Why Human Flourishing Should Be The Purpose of An Economy: Humanity 2.0

Are you better off today than yesterday? Physically, emotionally, socially, mentally, ethically? Because of your interactions with others? Many people say they are better off after a good workout or times with good friends and family. What about after a day at work?

What is the role of leadership for flourishing? Should flourishing be something we consider in our work life? My colleagues in Harvard’s Center for Work, Health, & Well-being, where I am a department associate, are discovering the elements of the work environment that lead to thriving experiences for workers.

Humanity 2.0 and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, with the Harvard Human Flourishing Program, where I am a research affiliate, invited me to give a talk this past November at the 2022 Human Flourishing Forum in the Vatican addressing the question of why human flourishing should be the purpose of an economy. You can see the talk by clicking on the link below.

Basically, I suggest that when we take human flourishing into account in our human interactions, we see greater engagement and better results, throughout the ecosystem of your organization. When we do not consider the whole-human experience, we see lower engagement, massive energy loss, and thus worse results. It is that simple. I show how we can measure this.

I invite you to see the other talks by my colleagues Matthew Lee, Brian Wellinghoff, and Katy Granville-Chapman, as well as Fr. Ezra Sullivan, and Jonathan Lever, as well as panels on each theme. I am grateful for this experience, seeing how to accelerate what is possible for humanity.

Do You Know Your Business?

“If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business.” You probably believe this.

If you don’t know your people, you’re not engaging what they bring. You probably believe this.

You measure their outputs, not engagement of the unique capacities they bring. Because of this, you miss out on the benefits you paid for, and your costs of disengagement are very high.

Net net, this inefficiency is very expensive. If you measure this, you’ll have the numbers, and better understand your business. And, it is easy to do.

Stakeholder Engagement — a Continuum from Stakeholder Inclusion to Stakeholder Discrimination

You absolutely know when your group can get much better results. Why aren’t you achieving the results you know you can?

There might be incremental changes you can make to remove basic inefficiencies.  For example, simple steps in project management, time management, process organization, or agenda setting might help.

There might be strategic changes you can make to prioritize focus areas. For example, do we continue, stop, or pivot in the ways that we drive value for our customers and employees?

There might also be systemic changes you can make to shift from working against the dynamics of the existing system to working with the dynamics of the system that you want.  For example, you could (1) define your deeper shared purpose, (2) map the ecosystem dynamics generating the system outcomes you are experiencing, and (3) map the degree of inclusion of the stakeholders who directly influence those ecosystem dynamics. You would find that some of your stakeholders and the ecosystem dynamics they influence are deeply included in your current understanding and work, while many ecosystem-critical stakeholders and dynamics are not.

The key lesson here is that a low degree of inclusion (Latin for enclosed, closed in) = discrimination (Latin for to separate away from).  By not including them, consciously and explicitly, you are excluding them.  This weights the value of their contribution as zero, which is the only value that is not possible, given that they are an ecosystem-critical stakeholder.  They influence your ecosystem and, therefore, its dynamics and outcomes.  A systemic change would be to explicitly include them in your understanding of ecosystem dynamics, outcomes, and strategic relationships.

Stakeholder engagement–engaging those who directly influence your ecosystem dynamics and outcomes–is a continuum from stakeholder inclusion to stakeholder discrimination.  This gives you 3 strategic choices.  The first choice is to see it. The second choice is to understand it. The third choice is to do something about it. This might be the systemic change that will allow you to finally achieve the outcomes that you know are available to your group.

The Core Problem We Face

It takes an instant to see the key to a core, seemingly unsurmountable problem we face.  The core problem is that the experiences we have and the outcomes we achieve are determined by the agreements we accept, and the agreements we accept are leading to experiences and outcomes we do not want. And, therein, lies the key.  Right out in the open.  You can either unconsciously accept the agreements that determine your experience and outcomes, often to your detriment, or you can consciously choose them.

You put massive amounts of effort into engaging in some purpose, to transform something into something else, for someone else. As a matter of fact, you put all of your time and energy, your whole existence, into doing this.  In every moment that we are alive, the energy that makes up each one of us is used to do something.  That something engages, transforms, and transfers your creative energy into something else.  The question isn’t whether this happens: it does, all day long.  The question is who is using that energy towards what purpose.

