On change

The 2010 JOE (Joint Ops Executive) Report is an interesting read, framing the difficulty of planning for security at a global level. This one quote is telling:

The Fragility of History – and the Future...
The patterns and course of the past appear relatively straightforward and obvious to those living in the present, but only because some paths were not taken or the events that might have happened, did not. Nothing makes this clearer than the fates of three individuals in the first thirty plus years of the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler enlisted in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment (the “List” Regiment) in early August 1914; two months later he and 35,000 ill-trained recruits were thrown against the veteran soldiers of
the British Expeditionary Force. In one day of fighting the List Regiment lost one third of its men. When the Battle of Langemark was over, the Germans had suffered approximately 80% casualties. Hitler was unscratched. Seventeen years later, when Winston Churchill was visiting New York, he stepped off the curb without looking in the right direction and was seriously injured. Two years later in February 1933, Franklin Roosevelt was the target of an assassination attempt, but the bullet aimed for him hit and killed the mayor of Chicago. Can any one doubt that, had any one of these three individuals been killed, the history of the twentieth century would have followed a fundamentally different course?

The Fragility of Energy

To meet even the conservative growth rates posited in the economics section, global energy production would need to rise by 1.3% per year. By the 2030s, demand is estimated to be nearly 50% greater than today. To meet that demand, even assuming more effective conservation measures, the world would need to add roughly the equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s current energy production every seven years.

Failing to succeed

Nature has a wonderful way of teaching, if we can manage to stay still and silent enough to engage with her ways. One of the areas that we've been finding most interesting to reflect on is the idea of failure, which doesn't really seem to exist in nature - the only 'failure' that we've been able to conceive so far would be the failure as 'not adapting to your changing environment - and going extinct' - but even this isn't a big deal in nature as the disappearance of dinosaurs makes space for lots more species, including eventually, us.

A recent Seth Godin blog about failure prompted me to think about the scales for failure that link to the work that we're doing on biomimicry

FAIL OFTEN: with ideas or projects that can challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors. By taking small steps frequently and sharing ideas widely, there's little risk of over-expending energy on something that doesn't work. A plant will send out root hairs to find the next nutrient - as they're only a cell or two thick, it's not too big a deal if they don't find food. If I haven't gestated on my magic idea for months before I share it, it's no big deal either.

FAIL RARELY: Avoid failing often on the things that you have to do for a living; in nature, it's bad news for a raptor to miss and his a tree instead, and it can be dangerous to eat the wrong food. For humans, it can screw up a presentation once, but to do it often will lose us customers or influence quickly.

FAIL NEVER: Bring home the food, raising young, keeping warm and staying healthy are the keystones for survival in nature in the same way that delivering for stakeholders and customers is key in business. Adaptation to a rapidly changing environment, such as the one that we're creating - peak oil, energy, water and food crises that we've created - is something that we've got to do. We can't afford to fail on this one, but look as though we're going to. "Too difficult", "not enough time" or "too complicated" may all be true, but if we fail to adapt, we're out of here.

Learn when to turn failure into food