There is a fallacy about vision that is important to expose. Many believe that original vision is an innate gift that few are born with. Visionmakers believe otherwise.

Visionmakers believe that everyone is born with the gift of original vision. Few people, however, are willing to develop that gift. It can be an uncomfortable process. Most of us don’t like to be uncomfortable. It’s irritating and demands attention be diverted from maintaining the status quo, that comfort zone that allows us to maintain our routinized engagement with life. That’s where the average person spends a majority of their waking hours, in routines. Few are actually present to the unfolding mystery that surrounds us!

Visionmakers develop a tolerance for creative tension, that perceptual stretching required to develop original vision to its potential. Creative tension is the cradle of original vision. It requires that we face the future without a guarantee of success. That can be uncomfortable, especially when experiencing the products of creative tension–uncertainty, paradox, challenges, problems, confusion, chaos, ambiguity, change, and new possibilities.

These ten conditions, however, stimulate us to reach within ourselves to expand our vision. Over the next several weeks, I will be looking at these ten conditions as the cradle of original vision. Thank you for visiting Visions. Your insights and comments are welcome as always.

©Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved

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Seymour Melman is professor emeritus, Columbia University. Since the late 1960′s, he has championed “the conversion project.” The conversion project envisions the day that the world economy is converted from a military to a civilian economy.

Melman suggests that the conventional wisdom that military spending is good economics may be running its course. He suggests that they are forces at work that have created a “less durable” war economy.

“As a war economy deindustrializes, part of the work goes into more military stuff, but the major part of the deindustrialization is simply the shutdown of civilian work in this country and its transfer elsewhere, mainly to countries that pay low wages and, very importantly, discourage the formation and operation of trade unions. The militarization of the economy then has two sides: the continuation and the expansion of the militarization in the U.S. and the cessation of all manner of civilian work and its transfer of the investments for this work, especially to China.”

 

He suggests that there is massive damage being done to the American economy, damage that will become even more visible over time. Melman’s solution?  As Bruce Mau and his collaborators report in a brilliant book called Massive Change, “go civilian or go broke.”

Melman is passionate about the necessity of transforming the war economy to a civilian economy as soon as possible and in a planned and orderly way: 

“I don’t see the prospect of a permanent war economy going on indefinitely.  I think the damage that is now in process to the American economy is very considerable, and is going to be more visible all the time. I see a prospect, though I can’t put a timetable on it, for the idea of economic conversion and thereby not only the occupational transformation but also, very importantly, the industrial economic transformation.”

 

Consider this spending comparison:

                           Military       or      Civilian

 

$5.3 Trillion: Cost of creating U.S. Nuclear Weapon Overkill Capacity… or …more than twice the net value of the plant and equipment in U.S. manufacturing industries.

$99 Billion: F-22 Raptor Advanced Fighter program…or …3,500 miles of Maglev train lines, running at         266 miles per hour.

$80 Billion: Navy SSN 774 Virginia Class Submarine program ($71 Billlion) and Navy Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle program ($8.7 Billion)… or… Investment needed to provide 20% of U.S. electricity supply from renewable and clean resources.

$59 Billion: Army Comanche Helicopter program ($48.1 Billion) and Navy Joint Standoff Weapon program ($11.2 Billion)…or… Cost of building housing for the 600,000 homeless families in the U.S.

$11 Billion: Total cost of the Navy’s “Future Surface Combatant” program …or… Annual shortfall to meet federal safe drinking water standards and replace aging facilities.

$11 Billion: Amphibious Assault Ship program…or … Research program to develop zero emissions, coal gasification power plants.

$10 Billion: Two Navy CVN6-B Aircraft Carriers…or… Annual cost to provide sanitary water to 2.4 billion people worldwide.

$9.1 Billion: E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System program…or… Five years of funding for a global tuberculosis program.

$210 Million: One Global Hawk Unmanned Drone…or… Electrification of 50 miles of mainline railroad.

$7.9 Million: One “upgraded” Abrams Tank…or…Annual cost to enroll 1,100 children in Head Start preschool programs.*

As the world changes, our values must change as well. We have an opportunity to take advantage of Visionmaking to remake the world we want rather than uphold the world we inherited. Seymour Melman, along with others, provides a provocative vision for economic transformation.

