Strategy – Page 12 – Public Intelligence Blog

Brilliant Tour, New Knowledge, Best in Class & Practical,June 19, 2009

Colin Gray

For those who have not already digested the author's seminal publication, Modern Strategy, I have a summative review there that could be helpful in conjunction with appreciating this new work.

10 pages of notes–this is a major work that is also easily grasped by undergraduates and graduates. I want to say up front that I have seen no finer overview that blends the original thinking of the author, himself a master strategist, with broad consideration of the work of others, and very disciplined integration of selected quotes and ample citations. The notes are superb.

My summary notes first:

Six lessons of Bush-Cheney era:
01–Bush era did not lack for brains or judgment, simply suspended intelligence in favor of “hopes, dreams, and good intentions.”
02–Crusades inconsistent with reality will fail
03–US forces not trained, equipped, organized for counterinsurgency
04–Transition to peace is harder than winning war
05–International politics is real and will not go away
06–Beware capabilities-driven strategy.

Three levels of strategic thinking:
–general
–general applied to regular or irregular warfare
–tailored to a specific “episode” e.g. Haiti, Somalia, Iraq

US starts with multiple handicaps:
01–cultural disposition to look at pieces, not the whole
02–flawed theory of deterrence
03–excessive faith in technology, insufficient grasp of human factors, incompetence at irregular war
04–one size fits all military does not suit diversity of challenges
05–lack of authority among those we seek to influence
06–barriers between military and political leaders (and lack of inter-agency coherence at any level)

“Deterrence…is not a fixed, settled, and now long-perfected product.” [It is] not understood, illusions abound, and it [a theory of] is desperately needed as a companion to the concepts of prevention and pre-emption. This is the first time I encounter a concise well-organized critique of the entire field of deterrence. He cites Payne in noting how the US tried to “deter” NVN with a Rolling Thunder air campaign, despite having no clue “about the enemy's policymaking process or how he rank-ordered his values.”

Key recommendations:
01–Deterrence must be part of broader strategy of influence in all its forms
02–We must take the ideas and perceptions of others seriously
03–Citing Metz & Mullen, “the age of the stupid enemy is past.”

Quoting Echeverria: “American way of battle has not yet matured into a way of war.” Later in the chapter on Irregular Warfare he observes, citing others as appropriate, that war is the whole enchilada–political, legal, social, economic, military, cultural; while warfare is the conduct of the war, predominantly but not exclusively military.

The chapter on surprise is original, lacking only one fundamental: intelligence must cast a wide net and policy must keep an open mind.

The chapter on revolutionary change is original but overlooks O'Hanlon's Technological Change and the Future of Warfare and does not address the broad literature on the need to reinvent intelligence and shift from secret unilateral to open multinational.

I learn that context is both that which surrounds, and that which weaves together; throughout the book the author emphasizes the importance of Gestalt, of “the whole,” with particular attention to the political consequences of military actions.

Citing Field Marshall Keitel: errors in tactics and operations can be corrected in the current war, errors in strategy can only be corrected in the next.

Quoting Gray:

p. 108: “Strategic surprise on the greatest of scales occurs as a result of changes in the contexts for national security.” He goes on to note that political surprise is what catches the US most unawares, in part because the US separates policy and politics from all else.

p. 119 “War is about peace…above all else, war is about the kind of peace that should follow.”

Essence of strategy:
01–About the use of force for political effect
02–About relationship between means and ends
03–Politics must rule BUT politicians must hear, understand, and respect the military

American “way of war (more properly, way of battle):
01–Apolitical (I would add, amoral)
02–Astrategic
03–Ahistorical
04–Problem-sovling, optimistic
05–Culturally-challenged
06–Technology-dependent
07–Focused on Firepower
08–Large-scale
09–Aggressive-Offensive
10–Profoundly-Regular
11–Impatient
12–Logistically-Excellent
13–Highly-Sensitive to Casualties

Irregular Warfare demands:
01–Protect-the-People
02–Intelligence-is-king
03–Ideology-matters
04–Enemy-not-the-main-target
05–Unity-of-effort (I add, Whole of Government, M4IS2)
06–Culture-is-crucial
07–No-sanctuaries
08–Time-is-a-weapon
09–Undercut-enemy-POLITICALLY

The author is deeply respectful of our soldiers, lamenting that they are victims of a strategic deficit among both our politicians and senior military leaders, hence sent in harm's way ill-advisedly to few good ends.

