Pride in Past Achievements
Posted on | February 19, 2010 | 4 Comments
When I went to Greece a few years back and saw the Parthenon, the almost impossible architecture that is supposed to make the building look the same size from all directions, or something, I did not understand how come modern day Greeks are not even able to build a road with a straight shoulder. If you look at Greek buildings and roads of today they are far behind their ancestors, and they seem only to take pride in the ancient history, not care about the (under)achievements of today. The same with Italy. Great pride in what once were. Ah, the northern Italians are still great engineers, with a twist (unlike the Germans – great engineers, no twist).
We all need to realize that we are now starting anew. We all have made some great achievements in the past, but now we need to re-build.
I sometimes get annoyed by getting stories about how far the City of Malmö has come in energy transformation. People don’t seem to see all the gasoline that is filled up at petrol stations every day and all the gasoline fuelled cars that still fill the streets. “We have done so much, we are almost there”. (Malmö was named one of the most creative cities by some of the major US magazines in the world among nine other much larger ones, which doesn’t help reduce the smugness of the “Malmöits”.) I sometimes try to tell them politely, without inferring that I know something they don’t that Malmö has taken an important first step, but we now need to take The Next Step. I don’t know how to get this across, actually. Smug people never send e-mails saying: Never apologize for being right! They don’t want others to try to call their bluff.
http://www.grist.org/article/cities3/ Malmö the 4th greenest city in the world. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/135/fast-cities-malmo-sweden.html Malmö in Fast Company. http://web.tag-gym.dk/old/parthenonfrisen_p%C3%A5_akropolis.htm The Parthenon, Athens.
These articles actually make people lose perspective. Companies can’t afford to become smug, because the ones that do rapidly lose out to competitors. Cities will only notice because others are the ones that get featured in major magazines for taking Next Steps. The Next Step is about recognizing the importance of Peak Oil and speeding up large scale energy transformation to dramatically reduce dependence on oil.
In comparison I have written “Global Energy Transformation” and “Overcoming Overuse”, received very little praise, looking for the next good thing to do. Let’s hope we don’t lose perspective when people start to recognize what we are doing.
Tags: change management > energy efficiency > energy systems transformation > fast company > Global Energy Transformation > International Energy Agency > large scale transformation > Malmö > Mats R Larsson > organizational learning > parthenon > program management > project management
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Mats Visits GWU June 21
February 21st, 2010 @ 10:06 am
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