People Who Have Inverted My Thinking

Christopher Alexander

While he speaks to the world of architecture, his thinking applies equally well to the creation of community. He grieves over the fragmented and mechanistic way we currently operate. In his book, The Timeless Way of Building, he declares that what brings value into the world is architecture that has a quality of aliveness. This redefined the purpose of my practice which is simply to bring aliveness into everything that we touch. A stunning example is that when a carpenter drives a nail, they need the same consciousness as the architect that designed the building.

Pattern Language

Mark Anielski

Mark is transforming the basic beliefs of economics. He begins with inverting the belief in scarcity to one of abundance. His books, The Economics of Happiness and An Economy of Well-Being, propose new measures of economic outcomes. The current measures of economies, like GDP, GNP and Average Annual Income are distorted and a narrow version of the human condition. He has introduced measures of communities that capture the fullness of the person, their view of a place, the quality of their relationships, their trust, happiness and sense of safety, livelihood and governance. This changes the narrative of who we are and what we aspire to. Which is at the center of everything.

Anielski Management

Walter Brueggemann

Walter is a world-famous Old Testament scholar. He awakens us to the fact that our modern economy is just a reperformance of Pharaoh’s economy which held the Israelites as slaves. Much of the work we are doing is seeking a contemporary exodus from an economy that is producing untenable side effects. I asked Walter why the Israelites allowed themselves to be slaves for 400 years and he said they could not imagine being free.

Walter Brueggemann

Allan Cohen

He translates the world of emergence and complex adaptive systems into language that once in a while I begin to think I understand. Allan lives and works in partnership with Ann Overton. The two of them have created miracles through the Mastery Foundation. They mostly go to tough places like Northern Ireland and Israel where they have created an amazing leadership development program that is changing the world.

Allan Cohen

Werner Erhard

I met Werner working on reconciliation in Northern Ireland. He taught me that all transformation is linguistic, which gave me a focus for my life and work that had not been there before. Werner has named and integrated a set of ideas about possibility and commitments that have brought agency and accountability into the lives of millions. It seems to me that much of what I write about somehow came from Werner.

Werner Erhard

Gustavo Esteva

I’ll tell you this one story about Gustavo Esteva in Mexico. In 1949, he wrote this book, The Future of Development. “Harry Truman declared after the war that we’d been so lucky as America to come out of the war so well, we are now committed to helping undeveloped countries.” Gustavo writes, “I lived in Mexico at the time, until that moment, I never knew I was undeveloped.” His writing along with others has been the most clarifying distinction to help me understand how much of what we and I do are just modern forms of colonialism. Must reads.

Gustavo Esteva

Tim Gallwey

Tim is a friend and teacher of mine who has revolutionized our thinking about learning. He has a genius for designing learning experiences that create trust in ourselves and cause results in the world. He has eliminated the dividing line between awareness and action. Tim has consistently created powerful programs that seduce us into becoming accountable and effective human beings. He is such a great teacher that you can learn to play tennis without ever receiving a stroke instruction. He applies the same principles to leadership and running organizations.

The Inner Game

Peter Koestenbaum

There is no finer consultant, friend or philosopher on earth. Few people of his humanity and intellect have so committed themselves to being useful in the world of business. For several decades, Peter Koestenbaum has brought the insights of philosophy to the business marketplace. His work on the Leadership Diamond is holistic and practical landscape of what is required of leaders to achieve greatness in the world, both personally and for the institutions. Peter is also a great healer. When I was once complaining about my divorce, he told me that that marriage was an apprenticeship for what’s to come. He embodies forgiveness.

Philosophy-in-Business

Ward & Kranti Mailliard / Mt Madonna

Ward and Kranti are changing the face of education. So many of our schools hold to the industrial model of producing adults by teaching values, pouring in information, testing with high stakes, and reducing the arts. Mount Madonna, the school Ward and Kranti have spent decades creating, celebrates the gifts, values, and abilities inherent in each child. They are a living demonstration that, more than pedagogy, instructional design, or curriculum, it is the humanity and love of the teacher that opens a new world for the possibilities of the child.

Mount Madonna School

Mike McCartney

I met Mike when he was head of a major union in Hawaii. Since then he has been a major figure in the government and tourist industry in this state. Through him I was exposed to the powerful economic and educational renaissance movement within the Hawaiian culture. They have been as colonized and controlled by mainland United States as any indigenous people around the world. Their Queen was deposed and land taken. Yet they never lost their memory and way of being together. I did not know until I spent time with him and his colleagues that there were people in powerful institutional positions, including government, that were committed and successful in keeping their authentic, communal values alive. I had never known that was possible.

hawaii.gov

John McKnight

A leading light in the world of understanding the nature of community and what builds it. Three of his insights have permanently changed my thinking: focus on gifts, associational life, power in our hands. John is so clear that a neighborhood has a much stronger capacity to raise a child than we realize. John also used to report to Bobby Kennedy, which is quite a credential.

John McKnight

Amrita Patel

Amrita helped found and sustain and grow the largest agricultural cooperative in the world. Based in Anand, India, she and Dr. Kurien imagined how foreign aid, in this case milk powder from the West, can be used to build local economy of the recipient. Most foreign aid is used to fill the pockets of the donor at the expense the economy of the recipients. Her work improved women’s lives and inverted the rush of colonialism that is the basis of aid. And she, through the National Dairy Development Board, did it on a national and world scale. She is one of most amazing people I have know and working with her in India was life changing.

NDDB

Louise van Rhyn

It is rare to become friend and colleague with someone whose purpose in life is to build a nation. Louise invited me to run a workshop on community building in South Africa. She then, through Partners for Possibility, designed a program for education reform, focusing on a partnership between school principals and corporate executives that would impact tens of thousands of school children and professionals. She imagined that real learning partnerships between the private sector and education could change the lives of both the principal and the executive. This is in sharp contrast to the more common western practice where the private sector executive, even with noble intentions, proceeds as if they know what is best for education and the not for profit world. Louise’s leadership, her mind and thought process, and her courage to sell this idea into a South Africa of great poverty and turmoiled national politics is a moving experience to be a small part of.

Partners for Possibility

Books that have had Influence

Organizations

These ideas are being expressed in a thousand places. Here are some organizations that are wonderful and also have the commitment to create a more habitable world.