Sustainable Organization

The Canadian Council on Learning recent report on the state of learning in Canada is a call to action

http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Reports/StateofLearning/StateofLearning2007.htm. But what is the action or what really works?

While 56% of Canadian firms offer training and development programs, the annual dollar amount per employee is low and going lower (about $800). Apparently, management is not sure of the ROI and employees have low interest in training. Mostly they are just too busy or the training schedule is not convenient or it costs too much.

At the same time the cost of mental health issues in the workplace are skyrocketing with every new study. It cost about $9000 annually for each employee with a mental illness and the number affected is getting close to 1 in every 20 employees. Probably more people than participate in training. No wonder employers are reducing the amount spent on training and development. Not only are they not clear on the ROI but they can’t afford it.

The mental health cost to employers in Australia just doubled to about $10 billion annually (Fed: Employers must combat $10b cost of mental illness: council. The comparable figure in Canada is over $3 billion at present and will likely catch up when new studies are completed. However, some research suggests that the real cost to Canada when you consider all the extras after company benefits have run out is about $33 Billion annually. And this does not count lost productivity (http://jenniferforbes.blogspot.com/2007/02/ipsos-reid-study-on-depression-in.html).

Other studies on empowerment suggest that about 16% of employees are actively disengaged at work as a method of coping with workplace stressors. About 1 in 5 of us will have a mental illness sometime in our life. And many of us suffer in silence making the true cost of workplace environments that are toxic for human beings much higher than is currently known.

Leadership obviously has a problem. Bureaucracy is bad for your health. Training, coaching, EAP services, and other human resource initiatives don’t seem to be enough (http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/article.asp?intArticle_id=618). Only real employee empowerment with normal human dignity and respect will work in the long run.

And the way to do that is to change the genotypic design principle through a company wide participative design process. Learning and development initiatives help but are usually not sufficient. Once one understands that the fastest way to a radical cultural change is a radical structural change and that there is a relationship between structure and process, then one can see that real learning and development, and real empowerment only happen through ongoing organization wide conversation over time. What Fred Emery pointed out some years ago with reference to the Scandinavian democratic dialogue approach is that the design principles must be smack dead centre of this conversation. A conversation about more training will not suffice when one is stressed out and humiliated on a regular basis.

The Manifesto

After a great work day designing a participative democratic political system for Canada, afterwards in the bar some of us worked out The Manifesto below. It is a statement of what we are about.

The People are Making the Future (otherwise known as the Manifesto)

The people are working together all around the world – to build a better world. We are working on our shared goals, those that are good for all people. We know that people are people all over the world, that we have common concerns. We are open to others and to new learning. We are trustful of each other. We know we belong to the planet and we appreciate her and all her people. We are looking after our planet and its people.

We congregate around global issues, the Earth, and peace on Earth. We also congregate around our separate issues. We decide together how to build our nations and cultures so that they contribute to a healthier planet and peace for all people. We congregate at our local levels and decide how to make them more desirable for all. In our organizations, we manage our work and ourselves so that we are productive and creative. Our people grow as they work and create together.

We have learnt from our ancient cultures that talking and deciding together as equals works better than creating superiors and subordinates. We have learnt that we must all take responsibility for our future. We refuse anymore to hand that responsibility over to somebody else. We have learnt better ways of democratically governing ourselves. We pull our politicians out of a hat. They serve their term and then they return to being ordinary citizens. They work for our children, our children’s children, and us. They, like us, work for the good of the whole.

As we congregate and decide together, we celebrate life and are joyful. We are becoming wise as we learn how to create a better world together.

Can Ideals bring oposites together?

When I look around the world I can't help notice that there is a divide that has become accentuated in the past couple of years since the dawn of the new millennium. From the divide in perception noted by Don in his post, to a more fundamental divide of world views, perspectives and systems of belief there's a social expression telling us something.

Elections results all over the world are expressing a tide or, as in the case of Quebec, expressing a 'quasi' even distribution of votes, where the divide becomes clear between the regions and the urbanities. My awareness of this started in 2000 in the controversial USA final results between Bush's (51%) and Gore's (49%). This past 2006 Mexico social tension escalated to an unbearable point in an election defined by a little over of 200,000 votes in a country of 120 million people (In Italy the difference was a dramatical 20,000 votes), still the divide shows a clear difference from the conservative north and the leftist south.

It is not a divide between two opposing views but among three

Furthermore, the story of Mexico and Quebec share a closer resemblance as in Quebec there was a shared vote in clear thirds close to an almost equal 30% of the seats. Meanwhile, while people talk about Mexican struggle between the left and the right the missed to speak about the other 30% of the votes that went to every other party. So, it really was again a similar picture of an equal distribution of votes among three 'ideologies'. Is that the same in USA? Still, the final races remains a close tide between Left and Right, I wonder what will happen two weeks from now in France?

Belonging

The above, added to some other events here in Montreal, has inform program development at the Institute of Management and Community Development and the University of the Streets. Speaking to what Don pointed out we, the X-ers at the Institute, have undertaken the challenge of responding in a spirit of proposition. Hereafter, my first draft for a potential series of conversations to be organized in the Fall'07. The key element for me, and the question I am posing to the group comes from the notion that Ideals 'overrule' (lacking a better word) values.

Your thoughts and feedback are more than welcome.

Gerardo

How can we make of Montreal a place of belonging?
Draft proposal for University of the Streets: Cafe Fall series

In a diverse city, within a plural and multicultural country built of immigrants: is there space for everyone to make this their home? As the debate around language, culture, religious beliefs, accommodation and the future of a French Quebec keeps permeating our daily lives confusion and not clarity shades every exchange.

As long as this remains a debate between values, believes and practices there’s not that much space for agreement. However, there’s a difference between human values and human ideals. While values refer to human belief systems, ideals hold the promise of universality. That is, every human holds them dearly without distinction of race, cultural background or religion.

Under these questions, it is important to look into shared ideals as a bridge beyond exclusion and marginalization of worldviews that might be the greatest wealth of Canada. This exchange should be one that happens on the premises of common ground and not of differences. Our common ground on this matter is that of: belonging as an ideal.

What would make us all feel we belong to this community? Who is entitled to dream the future of this community?

Analytical Framework

This is the analytical framework used for Project Australia and other studies since then. If we decide to look at the L22 scans and analyze them, we will be looking to see examples of adaptive and maladaptive scenarios and then compare and contrast these across the scans.

It seems to me that we have a new generation gap. People in their real 60's seem to track mostly maladaptations and particularly those of the elite whereas the gen x'ers in our midst track mostly the ideals as they emerge. Their vote is to ignore problems and get on with creating the world they imagine. Just do it.

For the older generation there may be a lasting memory of their youth movement of the 60's which was essentially anti-establishment. And to some extent they still are anti-something. There is however a wisdom, a knowing from within experience how easily visions, dreams and lot of good work can be co-opted.

Our strength and challenge (should we choose to accept it) is to bring these two persepectives together to get an accurate picture of the ideals and the maladaptations in our current environments.

Introduction

This is a great idea. Not sure I understand. So let's talk about it and how to make it available to others and how to teach them about how to use it. For example, when I publish this note, where does it go?