Stuff that works

Have you ever seen one of those documentaries about how they make things? It’s fascinating. They show you how a door handle or a golf club go through the factory floors and are made into their finished forms with perfect expertise. That is the magic of the Industrial Revolution. If we walked in a Medieval room we would find out that all the things in that room would have been made at most by a dozen people. There would be a table or a chair made by a carpenter. And a basket made by a weaver. And the kids clothes would have been made by their mothers. And most of these things would have been made by people our host would know personally. Yet, today, in our own living rooms we find the work of thousands of people, separated by thousands of miles and many years. That’s what the Industrial Revolution brought us: the ability to benefit from the work of many other people, and for many other people to benefit from our work.

Imagine we had a very knowledgeable and cult man who would go to another planet where mankind would still be in Medieval times – it would be impossible to him to replicate the Industrial Revolution. We can get that sense by looking at the documentaries I was talking about: the sheer amount of expertise, know-how, intelligence, information, training, organization that goes into each industrial process is staggering.

However, the Industrial Revolution also brought us a lot of things we could do without. Waste. Pollution. Some injustice, some trouble. But I guess none of us would want to go back to agriculture and to making our own shoes. So there must be another way. I am positive that we will find it.

Deficits Rule!

Yesterday, I watched a woman in TV criticizing in no small words the fact that the Germans established in their Constitution specific rules for budget deficit controls, and France and Germany’s suggestion that other countries should do the same. This kind of criticism baffles me. I know many countries seem to be happy running 2% or 3% budget deficits (Portugal will be happy with 5.9% this year). But if we see it through the point of view of coherence and sustainability, there is only one acceptable level of budget deficit: 0%.

Deficits are not wrong by nature, just as credit cards are not wrong by nature. But when you start believing that your credit card is a source of income, something is definitely wrong. Deficits are ok if they are an exception. But no system can be sustainable if it depends on running deficits for years, decades or even centuries. No family could live like this and no company would dream of functioning like this, except if it was being subsidized.

Why shouldn’t countries have debt ceilings and deficit controls in their fundamental rules? I think it is a perfectly reasonable idea. As much as calling for regulations in the banking and financial systems. I would go even further: there should be goals of achieving 0% deficit levels (didn’t Bill Clinton achieve this in the US just a few years ago?). Not all the time (let’s give room to exceptional times), but at least most of the time. Because, as Milton Friedman would say: it’s very easy to spend other people’s money in other people’s name.

Would this impair growth? I think growth is better served by a healthy system. Growth by growth’s sake is a fool’s errand. We should try to be healthy. Health will bring growth.

Of course, there’s a whole other debate we could have about the flip-flapping of France and Germany’s positions on this subject (which lead us to believe there’s not an ounce of coherent thinking in both countries’ Governments at the moment), but that doesn’t mean the idea is not a good one.

Let it also be coherent

‘Coherence’ is an underrated concept. I would describe it as consistence between the several parts of a system. I believe that everything and everyone is coherent. But many times not with what one would want. Our unconscious mind is really very powerful and most of the time we are not working towards our conscious goals but rather towards some obscure objective we will never comprehend.

Just like people, most organizations are not coherent with what they intend to be. Many times its individual parts (departments, languages, objectives, missions, people, etc.) are in conflict with each other. There are many reasons for this, but there is one that stands out in my mind.

In the XIXth century, probably the largest organization known in the planet was Napoleon’s Grand Armée (Great Army) which at some point had about 600,000 individuals in it. No commercial or industrial organization had anywhere near this kind of size. Yet, an army, still today, spends an awful lot of its time ensuring its coherence. It trains more often than it acts, and it invests tirelessly in language, in communications, in procedures, in the ability to perform coherently in the middle of chaos. Still, it usually fails in this goal when in the midst of the fog of war.

Today, there are in the world hundreds of companies with more than a hundred thousand people in them. It is said that Wal-Mart alone has more than one million employees. Yet, the effort that companies put into coherence is pitiful. The amount of time and resources a typical big company or organization (state or otherwise) squander in internal battles and incoherent strategies is, in my experience, ridiculous.

Incoherence breeds waste. So it is almost impossible to have a sustainable organization without coherence. A sustainable system must be coherent. And a coherent system will sooner or later be sustainable.

We have to invest a lot in coherence to have sustainability. This means a lot of analysis and a lot of difficult decisions. It also means a set of coherent values we can start from. Not those kinds of vague and forgotten values many companies frame and hang on the walls of their corridors, but rather a set of principles that actually stand for what we believe.

These principles don’t have to be there immediately from the outset. We can figure many of them out as we go. But in the least, they have to be coherent. And our acts have to be coherent with them.

There is a reason for the emergence of ethics in Human society. It is because being ethical works better than being unethical. You don’t believe me? Maybe you will one day.

First, let it be sustainable

Let’s start with ‘Sustainability’. In the last few years the concept has been confused with environmental concerns. It seems silly to try and detach it, because it is about environmental concerns, only much wider, in my mind, than it is usually thought of. ‘Sustainability’, to me, is the ability of a system to keep going indefinitely, keeping its main characteristics, resilient in its path, changing because of evolution drives and not for the sake of change itself or in a fit of despair and survival anguish.  ‘Sustainability’, to me, is the ability of a system to live well, healthy, to live in peace with itself and, most likely, in peace with others.

Most people’s ‘life system’ is not sustainable. Most organizations’ system is not sustainable. This is not because of the nature of systems themselves. ‘Sustainability’ is not incompatible with capitalism, with wealth, with economic evolution, with modern comfort, with freedom.

This is also not because of the nature of Man. For most of History, there was a fair amount of sustainability in society, with empires and religions lasting for thousands of years. Demographics and economics wouldn’t change much, and technology developments and social innovation were slow at best, leaving social and individual systems pretty much the same. Of course, there was more to come, and in the last few centuries Mankind benefited from understanding as much and evolving to different levels. In the process, it also developed a culture obsessed with growth, based on a myth that ‘Growth brings Health’, when actually it’s the other way around: ‘Health brings Growth’.

What we have right now that is incompatible with ‘Sustainability’ is a culture of ‘Consumption’. I wouldn’t say ‘overconsumption’ – for the system would also be in peril if there was ‘underconsumption’. The problem is that consumption exists in society nowadays regardless of everything else. We consume what we consume because it’s available, interesting and good. We do not check it against the health of the system, in fear it will be a burden. I think we ought to do otherwise.

Let me be clear – I am neither a socialist nor a religious man. I do not believe in boundaries and traits imposed by higher powers. I do not believe ‘Sustainability’ is a moral issue. Something we should do because it’s the ‘right thing to do’. Quite the opposite – it’s the ‘right thing to do’ because it’s the ‘best thing to do’. It will bring us to higher ground in evolution.

I do not lead a ‘sustainable’ life yet. It will probably take some years before I do. But I believe it is the future.

My first challenge will be to make this blog sustainable. I probably will not be able to write it every day, but the goal is to make it continuous, regular and balanced. I hope you keep coming back as well.