You may be aware of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that has begun. You may also be aware of the “99 Percenters” and how these two things are connected.

But, in case you weren’t aware — or if you don’t know what it’s all about — I wanted to do my part to spread the news.

(Frankly, I’m surprised an uprising took this long to get going.)

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a group of people who are fed up with the way things have been going in the U.S. They see their actions as a type of Arab Spring against the establishment. There are five basic themes of the movement, which are pretty well described in this summary article on Good (this article is politically slanted to the left, but their categories seem fair).

The overarching issues connecting the movement are:

1. Affordable health care
2. Jobs
3. Home stability, affordability & mortgage debt
4. Education not connecting to jobs
5. Debt (credit card, school, etc.)

I don’t think I have to belabor the pain of this — I have no doubt that you can personally relate to struggles/frustrations in at least one of these themes. What I want to point out is something else:

These all have to do with WORK.

1. The best health care in the U.S. is provided through employers we work for.
2. Jobs are obviously a pretty big part of work.
3. We can afford to live in a home because we work.
4. Education isn’t providing a direct path to meaningful work (or often, work of any kind).
5. Debt may be personal choice to a large degree, but there’s no question that for me, at least, if my work situation had been better throughout my twenties I would have a hell of a lot less debt today.

To me it seems pretty simple: Wall Street is being occupied because WE NEED A WORK REVOLUTION.

The challenging part is that this problem won’t likely be solved through government involvement. Are there things that government can do to help? Sure, but that’s not where the real power lies.

Now, more than ever before in human history, the power lies in the people.

If we, the people, can find a way to change the way we work, we will change everything.

We are fed up with these problems, are we not?

Work is where we fix them all.

What will you do to help the revolution?

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(Due to the holiday on Monday and the time-sensitive info here, I thought I’d post this a few days early. I hope you’ll join us for the important discussion on July 13.)

Just beyond our sight, bubbling beneath the waves and simmering behind the scenes, there is a silent revolution happening. This is not a movement of guns and knives, but of goodness and creativity. It is a complete “turn around” (i.e. “revolution”) in mindset — a new way to think about how work intersects with our lives.

THE PROBLEM

Most of us spend more of our lives “at work” than we do with our families, relaxing on beaches, or anywhere else. This isn’t inherently a problem — good work is something humans need.

The problem is that the great majority of us don’t have “good work.” Instead, we exist somewhere on the continuum between abject hatred for our job and a mild ambivalence which allows us to stay just engaged enough to collect a paycheck. This is to say nothing about actually being able to LOVE what we do at work (currently, 77% of people working for companies are not passionate about what they do).

This tragic situation is a waste of our collective resources, a waste of our individual talents, and a waste of our lives. It cannot be allowed to continue.

WHAT IS THIS “WORK REVOLUTION”?

We are the tribe of revolutionaries who will end the reign of miserable work.

The Work Revolution is a movement committed to fundamentally reinventing business to help everyone (and we do mean everyone) have an opportunity to enjoy life-giving, meaningful work.

As individuals, we are passionate about different components of this process (and this is how it must be, for the task at hand is rather large). We are leaders of companies, entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, and employees. We know that change happens faster when it comes from all directions.

Together, we are passionate about helping our businesses become more sustainable, more human, and more meaningful.

CORE VIRTUES

Every tribe has core values: those things which float like a conscience in the background and guide its decisions. Here, we call them virtues. Using this word reminds us that everything we do should be somehow pushing humanity in a positive direction. Our work must always be for the common good.

Action.

There are plenty of places for great idea exchange (this one comes to mind). But we are about ideas with clothes on – until our ideas start tangibly helping people, they aren’t realizing their potential. We’re the people who make cool sh*t happen.

Angles.

We are interdisciplinary, holistic, and obsessed with letting people do more of what they’re good at. We deliberately seek out different perspectives because we know that we’ve all got blind spots. We’re the people who know that we don’t know everything.

All our decisions will be guided by these principles. (Full disclosure: this list is likely to grow and change as the movement evolves.)

WHERE DO I FIT / WHAT DO I DO?

