Rebalancing for 2012 and beyond

Posted on Jan 24, 2012 by sim

Every now and then I contemplate whether I should stop writing this blog. After all, much of the activity that used to be in blogs has shifted to various social networks and the volume has gone down. So far, every time the decision has been negative – and is that again. What 2012 will bring with it, though, is a bit of life re-balancing and subsequent inevitable changes to this blog.

Last year, as in most previous years, I read a lot – I could probably be categorized as an information junkie, though I prefer to call it a mostly harmless side effect of my ambition of being a specialist of everything ;) Anyhow, in the process, I also learned a lot. Which is great, I love learning. However, in the constant quest for new information, new research, new data, new this and that, individuals, companies, industries and even societies often lose track of what’s more important – application of the knowledge acquired. And I fear that is precisely what happened with me, too. As Bill Mollison pointed out:

Perhaps we should do nothing else for the next century but apply our knowledge. We already know how to build, maintain and inhabit sustainable systems, but in everyday life of people this is hardly apparent.

That may be a bit extreme, but there’s a very good point therein. At one end of the spectrum, we know how to make fuel-efficient cars, but we don’t. We know how to generate electricity sustainably, but by and large we don’t. We know how to farm truly sustainably, in a way that is healthy for the soil, humans and animals alike, but do anything but that. We know we shouldn’t be burning all those fossil fuels and using up all those resources quite at the speed we are, but we do. At the other end of the spectrum, we know we shouldn’t eat that chocolate or whatever, but we do. We know we should exercise, but we don’t. There is no shortage of such paradoxes, at all levels large and small, and failing to apply what we know might very well be the ultimate curse of humankind.

Which is why I’m planning on dialing down the reading in 2012 – not stop, never going to stop, but reduce. I have also pledged not to buy any more books until I have finished my current reading list (that currently consists of this, this, this, this, this, this and this).

The plan is to begin shifting the balance from reading to reflection and producing rather than consuming text, and also subsequently action. I plan on spending more time thinking, reflecting on and synthesizing what I’ve learned and how it could be applied, spend some more time on writing what I think, and also doing what I think is sensible and needs to be done, hopefully reporting on that and also spending some more time with my other precious hobbies and life in general. I have came to realize that anything I read and learn – anything anyone reads or learns – doesn’t really have any impact whatsoever unless I do something. It’s good to remember this point, formulated here by John Michael Greer in his great book The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered (a book that I need to cover in another post):

It deserves to be remembered that a small step that actually happens will do more good than a grandiose plan that never gets off the drawing board, a fate suffered by nearly all of the last half century’s worth of grandiose plans for sustainability. Starting from personal choices and local possibilities, rather than abstract and global considerations, makes it a good deal more likely that whatever evolves out of the process might actually work. Tackling the crisis of industrial society from the top down has been tried over and over again by activists for decades now with no noticeable results. Maybe it’s time to try something else.

All this means the contents of this blog will, again, shift as well. Shift how? Maybe it’ll be towards something more opinionated. Shorter, more frequent posts, perhaps. Maybe I’ll have more photos again. Maybe recipes again. What I will try to do less of is pure reviews, that practically dominated my blog in 2011 – of the books that read and review, I’ll endeavor to add more insight and reflection to the review. More meat around the bones, even if the books themselves are already meaty. More personal.

Finally, maybe this shift will also elicit more comments from my readers – not that it’s a raison d’être for any blog’s existence but I don’t in fact know if anyone ever reads this blog anymore :) It continues getting plenty of hits – averaging around 1,500 page views per day – but something like 99,9% of them are probably spam, the vast majority of which is thankfully effectively captured and dealt with.

Although this lengthy post was all about whining about lack of real content, this post will ironically wrap up here, having no real content :) Consider it as a heads-up for changes ahead, and as a mental reminder for myself to start making the Transition (capitalization and pun intended).

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Review: Consensus-Oriented Decision Making

Posted on Jan 11, 2012 by sim

I took the opportunity to start this year’s reading with some more work-related material (even though the broader theme of skills in decision making and conflict resolution form important parts of my wider future-preparedness plan as well), I took a look at Tim Hartnett’s Consensus-Oriented Decision Making: The CODM Model for Facilitating Groups to Widespread Agreement. It’s a book about a skill that’s too often completely lacking in business and other contexts: how to sustainably make good and efficient decisions as a group.

