Why the military must(n’t) invade our schools

In yesterday’s Telegraph there was an article titled ‘Why the Military must invade our schools’ and whilst this might have a simplistic attraction in the situation we find ourselves in as a society, it fails to address the reality we are now in. Fragmented as society of’ individuals’ in a future where the Common Good must be placed centre stage as the energy and resource intensity of our society, SystemUK, inevitably falls.

Radio and Television programmes abound, Panorama last night for instance, but none recognise this fundamental reality. The Seventies were the beginning of the future we are now in, only with outcomes differed was a result of the exploitation of North Sea Oil. Which we squandered on Business as Usual, creating no reserve for the transition to the future we are in.

As a consequence, neither did we educate for this reality and the common purpose and action this future requires. The ‘Service for the Nation’ required of us all.

We are now in a world of fire-fighting failure demand and looking for End of Pipe solutions to Society’s Failure Demand. Such is the reasoning behind ResPublica’s genuine concern. Failing schools, send in the military to sort out the problems.

But we are all in this together for the Common Good, and whilst it is eminently sensible to encourage military personnel to take up the work mentioned in the article, dealing with the issues in separate boxes does not solve the problems at system level, SystemUK.

We thought resources were plentiful, to squander as we thought fit as individuals, rather than the reality; limited and needing to be marshalled for the Common Good.

In this future we must all be expected to act for the Common Good, bankers included!. This can only be achieved by educating for and implementing, universal and compulsory ‘Service for the Nation’ , not military discipline in a forlorn attempt to contain the Failure Demand created by not doing the right thing right as a Society.

There are difficult times ahead but we must start now if we are to ensure a coherent and competitive society rather than a failing one. There are scenarios out there we do not   need to let happen.

dd

 

Service for the Nation

The financial crisis and the current Banking furore illustrates our failure to educate for ‘Service for the Nation’. An understanding inbuilt in citizens of the benefits they receive from society and their responsibility for it, together with an appreciation of how this impacts global societies.

We seem to have lost this quality in ourselves and it is increasingly degrading our Quality of Life.

On it depends our survival as a coherent society with an acceptable Quality of Life for all.

Here are some of my thoughts

DD

A 21^st Century National Service

The UK Government has introduced a requirement for 11 year olds, starting secondary education in September 2009 to stay in Education or training until they are 18.

There is currently much debate about how this translates into positive outcomes and Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity, which is the outcome least required as we shift paradigms into the OPW. A 2005 OFSTED report finding that only 12% of 19 to 30 year olds interviewed thought that school had enabled them to be creative or understand risk.

In addition the change to fee paying in Further and Higher Education has led to most learners deciding to stay local to complete their education.

Similarly, with no form of National Service, young people not in continuing education experience no other input than their local area and as a result, in most cases, have no expectations beyond their limited boundaries. There is clear evidence that this is causing a dependency culture and an underclass, as is being widely reported.

So where do we stand at the start of a new decade and halfway through the UN Decade for sustainable Development 2005-2014?

It can be stated

◦       There is a wide spread of achievement output from the UK’s Education System

◦       This is aimed at satisfying a paradigm that no longer exists.

◦       This results in high youth unemployment.

◦       Leading to disaffection and continuing underachievement.

◦       And withdrawal from involvement in the wider society

◦       Causing violence and crime, fuelled in many cases by drugs.

Clearly, increasing the age of compulsory education will have no effect on this vicious circle unless we recognise the paradigm we need to educate for is shifting rapidly as we move into the One Planet World.

We have to recognise, as stated throughout this article that education has to liberate the creativity that will enable citizens to help create the OPW within the UK. This can only be achieved through ‘service above self’.

This is not the politically correct thing to say at this time, but it is central to any future that can be envisaged in a UK of around 70 million citizens.

Conclusion

Our conception of National Service is coloured by its compulsory and in many cases arbitrary nature, where outcomes were not tailored to the needs of individuals, or even society.

This is not the aim of Service for the Nation; the aim is to provide rounded citizens with a range of knowledge and skills appropriate to their talents and the creativity to use them effectively and efficiently in helping create the One Planet World.

