What Started This

		What are all these links?

	Thoughts from the founder... Lately, I keep thinking what one of my friends calls "big thoughts" - the kind that give you a reputation at parties and dinners with colleagues after work. These thoughts are confusing and unsettling, but somehow I can't go back to not asking. The focus in my professional life on creating what is really valuable, coupled with the focus in my personal life on growing toward integrity and authenticity, leaves me with these questions about sustainability, community, and meaning... And when I ask myself about making a contribution to these, I find further questions - What are the dynamics that drive us to perpetuate an unsustainable economic system? Why are we unable to connect what we know, or suspect, about changes in the environment, to our personal habits and behavior? Why, when so many espouse inclusion, do so many experience racism and exclusion? Why, despite the longest economic boom in recent history, do we still feel not-enough? There are many levels to these questions, many people living out the answers. I am personally interested in the clues we find in the link between individual actions and corporate decisions. With the emergence of global corporations that supersede any single nation's boundaries, and the intrusion of economic life into all aspects of life in the U.S., we find a concentration of power around these issues that we've never seen before. Yet many individuals in corporations feel just the opposite - they often say they do not have freedom, options, or power in making decisions. Somehow, in belonging to an organization, we are pushed into a reactive, hyper-vigilant mode, which demands our constant attention, and diverts us from taking productive action. There is a powerful, extremely convincing story that we must attend to every vacillation in corporate direction in order to survive. The irony is that there is less certainty of the answers today than any time in the past, and if there were ever a search for broader contributions it is now. But the power of threat, crisis and distraction pre-empts a broader vision of power, participation and options. It's not that we don't care about bigger issues, we just hardly have time or energy to attend to them - or don't dare divert our attention for long. You would think we would learn from experience that the crises are perpetual, and that if we are ever to live our lives, it must be now...if we are ever to choose what is important, it must be now, ...if we are ever going to be powerful enough, it is now. As individuals, we know this. Yet few of us can sustain this awareness on our own, in the face of constant reinforcement of the need to react. But perhaps, by connecting to each other as human beings, we can encourage one another to build on that awareness, expanding it into action. After all, we sustain this system together. These ideas sound a little grandiose to me as I read them, and sometimes I think having "big thoughts" just leads to confusion. But isn't that attitude part of the problem? We question our right to participate in the conversation. We are facing an incredibly worthy question: how do we form organizations that more truly reflect the nature of human capabilities and values? To answer this question, those who've been expected to have all the answers, will need permission to say they don't know - and those who are used to deferring to leaders will need to make their thinking more visible, to become participants in shaping the future. As we hover over the possibility of globalizing our current unsustainable lifestyle, and eroding models of alternative lifestyles, we are called to attempt the integration of our wisdom as people and our selves at work. When I think about how to do this, I think of the subtle shifts that happen through simple interactions. And for me, some of the most powerful interactions have come through listening to people at work telling their stories. So I ask myself, what are the implications of these trends for my own work? What is that story?

	Five years ago, I left my role as a Senior Associate in a change services consulting firm in Boston. Since then, I have been building video case studies based on provocative business stories, as tools to support organizational learning efforts. Lately, subtle distinctions of meaning seem to have enormous implications for the energy and motivation available to do my work as it's currently framed. Although this is a personal story, perhaps it will connect with aspects of others' experience. First, it's become clear to me lately that my focus on creating technology products has been a barrier to actually participating in the conversations that inspire me and foster organizational learning capabilities. The technology is constantly changing and demands inordinate attention if we are to deliver reliable, functional products. Second, when I think about the conversations worth having, they have more to do with the people in organizations, than the corporate structure that identifies them. Despite the fact that clients will benefit financially, I find am only indirectly motivated by the prospect of improving business results. Also, looking back over my experience with seven major transformation efforts, even those efforts focused on serving people as a means to improve business results, I realize that every one of them was terminated prematurely according to the demands of the corporate structure, and not the individuals (or the business potential) involved. The attention, energy, and cohesion we had developed all existed in a provisional, delicate space that was easily disrupted. What's tragic is that this shifting of priorities was often taken as a verdict against the new approach. As a result, I have noticed my attention with clients tends to be defensively skewed towards the corporate political agenda, despite my original intentions. This shift shows up as limiting the depth or duration of the efforts, orienting them more toward what's measurable than what's generative, and foregoing opportunities for useful conversation about what's possible. This is not to say I'm not proud of the work I've been part of, but only that I'm noticing a systematic tendency to stop at a certain level. Bound up with this tendency is the belief that as a professional I must align myself with the emerging economic direction, advocating the changes underway and dismissing any serious questions about that direction. But the more I hear the voice of the technology revolution, the more I become aware of alternative voices with different perspectives on growth, globalism, and progress. The more I find my attention pre-empted by advertising and urgency , the more interested I become in questions of sustainability, community and meaning. Although I look forward to evolving my business as a way to support organizational learning, stay in touch with current practice, work with others I respect, and earn my living, I've decided I need to free up some time to experiment with service work. This is work that allows me to be in conversation with others in the most direct way possible - without the necessity of corporate sponsorship or supporting technology. Ideally, it is oriented toward openings for social and environmental sustainability, and perhaps, involves storytelling as a pathway to dialogue. What's most important is that it involve working with others, and creating something together. And it looks as though this idea of storytelling and business could be the way to get started... --Elizabeth Doty (March, 2000)

