VOLUME 9, NUMBE R 2

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

F E A T U R E A RT I C L E S

The Role of the Corporationin Supporting Local
Development
Muhammad Yunus

Serving the Underserved:
Progressive Energy Solutions
Through a Sustainable
Business Model

Roberto Bocca and Prema Gopalan

Matrix Sales University
Eric Mellet, Philippe Pierre,
Béatrice Quasnik
Book ExcerptS

The Necessary RevolutionPeter Senge, Bryan Smith,Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur,
Sara Schley

Limits to GrowthDonella Meadows, Jorgen Randers,Dennis Meadows

IBERDROLA RENEWABLES

Published by The Society for Organizational Learningreflections.solonline.org
ISSN 1524-1734

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p ublis h e r ’ s N o t e 9 . 2

Where do “we” end 		and “they” begin? No
matter how good webelieve we may be at thinking
systemically, it’s hard to resist
the habit of categorizing others
as irrelevant, alarming, or justincomprehensibly different.
C. Sherry Immediato
I’m sure you’ve had days wheneven those you know and care about most suddenly
seem like strangers, and the ranks of “them” appear vast
– surely not part of your system. In his classic work, I andThou (1923, English 1937), Martin Buber posed a more
intimate way to appreciate the distinction. He suggested
that we can experience ourselves as separate from theworld (I-it) or as an inseparable part of it (I-thou), withthe expected consequences. His most striking examples
challenge our belief that the I-thou relationship islimited only to those we know well. I’m sure you’ve hadthat experience, too: there is a flash of deep connection
and commonality with what first appeared foreign.
Buber documented the value of each perspective andour capacity to choose our experience.
In this issue of Reflections, we are fortunate to have anumber of illustrations of new partnerships that emerged
when action was taken from the perspective that there’s
only “us” and there’s no “away.” (If you would like to see a
short artistic rendition of this, I highly recommend thisvideo: http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.
shtml.) I encourage you to read this issue with attention
to the connections between action and the state of being they reinforce. In some cases, deeply held beliefs
inspired action; in others a more naïve curiosity about“the other” opened up new possibilities.
As a community, we were fortunate to have a tangible
experience of “Bridging the Gulf” between “us” and“them” last April when about 400 people from aroundthe world convened in Oman at SoL’s 3rd Global Forum.
At the Forum, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus,

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the founder of Grameen Bank, joined a diverse panel of
SoL members from across sectors and around the world
to look at the ways in which business can be reframed
in order to help the poor. Taking a true systems perspective, Muhammad Yunus related the story behind
Grameen Bank and shared his concept of “social business.” Moderated by social researcher Laurent Marbacher,the panel also explored the idea of what human beingsare capable of doing for local development, as well as
how systems can enhance our capacities so that they
can flourish. That conversation is summarized here as“The Role of the Corporation in Supporting Local
Development.”
One of the most well-attended sessions at SoL’s Forumin Oman was a presentation by Roberto Bocca, thendirector of Emerging Consumer Markets for BP Alternative Energy, and Prema Gopalan, the founder andexecutive director of Swayam Shikshan Prayog (Self
Education for Empowerment, or SSP), a non-governmental organization (NGO) in India. In “Serving theUnderserved: Progressive Energy Solutions through a
Sustainable Business Model” we learn how their organizations partnered to look at solving the problem ofbringing clean energy to some of India’s poorest people. This took the form of creating a market together
for an innovative, affordable cooking stove that uses
pellets made of agricultural waste for fuel.
How do you justify investing in people who are noteven your employees? An “intelligent” organization is
one that makes systematic use of the intelligence of
all its players in order to become ever more efficient.
Based on an empirical study carried out over three
years, “Matrix Sales University: A New Model for Learning” traces the development of Matrix Sales University(MSU), which is part of the L’Oréal organization. Eric
Mellet, Philippe Pierre, and Béatrice Quasnik outline thefactors of MSU’s success and the difficulties of developing a learning organization with concrete operational
aims working across organizational boundaries.

p ublis h e r ’ s n o t e | immediat o

We close the issue with two book excerpts – both chosenwith the intention of challenging us to deepen ourability to think and act systemically. From The Necessary
Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World by Peter Senge,
Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, and Sara Schley,
we look at “How We Got Into This Predicament.” Something important has happened in the last stage of theindustrial era that sets it apart from the past: Globalization has brought a level of interdependence between
nations and regions that never existed before, alongwith truly global problems that also have no precedent.
This excerpt explains “how we got here” and lays out
the case for urgency in radically shifting the kind of
thinking that has made the industrial era so successful, and so disastrous.
In “Limits to Growth: Tools for the Transition to Sustainability” (from Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by
Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows,
we have guidance for action – the kind that reinforcesa systemic point of view. In 1972, these three scientists
from MIT created a computer model that analyzed
global resource consumption and production. Theirresults – published in the bestseller Limits to Growth –shocked the world and created stirring conversation
about global “overshoot,” or resource use beyond thecarrying capacity of the planet. In this classic update,published thirty years later, they lay out five tools thatwill be necessary for our survival over the long term:
visioning, truth-telling, learning, networking, andloving. Just as they concluded almost 40 years ago, theinnovations we require are not technical, but social.
I recently saw a charming bumper sticker that advised:“make love, not carbon.” With so much uncertainty about
how we can be effective, such simple advice was welcome. Maybe we should all change our plans for theevening! More importantly, I hope we can take somelessons into action from the stories shared here about
the immense value that can be created from “loving”
some part of the system that is normally excluded. Then
we can head home smiling because we know it’s true:“Systems thinkers make better lovers!” Now don’t
forget to read the issue…
With affection,

Publisher

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fea t u r e 9 . 2

The Role of the Corporation in
Supporting Local Development
by M u h ammad Y unus
At SoL’s Global Forum held in Oman last year, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, the founder ofGrameen Bank, joined Roberto Bocca, director of emerging consumer markets at BP Alternative Energy;
Lynne Dovey, director of strategic planning at the Ministry of Economic Development in New Zealand; Shaikh
Saleh Al-Turki, the chairman of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Omar Shaban, directorof operations at Cisco NetVersity to look at the ways in which business can be modeled in order to help thepoor. Muhammad Yunus related the story behind Grameen Bank and shared his concept of “social business.”
Moderated by social researcher Laurent Marbacher, the panel also explored the idea of what human beingsare capable of doing for local development, as well as how systems can enhance these capacities so thatthey can flourish.

I

Muhammad Yunus:
was not thinking of creating a bank for poor people when the Grameen
idea came to me. The idea had to do with the circumstances in which I foundmyself. I came back to Bangladesh in 1972, when it became an independent
country. It was a devastated country, and I came back from the United States
to participate in rebuilding the nation. I started teaching economics at Chittagong
University. As the economy slid down sharply, we had a terrible famine in 1974. I
Muhammad Yunus
was teaching elegant theories of economics while seeing people dying of hunger
outside the classroom. I saw that what I was teaching meant nothing to those
who were dying, and I thought that as a human being, I should see if I could be of some use.
People were taking loans from loan sharks, and were getting exploited. I went around with a student
to make a list of people who were borrowing from loan sharks. When my list was complete, we had 42
names, and the total loan was $27. I was shocked by the smallness of the figure. All I had to do wasgive $27 to these 42 people so they could return the money to the loan sharks and be free.
Another question then came to my mind. If I can make so many people so happy with such a small amountof money, why should I not do more? I wanted to do more. The idea to connect the bank located on thecampus with the people who live next door came up. I suggested to the bank manager that he should
lend money to the poor people. He said, “No way! A bank cannot lend money to poor people.” Our debate
went on for several weeks, and then he said, “Why don’t you go to the senior people? I cannot do sucha thing. There is no use arguing with me.” So I talked to the senior officials, but everybody told me thesame thing. After several months of running around, I offered myself as a guarantor. That is how it
all began.

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Whenever I needed some rules in my work, I justlooked at how conventional banks operate. Once
I learned about their procedures, I did the opposite.
Conventional banks are always looking for people
who have lots of money and wealth, in order tolend more and make more money. We reversedthat principle. To Grameen, the less you have, themore attractive you are. If you have nothing, youhave the highest priority.
We also dismissed the whole idea of collateral.
We dismissed lawyers. We do not have guarantees.
Conventional banks focus on men; we focused on
women. They look for the rich men; we look forthe poor women. Conventional banks are owned
by rich men, and we reversed that too. Grameen
Bank is owned by poor women. What is amazingis that the system works.
People pay back. Why do they pay back? Because
it makes sense to them. Because for the first time,they are getting an opportunity that they never
had.
Moderator: Omar, would you tell us about yourexperience? What programs are you working on?
Omar Shaban: From Cisco’s perspective, you cancarry out social responsibility by improving,reflections.solonline.org

developing, or transforming the educational
systems worldwide. Among the things Cisco does:
1. Business as usual. We have products that run
the Internet, build networks, connect to people,
and connect to organizations, companies, andgovernments. Partnering with the Hungarian
government worked for us in connecting morethan 3,000 schools. It enables them to share
information such as grades and curricula.
2. E-learning. Through e-learning, we introduce
another method of learning, and give schoolchildren a tool for research.
3.	The Cisco Network Academies. In the pyramid
set-up of the Academies, the bottom two-thirdsof the academies are workers whose skill sets
we elevate. We also develop the top one-thirdof the pyramid, who are the future leaders ingovernment and business. This past year in
Saudi Arabia, we hired the top ten percent ofgraduates. We hired 40 students and broughtthem in for a year of training. The results havebeen incredible.

Solving the Problem of Regressive Energy
Moderator: Roberto is also leading a project that
includes working with those near the bottom of
the pyramid. Would you share your experience?

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Roberto Bocca: At the end of 2004, BP started
looking at the bottom of the pyramid, which refers
to those who use regressive energy. Regressive
energy is energy that is unhealthy and unsafe.
More than three billion people around the world
use regressive energy, and 1.6 million people dieevery year of respiratory diseases and indirect
pollution, mostly by burning regressive fuel. It
presented a business opportunity to us.
We worked with a local non-governmental organization (NGO) to understand how we could solve
the issue of regressive energy. The team lived in
the village, ate with the consumers, and tried tounderstand what the need was. The first need thatcame up, in terms of energy, was cooking. We
started thinking about the villagers as emerging
consumers. Our mission was to develop a productand an energy solution to fit their needs that
could also be cleaner, safer, and affordable.
It was not an easy task, especially when you
want to do it as a business. The work is not aboutcharity. It is about creating a business. And so wedeveloped a solution, a cooking stove developedwith the technology in India. We used agricultural
wastes in the form of pellets, as the fuel for thestove.
Hurricane Katrina aftermath

Profit maximization is the goalof the business: the more profit
you make, the more everybody
benefits. I feel uncomfortablewith that concept, because thetheoreticians behind it interpret
human beings too narrowly.
NGOs became one of our distribution channels.
We are their service provider, while they distributethe product. After three and a half years in India,
more than 200,000 people have bought oursolution, which is a good sign that it is a sustainable model. Of this, over 20 percent come fromthe NGO channel.

Social Business and the Limits of Charity
Muhammad Yunus: There is only one definitionof business in the capitalist system: to make money.
There is no other interpretation of that concept.
Profit maximization is the goal of the business:the more profit you make, the more everybody
benefits. I feel uncomfortable with that concept,
because the theoreticians behind it interpret
human beings too narrowly. They have createdthis artificial human being who is one-dimensional. All his enjoyment comes from one source,

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which is making money. But real people are multidimensional human beings. Not only do they enjoy
making money, they also enjoy giving away money.
They enjoy touching other people’s lives and making a difference in the world. Economics does not
admit that.
My proposition is that in order to justify the
totality of the human being, we need to create
another kind of business. Social business is thebusiness of doing good to others. It is a non-loss,
non-dividend company with a social objective.
Social business also refers to any profit-making
business owned by poor people.
We created social businesses of several kinds.
Grameen-Dannon Company is a joint venture company that produces yogurt. Our objective is toreach millions of malnourished, poor children in
Bangladesh. We are putting all the micronutrients
they need in the yogurt and then selling it at
the cheapest possible price.

The charity dollar has only 		
one life. You can use it only once;
it goes and never comes back.
As part of a social business, a
non-loss company, the dollar
never stops.
Beside social business, the only alternative that
we have to help others is through charity. We
could have conceived of the yogurt venture as a
gift to the children, and it could have become acharitable program. However, there are several
differences between the charitable program anda social business. One particular difference is thatthe charity dollar has only one life. You can use it
only once; it goes and never comes back. As partof a social business, a non-loss company, thedollar never stops. The social business dollar has
endless life. You create an institution so it cangrow and can change direction.

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Now, if all the children are already fully nourished,
you do not need to give them any more of thatspecial yogurt; you can move on to somethingelse. You can continue to produce other productsthat will address other aspects of health. The company is dedicated to a social goal, so you can continue that social goal without running out ofmoney, and that is a more powerful concept.
Moderator: Sheik Saleh, does what Professor
Yunus is saying resonates with your own
experience?
Shaikh Saleh Al-Turki: It does. Over the last 12
years I have worked with charities, and I can tell
you there are no success stories; you always feelthat you are going nowhere. The poor get poorer
and the more money you spend helping them,the more are asking for support.
But all the programs we gave the poor families
kept them poor. We decided to convert the chamber of commerce from a lobby for the big business
communities to an advocate of social obligation
for them. We concentrated on alleviating risks forsmall and medium-sized business companies.
Most small business are scared of risks: they can
go to jail for a very small amount of indebtedness,
SR 3,000–SR 4,000 ($1,000–$2,000). Last year wegot 130 small businessmen out of jail for suchsmall amounts owed. They could have ruined theirlives if we did not help them. Today we have aprogram that gives them technical training andfinancial support, and stands by them if they
have legal issues.
Next, we realized that a lot of poor Saudi girls
have no education, are not trained, and will end
up on charity – unless we help them. So we createda program where training institutes go to major
companies and promote hiring Saudi girls. If theysucceed, these girls are trained at government
cost and get jobs. Today we are hiring about a
100 girls every other month.

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We also have a program now to train fishermen.
Saudi fisherman in the Red Sea lost interest infishing because it could not support them financially. So today the government provides boats,
we give them training, and we are trying to raise
their income per month from SR 1,500–SR 2,000
to SR 9,000. In Al-Kohima, where we had 50 fishermen, their per-month income jumped from
SR 3,000 to SR 9,000.
Finally, we have a program for deaf girls who are
handicapped. Textiles is a big business in Saudi
Arabia. Through the Deaf Club of Jeddah, of which
I am the chairman, we have hired 150 deaf girls,
who would ordinarily have no future, to work in aworkshop. We are training them now to become
embroiderers and within six months they will beable to earn about $1,000 a month, working at
home or in a workshop.
These programs are much more important thancharity. What Mr. Yunus is saying is right. Every
dollar you spend on charity gives you nothing.
Every dollar you spend on social programs gives
you back at least 30 percent, if not 50 percent.