This does not mean that military service will not be part of the mix for those attracted to such service and we need to acknowledge the part played in current conflicts by our young people.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel as there are service organizations, Scouts etc. who know how to create future citizens and leaders that we can use as templates.

These things are critical

◦       There must be an element of compulsion for all to contribute in their own way.

◦       There must be a controlled but significant element of risk.

◦       Service should be away from home for realistic periods

◦       Learning and work undertaken must result in value added to society.

◦       All must have access to achieve to laid down standards

◦       Rank must be available for significant leadership ability.

Many will argue that this cannot be afforded but the real question is “can we afford, not to be able to afford it?” – if the alterative is societal collapse.

 

The Circular Economy and Product Lifecycle

I placed this comment on the Interface Blog at http://bit.ly/L0ZmbZ

There seems to be a fundamental error in the interpretation of the Circular Economy as propounded by Michael Braungart. http://vimeo.com/2362082

The assumption is that we try to make products last longer. Braungart says that if we maintain the integrity of the technical and nutrient cycles and use Cradle to Cradle design, then the shorter the life cycle, the faster learning and improvement will take place.

Braungart also reprises the core tenet of Quality; that it is about doing the ‘Right Thing Right, every time’

This highlights the reality that must drive the Circular Economy, that it must only create the ‘Essential Value’ needed by society. It cannot be used as an excuse for vicariously tying up constrained resources for non-essential use.

The greatest task facing us is for societies to define and create this essential value whilst maintaining freedom and democracy.

dd

 

‘Essential Value’ and Resource Intensity

It is now widely acknowledged that global resources are increasingly constrained, most recently on the 16th March by the US, where the president signed the National Resource Preparedness  Order

As resources become more constrained, we, as societies, organisations and individuals will decide what is the ‘essential value’ that gives us a satisfactory ‘Quality of Life’, within the affordable resources available to us. Spending on ‘non-essential value’ will of necessity fall; although in the real world it will not completely disappear as incomes will always be unequal. (luxury car sales to China for example)

We can see at  http://trailblazerbusinessfutures.wordpress.com/the-one-planet-equation/ that Resource Intensity decides the Consumption (Value) creatable for a given consuming population. Past circumstances that allowed a disproportional level of consumption in the West for given availability of resources no longer apply.

In the limit, most available resources will be used creating ‘essential value’ and we can thus define Resource Intensity as ‘the resource use per person per unit of ‘essential value’ created’.

Although there will always be transient niche markets; in this One Planet World, only organisations that create ‘essential value’ can hope to survive and grow over time.

What we can say is, tomorrow’s successful, sustainable organisations will help maintain the Essential Value Created on Energy Invested by

• Satisfying emotional and spiritual need rather than gratuitous wants – self-actualisation
• Satisfying the essential needs in the lower orders of Maslow’s Pyramid
• Employing people rather than energy
• Creating or using renewable energy and other resources
• Minimising water use or creating the technologies that do
• Creating/deploying climate stabilising and mitigation technologies
• Being increasingly local
• Providing a service rather than a product
• Practising life-cycle stewardship of their resources
• Managing value rather than cost
• Being able to operate at continually reducing resource intensity

Defining the ‘essential value’ you and your organisation add to society is the first step in deciding a viable business strategy and this is best seen as an organisational ‘Quality’ issue http://trailblazerbusinessfutures.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/re-defining-quality/

DD

 

The Magic and Misery of Exponential Growth

Exponential Growth is what we see all around us, it is what maintains life but spells the end of an individual ‘system’ unless a balance, steady state can be maintained.

Over the short run, in geological terms the Earth does this and mankind’s ability to influence this has been  minimal. We have now reached the near vertical part of the Exponential Curve in many areas of human activity.

Look at these two resources and decide for yourself if our ‘multi-planet world’ way of life is sustainable

DD

The magic and misery of exponential growth 97-03 v2

Arithmetic, Population and Energy- abridged)

 

Reducing the ‘Resource Intensity of Society’ ~ the critical driver for HE and FE

“In the #oneplanetworld how do we continually reduce the #resourceintensity of society? Do we rethink everything, or do we let the Earth do it for us?”

Resource Intensity of Society – “the resource used per person per unit of ‘essential goods and services’ created”.

