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Posts Tagged ‘indicators’

Navigating Intelligence Enables Course Corrections

Posted in D. Strategic Intelligences, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , , , , , , on August 23, 2012 |


Navigating intelligence allows us to scan the environment and make decisions about our course corrections using Integral Vital Signs Monitors (IVSM). An IVSM is a reporting system whose design is based on an integral framework. It utilizes life-sustaining indicators and communicates its results in a universal language.

An IVSM system mines existing databases, gathers new data and reports observations in a global graphic language that is accessible to all (in multiple versions and multiple translations). Its purpose is for providing life-giving data for making decisions that develop, maintain and emerge the health of local and global systems of interest, for the current generations and the generations to come.

IVSM’s can exist on any scale of the human system, and are designed so that they can scale up and down from the individual to the planet.

Navigating intelligence develops a vital signs monitor with indicators and benchmarks that recognize :

  • climate systems that affect natural and human sustainability (eg. rainfall, water tables)
  • the limits of carrying capacity for the basic resources of air, land and water
  • bio-psycho-cultural-social health indicators for individuals, families, workplaces, neighborhoods, and city systems
  • sustainable economies
  • sustainable infrastructures for transportation, health, education and commercial development
  • congruent and incongruent neighbours that affect the health of the natural and human systems (eg. air shed, water quality, transportation systems, human movement,communicable diseases, etc. )
  • physical, psychological, cultural and social boundaries

Navigating intelligence that uses IVSM adds value in four ways:

  1. The essential design elements of the IVSM provide a framework, indicator organizer and common language to communicate results across cultures. We can see the investment of resources that we have made in each quadrant and level; ie. we can track energy, matter and information.
  2. We can translate the investments into terms of traditional financial management; strategic financial investment; density of social networks; or sustainability vectors such as carbon-based resources (or all).
  3. By the use of hyper linking, we can see the linkage between realities (four quadrants); levels of complexity (eight plus levels); time (development/evolution); and scale.
  4. It allows us to compare results internally within urban systems and externally between urban systems.

From an Integral Vital Signs Monitor is designed, the Integral Scorecard can become the reporting vehicle for informing all the stakeholders of the city. It tells us whether we are achieving the purpose and objectives of the city in a sustainable way. It reveals to us if we are amassing the energy, matter and information that we need to sustain ourselves. It is a way of mapping capacity and potential and has the power to reveal imbalances that indicate unsustainable practices.

Navigating intelligence using IVSM works hand in hand with Meshworking intelligence to design new governance systems that research, plan and manage the city.

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This blog is a prologue to the Integral City webinar conference  City 2.0 Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive . We are inventing a new operating system for the city.  Click to get more details re the Free Expo and eLaboratory membership  scheduled September 4-27  2012. You are invited to attend and participate.

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Navigating Intelligence Discloses Wellbeing of the City

Posted in D. Strategic Intelligences, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 22, 2012 |


Navigating intelligence monitors and discloses the wellbeing or general condition of the city.

Many city information officers are now developing versions of vital signs monitor for monitoring and reporting the health of the city. From an eco-regional perspective the indicators should track what Jared Diamond noted every society must pay attention to for long-term survival:

  • Climate change
  • Environmental health of the eco-region
  • The city’s responses to environmental problems
  • Positive economic relationships with other cities and/or eco-regions
  • Incongruent neighbouring cities and/or eco-regions

Vital Signs Monitors become Integrally (IVSM) framed when they serve as community indices to measure the quality of overall health and wellbeing.  This becomes owned by the whole community when community partners (like the education institutions, health care systems, justice system, economy, recreation facilities, city hall)  contribute core data so that a composite picture of the whole community emerges from the integral map.

As a result, each community partner has a stake in the success of the IVSM and together the community of partners gains insights how their interconnections contribute to the wellbeing of the whole city.

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This blog is a prologue to the Integral City webinar conference  City 2.0 Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive . We are inventing a new operating system for the city.  Click to get more details re the Free Expo and eLaboratory membership  scheduled September 4-27  2012. You are invited to attend and participate.