The Role of Good Government
and Enablers
Moderator: We have heard from several businesspeople. Now we will hear a government point ofview. Lynne?
Lynne Dovey: Let me bring the perspective ofgood government. Good government has integrity, ethics, and standards. It must know what
outcomes it wants. In New Zealand, I belong to a
strategy team, and believe we must take the longview when thinking about outcomes for people.
Provocatively, I ask “What is the vision for 50
years?” But in a recent seminar, a member of thecircle said that he was thinking 500 years out. We
need to be thinking about those seventh-generation voices. That is a prime responsibility of
government.
The other thing I want to talk about is the roleof government vis-à-vis business and vis-à-vis

the society. The traditional role of regulator isimportant. The government establishes the law
and sets up the incentives for good business. The
government can do lot of harm by having poor
incentives.

All human beings are packed
with all the entrepreneurial,
creative, and innovative capacity
they need to succeed. All humanbeings in the world have thesame capacity and creativity.
But the role that I have become particularly interested in over the last ten years or so is the role ofenabler. An enabler is a person who helps somebody achieve something. Enablers may be brokers
of an arrangement, or simply influence. They workin cooperation with others. One of the things that
I have been doing is working in multiple sectors –the health sector, social sector, and in our economic
development ministry – to achieve outcomes forthe people of New Zealand.
A couple of years ago we were privileged to havePeter Senge visit New Zealand, and we worked
with a community in the Auckland region thatwas concerned about young people and violence.
We got the NGOs and the grassroots community
groups together. We shared with them the storyof Roca, a non-profit organization in East Boston
which helped the local government organizations
and the city managers to cope with serious youth
violence. The government organizations and thepolice said that they did not know how to handle
youth violence, and Roca stepped in. In that case,the government stepped back, and it enabled
Roca to step up. For me, that was a wonderfulstory about government enabling.
I shared the Roca story with a very diverse group.
The chief of police asked me to come and share
the Roca story with his staff. The word got out, andsuddenly 125 people wanted to come, basically to

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meet with each other. And so I became an enabler
for that process. We managed to hold the police
and some NGOs who were very angry with them –and vice versa – in the same room for half a day
and have a conversation around common problems. That dialogue was a critical opportunity.

What is poverty really? If you
look at these experiences, again
and again, you come to the conclusion that poverty is not in the
person. It is not created by the
person who is poor. Poverty iscreated by the system.
The Power of Dialogue and Opportunity
Muhammad Yunus: One point that I have beenraising again and again is the power of opportunity.
Through Grameen Bank we constantly see, for example, a person who a few years back did not know
anything, had never touched money. Now that person
is changed completely, an enthusiastic entrepreneur.
She is running an expanding business. All humanbeings are packed with all the entrepreneurial,
creative, and innovative capacity they need tosucceed. All human beings in the world havethe same capacity and creativity.
We have been encouraging our borrowers to send
their children to school. Their children are now inthe colleges. Right now more than 21,000 students
are in medical schools, engineering schools, andreflections.solonline.org

universities. Occasionally, when I go to the villages and I see a mother who is still working in
the Grameen Bank. She started 12 or 15 years ago
with a tiny loan to raise chickens, and gradually
improved her life and bought a car. She now has
several cars, and has sent her daughter to school
to become a doctor. The mother could have beena doctor too, but she never got the opportunity.
What is poverty really? If you look at these expeiences, again and again, you come to the conclusion that poverty is not in the person. It is not createdby the person who is poor. Poverty is created by thesystem. I am sure that the daughter of the doctor
will not go back to illiteracy. She will push theenvelope further. What is wrong with the system?
Why could they not fix the system? If you want toremove poverty, instead of trying to fix those whoare poor, we should be trying to fix the system.
This is our planet. We have not come from anyother planet. This is our home. If this is our home,
we have to make sure that it is a safe place. We
must hand over this planet to our next generationsafer and healthier than we found it. That will be
our responsibility. Today it does not look like weare doing that. It looks as if we are the last generation, enjoying the world as much as we can. And
all that comes back to the concept of the businesses that we run. Because the only thing wehave is a robot-like maximization of profit. We
cannot forget everything else. We have to bringback those other considerations and values.
Profit maximization is not the answer. n

ab o u t t h e au t h o r
Muhammad Yunus, a banker and economist, founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983.
Determined to help the poor escape poverty and fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental
human right, he provides tiny cash loans on terms suitable to borrowers. By sharing sound basic
financial principles, Yunus teaches people to help themselves. His simple idea of microcredit has
grown into an international movement for which Yunus was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
He is the author of Banker to the Poor (Public Affairs, 2003) and Creating a World Without Poverty(Public Affairs, 2008). reflections@solonline.org

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Serving the Underserved

Progressive Energy Solutions Through 					a Sustainable Business Modelby r o be r to b o cc a and P r ema G o palan
One of the best attended sessions at SoL’s 2008 Global Forum in Oman was a presentation by Roberto
Bocca, then director of Emerging Consumer Markets for BP Alternative Energy, and Prema Gopalan, the founderand executive director of Swayam Shikshan Prayog (Self Education for Empowerment, or SSP), a non-governmental organization (NGO) in India. The two organizations partnered to look at solving the problem of bringing
clean energy to some of India’s poorest people. This took the form of creating a market together for an innovative, affordable cooking stove that uses pellets made of agricultural waste as fuel. The following is adaptedfrom that session, which addressed the unique nature of corporate-NGO partnerships.

A

Roberto Bocca

Prema Gopalan

Roberto Bocca:t the end of 2004, BP started looking at the bottom of the pyramid,
those who are economically underserved, who use “regressive” energy.
Regressive energy is energy that is considered unhealthy and unsafe.
More than 3 billion people around the world use regressive energy,
and 1.6 million people die every year of respiratory diseases and indirect pollution attributed to burning regressive fuel. This issue presented a business opportunity for us, and BP began working with SSP to understand how we could solve
the issue of regressive energy. The partnership between BP and SSP grew suchthat SSP became one of the largest distribution channels for a clean-burning
stove, and even invested in some manufacturing.
After three and a half years in India, more than 200,000 people have bought ourOorja stove and biomass pellets solution, which is a good sign that it is a sustainable model. Of this, over 20 percent come from the NGO channel set-up by SSP.
The partnership with SSP has definitely added value to BP.

In terms of what factors play into partnerships between non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
and corporations, I’d like to emphasize the following points about BP’s involvement with SSP:
1. 	Partnership is key.
2. 	Our business is a business. Our system has to be socially sustainable, environmentally sustainable,and profitable. Without those three elements, the business will not work.
3. 	Our approach has been very rigorous. While we are co-creating and working with partners,
we have created all of the phases that are needed in any business or project.

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4. It is necessary to link the three elements of“people, planet, and profit.” Our challenge isalways to bring the three elements together
to some level of balance.
5. We have been co-creating with the consumer.
All that we have done has relied on the accessto the consumer that we have achieved. Close
to 20 percent of the access we have to ourconsumers today comes from work with SSP

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as an NGO partner. The consumer has always
inspired our product.
Prema Gopalan: SSP began as an informal network for the economic empowerment of rural poor
women in 1990. After India’s 1993 earthquake, SSP
worked in over 1,000 villages in rural Maharashtra
to lead disaster recovery efforts. Fifteen year later,
SSP partnered with BP Energy to create a business
partnership that built on SSP and the networks
that emerged from the disaster work. When similardisasters occurred, the latest being the tsunami,
SSP involved women’s groups in the recovery anddevelopment. Today the NGO partners with over
60,000 women in self-help groups or networks inthree disaster-hit states in India.
SSP’s primary goal is to build the social and economic competencies of women at the grassroots
level, by creating networks that enable communities to move from the margin to the mainstreamof development. We value our partnership with BP,
as it has introduced us to a business opportunitythat provides livelihoods to large numbers of
women who are first-time entrepreneurs.
For poor women, any kind of learning is seen as aluxury. SSP began as a self-education experimentthat organizes learning around practical issues.
Poor women are centrally involved in finding solutions to the practical problems that the poor face
– be it health, water, food security or energy. Social
mobilization designed by SSP ensures that women’sgroups learn and act collectively by traveling outof their homes for exchanges, market exposure,and training workshops.
SSP provides support to over 5,000 groups thatform the economic and social base of our network. Women’s groups operate savings and credit
and insurance businesses and act as information
providers and planners. Mature groups improveaccess to services by working hand-in-hand withservice providers and government to improve
quality of health, water and sanitation services.

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By using a market-based approach to development, SSP has created new markets in rural villages that are traditionally difficult to reach. We
involve the grassroots women’s network in cocreation of the product, business model, and thebusiness itself. Global corporations entering therural markets in India have found that women’s
self-help networks involving more than 30 million
individuals have an extraordinary reach to remotevillages. These groups are formed by the government, by NGOs, and by groups of women themselves. Women who take microcredit start microenterprises. It is an entry point that allows them todevelop financial and organizational capabilities.
Corporations are partnering with NGOs to connect
with these networks for marketing and distributionof products. When we started working on the partnership with BP Energy, we found that our biggest
challenge was to prepare the women’s groups andthe NGO teams to shift from development tomarket-based approaches that entailed partnerships with commercial entities and “Be Ready for
Business” social values. This is very different fromthe micro-credit story.

The Innovation Brought Aboutby the Partnership
In the search for solutions that address basic
needs, SSP promotes social businesses that aredesigned to fulfill three goals – social impact,sustainable livelihoods and women’s empowerment. What was really important was that we saw
a huge business opportunity that was right inthe sectors that we cared about most.
Grassroots women are at the forefront in bettering quality of life. We listened to their demands
for products and services that promote “savings”
of time, energy, and money. They want to be at
the center of creating these products andbusiness models.
Since 2007, the SSP–BP partnership has catered
to the clean energy needs of 58,000 customers andfamilies by creating a for-profit entity. Prior to thelaunch of the business, the NGO identified thevillages, the women, and the groups that would
be involved. At the center of the business model
are the women’s networks, which act as a businessplatform. The network appoints women as village
level entrepreneurs (VLEs) or “Jyotis,” a symbol ofenergy. Jyotis are responsible for the homedelivery of cooking stoves and pellets or bio fuels.
They are the first users of the stoves. They demonstrate the value of using clean fuels and vow toconvert their neighbors and help to create smokefree villages for the future. Linking to customers
through the Jyoti network allows corporations
and NGOs to understand rural households andtheir needs, and to facilitate sustainable solutions.
The engagement between BP and SSP withgrassroots women’s groups in the partnershipcreated a multi-dimensional business model that
followed the growing theme of “People, Planet
and Profit.” Women are “daily life experts” on practical issues such as food systems, fuel, water facilities, and waste recycling. The co-creation processbuilds upon their insights to test and innovate
new products, reduce costs and empower women
to play new roles in the operation and management of business.
Both BP and SSP had to develop very different
ways of thinking and working together, because
the business models for serving these emerging
consumers profitably are different than others.
We need to move further in terms of numbers,
because this is a high-volume business with low
margins. Scaling up is a challenge, but the process
can be replicated because in almost every Indianvillage, women are organized in self-help groups
and micro-credit networks.

Producing Social Development Gainsfrom Corporate Partnership
We have gained a fair amount of knowledge about
how social networks can function in a businessenvironment. The NGO team, together with the
Jyotis, have some powerful insights to offer on
how to conduct business in remote, hard-to-reachrural markets. We have created a “social market”

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from our member networks that responds to new
products and deals with market relationships in a
way that is a win-win for commercial entities andcommunities.
Our real challenge involves sustaining the outcomesof our partnerships. On a daily basis, the businessmodel must deliver social value and business
offers to the consumers. People must see and feelsuch values, because otherwise we will lose theirtrust, the relationship will go bad, and everything
could go wrong very quickly. NGOs bring in credible long-term relationships that are truly helpfulin starting businesses in remote markets.
In the prototype testing, things went wrong, butpeople did not take to the streets. There is patienceand understanding between our consumers andmembers, because networks and groups wereexplaining the processes. We have to invest in
networks, in horizontal learning, and in teams andwomen who are part of the innovation in order toproduce a community of business leaders who
can transfer insights across networks, institutions,and corporations.

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BP has been extraordinarily sensitive to the factthat women at the grassroots are driving the business on the ground. Experienced Jyotis or entrepreneurs train and hand-hold new entrants. This
principle guides our training strategy. We haverefused any inputs from commercial market agencies for training, market research or marketing. As
an NGO, we have built on scaled social campaigns
and used popular promotion methods to takethe product to weekly markets and to homes.
Our annual gathering of Jyotis or entrepreneurs
was held in early January 2008. It was attended
by 820 women – a huge leap from the 30 who
attended in 2007. Women presented plays andsang songs about how the stove had changed
their lives. They called the stove by names including Lakshmi, [the goddess of wealth and prosperity and a household deity of most Hindu families],
because it is an integral part of their life. Cooking
food and fire are very important symbols in India.
Other songs and skits were about creating awareness among men – fathers, brothers and husbands– about what the women are doing, convincing
them that investing in the new coking stove andfuel will pay off.

feat u r e | b o c c a , p r E ma

The system has given women a new economic
identity in their villages. Many of them are getting
elected to local governments. But what is moreinteresting is that they have gained the confidence to start new businesses. Unlike before, they
are investing their money and taking risks. They
are keen on creating a business platform. This canbe a boon for large companies wishing to partnerwith a network of distributors in emerging
markets.
Roberto Bocca: The big challenge for us is how to
go forward: 200,000 households is great. It is about
1 million people. But it is nothing compared towhat we want to achieve.
I think that everybody realizes the value that weare bringing by discovering a new world, a new
way of working, and a new space. Being in themarket, we have to find out what consumers reallywant. We started somewhere, and are now somewhere completely different. We are starting to look
into the value of carbon. Three years ago, carbon
was not even in the agenda.
Prema Gopalan: There is tremendous interest
within India from NGOs and corporations on continuing to work together. We struggled to recruit
women in the beginning, because women andcommunities did not understand the conceptof this business. There was a lack of family support

for the women, which changed dramatically once
families started using the product. They understood its value, and word of mouth is the best marketing we have. Men have become supportive andhelp women entrepeneurs to handle the business– carry things, keep records, handle cash, and soon. The house is the shop front and therefore isboth an asset and a contribution for this business.
We are not faced with drop-outs as yet. But weneed women who are more prepared for businessand ready to take on risks. We plan to increase
economic incentives and introduce social incentives together with better training and monitoring. The business is over if women start droppingout. So, it is important that we sustain women in
the first four or six months until they cater toenough customers and earn sufficient incomes.
Next year, we plan to invite GROOTS International– both grassroots women’s networks and organizations from Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean,
and parts of Asia – to come see our work. They
will not learn about the system otherwise, andthey are interested in learning how to partnerwith a corporation. They want to understand what
grassroots women are getting out of the partnership, see the partnership at work, and talk to thewomen on the ground. We all have a lot to learn
together. n

ab o u t t h e au t h o r s
Roberto Bocca was director of the emerging consumer markets for BP Alternative Energy. He
held various roles in BP since joining the company in 1995. Since 2004, he led the developmentof the business to provide access to cleaner, safer and affordable energy solutions to a large numberof emerging consumers across the developing world. Before joining BP, Roberto worked in Italy for
Telecom Italia and Finconsumo in Finance. He is a graduate of the Turin University of Business andEconomics. roby2bocca@gmail.com
Prema Gopalan is the founder and executive director of Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) a learningand development organization headquartered in Mumbai, India. SSP’s mission is to build andenhance core social, economic and political competencies of grassroots women’s collectives andcommunities with the aim of bringing the rural poor, women and communities from the margins
to the mainstream of development. premagab@gmail.com

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fea t u r e 9 . 2

Matrix Sales University
A New Model for Learning

by E r i c M elle t, P h ili p p e Pie r r e , B é at r i c e Q uasni k
An “intelligent” organization is one that makes systematic use of the intelligence of all its players in order to become
ever more efficient. This article, based on an empirical study carried out over three years, traces the developmentof Matrix Sales University (MSU), which is part of the L’Oréal organization. It outlines the factors of MSU’s
success and the difficulties of developing a learning organization with concrete operational aims. In view of thedecline of traditional solidarity within business and the risk of geographical break-up, belonging to a profession
with a strong identity and tradition is seen as the basis for establishing a professional community on a global scale.

