CHAPTER 16: SYSTEM CITIZENS
System Thinking
❑ Meiko Nishimizu
❑ “Bretton Woods Accords”
❑ Future as alien to us
❑ Networks of mutuality
❑ Tied in a “single fabric of destiny” on planet Earth
❑ We have to be concerned about how day-to-day
decisions like the product we buy and the energy we
use affect people who live thousand miles away.
❑ The system is not only out there, it is in here.
❑ #ActOnClimateCrises
“All organization sits within larger systems –
industries, communities, and larger living systems
SEEING THE SYSTEM
❑ Interdependence: “knowing what we knew but
didn’t know that we knew”
❑ Seeing into the future starts with knowing how to
interpret signs that are present today but got
unrecognized
SEEING THE GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
❑“well, it will probably be a problem for people in a
hundred years or so”
❑Seeing the global climate change system is to
expand our personal boundaries of awareness
beyond just managing our own positions.
❑ Greenhouse gasses like Co2 emissions
❑ Kyoto protocol
❑Diverging views are a tragic testimony to our
inability to apply the most rudimentary system
thinking to look at the facts we have today in ways
that allow us to see their implication for the future.
❑“If we keep heading as we are, we are likely to get
where we are going.”
As businesses, we have to be the change we want to
see in the world. This will mean that most everything
is up for change: Our products, our process, our
business models, how we manage and lead, and how
we are with one another. It is not likely that we can
change just-bits and pieces and shift the whole. - Roger
Saillant, Plug Power
❑ Plug Power
❑ Fuel cells
❑ Roger Saillant
❑ Hydrogen Economy
❑“though, implementing learning organization
principles with sustainability as the basis for
organization.”
❑ Triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit
❑ “Zero-to-landfill”
The innovations that will have the big impact will be
the ones that integrate complete value chains
around securing long term viability for social and
ecological as well as economic system. -Darcy
Winslow, Nike
SUPPLY NETWORK: THE SYSTEM SEEING ITSELF
❑ “today’s global food system produces cheap food
for the rich and expensive food for the poor”
❑ Unilever and Oxfam
❑ Sustainable Food Lab
❑Aim:“sustainable food supply chains into the
mainstream,”
❑“think together on behalf of long term and their
common interests.”
❑Reinforcing growth in supply driven by rising
production and rising profits, leading to capital
investment and further increases in capacity (food
production)
❑Reinforcing growth in demand driven by supply
increases that lower prices and raise availability,
leading to further increase in supply as producers see
more market opportunities (food companies,
retailers, and consumers)
❑Further increase in capacity driven by falling
prices, spurring investments in increased efficiency
and land use in order to maintain farm income (local
and larger food producers)
“RACE TO THE BOTTOM”
❑A race to the bottom refers to heightened
competition between nations, states, or companies,
where product quality or rational economic
decisions are sacrificed in order to gain a competitive
advantage or reduction in product manufacturing
costs
“[To get started,] you don’t have to have the answers
for everything that needs to be done to solve the
problems. In fact, if you did have all the answers, you
might not have the best answer.”
SOCIETY: TALKING ACROSS THE BOUNDARIES
It is time to for all of us to come together and think
about the future we want to create. If we do
nothing, our children could be living in $2 a day. -
Salim Al-Aydh
SYSTEMS THINKING
❑ Saudi Aramco
❑ Dialogue meeting in Hawar
❑ Coming together across differences
❑ Are a system citizen?