WorldChanging has asked its contributors for thoughts on the question: “Looking Toward 2007: What’s Next?” Here’s what I wrote:
The key words I’m watching for 2007: generative feedback. Performance feedback that doesn’t just track behavior; it drives it. And changes the way people talk and think about it.
Just as Prius owners inevitably change their driving behavior (whether they want to or not, whether they intend to watch their energy dashboard or not, and regardless of penalties or incentives) relevant performance feedback can engage stakeholders, steer strategy, and markedly improve implementation – the Achilles heel of most sustainability initiatives.
JM Juran pegged this nearly 60 years ago, when he observed that “To be in a state of self-control, a person must know: what he [or she] is supposed to do, what he [or she] is actually doing, what choices [or she] has to improve results wherever necessary. If any of these three conditions are not met, a person cannot be held responsible.” (I ask for a show of hands in every business audience I speak to: “How many of you have all three in your organization? How many have two? One?” The silence is consistently deafening and the unease palpable, as everyone realizes what a fix we’re each/all in.)
Which is why it’s such good news that technology is conspiring to break this logjam (even if management and organizational culture may still lag the opportunity):
- Business intelligence “dashboards” are all the rage – though how well and how fully they’re used is open to question.
- Web 2.0 mashups, with lots of stuff, both silly and cool, underway, including the geospatial opportunities being cataloged at Where 2.0 (GoogleEarth is the big dog but so much more is going on.)
- What Worldchanger Jamais Cascio has dubbed the Participatory Panopticon.
Where’s the cool feedback on the Worldchanging front?
- Worldwatch Institute has been chronicling planetary “vital signs” for years (but hasn’t yet made the leap to web interactivity)
- FAO’s FAOSTAT offers a richness of breadth and interactivity that one can only hope for from the US government, which is hopefully near the end of its recent phase of constraining rather than expanding information access
- Gapminder‘s slick – and dynamic – views of Human Development Trends provides a fascinating way to understand trend and pattern. (For example, look at how differently income distribution changes as China, India and Brazil develop.)
- Buckminster Fuller Institute‘s EarthScope offers up trending data in “geostories” rather than charts and graphs, providing dynamic maps with supporting graphics, imagery, sound, and text – all inspired by Bucky’s “GeoScope” vision, laid out in Critical Path.
- Swivel‘s preview provides a cool tool for data mashups or all sorts
Our focus at Natural Logic: building on Bucky’s GeoScope inspiration, Jan Hanhart’s
early 90s “EcoFeedback” project in the Hague, our own work with our Business Metabolics sustainability indicators system (delivering
live corporate sustainability metrics to help people manage more
sustainably, not just report on it), Regional
Metabolism Assessments of city and county economies, we’re building
a “Regional Sustainability Dashboard” for the San Francisco Bay Area.
(And encouraging the formation of a public/private consortium to
support real time regulation of environmental performance.) We’re weaving a juicy web of technology-, data- and channel-partners, and we’d love to hear from
you if you have a potential role to play.
There’ll be more about this – coming soon – on the Natural Logic web site, at Worldchanging, and of course at this blog.
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