You are a critical part of this campaign. I cannot fix this problem alone, and, frankly, neither can you. But together, WE can change the world.

And we will.

The short answer to the question of where you fit is: “wherever your strengths and passions intersect with the mission of the tribe.” We need you exactly in the place where you are most alive.

(If by chance you forgot our mission, it’s this: To fundamentally reinvent business so everyone can enjoy life-giving, meaningful work.)

By joining this group, you’re committing to two things: 1) adopting a habit of continual learning about how the world is changing and 2) doing something to push work in a more positive direction.

WHAT DOES THE REVOLUTION DO?

First, it gathers revolutionaries. There are way more of us out there than any one of us knows about. (You may have felt alone in your quest… I know I have — but we are not!) The Work Revolution will create ways to connect amazing, action-oriented people to each other, in the knowledge that we can do so much more together than we ever could alone. These connections will happen in a virtual space and (hopefully soon) in physical meetups.

Second, it helps support revolutionaries. The Work Revolution will spread new ideas, great frameworks and models, and helpful tools to the people who are doing great work to disrupt the status quo (that’d be you).

Third, it spreads the good word about a new way to work. There are many people out there who do not believe there is a better way to work, simply because they have never seen any evidence of it. The Work Revolution will tell the stories of work revolutionaries to the rest of the world.

WHAT’S NEXT?

If you haven’t already, please join the tribe. (I know this isn’t a very sexy entrance; we’ll have a better one soon!)

Also, I would like to invite you to join in an important discussion about where The Work Revolution is headed. We will be partnering with the phenomenal “Four Years. Go.” movement in a Collaborative Café event, which is a dialogue that happens virtually (call in with phone or Skype). The purpose of these events is to offer our collective intelligence and resources to support and refine a new idea/concept/movement. In this case, the idea is The Work Revolution, and we will be brainstorming ways to move it forward!

This call will happen on Wednesday, July 13 at 10:30am PDT / 1:30pm EDT. It’s open to any and all current or would-be revolutionaries.

It’s totally free, and you can click here to register.

I hope you’ll join us. ¡Viva la Revolution!

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What makes America great is not our endless preoccupation with liberty or freedom (those things are great, but they’re more effects than than they are causes).

It’s not our military force or our Constitution (impressive creations, perhaps, but still not the source of greatness).

It’s not our our radical inclusiveness or endless diversity (again, more of an outcome — though I must say I am very proud of those things when we do them right).

Like most things (true for organizations and leaders, for example), it’s the WHY that makes America great.

It is the underlying motivation of our founders — WHY this country exists, in the first place — that has made it a great place to live for many years.

At its core, America was founded on the idea that certain ways of treating other human beings are NOT OK. Our architects rebelled under a banner that said, “If people are not being treated rightly, it is up to us to speak up and change it.”

What makes America great is our fundamental passion to challenge the nature of societal entropy. It’s an internal fire that makes us stand up and shout, “THAT IS NOT OK!” — and then, even more importantly, to DO something to change it.

What makes America great is our desire to grow, to evolve, to become something better than we were. And because this started with our founders, this catalytic energy is somehow baked into our DNA.

To be sure, we make (and have made) our share of mistakes, but greatness isn’t defined by the fact that we do stupid things, but that we FIX them and don’t repeat them. That we now recognize the equality of different genders and races, for example, and that we’ve changed our systems to reflect this new way of thinking.

Why am I bringing all this up?

Because a moment very similar to 1776 is upon us again. But this time, the threat is not an oppressive country “out there,” but the institutional systems we built, right here.

At this very moment, far too Americans are suffering at the hands of a economic system that is tragically unjust and unfair. It is unsustainable at best and will be our complete undoing at worst.

It is NOT OK for corporate profits to be soaring while so many people remain un- or under-employed.

It is NOT OK for incomes to be this disparate.

It is NOT OK for jobs to pay so much less than what people need to live.

It is NOT OK for 82% of our people to not be passionate about the work they do. (82%!?)

It is NOT OK for people to die making our gadgets (this may happen overseas, but these are our companies).