We are up to the challenge.

* Massive Change, Bruce Mau and the Institute Without Borders,pg. 176

©Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

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Many people are asking for help facing the uncertainty and volatility of present conditions. Stress is everywhere. Businesses are failing, many because of greed and mismanagement. This post attempts to provide some support to those that have suffered setbacks at this time.

This is a time of character. Because our current circumstances have resulted from a deficit of character, we are being asked as individuals and as a society to come to another level of character excellence. We have entered a collective, initiatory crucible.

One test of character that we must demonstrate we are capable of meeting is Perseverance. Perseverance is the ability to maintain forward progress towards our dreams despite obstacles, challenges and setbacks. Perseverance is the gumption to overcome fear, loss, fatigue, suffering, disappointment and illness. This demands a strong heart supported by a strong will. 

The Greek dramatist, Euripedes suggests: “To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man (or woman). The coward despairs.” (The addition in brackets is mine.)

Every journey of meaning will contain stretches that test the Visionmaker’s courage to the point of choosing whether to quit or continue. There will be temptation after temptation to quit as part of the status quo’s concerted effort to rid the world of one more Visionmaker. The seduction sounds so reasonable:

 

“You gave it your best shot…”

 

“It’s an idea the world isn’t ready for…”

 

“The game is rigged…”

 

“Better to try a less risky, less difficult path…”

 

“You can’t change the world…”

 

The Flame of Perseverance comes to those who are more committed to the journey of meaning than they are to fear. It is a refuge and a light during times of darkness and doubt. Turning his or her back to the status quo’s insistent campaign to have us quit, the Visionmaker turns to the flame and continues the journey undaunted. 

Setting our sights on the next step, we move forward repeating the mantra:

“Commitment…take the next step.”

“Persistence…take the next step.”

“Resilience…take the next step.”

“Patience…take the next step.”

“Hope…take the next step.”

 

“Drop by drop collected will make a river,” writes Sa’di, the great Persian poet. “Rivers upon rivers will make a sea.” And so it is with pursuing a journey of meaning: one purposeful act at a time. Perseverance delivers the greatest success in the face of overwhelming odds. Take the next step.

©Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

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Visionmakers are committed to the expansion of their own vision.  As a result of this commitment, they remain vigilant to three other conditions that threaten 20:20 sight: skilled unawareness, fixed perspectives, and denial. (Please refer to The Obstructions of Vision category to see past entries on this topic.)

Skilled unawareness is a term coined by Chris Argyris, a pioneer of organizational learning. Argyris argues that blind spots, gaps and inconsistencies are designed behaviors. He suggests that “human beings have designs that keep them unaware of their errors and they are unaware of these designs.” One such design is the ability to replicate these behaviors expertly, and without consciously having to think about them. Defensiveness keeps these designs hidden and operational. 

Brilliant insight.

Visionmakers seek to interrupt skilled unawareness by being open to coaching. Working with someone who can assist in making the invisible visible is one means of dismantling such an insidious pattern.

Fixed perspectives also limit vision because the will becomes engaged behind a singular viewpoint, blinding us to anything other than what we wish to see. Fixed perspectives are held in place by the need to be right and to win. Thus, we have given up a commitment to see in order to dominate others, hardly the commitment of a Visionmaker.

Often, we only become aware of fixed perspectives when we are in conflict with the point of view of others or when we are trying to control situations and people’s thoughts, behavior, actions and reactions. Of course, we all suffer from the tyranny of our own certainties, so everyone has work to do on this obstruction to avoid becoming self-righteous control freaks. 

Visionmakers attempt to mature vision by broadening their perspectives. One practice in support of this is hosting different points of view. This is a commitment to curiosity rather protecting a position. Curiosity is the vehicle by which we enter someone’s world to explore the unfamiliar and understand how they construct their point of view.  We rarely see this practiced in today’s world, where it has become a blood sport to deconstruct the views of others. This deconstruction usually comes with some form of ridicule, sarcasm and derision. Any political panel discussion on television is sufficient example of the practice.

