Recent Posts:
Energy Productivity of Systems
All industrial societies depend on generated energy. Even the sensors and devices needed for the internet of things talking to each other require energy. The internet of things is coming on fast – and befuddling many of us. To improve quality of life globally while...
Forming Issue Learning Groups
Why do we need Issue Learning Groups, which we’ve called by other names: Action Learning Groups or Vigorous Learning Groups? Because we need to learn how to improve systems (or processes) on which we depend while reducing the level of resources we consume. No one can...
PDCA and Systems Boundaries
Most readers know the Deming Circle, Plan-Do-Check-Act, or PDCA, a problem solving logic that is often expressed in other formats like DMAIC or C4. Likewise, systems thinking is packaged in a variety of flavors but with a common theme of taking big-scope,...
Trust Me, I’m Lying
One of the more interesting exposes of the media business is Trust Me. I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, by Ryan Holiday, who became fed up with the games at which he was a master well before his 30th birthday. We swim in an ocean of this stuff, so books...
Biological Work Organizations
In the 20th century, work organizations were often described mechanically – as well-oiled machines, perhaps. Today, work organizations are more likely described biologically, like an amoeba organization, or Open Xerox. This trend should accelerate. Old machines had...
Egypt in Compression
For the last two years, Egypt has been prominent in global political news, but that tends to bury deeper issues in the excitement of who’s in, who’s winning, and who’s not. Any Egyptian government will have to get beyond finger-pointing circuses to address long-term...
Uncertainty and Depression
Uncertainty is a popular business buzzword. Western managements mostly use the term to explain reluctance to invest when the future direction of regulations and tax laws are unclear – and anywhere, not just in the United States. In places like Egypt, slipping closer...
Issue Learning Groups
When the Compression Institute began we had the notion of forming learning groups of for-profit companies that could start a learning journey together toward a much bigger view of how to live better using much less. However, very few companies could see where that...
Bureaucracy and “Subsidiarity”
“Subsidarity” is a buzzword for an old idea: that a matter should be handled by the authority closest to the action that is capable of addressing it effectively. Its fuzzy opposite is “bureaucracy:” that in order for matters to be addressed with competence in an...
Explaining Risks
The difficulties of explaining risk are the nub of the recent conviction on manslaughter changes of six Italian seismologists and a public official for inadequately forewarning the public of the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009: 309 fatalities, over 1500 injuries, and...
Food Risk
Formal risk management has become common in large organizations. Risk management has become complex, standardized in ISO 31000, and meriting university degrees. Most risk assessment multiplies the consequences of an event times its probability to create a risk index....
Resolving Hydraulic Fracturing Uncertainties
American prospects to displace coal and petroleum fuels have been boosted by natural gas from hydraulic fracturing. This “fracking boom” began when “slickwater “ fracturing made extracting gas from shale feasible in 1999. By 2005 thousands of fracking operations...
What’s Wrong with U.S. Education?
We need to question our basic educational needs. Both the quality and quantity of U.S. education are constantly under fire. District school superintendents are under pressure to do more with less funding, especially in urban areas. Lost in the clamor is that all...
Everything is a “Nexus”
Summertime and the food forecasts are queasy. In the drought-hit U.S. the latest USDA projections show corn harvests down 13% and soybeans 12% from 2011; wheat stays about even. Although other world crop areas are not as hard hit, no major area has a big record...
Learning to See the Whole
Feedback from our Summer Institute in Boulder, CO led to a few changes in terminology that you will soon notice. One of those changes is the attribute of a Vigorous Learning Organization that we have called "Meta-Vision." The term is too academic to grasp quickly, but...
Compression Thinking About Water Systems
Water affects more people in the world than any other environmental problem today, even when they don’t realize it. Water and sewage are hidden beneath the surface of many political issues. Agricultural irrigation being a major use of water, food supply is affected,...
Smart Water Systems
Andrew Warrington is President of Peerless Pump Company, a division of Grundfos Water networks have problems that can only be solved by taking a total systems look at water issues. Our company is mostly in the pump business, big pumps like those supplied by QMAX...
Black Swan Swarms
A major theme of Compression Thinking is learning how to live as well or better using much less. That simple objective is possible for a working organization to fix in mind, but complexity implementing it challenges old business thinking. From a business view,...
Snakebots
Snakebots are robots shaped like a snake. Snakebots are coming out of labs to be used for many different purposes, including heart surgery. Robots have been used as surgical tools for several years, so a serpentine shape just gives a robot advantages in...
“Hype Becomes Reality”
Shelly Palmer used this phrase to describe the May 18 Initial Public Offering of Facebook, described as a Grand Casino Game – a monetization of Facebook hype, positive for the winners; negative for the losers. Of course, this assumes that money defines reality. Before...