Prompts & Competent Requests • Interventions & Leverage Points • GilBot on the Loose!
Prompts & Competent Requests
You may think you know how to get the best out of an AI, because after all you’ve been making requests of people your whole life. But actually, you’re probably incompetent in both realms – getting less than ideal responses from your AIs, and missing opportunities for great results and great relationships, with the people you work with, and the people you love. (To be continued…)
Interventions & Leverage Points
What happens when you use Donella Meadows’ 12 Places to Intervene in a System not just as a high-level strategic or even philosophical guide, but as a diagnostic lens applied to your own actions in the world, or the actions of your organization, or…
In the midst of metacrises, my thoughts often return to Meadows, one of the authors of the Limits To Growth report more than 50 years ago, which predicted, at least directionally, if not precisely, the ecological and resources messes we find ourselves in now. Meadows also famously proposed a list of nine, now 12, leverage points—places to intervene in the system, arrayed by influence. (We spoke of these at some length in Living Between Worlds 2.4 and other sessions.)
This month we asked our participants “Where along this trajectory would you say you characteristically find yourself, or place your work? How would you characterize what you do? And then, “Where do you think your work should be focused? Or where do you aspire it to be?”
That’s where this month’s Living Between Worlds “conversation for possibility” started. Have a look at the video, see where the conversation went, and let us know:
- What, if anything, shifted for you while watching this video?
- What ideas would you offer that might enrich the conversation?
And join us next time, on the third Wednesday of every month from 12:00-1:30pm Pacific time. Register here. (Also, please “like” and “subscribe”! YouTube is nicer to us when you do.)
Who joins these conversations? Executives. Sustainability professionals. Investors. Activists. Entrepreneurs. Seekers. Up-and-comers. A poet or two. And you!
“Because people are hungry for meaningful conversations that move worlds. Let’s have some!”
GilBot in the Loose!
I’ve just added my AI “GilBot”—the 24/7 ontological, ecological, strategic coach we’ve built—to Natural Logic’s new home page.
The first question it got asked:
“So what’s the deal with carbon offsets? Good or bad? (Or both or neither?)”
The bot’s response:
“Carbon offsets can be a tool for managing carbon footprints, but they are not a panacea. They work best when used in conjunction with genuine, robust efforts to reduce emissions at their source rather than as a license to continue business as usual. The real challenge—and opportunity—is in carbon insetting, where emissions reductions are integrated into the core operations of a business, rather than externalized. How do you see carbon offsets fitting into your broader sustainability strategy?”
I’ll stand by that. (And may have more to say about it at another time.)
What do you think?
PS: Here’s more of what my clients have been asking these days.