- Sunday, 15 December 2013
What Happened On Easter Island — A New (Even Scarier) Scenario
by ROBERT KRULWICH
December 10, 2013 8:41 AM
We all know the story, or think we do.
Let me tell it the old way, then the new way. See which worries you most.
Robert Krulwich/NPR
First version: Easter Island is a small 63-square-mile patch of land — more than a thousand miles from the next inhabited spot in the Pacific Ocean. In A.D. 1200 (or thereabouts), a small group of Polynesians — it might have been a single family — made their way there, settled in and began to farm. When they arrived, the place was covered with trees — as many as 16 million of them, some towering 100 feet high.
These settlers were farmers, practicing slash-and-burn agriculture, so they burned down woods, opened spaces, and began to multiply. Pretty soon the island had too many people, too few trees, and then, in only a few generations, no trees at all.
Robert Krulwich/NPR
As Jared Diamond tells it in his best-selling book, Collapse, Easter Island is the "clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources." Once tree clearing started, it didn't stop until the whole forest was gone. Diamond called this self-destructive behavior "ecocide" and warned that Easter Island's fate could one day be our own.
When Captain James Cook visited there in 1774, his crew counted roughly 700 islanders (from an earlier population of thousands), living marginal lives, their canoes reduced to patched fragments of driftwood.
And that has become the lesson of Easter Island — that we don't dare abuse the plants and animals around us, because if we do, we will, all of us, go down together.
Robert Krulwich/NPR
And yet, puzzlingly, these same people had managed to carve enormous statues — almost a thousand of them, with giant, hollow-eyed, gaunt faces, some weighing 75 tons. The statues faced not outward, not to the sea, but inward, toward the now empty, denuded landscape. When Captain Cook saw them, many of these "moai" had been toppled and lay face down, in abject defeat.
OK, that's the story we all know, the Collapse story. The new one is very different.
A Story Of Success?
It comes from two anthropologists, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, from the University of Hawaii. They say, "Rather than a case of abject failure," what happened to the people on Easter Island "is an unlikely story of success."
Success? How could anyone call what happened on Easter Island a "success?"
Well, I've taken a look at their book, The Statues That Walked, and oddly enough they've got a case, although I'll say in advance what they call "success" strikes me as just as scary — maybe scarier.
Here's their argument: Professors Hunt and Lipo say fossil hunters and paleobotanists have found no hard evidence that the first Polynesian settlers set fire to the forest to clear land — what's called "large scale prehistoric farming." The trees did die, no question. But instead of fire, Hunt and Lipo blame rats.
Robert Krulwich/NPR
Polynesian rats (Rattus exulans) stowed away on those canoes, Hunt and Lipo say, and once they landed, with no enemies and lots of palm roots to eat, they went on a binge, eating and destroying tree after tree, and multiplying at a furious rate. As a reviewer in The Wall Street Journal reported,
In laboratory settings, Polynesian rat populations can double in 47 days. Throw a breeding pair into an island with no predators and abundant food and arithmetic suggests the result ... If the animals multiplied as they did in Hawaii, the authors calculate, [Easter Island] would quickly have housed between two and three million. Among the favorite food sources of R. exulans are tree seeds and tree sprouts. Humans surely cleared some of the forest, but the real damage would have come from the rats that prevented new growth.
As the trees went, so did 20 other forest plants, six land birds and several sea birds. So there was definitely less choice in food, a much narrower diet, and yet people continued to live on Easter Island, and food, it seems, was not their big problem.
Rat Meat, Anybody?
For one thing, they could eat rats. As J.B. MacKinnon reports in his new book, The Once and Future World, archeologists examined ancient garbage heaps on Easter Island looking for discarded bones and found "that 60 percent of the bones came from introduced rats."
So they'd found a meat substitute.