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Cities Are Vital for Organizational Sustainability

Posted in B. Individual Intelligences, C. Collective Intelligences, city, D. Strategic Intelligences, Integral Maps, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 29, 2012 |


Are economics and technological factors sufficient to incubate innovation and sustainability? At least they are a start to consider the importance of cities to organizational success.

That was a recent focus of Greenbiz forum where the growing recognition that the wellbeing of cities is an underlying condition for the success of organizations. Drawing from a recent report on the SustainAbility that identifies the States of Cities the discussion explored cities through the lenses of:

  • Personal Values
  • Decisive
  • Connected
  • Collaborative/Competitive
  • Visceral
  • Adaptive
  • Experimental

What is really encouraging about this identification of city qualities is that they appear to align with the four capacities of an Integral City:

UL: Psychological Capacity

  • Personal Values
  • Decisive

LL: Relationship Capacity

  • Collaborative

UR: Embodied Capacity

  • Visceral
  • Adaptive

LR: Systems Capacity

  • Competitive
  • Experimental

Furthermore this approach to SustainAbility appears to bring to the table the voices of stakeholders from the four quadrants of both the city and organizations. This is promising news for the future of Integral City Sustainability Planning. Perhaps the States of Cities will become the leading indicators of the wellbeing of City States?

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City Purpose: Glimpsing Prosperity Scorecards

Posted in Building - Structures, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 28, 2012 |


Integral City proposes that all cities have a purpose that serves Earth’s sustainability and wellbeing. Glimmers that the value of purpose are breaking through into the world of organizational and business scorecards are showing up in the news and financial presss.

The Toronto Board of Trade just released a report showing how 7 major U.S. cities compare to 5 Canadian cities in 9 industrial sectors. We must recognize this opportunity to measure prosperity as the first step along the way to actually measuring wellbeing in cities.

The 9 clusters which effectively measure the success of business hubs in each city included:

  • Auto & Parts
  • Finance
  • Food & Beverage
  • Energy
  • Transportation
  • ICT
  • Bio-Medical
  • Aerospace
  • Entertainment

It is not surprising to notice that each cluster is still very hard asset oriented, with little nod to the Creativity or Innovation that underlies the capacity for each and all of these clusters to be successful. While it may be interesting to note that Calgary’s success could be attributed to the nexus of the Finance and Energy sectors in the city, it is only a first step to acknowledging that the expertise, relationships, consciousness and culture in the city enable those sectors to perform at world class levels.

However, the practise of Prosperity Scorecarding is a shift in the right direction for seeing cities as purposeful contributors to the prosperity and wellbeing of the planet. Can we anticipate that such a beginning will open up to a whole Integral Vital Signs monitor in the not too distant future?

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Integral City 2.0 Develops Innovation Ecosystems

Posted in Building - Structures, city, D. Strategic Intelligences, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 7, 2012 | 1 Comment »


Integral City 2.0 innovation systems are emerging because conscious capitalists, governments, students and citizens are aligning strategies for leaders, organizations and governance systems to transform entire cities from resistant holdouts to resilient human hives. Humans as Gaia’s most “reflective organ” have located 50% of our species’ brain trust in the world’s cities.

We are starting to see the shape of Integral City 2.0 in places that have developed a variety of innovative frameworks and practical approaches to optimizing human co-existence. If we could combine and align these emergent designs into innovation ecosystems, we would create a resilience strategy that would move our human hives from City 1.0 to City 2.0 in service to a healthy planet. Five cities on five continents lead the way.

1. Curitiba, Brazil demonstrates an ability to develop individual capacity and organizational capital through people-friendly transportation systems and re-valuing eco-citizens who collect cooking oil, tires and even fallen leaves.

2. Sydney, Australia has developed Sustainability and Resilience strategies through the Sustainable Sydney 2030 Vision  for a Green, Global, and Connected City. It identified 10 targets and  five big moves embracing the city centre, transportation network, green corridors, community hubs and energy and water infrastructure.

3. Metro Vancouver, Canada  leverages community engagement and dynamic decision making that coalesces authority, power and influence, at breakfast meetings with citizens across 21 municipalities. They are anchoring three imperatives: regard for both local and global consequences and long-term impacts of decisions; recognizing and reflecting the interconnectedness and interdependence of systems; and being collaborative.