The author provides new thinking on pre-emptive and preventive war, stating on page 242 that both are “only feasible if intelligence is immaculate.” This chapter may be the most important chapter as well as the most difficult for conventional decision-makers, both political and military, to grasp, given their “closed circle” circumstances.

The concluding chapter on The Merit in Ethical Realism is absorbing and feels a huge gap in current US strategic thinking. Three quotes capture my admiration for this author and this chapter:

“…it is nearly always inexpedient to ignore or affront the ethical sensibilities of stakeholder communities, including one's own.”

“As a practicing strategist, I am convinced that strategy's ethical dimension is not subjectively irrelevant; rather it is integral to supposedly objective analysis, calculation, decision, and behavior.”

“The moral is strategic, and the strategic is moral.”

The author concludes that we cannot think in terms of one “Master Menace,” and must instead be prepared for a diversity of challenges and dilemmas. In my comment below I provide URLs for summary articles about the Army's Strategic Conferences in 1998 and 2008, both ignored by all “deciders.”

I encourage readers to buy this book, and to see my reviews of the books linked to below.
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

See images posted above and comment below. Colin Gray is a global treasure, would that those in power had the humility to attend to his wisdom.

2009/06/272009/12/04

Review: Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Government), Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Not What I Expected But Hugely Satisfying,

June 27, 2009

R. Buckminster Fuller

I was actually expecting an Operating Manual. Although what I ended up with is a 136-page double-spaced “overview” by Buckminster Fuller, a sort of “history and future of the Earth in 5,000 words or less, bracketed by a *wonderful* introduction by grandchild Jamie Snyder, an index, a two-page resource guides, and some photos and illustrations including the Fuller Projections of the Earth.

First, the “core quote” that I can never seem to find when I need it:

OUR MISSION IS “To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” Inside front cover.

The introduction is a treat–I note “impressive” and appreciate the many insights that could only come from a grandchild of and lifelong apprentice to Buckminster Fuller.

Highlights for me:

Founder of Design Science, a company by that name is now led by Medard Gabel who served as his #2 for so long. I just attended one of their summer laboratories and was blown away by the creativity and insights. It is a life-changing experience for those with a passion for Earth.

He imagined an inventory of global data. I am just now coming into contact with all of this great man's ideas, but my third book, Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time, also online at the Strategic Studies Institute in very short monograph form, is totally in harmony with this man's vision for a global inventory of global data.

“Sovereignness” was for him a ridiculous idea, and a much later work out of Cambridge agrees, Philip Allot tells us the Treaty of Westphalia was a huge wrong turn in his book The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State.

“Great Pirates” that mastered the oceans as the means of linking far-flung lands with diversity of offerings was the beginning of global commerce and also the beginning of the separation between globalists who knew the whole, and specialists whom Buckminster Fuller scathingly describes as an advanced form of slave.

He was frustrated with the phrases “sunrise” and sunset” as they are inaccurate, and finally settled for “sunsight” and “suneclipse” to more properly describe the fact that it is the Earth that is moving around the sun, not the other way around.

In 1927 he concluded that it is possible for forecast with some accuracy 25 years in advance, and I find this remarkably consist with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's view that it takes 25 years to move the beast–see for instance Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy.

He has an excellent discussion of the failure of politics and the ignorance of kings and courtiers, noting that our core problem is that everyone over-estimates the cost of doing good and under-estimates the cost of doing bad, i.e. we will fund war but not peace.

He described how World War I killed off the Great Pirates and introduces a competition among scientists empowered by war, politicians, and religions. He says the Great Pirates, accustomed to the physical challenges, could not comprehend the electromagnetic spectrum.

He states that man's challenge is to comprehend the metaphysical whole, and much of the book is focused on the fact, in his view, that computers are the salvation of mankind in that they can take over all the automaton work, and free man to think, experiment, and innovate. He is particularly forceful in his view that unemployed people should be given academic scholarships, not have to worry about food or shelter, and unleash their innovation. I am reminded of Barry Carter's Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era as well as Thomas Stewart's The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization.

There is a fascinating discussion of two disconnected scholars, one studying the extinction of human groups, the other the extinction of animal species, and when someone brings them together, they discover that precisely the same cause applied to both: over-specialization and a loss of diversity.