Robert Krulwich/NPR
What's more, though the island hadn't much water and its soil wasn't rich, the islanders took stones, broke them into bits, and scattered them onto open fields creating an uneven surface. When wind blew in off the sea, the bumpy rocks produced more turbulent airflow, "releasing mineral nutrients in the rock," J.B. MacKinnon says, which gave the soil just enough of a nutrient boost to support basic vegetables. One tenth of the island had these scattered rock "gardens," and they produced enough food, "to sustain a population density similar to places like Oklahoma, Colorado, Sweden and New Zealand today."
According to MacKinnon, scientists say that Easter Island skeletons from that time show "less malnutrition than people in Europe." When a Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggevin, happened by in 1722, he wrote that islanders didn't ask for food. They wanted European hats instead. And, of course, starving folks typically don't have the time or energy to carve and shove 70-ton statues around their island.
A 'Success' Story?
Why is this a success story?
Because, say the Hawaiian anthropologists, clans and families on Easter Island didn't fall apart. It's true, the island became desolate, emptier. The ecosystem was severely compromised. And yet, say the anthropologists, Easter Islanders didn't disappear. They adjusted. They had no lumber to build canoes to go deep-sea fishing. They had fewer birds to hunt. They didn't have coconuts. But they kept going on rat meat and small helpings of vegetables. They made do.
Robert Krulwich/NPR
One niggling question: If everybody was eating enough, why did the population decline? Probably, the professors say, from sexually transmitted diseases after Europeans came visiting.
OK, maybe there was no "ecocide." But is this good news? Should we celebrate?
I wonder. What we have here are two scenarios ostensibly about Easter Island's past, but really about what might be our planet's future. The first scenario — an ecological collapse — nobody wants that. But let's think about this new alternative — where humans degrade their environment but somehow "muddle through." Is that better? In some ways, I think this "success" story is just as scary.
The Danger Of 'Success'
What if the planet's ecosystem, as J.B. MacKinnon puts it, "is reduced to a ruin, yet its people endure, worshipping their gods and coveting status objects while surviving on some futuristic equivalent of the Easter Islanders' rat meat and rock gardens?"
Humans are a very adaptable species. We've seen people grow used to slums, adjust to concentration camps, learn to live with what fate hands them. If our future is to continuously degrade our planet, lose plant after plant, animal after animal, forgetting what we once enjoyed, adjusting to lesser circumstances, never shouting, "That's It!" — always making do, I wouldn't call that "success."
The Lesson? Remember Tang, The Breakfast Drink
People can't remember what their great-grandparents saw, ate and loved about the world. They only know what they know. To prevent an ecological crisis, we must become alarmed. That's when we'll act. The new Easter Island story suggests that humans may never hit the alarm.
It's like the story people used to tell about Tang, a sad, flat synthetic orange juice popularized by NASA. If you know what real orange juice tastes like, Tang is no achievement. But if you are on a 50-year voyage, if you lose the memory of real orange juice, then gradually, you begin to think Tang is delicious.
On Easter Island, people learned to live with less and forgot what it was like to have more. Maybe that will happen to us. There's a lesson here. It's not a happy one.
As MacKinnon puts it: "If you're waiting for an ecological crisis to persuade human beings to change their troubled relationship with nature — you could be waiting a long, long time."
- Wednesday, 06 November 2013
You might Want To Go to This Leadership Seminar with Lisa Marie Platsky:
When I was deciding what to name the Leadership Success Summit before it was ever the Leadership Success Summit, I remembered back to my days when I used to rock climb.
As every successful climber knows, the journey begins before you start your climb.
I used to spend time preparing myself physically and mentally, as well as getting my equipment ready before I ever set foot on the mountain.
And, if you're serious about reaching the summit, you have to map out the best route, knowing that you may encounter obstacles along the way.
This is exactly the way I felt about leadership.
If you want to make it to the top, you've got to have all of the right tools and equipment for the trek.