One of the first things to note is that the book is NOT about unanimity, which many people confuse the term consensus with. The CODM-model for decision making seeks to make decision making an inclusive, collaborative process that aims for as big a consensus as possible, but it does not necessarily mean the decision is made unanimously. In fact, an entire chapter at the end is dedicated to going through the pros and cons of unanimous decision making; turns out there are many downsides to requiring absolute unanimity, and even many groups whose primary mode of decision making is unanimity, benefit from a less restrictive fall-back mode of e.g. supermajority or majority (which are probably the most suitable default models for most groups). The CODM model can be successfully used across the whole spectrum of decision-making rules, even when the actual decisions are made with the person-in-charge (i.e. by the boss) model. However, when resorting to the person-in-charge model, it’s crucial that the process and views emerging from it are respected by the authority figure – otherwise further engagements with the group will be undermined.

What is a group-based decision-making model good for anyway? Well, we all probably know all too well that if a decision or a line of action is simply thrust upon us, there is often little if any positive commitment to help execute the decision if our voices haven´t been heard at all. What’s more, few significant things can be accomplished by individuals, so this benefit from an engaged group decision-making is a very important one:

The shared ownership of a group decision can foster considerable commitment to the successful implementation of group-generated proposals. A “B grade” decision executed well because of a strong sense of shared ownership may have far better results than an “A grade” decision poorly implemented because of lackluster support.

That is a very important point; the overall long-term health of a group is typically much more important than any decision the group makes; hence it’s very important for the group members to feel included and respected in the decision-making process, even if they don’t always get everything everyone wants (which nearly never happens). So what is the CODM model? It’s a seven-step process that consists of:

  1. Framing the Topic
  2. Open Discussion
  3. Identifying Underlying Concerns
  4. Collaborative Proposal Development
  5. Choosing a Direction
  6. Synthesizing a Final Proposal
  7. Closure

Each of the above steps consists of several sub-steps; the book goes in quite a bit of detail, down the providing very useful language guidance for facilitators in how to approach each of the steps and prepare and guide the group through them, as well as how to defuse situations that could lead to arguments and how to return the group to productive working mode. The work also ties in well with techniques such as Focused Conversation Method and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) developed by Marshal Rosenburg. Working in an environment where stakeholders are numerous and distributed widely, I noted that the book covers stakeholder engagement rather briefly and almost passingly mentions options for things like interviewing stakeholders – so that part of the process will probably need more emphasis in certain environments than is given to it in the book.

As I haven’t actually tried the CODM facilitation model in practice yet, I cannot comment on the efficacy of the model; it does, however, appear to be an extremely useful model and something that will certainly come in handy. It’s also a flexible model in that many of the steps can be skipped for certain types of decisions and some shortcuts (such as referring a decision to a committee) are provided for some steps that can be used where appropriate. It provides very useful frameworks as well as practical guidance that cannot help but make group decision-making more effective, if implemented properly. An unfortunate fact that I have noticed in many corporate environments is that often companies are unwilling to develop or use facilitation resources sufficiently; all too often dysfunctional group behavior is allowed to continue without even trying to bring some structure, such as CODM, into the decision making process. So the book is not only a highly useful guide from a practical point of view, but it also highlights the importance of skilled facilitators in many situations.

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2011 in Pictures

Posted on Jan 1, 2012 by sim

Another year is behind us; seems they go by faster every year, a feature that I’m not a particularly big fan of. However, turns out quite a bit happened this year as well – leaving aside the world events for a while, here’s a recap of some memorable personal moments from 2011:

January was the height of summer here, and our first-ever vegetables were beginning to bear some fruit. The tomato plant was a success, but unfortunately some unknown animals (most likely possums) thought so, too, and ate a bunch of them. This year we are better prepared with nets.