Synergy is the uniqueness of the whole, unpredictable from the sum of the parts or any part individually.

On page 87 he forecasts in 1969 when this book was first published, both the Bush and the Obama Administration's ease in finding trillions for war and the economic crisis, while refusing to recognize that we must address the needs of the “have nots” or be in eternal war. I quote:

“The adequately macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive solutions to any and all problems never cost too much.”

I agree. I drove to Des Moines and got a memo under Obama's hotel door recommending that he open up to all those not represented by the two party crime family, and also providing him with the strategic analytic model developed by the Earth Intelligence Network. Obviously he did not attend, and today he is a pale reflection of Bush. See the images I have loaded, and Obama: The Postmodern Coup – Making of a Manchurian Candidate.

Early on he identified “information pollution” as co-equal to physical pollution, I am totally taken with this phrase (see my own illustration of “data pathologies” in the image above). I recognize that Buckminster Fuller was about feedback loops and the integrity of all the feedback loops, and this is one explanation for why US Presidents fail: they live in “closed circles” and are more or less “captive” and held hostage by their party and their advisor who fear and block all iconoclasts less they lose their parking spot at the White House.

Most interestingly, and consistent with the book I just read the other day, Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change (The Changing Face of War), he concludes that wars recycle industry and reinvigorate science, and concludes that every 25 years is about right for a “scorched earth” recycling of forces.

He observes that we must preserve our fossil fuels as the “battery” of our Spaceship Earth, and focus on creating our true “engine,” regenerative renewable life and energy.

He joins with Will Durant in Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers: education is our most formidable task.

I am astonished to have him explain why the Pacific coast of the US is so avant guarde and innovative (as well as loony). He states that the US has been a melting pot for centuries, and that the West Coast is where two completely different cultural and racial patterns integrated, one from Africa and the east, the other from the Pacific and the west.

I learn that he owned 54 cars in his lifetime, and kept leaving them at airports and forgetting when and where. He migrated to renting, and concluded that “possession” is burdensome.

2009/05/292009/12/04

Review: Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy

5 Star, Iraq, Strategy

Serious Strategy–Serious Whole of Government Strategy, May 29, 2009

Steven Metz

I am disappointed to find so few reader reviews of this work. I read it in galley, and provided the following as it appears on the back jacket:

“Steven Mets is considered by many to be one of America's greatest strategists. It is no wonder, therefore, that this elegant book provided a balanced overview of the numerous ways in which America fails to devise strategy that can effectively guide inter-agency planning, capabilities development, and operations.”

I've known the author for over fifteen years now, and consider him along with Colin Gray (UK) to be among a tiny handful of strategists that have displaced the Cold War self-proclaimed strategists who totally hosed the planet in a 50-year spree of unilateral militarism–all brawn and no brains.

This book is as a graceful, elegant, diplomatic–all the stuff I don't do–a “reading” on where our flag officers failed to question illegal orders, down-right idiotic orders, all of which have led to an elective war that we won only because the Iraqi Army under Sadaam Hussein was totally incompetent, and we used up every air weapon in the inventory, a great many of which did not hit the target as advertised, and a disconcerting number of which did not explode at all.

Metz is the tip of the iceberg that lies quietly at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Strategic Studies Institute is a jewel waiting to be noticed by the new National Security Advisor, who would do well to ask them to connect him with all those now being shut out by the “closed circle” that has captured President Obama and is feeding him pap–dangeously uninformed unintegrated pap.

2008/10/252009/12/04

Review: Charm Offensive–How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World

5 Star, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Strategy

Extremely Good Effort for One Mind–Missing Some Links, October 25, 2008

Joshua Kurlantzick

I first studied China, the “Middle Kingdom,” in 1975 when I found Mao relevant to my primary interest, understanding and addressing revolution in all its forms. The image above is the heart of my graduate-level quick look at how the PRC exercised foreign influence back then. In addition, my father was a Chinese “guest” in 1967-1968 after pirate militia sank his trimaran enroute from Saigon to Hong Kong, a story told in Yachtsman in Red China.

The author has done a superb job of observing, interpreting, and documenting. I take away one star for a certain amount of naiveté and incompleteness–the book ends somewhat weakly–but I totally disagree with those who consider this book disorganized or less than four stars in merit. I found the book absorbing, consistent with my own recent observations tracking Chinese irregular warfare including both electronic warfare and waging peace in Africa and South America, and over-all, I cannot think of a finer book for American diplomats, politicians, and students of serious mien.

