Robert Paterson's List: KETC Resiliency

Scary new year? Think again. 2009 may look bleak - but this year, those with the purpose, courage, and vision to get seriously radical will have the opportunity to reconceive and reinvent the global economy.

This year, leaders of all kinds face a single, critical challenge: building 21st century organizations that yield new sources of advantage, powered by new rules of management.

Here's why - and how to get started.

Tomorrow will not be like yesterday. This is no mere recession: it's a tectonic global shift in savings, consumption, and investment. Today's macropocalypse is a rupture in the global economic fabric - and the next half-decade will be spent reweaving it. It is not a temporary departure from business as usual, an illness - it is a structural transformation, a lasting change.

20th century business isn't fit for 21st century economics. Yesterday's businesses were built for a world of overconsumption, artificially cheap production, symmetrical competition, and macroeconomic stability. That was yesterday. Today, the herd of industrial-era dinosaurs is going to be mercilessly culled - unless they can evolve to fit a radically altered economic environment.

Tomorrow's market leaders have new DNA. We've spent the last year identifying next-generation leaders - from the Obama campaign to Google to Threadless to Zara - and learning from them. They look and feel radically different because they were built for 21st century economics, not 20th century economics. They are organized and managed according to new rules; and it is those new rules that make the difference between surviving - and thriving in - the macropocalypse, or being vaporized by it.

Where do new rules come from? Here are five questions every decision maker should kick off 2009 by asking - and five results summarizing some of the new rules we've learned over the last year at the Lab.

If you are a regular reader - you will find these points familiar - like all ideas that are real versus intellectual fantasies - the ideas behind both the problem and the solutions are being developed by many people independently of each other - the sign of a "discovery of a truth".

Even the Premier is starting to hint at them - "But as these kinds of events cannot be foreseen, the Island must chart its own course for the future and become more economically and socially sustainable", Ghiz said.

Maybe a political platitude now - but maybe also the seed of awakening - I can only hope.

Critical for the success of the Mission in LOTR is that Gandalf make it clear to all the nature and extent of the threat and also what has to be done to "Win".

Most of the time Gandalf advises. Rarely - at crisis points - he acts. Above all he treats all as adults. You take his advice or you don't. He does not preach - he offers.

He is hard to read. There are deep internal forces that are not clear to outsiders or even to himself as he also morphs from Grey to White.

I think many of us might agree that if there is a Gandalf among us - it may be John Robb.

At the Boyd 2008 Conference, John did what Chet said was the key to orientate a group's mindset into harmony. He offered us an overarching context and he offered us a series of pathways that could take us to remedies.

* That there is no soft landing. We are not in a recession. We are not even in a depression. We are at the end of an era. The Tipping Point is of course the financial collapse. The Vast Ponzi Scheme of our financial world - with the vast sums in the Derivative Market and the Credit Bubble all in effect lost - cannot be saved. There is not enough money in the national accounts to pull this back.

* The search for efficiency and the urge to consume has set us all up like a row of dominoes - there is no buffer, no resiliency. As one problem rises it causes another. As one solution is tried it drives another problem. We all pull back and the consumer economy stalls. The auto industry and credit firms feeds the media (40% of conventional advertising). Papers and TV and Radio networks, many subject to LBO's will have to fail as per the Tribune. Every sector will be laying people off. Sales of all things fall off a cliff - driving more business failures and layoffs. Cities and states that depend on sales tax and property tax and the credit markets can rely on none of these. So they too will have to lay off millions - thus making all the problems worse. National governments will be asked to save us all and of course cannot. As States and Cities get squeezed and cannot borrow, they will too lay off millions - teachers, firemen police. No one will be safe

* As all of this is happening - the web is also sweeping through all businesses and gutting all who made artificial scarcity the heart of their model. This would be enough to drive a revolution but now is only one aspect of a perfect storm. There is no time to feel a way into a new model. A new model has to be found in 2009 or your business will die from this alone.

TRANSITION CALIFORNIA is a networking site for those interested in exploring and/or implementing the Transition model in their community. This site is being created through grassroots participation, and is continually evolving. It is a spontaneously arising effort to connect 'transitioners' with each other and to encourage and support the development of local Transition Initiatives.

The Transition approach empowers communities to squarely face the challenges of peak oil and climate change, and to unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers to this momentous question:

12 Key Steps to embarking on your transition journey

To begin with, it is important to note that although the term “Transition Town” has stuck, what we are talking about are Transition Cities, Transition Islands, Transition Hamlets, Transition Valleys, Transition Anywhere-You-Find-People.
#1. Set up a steering group and design its demise from the outset

This stage puts a core team in place to drive the project forward during the initial phases. We recommend that you form your Steering Group with the aim of getting through stages 2 – 5, and agree that once a minimum of four sub-groups (see #5) are formed, the Steering Group disbands and reforms with a person from each of those groups. This requires a degree of humility, but is very important in order to put the success of the project above the individuals involved. Ultimately your Steering Group should become made up of 1 representative from each sub-group.
#2. Awareness raising

This stage will identify your key allies, build crucial networks and prepare the community in general for the launch of your Transition initiative.

For an effective Energy Descent Action plan to evolve, its participants have to understand the potential effects of both Peak Oil and Climate Change – the former demanding a drive to increase community resilience, the later a reduction in carbon footprint.

Screenings of key movies (Inconvenient Truth, End of Suburbia, Crude Awakening, Power of Community) along with panels of “experts” to answer questions at the end of each, are very effective. (See Transition Initiatives Primer (1MB pdf) for the lowdown on all the movies – where to get them, trailers, what the licencing regulations are, doomster rating vs solution rating)

Talks by experts in their field of climate change, peak oil and community solutions can be very inspiring. Articles in local papers, interviews on local radio, presentations to existing groups, including schools, are also part of the toolkit to get people aware of the issues and ready to start thinking of solutions.

Totnes is the UK’s first Transition Initiative, that is, a community in a process of imagining and creating a future that addresses the twin challenges of diminishing oil and gas supplies and climate change, and creates the kind of community that we would all want to be part of.

The challenges presented to us today by global warming and peak oil (and gas) are perhaps the greatest that humanity has faced. This time brings a great opportunity for rethinking the way we live and making conscious choices about what kind of community and world we would like to live in. Change is coming whether we like it or not – and a planned response to the change will leave us in a much stronger position than if we wait until change is upon us.

Map pf North American Transition Towns

5thnorder intentionality

Peeelt stove in school