4. Songpa, South Korea demonstrates the value of Context mapping that integrates Place, Priorities, People and Planet. It completely removed a major freeway that bisected the city and fully restored the river that now has become the ecological and cultural centre of its urban life.

5. Murcia, Spain applies navigational dashboards that monitor vital signs of wellbeing across all city systems. It integrates KSF’s across city initiatives and objectives with multiple stakeholders. These measures include everything from reduction of energy consumption to school use of photo-voltaics to citizen awareness, especially immigrants, women, seniors and students.

What these Integral Cities 2.0 are proving, is that we can create the life conditions for innovation that will become a legacy to future generations. When we co-create City 2.0 habitats for innovation eco-systems we discover that:

  • secure supply chains emerge in around the Integral City 2.0
  • risk is mitigated through shared values and proximate peers
  • we can retain and attract high-performers
  • we create opportunities for sustainable energy efficiencies as we learn how to competitively recycle energy and effort in our eco-region;
  • we can redefine value-added profitability not just for our organizations, but for the city, its eco-region and Gaia herself;
  • our actions inevitably enhance our brand reputations.

Multiple stakeholders acting together in Integral City 2.0 create innovation ecosystems that become self-fulfilling – where we naturally align leaders, strategies and governance systems to develop caring capacities for taking care of people, taking care of priorities and taking care of this planet.

Download Links, Resources, Connections for Integral City 2.0 Developers at: http://www.integralcity.com/developers/

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Wellbeing indicator of a living system – “Could I die happy?”

Posted in E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Lifecycle, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 18, 2011 | 1 Comment »


Indicators of wellbeing have been a fascination of mine for many decades. Today I am contemplating the indicator of happiness – as in “Could I die happy today?”

The EU calls and I have my powerpoint bags packed with all the trends that show the Big Picture of Global Sustainability to share with Experience Integral  along with the Grok Talk Walk Rock Story I have to share with Gen X and GenY. Could I die happy that I have this opportunity to connect my (meshworking) Purpose with my environment? A big Yes!!

Connecting with the environment is one of three conditions of a living system. The other two are reproducing and surviving.

I have had direct encounters with those two in the last three months that have really put me on my edge.

First the surviving condition … I’ve been the bone marrow donor for a brother with lymphoma. Ouch what a potentially dehumanizing experience that can be!  All the medical system wants is my stem cells and they trade an “out of body experience” for my blood in exchange for the (better than) faint hope that my brother will be able to re-cover his immune system with the amazing quality of stem cells to become any organ/function the body needs. If you are really committed to sustainability how can you say no to such a request?  You can’t, because all at once you get to reproduce in a way only science and technology can “magically” now enable. If you are a person like me who has a perspective that we arise out of consciousness (and not matter) you imbue those stem cells with all the capacity you can charge into them before, during and after they are transplanted.

Let me tell you a bone marrow transplant (BMT) is a fairly clinical procedure for the donor but an incredibly risky and messy procedure for the recipient. They endure the complete destruction of their immune system in preparation for the BMT and then live on a series of chemical cocktails while the stem cells (hopefully – no guarantees) grow a new immune system in the recipient’s body.

But LIFE never guarantees anything, so even though my bro has days where he questions the choice that he made, I see (like a sister/mother) that his system is gradually gaining strength. I can’t hold him like a new baby but I do watch him work his way back up the mountain of life’s taken-for-granted capacities – eating solid food, walking a few steps, pushing furniture around (even vacuum cleaning is a major milestone :-) , writing notes, responding to email, playing music, managing his anger, driving himself on purpose.  Like a mother I hug him every chance I get and I root like a cheer leader for every small gain in his white blood cell count and rejoice with him when the doc says he can drive again. My bro’s old body has been given a new lease on life – and together our stem cells our coming into our 100 day anniversary. Hopefully mine will have done their job and his will be taking over any day soon.  Perhaps then I will feel like the parent whose child has left home. Could I die happy with the pleasure of such a relational empty (but ever so full) nest??  Absolutely! (Though I await the results with small trepidation and intuitive optimism!!)