The author opens with a very personal and relevant account of how he watched the fall of US influence and the rise of Chinese influence in Thailand, marking the late 1990's as the time of change. To his surprise, when he asked US diplomats about this, he found them unaware. Today, they are aware, but powerless in the face of a White House that under Dick Cheney has totally destroyed the policy process (for an account of how this was done, see The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill.

He follows the 1990's in Thailand with a very compelling comparison of how George Bush was heckled by Australian senators and booed by the Australian public in 2003, while a few days later the Chinese leader Hu Jin Tao was welcomed as a hero. He points out that Australians now see US unilateral militarism as a threat to Australian peace and prosperity fully co-equal to the threat of radical Islam. For one balanced take on foreign public perceptions on America, see The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World

He properly credits Joe Nye with the term “soft power” but I am in agreement with the anthropologists and others who now choose not to use that term because global presence has to be managed as a Whole of Government/Whole Earth enterprise, something Stewart Brand and others understood decades before the rest of us. Of all Stewart's books, my favorite remains Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer, a book I fear the Chinese appreciate vastly more than the two idiot parties now looting the US commonwealth on behalf of their Wall Street masters.

The author says that the Chinese think of their primary power as everything outside the military and security realm. See my image above for a nuanced understanding that is still valid–the names have changed, but the Chinese are simply playing a modern version of Middle Kingdom ubber alles.

The author reviews the mis-steps under Mao (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, export of revolution), and then gives proper credit to Deng Xiao Ping as the transitional and transformational leader who adopted pragmatic reforms. The deal China made, in substituting enhanced nationalism for absolute communism, was “make money, not trouble” and all would be allowed.

The new leaders are college graduates and in many cases have graduate degrees. The end of the Cold War freed China from fear of Russia, and now China is focusing on the Second World. For good reasons why, see
The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order

The new era leaders clearly understand that global problems impact on them, and they must pursue global solutions.

Here are the 20 elements of China's global strategy as I understood them from the author's excellent account.

01 Stability in the 14 countries on its borders
02 Cease military confrontation (e.g. Spratleys), use non-military assets
03 Go after resources all over the world
04 Create ring of allies as buffer against US and other interventionists
05 Non-interference in affairs of others
06 “Born-again Multinationalism” (Susan Shirk)
07 Cooperative agreements (7 with Mexico, 14 with Venezuela, etc)
08 Help those the US shirks or slights (Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, Uzbeckistan…)
09 Offer socio-economic model in which state, not market, is steering
10 Focus on small nations ignored by US and others
11 Cultural and public diplomacy ****needs its own book****
12 Direct recruitment of overseas Chinese in 1980's, used their wealth, $30B or 7% of external investment, as seed crystal for 1990's boom
13 Aid, trade, easy loans, investment (a fraction of what US does, but they get more mileage out of theirs by how and when and why they do)
14 Easy fit with corruption and deals outside the rule of law
15 Lots of construction including free buildings for headquarters (the author does not say this, I do: “no extra charge for the electronic bugs”)
16 Junkets to China, junkets with issue training for the staffs
17 Exporting men (this could have used more attention–Argentina will be majority Chinese by 2020 or so)
18 Exporting visual media (#2 in the world right now)
19 Rolling Taiwan back, everyone withdrawing recognition
20 Direct influence both good and bad (good: anti-drugs, some effort on human trafficking, on disease; bad: illegal lumber harvests in Myanmar, Indonesia)

The last three chapters are not as arresting, but still good:
IX: America's soft power goes soft, both Clinton and Bush killed us overseas
X: Shanghai Cooperation Organization, giving US “wedgies” all over the world
XI: Rest of World waiting for two things from USA: live up to our values and stop our bad policies

The author is a big naïve (or less informed) when he lambasts the Chinese for supporting dictators and fails to realize that our two corrupt political parties love 42 of the 44 dictators as their best pals (see Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025).

Serious book by a serious person for serious people. Well done.

My last four allowed links:
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2008/08/282009/12/04

Review: Fast Strategy–How strategic agility will help you stay ahead of the game

4 Star, Change & Innovation, Strategy

Superb, Needed by the 90% of Leaders Who Don't Read, August 26, 2008

Yves Doz

Minus one star for publisher being lazy about using Amazon tools to help readers see the table of contents and otherwise “look inside the book,” and for lack of deeper reference to externalities that deeply impact on emerging business models, including natural capitalism, moral capitalism, and transcendent capitalism.