You can choose this.  You can align this choice with your Yes!  You can choose to align your purpose with your unique, creative contributions.  In everything you do.

This converts the core problem you face into your core asset.  Choice.  Choosing the experience you have and the outcomes you achieve by choosing the agreements you consciously enter.

The how.  You can look at your purpose.  You can look at your experiences.  You can describe your assumptions.  With these, you can start to align them.  This is completely surmountable.  It’s right there.

Are You Productive at Lifting Things (labor) or Creating Things (elaborated nature)?

We all want to be productive.  To produce stuff with our creativity.  We vary greatly in what we are creative at producing.  That leads to 2 questions.  First, are you being productive?  Second, are you productive at lifting or moving things (labor) or at creating things (elaborated nature)?  How do you know?

As a human being, you do two things. As a being made out of matter–having a physical body– you move matter around. We measure matter and its movement with calories, a unit of energy.  As a creative being, you transform energy, from one form into another.  You have an idea, which you can choose to transform into a process that becomes a new outcome, a different form of matter.  We measure energy and its transformation with lumens, a unit of energy flow.  Said another way, as a human being, you move energy around and you transform energy.  One is measured in calories, the other in lumens.  

Another way of saying this is that you are both moving things that already exist (labor) and you are adding your labor to what exists (eLABORated nature).  There is a long history of thought around this. You can start with the labor theory of value. 

When you are being productive at work, are you measuring (1) the calories of moving already-existing things around or (2) the lumens of transforming something with your creativity?  Calories-equivalent measures tend to look at the monetized equivalents of inputs and outputs, like wages, hours worked, units produced, units moved.  The inputs and outputs are often in the same units of measurement.  They are usually expressed in the ecosynomic form of capacities and outcomes, also referred to as nouns.  The already-finished.  They all have a direct translation to material forms, often monetized.  Lumens-equivalent measures tend to look at the energy put into changing of form, from possibility to probability, from idea to process to thing, from outcome to insight to new idea.  The creative, evolutionary process. The inputs and impacts of that creative transformation are often in different units of measurement. They are usually expressed in the ecosynomic terms of (1) the development of new capacities and relationships, (2) the possibilities seen and manifested, and (3) the insights gained from observing what happened and evolving to new possibilities, processes, and forms.

If you are measuring the moving around of already-existing things, in calories equivalents, you are probably being productive in lifting-moving things (labor).  If you a measuring the changing forms of energy, as ideas, processes, outcomes, and learning, you are probably being productive in creating things (elaborated nature).  They are different processes, measured in different ways, adding different kinds of value. Which are you doing?

Inviting a High-vibrancy Data Artist–Communicating a Unifying Framework for the SDGs

Making It Obvious. How do you tell the story of the great challenges facing humanity? In a very simple and clear way that both shows the challenges and what you can do about it? As an individual, a small group, a large group, a nation, all of humanity?

OUR INVITATION. We would love to work with a high-vibrancy data artist to tell a 4-principles story, in a simple, clear graphic. Starting with the ideas described below, bringing your creativity to how to tell that story.  We are writing an article on this unifying framework, which we intend to publish in a prominent journal in 2022. Your art would be part of that article, acknowledged as your contribution.  If you are or know that high-vibrancy data artist, who would love to figure this simple, clear graphic out with us, please contact us.

What is the project?

The Challenges Humanity Faces. Many, many people around the world have taken up the work of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs were laid out by the United Nations. They provide 17 goals of a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.” Many have also taken up work on the planetary boundaries, a framework providing “a set of 9 planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come.” To figure out how to meet the 17 SDGs, while respecting the 9 planetary boundaries, some groups have started to work with the donut-economics framework providing planetary and social boundaries for the performance of an economy, that must meet the needs of people while not overshooting the planetary boundaries. This provides 26 boundaries.

A Unifying Framework. My colleague Adam Hejnowicz and I suggest a simple way to understand 4 underlying principles of the 26 boundaries, making it simpler and clearer how to deal with all 26 in anything that you do, and in any way that you choose to directly contribute. The idea works with the 4 spheres of the earth system: the mineral lithosphere, the water hydrosphere, the air atmosphere, and the life biosphere. Talking about them as spheres shows how they are both separate and how they mix. We suggest that all 26 boundaries deal with (1) the mixing and depletion of the spheres, faster than they naturally balance and replenish, and (2) equitable human access to those balanced and replenished spheres. Equitable access to clean minerals, water, air, and life.