T

Eric Mellet

Philippe Pierre

he Matrix Sales University“In the old-fashioned factory, there(MSU) is dedicated to trainwas little actual cooperation but aing, developing, and assistingbackground of dense and stable links
in the recruitment of salespeople for the brand Matrix. The
outside the working environment. In
French company L’Oréal acquired thenumber one American haircare brand the modern business of networks andMatrix from Bristol Myers Squibb in
projects, cooperation is intense, but
2000. When L’Oréal was preparing theworldwide launch of the Matrix brand it is set against a background of
in 2003, all the elements of the “marweak and shifting links.”
keting mix” were in place except for— Richard Sennett
direct distribution networks. Historically, these networks have been a strong factor in L’Oréal’s success: company
sales consultants sell products directly to hairdressers, where as Matrix had
traditionally been sold through the indirect distribution model. There was nosimple answer to the question of how to internationalize a leading American
brand, and deal with the challenge of distribution on a global scale.

Realizing it was impossible to tackle this challenge from headquarters alone andwithout the necessary resources to pay external consultants to spread the word,
L’Oréal’s Sales Training and Development team decided to devise a specifictraining program for an indirect sales network. It’s major objective would be totrain, develop, and assist in the recruitment of the best possible salespeople. This
Béatrice Quasnik
global program would empower the Matrix sales managers to train the distributors’ sales consultants, who often sell other haircare brands as well as Matrix (see Figure 1). Keeping thesales force engaged, building on their professional identities, and securing their loyalty to the Matrix
brand would be of paramount importance.

feat u r e | M elle t, Pie r r e , Q uasni k

Figure 1 Route to Market
Traditional L’Oréal Distribution Model
Hairdresser

▲

Sales
Consultant▲▲

L’OréalTraditional Matrix Distribution Model

▲

Sales
Consultant

Hairdresser▲

Distributor▲(MSU Trainers)

Multi-brand▲Matrix SalesManager▲▲MatrixConsumer

Consumer▲
Ancillary Products

Stage One: The Pilot Project
Few such programs existed at that time in the
U.S., despite its being the birthplace of the Matrix
brand. L’Oréal Project Manager Eric Mellet discovered a rudimentary training program in GreatBritain from which he was able to construct, withthe help of a British consultant, a pilot model forcommercial training. Mellet chose to rely on his
own intuition in developing the pilot, and focusedon the idea that “before you can do business; youhave to create a relationship. In the same way,
before you can engage in training, you have tocreate a relationship.” The program was designed
to enhance and develop relationships between
the participants and trainers, and among theparticipants themselves.
The first session took place at the end of August,2003 in the Polish town of Plotsk, several hours
drive from Warsaw. Fifty-three sales representatives awaited the arrival of the British and French
consultants with no great enthusiasm. They had
no idea what the program consisted of, but wellunderstood that at the end of it they would findthemselves in the field selling Matrix-associatedproducts and services. The module consisted ofthree days of training, the first devoted to knowledge of the product, the remaining two toappropriate sales behavior.
The new program was based on the study ofactual situations, and participants were encouraged to intervene and interact spontaneously at

any moment. The instructors, despite speaking no
Polish whatsoever, were well received, but the useof live translators resulted in a communication
time lag which stifled spontaneity. “Imagine tellinga joke and having people laugh two minutes after
you’ve delivered the punch line,” said one trainer.
“You need good intentions on both sides to getthrough situations like that.”

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The trainers also encountered another unforeseen
cultural barrier: trainees were not used to getting
involved in discussion and behaved far more passively than the instructors had anticipated. For
Polish sales representatives to dare to express themselves in role-play situations, they had to feel secure.

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desired result. As one of the instructors underlined:“It’s not about sacrificing creativity in the nameof rigor. Rigid training erases the richness of therelationship, in the act of selling as in the act oftraining. There’s no difference between a goodsales rep and a good instructor, and that should
be felt during a training session. Daring to personalize training is about defending the sale and its
creativity.”

Reflection and Learning for Stage Two

Merely telling them they were was not sufficient;
they had to feel it. A sense of trust was needed forthem to understand that the instructors who had
come from afar were there not to judge but totrain them.
The trainers worked hard to establish and build
on attendees’ trust, changing plans and logistics
several times as they sought to identify and buildon what worked with the group. “Energy circulates” as one trainer put it, and the use of audiovisual supports, music, and “ice breaker” exercises
lightened the mood and encouraged learning.
The participants’ superiors, who joined the sales
teams for the closing evening session, expressed
outright astonishment; they barely recognized
the enthusiastic sales staff they had recruited.
During two more test sessions (in Russia and theCzech Republic), the international status andexpertise of the instructors – which again could
have created a barrier between them and the local
participants – was soon forgotten. The combination of reassurance (for the necessary “letting go”
of hardened salespeople), thoughtful timing, andcreativity, notably in the role-plays, yielded theWith 135 salespeople trained, Mellet’s team (incharge of what would become the MSU) felt thatthe time was right to review the operation. Morethan 30 other countries were waiting in line tolaunch the brand, including giants like China, India
and Brazil. It would be impossible to rely on direct
one-to-one training. It was clear that delegating
training responsibilities was necessary. Once again
Mellet made an intuitive rather than an intellectual decision and, aided by his martial arts
training, was able to look at the situation from acompletely different perspective. A former sales
representative himself, he returned from his
meditations with an idea that contained all theelements that eventually developed into the MSU.
He envisioned a training organization that would
resemble a university and would function like afranchise, supplying support to subsidiaries. In
addition to training representatives, it would be
run in such a way as to ensure the recruitment andsecure the loyalty of hundreds of salespeople
throughout the world.
To be effective, the strategy had to be shared withall levels of the business hierarchy, including sales
staff, sales managers, operational directors of theheadquarters, marketing and training teams. All
the participants (representatives of the staff bothof Matrix and its distributors) had to be able tounify around a common profession – commerce –and a pedagogy aligned with the stated valuesof the brand as it originated in the United States(“ connected,”“daring,”“smart tech,”“positive energy,”and “professional passion”).1 Defined as KTD (“Knowing/Training/Doing”) the three-stage training
process, at both basic and advanced levels, would

feat u r e | M elle t, Pie r r e , Q uasni kconsist of 1) preparation with the “knowledge content” as a common point of reference; 2) “training”
with actual situations, role-plays, and practicalcases; and 3) “doing,” which would conclude withon-site “road check” sales calls with a trainer. After
this confirmation, salespeople would be given
their “passport” and validated in the MSU database.
The MSU dynamic is based on group learning:
notions of group, community and interaction
between participants are present at every formal
step of the program. At the outset, constraints
such as time lag and geographical distance would
have made a good case for an e-learning tool witha minimum of human presence. This option was
immediately rejected. The program designers
understood and took into account the fact thatcommercial performance and the economic exchange between hair stylists and sales representatives throughout the world are often underpinnedby concrete interpersonal relationships. Throughthese relationships they distribute informationand share best practices, as well as different forms
of professional, cultural and social capital. For MSU
to work – to build knowledge (both individual andcollective) and loyalty – participants needed tofeel “seen,” that they “belonged” to an MSU collective, one that transcended national boundaries.
The program also had to overcome two major
obstacles: language and history. When more than
20 nationalities are gathered together, one cannot
simply insist on conventional English, and evenless on simultaneous translation, which is prohibitively expensive. The language barrier can in fact
be the more dangerous of the two obstacles, because the problems that arise from it are often
difficult to detect when using live interpreters andEnglish as a common working language. MSU
trainings would emphasize non-verbal communication to allow an engagement that was easierand more powerful on the part of the participants.
Training programs would make extensive use ofmusic, videos, and any aspect of nonverbal communication that could federate and communicate
positive energy.

The second cultural obstacle is historical. Just
twenty years ago, the countries in which the first
three sessions took place were living under apolitical regime that left little room for individual
affirmation. If the approach had been presented
as being based on one single “team,” it might haveprovoked considerable turmoil at a time when the
Poles, Russians and Czechs were only just beginning to discover the market economy. While being
fully aware of the potential misuse of psychology
in the workplace, the MSU promoters neverthelesssought to valorise the symbolic dimension of belonging to the MSU, encouraging, for example, theawarding of diplomas to participants at the endof the session, a ritual that marks a rite of passage
from “ordinary person” to “member of an extraordinary group.”

Stage Two: MSU Trainer Camps
The conception and the development of the
global train-the-trainer program took ten months.
It was organized around two principles: a balance
between common content and practices, and theability to adapt the training to different culturalcontexts. The second principle consisted of creating the conditions needed to allow the salespeople
to appropriate the program as their own.

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Matrix Sales University
has trained representatives
in more than 30 countries.

In February 2005, just 18 months after the training
session in Poland, the team held the first “MSU
Trainers Camp” outside Paris. Forty-five instructors
from 32 countries (including China, Sweden, Canada
and Great Britain) joined together. For the promoters of the MSU, this was the decisive moment.
They were testing, on a real scale, the “teacher
training” tool they had been working on for months.
The hotel they were staying in took on a real campus feel, with as many as 16 languages spoken
around the dinner table. For five days and fournights, participants bonded in what became an
intense personal and professional experience. By
the program’s close, it was clear that the MSU challenge was being taken up. Just two months later,
the first wave of national commercial managers
began launching their own programs, having soldtheir distributors on the idea. Understandably
they were the “old hands” who had taken part in
the first experimental sessions: Poland, Russia, andthe Czech Republic. They were soon followed by
Hungary, Finland, Italy, Chile, Hong Kong, thePhilippines, Lebanon, Dubai and Canada – morethan 15 countries in all, in which 500 Matrix sales
staff were trained.
After this first Trainers Camp, the “MSU Trainers
Community” formed. An Internet site was created,
and trainers posted photographs and videos tocirculate the latest news and experiences of the

instructors, sales staff, distributors. After the second
Trainers Camp, another wave of countries launchedtheir MSU franchises: China, Brazil, Great Britain,
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden,
Morocco, Greece, Croatia and Romania.
The mass training system gained in power andgave rise to several remarkable local training
initiatives. In Canada, for example, an agreement
was signed with Laval University to certify training
undertaken by the MSU. Some countries took the
initiative and developed modules to meet theirown specific cultural or technical needs. These
innovations were incorporated into the basic
program, and adopted with ease by other countries. A worldwide community linked by common
practices was clearly forming, in which eachmember country supplied their own specificcodes and contents.

Learning How to Learn Together
Training Camps are destined to offer training
supports that are subsequently relayed to representatives who are, to quote a manager from
Matrix Russia, generally “people who have undertaken only brief formal studies and who more orless admit to feeling bad about the fact. This constitutes a mental model that makes them recalcitrant to training; they see themselves as “badstudents,” and anything that resembles school asfeat u r e | M elle t, Pie r r e , Q uasni k

an obligation they wish to rid themselves of at theearliest opportunity, as it is for them synonymouswith failure. They also have a great need of recognition, a kind of revenge they need to take against
life. It’s the financial success of selling and the social
recognition that goes with it that motivates them.”
The power of the MSU approach comes in partfrom the fact that the creators of the program
confronted these very difficulties and turned themto the program’s advantage. An adult in training is
not someone who doesn’t know, but rather someone who aspires to know differently, the betterto construct his or her own autonomy of thought
and action. The pedagogy of the Training Camps
seeks to “take off from” operational questions
from the participants themselves. Wherever the
MSU has been deployed, it has been impossible
to know in advance the skill level of the salespeople, or the mix in terms of age and ambition,
which leads trainers to “choose to work eachsequence from the skills that are already present
in the room,” as one instructor put it. Finding theright mix is not only a question of techniqueand pedagogical ingenuity; it rests on a fundamental choice, one specific to the learning organization, where one renounces the temptation
to only plan and control. It trusts that thetraining will unfold organically, naturally andspontaneously.
From this pedagogical work arose, or rather was
revealed, an intense need for the actors to “put itin words,” to recount their sales and management
experiences. The Training Camps, like all the MSU
training sessions for sales staff, revealed an interadult teaching domain that was largely conversational. Role play and discussions elicited knowledge that sprung forth from participants, that was
first and foremost a moment of orality, of maieutics shared among a group of equals. They also
provided a forum for “learning by events” (losing
a client, logistic breakdowns, a particular salon’s
credit difficulties, etc.). On leaving such a sessionof exchanges, people knew more, collectively.
New knowledge appeared through the dynamic
confrontation of different points of view andthe stimulation that arose from it.

The MSU program seeks to transcend obstacles
that make up cultural differences, as well as differences of training level and seniority within thebusiness, by giving participants the possibility of
expressing themselves in the service of a common
project. For the MSU training to have meaning, it
has to represent for all involved the opportunity

The MSU program seeks to transcend obstacles that make up
cultural differences, as well as
differences of training level andseniority within the business, bygiving participants the possibilityof expressing themselves in theservice of a common project.
for both personal and professional development.
Its holistic human approach integrates all thedimensions of “think – feel – act.” This invitation toauthenticity produces visible transformation (witness the Polish managers who no longer recognized their employees); strangers at the beginningof the course become firm friends, joined in relationships that will last long beyond the groupillusion of the moment. In addition, by taking partin the local construction of training modules, theelders transmit to the young, and stand a goodchance of securing their loyalty. The elders feelvalorised and rediscover that the paradox of any
training program is one of accepting others as
they are, while offering them the possibility of becoming someone different. The business of training is, after all, structured with the objective totransmit knowledge.