Summer inevitably brings with it some critters, and it must be said that despite Finland having lots of forests etc, nature comes closer to you in Australia, even in the cities. Many people are not particularly fond of spiders, such as these pretty big huntsman spiders captured here on our fence in February. You may not learn to love them, but you do learn to live with them – and, as far as spiders go, the furry huntsmen are sort of beautiful, aren’t they? :)

I spent half of March working in Europe, in Brussels and Paris; over the weekend there, I think I exhausted most of Brussels’ interesting sights, from the Atomium pictured here to breweries and museums. While early March is not a particularly pleasant period to visit either city weather-wise, with spring yet to arrive, I do like Europe a lot, though Paris much more so than Brussels – even the ubiquitous crepes in Paris win the ubiquitous waffles in Brussels hands down ;)

In April we went on a road trip, touring to Lakes Entrance, Buchan Caves, Snowy River National park (the edge of which is pictured here) and Canberra. Canberra turned out to live up to its reputation – clean, orderly, uncrowded, and somewhat boring. The kids, however, loved the wonderful science museum there, Questacon, and the War Memorial was pretty impressive as well.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve gotten to know and love the local farmer’s markets, like the closest one at Sir William Fry Reserve, a couple of kilometers from where we live – pictured here in May. The quality & selection of the produce is excellent, supporting local farmers is crucial and you can get some things you can’t easily find elsewhere; stuff like like venison, which makes for a very passable substitution for reindeer when making poronkäristys.

In June, for the first time in Melbourne, I hired a set of studio flashes for a photoshoot gig I did for a friend. Testing the equipment at home, our kids were the natural guinea-pigs and made for supremely cute subjects.

Late July we set off for Singapore for a couple of days’ stop-over on our way to Finland. Singapore is a great place to visit, particularly if you like good food or shopping – really all there is in the city are shopping malls and restaurants, or at least that what it seemed like. I wouldn’t want to live there, though – the climate is too hot & humid, people often not very nice and it’s not what you’d call a family-friendly city either. And I don’t like shopping. It was, however, good to catch up with some of the friendlier people in the city with our friends as guides.

After Singapore, we spent the entire month of August in Finland; it was the first time we went back after moving to Australia in 2009. I took some 7,000 photos during the month, many of which still need to be sifted through, selected and sorted, but the best moments were spent with family and friends; like this one, where me, my father and my son – three generations of men – are going fishing. Perfect, like many moments. Even the weather co-operated, with a sunny and warm August pampering us.

Some three days after returning from Finland, at the very beginning of September, I was off to San Francisco / the Bay Area for a business trip. What made this trip particularly great was that there are now some three good friends living in the area, and that I got to spend a weekend there which meant lots of hiking at various National, State and County parks.

By October, summer (by Finnish standards anyway, the official one starts in December) was in full swing in Melbourne, and many of the warmer evenings were spent on the beach – the kids never get tired of water and sand, and hanging around at the beach is not an entirely unpleasant way to spend time for adults, either ;) One of the highlights was when Amanda found a bunch of live starfish from our local beach.

In November, we spent some time at the local botanical gardens; this flower is from the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne that has great picnic areas and interesting tasks for kids, whereas the Melbourne version has some great water features in the summer, like water vapor fountains, artificial rain in the “rainforest” section of the children’s garden and a small artificial river for wading in.

At the end of December, we went on a vacation for a week to a destination that raised quite a few eyebrows here; we were going to Canberra. Again. Most Australians are generally perplexed why anyone ever bothers going to Canberra, let alone twice within a year – but really it’s not all that bad.

The primary reason for going back was that ever since our visit in April, our kids had been begging to go back to Questacon (the great science museum). And since a) science is a good thing to be excited about, b) one of the best sources of joy is seeing kids happy and c) it wasn’t a good time of the year to visit other destinations on our to-do list (Uluru and Cairns), off to Canberra it was. To be fair, we did include a few other places in the itinerary, too – wonderful experiences like seeing kangaroos in Tidbinbilla, good food in Canberra and quite a few good sights in Cowra (of all places!). We finally made it to a couple of cave tours at Jenolan Caves, too, which were simply awesome:

It felt like 2011 was a year when I did very little traveling in, but looking back it seems I’ve been traveling abroad or domestically in Australia for over 20% of the year, most of it on vacation, which doesn’t feel so little after all. Anyhow, it’s been mostly a great year for me personally (I’ve learned a lot) & our family, and despite the alarming emerging macro trends I’m hoping that streak will continue in 2012.

