What´s up with water: Pouring water in your corporate strategy. Look around everything is water (XIX).
Have a charming first Friday of July.
In our last post, we concluded our article with the following paragraph:
“Loving water implies knowing very well what are the underlying reasons or causes that are hurting our beloved water. By doing it we are enclosing and embracing every single aspect of the rest cycles, and in doing it we also understand the causes of climate change. The Human Causes of global climate change are affecting the whole water cycle, and to continue making them, all these causes means that we don´t love water at all”.
Today we won´t provide any slides. I think it is our turn to write about the noble act of observation. And why is so important to watch, to look around, to view with our eyes, and with extraordinary detail. Just to look around is an art, just to see with discernment is also better than art. Sadly, humans are forgetting how to do it. So let´s begin.
What is the meaning of looking around? To look around means to “employ one´s sight in a given direction or on a given subject”. It is also defined as an action or instance of looking on all sides from all hints that you can. This last idea means that the action of “looking around” implies a 360 degrees view: up, down, behind, below, to your right, to your left, and all the degrees in between. To look around requires seeing in an imaginative sphere context – if this is the way to explain – that we are capable to look around in a volume manner, which is a 3D (three dimensions). We all can see in 3D. That is how God created us.
But nowadays, I wonder if humans as a civilization, are able to see more than a mobile or a tablet or a computer. Ordinarily, no one is watching even where to put the steps ahead, because we are concentrating, and devoting all our sight to a Smartphone. We are forfeiting the long-term view analysis too. Since the decade of 2000s, humans have started to lose the capacity to notice outside of that little black box called the Smartphone, so that is why all the inventors are also trying to insert everything we do in that little box. And by doing it, we are losing our capacity to look around. Why? Because we always concentrate our sight on that little digital mobile. If we don´t use our sight to look around, trust me, there will be a future in which the next generations will lose that capacity forever. All our greatest ancestors in every discipline, including Einstein, were dedicated, watchful people. That capacity for attentive and perceptive observing skills is tied to the capability to innovate well. And now, almost three generations by now: Millenials, Generation Z, and Generation Alpha are relinquishing it.
Biologically, before the Smartphone, our human specie was blessed with two eyes, but if we don´t move our heads, we have a limited field of vision.
Humans aren´t able to see 360 degrees, or are they? Some Harvard scientists (among others) have been studying how human vision and memory work together to inform our understanding of the world around us (2). We are only capable to see what is in front of us with a 180-degree vision (both eyes working for it) (1). Like other predators, our eyes face forward. They’re designed less to look out for our own protection than to locate prey (3). Observing our past history, it seems to me that human evolution progressed to grant us a vision capacity to become predators. This happened in the prehistoric era when vertebrated animals and humans were acting as predators when they were selfishly alone. Only when our ancestors understood the concept of living together with other humans, did they also begin to become protectors?.
When humans decide and act as predators, they are unable to collaborate with other human beings, and their biological vision capacity barely provides half of the story (only 180 degrees): but when humans act as protectors, they work with other humans that can help them to see what is happening backward, that is when the 360 degrees view starts. Then, as we go from the general to the particular, different humans specialize in different views or diverse perspectives, and that is how people commenced working all together as a team for protecting each other, not as predators, but as shields of our destiny. It is in the union of souls that we can see 360 degrees. When we stop to rely “solo” on our own, that is when we began a community, as a family, as a society, and only then, as protectors and not predators. When humans move as a team to see 360 degrees, then and only then we can begin to learn to do things correctly.
Learning to have faith in a 360 degrees view. As a corporate strategist, regardless of my multidimensional past background, we are humble enough to recognize that there are certain views about water on which we are not experts of it. We can´t be. But we know there are other experts who have been working for decades, trying to understand and defend the water cycle in between other biogeochemical processes, which are all interrelated in between. When we go to our K-12 schools and/or universities, we don´t go there to make money, we attend our program studies and classes because there are certain things that are extremely fundamental and important for all of us to learn. How do the earth systems work, what are the causes of global climate change and how can we measure the impact of our actions on earth, affecting the water cycle. All these subjects are so crucial for all of us to constantly update. What we learned about the water cycle (and the rest of the earth´s cycles) 30 years ago, has been revised and we are obliged to refresh our situation. We are not living as visitors on planet earth on vacations, we have a span of around 80 years on average, to administrate or at least contribute to don´t mess up with water.