Learning for the Future
MSU gives everyone the opportunity to learn
continually, be trained at the Training Camps and,in turn, to train local teams upon returning to thecountry of origin. The “chain of value creation” ona worldwide scale has invigorated the learning
process not only of the Matrix sales staff but also
the brand’s distributors. Since the 2006 launchof training in the U.S, there have been further

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Figure 2 The Matrix Sales University Curriculum
D istributors

Getting Ready to Sell

matri x staff• Sales Administrative Matrix• Leading a Team• Interviewing & Recruitment▲

Level 1
•	Conquest• Sales Techniques & Attitudes• Salon Business▲
Level 2• Merchandising•	Tough Negotiations• Great Communication is Great Sales

Matrix Distributors Business
Developers Seminar• Best practices & sharing experiences(organized by zone)

Trainers Level 1•	Conquest• Sales Techniques & Attitudes• Salon Business• Getting Ready to Sell
•	Train the Trainers 1▲

sales R E P S

Trainers Level 2• Merchandising•	Tough Negotiations• Great Communication is Great Sales•	Train the Trainers 2▲

Matrix Sales University Diploma
Master Sales Consulting
Master Management (Leading a Team, Interviewing & Recruitment)▲

Access to Business School Program
MSU’s goal is to have more institutions of higher learning accept the Matrix Diploma as partial credit toward advanced degrees.
The heart of the MSU’s operation consists of two to five-day training seminars, conferences, e-learning, teacher training,coaching and various models of self-learning (through the use of CD-ROM and video). MSU also offers more innovative activities
which are being formalized throughout several countries, such as practice-oriented communities on commercial expansion,and partnerships with major universities.

innovations, including the creation of a specificpath for distributors, which was presented andadopted at the 2007 MSU Trainers Camp.
In most of the countries in which the brand is present, the sales network is indirect. But rather thanrelying blindly on salespeople’s interest or abilities,
MSU shows salespeople “how to sell intelligently,
making the sale have a real value for the salon”.2
One of the objectives of the program is to train
distributor teams to become more than simple“order takers” from the hair stylists. As a directorof Matrix’s Polish subsidiary put it: “Training thesales staff directly thanks to Matrix, we now havethe means to check on site that the program hasenabled our hair stylist clients to offer new services
in the development of their business.” The MSU enriches the nature of negotiations undertaken by

the Matrix teams with their (wholesale) distributors, and, consequently, further down the line,with the hair stylists themselves. It illustrates theglobal dimension of Matrix for those who have
opted to contract with it. It is a training tool moreadvantageously priced and of superior quality
than anything else on the market, conceived inclose collaboration with other teams (marketing,education, and sales administration) dedicated tothe brand. The training provided within the framework of the Matrix University has become a toolfor external communication and even sales
staff recruitment.
To date, MSU has trained over 4,300 people. Saying that it seems to be reviving the profession ofsales representative where it is least expected is
to underline that the profession, in a businessfeat u r e | M elle t, Pie r r e , Q uasni kpresent in over 110 countries, constitutes thebasis of belonging and a means of distinguishing between a good craftsman and a beginner, ascale of talent measurement. As Philippe Zarifian
reminds us,3 “in principle – and we forget this
all too often – the cutting edge of the profession
is reached when, through hard-earned respectof existing rules, the individual manages to bringhis/her own personality to bear and do something original.”
The MSU shows how the position of the players(sales representatives, distributors, general managers) within a network and the resources thatare provided to become competent, which determines the world of possible economic action andthe desire to learn. In the world of hair care, partof the informal economy lies outside the official
regulation of economic reports, the nature of thebusiness being also governed by rules of reciprocity within the domestic sphere, the social economy in part regulated by values associated withprofessional hair care unions. Networks, institutions and systems of meaning are constituent
elements of the economy and complicate any

too hastily modelled representation of economic
success as a simple a question of profit.
Finally, the MSU illustrates through its training
tools and its system of internal normalization,
how the “global” business creates its own private
languages, different from those spoken in public
and academic institutions (thereby perhaps evencalling into question the real value of the diplomas it awards). For those piloting the training
program on a worldwide level, one strategic issue
affirms itself: that of developing, between countries and between teams, exchange and interactionof a kind of knowledge that does not originate
in traditional school and university education; toassure the passage from tacit to explicit knowledge; to favor a learning process which is notconceived solely along the lines of unity of action,
place, and time. There is not, on one side, a “commonplace” knowledge acquired through experienceand on the other a “noble” knowledge producedby science, but instead a collective dynamic thatmoves from one to the other, each unable toexist without the other.4 n

ab o u t t h e au t h o rEric Mellet is a sales training and development Director for L’Oréal Professional Products.
emellet@fr.loreal.com
Philippe Pierre is a consultant and researcher with the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Economical
Sociology (National Scientific Research Center – CNRS Paris). contact@philippepierre.com
Béatrice Quasnik is a consultant specializing in learning organizations. She is a member of theBoard of SOL France, and author of Unleash Your Energies (Paris, First Management, 1995).
beatrice.quasnik@wanadoo.fr

E ndnotes
1 L. Losoncy & J. Santy, Passionate Salon Professionals (Sanford, Florida: DC Press, 2006).
2 J. P. Thomassin, “Matrix U”, Canadian Hairdresser, 2006, p. 30.
3	P. Zarifian, “Organization apprenante et formes de l’expérience, “ Symposium Constructivismes:
usages et perspectives en éducation, Geneva, September 8, 2000.
4 V. Merle, “Apprendre tout au long de la vie : pourquoi, comment?,” Minutes of a quarterly public session
at UNESCO, April, 27, 2006, the Worldwide Committee for Education and Lifelong Training, p. 3.

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Book Excerpt 9.2

The Necessary Revolution
How We Got Into This Predicament

Something important has happened in the last stage of the industrial era that sets it 		apart from the past: Globalization has brought a level of interdependence between nations
and regions that never existed before, along with truly global problems that also have noprecedent. The Industrial Age isn’t ending because of a decline in opportunities for further
expansion. It is ending because individuals, organizations, and governments are realizingthat its side effects are unsustainable. But endings are also beginnings. In The NecessaryPeter Senge

Revolution, Peter Senge and his coauthors share the guiding ideas that are essential for
creating a more sustainable future: seeing systems, collaborating across boundaries, andmoving from problem solving to creating. The book is full of stories and examples of individuals and organizations
who are putting these ideas into action, many of whom are associated with SoL. This excerpt explains “how we
got here” and lays out the case for urgency in radically shifting the kind of thinking that has made the industrial
era so successful, and so disastrous.

The Wages of SuccessH

ow did we get to the point where we are running out of the resources (such as oil) that support our way of life, and others (such as clean airand fresh drinking water) that support life itself? And
how did entire industries, such as fishing and agriculture, find themselves in trouble as well, as chronic overfishing and the drive for ever-higher crop yields led 		
to widespread depletion of fish stocks and a historicloss of topsoil?
How on earth did we get here? The short answer isbecause of our success, success beyond anyone’s
wildest dreams.
In the first stage of the Industrial Revolution (1750 		
to 1820), the rise of large-scale manufacturing caused
labor productivity in England to rise a hundredfold.
But the Revolution did not simply change the way
we worked; it transformed the way we lived, the way
we thought about ourselves, and the way we viewed
the world. Nothing like it had ever occurred before.

The Necessary
Revolution: How
Individuals andOrganizations are
Working Together
to Create a
Sustainable WorldPeter Senge, Bryan Smith,Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur,
Sara Schley
Doubleday, 2008

It didn’t take long for innovations such as the assemblyline to spread to other countries in northern Europe
and to the hinterlands of the United States, whose exploding population and vast store of natural resources
enabled the former colony to become the next industrial power. Industry was booming and so, too, wereb o o k e x c e r p t | S enge , S mi t h , k r us c h wi t z , lau r , s c h ley

the material standards of living. As the United States’
population increased from about 10 million to 63 million between 1820 and 1890, the country’s industrial
production grew thirtyfold. The resulting fivefold
growth in output per person was even greater thanthe productivity gains on the other side of theAtlantic.
The impacts the Industrial Revolution had on qualityof life were undeniable. As industrial expansion continued into the twentieth century, life expectancy inthe industrial world roughly doubled, literacy jumped
from 20 percent to over 90 percent, and benefits hitherto
unimaginable sprang up in the form of products (fromprivate cars to iPods), services (from air travel to eBay),and astounding advances in medicine, communication, education, and entertainment. With this kind of
success, it is little wonder that the side effects of theIndustrial Age success story went largely ignored.
But the downsides of this great prosperity weresteadily accumulating from the very beginning. Somewere hard not to notice. In the 1800s, England’s levelof fossil fuel combustion grew dramatically, and so too
did levels of water and air pollution. In the late 1800s,
London’s infamous “fog,” particulate emissions fromburning coal, caused a virtual epidemic of respiratory
diseases once confined to coal-mining communities.
By 1952, air quality in London was so bad that the “greatsmog” (four days of toxic air trapped over the city) killed
more than 4,000 people and galvanized the government
to create air pollution regulations.1
Other side effects went unseen. Invisible CO2 emissions in the United Kingdom rose from virtually zero
to over a million tons per year by the end of the nineteenth century. During America’s twentieth-century
economic miracle, the amount of fossil fuels burned
grew so much that by the end of the century CO2emissions totaled almost two billion tons annually, 		or about seven tons per person.

Despite growing awareness of the importance of ahealthy environment and successes in pollution reduction, even a cursory summary shows that things havemostly gone from bad to worse worldwide. Let’s lookat the problems by category.

Industrial Waste•	The U.S. economy consumes over 100 billion tonsof raw materials per year; more than 90 percent of
this, by weight, ends up as waste from extraction
and production processes. That works out toabout 1 ton of waste per person per day.2• Solid and liquid industrial wastes (such as plastics
and petrochemical wastes) disperse throughgroundwater, and airborne pollutants (such asacids) can travel hundreds or thousands of miles

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 2

before they end up in rainfall, soil, and water. These
pollutants affect health both directly (they’ve played
a role in the significant increase in asthma since1960) and indirectly (by decreasing food andwater quality).3•	The “Asian Brown Cloud,” a dense blanket of
airborne, mostly industrial particulates, has been
blamed for 500,000 deaths from res­piratory
illness per year in India alone.4• Seventy percent of the developing world’s untreated industrial waste is dumped into rivers,
lakes, oceans, or soil.5

Consumer and Commercial Waste and Toxicity• Approximately 8 billion tons per year of carbon in
the form of carbon dioxide are emitted globally
through the burning of fossil fuels for transportation,
heat, and electricity worldwide. This is approximately
5 billion tons more than the biosphere can absorb.6• Around the world, more than 90 percent of computers, TVs, video and audio recorders, PDAs, andother consumer and commercial electronics end up
in landfills. About 20 to 30 million cars are taken off
the road every year around the world; in the UnitedStates, about three-quarters by weight are recovered as scrap metal, but in the developing world,most old cars end up as waste in landfills.7•	Packaging waste has grown 400 percent in the past
twenty years, mostly cardboard and diverse plastic
containers and wrappings. While a few types of plastic containers are recycled at higher rates (such as
water and soft drink bottles in developed countries), the vast majority of plastics worldwide –more than 90 percent – end up as solid waste. 		
In the United States, for example, 93 percent ofplastics end up in landfills.8•	Toxins embedded in everyday products also posesignificant health risks even before they are discarded to landfills. For example, immunologists
have shown that a great many diseases (such as
many cancers) have become far more prevalent to-reflections.solonline.org

day due to toxins in our bodies that come not only
from food ingredients but also from chemicals in
products, dyes used in cloth, and plastic compounds
in children’s toys, computer screens, and household appliances.9

Non-regenerative (Non-renewable) Resources• In a study commissioned by the U.S. government,
the U.S. petroleum industry recently reported thatworld oil and gas supplies will be unable to keep up
with rising global demand over the next twenty-fiveyears, which could lead to continually rising prices(oil rose from $25 per barrel to $100 per barrel between 2000 and the end of 2007), shortages, andsocial instability in both producer and consumer
economies.10•	The United States consumes about 20 million
barrels of oil a day (about 25 percent of global
consumption); China consumes about 6 million;
Japan, 5 million. About 80 percent of the oil
consumed in the United States is imported.11•	Other mineral resources in significant decline
include zinc, copper, and iridium, all critical
for technological innovations we’ve come todepend on, such as computers and cell phones.
•	Coal is relatively abundant (known stocks are
expected to last 50 to 100 years at current extraction rates) but problematic: It is the single biggest
source of air pollution in the United States (andincludes substantial amounts of highly toxic
elements such as mercury), and CO2 emitted perunit of energy (BTU) is roughly double that ofnatural gas. Coal generates 54 percent of theUnited States’ electricity, 80 percent of Australia’s,and 80 percent of China’s growing electricity use.12

Regenerative (Renewable) Resources• Freshwater quality. More than one-fifth of theworld’s people do not have reliable access to clean
drinking water, and many are chronically dehydrated. Many natural water supplies – rivers, lakes,

b o o k e x c e r p t | S enge , S mi t h , k r us c h wi t z , lau r , s c h ley

groundwater – have become increasingly degraded.
Roughly two-thirds of the water we use goes toagriculture, and runoff from pesticides and fertilizers
is the single biggest polluter.13•	Topsoil. Overproduction has caused severe or
extreme soil degra­dation of over 1 billion hectares(or over two and a half billion acres) in the past fifty
years – more than the size of India and China
combined.14• Fisheries. Over 70 percent of the world’s fisheries
are chronically overfished. Many species are so
depleted that if drastic actions are not taken soon,
their populations will likely be unable to recover.
This will affect more than just consumers; the fishing industry itself will suffer, and as coastal economies are ruined, the unemployed will migrate,
becoming part of the growing millions of unwelcome migrants worldwide.15• Forests. More than a third of the world’s forests
have disappeared in the past fifty years. Their loss,
especially in the tropics, affects the lives of many
communities and species and reduces the rate at
which CO2, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is absorbed from the atmosphere.16
Our diminishing resources and growing waste underliea host of related economic stresses and reflect environmental and social imbalances that all but ensure that,without significant change, these problems will worsen.
The first imbalance concerns nature’s capacities tocontinue regenerating resources and providing the“eco-services” upon which human life depends – cleanwater, breathable air, fertile soil, pollination, and astable climate. In economic terms, most of these services either have no substitute or are prohibitively
expensive to generate by alternative means.17 Today,
according to the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report, one-third of the major ecosystems thatprovide these essential services worldwide – fromforests to grasslands and wetlands – are in “significant

decline,” and another one-third are “in danger.” Since
1900, more than half of the world’s wetlands havebeen lost. Today, 50 percent of the world’s five hundred
major rivers are heavily polluted or drying up in theirlower reaches. The acidification of oceans (primarily
due to the absorption of CO2 from fossil fuels) has, inthe past twenty years, caused the loss of 20 percent 		
of the world’s coral reefs, while 20 percent more havebeen seriously degraded. Many of these reefs protect
coastal areas from flooding and serve as criticalbreeding areas for marine life.18
As the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report
also discusses, declining ecosystems and increasing
pollution tend to correlate with the erosion of oursense of spiritual and non-material well-being, indeveloping and developed countries alike. Growing
social stresses are all too often taken as the norm today.
In the developed world, we are plagued by anxiety,overwork, stress, mistrust, fear, and anger. America
isn’t the only advanced country “bowling alone,” to