I found the content engrossing, while on every page I realized that with every word, the authors are describing precisely what 90% of the “successful” leaders refuse to do–and especially those in the secret intelligence community that I know so well.

The authors blend deep strategic experience with Nokia and at INSEAD among many other qualifications, and I recommend this book be read together with two others that I recently reviewed:

The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks
Execution Premium

Book's bottom line: leaders must create and nurture counterintuitive blending–sustained constant blending, of the following:
+ Strategic sensitivity
+ Collective commitment
+ Resource fluidity
+ Management depoliticization

They summarize the challenge early on: “interdependent opportunities in the world of convergence and fuzzy enterprise boundaries and of rapid emergent systemic change in environment.”

Before summarizing the really compelling points made by the authors, I want to skip ahead to their appendices and list the thirteen toxicities that define most successful businesses today, as well as government agencies and most especially secret government agencies that are, in the words of one Defense Intelligence Senior Leader (DISL) cited in Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon: “institutionalized lunacy.”

The thirteen toxicities (buy the book for these pages alone):
– Tunnel vision
– Tyranny of core business
– Strategic myopia
– Dominance mindset
– Snap judgment and intellectual laziness
– Imprisoned resources
– Business system rigidity
– Ties that bind
– Management mediocrity and competence gaps
– Management divergence
– Heady charm of fame and power (or in secret world, lack of accountability for failing to deliver anything truly valuable)
– Expert management (making operational decisions instead of strategic)
– Emotional apathy

In the book in you are looking at it in a bookstore, pages 124-126 are a priceless inventory of the drivers, consequences, and toxicities that undermine strategic sensibility, collective commitment, and resource flexibility. Any CEO or Board of Directors can use these three pages alone to fail just about any company, right now, across the board.

Now here are the gems I pulled from this worthy offering:

STRATEGIC SENSITIVITY
+ Casting a wide net (as I suggested to AGSI in 1994)
+ Multiple levels of analysis (see image–threat and opportunity change depending on the level of analysis)
+ Including understanding of one's creeping and binding “lock ins”

COLLECTIVE COMMITMENT
+ Keep the top level meetings focused on strategy
+ Create culture of holistic accountability instead of silos
+ Make time for full information sharing and interaction
+ Treat personal objectives and concerns as critical inputs
+ Have a FAIR process that allows for needed UNEQUAL resource allocation

RESOURCE FLUIDITY
+ Some resources are more fluid (money, brand) than others (key people, fixed inputs, special relationships with clients)
+ Challenge is cognitive and political rather than procedural or financial
+ Generative growth (on the edges) is key–one reason I hate tethered devices like the X-Box or the iPhone
+ Must MAXIMIZE knowledge SHARING with OUTSIDE parties
+ Experiment

MANAGEMENT DEPOLITICIZATION
+ “Most top teams are, for natural reasons, collections of independent individuals with strong opinions rather than inspiring and innovative teams.” Page 79 citing Teams At the Top. In my own experience and that of Ben Gilad, author of Business Blindspots (order from UK Infonortics), the INFORMATION reaching most managers is biased, late, incomplete, filtered, and poorly focused–thus making opinions even more dangerous.
+ Authors feel strongly that teams need to be organized for mutual interdependencies, with incentives to match.
+ “Cognitive diversity is a key precondition to high-quality internal dialogs.”
+ Use young rising leaders as a shadow management team focused on the future
+ Have an OPEN strategy process
+ Leaders must learn to ASK and ADAPT rather than to DECIDE and TELL.

Other key points that grabbed me and are memorable:
+ Strategy now is continuous
+ Strategy now is less about foresight (still important), more about insight across every domain
+ Agility is the key ingredient, means being able to think and act differently (so much for most leadership teams)
+ Emotions matter–people not products innovate, learn to use this

I put the book down (at the beach, in Rohoboth) with three ideas bringing this encounter to a close:

1) Mature *successful* businesses die of strategic paralysis and the thirteen toxins

2) Three core values the authors use to conclude are

+ Dedication to EVERY client

+ Innovation that matters to both the company and the world

+ Trust and personal responsibility in ALL relationships.