As a human community, we all need to acknowledge the water problem or situation. Only then, we will be able to do something about it. Moreover, only by knowing it (as we wrote in our last publication), we will grant her the condition of appeal, attraction, and loving. When we begin to look around, with our protector sight, then we are capable to love our object of affection, water. Just look around and you will find it everywhere. Everything we are, we hold, we buy, we eat, we multiply is based on or has been manufactured with water.
Look around, everything is water. Nothing is more omnipresent and delightful in our lives than water. Probably only the air is more important than water, but we can´t see the air, and that makes air non-tangible. Still, water is so good, is such a priority for us, it is always popping up in our daily activities for our survival, water is so critical, even more than electricity and WiFi, and that is why we put it as a priority in our earth system complex panorama. We have put water as the priority or key symbol by which we should be reminded every day, of how to fix, protect and promote a wholesome earth system.
Counting water daily. We invite you to count how often you interact with water or with something that has been done or produced with water. Before going to bed, tell us that number. That represents the priority of all of us to protect water at all costs. Eleonora Escalante Strategy believes that by including the protection of water in our business models and strategy frameworks, we will also include all the aspects of other biogeochemical cycles (including the energy ones). We will be qualified enough to stop businesses that affect our process of loving water. We will be able to eliminate all the causes of global change, which are instigated by humans. And we will begin to innovate properly (not with a predator shareholder value perspective) but with a protector community value perspective. Loving water with an integral 360 degrees view means to look around with discernment first (learn to comprehend and tame water initially), then once we have acknowledged water in all its dimensions; we proceed to decide if it is worthy or not to love her. Finally, once we decide to love her with sincerity, then we will act accordingly to protect her, raise her, and fix all our wrongdoings against her. Only then we, as a community will bring out the best of water for our universe.
So, next time that you see water in your life, please remember to look around: everything is water.
Our next subject: The concept of agility in corporate strategy.
Strategic Music Section:
Why did we choose Henning Kraggerud? We found Mr. Kraggerud by following Mozart. His performance with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra was an excellent experience for my ears. “The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra has established itself as one of the foremost chamber orchestras on the international classical music scene”, and I am sure you could feel it by listening to it. Henning Kraggerud is another well-recognized violinist, not only in Europe but all over the world. His children are also learning to become musicians, as you noticed when playing with his daughter. Kraggerud plays the 1744 Guarneri del Gesù violin. We chose him to be in this saga because he is also composing his own material. We celebrate Kraggerud not only because he has been able to perform his own compositions at the Nobel Peace Prize occasion in Oslo 2018, but also because he continues his discovery journey as a composer. It is not common to find virtuosos who have produced their own pieces and have been well received by the audiences. Usually, we as spectators, do not care for musicians’ own compositions. Nevertheless, in the case of Kraggerud, he produces his compositions to be interpreted by the Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. We truly recommend you to find his music and so many more pieces that are his own. Go to one of his concerts. Observe him and his team of musicians. You will find so much truth in good music.
Songs of today are interpreted by Viktoria Mullova. We have chosen two interpretations. The first one from her presentation with Accademia Bizantina, at the George Enescu Festival 2013: Bach Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major. The second one is the song Manhinha, from her album Stradivarius in Rio. Enjoy the music!
See you next Friday, with the 20th episode of “What´s up with water: Pouring water in your corporate strategy: The concept of agility in corporate strategy”. Thank you for reading to me.
Sources of Reference utilized to prepare the slides and the material above:
(1) https://nba.uth.tmc.edu/neuroscience/m/s2/chapter14.html
(2) https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/09/peeking-between-memory-and-perception/
(3) https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2581.htm
Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY. Nevertheless, most of the pictures, images, or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.
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