We don’t necessarily have to relinquish our own perspectives as we seek to broaden vision, but quite often, seeking more information and understanding about how others view the world softens our righteousness and expands what we are able to see and learn.

Denial is a third obstruction to seeing. It is a sophisticated psychological defense mechanism that kicks in when the facts become so uncomfortable that they cannot be accepted and are rejected rather than examined.

Most often this rejection comes in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Denial may be total, partial as a way to minimize the evidence, or the person involved may claim no responsibility in the matter at hand as a means of dismissing it. In this pattern, we often deny facts, responsibility, the impact of our words and actions, and when pushed against the wall, deny that we are in denial.

Denial is a form of self-deception. It can be produced by stress, conflict, painful thoughts, and threatening situations. 

This pattern behavior signals to Visionmakers that there is work to do. Strengthening can be accomplished through the recovery of the strong heart, where courage resides. Unresolved issues based in the past must be brought to closure and fears must be faced in order to interrupt denial. These all cause denial.

Tough work to break the obstructions to vision, but necessary if we are to expand our vision beyond fear.

©Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

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With almost half of the world’s population surviving on less than two dollars a day and one fifth on less than one dollar, global progress in the fight against poverty in developing countries is declining

Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist, has recognized that one important cause of third world impoverishment is the absence of deeded property.  De Soto’s quest is to help the poor acquire legal rights to the property they live on. In a New York Times Magazine story by Mathew Miller, de Soto said:

“Imagine a country… where nobody can identify who owns what, addresses cannot be verified and the rules that govern property vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, or even from street to street.”

This is what life is like, he says, for 80 percent of the people in the developing world and the former Communist Countries. Through ‘extra-legal’ businesses and home building, de Soto reckons, the world’s poor have accumulated assets worth $9 trillion – 20 times the direct foreign investment in the third world since the Berlin Wall fell and more than 46 times as much as the World Bank has lent in the last three decades.”

Because these assets are not legally titled, they cannot function as capital. Hernando de Soto’s proposition is simple: the legal ratification of ownership creating collateral.  Hernando de Soto contends that such formalization would effectively “turn ‘dead capital’ into fuel for growth.” 

Governments of Mexico, Egypt, the Philippines, Haiti, and other public and private sector leaders, are exploring how de Soto’s vision could be applied locally. On the problem of determining property lines where no formal systems of titling exist, de Soto’s solution is as pragmatic as it is visionary:

“You know when you have crossed onto someone else’s property in Bali because – a different dog barks.  The dogs know.”

One man’s simple idea… an idea that could change the world. Extraordinary challenges require extraordinary leadership. That leadership must come from each of us.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

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• The present and the future live side by side in this moment.  We have been taught to see them as contiguous.  They are in fact concurrent. Chance is the spark that occurs when the present and the future touch.

• Chance confronts us every day. This confrontation reveals three things: the work that we have done to fund our generative powers, the work that we have not done, and the work we need to do.

• Chance comes when your back is against the wall, when you have nothing to lose. Chance comes when you place yourself on the line, when you take a stand for something that matters. Chance comes when you have immersed yourself so deeply in something that you forget you are you. Chance was always there anyway.  It just takes full commitment to catch a glimpse of the obvious.

• Our certainties limit Chance.  Chance cannot penetrate a closed mind.  Perhaps it is the only place it cannot go.  Open your mind and improve your Chances.

• The eyes and ears are the receptors of Chance. Chance is empirical. It likes to be seen and heard. 

• Anticipation is required to capitalize on Chance. What is anticipation? It is the partnership of optimism and readiness.

• Synchronicity is Chance’s calling card. When events converge in remarkable ways, we know that Chance is trying to get our attention. But why, we ask?  What is the mystery that is unfolding in front of our eyes? The only way to find out is to follow the clues. 

• Second Chances come to us through positive changes that resulted from first Chances. That’s called continuous improvement.

• Living is an experiment. It’s full of opportunities and challenges. Outcomes are derived from our attitude during the experiment. If we are open, positive and excited to be alive, Chances are that our outcomes will support our outlook. If we are closed, negative and resentful about living, Chances are that our outcomes will support our outlook. The good news is we get to choose.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.

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