Two things flow from this

1. Non-essential processes add no value to society in a resource constrained world, their RI is effectively infinite
2. The least resource intense process is the one that doesn’t exist.

The Oil Drum 30^th July http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8210

It has been a constant theme in these columns that the global oil supply is under real threat. The facts to confirm this are everywhere if one were interested in pursuing the topic. (Google “Peak Oil” and see what comes up). A clear indication of a shift in supply is that Saudi Arabia, while it increased its output by 700,000 barrels per day, has kept more of its oil at home to benefit its own citizens with air-conditioning and desalinization projects.

So how do we confront a shrinking economy at work and at home? Brutal assessments will be the order of the day. Even though the top 10 percent of the population will manage to keep luxury businesses going for a time, the economy must shift away from businesses that feed the public’s desires to those that address what people need to survive.

Small enterprises will fare better. All businesses should start wondering whether their employees could get to work if they couldn’t afford to fill the gas tank. Is your business near a transit network? These are tough questions”.

“So how do we confront [and avoid] a shrinking economy at work and at home?” We do it by decoupling ‘service availability’ from ‘resource use’ as viewed from a ‘SystemUK’ perspective, by rethinking FE and HE to enable the creative reduction in the processes ’essential ’ to maximising our Quality of Life with the resources competitively available to us. We become continually more ‘effective’ as a society.

We don’t do it by trying to do what we are doing now more ‘efficiently’

Competitively winning constrained resources requires us to evolve and create organisations that can innovate as expressed in the presentation. Enabling the Future v1

Let’s not change a Challenging Adventure into an Impossible Challenge

dd

 

On our failure to understand External Failure Demand

The World Economic Forum has just released a report ‘From Risk to Opportunity‘ that looks at six different themes

• The challenge of a shifting balance of power
• The challenge of natural resource scarcity
• The challenge of inclusive growth and equality
• The challenge of economic uncertainty
• The challenge of fragile states and new conflicts
• The challenge of global risk management

This is a wide ranging Report that this Blog will come back to, but it includes this comment that is critical to the situation we find ourselves in, as SystemUK, and Globally

“There are commonalities between all sorts of
disparate risks: the BP Gulf disaster, the terrorism
incident in Germany, Wikileaks, the euro zone crisis.
The interconnectedness is that they are all out of the
flow of day-to-day events. They are low probability
but high consequence events.”

Axel P. Lehmann, Member, Group Executive
Committee and Group Chief Risk Officer, Zurich
Financial Services, Switzerland; Member of the Global
Agenda Council on Systemic Financial Risk

There was a time when organisations were increasingly aware of the work of thinkers in ‘Quality’ such as Deming, Juran and Crosby but those were simpler days and we have moved on to a confusing, reductionist world of CSR, Environment, H&S and Sustainability.

These ‘Quality Gurus’ understood the core concepts of Organisational Leadership’ and the costs of less than perfect ‘Quality’ of organisational and product/service performance , of not doing the right thing right, every time.

Central to this was understanding the risks and costs of external Failure Demand arising from actions that ignore the consequences of the economic, environmental or social downside of decisions. The News International disaster is a current example.

Unless we rediscover these eternal truths there is little possibility we can create ‘Sustainable’ organisations and societies, as Quality and Sustainability are just the two faces of the same coin and ‘Sustainable Development’ is the journey of continual improvement towards perfect ‘Quality’

dd 

 

My letters in Green Futures 2001 and 2004

There is a fundamental disconnect between the genuine and understandable concern of environmentalists and the realities of organisational management, especially the 95+% of organisations employing fewer than 10 people.

They naturally want to engage the large organisation who can fund campaigns but have a natural propensity to ‘divide and rule’

These letters of mine were published in Green Futures in 2001 and 2004.

At the end is my comment on the UK Northwest Economic Baseline report in 2006

Today I define Quality as that which “maximises the essential value added to society resulting from the creation, use and disposal of products and services at reducing resource intensity”

DD

Letter published in Green Futures May/June 2001

 Quality Defined

 I noted with interest your reporting of the EU Environmental Awards and the comment by Environmental Commissioner, Margot Wallstrom that “sustainable development and greater competitiveness go hand in hand” [GF 27, p10]. These awards were appropriately made to companies that have or manage significant environmental impacts.

