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Rod's Other Activities
In April, Fortune Magazine honored the Environmental Defense Fund as one of the 7 Most Powerful Boards in the World. Rod is honored to be a Board Member of this important organization, and shares the following photo, taken with his fellow board members (Rod is 5th from the left, in yellow jacket).
See the Fortune Magazine article here.
What Rod's Been Reading: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
How Korean Air Spiders turned into Starfish in the Cockpit
Gladwell is a wonderful researcher and writer and this is his best book to date. The book reviews social and personal factors that lead to great success. Much success is due to timing. Most of the titans of the railroad industry were born in the 1830’s. They were born early enough to have the creative energy to build a new generation of companies when the time was right, yet they were not so young that they missed the birthing of the railroad industry and all the opportunity that came with it. The same is true of the computer era. Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Steve Jobs were all born in 1954-55, as were many other tech leaders. Timing counts. So does hard work and 10,000 hours of practice. The Beatles became great performers after playing in Hamburg strip joints, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. “8 days a week…” and many other great Beatles songs came out of the crucible of that intense practice and work.
Tucked inside this excellent book is a jewel of a starfish story. In Chapter 7 Gladwell shares “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes.” You see, Korean Air had one of the worst safety records in the world. So many airplanes were crashing that in 1999 Delta Airlines and Air France both suspended their partnerships with Korean Air.
The problem? The majority of airplane crashes occur when the captain is king and no one feels comfortable questioning him (or her). Analyses of airplane accidents demonstrate that most fatal crashes occur after a series of human errors. This series of errors often takes place because of a failure to communicate: a first officer unwilling to share direct concerns with the spider-like captain, or a captain who does not listen. It is dangerous to have a spider in the cockpit. A hierarchy in the cockpit is a bad thing—it creates a “power distance” between the captain and others and blocks the flow of vital and possibly negative information both to the captain flying the plane and to the control tower responsible for helping the plane land safely.
The solution to this dilemma? Turn the spiders in the cockpit into starfish. After years of accidents, in 2000 Korean Air hired American David Greenberg to run its flight operations. Greenberg found deficiencies in the English skills of the Korean pilots. He hired English trainers and introduced language courses. He even demanded that all flight operations in the cockpit be handled in English, because mastering English for radio communications with flight control towers is essential for safety. A surprising and unintended side benefit occurred. When the pilots spoke Korean, they consistently acted within the boundaries of their native hierarchical and deferential culture. However, when they spoke English, they operated in a different and more casual culture. The result? The hierarchy faded away. First officers and others became comfortable sharing with the captain important and even negative information. The language change sparked a cultural shift, turning the cockpit from a spider-like to a more starfish-like environment. As a result, the safety record of Korean Air soared.
For safety’s sake, the next time you’re on a flight, let’s hope there are a few good starfish and not one domineering spider in the cockpit.
Share Your Starfish Story
Alex Brown Racing: A Horse Welfare Community
The following story was sent in by Alex Brown, founder of Alex Brown Racing.
Alex Brown Racing is home to Fans of Barbaro, which took shape as a consequence of the tragic accident, and subsequent death, of the great racehorse Barbaro. Barbaro had a strong following, and many wanted his legacy to be a spotlight on horse welfare issues, including horse slaughter. Fans of Barbaro have been pursuing Barbaro's legacy now for well over two years. In that time they have raised more than $1 million to rescue horses from slaughter, raised awareness of the horse slaughter issue, actively lobbied to end the practice of horse slaughter and participated in myriad other horse welfare issues. The group achieved this without the structure of a traditional organization.
Alex Brown established a blog for Barbaro updates, which ultimately evolved into Alex Brown Racing. It now includes a blog with more than 10 million page views, a discussion board with close to a million posts, a wiki with more than 2 million page views, and both a Facebook Group and a YouTube Group.
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| Barbaro, before the Preakness, Lydia Williams |
Many projects run simultaneously within the community. Fans of Barbaro lead individual initiatives. Some are successful and some are not. But in general the “organization” works very well. A million dollars has been raised to rescue horses heading for slaughter using the eBay model. Alex Brown Racing itself raises no money. Individual fundraisers are offered on the discussion board and Fans of Barbaro decide what members want to support. The role of Alex Brown is to stay out of the way, while observing everything. Alex also researches new technologies to strengthen the community and expand its reach, and works with the media for wider exposure. Most important, the role of Alex Brown is not to mess things up.
Why is this a starfish organization? It’s not an organization in any traditional sense. The only thing that could be considered organizational is a Mission Statement. Yet this statement has been essential, for it knits together this group of people around a common cause. Barbaro is the catalyst that binds them together, and technology allows the members to engage with one another and expand the group. New members join daily, despite Barbaro passing more than two years ago, on Jan. 29, 2007. Members leave, too. There is no official count. The community does not rely on one member's leadership. Although Alex Brown started this, if he left it might simply take a different form.