"Modern residents would hardly recognize the Bay Area as it was in the days of the Ohlones [200 years ago]..... The intermingling of grasslands, savannahs, salt- and freshwater marshes, and forests created wildlife habitats of almost unimaginable richness and variety....'There is not any country in the world which more abounds in fish and game of every description,' noted the French sea captain, la Perouse. Flocks of geese, ducks, and seabirds were so enormous that when alarmed by a rifle shot they were said to rise 'in a dense cloud with a noise like that of a hurricane.' Herds of elk - 'monsters with tremendous horns' as one of the early missionaries described them - grazed the meadowlands in such numbers that they were often compared with great herds of cattle. Pronghorn antelopes, in herds of one or two hundred, or even more, dotted the grassy slopes."

"And of course there was the grizzly bear...These enormous bears were everywhere, feeding on berries, lumbering along the beaches, congregating beneath oak trees during the acorn season, and stationed along nearly every stream and creek during the annual runs of salmon and steelhead....There were mussels, clams, oysters, abalones, seabirds, and sea otters in profusion. Sea lions blackened the rocks at the entrance to San Francisco Bay and in Monterey Bay they were so abundant that to one missionary them seemed to cover the entire surface of the water 'like a pavement.'... In the days before the nineteenth century whaling fleets, whales were commonly sighted within the bays and along the ocean coast. An early visitor to Monterey Bay wrote: 'It is impossible to conceive of the number of whales with which we were surrounded, or their familiarity; they every half minute spouted within half a pistol shot of the ships...."

"What's wrong with these people? Why are they doing this to us? ...Our brothers from the north are saying that we've got to die. ... Something really weird must have happened up there to turn these people into murderers. ...They're saying. 'Nobody eats but us.' ...They're acting as if they eat at the gods' own tree of wisdom, as though they were as wise as the gods and could send life and death wherever they please."

"Surveys show use of cocaine and marijuana among whites and blacks are about the same; yet blacks experience 5 times the arrest rate of whites."

"Everyone internalizes the culture's ranking system, permitting external oppression to extend as a subjective force in personal life. Many people from minority groups are plagued by self-doubt, self-hatred, or hopelessness and think these feelings are only their own problems....Mainstream people, too, can be hurt by internalized oppression. Most chronic self-criticism stems from the internalization of mainstream views. ...When self-critical people do inner-work, they are apt to meet a figure who puts them down because they are not valuable in some culturally defined way: they have the wrong physical appearance, skin color, hair, health, race religion, age, gender, occupation, training or economic status. The outer world and its value system dominate them internally."

"Listen... we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you... in a culture up to its chin in shame living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you ...over telephones we are saying thank you ...with nobody listening we are saying thank you we are saying thank you and waving dark though it is"

--W.S. Merwin, excerpts from The Rain in the Trees, published in Earth Prayers (p 244)

"Seattle was not the beginning but simply the most striking expression of citizens struggling against a worldwide corporate-financed oligarchy -- in effect, a plutocracy. Oligarchy and plutocracy are not polite terms. They often are used to describe "other" countries where a small group of wealthy people rule, but not the "first world" -- the United States, Japan, Germany, or Canada. The World Trade Organization, however, is trying to cement into place that corporate plutocracy. Already, the world's top 200 companies have twice the assets of 80 percent of the world's people. And this polarization and concentration of wealth is increasing. Global corporations represent a new empire whether they are aware of it or not. With massive amounts of capital at their disposal, any of which can be used to influence politicians and the public as and when deemed necessary, they threaten and diminish all democratic institutions are diminished and at risk. ...the WTO is eliminating the ability of countries and regions to set standards, to express values, or to determine what they do or don't support. Child labor, prison labor, forced labor, substandard wages and working conditions cannot be used as a basis to discriminate against goods. Nor can environmental destruction, habitat loss, toxic waste production, and the presence of transgenic materials or synthetic hormones cannot be used as the basis to screen or stop goods from entering a country. ...If the as-yet unapproved draft agenda were ever ratified, the Europeans could no longer block or demand labeling on genetically modified crops without being slapped with punitive lawsuits and tariffs. The draft also contains provisions that would allow all water in the world to be privatized. It would allow corporations patent protection on all forms of life, even genetic material in cultural use for thousands of years.