It is NOT OK.

As Americans, we have a duty to do something to change the status quo.

Those in power have no reason to change. But that is the very reason revolutions happen.

Will you stand up? Will you do something?

America is great today because a fiery group of rebels believed SO STRONGLY that they could create a better life that they went to war with the greatest empire on earth. I do not believe today’s revolution is one of violence, but it will take the same spirit.

Do we believe in a better life that much?

What will it take to upset you enough to do something?

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P.S. Today marks the 43rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. In honor of his life and activism, GOOD posted a terrific article today that is along the lines of this post. Check it out here.

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Further recommended reading:
Dutch bankers’ bonuses axed by people power from The Observer
Vietnam by Bob Lefsetz
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% from Vanity Fair

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We’ve been hearing a lot about Google “going evil” over the last week or so. I just read this article, which sent me to the FCC page I link to at the end of this post and also caused me to write the following.

This is why net neutrality matters to me, in just a few words.

In a very real way, the collaborative power of the internet is the greatest hope we have for a better future for our children and grandchildren. It allows our collective ideas and brainpower to spread exponentially — imagine what future generations will be able to do with this compounding of information, knowledge, and wisdom?

The continuing neutrality of the internet is what will allow emerging generations to collaborate on, invent, and champion new and innovative solutions to the world’s greatest problems. To allow today’s controlling interests to usurp the future creativity of our descendants is a Free Speech violation of the grandest and most destructive kind.

It is short-sighted and selfish for any single entity (or entities) to claim control of something that rightfully belongs to the collective of humanity.

If you agree, and would like to do something to help make sure a creative and collaborative future is the one we create, please visit SaveTheInternet.com’s FCC page here. Feel free to copy any or all of my comments if they are helpful to you.

Photo by Mark Knol on Flickr.

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American author and poet Alice Walker has a quote I love which says, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

This is so true, and everyone I know does it — including me. It’s so much easier to pretend like a victim of __________ (whatever our current problem is), to think there’s nothing that can be done about a situation. It abdicates us of responsibility.

But it’s often not that hard to do something.

I recently watched a fascinating documentary called Food, Inc., which I highly recommend.

The most important thing I learned from this film is that we have more power than we think. It’s easy to look at something like our industrial food system, for example, and say, “That is far too big for me to impact.” But that’s not true. It is the collective consuming “us” who actually have the leverage, through the things we choose to eat and the items we decide to buy. Nobody makes us purchase anything, but through those choices, we are voting for what we believe in — because those companies are tracking every single thing we buy.

My wife and I were walking around Target this weekend getting household products (windex, toilet cleaner, etc.), and we decided to pay the extra thirty cents and go for the “natural” products. Are they completely natural? Maybe not, but it’s clearly a step in the right direction for product manufacturers. And we have the power to vote that they should make more of these kind of products, every time we buy them.

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I saw Michael Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, on opening day. This was my first viewing of one of his documentaries (I know, I know, the rest are on my list, OK?).

Love him, hate him, or otherwise, I think this is an important film for most everyone to see. The stories are heart-wrenching, in a really good way, and his points are good.

I have two thoughts about it.

First, I’m not sure he’s using the word “capitalism” correctly. Leaving this film I got the impression that Michael equates “capitalism” with “greed, tyranny, and abuse of power.” These can clearly be effects of capitalism (God knows we’ve seen enough of that in the last year), but they are no more defining to the concept than “healthy competition,” or “innovation” — effects of capitalism which allow people to, say, make movies. I don’t have a suggestion for a better title — Ingloriously Greedy Wall Street Basterds has kind of already been taken, and just doesn’t have the same marketable ring — but vilifying the concept of capitalism isn’t exactly fair, either.

In addition, it occurred to me, more than once during the film, that the heinous acts Michael is describing could not have occurred without significant government involvement. To be fair, he actually points this out multiple times… but then stops short of seeing the contradiction in his argument. If government is involved in the ways he says they are, we’re actually not talking about capitalism anymore because the free market has been drastically tampered with.