As for the first day of 2012, I am writing this on January 1st, 2012 and it’s a scorching ~+35C outside with the UV index at 11. I’ve raked a couple of hundred liters of flowers from our driveway (this is a daily exercise this time of the year, as the 20m tree generates a near-infinite number of flowers), the kids have had their water play in the balmy morning weather, and are now enjoying some downtime. A siesta would sound attractive, as would hitting the beach – but probably won’t do that until later in the day after some of the heat dies down. Tomorrow the temperature is forecast to head beyond +40C, but luckily it’s a day off to compensate for January 1st falling on a Sunday – so it’s shaping up to be a rather relaxed start for 2012. Maybe I can even read some of the books that I meant to read on our vacation this past week, but didn’t even open :)

Happy 2012!

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Review: Edible Forest Garden, vol 2: Ecological Design and Practice for Temperate Climate Permaculture

Posted on Dec 7, 2011 by sim

Where volume 1 of this book was focused more on permaculture-related theory, this 640-page whopper is all (well, mostly) about practical things – a toolkit, really. And what a toolkit; without a doubt the most comprehensive manual for designing and implementing forest gardens – not the entire permaculture landscape that Mollison focuses on, but much more useful and practical than the Designers Manual for actual plant planning. The book covers the entire process of building a forest garden, from strategies to describing the necessary pattern language, to various aspects of the design itself and finally site preparation and garden establishment and seasonal maintenance guides.

As one would expect from a book as massive as this, there are too many points to highlight. Some of what personally caught my eye, however, are:

  • Timelines are given as a guidance on the design; one cannot do a good garden design in one evening, and there are useful guidance figures to give an idea as to the amount of time and effort that goes into the planning process – that, as well as practical tools to help you get there.

  • In permaculture, having a single systems element perform multiple functions is important; Edible Forest Garden highlights beauty and prettiness as one of these aspects, which is not just a nice touch but a really important aspect, considering beauty is the guiding principle of most gardens out there and one cannot expect for people to just disregard that in search of useful plants.

  • There is heaps of practical, hands-on advice for design and building. One of the more interesting elements was the chicken moat combined with an electrical fence as a way of keeping unwanted wild animals away from the garden while providing a chicken run and vertical room for vines etc. There are also extensive site preparation and soil improvement techniques and tree planting techniques, described in enough detail that even I could to that ;)

  • A small but important point is made about the detrimental fruit perfectionism; people buy only fruits that look “perfect”, whereas one should really be more skeptical about apparent “perfection” in fruits than natural variation and visual blemishes. I am happy to report Australians aren’t quite as bad at this than the Finns, but both nations have room for improvement here.

  • The approach taken is very much that of real life, not just perfectionist theory. For example, the malleable nature of one of the permaculture founding principles – zoning – in real life is well recognized and examples given of “real-life” zoning.

  • Turns out each specialty has its own vocabulary; Edible Forest Garden lays out the various vocabularies needed to discuss things like landscapes in plain language, yet in sufficient detail.

  • This book delivers something the majority of permaculture literature just glosses over; quantified yield figures. It also quantifies many other things as, including nitrogen needs for specific plants etc. The yield figures are, of course, guidances, but it still helps to know that out of e.g. a single mature kiwi plant you one can expect an annual yield of 50-60kg/year.

In addition to the highly practical and valuable main parts, possibly the most useful part of this book, however, can be found at the appendices – of which there are 200 pages worth. There is an incredible amount of information in the plant species matrix; habitat & growth environment tolerances, root patterns, soil needs, plant architecture, uses & functions, drawbacks (such as thorns) and so on, for hundreds of plants!

That alone makes this book an amazing resource and an extremely useful reference. Then there are species by use-tables, by-function tables, separate sections for herbs and spice plants, tea & beverage, medicinal plants, ground covers etc. Flowering times are there, as are useful indicative life spans, animal needs of selected species etc.