The following links show how other groups graphically show these 4 spheres and how they influence each other.

• Spheres
  • https://thecarboncycleandclimatechange-bb.weebly.com/the-biosphere-lithosphere-hydrosphere–atmosphere.html
• Earth System Interactions
  • https://gpm.nasa.gov/education/lesson-plans/connect-spheres-earth-systems-interactions 
• Earth Systems Cycles 
  • http://earthsci.org/processes/weather/earth_systems/earth_systems.html
  • https://www.earthsciweek.org/sites/default/files/Calendar/201415_AGI_Calendar.pdf
  • https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_system_science
  • https://www.agci.org/education/fundamentals
• Carbon Cycle
  
  • https://thecarboncycleandclimatechange-bb.weebly.com/the-carbon-cycle.html
  • https://earthhow.com/carbon-cycle/
• Greenhouse Gas Effect
  
  • https://thecarboncycleandclimatechange-bb.weebly.com/climate-change.html
• How Earth’s spheres interact
  
  • https://gml.noaa.gov/outreach/info_activities/pdfs/Teacher_PSA_sphere_interactions.pdf
• Earth Energy Budget
  
  • https://gml.noaa.gov/education/info_activities/pdfs/Teacher_CTA_how_much_is_the_global_energy_budget.pdf

Lopsided Value Generation: Who Is Better Off?

Look, she’s doing well. She made lots of money. Look, they are doing well. We helped them. Are they better off? How do you know?

One way to assess whether someone is better off is to see how much is flowing into their lives. These are inflows. Another way is by looking at what they are able to do, which you can assess through how much is flowing out of their accounts for products and services, for experiences. These are outflows. Whether they are better off can also be looked at by the wealth they accumulate, how much is in the stock of money, things, or experiences they have. This stock goes up when the net flow (inflows minus outflows) is positive–more inflows than outflows–and goes down when the net flow is negative–more outflows than inflows.

While the three ways of looking at better off might all be valid, they tell different stories. Based on what story you want to tell, you would use a different one of these three. They are better off because we gave them inflows. Inflows sound good. More is better. And, to know if someone is better off from the inflow, you need to know their outflow as well. For example, we helped them get 1,000 calories of food. Good. More is better than none. We can also see that these 1,000 calories are to feed 4 people for a day. They need to consume 8,000 calories (4 people times 2,000 calories/day/person). The net flow is still very negative–1,000 in and 8,000 out. They are better off with the inflow, but not enough to cover the outflow. Likewise, we can focus on the outflow narrative. They purchased 8,000 calories of food. Good. Did they have the inflows to cover that, or did they deplete their reserves to do that?

While both the inflow and outflow narratives seem powerful, they are usually partial narratives, often to the benefit of the storyteller. A fuller narrative looks at the stock with the inflows and outflows. They are better off when the stock stabilizes or increases, improving their resiliency, their reserves for a future day, and when their access to inflows is greater than their outflows. To summarize, the stock increases when the net flow increases. You are worse off, now and going forward, when that stock decreases. You are better off, now and going forward, when that stock stabilizes or increases.

That is a focus on the individual. Expanding the view to include multiple individuals, a different question arises. When these individuals interact, who is better off? We can look at their stocks, their accumulations of inflows and outflows.

Most better-off narratives focus on the inflows, outflows, or stocks of one of the individuals in the mix. Rarely do they focus on the net effect of the interaction on all of the individuals in the mix. They avoid telling the fuller story. Look at the massive amount of press on the accumulated wealth of the rich. Or how they helped the poor. All of these narratives focus on one of the inflows or outflows or stocks, not on the whole mix.

To know if people are better off because of someone’s actions, a simple thing to ask is whether all of the individuals in the mix are better off. At time zero, this was what was in each person’s stock. After the action taken, at time one, this is what is in each person’s stock. If all of the stocks have increased, everyone is better off. If one or more of the stocks have increased, and others have decreased, then that value was taken from one and given to another. It was redistributed. The total amount of value in all of the stocks stayed the same, moving some from one person to another. This is extraction. People don’t like extractive narratives, so they tell the story of how one person’s stock increased. They don’t tell you where it came from. Did it come from an overall increase in everyone’s stock or by extracting it from one person’s stock?