These two thoughts aside, it is a fantastically enjoyable film.

P.S. The “Cleveland” segment made me laugh so hard I was crying. If you’ve seen it, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

P.P.S. Here’s a great article by a great author on the subject.

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Last night (October 3, 2009) the headline of The Huffington Post, in characteristic bold red letters, said:

CALIFORNIA:
America’s first failed state?

The linked article is here, and its tagline reads:

Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?

(A little reading soundtrack for your enjoyment, courtesy of Rufus Wainwright.)

This–California–is where I live. While it’s not a surprise to me that something has gone (and continues to go) horribly wrong, it’s still rather sobering to read about it on the front page of The Huffington Post, which linked to an article written by The Observer… in the UK. Paul Harris, the author of this article, makes some terrific points. For example, I knew California’s economy was large but never put it together that if the state of California was an independent country, it would be a member of the G8. That is ridiculously huge.

The fact that this article was written by somebody stationed halfway around the world and not by someone in, say, Sacramento, is disturbing. But a distant author might actually be indicative of the crisis itself.

I think most of us on the “outside” recognize that we have a system problem, here. Some even say that there’s a movement in the current legislature to have a constitutional convention next year to discuss starting from scratch. While I’d be an advocate for this, I’m not convinced it could ever be a reality.

Why? In the world of systems, change is difficult. Very difficult.

First, it is dreadfully hard for the individuals inside the system to even see what’s going on within it. It’s like teaching a fish about water. By the nature of what it takes to get into politics, many representatives have been swimming in the system since Day 1. It is a rare individual who can be indoctrinated into a system and still have the critical awareness to identify its weaknesses.

Second, even if an individual can see the root problems, the entire system is biased against letting it change. A system exists because it (originally, at least) simplified problems and streamlined things. But just like a person, a system can become greedy. Once a collective crosses this line, the system stops questioning its processes and begins to enter a type of “survival instinct” mode, where most of its actions exist solely to keep the system functioning in the same way it always has.

But organizationally this never works. Why? Because the world surrounding the organization is constantly CHANGING. A static organization cannot be profitable (in any sense: monetarily, socially, etc.) in a dynamic world.

This is the unending challenge of systems, and why leadership is imperative. True leaders may be the only thing that can break this cycle.

A good friend of mine told me that Newt Gingrich recently said he has his eye on California. The reason is simple: the majority of the country is following our path. If we can figure a way out of this mess, the larger country has hope.

C’mon Cali. We can do this.

UPDATE (10/5): Consulting firm Bain & Company’s L.A. office have released a very informative report on related issues. Check it out here (Exec Summary, bottom of page).

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For the last few months the Obama administration has been making a pretty big deal out of health care, and I figured it was time for me to have at least a basic understanding of what’s going on. So, I’ve been doing my research, trying to navigate the mired mass of nonsense that is “the health care debate.” I’ve read a lot, watched far too much news, wasted my life on commentary shows… you name it, I’ve been doing it.

Turns out, nobody has a bloody clue what’s going on.

Finally, thanks to my friend Nate, I got hold of an article that finally shed some light on the systemic problems I’ve sensed, but never knew enough about to articulate. The author is a man by the name of David Goldhill, who, sadly, had to watch his father deteriorate in a dreary hospital for many weeks before finally dying in order to get the insider knowledge it took to catalyze this insightful piece.

To date, it’s literally the only thing that has made any sense to me, and I wanted to do my small part to spread the word.

You can find the original article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200909/health-care. If you’d like to download a PDF version, click here. I know many of you may not feel like you have time to read a twenty page article, so I tried to create an abridged version below as well (page numbers correspond to the PDF).

Thanks for your great work, David! Here’s hoping we can actually see something resembling your ideas become a reality.

INSURANCE IS A BIG PART OF THE PROBLEM (p. 5-6)

How often have you heard a politician say that millions of Americans “have no health care,” when he or she meant they have no health insurance? How has a method of financing health care become synonymous with care itself?