Reading The Starfish and the Spider has been useful in terms of rationalizing why the "organization" Alex Brown Racing works. It provides a road map, where a road map did not formerly exist for such a nontraditional organization.
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Starfish Principles at Work
Emergence: Beyond networks to how life really changes
We were very interested to learn of some new thinking that expands on the principle of the power of decentralized networks, presented in Fieldnotes, published by The Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership. The article’s authors, Margaret Wheatley and Debbie Frieze, explain the concept of emergence, stating that, “As networks grow and transform into active, collaborative communities, we discover how life truly changes, which is through emergence.”
The emergence concept is based on the idea that the world doesn’t change one person at a time, but rather through networks of relationships that form among people with common interests and passions who share a vision of what is possible. When these networks develop into communities that work to accomplish change, a new system that goes beyond the network can suddenly and surprisingly emerge at a greater level of scale: a system of influence.
As Wheatley and Frieze explain, “This system of influence possesses qualities and capacities that were unknown in the individuals. It isn’t that they were hidden; they simply don’t exist until the system emerges. They are properties of the system, not the individual, but once there, individuals possess them.” The authors also believe that these spontaneously emerging systems contain more power and influence than would be possible through planned, incremental change.
There’s nothing new about networks as a form of organizing. But they are only now being widely recognized as researchers and society remove the old paradigm blinders that look for hierarchy and control as the only way that organizations form, through human will and intervention. Uncontrolled (decentralized) networks are evident everywhere, in the form of self-organizing networks such as social activist groups, terrorists groups, drug cartels, street gangs, and web-based interest groups.
The authors claim that self-organizing networks are the only form of organization used by living systems on the planet, and their interdependence are based on the recognition by individuals or species. These networks support the diversity and viability of all members.
Wheatley and Frieze have observed that, “Emergence violates so many of our Western assumptions of how change happens that it often takes quite a while to understand it. In nature, change never happens as a result of top-down, pre-conceived strategic plans, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss. Change begins as local actions spring up simultaneously in many different areas.”
The authors emphasize the importance of understanding that emergence always results in systems that have much more power than their individual parts. “This aspect of emergence has profound implications for social entrepreneurs. Instead of developing them individually as leaders and skillful practitioners, we would do better to connect them to like-minded others and create the conditions for emergence. The skills and capacities needed by them will be found in the system that emerges, not in better training programs,” the authors say.
About the authors: Margaret Wheatley is president emerita of the Berkana Institute, author of Leadership and the New Science and other groundbreaking books, and a presenter at the Shambhala Institute’s Authentic Leadership Summer Programs. Debbie Frieze is co-president of the Berkana Institute and co-director of the Berkana Exchange. Debbie also works with The Mastery Foundation, which is committed to peace and reconciliation in divided communities
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Maria Sipka's Column
Decentralized Public Transport: Communal Bicycles in Barcelona
Barcelona is a vibrant, colorful city, bustling with people, especially at rush hour. The roads are bumper to bumper, and bus lanes are jammed.
Last year the city government launched a new initiative called “bicing” to ease congestion. Bicing is a decentralized communal bicycle system. The Barcelona City Council wanted to take the next step towards prioritising its sustainable policy and the promotion of public transport within the city centre.
Over 100 bicycle stations house up to 3,000 cute white and red bicycles. A user subscribes to this service online and in less than one week an access card arrives in the post. More than 100,000 subscribers now ride the bicycles. From men and women in suits to grungy teenagers, you’ll see all ages scooting around town. The service has been used over 3 million times since its launch in March 2007.
My husband and I decided to venture into the heart of Barcelona one weekend, curious to explore the exotic parts of this city where it’s generally not safe to walk. We set off on our journey by finding the closest bicycle station to our home. To unlock a vacant bicycle the card is swiped on an access pad secured to a welcoming pole. The first 30 minutes are free and then a small fee is deducted from the user’s account for each additional hour. The purpose is not to keep the bicycles for any longer than two hours so the cost increases significantly the longer it takes for the bicycle to be returned.
The bicycles are evenly distributed throughout the city. The system is completely decentralized. The users collect and drop off the bicycles at any docking station when their journey ends, consistently circulating the bicycles.
Throughout the day, we docked our bicycles three times at various bicing stations around the city to take a break or explore by foot. And each time we swiped our card and grabbed a new bicycle. Some stations were full and others were empty. The computer system would notify you where you could collect the nearest vacant bicycle or dock your bicycle if the rack was full.
If the bicycles are faulty or the user experiences a problem, customer service is a phone call away. The bikes are provided with an anti-vandalism mechanism and the pieces are not compatible with other bikes on the market.
Photo by JC Duarte
Maria Sipka is CEO and co-founder of Linqia, the Social Network Marketplace that connects commercial partners to social networks through Linqia's online marketplace.
