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Hello Everyone,
Kiwi Scrum now has 1871 members.
From today, when your invitation to a new connection is accepted, LinkedIn sends you a meaningful page about the new connection. You can view the profile page, (as you were advised previously) but now they offer you an email address, some selected connections and some organisational links regarding that person. Try to use these connections to make PERSONAL contact with that individual. Of course, what you send will be some form of a standard letter, but do more than that, read about the person first and say something personal and relevant.
Our politicians are still banging on about increasing economic growth. The Internet is full of ideas about a new and exciting economic paradigm if you care to look. The "economics" of the last 100 years is close to dead. A whole new economic understanding is growing and being supported by a new group of economic thought leaders. The lone voice of Dr Herman Daly, is now supported by dozens of others and many research institutes and think tanks.
The economy is not about to "recover" this year or next nor the year after. Look to Japan to see what happened to them. Time for a paradigm shift. GDP growth is irrelevant. Community, social capital, and the environment, and personal knowledge and skills are real. Focus on doing what is useful and desirable. Use government policy to correctly price natural resources like water, and tax extraction and pollution. There is still magic in markets when the prices are right. In the long run abolish income tax, which is and always has been unfair anyway.
For non-economists, some video is perhaps the easiest way to learn about these ideas. I've found some of the video for you. Slowly, in the next few weeks I'll provide notes for each clip so you don't need to watch them all. (You could help by making your own notes on a clip and sending them to me.)
Some of you might like to help me develop those 11 economic contradictions I've tried to briefly outline.
For me the Four Years.Go group remains a source of inspiration. The 4YGo LinkedIn group discussed the failure of modern economies to create "full employment". Once again this reality makes nonsense of government policy in New Zealand. When I was starting high school we were told that in our life-time people would work a 20 hour week and retire at 50. Look around you. That's the unwanted reality for many people. The real unemployment rate is much higher than government figures show. Even with investment modern economies produce very few jobs.
Forty years ago, working 20 hours a week and retiring at 50 sounded like a dream lifestyle. So why is it a problem now? Because, the whole of our society is based on a different, very false reality, that "full employment" is normal and desirable. That hasn't been true for perhaps 30 years. Open your eyes and see what's really there. We are slow to change because we choose to be blind.
Most members of Kiwi Scrum still invite far too few new people into their network. If you've got fewer than 30 connections you can hardly use LinkedIn at all. Most of the people who find Kiwi Scrum have more connections than that. However, all of you have friends who have tiny numbers of connections and are not yet members of Kiwi Scrum. Help your friends out. Invite them here.
The discussion about using or not using open networkers developed in an interesting way, from the Kiwi Scrum Newsletter, last month. If you were not following that discussion you should take a look here.
Talking about the economy, while a modern economy doesn't create enough jobs for everyone, it does create an enormous demand for volunteers of all types. Even university graduates are finding this problem. When I was a new graduate, I was offered 30% of my existing salary to start in the office of an accounting firm. (An offer I refused.) New graduates in most countries are now expected to work as "interns" for zero income, as the price of entry to the profession of their choice. For "three months" says one voice, "but I've been doing that for 18 months, already," says another.
The world really runs on the work of volunteers. Failure to recognise that is part of the economic sickness that pervades the world. Our own Marilyn Waring, recognised that and wrote about it in "Counting for Nothing" (1988). My own experience of volunteering is in the amazing world of new innovation. Real innovators, so vital to the economy we are told, are about 98% volunteers. Most of them NEVER get paid.
Conversations on Skype take a great deal of time, and I've tried to minimise my availability. However, talking directly to someone in real time is a powerful way to get to know who they are and what's important in their world.
I saw members of the Pachamama Alliance applying their technique of ritual at the "4YGo Gathering", a couple of weeks back. That was about "engagement" about building a sense of bonding between people. In the beginning it was a slow process, frustrating for me. In the end, however, it made a lot of solid work possible. I don't know how to find the balance here.
More interesting news next month,
John Stephen Veitch
The Network Ambassador
Global Spread Team Leader
Four Years. Go.
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