The reason for financing at least some of our health care with an insurance system is obvious. We all worry that a serious illness or an accident might one day require urgent, extensive care, imposing an extreme financial burden on us. In this sense, health-care insurance is just like all other forms of insurance—life, property, liability—where the many who face a risk share the cost incurred by the few who actually suffer a loss.

But health insurance is different from every other type of insurance. Health insurance is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are unexpected and large, but for nearly all health-care expenses. We’ve become so used to health insurance that we don’t realize how absurd that is. We can’t imagine paying for gas with our auto-insurance policy, or for our electric bills with our homeowners insurance, but we all assume that our regular checkups and dental cleanings will be covered at least partially by insurance. Most pregnancies are planned, and deliveries are predictable many months in advance, yet they’re financed the same way we finance fixing a car after a wreck—through an insurance claim.

The use of insurance to fund virtually all care is itself a major cause of health care’s high expense.

Insurance is probably the most complex, costly, and distortional method of financing any activity; that’s why it is otherwise used to fund only rare, unexpected, and large costs. Imagine sending your weekly grocery bill to an insurance clerk for review, and having the grocer reimbursed by the insurer to whom you’ve paid your share. An expensive and wasteful absurdity, no?

THE EFFECT OF MORAL HAZARD (p. 6-7)

“Moral hazard” is the tendency we all have to change our behavior, becoming spendthrifts and otherwise taking less care with our decisions, when someone else is covering the costs.

Every time you walk into a doctor’s office, it’s implicit that someone else will be paying most or all of your bill; for most of us, that means we give less attention to prices for medical services than we do to prices for anything else. Most physicians, meanwhile, benefit financially from ordering diagnostic tests, doing procedures, and scheduling follow-up appointments. Combine these two features of the system with a third—the informational advantage that extensive training has given physicians over their patients, and the authority that advantage confers—and you have a system where physicians can, to some extent, generate demand at will.

For almost all our health-care needs, the current system allows us as consumers to ask providers, “What’s my share?” instead of “How much does this cost?”—a question we ask before buying any other good or service. And the subtle difference between those two questions is costing us all a fortune.

THE GOV’T IS NOT GOOD AT COST REDUCTION (p.

Every proposal for health-care reform has featured some element of cost control to “balance” the inflationary impact of expanding access. Yet it goes without saying that in the big picture, all government efforts to control costs have failed.

Cost control is a feature of decentralized, competitive markets, not of centralized bureaucracy—a matter of incentives, not mandates. What’s more, cost control is dynamic. Even the simplest business faces constant variation in its costs for labor, facilities, and capital; to compete, management must react quickly, efficiently, and, most often, prospectively. By contrast, government bureaucracies set regulations and reimbursement rates through carefully evaluated and broadly applied rules. These bureaucracies first must notice market changes and resource misallocations, and then (sometimes subject to political considerations) issue additional regulations or change reimbursement rates to address each problem retrospectively.

A RIDICULOUS LACK OF COMPETITION (p. 10)

The net effect of the endless layers of health-care regulation is to stifle competition in the classic economic sense. What we have instead is a noncompetitive system where services and reimbursement are negotiated above consumers’ heads by large private and government institutions. And the primary goal of any large noncompetitive institution is not cost control or product innovation or customer service: it’s maintenance of the status quo.

THE GOVERNMENT LOVES HOSPITALS (p.10)

Many hospitals still exist in their current form largely because they are protected by regulation and favored by government payment policies, which effectively maintain the existing industrial structure, rather than encouraging innovation.

Hospitals are indeed required to provide emergency care to any walk-in patient, and this obligation is a meaningful public service. But how do we know whether the charitable benefit from this requirement justifies the social cost of expensive hospital care and poor quality? We don’t know. Our system of health-care law and regulation has so distorted the functioning of the market that it’s impossible to measure the social costs and benefits of maintaining hospitals’ prominence. And again, the distortions caused by a reluctance to pay directly for health care—in this case, emergency medicine for the poor—are in large part to blame.

