One under the Sun

Webb Chiles posted about the movie 1917. The Camus quote in it grabbed me and does not let go.

As an organizational consultant, I am challenged how to transform humans so they produce less Waste. Deming stated that any well run quality minded organization produces on average 40% waste. That means that 40% of the Sales produced are wasted on non-value-added activities. This could have been saved if the organization would work towards minimizing this waste.  These are well run organizations which have a high degree of systems management. Imagine what most companies/organizations have as a potential for improvement... Oftentimes organizations waste more than half of their resources. The greatest, saddest and most impactful Waste is the inability to use the ability of people (https://blog.deming.org/2012/11/the-greatest-waste/).

Yet most organizations are stuck in a way of working which minimizes the performance of all involved in that organization. I see similarity between the WW1 and the current business world. Albeit people are not physically getting mowed down my machine guns these days but they are being metaphorically speaking "mowed down" by policies and paradigms which kill worker's pride and income. This eventually will hollow out countries and bury us in the mud of this struggle.



We are in the area between two S-curves where things are always chaotic. Before the WW1, in the 1850s, the square rigger sail-ships had to transport the coals to destinations because the steamers could not travel far enough. Eventually the sail-ships disappeared because the steamers' boilers got more efficient. Once this happened the industrial age was on a roll.

Today the centralized fossil fuel electric generators power us all, with the consequent detrimental effects of overburdening our planet with CO2 (Waste). According to some (read J. Lovelock) we are doomed and even if all CO2 emissions stopped today, we would still be drowned by Earth which is working to come back to a stable state.

Solar power and battery storage solutions are starting to spread. The central power provisioning still has the economic advantage due to scale and is (together with fuel-providers) actively pushing back for a fear of loss of power and income. Once the scales tip towards the de-central solar produced power the unit price for centrally produced kWh will rise exponentially. That will cause more investments in de-central solar powered homes and business. The coming decade will see this transformation for many countries. Factor into that the electrical vehicles and fossil fuels will become obsolete.

Hopefully we will be in time and have not all drowned yet.  We as humans working together may need more pain before we wake up to the fact that we need to think and act as One. That will make us want to eliminate the elements causing us to waste some much of our resources. These elements cost us too much. Most often the elements can be identified by faulty (management) policies and regulations.

Camus' quote gave me the understanding that which gives me the deepest satisfaction; to help another human being discover something new which transforms their world for the better. I believe I am not the only one who thinks like this; I had to learn something first from somebody else, as John Welsford says "an expert is a beginner with experience". On my own I know nothing.