A straightforward calculation of the total amount in everyone’s stock is to look at the Total Value Generated for those involved in the ecosystem of the interaction. Sum up the stocks of all those involved at time zero. Sum up all of the stocks at time one. Is the value generated in each person’s greater? Is the total sum of the value generated greater? If yes, then everyone involved in the interaction is better off. If no, then someone gained at the other’s expense.

It is often challenging to know which scenario is playing out in a story you are being told. More value generated for all or extracted from some for others. Often this is because they are telling you about specific inflows or outflows or stocks, and not about the net effect on all involved. An easy way to do this is to talk about outputs instead of outcomes or impacts. This is what we did, our output. It hides what happened, the outcome, what that did, the impact of the net effect on everyone involved in the interaction.

Northwestern professor Gillespie and Harvard professor Bazerman formulate this as parasitic integration, where a win-win agreement contains losers. The net effect of the interaction is lopsided. Someone gains from the others. It might be a win-win for some, but not for all.

By asking the question of the Total Value Generated, you are providing a principle that suggests that a person’s actions within any ecosystem can leave the whole ecosystem better off. Instead of accepting the narrative of how someone is better off because she made lots of money, you can ask the question of whether she is better off because what she did increased the value for everyone involved.

This could change your understanding of what actually happened. Did you buy the food because it was cheap, or was the food cheap because the people doing the work were underpaid and the quality of the food was very low? Or was the food cheap because the company figured out how to profitably pay the workers well for high quality food, in a way that was less expensive to you. Were you and the company lopsidedly better off, while the workers were not, or was everyone better off?

By measuring the Total Value Generated, you can look at the Value Generated for each person (the net effect on their stock of their inflows and outflows) and for the whole of those people involved in the ecosystem. If the Value Generated for each increases, they are all better off because of what you did. A more efficient interaction.

The NocHoIce Placebo — You Might Have Just Been Given One, and How to Counteract It

You know about medical placebos. That is when they give you a sugar pill instead of the real thing. Medical research uses the placebo to see if the real thing actually has the intended effect, or it was something else that did it. They do this by giving you something that has no medicinal value, a placebo.

Placebos are used in a lot of places, not just in medicine. The word “placebo” comes from the Latin for “I shall please.”  Is that really a thought you had (the real thing), or did someone else put it there (the sugar pill)?  That is the thinking sugar pill (cognitiva placebo).  Do you really like your friend or love your partner, or did someone lead to you feel that?  That is the feeling sugar pill (emotive placebo).  Are you really get nutrients out of that food or the caffeine out of that coffee, or did someone give you a sugar pill, masquerading for an incomprehensible list of ingredients?  That is the biological sugar pill (biological placebo).  Is that a real door you are knocking on, or is it a Pauli-exclusion-principle space you cannot pass through?  That is the material sugar pill (materia placebo).  Placebos are everywhere.  Are you getting the real thing or a sugar pill, something with no actual value?

You probably took a NocHoIce placebo recently.  Did you get the real thing, or a sugar pill?   The thinking, feeling, biological, and material are all ways that you relate to and make sense out of your experience.  You know this.  You create a story, in your head, of how the world really works.  While as humans we don’t actually know how most things in the world actually work, we are really good at knowing that they do work.  [For example, physicists don’t know what time actually is, just that it works, relatively.]  We humans can also be good at knowing, from our own experience, whether we are experiencing a placebo or the real thing.

You have multiple ways of sensing what is happening.  In your thinking, your feeling, your sensory perception.  These are different systems that you can use to perceive and differentiate what is real and what is a placebo.  Integrating these different systems gives you a fuller perception of what is happening.

When you are NOT pay attention, you might be accepting the NocHoIce placebo (non election placebo). You are letting someone else use your attention.  To counteract the NocHoIce placebo, you already have what you need.  You have the YesChoice.  It is in your thoughts, your feelings, your intentions, your biology, your matter.  You can see the NocHoIce placebo and choose reality with your YesChoice.

What Should I Measure? What Am I Measuring? Inputs, Outputs, Outcomes, Impacts?

