Here’s a way to shift from despair to hope. How we understand groups and nations and how they work determines…
Here’s a way to shift from despair to hope. How we understand groups and nations and how they work determines how we think and act. Paul O’Neill, CEO of Alcoa at the turn of the century, offered us a priceless lesson we’re not heeding. /1 https://t.co/bzJEwuXVx4
O’Neill transformed Alcoa, in quick time, doing something that nobody saw coming. He took a huge organisation, and instead of trying to fiddle with all the different aspects of it, he told the staff they were only going to focus on one thing. Safety. Analysts said he was mad. /2
They quickly had to eat humble pie. The revolution at Alcoa is probably unprecedented in history. What O’Neill recognised is that in an organisation, everything is already connected. The key to bring about change is to find the most densely connected thing. /3
In this case that was safety. Ruthlessly targeting safety not only had the advantage of bringing everybody along - who would argue against being safe? It had fingers in every tiny part of what Alcoa does. A single workplace accident could unlock a whole network of connected…/4
…workplace and management practices that needed review. This one simple focus transformed the organisation, and very fast. What stops us changing bad situations and drives our despair is viewing them incorrectly. Organisations and societies don’t function in the way we think. /5
You don’t have to convince millions or billions of people to change, to bring about change. You don’t have to ‘mobilise’ them with protests and messaging and persuasion. You just need to target something that connects all of them already, and then change that. /6
I’ve been Tweeting about how I think this ‘keystone’ for our current public decay is energy. Fossil fuel energy has determined every aspect of our culture for over a century. It’s a terrible mistake to think this is just about energy, like that’s some separate thing. /7
How our cities evolved, how we live and work, all of that has been transformed by fossil fuels. If you want to change that system fast, you need to target energy. Disrupt it. That’s what solar in particular is doing, right now. Again the danger is seeing this as only energy. /8
For those concerned about Covid, or housing, or whatever, it’s the same keystone. The lack of progress on all of those traces back to a fossil fuel-driven culture. Transform the energy, the rest will follow. Why I say people are absolutely not powerless. /9
Put solar on your house, if you can. Nothing will change the world faster, it already is. That includes pushing aside the vested interest opposing actions on Covid, and climate, and on housing. All of their power and wealth traces back to energy and fossil fuels. /10
Here in Australia this has already been happening, for years, barely noticed. Ordinary households are about to break the entire grid, a grid built to reflect fossil fuel culture. That sea of yellow. It’s going to change much more than where we get our energy from. /end https://t.co/uM9EeWzJTA
