Values | Hinesight

Glass Houses

April 5, 2013 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

A great post by “The Consumerist” on a social-media driven issue on Future of Artificial Dyes in Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Mary Beth Quirk tells the story of how two bloggers triggered an online petition with over 270,000 signatures that led to a meeting between the bloggers and Kraft. Here’s a telling quote from the piece: “In a one-hour meeting with me and [the other blogger], Kraft told us they ‘can’t predict the future’ of dyes in Macaroni & Cheese,” she said. “I can give them a preview: if Kraft is anything like the hundreds of other companies facing a consumer uprising online, they’ll eventually start listening to their customers and work with us to ensure the health and safety of all Kraft Macaroni & Cheese products.” That is strong stuff!

In ConsumerShift, “Glass Houses” was one of the seven key “meta-needs” reshaping the consumer landscape. It suggested that growing numbers of consumers would shift to an activist and sometimes aggressive orientation. They would be intolerant of behavior they deem wrong and are not afraid to let the offender, or any interested party, know about it. They feel they are not to be trifled with and that their values and beliefs are important and need to be respected. These consumers are watching, often all the time. They are often savvy users of technology and expert in the world of information, and they use that to support their cause. Accountability is the buzzword; it won’t always be pleasant; and it won’t always be fair. The best an organization can do is stay consistent and true—or, closing the circle back to our first need state cluster, be authentic. “Spin” and message control and such tools will only get organizations into trouble. Telling the truth will, eventually at least, earn respect and credibility that will be appreciated and rewarded over the long haul.

Sounds like we have an interesting case example of “glass houses” here! Andy Hines

Filed Under: Foresight, Values Tagged With: activism, activist, consumerist, Consumershift, future, glass houses, kraft, need states, needs, values

Sharing as another indicator of consuming less

March 17, 2013 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

Another post on the trend to consuming less — I sense a trend here. I came across an excellent piece on the topic by Emily Badger: Share Everything: Why the Way We Consume Has Changed Forever. It illustrates many of the themes highlighted in ConsumerShift. Perhaps foremost is that it indicates a changing relationship between consumers and consumption. At its simplest, people are questioning whether they really need to own something or can they just access it when they need it. In values terms, the modern values holder wants to possess goods to demonstrate their belonging and status. The postmoderns, and especially the integrals, are less concerned with their status – having felt they have achieved it, and thus less concerned with collecting goods and possessions. Note, I’m saying “less” concerned, not unconcerned. So the postmoderns and integrals look at sharing as an interesting option – do I really need that? Do I need to have my music physically on my device, or am I willing to pay for a subscription and have it streamed? Perhaps the prototype of sharing is ZipCar, built on the idea in the urban areas, where parking is scarce and expensive, possession is actually a pain!

The cycle aspect, for the more cynical among us, suggests we are simply returning to our roots, and that this is much ado about nothing. Even in the present, Badger notes that “we’re used to the notion of sharing libraries, public parks, and train cars.” In my work with values, almost every time I give a talk, someone suggests that postmodern/integral values are simply new versions of traditional values. Well, okay, I can see that, but the key factor is the context. Values are intimately linked to context, or life conditions to use Spiral Dynamics language. It doesn’t really work to suggest that what’s happening in 2013 urban areas is a return to medieval farming community values (or whatever the example is).

Bumping the discussion to a higher level, futurists and others have been playing with notions of what the “next” economy might look like. Descriptions such as the open-source economy, gift economy, relationship economy, attention economy, etc. At our Master’s program last Spring, we had a day-long meeting on “After Capitalism” that was inspired by student interest. Sharing, I suspect, is at the heart of what’s next. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumers, consumption, emily badger, integral, modern, postmodern, sharing, spiral dynamics, values, zipcar

Values shift to consuming less

March 11, 2013 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

A key theme of ConsumerShift is that the emergence of postmodern and integral values would lead to less emphasis on material goods consumption. It is perhaps best captured by the theme of “enoughness,” in which people feel their lives are getting out of control, and they want to take back that control and set limits. If you’re wondering what this looks like in “real life,” take a look at this New York Times piece on “Living with Less. A Lot Less.”

It tells the story of an entrepreneur who strikes it rich and finds himself being more or less sucked into a consumptive lifestyle. Interestingly, the story shows how so much of our consumption is based on an expectation that it is appropriate to where one is in their journey, e.g., strike it rich = consume as one with money and status “should” consume.

Our entrepreneur is vaguely discomforted by this slide into high consumption and it takes a romantic relationship to snap him out of it, and rethink his priorities. In ConsumerShift, it’s noted how it often takes some sort of crisis or change in life conditions to provoke a rethinking. In the case here, the author downsizes his lifestyle and turns his entrepreneurial efforts to causes such as treehugger.com. Many of you will recognize this “make a difference” turn and not he’s shift into Integral values. A really nice illustration of some of the key ideas we’ve been talking about here! Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumption, enoughness, integral, postmodern, values

Future of Values Annotated Bibliography

February 21, 2013 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

I’m happy to share the annotated bibliography of key sources for ConsumerShift. It could come in handy for those doing some research on the topic and perhaps a great source of summer reading! I’d more than welcome any suggested additions to the collection. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: bibliography, Consumershift, future, values

Myths and the Future

January 16, 2013 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

Elizabeth Rudd of the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) recently shared a link to a nice piece in Strategy & Business interviewing Betty Sue Flowers on the Dueling Myths of Business. (A great benefit of being part of the APF is this spontaneous sharing of interesting leads).
Among her many qualifications, certainly a unique one in the area of myths is that she edited The Power of Myth (Doubleday, 1988), the bound record of Bill Moyers’s six-part interview with mythologist Joseph Campbell.