What’s more today I am ESPECIALLY buoyed by the other of LIFE’s manifesting conditions - the usual manner of human reproduction – the sweet sweet joy of the new life of Cole Stephen Perkin, born to my granddaughter Amanda Jenny Dobson Perkin. WOW!! I am a great grandmother!! I never expected such an honour!! I can’t believe how elated I feel!!. I had no direct genetic link to this birth but I feel as happy as if I did. Just a Kosmic connection to the young woman I taught to read 25 years ago as her (step) Granma. I really feel like celebrating!! And I feel an upswelling of affinity for all the conditions of LIFE in this special moment – that I/We/The Family have survived, reproduced and connected with our environment long enough to savour the magificence of existence through this new life!! It brings into focus all the other reasons for so deeply living life!! My gratitude is overwhelming!!

Could I die happy as a GGM? You betcha!!

As a living system I can die happy, simply BECAUSE I connect with my environment, reproduce and survive. Now that’s a pretty awesome measure of LIFE’s value, isn’t it?

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Climate Change Scoreboard

Posted in E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , , , , , on December 11, 2009 | 2 Comments »


As we are striving to create new frameworks, approaches and paradigms, it is often easy to overlook how far we have come and what progress we are making. For someone, like Hazel Henderson, who has demonstrated decades of commitment to changing our perspectives on economic performance the following is good news indeed.

MH/Integral City

For Immediate Release:

NEW GLOBAL CLIMATE PROSPERITY SCOREBOARD FINDS OVER $1 TRILLION INVESTED IN GREEN SINCE 2007

 

Washington, DC – December  4, 2009 – Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil) and The Climate Prosperity Alliance today launched their Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard® which tracks private investment in companies growing the green economy globally.  This new, never before reported number, showing $1,248,740,645,993.00 (over $1.248 trillion) in total investment since 2007, indicates how investors and entrepreneurs are leading governments in promoting sustainable growth.  The scoreboard totals investments in solar, wind, geothermal, ocean/hydro, energy efficiency and storage, and agriculture.  We purposefully omitted nuclear, “clean coal,” carbon capture and sequestration, and biofuels.  We indicate which investments have been publically announced and committed by major companies for 2010 and beyond.

 Dr. Marc A. Weiss, Chairman and CEO of Global Urban Development and Chair of the Climate Prosperity Alliance, said, “This $1.248 trillion of investments are not only from North America and Europe, but also from China, India, Brazil and other developing countries.  They indicate that the private sector currently is ahead of governments in understanding that during the 21st century, people, places, and organizations can only get richer by becoming greener and only earn more money by using fewer resources and reusing more. Private capital investment is now leading globally in promoting technological innovation and resource efficiency that will accelerate environmentally and socially sustainable industrial growth and economic development throughout the world.”

Dr. Hazel Henderson, futurist, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (Chelsea Green, 2006) and president of Ethical Markets Media, serves as vice-chair of the Climate Prosperity Alliance together with vice-chairs C.S. Kiang (China), Rodrigo Loures (Brazil), Lawrence Bloom (UK) and James Nixon (USA).  Dr. Henderson said, “Ethical Markets Media’s mission is reforming markets and growing the green economy globally.  Our Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard® will be updated regularly to show progress toward the ecologically sustainable economies that are vital to our common future.  Societies are transitioning from the 300-year old, polluting, fossil-fueled Industrial Era to the advanced technologies of the information-rich Solar Age.”

The Climate Prosperity Alliance, a volunteer, global network of financiers, businesses, economic development authorities, scientists and NGOs is based on earth systems science, showing the widespread evidence of destruction caused by the now-obsolete technologies of the combustion-based Industrial Revolution and its extraction and exploitation of the Earth’s capital: oil, coal, gas, minerals, forests, water, land and biodiversity.  Human societies are now gradually re-industrializing our economies using the Earth’s income – the renewable energies of sun, wind, ocean/hydro, geothermal and non-agricultural biomass – based on human capital: new knowledge of planetary processes and ecosystems, designing our economies with Nature.