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borrow Robert Putnam’s famous phrase for the breakdown of social community; similar signs of social
stresses have been increasing in other nations, suchas the tensions in Europe over growing African andIslamic immigrations.
In developing countries, environmental and social
stresses often have a harder economic edge. According
to the World Bank, from 1980 to 2000 the bottom quartile of the world’s people found that their share of global
income fell from 2.5 percent to 1.2 percent.19 Today, about
50 million people globally migrate each year to cities,
usually driven by the collapse of traditional economies
and environmental degradation of land and fisheries (asnoted previously). This migration rate is far greater thancan be absorbed by urban economies, and as a consequence approximately 500 million chronically underemployed people currently live in squatter camps or slums.20
Inevitably, these underlying imbalances – deteriorating
ecosystems and fraying social harmony – reinforce one
another. The poor invariably bear a disproportionate
share of the consequences of industrial waste and compromised ecosystems. This is one reason the extremes
in inequity persist and are largely getting worse worldwide. Second, people living under growing stress,
whether physical, psychological, or economic, havegreat difficulty acting as stewards for the future.
An inventory such as this can go on forever, becoming
more exhausting as it becomes more exhaustive. The
point, however, is not to be comprehensive but rather tobe systemic: to see the deeper patterns behind all these
problems, which at first glance might seem unrelated.
What these examples demonstrate is that the industrial system that has brought us so many benefits is
now generating countless dangerous side effects thatare swamping its ability to continue advancing standards of living. One of two outcomes is possible: Either
we keep on with business as usual, leaving the accumu-

reflections.solonline.org

lating side effects to continue growing until they
overwhelm us, or we step back far enough to rethink
where we are headed. Notice we said the first thingthat needs to be done is to take a step back.
Not surprisingly, when we – individuals, companies,
non-profits, governments – first acknowledge problems such as the ones we’re discussing, our instinct 		
is to do the opposite, to apply exactly the same kindof thinking that created these challenges in the firstplace. We focus on the symptoms in front of us – theriver is dirty, we emit too much CO2 – and ignore theunderlying forces contributing to them. We devise
ways – usually through some combination of stopgap regulations or find-the-villain blame games – 		to try to fix the symptoms.
Focusing on eliminating the symptoms is always
tempting. Taking two aspirin to relieve the pain of 		a headache can be an effective solution that works
quite quickly. But if a person gets severe headaches
every few days, there are probably deeper, longerterm sources of the problem, such as stress or overwork, that all the aspirin in the world will not help. 		
In fact, the aspirin can even make matters worse bymasking the pain, and along with it the signals that
there are deeper sources of the problem. Over time,
this neglect leads to a worsening of symptoms andthe need for still more intense symptomatic fixes, suchas more powerful drugs that simply continue the pattern of ignoring the underlying cause of the pain.
In most organizational situations, this pattern, known
as “shifting the burden,” often includes shifting the locus
of responsibility for dealing with difficult problems tovarious “others” or “experts.” Business executives
have been doing this for years, hiring consultants tosort out their chronic management problems, safety
specialists to reduce the number of accidents, and,today, environmental specialists, such as pollution
experts, to scrub emissions from smokestacks.

b o o k e x c e r p t | S enge , S mi t h , k r us c h wi t z , lau r , s c h ley

Figure 2.1 Shifting the Burden
to “Expert” Specialists

How We Got into This PredicamentSpecialists (e.g., lobbyists)
intervene to reduce pressure
Short-term symptomatic fixes
Easier, faster
Pressure to meet tougher
environmental standards
Fundamental solutions
Harder, take time

Y
LA

DE

Managers develop capacity forinnovative solutions, e.g., new products,
better government regulations

The net effect of decades of shifting the burden toexperts is that many people today regard issues involving water, waste and toxicity, energy, and community health as “someone else’s problems.” Whilebusinesspeople often have strong views about the
ineffectiveness of government regulation, many also

simultaneously advocate that it is up to government
to tackle such problems. And many, rather than working proactively with government to come up withmore innovative fundamental solutions (lower loop in
Figure 2.1), have shifted the burden to lobbyists whofight to preserve the status quo (the upper loop).
And, of course, government leaders likewise havetheir own set of “experts” for addressing symptoms in
the form of environmental departments and agencies
to whom they shift responsibility. These groups areoften isolated from the core functions of government
such as economic and foreign policy, taxation, andnational security, and as a result their actions havemarginal impact.
But the time for shifting responsibility to others, orcovering up deep problems with simplistic solutions
that only make problems “go away” for a short time, 		
is running out.
In the earlier phases of the Industrial Age, the wealthy
simply moved away from factories and their waste
by-products. Later, we found ways to dump wastes
farther away from population centers (New York City

Tips on Reading Causal Loop Diagrams
Throughout the book, you will find causal loop diagrams such as Figure 2.1, which portray interactions thatgive rise to patterns of change (or non-change) and forces over time. For example, in the shifting-the-burden
pattern, the problem symptom “Pressure to meet tough environmental standards” can be addressed in two
ways: a short-term symptomatic fix, such as using lobbyists, or a more fundamental solution, such as newenvironmentally friendly products or working proactively with government for better regulations. Think ofthese two loops as competing: If the symptomatic fix wins out, pressure to meet tougher standards diminishes and there is less need for fundamental solutions. But this leads to new forces. If fundamental solutions are neglected, the problem symptom will eventually return: since nothing is being done to actually
address the underlying environmental problems, pressures will build up again. If the company still opts forthe symptomatic solution when these pressures again need to be addressed (which is likely, given that thefundamental solution is no easier and they now are used to working with the lobbyists), it will lead to still more
lobbying. In this way, forces build over time to shift the burden to depending more and more on lobbyists.

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 2

exports over 10,000 tons of solid waste per day).21
But in today’s interconnected world, “away” is goingaway. As population and industrialization have continued to grow geometrically, waste generated in
one region affects others. The earth, after all, is a finite
system. Particulate emissions from Beijing affect air
quality in Los Angeles, and those from Los Angeles
affect asthma rates in New York. Our common atmosphere, oceans, and groundwater systems have always
connected us, but the scale of industrial activity has
now reached a point where the consequences of local
actions are no longer simply local. The space in which
short-term, Band-Aid solutions to fundamental challenges will work is contracting as fast as the space formore landfills and toxic waste dumps. The time forrethinking and redesigning is at hand.

Seeing the Whole Picture
For most of us, the endless litany of environmental andsocietal crises is overwhelming, both emotionally andcognitively. It is no wonder that so many simply “turnoff” when confronted with another story of climatechange-related severe weather, water shortages, or
toxic waste. The first problem to deal with is simply“How do I take all of this in without frying my circuits?”“Systems thinking” has long been a cornerstone in
our work on organizational learning, but the term
often seems more daunting (it can easily sound like 		an intellectual task reserved for Ph.D.s) than helpful. In
fact, systems thinking is not about fighting complexity
with more complexity. It simply means stepping backand seeing patterns that are, when seen clearly,
intuitive and easy to grasp.
Several years ago, working with the Rocky Mountain
Institute, an energy and resource research and consultancy group, we developed a simple “systems picture”
to help people make sense of the situation in which
we find ourselves today.22 The gist of the picture
centers on six basic ideas.

reflections.solonline.org

If you had to explain our predicament to a ten-yearold, this would be a good way to start:
1.	The industrial system – what we make, buy, and use(from cars and TVs to buildings and power plants) –sits within the larger systems of nature.
2.	This larger natural world includes living, regenerative
resources, such as forests, croplands, and fisheries,
and other resources that, from a human time perspective, do not regenerate, such as oil and minerals.
3.	The regenerative resources can sustain humanactivities indefinitely, so long as we do not “harvest”
them more rapidly than they replenish themselves.
4.	The non-regenerative resources can only be depleted or “extracted.” (That is why mining, oil production, and other similar industries are called “extractive industries.”) And not surprisingly, since theycannot be replenished, sooner or later – as ishappening right now – many start to run out.
Because modern societies are set up to focus on thebenefits and output of industry, we tend to either notsee or pay less attention to the fifth and sixth features:
5. In the process of extracting and harvesting resources in order to produce and use goods, theindustrial system also generates waste – wastefrom extracting and harvesting resources, and fromhow we produce, use, and eventually discard goods.
This waste damages the ability of nature to replenish resources.
6.	The industrial system also sits within a larger social
system of communities, families, schools, and culture. Just as overproduction and waste damage
natural systems, they also cause anxiety, inequity,and stresses in our societies.
These six ideas are captured in Figures 2.2a through con page 27, starting with the initial phase of the Industrial Age, driven primarily by expansion of productionand employment, and continuing into the last halfb o o k e x c e r p t | S enge , S mi t h , k r us c h wi t z , lau r , s c h ley

Figure 2.2a Industrial Age (1750–1950)

NT
HE
SIS

S
EN OL
ER AR
GY

Figure 2.2C

SY
TO
P HO

Ha

Clean Air
Drinkable Water
Fertile Soil
Pollination
Stable Climate

Growth

rve

sti

ng
Natural Resources
g
tin
ac
r
t
Ex

Goods in
Production

Ecological
Systems

Production

Regeneration

CONSUMPTION

Ha

rve
sti
ng
Natural Resources
ng
cti
tra
Ex

Figure 2.2b Industrial Age (1950–Present)

NonRegenerative
Resources

PRODUCTS SERVICES
Goods in
Production

Production

Waste from
Extracting andManufacturing

Goods
in UseWaste
fromUseWaste from
DiscardAccumulating Waste

CONSUMPTIONHaPRODUCTSrve

SERVICESsting
Natural Resources
g
tin
ac
r
t
Ex

27

Goods in
Production

Production

Goods
in Usecentury, driven increasingly by growing consumption.
This includes consumption of both tangible consumer
goods (such as cellular phones and iPods) and services(such as air travel and music downloads), both ofwhich are produced by companies based on theircapital equipment and facilities.
But seeing the whole picture is difficult (see figure
on page 28). Until very recently, most politicians, businesspeople, and media have focused on only the“system within a system” – the industrial economy andhow to keep it expanding. Concern for the health ofthe larger social and ecological systems within which
the industrial system sits has been confined largely to
the “back page,” even though public concern for theselarger systems has been growing for more than a generation. Only in the last couple of years have we seen
more front-page articles about the economy, business,and technology that mention the declining health 		
of the ecosystems that enable the global economic
system to function.
That relatively few paid much attention to these larger
problems is perfectly understandable. Ignoring unintended side effects is hardly limited to this environment.
Indeed, it is one of the most common underlying pat-r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 2

28

reflections.solonline.org

The Case for Urgency: The 80-20 Challenge

NT
HE
SIS

S
EN OL
ER AR
GY

Figure 2.2D

SY
TO
P HO

Clean Air
Drinkable Water
Health vs. StressFertile Soil
Security vs. Fear
Pollination
Social Harmony vs. Mistrust
Stable Climate Peace vs. Unresolvable Conflicts

GrowthGrowthEcological
Systems

SocialSystems

Regeneration

CONSUMPTION

Ha

rve
sti
ng
Natural Resources
ng
cti
tra
Ex

NonRegenerative
Resources

Regeneration

PRODUCTS SERVICES
Goods in
Production

Production

Waste from
Extracting andManufacturing

Goods
in UseWaste
fromUseWaste from
DiscardAccumulating Waste

terns that we have experienced when helping companies understand systems thinking. For example,
managers are often rewarded generously for cutting
costs and improving short-term profits, but the side
effects of their maneuvers, such as demoralized workers
or angry customers, often end up costing the company more in the long run.
Put differently, we have gotten into our predicament
today because of a way of thinking that focuses onparts and neglects the whole. We have become masterful at focusing on immediate goals – such as shortterm profits – and neglecting the larger systems ofwhich quarterly profits are but one small part. But thisis changing because the larger reality can no longer
be ignored.

Although the problems of the Industrial Age havebeen evident for decades, there is now one importantdifference, an increasingly inescapable mandate urging
us to wake up and start operating differently: global
climate change.
Though but one of many side effects of global
industrial growth, climate change has two uniqueaspects: The current and prospective costs are enormous for both rich and poor, and it provides simple,
numerical indicators of just how far out of balance weare – and how rapid and strong the adjustments must
be if we are to avert disaster.
Although science rarely provides absolute certainty, aconsensus has emerged among scientists, and amonga small but growing cadre of influential leaders, thatthe changes needed to avert extreme and possibly uncontrollable climate change will be greater and must
happen far more quickly than we imagined even a few
years ago. In this sense, climate change is a particularsort of gift, a time clock telling us how fast theIndustrial Age is ending.
As for the costs of climate change, they already are considerable, and will be far greater if we do not address
the issue quickly and systematically. In 2007, Oxfam International, one of the world’s largest and most respectedcivil society organizations (often called non-governmental organizations or NGOs), published the first study
on climate change “compensation” costs for the poor –what it would take to compensate for the sufferingfrom disease, failed crops, and dislocation arising fromclimate change. This report placed the costs at $50 billion globally and noted that they will rise precipitously
in the coming years. In preparing the report, Oxfam’s
larger goal is to establish a method to make these escalating costs visible. The costs to the insurance industry already can be seen: Insurance premiums are rising
dramatically – up to 40 percent in Florida, 20 percent inb o o k e x c e r p t | S enge , S mi t h , k r us c h wi t z , lau r , s c h ley

coastal Massachusetts, and 400 percent for some offshore oil rigs – reflecting the risks of climate instability.
These rates make self-insurance (dropping coverageand taking your chances) more economical for manybusinesses and homeowners in high-risk areas such as
southern Florida. The influential Stern Report, commissioned by the UK government in 2006 and led by aformer World Bank chief economist, concluded that if
dramatic changes are not made soon, the costs to theworld of climate change in the next decade could
equal or exceed the costs of World War II.23

29

Figure 2.3
400

Carbon Dioxide (CO2)CO2 (ppm)

350

300

250

Unlike so many other global social and environmental problems, in one sense climate change is simple –because its primary dimensions are measurable.
Scientists now have extensive evidence of how rapidly
CO2 and other greenhouse gases are accumulating in
the atmosphere, and how that compares with historical levels.

0

500

1000
Year

1500

CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been
rising throughout the industrial era, with the current
level more than 30 percent higher than in 1850.24 Thislevel is continuing to increase rapidly because the

The CO2 Bathtub
The difference between inflows andoutflows of CO2 in the atmosphere works
just like a bathtub: The CO2 level rises aslong as more flows in than flows out. This
simple fact has confused many people,
including many in important leadership
positions, who believe that curtailingemissions growth alone would solve
the climate change problem.26
So long as the inflow of CO2 emissions
exceeds the outflow of CO2 removed fromthe atmosphere, at some point the bathtub
will “overflow.” This means that unless wereduce emissions to equal CO2 removed
from the atmosphere – in other words,
a 60 percent to 80 percent reduction ofworldwide emissions – we will likely enteran era of irreversible climate change.

Figure 2.4
Fossil Fuel Burning

8 billion

CO 2 IN ATMOSPHERE

tons go in5billiontons added
every year

800 billion tons
(380 ppm)

3 billion tons go out, absorbed by land and ocean
The atmosphere as a bathtub, with annual inputs and 		
outputs of CO2. The level in the tub is rising by about 		
5 billion tons per year (2.1 billion tons of carbon
equivalent = 1 part per million (ppm) CO2).
(An interactive simulation of the CO2 bathtub is available at
http://www.sustainer.org/tools_resources.)