YOU ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER (p. 12)

In case you wonder who a care provider’s real customer is, try reading one of these [hospital] bills. [Or] try discussing prices with hospitals and other providers. Eight years ago, my wife needed an MRI, but we did not have health insurance. I called up several area hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices—all within about a one-mile radius—to find the best price. I was surprised to discover that prices quoted, for an identical service, varied widely, and that the lowest price was $1,200. But what was truly astonishing was that several providers refused to quote any price. Only if I came in and actually ordered the MRI could we discuss price.

Keeping prices opaque is one way medical institutions seek to avoid competition and thereby keep prices up. And they get away with it in part because so few consumers pay directly for their own care—insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid are basically the whole game. But without transparency on prices—and the related data on measurable outcomes—efforts to give the consumer more control over health care have failed, and always will.

TECHNOLOGY IS GETTING MORE EXPENSIVE!? (p. 13)

One of the most widely held pieces of conventional wisdom about health care is that new technology is relentlessly driving up costs. Yet over the past 20 years, I’ve bought several generations of microwave ovens, personal computers, DVD players, GPS devices, mobile phones, and flat-screen TVs. I bank mostly at ATMs, check out my own goods at self-serve supermarket scanners, and attend company meetings by videoconference. Technology has transformed much of our daily lives, in almost all cases by adding quantity, speed, and quality while lowering costs. So why is health care different?

Well, for the most part, it isn’t. Whether it’s new drugs to control previously untreatable conditions, diagnostic equipment that enhances physician productivity, or minimally invasive techniques that speed patient recovery, technology-driven innovation has been transforming care at least as greatly as it has transformed the rest of our lives.
But most health-care technologies don’t exist in the same world as other technologies.

Recall the MRI my wife needed a few years ago: $1,200 for 20 minutes’ use of a then 20-year-old technology, requiring a little electricity and a little labor from a single technician and a radiologist. Why was the price so high? Most MRIs in this country are reimbursed by insurance or Medicare, and operate in the limited-competition, nontransparent world of insurance pricing. I don’t even know the price of many of the diagnostic services I’ve needed over the years—usually I’ve just gone to whatever provider my physician recommended, without asking (my personal contribution to the moral-hazard economy).

“COMPREHENSIVE” REFORM (p. 14-15)

How would the health-care reform that’s now taking shape solve these core problems? The Obama administration and Congress are still working out the details, but it looks like this generation of “comprehensive” reform will not address the underlying issues, any more than previous efforts did. Instead it will put yet more patches on the walls of an edifice that is fundamentally unsound—and then build that edifice higher.

A central feature of the reform plan is the expansion of comprehensive health insurance to most of the 46 million Americans who now lack private or public insurance. Whether this would be achieved entirely through the extension of private commercial insurance at government-subsidized rates, or through the creation of a “public option,” perhaps modeled on Medicare, is still being debated.

Regardless, the administration has suggested a cost to taxpayers of $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That, of course, will mean another $1 trillion or more not spent on other things—environment, education, nutrition, recreation. And if the history of previous attempts to expand the health safety net are any guide, that estimate will prove low.

SOLUTIONS
I wanted to include some of his suggestions for solutions, but found it difficult to create a fair “short” version, as they seem drastic without proper explanation. I’d encourage you to check them out on pages 16-17.

As always, your thoughts below…

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I’ll keep this brief, as I’d love for you to consider taking the next 21 minutes to actually watch this video.

In The Story Of Stuff, Annie Leonard does a completely masterful job of illustrating how we get all our “stuff,” where it comes from and where it goes. To be frank, this might be the most important short film you see all year. Hopefully it will inspire you to pass it along and start the dialogue in your own specific circle.

Feel free to watch it here, below, or there’s a wonderful interactive presentation on the Story Of Stuff website.

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I don’t suppose there are too many things better to post on Christmas Eve than something about peace.

My friend Greg recently turned me on to this documentary, made by Mark Johnson, called “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music.”

I don’t want to ruin all the fun by telling you the story here; take 18 minutes or so and watch this video above… you’ll be glad you did. (Get a sample song, “Stand By Me,” below.)

Happy holidays my friends!

PBS chat transcript is here.
Playing For Change website is here.

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