While the road may be arduous and rocky, when you get there the view will be awe-inspiring, and you'll get to:
Enjoy Work You Love
Position Yourself to Be Seen as an Expert (Leader)
Leverage Your Expertise for the Clarity, Connections, & Cash You Want
Get the Appreciation, Recognition and Rewards You Deserve
Open the Door to Big Opportunities
www.LeadershipSuccessSummit.com/about-the-event
Rock climbing isn't for everyone. You've got to prepare well and stay the course so that you don't lose your footing or tire yourself out.
Mapping out a clearand direct path is critical to making the climb a success as you stand at the peak taking in the view, overwhelmed by your accomplishment.
As you think about your own journey to what you want, it's critical to have that same clear path to get to the top with ease.
If you haven't taken the time to prepare yourself, you're never going to get there.
On my personal leadership journey, through research I identified the 7 pillars you must have if you want to get to the summit with ease.
They are:
1. Start with a written PLAN, beginning with the end in mind.
2. Know your PERSONALITY.
3. Build powerful PARTNERSHIPS.
4. Create a meaningful and memorable PRESENCE.
5. Live your PRIORITIES.
6. Evaluate your PROGRESS.
7. Invest in PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT.
If you're missing any of these pillars, you may never make it.
Before you put all of your gear in your pack and get started on your trip, assess what might be missing and what you are going to do about it. (Note: You may be missing out on big results without even realizing why.)
And, then get climbing!
Grateful for you,
Lisa Marie
p.s. Get equipped for success by learning how to implement the 7 pillars effortlessly at the Leadership Success Summit, January 24th and 25th, 2014 so that you leverage your expertise and get the connections, clarity, and cash you deserve.
Click here for details and to register -
www.LeadershipSuccessSummit.com/about-the-event
- Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Malcolm Gladwell--On Why You Just Might Not Want To Send Your Child To Harvard--Listen, learn and be in gratitude for being able to so easily
access the bright minds of our time...
The one-of-a-kind journalist who’s out with a new book, DAVID AND GOLIATH.
download mp3
- Friday, 18 October 2013
"Blue Bottle" Branding & Stachi and Stachi Speak People--PLanet--Profit Values First
Creating an innovative and entrepreneurial culture that is collaborative, accountable to leadership actions and philanthropic in their partnering with nonprofits will benefit your brand identity, inspire employee engagement and lead the way in social impact investing. You change lives by engagement to the greater good.
Purpose, people, pleasure and profit are trumping the traditional product, price, place and promotion as the new “4 P’s of marketing,” Annie Longsworth told attendees at New Resource Bank’s re:think event on Oct. 3.
As CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S North America, a sustainability consulting and communications firm whose mission is to “make sustainability irresistible,” Longsworth works with both fledgling companies starting with a sustainability mindset and large corporations trying to redirect their operations onto a more sustainable path. In both cases, the new 4 P’s are central to building a sustainable brand.
Why?
Purpose: Longsworth cited London Business School research showing that a strategically coherent and well-communicated purpose accounts for an increase in financial gains of almost 20 percent, and that purpose represents 40 percent of an organization’s reputation.
People: “What do Intel and Seventh Generation have in common?” she asked. The answer: “They both incentivize employees based on environmental goals” by integrating sustainability targets into their employee bonus structures. If the people in your business don’t buy into your purpose and your sustainability vision, failure is practically assured. If they do buy in, employees can drive success and become the core carrier of your brand values, Longsworth said, noting that Tony Hsieh built Zappos into a store worth $800 million based on company culture. “HR is the heart of the brand.”
Pleasure: Fear of dire consequences may get people’s attention, but pleasure motivates them, she said. For example, companies like Method and Patagonia produce products that appeal to customers’ desires first. Sustainability is an intrinsic quality to both businesses’ products—it’s not a separate value.
Profit: It’s OK to talk about doing good and making a profit, said Longsworth, noting that “consumers see it as enabling companies to do more good work.” She cited Edelman’s 2012 Good Purpose survey , which found that people increasingly think it’s OK for brands to support good causes and make money at the same time (76 percent of respondents said so).
Blue Bottle’s Organic Approach
New Resource client Blue Bottle Coffee illustrates all those principles, probably none more vividly than pleasure.