 Most small or medium-sized companies, however, do relatively little to address their environmental impact, despite the effort of projects like SIGMA [see GF 23, p 21]. We need to do more to engage such companies.

I am convinced the best way to do so is by integrating sustainability management into quality management – since most businesses have at least some system for the latter, however informal.

 It’s becoming increasingly evident that the traditional, customer-focused definition of quality as ‘fitness for purpose’ is inadequate. We need a new definition. Here are two possible ones that I advance for debate:

1.  1. Quality minimises the ‘loss to society’ resulting from the creation, use and disposal of products, processes and services.
2.  2. Quality maximises the life cycle efficiency of products, processes and services.

 Viewed in this way, less than perfect quality creates unsustainable systems, which are the basis of the problems being addressed by the SIGMA Project and other initiatives.

 An additional benefit of this redefinition of quality will be to re-examine the ways in which the quality and environmental ‘industries’ have become so ‘standards-based’. My definition of quality implies a ‘synergy’ between the supplier and customer rather than compliance. My hope is that the SIGMA Project will become a means to do precisely that.

Derek Deighton

 Coordinator, North West Professional Engineering Institutions, sustainability joint venture

Chair, IQA Integrated Management Group

Letter published in Green Futures March/April 2004

Tossing the Quality Coin

Reading with interest Jonathon Porritt’s article in the current edition of Green Futures brings to mind my letter you were kind enough to publish in edition 28.

 The view I expressed then and I feel is evident from this article is that Sustainable development is seen as an unaffordable luxury and not a central business imperative.

 The environmental community has admirably driven SD but will only gain credence in business if it is expressed in terms of Quality based financial metrics; a concept that has a resonance within all businesses, large and small.

 Reprising my previous letter, SD advocates must work to redefine Quality as

 “Minimising the loss to society resulting from the creation, use, and disposal of products, processes and services.”

 If losses are minimised, sustainability is brought nearer. Quality and sustainability are the two sides of the same coin, toss it and you can only win.

 Derek Deighton

 Institute of Quality Assurance, Integrated Management Group

Comment on the UK Northwest Economic Baseline report

Referring back to the original strategy it says at the end of paragraph 3.7 ‘sustainable development provides the only long term route to competitiveness’ My conclusions to my submission in 1999 and reprised in this year’s NW Engineers’ Handbook echo this.

In the Baseline Report only the economic strand of the ‘triple bottom line’ is being discussed, this may be possible in a report but it perpetuates the myth that they can be considered separately, although to be fair, challenge 6 does say they are interlinked. ‘Securing the future’ specifically recommends the use of the SIGMA Guidelines www.projectsigma.com which binds all the SD strands together.

 The challenges listed are

• business (professional) services
• skills gap
• enterprise gap
• innovation gap
• knowledge gap

Professional services are increasingly at the core of the problem surrounding SD, as is the tendency of large organisations to use complexity to ’divide and rule’. The need for a ‘unique selling point (USP)’ leads academics and professionals to sell every ‘tool’ as a solution.

 Next the tendency is to enshrine these ‘tools’ in ‘standards’, which in turn become certifiable to create a ‘standards industry’, and work for them. This burdens businesses with ‘appraisal costs’, which make them uncompetitive in world markets.

 Far more insidious is the fact that it engenders a compliance culture, where companies live in fear of losing ‘ticks in boxes’ and the other four challenges are thus created.

 What is needed is a synergy between all the stakeholders in a organisation to make 2+2=5.

 If we are to make ‘SD the route for competitiveness’ then we have to innovate in ‘process design for sustainability’.

 We can only do this with a synergy of all the stakeholders involved to pool knowledge and skills; to crosslink and identify and correct deficiencies. Doing this should ‘enable process learning’ to locate the problem areas. Now we have to take account of external factors before, hopefully, the ‘spark of ingenuity or innovation’ is ignited to move the process in the direction of sustainability. This is conventionally termed ‘quality improvement’

My firm feeling after six years is that the UK (not just us) is going down the reductionist/compliance route; which is making synergy impossible and innovation and ingenuity unlikely. There is also the real risk that knowledge and skills development will be concentrated in the wrong areas and vital areas missed.