2000

30

r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 9 , N umbe r 2amount of CO2 emitted from combusting fossil fuels in
our power plants, buildings, cars, trucks, airplanes, andfactories each year – about 8 billion tons of carbon
equivalent per year worldwide – is more than double
what can be removed from the atmosphere andabsorbed by natural biomass (trees, plants, andplankton) and dissolved in oceans.25
No one can say with certainty how much CO2 in theatmosphere is too much, but a few basic facts arestarting to coalesce into a strong consensus.
First, current levels of CO2 are almost one-third higher
than at any other time in the past 650,000 years.27 This
includes much of human history, a period of time inwhich, despite periodic ice ages, the overall climate
was conducive to human life.
Second, concentrations of CO2 in oceans and biomass
are far above historic levels, causing problems such as
ocean acidification and raising questions about how
much more these natural CO2 sinks can absorb. If they
start to absorb less, more CO2 will concentrate fasterin the atmosphere, driving global warming faster.
Third, there is a long time lag before the full effects 		
of CO2 are felt on temperature and climate; scientificestimates put this at thirty to fifty years. This meansthat the full effects of current atmospheric CO2 levels
will not be felt until 2050 or even later.
And finally, at some point, rising CO2 and greenhousegas levels trigger “runaway” effects in which climatechange causes further climate change, such as melting arctic permafrost releasing methane (another greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere, leading to still more
warming.28 Once these “tipping point” feedbacks takeoff, our ability to influence the future may decline
significantly.

reflections.solonline.org

So how much CO2 is too much? Some scientists feelthat present levels of CO2 (about 380 ppm) are alreadytoo high. Others believe the risks of triggering irreversible and uncontrollable effects will increase substantially if CO2 levels continue rising as they have foranother one to two decades (reaching levels exceeding 425 ppm or so). By contrast, continued businessas-usual growth in CO2 emissions would lead to midcentury CO2 levels about twice as high (approximately
550 ppm) as the historic maximum for the last 650,000
years, and far more dangerous – levels that few withany sense of stewardship for future generations,let alone present ones, should tolerate.29
In some sense, the “How high is too high?” debate 		is academic because simply stabilizing CO2 levels
will require extraordinary and dramatic reductions 		
in emissions worldwide – a crucial point to which
the people of the world have just begun to awaken.
A little more than a decade ago, a number of nations
came together to shape the Kyoto Protocol, the firstintergovernmental agreement to confront climatechange (which the United States never signed). The
accord focused on curbing emissions growth. But as
we now know, stopping the rise of CO2 levels in theatmosphere, the primary source of climate change,
will actually require significant emissions reductions.
Accomplishing this will require a sea change in thekinds of energy we use, cars we drive, buildings welive and work in, cities we design, and ways bothpeople and goods move around the world, as well 		as other changes no one can even imagine.
Advances in climate science will continue to be
crucial for understanding the specifics of how rising
average temperatures are likely to affect rainfall anddrought patterns, storm activity and intensity, thespread of disease, and significant increases in sea
levels. But science can take us only so far. Sooner orlater, it becomes a matter of making choices, notsimply waiting for more predictions.30

b o o k e x c e r p t | S enge , S mi t h , k r us c h wi t z , lau r , s c h ley

Already, people and institutions around the world arestarting to formulate bold “stretch goals” – aspirationaltargets that can galvanize the imagination, creativity,and courage truly called for.31 Though the details ofthese goals differ, their central message is the same: Tostabilize CO2 in the atmosphere at levels that minimize
the threat of catastrophic consequences will require a
60 percent to 80 percent reduction in emissions within
the next two decades!32 We call this the 80-20 Challenge, the bell tolling the end of the Industrial Age.
While focusing on CO2 levels helps us to understandthe urgency we face, it is equally important to remindourselves that climate change is not an isolated problem. Rather, it is part and parcel of all the other problems that are signaling the end of the Industrial Age:accumulating waste by-products that derive from the
take-make-waste industrial system; diminishing resources (some of which are driving CO2 levels further
upward: about 6 billion tons of CO2 per year are

released from deforestation – including the burningand decaying of wood – alone); deteriorating ecosystems; the intensification of social stresses (such as
the United States’ foreign policies, driven by dependency on Middle East oil). Climate change is but one
thread in a larger cloth; we cannot simply remove
the thread, but must reweave the cloth.
Because the side effects of globalization are interrelated, meeting the 80-20 Challenge of reducing
emissions 80 percent in twenty years will requirechanges in all the major global industrial systems:
food and water, energy and transportation, and theglobal production and distribution of goods. Little 		in our modern way of living will be unaffected.
In other words, the change will not happen without 		
a radical shift in the thinking that has made the industrial era so successful – and so disastrous. n

ENDNOTES
May 3, 2007.7 U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity
Summaries, January 2004, http://minerals.er.usgs.gov/
minerals/pubs/commodity/iron_&_steel_scrap/festscmcs04.
pdf.

1 		 David Urbinato, “London’s Historic ‘Pea-Soupers,’” EPA
Journal, Summer 1994, www.epa.gov/history/topics/
perspect/london.htm.
2 		Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and E. Hunter Lovins, Natural
Capitalism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999), 8. The waste equals
1.5 tons per day if you assume the average American weighs
150 pounds, and twenty times a person’s weight per day.
3 		 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human
Well-being: General Synthesis (Washington, DC: Island Press,
2005), www.millenniumassessment.org/en/Synthesis.aspx.
4 UNEP, “The Asian Brown Cloud,” Executive Summary, 2002,
www.scientificjournals.com/sj/espr/Pdf/aId/5339.
5 		 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human
Well-being: General Synthesis.
6 		 See carbon bathtub diagram, page 29, Scientists debate
how much of the CO2 emitted from burning fossil fuels canbe absorbed in “carbon sinks” such as plants and algae anddissolved into the oceans. Peter N. Spotts, “Nature’s Carbon‘Sink’ Smaller than Ex­pected,” Christian Science Monitor,8 		 www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/pubs/06data.pdf.
9

W. R. Orr and J. W. Roberts, “Everyday Exposure to
Toxic Pollutants,” Scientific Ameri­can, February 1998, 90;
W. McDonough and M. Braungart, Cradle to Cradle (NewYork: North Point Press, 2002).

10 		 Jad Mouawad, “Big Rise Seen in Demand for Energy,”
New York Times, July 19, 2007.
11 		 Energy Information Administration, www.eia.doe.gov,
and www.energyliteracy.org/compare-oil.html.
12 		 International Energy Outlook, 2007, www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/
ieo/pdf/electricity.pdf; Union of Concerned Scientists, www.
ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c01.html.
13 		 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human
Well-being: General Synthesis.
14 		 Ibid.

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15 		 Ibid.; Jason DeParle, “A Global Trek to Poor Nations, from
Poorer Ones,” New York Times, December 27, 2007.
16 		 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human
Well-being: General Synthesis.
17 		 For example, Biosphere 2, an experimental man-madeclosed ecological system built in the 1980s, failed to provide
clean air, water, and food for eight people over the firstmission’s two years. The project cost about $200 million.
18 		 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human
Well-being: General Synthesis.
19 		 Similar shifts in income and wealth have occurred indeveloping countries; for example, the poorest 10 percentof Americans have seen their income share fall from 3.5
percent to less than 1 percent in the past twenty years. 20
Mark Kinver, “The Challenges Facing an Urban World,” BBC
News, June 15, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5054052.stm.
21 		 Annie Correal, “12,000 Tons a Day, and What to Do with It,”New York Times, September 18, 2007; John Rather, “A Long,Long Haul from the Curb,” New York Times, December 4,
2005.

reflections.solonline.org

22 		 See Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins, Natural Capitalism.
23 		 Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern
Review (Cambridge Uni­versity Press, 2007), Overall financial
impact and benefits of early action; Gordon Brown speech
on climate change, WWF, November 19, 2007.
24 		CO2 concentrations are measured in parts per million (ppm),
a standard method of measuring the concentrations ofatmospheric gases. CO2 in 2007 was estimated at 380 ppm,
versus about 280 ppm in 1850.
25 		The scientific convention for measuring CO2 flows is in
equivalent tons of carbon per year. Estimates on how muchof present emitted CO2 is absorbed by the biosphere andoceans range from 2 to over 3 billion tons a year. J. Hansen
and M. Sato, PNAS 101,16109, 2004; Greenblatt, Princeton.
26 		 John Sterman and Linda Booth Sweeney, “Cloudy Skies:
Assessing Public Understand­ing of Global Warming,”
Reflections: The SoL Journal 7, 3 (2007); Linda Booth Sweeney
and John Sterman, “Understanding Public Complacency
about Climate Change: Adults’ Mental Models of Climate
Change Violate Conservation of Matter,” Climatic Change
Journal, February 2007, Vol. ,80, No. 3-4, 213-238.

ab o u t t h e au t h o r sPeter Senge, senior lecturer at MIT and the founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL),
is the author or co-author of several bestselling books, including The Fifth Discipline, Schools That Learn,
and Presence. reflections@solonline.org
Bryan Smith, coauthor with Senge of The Dance of Change and two other Fifth Discipline fieldbooks, is amember of the faculty at York University’s Sustainable Enterprise Academy, and president of Broad Reach
Innovations, Inc. reflections@solonline.org
Nina Kruschwitz, manager of the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook Project, is the editor of Reflections: The SoL
Journal on Knowledge, Learning, and Change. reflections@solonline.org
Joe Laur co-founded the SoL Sustainability Consortium in 1998. He is the vice president of content forGreenopolis.com. reflections@solonline.org
Sara Schley, co-founder of the SoL Sustainability Consortium, is a mentor for the Harold Grinspoon
Foundation. reflections@solonline.org

b o o k e x c e r p t | S enge , S mi t h , k r us c h wi t z , lau r , s c h ley

27 		 Long-term data on CO2 and temperature fluctuations,based on ice-core studies, shows cycles in both, such as
have produced periodic ice ages, but at no time was CO2
above 300 ppm (as compared to today’s 380 ppm). The
Industrial Age came at the end of a long warming period
where CO2 levels had risen to about 280 ppm by 1850.

28 		 Examples of these “tipping points” are melting ice coverleading to reduced reflectivity of the earth and further
warming (the albedo effect); melting artic permafrost
releasing stored greenhouse gases, also leading to further
warming; and rising temperatures re­ducing forest cover,leading to less carbon sequestration and still more
warming.
29 		 S. Pacala and R. Socolow, “Stabilization Wedges: Solving
the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current
Technologies,” Science 305 (2004): 969–72.
30 		 For example, on March 11, 2002, in a speech given at Stanford University, Sir John Browne, then-chairman and CEO of
British Petroleum, explained why his company broke ranks

with other oil corporations in 1997 and decided to face up
to climate change. First, it was clear that reputable science
could not be ignored. The science wasn’t com­plete—butscience is never complete. Still, they knew enough to saythat there were long-term risks and that precautionary
action was necessary if we were to avoid the greater risk—of delaying until the point where draconian action was
unavoidable.
31 		 For example, the Sustainable Development Commission 		in Britain (involving many senior business and government
executives) is working on setting targets for reductions inemis­sions from all forms of personal mobility of 30 percent
by 2010 and 60 percent by 2020.
32 		 While a 60 percent reduction relative to present global
emissions (8 to 3 gtc/year) might be sufficient, the 80 percent target is needed because of uncertainties regardingwhether carbon sinks can continue to absorb this muchexcess CO2 and virtual certainties that China and India
will be unable to achieve such 60 percent decreases.

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reflections.solonline.org

Book Excerpt 9.2

Limits to Growth:

Tools for the Transition to Sustainability
In 1972, three scientists from MIT created a computer model that analyzed global resource consumption and production.
Their results – published in the bestseller Limits to Growth – shocked the world and created stirring conversation about
global “overshoot,” or resource use beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. In this update, published 30 years
later, they offer an analysis of present and future trends in resource use, and assess a variety of possible outcomes. The
authors believe that humanity can still reverse some of its damage to Earth if it takes appropriate measures now to reduce
inefficiency and waste. In this excerpt, they lay out five tools that will be necessary for our survival over the long term.

“We must be careful not to succumb to despair,
for there is still the odd glimmer of hope.”
Limits to Growth:
The 30-Year Update
Donella Meadows, Jorgen
Randers, Dennis L. Meadows
Chelsea Green, 2004

“Can we move nations and people in the direction 		of sustainability? Such a move would be a modification of society comparable in scale to only two otherchanges: the Agricultural Revolution of the late
Neolithic and the Industrial Revolution of the past
two centuries. Those revolutions were gradual, spontaneous, and largely unconscious. This one will haveto be a fully conscious operation, guided by the best
foresight that science can provide. . . . If we actually
do it, the undertaking will be absolutely unique inhumanity’s stay on the Earth.”—William D. Ruckelshaus, 1989

—Edouard Saouma, 1993We have been writing
about, talking about,and working towardsustainability for over three
decades now. We have had theprivilege of knowing thousands of colleagues in every
Donella Meadowspart of the world who work intheir own ways, with their own
talents, in their own societies toward a sustainable
society. When we act at the official, institutional level
and when we listen to political leaders, we often feel
frustrated. When we work with individuals, weusually feel encouraged.
Everywhere we find folks who care about the earth,about other people, and about the welfare of theirchildren and grandchildren. They recognize the humanmisery and the environmental degradation aroundthem, and they question whether policies that promote more growth along the same old lines can makethings better. Many of them have a feeling, often hardfor them to articulate, that the world is headed in thewrong direction and that preventing disaster will
require some big changes. They are willing to work for
Meadows Photo: Medora Hebertb o o k e x c e r p t | M ead o ws , r ande r s , mead o ws

those changes, if only they could believe their efforts
would make a positive difference. They ask: What can I
do? What can governments do? What can corporations
do? What can schools, religions, media do? What cancitizens, producers, consumers, parents do?
Experiments guided by those questions are more
important than any specific answers, though answers
abound. There are “50 simple things you can do tosave the planet.” Buy an energy-efficient car, for one.
Recycle your bottles and cans, vote knowledgeably inelections – if you are among those people in the world
blessed with cars, bottles, cans, or elections. There arealso not-so-simple things to do: Work out your own
frugally elegant lifestyle, have at most two children,
argue for higher prices on fossil energy (to encourage
energy efficiency and stimulate development of renewable energy), work with love and partnership tohelp one family lift itself out of poverty, find your own“right livelihood,” care well for one piece of land, do
whatever you can to oppose systems that oppress
people or abuse the earth, run for election yourself.

All these actions will help. And, of course, they are
not enough. Sustainability and sufficiency and equity
require structural change; they require a revolution,
not in the political sense, like the French Revolution,
but in the much more profound sense of the agricultural or industrial revolutions. Recycling is important,but by itself it will not bring about a revolution.
What will? In search of an answer, we have found it
helpful to try to understand the first two great revolutions in human culture, insofar as historians canreconstruct them.

The First Two Revolutions:
Agriculture and Industry
About 10,000 years ago the human population, after
millennia of evolution, had reached the huge (for thetime) number of about 10 million. These people lived
as nomadic hunter-gatherers, but in some regions
their numbers had begun to overwhelm the once
abundant plants and game. To adapt to the problem
of disappearing wild resources they did two things.

