Management & Leadership

Why I Had to Rethink How I Measure Progress

In October I gave a talk at Monktoberfest in Portland, Maine, a small and intimate tech conference with a big impact in the industry. It’s quite unlike any other conference I’ve been to, which is explicitly the point. I’d been hearing about the conference from friends for years, and it somehow still managed to exceed all my lofty expectations. Monktoberfest asks that your talk be something you wouldn’t be able to hear at any other conference. Mine was about values and how they show up at work and what happens when there is a gap between your stated and enacted values. It’s a theme that percolates through a lot of my writing and something I’ve spent many sleepless nights ruminating on, and giving this talk to such a receptive, empathetic, and compassionate audience was incredibly meaningful to me. You can watch the talk here: Seeing as I am personally allergic to watching any YouTube videos longer than five minutes unless I absolutely have to, I’ve also included a lightly edited version of the text of the talk below.

By Donella Meadows~ Folks who do systems analysis have a great belief in “leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. This idea is not unique to systems analysis — […]

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