...Globalization supersedes the nation, the state, the region, and the village. While eliminating nations may indeed be a good idea, the elimination of sovereignty is not. ...Countries as different as Mongolia, Bhutan, and Uganda will have no choice but to allow Blockbuster, Burger King, and Pizza Hut to operate within their borders. Even Martha's Vineyard's refusal to allow a McDonald's could be nullified under the WTO regulations. The as-yet unapproved draft agenda calls for all governments to open up their procurement process to multi-national foreign corporations. No longer could local governments buy preferentially from local vendors. It could force governments to essentially privatize health and allow foreign companies to bid on delivering national health care programs. It could privatize and commodify education, or ban cultural restrictions to entertainment, advertising, or commercialism as a trade barrier. In addition, globalization kills self-reliance, since smaller local businesses can rarely compete with highly capitalized firms who seek market share instead of profits."

"Our senses are our windows to the world, and sometimes the wind blows through them and disturbs everything within us. Some of us leave our windows open all the time, allowing the sights and sounds of the world to invade us, penetrate us, and expose our sad, troubled selves. ... Do you ever find yourself watching an awful TV program, unable to turn it off? The raucous noises, explosions of gunfire, are upsetting. Yet you don't get up and turn it off. Why do you torture yourself in this way? ...Are you frightened of solitude - the emptiness and the loneliness you may find when you face yourself alone?"

"What's ironic is that even the boards of directors I work with feel they are compelled to act a certain way - the shareholders want this, the regulators want that - and so those that we assume have the most freedom to act, who seem to be the least constrained by the corporate organization, also feel like hostages to this system we've set up as a society. "

"These ..parental conditions often existing in mixtures among troubled families. ...These may include inconsistency, unpredictability, arbitrariness, and chaos. Inconsistency and unpredictability tend to repress spontaneity and are in general "crazy making." Combined with arbitrariness, these dynamics may promote lack of trust or fear of abandonment, as well as chronic depression. They result in a chaotic environment."

"It's the Oversoul, Nafai. " "What's the Oversoul?" "The force that sent you outside rather than listen to me talk about - about the thing that the Oversoul doesn't want people to know about." "That's silly - the Oversoul spreads information, it doesn't conceal it. We submit our writings, our music, everything, and the Oversoul transmits it from city to city, from library to library all over the world." "The Oversoul is inside your head, Nafai. Inside all of our heads. But some have it more than others. It's there, watching what we think. ... As soon as the Oversoul knew that you were getting close to a forbidden subject, it started making you stupid."

"We, who have lost our sense and our senses --our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are, we who frantically force and press all things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our earth and injuring ourselves: we call a halt. We want to rest. We need to rest and allow the earth to rest. We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lives in us, that is the ground of every unique expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion. We declare a Sabbath, a space of quiet: for simply being and letting be, for recovering the great, forgotten truths, for learning how to live again."

Somewhere in the process of researching these notes, I came across a statement about the changes happening in large organizations. The author said that, as we seek organizations that are more truly reflective of the human capability in all of their members, we are really just in another stage of the democratic process. What's telling is that I have been unable to locate that quote anywhere since - although I can still see the writing on the page in my mind. The idea that corporate governance can even be conceived of in the realm of democracy, is almost unthinkable, given my traditional economic and business education. How often have we heard, "A corporation is not a democracy!" And yet, if the organizations that most influence our lives, culture, and choices are not subject to democratic considerations, what does democracy mean?

"If one person is used to having his view prevail because he is the most senior person, then that privilege must be surrendered in dialogue. If one person is used to withholding his views because he is more junior, then that security of nondisclosure must also be surrendered."

"I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts."

