me in an email,
“The thought this brought to my mind is, where would we be today if Greenpeace would have engaged with the establishment and stakeholders rather than confronting them. I am not questioning Greenpeace’s achievements or the results they have achieved, but I think there could have been so much more coming out of the last 30 years…”
About the time of formation of the 1987 Brundtland Commission,
Greenpeace shifted its focus from the peace movement and antinuclear protest to building this engagement of conflict. This enabled a pattern that the US continues to be locked into today,
1. Many NGO’s see it their role to protest “corporate greed;
2. The scientific community in most instances refuses to engage with corporations or accept financial support for fear that this can be perceived as conflict of interest;
3. As a result , this pushes an expectation that change can only happen if government authors policies and regulation; hence pushing the notion that risk management and compliance is what leads change to protect the environment and people.
Moving Beyond this Trap…
None of the 3 organizations I described previously are trapped by that system of thought.
Today, Greenpeace is a global NGO headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands with offices in over 40 countries and 2.8Mno donors and foundations providing grants.
So while leading NGO Think tanks around the world point out challenges to building resources to shift adoption of sustainability across subsidiaries of multinationals and small and medium size enterprise; one has to wonder with the lost jobs, inability of so many to gain the right education to be employed and the impact of global warming and toxic exposures on a growing geography of people facing poverty complicated with chronic illness.
What would have happen if Greenpeace had shifted its focus from the peace movement and antinuclear protest to building engagement with corporations to adopt sustainable practices instead of perpetuating and reshaping the protest and campaign methodology of anti-war to the environment?
Would Marc Gunther be reporting as he did last week that the cost of natural disasters in 2010 grew to $130B?
Would the economic powers struggling with the global recession continue to avoid the real focus for economic development by investing in the education of its people who are unemployed or becoming of age to join the workforce and create a sustainable method of employment to replace the dying system of full employment based on one life-time job?
Will leaders of the sustainability movement regroup themselves to sustain sustainability by acting on science as we know it today?
Is this form of innovation the best practice to return balance to our global ecology?
Ultimately to sustain sustainability and be effective in creating a global system of health for the environment, economy, people and habitat —-politicians, business and NGO leaders can learn from ChemSec, EDF and Myelin Repair Foundation the most important lesson on how to align purpose to accelerate cooperation and collaboration that will result in embedding sustainability into all aspects of the global economy.
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Authors bio:
Lavinia Weissman is an sustainable market leadership coach, journalist, and publisher of thestoryofmeaningfuluse.com. As a speaker she describes the new emerging patterns of markets shaped by sustainable market leaders and the social networks they work with and employ. As a coach, Lavinia works with all her clients to inspire professional development that assures a person the opportunity to embed sustainability as a leader into the network and culture of people they work with.