 The most vital area at the moment is research and skills creation in the ‘demand side control of energy’ No one I speak to is aware of the, now almost unavoidable, crisis coming.

 The ‘virtuous circle’ can be applied at all levels – if we apply to the democratic system, I come to the unfortunate conclusion – every time a politician changes jobs they think they have the right answer, so the requirement of ‘doing the right thing right, every time’, is compromised and as they have to be re-elected every five years – their ingenuity is mainly used in staying in office rather than improving the process.

In addition the external factors or targets they introduce are more likely to be short-term, political and unrelated to any process learning that has been achieved.

 

 

Thinking Aloud ~ Meeting the exponential demand for creativity, ingenuity and Tacit Skills in the #oneplanetworld

An email to a friend

Hi Andrea

 It good to catch up again last night at the Lancashire Construction Best Practice Club event; This was a really interesting meeting and after  I mentioned Sugata Mitra’s new experiments in self-teaching. Here is the link to the TED Talk he gave last year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU

He has virtually proved that learning is an emergent property when small groups of students have access to information they can share.

I feel we are failing our learners if we do not lever the potential of social media and the internet to liberate the creativity all children possess and largely lose as they grow up with the educational model we have used since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution  . Ken Robinson makes this point in probably the most watched TED Talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Alison’s ideas and work with her Classofyourown Project www.classofyourown.com  is similarly inspirational and a vital tool in engaging children in the STEM subjects.

The problem, of course, as Alison has pointed out, is not with the children, it is with the Teachers and the industry, simply because they were not exposed to this concept of ‘emergent learning’ and the unlimited expectations of their mentors as they grew up.

In reality this educational model never served, but in this time of exponential change, where more children will be passing through education in the next fifty years than have ever done, we cannot create inspirational teachers fast enough to liberate the necessary creativity that will enable us to solve the problems presented in the One Planet World we now inhabit.

The other key issue of course is the necessity we have to reduce the resource and carbon intensity of the built environment by considerable amounts. We must liberate the creativity to do this by design, or resource availability at a price we can afford to pay as a society, will do it for us.

In all this a key point is being missed and this is the need to maintain and generate the ‘tacit’ skills our society requires as my generation passes from the scene. These are not created by this ‘Mitra’ process, powerful and vital though it is. Initiatives like Classofyourown are key to liberating these tacit skills as well.

These thoughts apply to all sectors of society of course not just construction, but the built environment does consume 50% of our resources.

Attached are two articles  that were in the Professional Engineers’ Handbook in 2005 and 2006. There is no point in my being unduly modest at this critical time and I feel they are both prescient and could have been written last week.

The third article attached is from the May 2008 edition of the CIBSE Journal and addresses the other key issue, our need to understand, as an industry the concept that the sustainability journey is just one of continual improvement towards perfect quality.

Kind regards

Derek

 Attachments

Sustainability and the Energy Gap sustainability-and-the-energy-gap2005

Building Towards the Future Sustainability, Building Towards the Future 2006

The Double-headed Coin Double Headed Coin – unformatted – BS

 

The Jevons Paradox

 

But there is one aspect of Jevons’s argument—the Jevons Paradox itself—that continues to be considered one of the pioneering insights in ecological economics.8 In chapter 7 of The Coal Question, entitled “Of the Economy of Fuel,” Jevons responded to the common notion that, since “the falling supply of coal will be met by new modes of using it efficiently and economically,” there was no problem of supply, and that, indeed, “the amount of useful work got out of coal may be made to increase manifold, while the amount of coal consumed is stationary or diminishing.” In sharp opposition to this, Jevons contended that increased efficiency in the use of coal as an energy source only generated increased demand for that resource, not decreased demand, as one might expect. This was because improvement in efficiency led to further economic expansion. “It is wholly a confusion of ideas,” he wrote, “to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth. As a rule, new modes of economy will lead to an increase of consumption according to a principle recognised in many parallel instances….The same principles apply, with even greater force and distinctness, to the use of such a general agent as coal. It is the very economy of its use which leads to its extensive consumption.”……………….

The extensive article, worth reading is at  http://www.monthlyreview.org/101101foster-clark-york.php