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Some of them intensified their migratory lifestyle. They
moved out of their ancestral homes in Africa and the
Middle East and populated other areas of the gamerich world.
Others started domesticating animals, cultivating
plants, and staying in one place. That was a totally newidea. Simply by staying put, the proto-farmers altered
the face of the planet, the thoughts of humankind,and the shape of society in ways they could never
have foreseen.
For the first time it made sense to own land. People
who didn’t have to carry all their possessions on theirbacks could accumulate things, and some could accumulate more than others. The ideas of wealth, status,
inheritance, trade, money, and power were born.
Some people could live on excess food produced byothers. They could become full-time toolmakers,
musicians, scribes, priests, soldiers, athletes, or kings.
Thus arose, for better or worse, guilds, orchestras,
libraries, temples, armies, competitive games,
dynasties, and cities.
As its inheritors, we think of the agricultural revolution as a great step forward. At the time it was probably a mixed blessing. Many anthropologists think that
agriculture was not a better way of life, but a necessary one to accommodate increasing populations.
Settled farmers got more food from a hectare thanhunter-gatherers did, but the food was of lower nutritional quality and less variety, and it required much
more work to produce. Farmers became vulnerable inways nomads never were to weather, disease, pests,
invasion by outsiders, and oppression from theiremerging ruling classes. People who did not moveaway from their own wastes experienced humankind’s first chronic pollution.
Nevertheless, agriculture was a successful response 		
to wildlife scarcity. It permitted yet more populationreflections.solonline.org

growth, which added up over centuries to an enormous increase, from 10 million to 800 million people
by 1750. The larger population created new scarcities,
especially in land and energy. Another revolution
was necessary.
The industrial revolution began in England with thesubstitution of abundant coal for vanishing trees. The
use of coal raised practical problems of earthmoving,mine construction, water pumping, transport, andcontrolled combustion. These problems were solved
relatively quickly, resulting in concentrations of laboraround mines and mills. The process elevated technology and commerce to a prominent position in humansociety – above religion and ethics.
Again everything changed in ways that no one could
have imagined. Machines, not land, became the central means of production. Feudalism gave way to capitalism and to capitalism’s dissenting offshoot, communism. Roads, railroads, factories, and smokestacks
appeared on the landscape. Cities swelled. Again thechange was a mixed blessing. Factory labor was evenharder and more demeaning than farm labor. The air
and waters near the new factories turned unspeakably
filthy. The standard of living for most of the industrial
workforce was far below that of a farmer. But farmland was not available; work in a factory was.
It is hard for people alive today to appreciate how
profoundly the industrial revolution changed humanthought, because that thought still shapes our perceptions. In 1988 historian Donald Worster described
the philosophical impact of industrialism perhaps aswell as any of its inheritors and practitioners can:The capitalists . . . promised that, through the technological domination of the earth, they could deliver amore fair, rational, efficient and productive life foreveryone. . . . Their method was simply to free individual enterprise from the bonds of traditional hierarchyb o o k e x c e r p t | M ead o ws , r ande r s , mead o ws

and community, whether the bondage derived fromother humans or the earth . . . That meant teaching
everyone to treat the earth, as well as each other, witha frank, energetic, self-assertiveness. . . . People must . . .
think constantly in terms of making money. They must
regard everything around them – the land, its natural
resources, their own labor – as potential commodities
that might fetch a profit in the market. They must demand the right to produce, buy, and sell those commodities without outside regulation or interference. . . .
As wants multiplied, as markets grew more and more
far-flung, the bond between humans and the rest ofnature was reduced to the barest instrumentalism.1
That bare instrumentalism led to incredible productivity and a world that now supports, at varying levels of
sufficiency, 6,000 million people – more than 600
times the population existing before the agricultural
revolution. Far-flung markets and swelling demands
drive environmental exploitation from the poles to thetropics, from the mountaintops to the ocean depths.

The success of the industrial revolution, like the previous successes of hunting-gathering and of agriculture, eventually created its own scarcity, not only ofgame, not only of land, not only of fuels and metals,
but of the total carrying capacity of the global environment. Humankind’s ecological footprint had once
more exceeded what was sustainable. Successcreated the necessity for another revolution.

The Next Revolution: Sustainability
It is as impossible now for anyone to describe theworld that could evolve from a sustainability revolution as it would have been for the farmers of 6000 bc
to foresee the corn and soybean fields of modern
Iowa, or for an English coal miner of ad 1800 to imagine an automated Toyota assembly line. Like the othergreat revolutions, the coming sustainability revolution
will also change the face of the land and the foundations of human identities, institutions, and cultures.
Like the previous revolutions, it will take centuries 		to unfold fully – though it is already under way.

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Of course no one knows how to bring about such 		a revolution. There is not a checklist: “To accomplish
a global paradigm shift, follow these 20 steps.” Like thegreat revolutions that came before, this one can’t beplanned or dictated. It won’t follow a list of fiats fromgovernment or a proclamation from computer modelers. The sustainability revolution will be organic. It
will arise from the visions, insights, experiments, andactions of billions of people. The burden of making it
happen is not on the shoulders of any one person orgroup. No one will get the credit, but everyone cancontribute.
Our systems training and our own work in the world
have affirmed for us two properties of complex
systems germane to the sort of profound revolution
we are discussing here.
First, information is the key to transformation. That
does not necessarily mean more information, better
statistics, bigger databases, or the World Wide Web,
though all of these may play a part. It means relevant,compelling, select, powerful, timely, accurate information flowing in new ways to new recipients, carrying
new content, suggesting new rules and goals (rules
and goals that are themselves information). When its
information flows are changed, any system will behave
differently. The policy of glasnost, for example – thesimple opening of information channels that had long
been closed in the Soviet Union – guaranteed therapid transformation of Eastern Europe beyond anyone’s expectations. The old system had been held inplace by tight control of information. Letting go ofthat control triggered total system restructuring(turbulent and unpredictable, but inevitable).
Second, systems strongly resist changes in their information flows, especially in their rules and goals. It is
not surprising that those who benefit from the current
system actively oppose such revision. Entrenchedpolitical, economic, and religious cliques can constrainreflections.solonline.org

almost entirely the attempts of an individual or small
group to operate by different rules or to attain goals
different from those sanctioned by the system. Innovators can be ignored, marginalized, ridiculed, denied
promotions or resources or public voices. They canbe literally or figuratively snuffed out.
Only innovators, however – by perceiving the need for
new information, rules, and goals, communicating about
them, and trying them out – can make the changes
that transform systems. This important point is expressed clearly in a quote that is widely attributed toMargaret Mead, “Never deny the power of a small
group of committed individuals to change the world.
Indeed that is the only thing that ever has.”
We have learned the hard way that it is difficult tolive a life of material moderation within a system that
expects, exhorts, and rewards consumption. But one
can move a long way in the direction of moderation.
It is not easy to use energy efficiently in an economy
that produces energy-inefficient products. But one
can search out, or if necessary invent, more efficient
ways of doing things, and in the process make thoseways more accessible to others.
Above all, it is difficult to put forth new information 		in a system that is structured to hear only old information. Just try, sometime, to question in public thevalue of more growth, or even to make a distinction
between growth and development, and you will see
what we mean. It takes courage and clarity to challenge an established system. But it can be done.
In our own search for ways to encourage the peacefulrestructuring of a system that naturally resists its own
transformation, we have tried many tools. The obvious
ones are displayed through this book – rational analysis, data gathering, systems thinking, computer modeling, and the clearest words we can find. Those aretools that anyone trained in science and economics

b o o k e x c e r p t | M ead o ws , r ande r s , mead o ws

Visioningmeans imagining, at first generally and then withincreasing specificity, what you really want. That is, what you really want, not what someone hastaught you to want, and not what you have learned to be willing to settle for. Visioning means taking
off the constraints of “feasibility,” of disbelief and past disappointments, and letting your mind
dwell upon its most noble, uplifting, treasured dreams.

would automatically grasp. Like recycling, they areuseful, necessary, and they are not enough.
We don’t know what will be enough. But we would
like to conclude by mentioning five other tools wehave found helpful. We introduced and discussed thislist for the first time in our 1992 book. Our experiencesince then has affirmed that these five tools are notoptional; they are essential characteristics for any
society that hopes to survive over the long term. We
present them here again in our concluding chapter“not as the ways to work toward sustainability, but assome ways.”“We are a bit hesitant to discuss them,” we said in
1992, “ because we are not experts in their use andbecause they require the use of words that do notcome easily from the mouths or word processors ofscientists. They are considered too ‘unscientific’ to betaken seriously in the cynical public arena.”
What are the tools we approached so cautiously?
They are: visioning, networking, truth-telling, learning, and loving. It seems like a feeble list, given theenormity of the changes required.
But each of these exists within a web of positive loops.
Thus their persistent and consistent application
initially by a relatively small group of people would

have the potential to produce enormous change –even to challenge the present system, perhaps
helping to produce a revolution.
“The transition to a sustainable society might behelped,” we said in 1992, “by the simple use of words
like these more often, with sincerity and without
apology, in the information streams of the world.” But
we used them with apology ourselves, knowing how
most people would receive them.
Many of us feel uneasy about relying on such “soft”
tools when the future of our civilization is at stake,particularly since we do not know how to summon
them up, in ourselves or in others. So we dismiss themand turn the conversation to recycling or emission
trading or wildlife preserves or some other necessary
but insufficient part of the sustainability revolution –but at least a part we know how to handle.
So let’s talk about the tools we don’t yet know how touse, because humanity must quickly master them.

Visioning
Visioning means imagining, at first generally and thenwith increasing specificity, what you really want. Thatis, what you really want, not what someone has taught
you to want, and not what you have learned to bewilling to settle for. Visioning means taking off the

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constraints of “feasibility,” of disbelief and past disappointments, and letting your mind dwell upon its
most noble, uplifting, treasured dreams.
Some people, especially young people, engage invisioning with enthusiasm and ease. Some find theexercise of visioning frightening or painful, because
a glowing picture of what could be makes what is all
the more intolerable. Some people never admit theirvisions, for fear of being thought impractical or“unrealistic.” They would find this paragraph uncomfortable to read, if they were willing to read it at all.
And some people have been so crushed by theirexperience that they can only explain why any vision
is impossible. That’s fine; skeptics are needed, too.
Vision needs to be disciplined by skepticism.
We should say immediately, for the sake of the skeptics, that we do not believe vision makes anything
happen. Vision without action is useless. But action
without vision is directionless and feeble. Vision isabsolutely necessary to guide and motivate. Morethan that, vision, when widely shared and firmly
kept in sight, does bring into being new systems.
We mean that literally. Within the limits of space, time,
materials, and energy, visionary human intentions canbring forth not only new information, new feedback
loops, new behavior, new knowledge, and new technology, but also new institutions, new physical structures, and new powers within human beings. Ralph
Waldo Emerson recognized this profound truth
150 years ago:
Every nation and every man instantly surround themselves with a material apparatus which exactly corresponds to their moral state, or their state of thought.
Observe how every truth and every error, each athought of some man’s mind, clothes itself with socities, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers.
Observe the ideas of the present day . . . see how eachreflections.solonline.org

of these abstractions has embodied itself in an imposing apparatus in the community, and how timber,brick, lime, and stone have flown into convenient
shape, obedient to the master idea reigning in theminds of many persons. . . .
It follows, of course, that the least change in the man
will change his circumstances; the least enlargementof ideas, the least mitigation of his feelings in respect
to other men . . . would cause the most striking
changes of external things.2
A sustainable world can never be fully realised until 		
it is widely envisioned. The vision must be built up by
many people before it is complete and compelling. 		
As a way of encouraging others to join in the process,we’ll list here some of what we see when we let ourselves imagine a sustainable society we would like tolive in – as opposed to one we would be willing to settle for. This is by no means a definitive list. We include
it here only to invite you to develop and enlarge it.
• Sustainability, efficiency, sufficiency, equity, beauty,
and community as the highest social values.
• Material sufficiency and security for all. Therefore,
by individual choice as well as communal norms,
low birth rates and stable populations.
• Work that dignifies people instead of demeaning
them. Some way of providing incentives for people
to give their best to society and to be rewarded for
doing so, while ensuring that everyone will be
provided for sufficiently under any circumstances.
• Leaders who are honest, respectful, intelligent,
humble, and more interested in doing their jobs
than in keeping their jobs, more interested inserving society than in winning elections.
• An economy that is a means, not an end; onethat serves the welfare of the environment,
rather than vice versa.
• Efficient, renewable energy systems.
• Efficient, closed-loop materials systems.

b o o k e x c e r p t | M ead o ws , r ande r s , mead o ws

•	Technical design that reduces emissions andwaste to a minimum, and social agreement not 		to produce emissions or waste that technology
and nature can’t handle.
•	Regenerative agriculture that builds soils, uses
natural mechanisms to restore nutrients and control
pests, and produces abundant, uncontaminatedfood.
•	The preservation of ecosystems in their variety, withhuman cultures living in harmony with those ecosystems; therefore, high diversity of both nature andculture, and human appreciation for that diversity.
• Flexibility, innovation (social as well as technical),and intellectual challenge. A flourishing of science,a continuous enlargement of human knowledge.
• Greater understanding of whole systems as an
essential part of each person’s education.
• Decentralization of economic power, politicalinfluence, and scientific expertise.
•	Political structures that permit a balance between
short-term and long-term considerations; some
way of exerting political pressure now on behalf 		
of our grandchildren.
•	High-level skills on the part of citizens and governments in the arts of nonviolent conflict resolution.
• Media that reflect the world’s diversity and at thesame time unite cultures with relevant, accurate,
timely, unbiased, and intelligent information,

Networks

presented in its historic and whole-system context.
•	Reasons for living and for thinking well of ourselvesthat do not involve the accumulation of material
things.

Networking
We could not do our work without networks. Most 		of the networks we belong to are informal. They havesmall budgets, if any, and few of them appear on rosters of world organizations.3 They are almost invisible,
but their effects are not negligible. Informal networks
carry information in the same way as formal institutions do, and often more effectively. They are thenatural home of new information, and out of themnew system structures can evolve.4
Some of our networks are very local, some are international. Some are electronic, some involve people looking each other in the face every day. Whatever theirform, they are made up of people who share a common interest in some aspect of life, who stay in touchand pass around data and tools and ideas and encouragement, who like and respect and support each other.
One of the most important purposes of a network is
simply to remind its members that they are not alone.
A network is nonhierarchical. It is a web of connections
among equals, held together not by force, obligation,material incentive, or social contract, but by sharedvalues and the understanding that some tasks can beaccomplished together that could never be accomplished separately.

are almost invisible, but their effects are notnegligible. Informal networks carry information in the same way as formal institutions do, andoften more effectively. They are the natural home of new information, and out of them new
system structures can evolve.

