Listen to the podcast; join the follow-up teleconference at www.compression.org. This podcast topic is “Quality Over Quantity, Always.” Learn how to address complex issues, think from alternate viewpoints, originate solutions, and dialog with others.
Follow on Teleconference: Commercial quality refers to the properties of a product or service. Compression Thinking expands that definition to the quality of life, birth to death, of all life. Learn to see quality beyond a commercial or industrial mindset. This is, for nearly all of us, no small shift in what we value, or what we think is important.
The teleconference opens by asking you what “quality of life” means to you. For some that may be risky extreme sports, showing that you dare to what others won’t or can’t. To others it may be sitting on the porch sipping tea. Both those ideas are me-centered. If quality of all life is what matters, how would both those responses change?
We’ll bring up commercial definitions of product quality and process quality, a huge field of thought in itself. It centers on what “customers” of various kinds want or need, not on what ecologies need. However, businesses rely on quantity, selling enough that revenue exceeds cost, not quantity. If growth-oriented, they “commodify quality,”replicating and selling, on the belief that making more money faster is the mark of success. That’s the quantity over quality guideline of expansionary thinking, that more is better than less. But suppose that less is better than more. Then where are we?
What must quality mean if we dramatically reduce our consumption of energy and raw materials (local circular economies)? Digging a little deeper, what is:
- A Quality Life Cycle (a living analogy to Life Cycle Analysis for product design)?
- Quality of Survival (Resilience)?
- Quality of Relationships (Trust)?
Finally, how can we measure this? Or should we?
- 8 PM Eastern, 3/10/2920