Recent Posts:
Action Learning Groups
The mission of the Compression Institute is to create and support action learning groups to transform work organizations and communities using Compression Thinking. That is, we’re seeking how people at the action level can aggressively cope with a fast-changing world,...
The Art of the Question
Every one of us is subject to confirmation bias. That is, we pay more attention to evidence that confirms past beliefs than to evidence that these beliefs are untrue. Our neural processes just work this way, even in scientific logic, where it is said that...
Structuring Compression Thinking
The Compression Institute is inching closer to feet-on-the ground experimentation. We’ve long harbored the idea of forming local learning groups that would foster real experiments doing more using less by real work organizations. By prevailing thinking, just...
Compression Institute Update
The Institute has formed a board of directors: Doc Hall, Chairman; Jack Ward, V.P. Fund Raising; Dave Veech, V.P. Finance; Jason McVay, V.P. Operations; Marvin Klein, Founder of PortionPac Chemical; Wayne Lindholm, Pres. of Manskliga-Anden; Rusty Patterson, Chairman...
Compression Thinking
Compression Thinking is collectively learning to enjoy living on our spaceship planet by becoming much wiser much faster. Compression Thinking differs from most initiatives to improve ecological sustainability in three primary ways: 1. Make huge reductions in total...
Compression Thinking Groups
The mission of the institute is to create and support action learning groups to transform work organizations and communities using Compression Thinking. To appreciate the difficulty of this mission, reflect on it, which will begin your Compression Thinking. We’ve...
The Chinese Enigma
October 31, 2011 China’s mass of contradictions may even be enigmatic to Chinese leaders. Chinese government secrecy inhibits fact checking. It is riding a growth tiger and must eventually dismount, but like all of us, appears fearful of being chewed up when it gets...
Compressed on Spaceship Earth
October 13, 2011 Concern is rising that the economy will never revert to a pattern resembling the past, but enter a New Reality. It’s trying to re-inflate, but only huffs and puffs financial bubbles instead. Looking at the world as physical systems rather than...
Water, Water…
October 13, 2011 In the last 40 years we discovered water in space. We expect to find much more water deep on the moon, Mars, and elsewhere. Water on Asteroid 24 Themis closely matches our ocean water. Scientists speculate that much of earth’s water wafted in from...
Low Load Energy
September 27, 2011 The Fukushima disaster cut Japan’s generating capacity. This immediately prompted ideas to cut the load on their grid. Many ideas are modern updates of a 200-year old one, a self-winding watch that powers itself at the point of use. For instance,...
Transformative Wing Walking
September 27, 2011 An old management adage called the “law” of wing walking is, “Don’t let go of anything before you have hold of something else.” Some wing walkers just shut their eyes and kept a tight grip. A few jumped from one plane to another. Since very few of...
Striking Against Ourselves
September 8, 2011 The Compression Institute is crawling toward developing a movement unlike any known precedent. Organizing ourselves for vigorous learning within some legal framework is, from a human view, a bigger challenge than the global messes we seek to address....
Insidious Toxins
September 8, 2011 Environmental toxins are more complex than any busy person can be expected to follow. Even biological specialists unable to grasp the scope of these risks tend to issue messages that are contradictory generalizations from limited observations. That’s...
Compression Institute Update
Aug. 25, 2011 The Institute has been incorporated in Kentucky with the intent of qualifying as a 501(C)3 organization. We intend to abide by the spirit of B-Corporations, now legally recognized by five states as an entity legally dedicated to serving all stakeholders,...
Valuations vs. Values
August 25, 2011 This post was sparked by an exchange with Tom Hachiya on a Wall Street Journal article in which Mark Andreesson (Silicon Valley venture capitalist) said that he’s betting on software to power new expansion of the American economy. Without question...
Economics of Learning
August 12, 2011 How can service companies increase effectiveness? Today we jump on techniques, like killer apps, as a hot market, but whether software saves resources or wastes them depends on its role within a total system. Think big. For instance, ask why the 1970s...
7 Billion and Counting
August 12, 2011 Demographers are statistically minded folk who count people and project population numbers. A cheery lot, they ignore politics, wars, shortages, and environmental issues. They track birth and death rates, life spans, ages, fertility rates, education,...
Footprints and Effectiveness
July 28, 2011 The diagram depicts a key challenge of Compression Thinking, using a simple framework to factor our huge global challenges into things that a work organization must do to contribute to global impact. In most cases, substantial change will require...
Green Goo; Yellow Sea
July 28, 2011 You have to know your algae. They exist in great variety from single cells to giant kelp. The mere sight of pond scum clouding clear water in summer displeases most of us, but algae blooms expanding all over the world are also a perverse resource...
Compression Thinking Groups
July 14, 2011 Linking a working organization’s future goals to a big global challenge is not easy, but every discussion of the possibilities for Compression Thinking Groups digs deeper into how to bring this closer to reality. Discussions in Cardiff, Wales were no...