"In Where We Stand, the authors rank the United States against other countries by 1,000 standards. Here's how America ranked on a few environmental issues: Percent of all glass recycled: 14th out of 16 countries, Percent of all paper and cardboard recycled: 13th out of 14, Waste per person per year: first out of 19 (and more than twice as much as the Brits), Carbon dioxide (the green-house stuff) released per person per year: first out of 8 (and twice as much as Germany), Carbon monoxide (smog) released annually: first out of 13 (and more than the next 12 combined) Chemical and biological waste generated each year: first out of 20 (7 times as much as the next 19 combined)"

"According to Cultural Survival, the Boston-based human rights organization, there are at least 3,000 native nations in the world today that continue to function within the boundaries of the 200-odd countries that assert sovereignty over them. Many wars that our media describe as "civil wars" or "guerrilla insurgencies" are actually attempts by tribal nations to free themselves of the domination of larger nation-states.

The process began in our country hundreds of years ago when we wanted land and gold. Today it continues because we want coal, oil, uranium, fish and more land....All of these acts were and are made possible by one fundamental rationalization: that our society represents the ultimate expression of evolution, its final flowering...So it becomes ok to humiliate - to find insignificant and thus subject to sacrifice - any way of life or way of thinking that stands in the way of a kind of "progress" we have invented, which is scarcely a century old.

In the later stages of [this] epic worldwide struggle, the forces of Western economic development are assaulting the remaining native peoples of the planet, whose presence obstructs their progress...Upon the ultimate outcome of this battle will depend whether a living alternative world view, rooted in an ancient connection with the Earth, can continue to express what is insane and suicidal about the Western technological project."

"I can't explain the effect of what I saw when I returned home to Delhi. There were a McDonald's and a Burger King on the main street. It fills me with such sadness to see the results of this cancerous rate of growth. But the most alarming experience was when I heard my two nieces, who were born there, talking about saris as 'ethnic clothing.'"

Ray was seen as an "old-fashioned" manager - the kind who liked to bang some heads together when there was a problem with quality, the kind who described himself as a Lone Ranger. When I asked him what meant the most to him during his career in insurance, he described the pain he felt while sitting with a woman in the hospital while she waited to hear if her husband would live or die from a workplace injury. I remember holding my breath as he described the two of them crying together in the waiting room.

"When I say I'm an actor, people look surprised and perhaps excited and say, 'Really? Are you in films? On television?' What I think they're asking is, 'Do you make money at it?' Once they learn that I do mainly stage work, their next question is usually 'What are you in right now?'. If I'm not currently in a show and say so, the attitude I often get is... 'Yeah, right, sure you're
an actor.' As if I'm defined by what I do for money and not what I do with intention!"

"We need to acknowledge the tremendous failure of our prevailing system of management; it has destroyed our people, creating unknowable loss."

-- W. Edward Deming, quoted by Peter Senge, Lessons In Leadership presentation, San Francisco, 1998

"In a modern version of an ancient Sufi story, a passerby encounters a drunk on his hands and knees under a street lamp. He offers to help and finds out that the drunk is looking for his house keys. After several minutes, he asks, 'Where did you drop them?' The drunk replies that he dropped them outside his front door. 'Then why look for them here?' asks the passerby. 'Because,' says the drunk, 'there is no light by my doorway.'"

After guiding the development of an incredibly successful new model year for an American luxury car, some of the leading executives were asked to leave the company, and accept early retirement packages. This amazing launch, wherein the new model had fewer defects during its first month in production than the previous years' model just moving out of production, involved revolutionary techniques such as openly inviting engineers to submit change requests.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

As I left a brainstorming session about the impact of the World Wide Web on a small business, I was offered a ride by one of the other participants. This man had been introduced to me as the director of on-line operations for a company that did hundreds of millions of dollars of business each day on the web; he had been a powerful advocate for the opportunities and power of the Internet revolution, and he continued to share his ideas as we drove out of town. As we neared my destination, I asked him how he was keeping up with the pace personally. His answer, "It's crazy - it's absolutely insane. I get 200 e-mails a day, I just can't keep up. In fact, I'm actively looking for a way to retire early so I can get my life back."

"Over the century since the Industrial Revolution, wave after wave of techno-utopian visions have so immersed us in positive expectation that they have solidified into a paradigm that new technology is virtually synonymous with the general advancement of society. It is only long after a technology has entered into general production and may have gained an important role in everyday life that we begin to perceive its adverse effect upon humans or nature. Even then, the proposed solutions usually consist of creating new generations of technology designed to fix the problems of the old. Thus the wave rolls on to the next technical generation."

"When we attend to someone we are caring for that person. The act of attending requires that we make the effort to set aside our existing preoccupations and actively shift our consciousness. ...As Rollo May says, 'When we analyze will...we shall find ourselves pushed back to the level of attention or intention as the seat of will. The effort which goes into the exercise of the will is really effort of attention.'"