Founder and CEO James Freeman started Blue Bottle in 2002, roasting coffee in a converted potting shed in Oakland and selling it at farmers markets. “I was basically just trying to make the kind of coffee I wanted to drink,” Freeman said. “It baffled some people and delighted others.”
It delighted enough of them that Blue Bottle now has four cafés and a kiosk in San Francisco; a production facility and café in Oakland, Calif.; four locations in New York; and new cafés under development in Los Angeles, Oakland and New York.
“It’s nice to have a plan, but I didn’t,” said Freeman, adding, “I meet people who are so into their plan they lose their product. We just grew every year. We do a lot of things that spring out of my desire to have them.”
People organized around a clear purpose is one thing that allows spontaneous ideas to take off successfully. Challenged by his managers a few years ago to come up with a mission statement, Freeman boiled it down to three words: deliciousness, hospitality and sustainability.
“It’s simple,” he said. “Any question that comes up we can basically answer by appealing to those words.”
Another key factor: “The investors and bankers I’ve chosen to work with haven’t said, ‘Well, James, you have to open 6.2 stores in the next year,’ and put me in a position where I had to do something that didn’t feel right.”
Blue Bottle is using its success to drive greater sustainability as well as expand to new markets. The company is working on a bean container with a recyclable vapor barrier that will give its product a shelf life without resorting to packaging that inevitably ends up in a landfill.
“As we grow, we’re able to afford more things like that, and it’s exciting,” Freeman said.
Look for more on Cause Marketing and B Corp Values soon!
- Monday, 14 October 2013
CORNER OFFICE
Four Executives on Succeeding in Business as a Woman
By ADAM BRYANT
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Clockwise from top left, Lisa Price, president of Carol’s Daughter, a beauty products company; Marjorie Kaplan, Group president at Animal Planet; Amy Schulman, general counsel at Pfizer; and Doreen Lorenzo, president of Quirky.
Gender inequality at work is “still an issue,” Ms. Lorenzo says. “It’s not better. There’s still a glass ceiling.”
When I started the Corner Office column more than four years and about 250 interviews ago, I set several guidelines for the conversations I would have with top executives about leadership.
I was going to pursue, for example, a diverse mix of voices, in terms of age, race, nationality and the kind of organizations they led. I would also interview a lot of women, though I planned never to ask them any gender-related questions. My thinking was simply to interview leaders who happened to be women, rather than focus on the fact that they were women leaders.
But a few things have happened. The vigorous debates started by Sheryl Sandberg, with her “Lean In” book, and by Anne-Marie Slaughter, with her provocative article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” in The Atlantic, suggest that we are not even close to being done with the gender conversation (though Janet Yellen’s nomination to lead the Fed is certainly a noteworthy milestone). I’ve also kept in touch with many of the women I’ve interviewed over the years, and I’ve heard from them a growing frustration with the stubbornly low number of women in executive suites.
Given that the arguments surrounding work-life balance have been so fully voiced, I decided to take a different tack, and add more insights to the discussion of leadership challenges that women face at work, apart from the juggling act.
So I went back for a second conversation with four women I had interviewed for Corner Office, to ask them to share stories about headwinds they have navigated over the years, and advice they would offer other women about succeeding at work.
Following are edited excerpts.
Amy Schulman
Executive vice president and general counsel; business unit lead, consumer health care, Pfizer
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Amy Schulman, named president of Pfizer Nutrition in 2010, increased revenue 15 percent, to $2.1 billion, over the following year, when the division was sold to Nestl for $11.85 billion.
Q.
What are some patterns you’ve noticed over the years about women at work, and things they could be doing better to advance their careers?
A.
One thing that happens at work is that women tend to hoard favors as if they were airline miles — you know, the hundreds of thousands of airplane miles that we’re saving for when we really need them. But “when we really need them” may never come. The trips are not going to happen, and we’ll be left with 800,000 airline miles.
