Revolution is Where You Find It
by Tony Lamport
As we drive, the full generous sun of late morning lights the mass of golden leaves of autumn in Nova Scotia from the inside, in a way that uplifts and overwhelms the eye. Beside me is my son – rock drummer, video gamer, lifeguard, ecological trainer and generally funny guy – who, for every one of his four years at university has placed near the top of the Dean’s list in spite of reading virtually nothing, much to my frustration, but course-assigned texts.
As we drive happily and silently together into the richly textured day, I am struggling for a way to begin my promised review of Peter Senge’s new book The Necessary Revolution. My son turns to me, out of the blue, and says with uncanny timing, “I’m reading a new book by Peter Senge and enjoying it a lot.” He pauses for awhile and then goes on, “I like the way he thinks and writes, in a way that allows things to connect across disciplines.” Read the rest of this entry »
How we think about efficiency depends on the paradigm in which we live. In the machine age, we think of economies of scale, lean operations, tightly controlled strategies, long hours, and hard work. All of these have virtue, but I am also reminded of the elegance of an almost-invisible aikido move that sends a much larger opponent hurtling to the mat. Or images from the Art of War, or from the tipping-point paradigm, where a well-timed intervention releases accumulated energy toward a desired direction or result. 
At the 2007 Summer Institute Bernard Lietaer sent a shudder through the program community with his presentation on global financial systems. Bernard is renowned as one of the architects of the Euro and as an expert on complementary currencies. He began his presentation by quoting Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, who predicted a “hard landing” of the dollar within five years. The quote was dated 2005.
It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth and can be radical. – Hannah Arendt
Peter Block’s new book asks the question, How do people in communities come together to produce something new for themselves? “We know a good deal about individual transformation,” he says, “but our understanding about the transformation of human systems…is primitive at best.” Read this excerpt and use the comments field to tell your own story of community transformation. And if you have read the book, leave notes of critique or recommendation for others. 
Reflections on the plenary session “Strategy at the Edge” led by Adam Kahane, Margaret Wheatley, and Jim Gimian,
by Juanita Brown