You are NOT measuring what you want. You want your efforts to do something, to mean something. You give your will towards a future you love. When you don’t consciously choose how you engage your will, your creativity, your efforts, your attention, you feel disengaged, like most of the people seem to feel most of the time at work. If you want your efforts to have an impact, then measure your efforts and their impact.

What are you actually measuring? Your impact? Probably not. Lots of research on evaluation shows that most people are measuring inputs or outputs. Not outcomes and impacts.

Two questions. What is the difference? Does it matter? There is a difference, and it does matter. In fact, What You Measure Is What You Pay Attention To (WYMIWYPAT — pronounced “wimy why pat”).

What is the difference? First of all, you get resources to do something that impacts someone else. In organization-speak, you engage and accumulate assets, which you transform into a service or product that others want. In the figure below, there are inputs that flow into the Asset Accumulation, and there are outputs that flow out. These outputs of resources generate outcomes, within the organization, which have impacts for the recipients outside of the organization. [Here are OECD definitions of these terms.]

Differentiating Inflows, Outflows, Outcomes, Impacts

Does it matter? What are you measuring? Most people are measuring INPUTS. Their story is about the number of people they have working, the number of service offices they have, the number of products they have, the inventory available. We are a 12,000-member company with 450 fully-stocked storefronts in 210 communities, providing dozens of services.

Some people tell a narrative about their OUTPUTS. The number of hours worked, the number of meals served, the number of units sold.  Last year, with 120,000 hours of service, we provided 234,000 meals to 56,000 elderly in 700 communities.

With a famous example, you can focus on the number of drills you have (inputs), the number of drills sold (outputs), the sustainability of the profits from the drills sold (outcomes), or the holes drilled (impacts). The famous question is whether the customer wants the drill or the hole that the drill makes.

The main point is that what gets your attention gets your intention. Where you focus is where you act. If you really want your efforts to make a difference, if you want your work to mean something, then you need the feedback from the impacts your efforts have. You need to measure impacts. To be able to adjust what you are doing (outputs), and how well you are doing it (outcomes), you can also measure your outputs and outcomes. To know what resources you need for those activities, you can also measure inputs. The inputs, outputs, and outcomes are in service to your impacts. Understanding them can help you evolve what you do and how you do it to achieve the impacts you want. This gives your efforts meaning, and the ability to evolve your capacity to serve that meaning.

Your choice is to think about how you measure that meaning, the impact of your efforts, in terms of the recipient. Then you can choose how to assess what you do and how you do it to achieve those efforts, on an on-going manner, to continuously improve, to evolve. It is your choice.

How to Talk with Lower-Engagement Leaders

Your way of making sense of the world is clearly useful. It seems to work for you. You got this far. Then you meet people who just don’t see the world as clearly as you do. They seem to see it differently.

While there are many explanations for differences in worldview (different cultures, different languages, different life experiences), one difference we have found to be critical is in what you perceive to be real. Your level of perceived reality.

Do you tend to see reality as that which you can touch? Mostly it is what is directly right here right now, often in quite material terms. That’s real. Or do you also include how things ebb and flow over time, how people develop in new capacities and relationships? It’s about the material and the dynamics of networks of influence. That’s real. Or do you also include the potential you and others see in what is not yet here, in the creative arts? It’s about the outcomes and the learning and the potential. That’s real. Or do you also include the learning from feedback of what actually happens, and how that informs the potential you see, in service to a deeper purpose, and pathways to getting there. It’s about evolutionary co-tangibilizing. That’s real. It turns out that these are four very different perspectives of what is real. And, most people think that theirs is the right and only one, in any given moment. At each of these four levels, you are adding dimensions of reality.

Our global survey research, with over 100,000 people from 125 countries, finds that there is a distribution of people, across these four perspectives of what is real. And, the same people might vary what they perceive to be real depending on the group they are with, the group’s agreements field–how the group engages, transforms, and transfers creative energy.

Communicating with someone who is working with a different perspective of what is real, along this continuum, is very challenging. If you perceive more of reality to exist than they do, they don’t necessarily see you as stronger, rather weaker. That their reality doesn’t include dimensions that yours does means that you are focusing on things that are invisible or irrelevant to them. Those dimensions you find to be so interested are not in their equation.