There’s a parallel at work. You need to spend political capital — be unafraid to introduce people, compliment somebody when it’s deserved and stand up for something you really believe in, rather than just go with the flow. I don’t mean being a perennial troublemaker, but it’s about having conviction and courage. Spend that political capital you earn by being intellectually credible, by being a fighter for the people on your team when appropriate, and by arguing for principles that matter. Those are qualities that give you credit. If you’re waiting for the perfect moment to spend that capital, you’re going to be sidelined your whole career waiting to just kind of enter the ring.
Women can and should do a better job of helping one another to be in that transactional forum, and to get over the anxiety that we’re going to be found wanting on the wrong side of that equation. We’re undervaluing the role that we can play in the success of other people and the organization. So don’t be afraid to spend some of that political capital. You have to be well prepared, you have to be smart, you have to be on time, you have to be responsive, you have to be respectful, you have to have principles. But once you have all those things and you’ve built a track record, don’t wait for the perfect day.
Q.
Other things you have observed?
A.
There are some things around style that I’ve seen. I’m not a formal person, but I don’t find myself responding very well when there’s an assumption that there will be a connection by virtue of the fact that we share a gender. If somebody is trying to capitalize on the fact that I have said publicly that I support the advancement of women, and they use that as a proxy to gain access to me, I find that annoying.
The less subtle way of saying it is that trading on gender, in my mind, is impermissible as a man or a woman. Assuming that you’re entitled to something by virtue of your gender strikes me as not fair or right. Having said that, there are clearly implicit biases and assumptions that follow you by virtue of your gender and your race. Workplaces need to be aware of those and do something to counterbalance those as institutions. Leaders need to make sure that the organizations we create, run and drive are receptive to that diversity of voices, in both tone and substance.
Q.
You spent two decades working in law firms before you joined Pfizer. Any observations about the challenges women face that are specific to law firms?
A.
In my early years as a young lawyer, much of what you’re doing falls into the model of traditional female success, which is the “dutiful daughter.” It’s an expression from Adrienne Rich, and it means essentially “the good girl behind the scenes” — you’re not transgressing the roles that are expected of you. A good law associate is organized, methodical, writes things that other people sign, prepares draft arguments that other people deliver and is in a kind of perpetual apprenticeship role.
That’s often why law firms and other institutions say, “Gee, we have all these great women in the pipeline,” but then they don’t become partner. Part of that is about whether the women themselves are able to gracefully transition from being the dutiful daughter to a partner. But do the organizations reward and recognize the full range of behaviors?
Q.
So women and the companies they work for both have to help with that transition?
A.
It has to be both. One problem is that we say to women that you have to claim your voice. Don’t make statements that sound like questions. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Own the room. Speak with confidence. But to the extent that doesn’t come naturally, women, in an effort to do precisely what they’ve been told, sometimes will over-occupy the space.
Think of all the things that make for a great leader and a great colleague — collegiality, a certain amount of self-effacement, a commitment to the team and the organization — but then we’re also busy telling young women: Don’t put yourself second. Don’t subordinate yourself. Speak up. If you’re not heard, speak again. We give really mixed messages, and we don’t teach women exactly how to do that because it’s not very graceful when somebody’s trying to claim a room in a meeting.
What we have to do is teach strategies, because here’s the thing about unwritten languages: whoever owns the language wins the conversation. We need to teach women the difference between a native tongue and a language. But institutions, conversely, need to be slightly more forgiving if you don’t get the jargon right all the time. That’s where the sweet spot of inclusion comes in.
Q.
You touched on the point of confidence earlier. Can you elaborate?
A.
For many guys, this is simpler because they’re not as over-invested in the question of “Do I belong?” Everything is not a test. If you’re not viewing interactions as a litmus test for whether you belong, you’re going to act better. On the other hand, if you’re looking all the time for that kind of validation, you’re either going to be self-conscious or insecure, and neither of those is a recipe for success. What you want is the kind of inherent confidence that leads to grace. You want to be around people who are having fun and enjoying what they’re doing.