The Climate Prosperity Alliance uses the Climate Solutions 2 computer model of Australia’s Climate Risk Pty., showing how $1 trillion invested every year for the next 10 years can assure the global transition to sustainable prosperity and job growth.  This $10 trillion is less than the bailouts of failed banks in the USA and Europe and less than 10% of the world’s pension and institutional funds of $120 trillion.  Institutional fund managers can shift 10% of their assets away from hedge funds, risky derivatives and commodity speculation to real investments in a greener global economy, thereby assuring their beneficiaries a healthier future.

“While we encourage progress toward directly investing in growing the green economy, we urge government officials meeting in Copenhagen December 7-14, 2009, to follow the lead of these private investors that have already committed $1.248 trillion.  We applaud our pension fund colleagues of the UN Principles of Responsible Investing who have joined in pledges to allocate more of their members’ $19 trillion of assets into similar green companies.  Now, governments must go beyond arguing over targets, caps and carbon-trading – and follow the lead of China and the USA in their comprehensive plan for cooperation on clean energy and climate change.  Such a general agreement in Copenhagen can promote and underwrite more direct investments and growth of the green economy,” said Dr. Henderson.

The new Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard® is researched and compiled by the Ethical Markets Media expert team: Timothy Nash, M.Sc., principal, Strategic Sustainable Investments, Toronto; Rachel Tubman, M.Sc., senior researcher/futurist; assisted by The Cleantech Group and members of the Ethical Markets Sustainability Research Group.  As these investments increase, the scoreboard will track totals, providing investors and governments with tangible evidence of the growing green economy.

Contacts:

  • Dr. Hazel Henderson, president, Ethical Markets Media, www.ethicalmarkets.com, hazel.henderson@ethicalmarkets.com, 1-904-829-3140
  • Dr. Marc A. Weiss, Chairman and CEO, Global Urban Development; and Chair, Climate Prosperity Alliance, www.climateprosperity.com, marcweiss@globalurban.org, 1-202-554-5891.
  • Rosalinda Sanquiche, Executive Director, Ethical Markets Media, rosalinda.sanquiche@ethicalmarkets.com, 1-904-826-1381
  • Timothy Jack Nash, Co-founder, Strategic Sustainable Investments, nash@ssinvest.com, 1-416-821-9179

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Thoughts About GRI Sustainability Reporting

Posted in D. Strategic Intelligences, Navigating - IVSM, tagged , on December 10, 2009 |


Canadian Sustainability Indicators Network (of  www.iisd.ca)  has just reported this oped on the use of GRI reporting from the mining industry. However it would seem likely the lessons could apply to any sector. I wonder how it opens up the natural evolution from the triple bottom line to the quadruple (integral) bottom line??

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Mehrdad Nazari reports that:

Sustainability reporting in mining has grown dramatically in the last couple of years, especially since the industry converged around the Global Reporting Intitiative (GRI), the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting framework.

GRI is an Amsterdam-based foundation that is also a collaborating centre for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The origin of GRI dates back to 1997, when it emerged from a project incubated by the Boston-based nonprofit CERES, a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups. By 2006, GRI had already released its current, third generation of guidelines (known as GRI G3), which have been developed using a multi-sectoral and consensus seeking approach.

…

As a course instructor trained directly by GRI, [Mehrdad Nazari has] been interested to observe the discrepancy between GRI’s intent and external perception of certain elements of the GRI framework. The discussions during the courses show significant misperceptions and concerns associated with Performance Indicators, declaration of Application Level and the concept of assurance.

 

For the full text of this article go to 

http://www.prizmasolutions.com//downloads/Sustainability_Reporting_using_GRI_Lessons_Learned_Nov09.pdf

 http://go.infomine.com/?re=123&tg=http%3A%2F%2Fviewer.zmags.com%2Fpublication%2F504803a7%23%2F504803a7%2F32

Mehrdad Nazari, MBA, MSc, LEAD Fellow

Senior CSR & ESIA Advisor, Prizma LLC

mehrdad@prizmasolutions.com

Web: www.prizmasolutions.com

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