In This Issue

Feature
Power Invisible
by Frances Moore Lappé

As long as we conceive of power as the capacity to exert one’s will over another, it is something to be wary of. Power can manipulate, coerce, and destroy. And as long as we are convinced we have none, power will always look negative. But power means simply our capacity to act. Many Americans are returning power to its original meaning—“to be able.” From this lens, we each have power—and often, much more power than we think.

Culture, not fixed aspects of human nature, largely determines the prevalence of cooperation or brutality, honesty or deceit. And since we create culture through our daily choices, then we do, each of us, wield enormous power. In fact, we have no choice about whether to be world changers. If we accept ecology’s insights that we exist in densely woven networks, then we must also accept that every choice we make sends out ripples, even if we’re not consciously choosing. So the choice we have is not whether, but only how, we change the world.

Systems Stories
Reverse Blueprinting in a Creative Mode
by Anastassios Perdicoulis

Human-built systems in engineering and architecture start with a well-documented design: a plan or a blueprint. This design guides the construction, allows troubleshooting upon breakdown, and permits repairs or modifications to the system. Natural systems, however, come with no such documentation. To be able to work with them, environmental engineers and landscape architects can “reverse engineer” the system and create “reverse blueprints”—
models that can be openly communicated, questioned, and discussed. Planners often use reverse blueprints to assess development strategies. This article looks the use of these models in the creative part of planning—that is, discovering the right actions that will satisfy a project’s objectives.

From the Resource Shelf
Turn to the Crowd for Diverse Ideas
by Edward Miller

Are experts really smarter than the rest of us? Most would have us think so, but according to James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds, the answer depends on the circumstances. He contends that, in certain situations, “randomly assembled groups of nonexperts consistently demonstrate more astuteness than individual experts.” He cites examples from honeybees to horserace odds, from Google’s algorithms to Wikipedia’s consensus-edited data. The relevance to management is that most organizational cultures still overvalue experts. To be really smart, leaders need to tap into the wisdom of the crowd they have assembled in the organization, as well as outside stakeholders.

From the Headlines
Compounding Interest in the U.S. Economy
by Janice Molloy

The daily headlines testify to the dire state of the U.S. economy. Many of the contributing factors fall into the category of reinforcing dynamics, in which a problem builds on itself over time. One such vicious cycle involves the fall of home prices and the tightening of credit. The good news about a reinforcing process is that it can work in the opposite direction—under the right circumstances, a vicious cycle can become virtuous. The other fact about reinforcing processes is that they eventually hit a limit and play themselves out. Unfortunately, these abstract dynamics can create real hardship for many people.

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