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Eco Corner
China's role in global warming
Rod interviewed Dan Dudek, Chief Economist of the Environmental Defense Fund, who was one of the co-authors of the Kyoto Protocol, and a leading expert on environmental markets and how to shape them, design them, and use them to create workable policies. As far as we know, this is the first time Dan has granted such an interview, so we are very pleased to share the following excerpt from their 2008 interview:
Rod: Maybe you can start off by telling us a little bit about on what you’re working on these days.
Dan: I think the big story on everyone’s mind is China. What’s happening in China? Is China actually going to get control of not only its economy, but more importantly of its environment?
The United States, at long last, seems like it is getting serious about global warming. I recently took a group of senior Chinese government officials, including the top official responsible for climate, to Capitol Hill. They were told there that it’s a certainty the United States will have effective cap and trade, greenhouse gas, control legislation by 2010. Legislation will be introduced this session, and probably not pass, but definitely in the next Congress. So the U.S. is moving. That will leave China as the last major country not to join the global environmental movement.
China’s already number one in greenhouse gases, but we’re number two, dubious distinctions at best, and the numbers are large. I’m sure the differences between them are pretty small, but China will be feeling, I think, significant pressure internationally, as well as from its own population, to be able to deal with not only the more conventional pollutant problems it has, like sulfur oxide and causing acid rain, but also with problems with ozone and smog in its major cities, and with particulates which travel across the ocean and reach California and Arizona. Also, I think, very important from a global perspective is this issue about the greenhouse gases and China’s contribution to the changing of the world’s climate.
Rod: What are the attitudes of China like, politically, about the global warming issue these days?
Dan: That’s a really interesting question. I think the conventional wisdom in the United States is that China doesn’t care and that China’s not doing anything. The reality is, when you look at what China has put on the table, they’re actually doing more than we are. Of course, I discount the claim by the Administration that the United States is doing more than anybody because we’re investing so much into future technologies.
But putting that aside, China is still a country in transition, so it has a 5-year planning process. This current 5-year plan, which runs from 2006 to 2010, has a very interesting target in it. That target is a 20% reduction in the energy intensity of its economy. That means 20% reduction in CO2 (because energy is primarily fossil fuel based in China) per unit GDP by 2010. Now, if China’s successful in hitting that goal, that would mean they would avoid approximately one and a half billion tons of CO2. That’s a pretty dramatic number. So the Chinese have something real on the table.
They are also the first of the developing countries to actually complete a national assessment of the impacts of climate change on the country. That was completed in the spring of this year. I think they did a very creditable and realistic job, within the limits of current science, of portraying the regional impacts on China. There are serious impacts on water supply. There’s a persistent drought in the northern part of China. There are already big plans to move water from the south to the north, to address the problem of the disappearance of the glaciers in the head waters in many of the major rivers in China.
The government set up a leading group on climate, and an advisory body of 12 eminent scientists to report to the government on what it ought to do. They’ve established targets on renewable energy. Right now, they’re at about 7 1/2% photo-regeneration from renewable sources. By 2010, they’ll move that up to 10% and by 2020 to 15%. Nuclear is a big part of China’s solution as well. They’re at about 8 gigawatts total nuclear now. They’ll move that to 40 gigawatts by 2020, and they have a goal of 30% of China to be forested.
So when you add this up, these are all fairly significant measures and targets that would significantly reduce greenhouse gases. Of course, the real question for China is . . . can they deliver on all this?
In future editions of The Beckstrom Starfish Report we will share Dan’s explanation of how pollution markets work, how the Kyoto Protocol was set up, and why Dan holds hope that we can turn global warming around.
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Starfish Tip of the Month
Ping.fm
Ping.fm is a simple and free service that makes it easy to update your social networks.
You can send your messages to ping.fm via mobile phone, SMS, MMS, email, instant messsage, 3rd party apps, or developer API.
Ping.fm will post your messages wherever you want within the 40 social networking sites it supports.
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Who We Are
Rod Beckstrom is an author, speaker, and the former director of the National Cybersecurity Center. He founded CATS Software Inc., which he took public as CEO. Rod serves on the boards of Environmental Defense and Jamii Bora Africa Ltd. He is also on the board of the Pacific Council of Foreign Relations and on the Kiva.org Board of Advisors. Rod holds a BA and an MBA from Stanford and was a Fulbright Scholar. He lives in Palo Alto, California and can be contacted through BECKSTROM.COM.
The team at BECKSTROM.COM supports Rod with his writing, speaking engagements and web presence. To inquire about booking Rod for a speaking engagement, contact speaking@beckstrom.com. To schedule an interview with Rod for your publication or blog, contact sandra@beckstrom.com.
© 2009 WWW.BECKSTROM.COM
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