Adjust your dreams to align with reality and what's possible (focus on next steps)

Take one step at a time and focus on the water.
Maybe it's good, maybe it's not.  To dive in or not?

Dwelling--or really spending much time at all--on analyzing the way things are or why they are the way they are is kind of a messed up, useless waste of time but apparently we have to do it as humans.  I'd rather spend my time imagining the future and figuring out what I need to do to get there.

Focusing on where we want to go and figuring out how to get there is a really important and necessary thing for us to be happy.  We have to take one step at a time and crawl, then walk, then run there.  We want to imagine ourselves warping into the future, to the place where we'd rather be.  But it takes time to get there in reality and our imaginations are way faster than time and real-world processes are.

We need to make things happen in reality through our actions and by externalizing our vision to other people and the world around us.  This takes time and keeps us grounded in the now and thinking about what steps are required to execute next.  We have to keep our pace and sense of urgency high (by developing new, more complete and current visions) to get to the future fast enough or it could be gone by the time we get there. 

So be flexible in your vision and let it change because hopefully it will only get better or more realistic as you take the steps to getting there.  Don't just be a dreamer, be an adjuster of dreams to align with reality.

Developing the Right Metrics Matters the Most

There are several ways a person could view an organization:

• As a collection of business processes (activities) that the business has to perform to meet its strategic objectives
• As a collection of IT applications that support the processes
• As a collection of people and suppliers who provide the resources necessary to achieve the organizational objectives
• As a collection of metrics or measures that describe the performance of the organization

Although each of these perspectives is equally real, only one is RIGHT in my opinion. Which one? METRICS, I say. Unless we boil our organizations into numbers and shared things that people can understand -- not complex and changing things like systems, processes, tools, and people -- can we really manage our organization as a program. I'm not making an argument for ACCOUNTING, per se, I'm talking about those facts and figures that tell us whether or not our business is being successful at achieving its objectives.

Therefore, it's my contention that a key part of the strategic planning and communications processes is to define and communicate about the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your business. KPIs are a bit of a cliche term but they're critical. The fundamental question we have to agree upon is, "How will we know that we are doing well?".

The more we develop this language of numbers and measurement, the more clear we will be together on our perception of what matters and how to allocate our resources and attention.

It's Efficient, but for Whom?

One big problem with the "green" (environmentalism, efficiency, social consciousness) movement is that it is hard to know the truth about what is green. Hence the term "greenwashing" as in flubbing or lying about the greenness of one's product, company, or service. But is lying necessarily bad here? It could be.

It's the case in business and life that things can be "efficient" (defined by Answers.com as "Acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort.") for one person but not another. In fact, that's the norm; there are system effects to improving one area of a process while not considering the others. There has to be a balance since there are many stakeholders and perspectives for anything we look at or touch. A simple example of sub-optimized efficiency is a company that dumps its waste into a local water supply, saving itself money but breaking the law and damaging the water supply. It's efficient for them but inefficient for the water supply, water users, etc.

Say things change and this same company decides to change its behavior and "go green". They promote how they reduced X, Y, and Z. This is good. All positive change is good, but it's still not enough. The company is not off the hook now for doing ONE GOOD THING!

The point here is that there are many SHADES of GREEN. Anything that is positive for people or the planet can be considered green but we have to be very careful what we call green or call good enough. What we should be shooting for is A BRIGHT GREEN THAT WE CAN MEASURE. That said, there's usually a the competing force of financial and economic greed. We can and do measure that well: it's called profit or loss. Where's the balance in a system like this? How would we know if we were doing the right thing? What if I made $1M from a business that hurt things and then reinvested that in saving children or streams? Am I bad?