Here is a 4-step process to communicating with someone with a different perspective of what is real.

Step #1 — Where You Are. The first step to communicating with someone with a different perspective of what is real is to determine where you are, what you include in your perspective of reality. In very simple terms, you can think of these as nouns-only, verbs-nouns, light-verbs-nouns, and ecosystems of sacred hospitality levels of reality.

• Nouns-only — there are things, mostly material, that are right here right now
• Verb-nouns — there are things, and there is change over time and space
• Light-verbs-nouns — there are things, change, and always-present creative potential
• Ecosystems of sacred hospitality — there are things, change, creative potential, all in an ever-evolving service to a deeper shared purpose

Step #2 — Where They Are. The second step is to determine where they are. How does the person you are communicating with see the world? What do they include in what they perceive to be real?

Step #3 — Understand How They See You from Their Reality. The other person can only see you and your reality from their reality. If your reality has more dimensions than theirs, they don’t see that. Often your attention to and inclusion of these other dimensions creates confusion for them. You are talking about things that are not in their definition of what is real, which usually is interpreted by them as a weakness. What you are going on and on about isn’t real.

The following table provides a first scan of what each perspective of reality experiences when communicating with someone from one of the other perspectives. This is based on what we observe when working with people across levels.

Perceived Reality	N Sees	VN Sees	LVN Sees	ESH Sees
Ecosystems of Sacred Hospitality (ESH)	High-risk explorers	Lack of alignment on agreed purpose	Shifting purpose	Comprehensive clarity (purposeful evolution)
Light-Verbs-Nouns (LVN)	Lack of clear focus (high risk ventures)	Lack of applying learnings	Comprehensive clarity (tangibilization)	Beingness
Verbs-Nouns (VN)	Inefficient, always experimenting	Comprehensive clarity (learning)	Stuck in own thinking	Becoming
Noun-only (N)	Comprehensive clarity (efficiency)	Static surprise from dynamics	Collapsed in outcomes	Already finished

If they are coming from a perspective with fewer dimensions of perceived reality than you–for example, they see Nouns-only (N) and you see Verbs-Nouns (VN)–they see your focus on learning and developing new capacities and relationships as being inefficient. You are always experimenting with something new, never focused on what you have already done. Always moving on to the next thing and not leveraging what you already have.

Step #4 — How to Communicate with Them. To communicate with them, you are trying to invite them into a reality, yours, that is not part of their reality. It works best to start with remembering what they see as real. If you are a verb-noun-reality person, you might be most excited about sharing your focus on the learning, the verbs. To you the importance of the nouns is obvious and already proven, so you are focused on how to improve on what you already know. To communicate with the Nouns-only person, start by showing that you can speak their language, in their reality. Yes, you have nouns, which you have proven to be efficient. You have outcomes. You are efficient. Now you can ask, what if we could have even more-efficient nouns? You are introducing verbs-nouns dimensions of reality, in terms that a Nouns-only reality can begin to perceive. Focusing only on your leading-edge understanding of the cool features of learning and developing sounds to them like you are not grounded. Stay grounded and add the benefits of some verbs.

This logic works all the way up through the ESH levels. Start with what they can see as real in your world. Then you can begin to see if they might see the value of beginning to add dimensions of the next level.

What do you do if you are communicating with someone whose reality includes higher dimensions than yours? You might be working with a Verbs-Nouns (VN) reality, while they appear to be working from an LVN or ESH level. You might perceive that they can see things you can’t. You can invite them to share what they see. It is most helpful if you clarify with them that it is most useful to you if they can explain it first in terms you can understand–in verbs and nouns. Then they can begin to show you the value of adding dimensions from LVN or ESH. The point is to communicate with others. If you experience that you want to communicate with someone else and that it seems like you are talking about completely different things, while still in relatively the same context, maybe you are assuming different levels of perceived reality. Ask. See if you can get to a shared understanding at the Nouns-only level. Then you can try the Verbs-Nouns level, and so on.

The good news is that we all have all of these levels of perceived reality within us, so we can access all four of these levels of perceived reality. And, the agreements we tend to work with in some groups exclude some of them, making communication difficult. Since you already have the dimensions within you, you can still access them and ask the question. It is your choice.