3) Strike three for the US Intelligence Community and the US Government.

Here are some other books I consider to be, as with this one and the ones cited above, worthy of top minds seriously interested in doing the right thing for country, company, and customers:
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace Battle for the Soul of Capitalism]]
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

I had something to do with the last two and hope I can be forgiven for including them–it is not possible to perform as a smart company in the context of a dumb nation, nor is it possible to co-create value without recognizing that the gold standard now consists of meeting individual needs without social or environmental costs being externalized.

Excellent book. Buy it–this review is a taste, not the meal.

2008/04/182013/01/18

Review: Authentic Chuck Hagel, America–Our Next Chapter–Tough Questions, Straight Answers

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Complexity & Resilience, Democracy, Future, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Priorities, Strategy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Continue reading “Review: Authentic Chuck Hagel, America–Our Next Chapter–Tough Questions, Straight Answers”

2008/03/092010/12/26

Review: The Philosophy of Sustainable Design

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Catastrophe, Consciousness & Social IQ, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Amazon Page

Can Be Considered “Ref A” or the Prime Directive, March 9, 2008

Jason F. McLennan

I came late to bioneering, after I was inspired by Herman Daly's Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications, Brian Czech's Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop them All; and everything by Paul Hawkin, but especially The Ecology of Commerce.

I have had an interest in the intersection of global science, sustainable political and social and economic orders, and the vulnerability of the nation-state in the face of growing complexity for some time, and many of my other reviews focus on these literatures, as well as the literatures of collective intelligence, global assemlages, wealth of networks, localized resilience, and so on.

I make mention of that broader literature to add emphasis to my view that this book is one of the most extraordinary I have ever encountered. I made a mistake when I first got it months ago and put it sight unseen into my “hard and dense, save for intercontinental trip.” This book is not hard, not dense, and it is both easy to read and intellectually elegant. I can easily see this book as the single mandatory first year or summer pre-reading at any level–undergraduate or graduate–along with contextual books such as:
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition
The Future of Life
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century and
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

The sixteen chapters and five appendices are elegant–concise, clear key points, short, just the right mix of photos (including color in a center spread) figures, and text.

The publisher has been criminally remiss in failing to load the varied items that Amazon allows, such as the table of contents. I am increasingly disenchanted with publishers and of the view that Amazon should get into the book publishing business, sending digital copies to FedExKinko's, helping authors self publish (full disclosure: BOTH Fred Smith at FedEx and Jeff Bezos at Amazon blew me off–these guys are simply not serious about innovation).

Preface: Philosophical Beginnings
Chapter 1: The Philosophy of Sustainable Design
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Sustainable Design
Chapter 3: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Biomimicry)
Chapter 4: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Human Vitality)
Chapter 5: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Ecosystem/Bioregional)
Chapter 6: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Seven Generations)
Chapter 7: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Energy/True Cost)
Chapter 8: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Holistic Thinking)
Chapter 9: The Technologies and Components of Sustainable Design
Chapter 10: Shades of Green–Levels of Sustainability
Chapter 11: Productivity and Well-Being
Chapter 12: Greening Your Organization
Chapter 13: Green Economics
Chapter 14: The Sustainable Design Process–Holistic Thinking
Chapter 15: The Aesthetics of Sustainable Design
Chapter 16: The Future of Architecture
Appendix A: The Green Warrior Reading List
Appendix B: Who's Who in Green Design
Appendix C: The Phases of Green Design
Appendix D: The Elements of Green Design Methodology
Appendix F: The Principles of Sustainable Design–Summary

I put this book down with several thoughts:

1) Enormously impressed with the University of Oregon in Eugene, to the point of trying to get my oldest to take his computer and creative skills there.

2) Profoundly delighted with the deep philosophical underpinning that one finds throughout the book, without pretense or pomposity.

3) The one appendix I would have liked to see that is not there is the one entitles: Green to Gold–Bottom-Line Dollar Savings Over Time, and then a whole range of the elements of sustainable design by climate zone.

This is an extremely satisfying book to read. My last throught: it's time to write the Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Read more about this at Earth Intelligence Network. This book by Jason McLennan is a perfect model for what the larger systems book should strive to be.

See also the literatures under panarchy, resilience, sustainability.

Category: Strategy

Review: National Security Dilemmas–Challenges and Opportunities