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We know of networks of farmers who share organic
pest control methods. There are networks of environmental journalists, “green” architects, computer modelers, game designers, land trusts, consumer cooperatives. There are thousands and thousands of networks
that developed as people with common purposes
found each other. Some networks become so busy
and essential that they evolve into formal organizations with offices and budgets, but most come andgo as needed. The advent of the World Wide Web certainly has facilitated and accelerated the formationand maintenance of networks.
Networks dedicated to sustainability at both thelocal and the global levels are especially needed tocreate a sustainable society that harmonizes withlocal ecosystems while keeping itself within global
limits. About local networks we can say little here; ourlocalities are different from yours. One role of local
networks is to help reestablish the sense of community and relation to place that has been largely lost
since the industrial revolution.
When it comes to global networks, we would like tomake a plea that they be truly global. The means ofparticipation in international information streams are
as badly distributed as are the means of production.
There are more telephones in Tokyo, it has been said,
than in all of Africa. That must be even more true ofcomputers, fax machines, airline connections, andinvitations to international meetings. But once more
the wonder of human inventiveness seems to provide a surprising solution in the form of the Web
and cheap access devices.
One could argue that Africa and other underrepresented parts of the world should attend first to theirneeds for many things other than computers and Web
access. We disagree; the needs of the underprivileged
cannot be effectively communicated, nor can the world
benefit from their contributions, unless their voicesreflections.solonline.org

can be heard. Some of the greatest gains in material
and energy efficiency have come in the design ofcommunications equipment. It is possible within asustainable ecological footprint for everyone to havethe opportunity for global as well as local networking. We must close the “Digital Divide.”
If some part of the sustainability revolution interests
you, you can find or form a network of others whoshare your particular interests. The network will help
you discover where to go for information, whatpublications and tools are available, where to findadministrative and financial support, and who canhelp with specific tasks. The right network will not
only help you learn, but also allow you to pass yourlearning on to others.

Truth-Telling
We are no more certain of the truth than anyone is.
But we often know an untruth when we hear one.
Many untruths are deliberate, understood as such 		by both speaker and listeners. They are put forth 		to manipulate, lull, or entice, to postpone action, 		to justify self-serving action, to gain or preserve
power, or to deny an uncomfortable reality.
Lies distort the information stream. A system cannot
function well if its information streams are corrupted
by lies. One of the most important tenets of systems
theory, for reasons we hope we have made clear inthis book, is that information should not be distorted,
delayed, or sequestered.
“All of humanity is in peril,” said Buckminster Fuller, 		
“if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth,always to tell only the truth and all the truth, and to
do so promptly – right now.”5 Whenever you speak 		to anyone, on the street, at work, to a crowd, and especially to a child, you can endeavor to counter a lie or
affirm a truth. You can deny the idea that having morethings makes one a better person. You can questionb o o k e x c e r p t | M ead o ws , r ande r s , mead o ws

Truth-Telling

We are no more certain of the truth thananyone is. But we often know an untruth when we hear one. Many untruths are deliberate, understood assuch by both speaker and listeners. They are put forth to manipulate, lull, or entice, to postpone action, tojustify self-serving action, to gain or preserve power, or to deny an uncomfortable reality.
the notion that more for the rich will help the poor.
The more you can counter misinformation, the moremanageable our society will become.
Here are some common biases and simplifications,verbal traps, and popular untruths that we run intofrequently in discussing limits to growth. We thinkthey need to be pointed out and avoided, if there isever to be clear thinking about the human economy
and its relationship to a finite Earth.
Not: A warning about the future is a prediction of
doom.
But: A warning about the future is a recommendation
to follow a different path.
Not: The environment is a luxury or a competing
demand or a commodity that people will buy when
they can afford it.
But: The environment is the source of all life and every
economy. Opinion polls typically show that the public
is willing to pay more for a healthy environment.
Not: Change is sacrifice, and it should be avoided.
But: Change is challenge, and it is necessary.
Not: Stopping growth will lock the poor in theirpoverty.
But: It is the avarice and indifference of the rich thatlock the poor into poverty. The poor need newattitudes among the rich; then there will be growth

specifically geared to serve their needs.
Not: Everyone should be brought up to the material
level of the richest countries.
But: There is no possibility of raising material consumption levels for everyone to the levels now enjoyed by
the rich. Everyone should have their fundamental
material needs satisfied. Material needs beyond thislevel should be satisfied only if it is possible, for all,within a sustainable ecological footprint.
Not: All growth is good, without question, discrimination, or investigation.
Nor: All growth is bad.
But: What is needed is not growth, but development.
Insofar as development requires physical expansion,
it should be equitable, affordable, and sustainable,with all real costs counted.
Not: Technology will solve all problems.
Nor: Technology does nothing but cause problems.
But: We need to encourage technologies that will
reduce the ecological footprint, increase efficiency,
enhance resources, improve signals, and end material
deprivation.
And: We must approach our problems as humanbeings and bring more to bear on them than justtechnology.
Not: The market system will automatically bringus the future we want.

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But: We must decide for ourselves what future wewant. Then we can use the market system, along withmany other organizational devices, to achieve it.
Not: Industry is the cause of all problems, or the cure.
Nor: Government is the cause or the cure.
Nor: Environmentalists are the cause or the cure.
Nor: Any other group [economists come to mind]
is the cause or the cure.
But: All people and institutions play their roles within
the large system structure. In a system that is structured for overshoot, all players deliberately or inadvertently contribute to that overshoot. In a system that is
structured for sustainability, industries, governments,
environmentalists, and most especially economists
will play essential roles in contributing tosustainability.
Not: Unrelieved pessimism.
Nor: Sappy optimism.
But: The resolve to tell the truth about both thesuccesses and failures of the present and the potentials and obstacles in the future.
And above all: The courage to admit and bear
the pain of the present, while keeping a steady eye
on a vision of a better future.
Not: The World3 model, or any other model, is right 		
or wrong.

Learning

But: All models, including the ones in our heads, area little right, much too simple, and mostly wrong. How
do we proceed in such a way as to test our models
and learn where they are right and wrong? How do
we speak to each other as fellow modelers with anappropriate mixture of skepticism and respect? How
do we stop playing right–wrong games with eachother and start designing right–wrong tests for ourmodels against the real world?
That last challenge, sorting out and testing models,brings us to the topic of learning.

Learning
Visioning, networking, and truth-telling are useless 		
if they do not inform action. There are many things to
do to bring about a sustainable world. New farming
methods have to be worked out. New businesses haveto be started and old ones have to be redesigned toreduce their footprint. Land has to be restored, parks
protected, energy systems transformed, international
agreements reached. Laws have to be passed and others
repealed. Children have to be taught, and so do adults.
Films have to be made, music played, books published,
Web sites established, people counseled, groups led,
subsidies removed, sustainability indicators developed, and prices corrected to portray full costs.
All people will find their own best role in all this doing.
We wouldn’t presume to prescribe a specific role formeans the willingness to go slowly, to try things out, and to collectinformation about the effects of actions, including the crucial but not always welcome information that theaction is not working. One can’t learn without making mistakes, telling the truth about them, and moving
on. Learning means exploring a new path with vigor and courage, being open to other people’s explorationsof other paths, and being willing to switch paths if one is found that leads more directly to the goal.

b o o k e x c e r p t | M ead o ws , r ande r s , mead o ws

anyone but ourselves. But we would make one
suggestion: Whatever you do, do it humbly. Do it not
as immutable policy, but as experiment. Use youraction, whatever it is, to learn.
The depths of human ignorance are much more
profound than most of us are willing to admit. This isespecially so at a time when the global economy iscoming together as a more integrated whole than it
has ever been, when that economy is pressing against
the limits of a wondrously complex planet, and whenwholly new ways of thinking are called for. At thistime, no one knows enough. No leaders, no matter
how authoritative they pretend to be, understand thesituation. No policy should be imposed wholesale
upon the whole world. If you cannot afford to lose, do
not gamble.
Learning means the willingness to go slowly, to try
things out, and to collect information about theeffects of actions, including the crucial but not always
welcome information that the action is not working.
One can’t learn without making mistakes, telling thetruth about them, and moving on. Learning means
exploring a new path with vigor and courage, being
open to other people’s explorations of other paths,
and being willing to switch paths if one is found that
leads more directly to the goal.
The world’s leaders have lost both the habit oflearning and the freedom to learn. Somehow apolitical system has evolved in which the voters
expect leaders to have all the answers, that assigns
only a few people to be leaders, and that brings themdown quickly if they suggest unpleasant remedies.
This perverse system undermines the leadershipcapacity of the people and the learning capacity of
the leaders.
It’s time for us to do some truth-telling on this issue.
The world’s leaders do not know any better thananyone else how to bring about a sustainable society;most of them don’t even know it’s necessary to do so.
A sustainability revolution requires each person to act
as a learning leader at some level, from family tocommunity to nation to world. And it requires each of
us to support leaders by allowing them to admit
uncertainty, conduct honest experiments, andacknowledge mistakes.
No one can be free to learn without patience andforgiveness. But in a condition of overshoot, there is
not much time for patience and forgiveness. Finding
the right balance between the apparent opposites ofurgency and patience, accountability and forgivenessis a task that requires compassion, humility, clearheadedness, honesty, and – that hardest of words, thatseemingly scarcest of all resources – love.

Loving
One is not allowed in the industrial culture to speak
about love, except in the most romantic and trivial
sense of the word. Anyone who calls upon thecapacity of people to practice brotherly and sisterly
love, love of humanity as a whole, love of nature andof our nurturing planet, is more likely to be ridiculedthan to be taken seriously. The deepest difference
between optimists and pessimists is their position in
the debate about whether human beings are able tooperate collectively from a basis of love. In a societythat systematically develops individualism, competitiveness, and short-term focus, the pessimists are in
the vast majority.
Individualism and shortsightedness are the greatest
problems of the current social system, we think, andthe deepest cause of unsustainability. Love andcompassion institutionalized in collective solutions isthe better alternative. A culture that does not believein, discuss, and develop these better human qualities
suffers from a tragic limitation in its options. “Howgood a society does human nature permit?” asked

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One is not allowed in the industrial culture to speak about love,

except in the most romantic and trivial sense of the word. Anyone who calls upon the capacity ofpeople to practice brotherly and sisterly love, love of humanity as a whole, love of nature and of
our nurturing planet, is more likely to be ridiculed than to be taken seriously. The deepest difference
between optimists and pessimists is their position in the debate about whether human beings areable to operate collectively from a basis of love. In a society that systematically develops
individualism, competitiveness, and short-term focus, the pessimists are in the vast majority.

psychologist Abraham Maslow. “How good a humannature does society permit?”6
The sustainability revolution will have to be, above all,a collective transformation that permits the best of
human nature, rather than the worst, to be expressedand nurtured. Many people have recognized thatnecessity and that opportunity. For example, John
Maynard Keynes wrote in 1932:
The problem of want and poverty and the economic struggle between classes and nations isnothing but a frightful muddle, a transitory andunnecessary muddle. For the Western World alreadyhas the resource and the technique, if we could
create the organization to use them, capable ofreducing the Economic Problem, which now absorbs our moral and material energy, to a positionof secondary importance. . . .
Thus the . . . day is not far off when the Economic
Problem will take the back seat where it belongs,
and . . . the arena of the heart and head will beoccupied . . . by our real problems – the problemsof life and of human relations, of creation andbehaviour and religion.7

Aurelio Peccei, the great industrial leader who wrote
constantly about problems of growth and limits, economics and environment, resources and governance,
never failed to conclude that the answers to the world’s
problems begin with a “new humanism.” In 1981 heexpressed this view:
The humanism consonant with our epoch must
replace and reverse principles and norms that we haveheretofore regarded as untouchable, but that havebecome inapplicable, or discordant with our purpose;
it must encourage the rise of new value systems toredress our inner balance, and of new spiritual, ethical,
philosophical, social, political, aesthetic, and artistic
motivations to fill the emptiness of our life; it must
be capable of restoring within us . . . love, friendship,
understanding, solidarity, a spirit of sacrifice, conviviality; and it must make us understand that the moreclosely these qualities link us to other forms of life andto our brothers and sisters everywhere in the world,the more we shall gain.8
It is not easy to practice love, friendship, generosity,
understanding, or solidarity within a system whoserules, goals, and information streams are geared forlesser human qualities. But we try, and we urge you 		
to try. Be patient with yourself and others as you andb o o k e x c e r p t | M ead o ws , r ande r s , mead o ws

they confront the difficulty of a changing world.
Understand and empathize with inevitable resistance;
there is resistance, some clinging to the ways of unsustainability, within each of us. Seek out and trust in
the best human instincts in yourself and in everyone.
Listen to the cynicism around you and have compassion for those who believe in it, but don’t believe it
yourself.
Humanity cannot triumph in the adventure of reducing the human footprint to a sustainable level if thatadventure is not undertaken in a spirit of global partnership. Collapse cannot be avoided if people do notlearn to view themselves and others as part of one
integrated global society. Both will require compassion, not only with the here and now, but with the
distant and future as well. Humanity must learn tolove the idea of leaving future generations a living
planet.
Is anything we have advocated in this book, from
more resource efficiency to more compassion, reallypossible? Can the world actually ease down below thelimits and avoid collapse? Can the human footprint be
reduced in time? Is there enough vision, technology,
freedom, community, responsibility, foresight, money,
discipline, and love, on a global scale?
Of all the hypothetical questions we have posed inthis book, these are the most unanswerable, thoughmany people will pretend to answer them. Even we –your authors – differ among ourselves when tallying
the odds for and against. The ritual cheerfulness ofmany uninformed people, especially world leaders,would say the questions are not even relevant; there
are no meaningful limits. Many of the informed are
infected with the deep cynicism that lies just under
the ritual public cheerfulness. They would say that
there are severe problems already, with worse ones
ahead, and that there’s not a chance of solving them.

Both of those answers are based, of course, on mental
models. The truth of the matter is that no one knows.
We have said many times in this book that the world
faces not a preordained future, but a choice. The choice
is between different mental models, which lead logically to different scenarios. One mental model saysthat this world for all practical purposes has no limits.
Choosing that mental model will encourage extractive
business as usual and take the human economy evenfarther beyond the limits. The result will be collapse.
Another mental model says that the limits are realand close, and that there is not enough time, and thatpeople cannot be moderate or responsible or compassionate. At least not in time. That model is selffulfilling. If the world’s people choose to believe it,they will be proven right. The result will be collapse.
A third mental model says that the limits are realand close and in some cases below our current levelsof throughput. But there is just enough time, with notime to waste. There is just enough energy, enoughmaterial, enough money, enough environmental
resilience, and enough human virtue to bring abouta planned reduction in the ecological footprint of
humankind: a sustainability revolution to a muchbetter world for the vast majority.
That third scenario might very well be wrong. But
the evidence we have seen, from world data to global
computer models, suggests that it could conceivably
be made right. There is no way of knowing for sure,other than to try it. n
Reprinted with permission of Chelsea Green Publishers.

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ab o u t t h e au t h o r s
Donella Meadows was a scientist, author, teacher, and farmer widely considered ahead of her time. She wasone of the world’s foremost systems analysts and lead author of the influential Limits to Growth – the 1972
book on global trends in population, economics, and the environment that was translated into 28 languages
and became an international bestseller. That book launched a worldwide debate on the earth’s capacity towithstand constant human development and expansion.
Jorgen Randers is a policy analyst and President Emeritus of the Norwegian School of Management.
He lives in Oslo, Norway.
Dennis Meadows is a professor of Systems Management and director of the Institute for Policy and Social
Science Research at the University of New Hampshire. He co-authored the original Limits to Growth with
Donella Meadows in 1972. He lives in Durham, New Hampshire. reflections@solonline.org

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Volume 9, Number 2

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