Personally, this book was also a little bit (a lot really!) frustrating to read, as I do not have any land of my own currently where to implement these ideas. Looking at the USDA hardiness zones reveals an interesting fact; while the book was written with North-East USA in mind (hence the “temperate” in the title), many of the species discussed can actually survive not only here in Victoria (which is USDA Zone 9 or 10) but also in Finland, which falls under USDA hardiness zone 5, the same as Maine where the authors live. I do, however, suspect more limited sunlight in Finland during the darker months may exclude some of the more borderline species.

Overall, the two-volume Edible Forest Gardens set is a highly useful, fascinating and in-depth resource for designing a forest garden / permaculture garden. I cannot think of a more comprehensive book for those wanting to design a yard that keeps on giving. Even though I have no practical experience to speak of from implementing most of the advice here, I still feel comfortable recommending the book. And even if you, too, are not in a position to actually do anything about it right now, the books make for supremely interesting reading and contain probably the most comprehensive collection of species information in the permaculture literature today.

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Review: Competing for the Future

Posted on Nov 30, 2011 by sim

A colleague recommended an older book for me to read, Gary Hamel’s and C.K. Prahalad’s Competing for the Future – this was first published some 17 years ago, but seemed like an interesting book so I gave it a go. And it was a good thing that I did, as it turned out to be one of the better business books out there. It also turned out to be echoing (or, given its publishing date, preceding) familiar advice from some of my favorite authors like Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton.

Despite its age, Competing for the Future translates very well to today. Understandably some of the examples mentioned are outdated, but that’s always the risk with example cases. One of the most important messages is to reward unorthodoxy – and exhorting the fact that it’s vital to be unorthodox – something that is still missed in most companies. A story from a big pharma company chairman illustrates it well, in that he regularly tracks down projects that were rejected long before they reached the board. Why?

I know that whatever we get to see at the board level is going to be pretty consistent with our existing model of the business. I’m looking for the projects that are a bit off the wall, that could change our model of the business.

Another point well worth heeding is that restructuring or acquisitions often don’t work, and that incessant downsizing is the equivalent of corporate anorexia. A company is surrendering today’s business if it gets smaller faster than it gets better, and surrendering tomorrow’s business when it gets better without becoming different. A related point that is also highlighted is that most companies are overmanaged and underled.

One eerily accurate prediction is made when talking about the music business. Remember, this was in 1994;

Now imagine a world in which there is a broadband, two-way communication into the home. You can call up on a screen the top 1,000 or 10,000 pieces of music – song-by-song, symphony-by-symphony, aria-by-aria. You can read what the critics have said about the particular selection and listen to a 90-second sample, to see if it suits your musical tastes. Once satisfied, you can have your chosen selections downloaded onto a digital recording device. At the end of the month, you get a bill. Take it a step further, and you can even imagine a “home juke box” where you could order up an evening’s music – personally customized, of course – to accompany a 1960s rock-and-roll party, a romantic dinner for two, or a backyard Tex-Mex barbeque. [..] Think what will happen to record stores as we know them – poof, they’re gone!

Sound familiar? The “music-by-theme” bit is still lacking a bit, but other than that detail, all of the above – and more – is delivered by Apple’s products, Spotify et al. Of course the book also has its share of predictions that didn’t pan out just as expected, but that’s the nature of innovation – win some, lose some. When searching for innovation, Hamel & Prahalad warn against being customer-led; customers are notoriously lacking in foresight, and by being customer-led you end up being a perpetual follower, and worse.

Overall, the book highlights many, many excellent points and gives great advice. It has its flaws, such as the outdated examples and a relatively shallow selection of example companies, but the advice offered is quite solid. Yet, after 20 years, at least 90% of the companies out there have not taken any of this advice, which is somewhat discouraging. Many points have also thereafter been successfully re-iterated and re-established in more recent best-selling business books by other authors. So what’s wrong? Do the people who have the power to change things – or feel they have the power to change things, as it’s rightly pointed out that revolutions don’t start from the top – in their company not read these, or just fail to act / follow through?

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