Dialog
Dawna Jones

Dialog between Peter Burgess and Dawna Jones to explore possible collaboration

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

RE: Greetings ... and some thoughts
Dawna Jones
January 30, 2015 12:08 PM

thanks Peter. I think Umair's book on the Capitalist Manifesto outlined the difference in the how to count what counts. The challenge is to come up with a way, a means for financial management that fits the new paradigm of stewardship. Everything thrown out has a value. Nature's services as inputs have a value. Impact accounting, from what little i know about it, puts measures to the decisions… what we need now is to put measures to a totally different paradigm. There are companies that have employed the living system form of management. What i don't know is how they've changed their financial systems to account. Interface is the most notable. Bill McDonough's work for companies is on top of that. I can introduce you to Steve Denning who is organizing the Learning Consortium for the Scrum Alliance in case a converstation there would help. There are many who don't get it… but my approach is to focus on the ones that are making the bold moves so that ultimately we create a tipping point.. ADapt or die variety.

I really appreciate your offer of help… I've been working to reinsert myself back into the fray for a while now… I think we just need to support one another in opening windows until they become doors and then an entirely new vista.

What do you think?

On 01/29/15 2:28 PM, Peter Burgess wrote:
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Dear Dawna

Your recent post on the B-Team discussion got me thinking ... again.

I believe I am on the right track ... but to be realistic, I still don't have much traction, and because of not much traction, not much (favorable) impact.

Others are much more 'in play' and talk a lot about various business issues that are important for an enviro-socio-economic system that would be less dysfunctional ... but in the end they don't have that much (favorable) impact either.

My dream is that all these people who 'get it' and are able to talk about it could also number it. Then I believe that there would be a lot of traction and favorable change, and more important, it would 'stick'. When I was doing corporate work in the dim and distant past we would talk about 'balloon' style management and 'ratchet wrench' style management. In the first case, an initiative works but is like squeezing a balloon ... stop the initiative (squeezing) and the balloon reverts to its previous state. With the wrench the bolt gets tightened ... and then tightened again, and there is continuous improvement.

Until we have quantification ... numbering ... for everything that matters then we will be in a 'balloon' world with lots of initiatives, but not much progress. With numbers we can start to do the 'ratchet wrench' process and have sustainable continuous improvement.

Better yet ... with quantification using a uniform standard system of value, we can sort out not only the bad actors, but also the good actors that are really not all that good. With numbering there will be surprises ... because, after all, this is a very complex system

How might I help you and vice versa?

Peter