10 June 2009
Our Original Invitation
Posted by Admin under: Events; Forum .
We invite you to join us in creating the Sustainable Leadership Forum, at our first membership gathering on Tuesday, June 30, from 5 to 9 p.m., in the Hartman Lounge at FDU’s Madison Campus. At this time we will lay out the mission, membership strategy, and programs for the Forum, and invite you to join with us in creating a dynamic, self-generating organization devoted to leading the sustainability revolution.
This is a small, targeted, but ambitious undertaking. It is deliberately intended to challenge much of our thinking – about change, about power, and about organizations – and to apply unconventional strategies to oppose our society’s headlong rush toward self-destruction. It is intended to serve as a hub for member projects and initiatives – not just one more thing to do, but one that supports you in what you already doing or choose as your role in leading change.
In a recent issue of the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell writes about the David and Goliath phenomenon, citing a study by Harvard political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft:
“When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguin-Toft concluded, ‘even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.'” (“How David Beats Goliath,” The New Yorker, May 11, 2009, p.41)
While some of Gladwell’s arguments have themselves been criticized (see Bill Harris’s “The Badwell of Gladwell,” Dubious Quality, Monday, June 01, 2009), Arreguin-Toft’s central thesis remains: when you adopt unconventional strategies, you can frequently win against a much more powerful opponent.
In this case, the “more powerful opponent” is what’s often called BAU – “business as usual” – which we see over and over again leads to unsustainable outcomes. Our challenge today is to imagine, and call into being, a sustainable future – which encompasses everything we know about the way human beings operate, and harnesses our ingenuity, energy, and creativity to alter what we know to be a drift toward catastrophic climate change, mass extinction, toxic chemical contamination, oceanic and atmospheric degradation, and global ecosystem reconfiguration.
Our goal, as an organization, will be to support the leaders of the sustainability revolution – beginning in our own back yard – and to devise the unconventional strategies we will need to cause our society to change direction. It will draw on what we know about individual and organizational transformation to create new structures, processes, initiatives, and enterprises to trigger more widespread change. In Gladwell’s terms:
In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said (in Robert Alter’s translation), and picked up those five smooth stones. What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”
We need to begin by acknowledging the forces of inertia, of ignorance, and of self-interest arrayed against us, and we need to pick up our own smooth stones. We then need to step out and undertake our own “full court press” against these forces by joining together to bring about a revolution in consciousness, a massive “paradigm shift” comparable to the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and alter the course of history through deliberative action.
Please RSVP to jcloud@fdu.edu if you are planning to attend. No refreshments will be provided, so plan to eat early or late, or bring something organic and healthful to share with others. Once again, the location on June 30 is the Hartman Lounge, in the Mansion – for directions to the campus see Directions to the Meeting location. And if you are interested in being part of the organization, but cannot make it on June 30, please email me and I will let you know how to join. Thank you.