In the interview she talks about scenario work where she introduced two myths for the team to consider. She describes A myth is a view of the nature of reality, so prevalent that it goes unseen. Although myths are conceived by people, they can feel like they are the only reality, and they can become the context in which events are framed. The frame people follow then affects the judgments they make.

She suggests five prominent myths in play today – she used the economic and ecological ones in the aforementioned scenario project. I put together this table to for an at-a-glance view.

Myth	Description	Limitation
Economic myth	seeks growth	leads to single-line measurements of success, such as revenues, profits, and market size
Ecological myth	seeks the health of a larger, interrelated system	tries to take all needs into account, which can lead to gridlock
Heroic myth	seeks to win	in every event there are winners and losers
Religious myth	seeks goodness (an ideological belief backed up by religious fervor)	dissenting views are dangerous
Scientific myth	seeks truth through reason	resistance is deemed “emotional”

I was particularly intrigued, or perhaps gratified, to see the economic and ecological myths used in a scenario project. At our recent week-long certificate course in Strategic Foresight I did a module describing Causal Layered Analysis (CLA), in which the example I used described sustainability using CLA’s 4 layers. CLA has a “myth” layer at its foundation and I used a variation of the economic (The Earth is made for man) and ecological myth (Gaia) as the two chief views underpinning debates around sustainability. One of our students asked if you could “change” myths as a way to revision scenarios, which I thought was an impressive question in an introductory class. Indeed, yes!

While I have some time to ponder the application of the three additional myths suggested by Flowers, I couldn’t help but make another connection to some of my foresight work around values. In CLA, the next level up is World views. In ConsumerShift, I drew upon Beck’s Spiral Dynamics to suggest four prominent worldviews (and accompanying individual values) of traditional, modern, postmodern, and integral. I expanded the table above to include where I feel the worldviews and myths were most compatible, along the lines, if you held myth x, you would be likely to hold worldview Y. Three combinations were clear to me. Interestingly, a myth fitting Integral is not yet identified – is that because it isn’t developed yet? Or is it there, but just not articulated? Interesting question to ponder.

Myth	Description	Limitation	Worldview “sympathetic” to the Myth
Economic myth	seeks growth	leads to single-line measurements of success, such as revenues, profits, and market size	Modern
Ecological myth	seeks the health of a larger, interrelated system	tries to take all needs into account, which can lead to gridlock	Postmodern
Heroic myth	seeks to win	in every event there are winners and losers
Religious myth	seeks goodness (an ideological belief backed up by religious fervor)	dissenting views are dangerous	Traditional
Scientific myth	seeks truth through reason	resistance is deemed “emotional”

Some great food for thought! Andy Hines

Filed Under: Foresight, Values Tagged With: Betty Sue Flowers, CLA, Consumershift, foresight, myths, spiral dynamics, strategic foresight, values, worldviews

Does lobbying have a future?

January 9, 2013 by Andy Hines 1 Comment

Warning: speculative thought piece ahead. In a workshop a while back, in the course of the discussion, I heard myself declare: “if you’re lobbying, it’s too late.” The essence of the story is that I was working with a leadership team to explore potential responses to strategic issues we had identified. I was struck by the appearance – and re-appearance – of the potential response that “we can lobby that” or something along those lines. I would not describe myself as particularly against lobbying – I have no dog in that fight, but if you asked me, I’d say it’s probably something I’d like to see less of. But for many clients, including this one, they often are not involved enough in shaping policy issues that affect them. So getting more involved is generally a good thing — and is at least related to lobbying. So, just to make clear I’m not a knee-jerk anti-lobbyist/anti-gov’t/anti-Washington type of person.

But my intuition was that something felt “wrong,” during that discussion and I’ve learned to pay attention to my intuitions that arise during these workshops. Even if I eventually dismiss them, I at least listen first.

As we’re used to in this blog, we often turn to the values work in ConsumerShift for an explanation. What caused me to blurt out “if you’re lobbying, it’s too late.” (A rather classic case of speaking first and thinking later). Thinking of what we’ve learned from the emergence of postmodern and integral values, lobbying, in general, seems out of synch with them. If we look at lobbying in relation to the five core changes identified in ConsumerShift.:

Authenticity. People are tired of being managed and manipulated and hunger for the straight story, warts and all. Lobbying is seen as a high art form of “spin-doctoring.”
Connection. People want to be more involved with those they live and do business with. Lobbying is perceived as a behind-closed doors activity.
Anticonsumerism. A disenchantment with consumerism has been gaining momentum. The rapid pace of modern life has taken its toll on lifestyles and relationships. Lobbying is perceived as being all about money.
Self-expression. People want to express their views, their values, their purpose, and their creativity. Lobbying may be seen as serving the interests of the corporation rather than “the people.”
Enoughness. People feel their lives are getting out of control, and they want to take back that control and set limits. Lobbying may be perceived as being an example of politics and influence-peddling run amok

The essence of the problem I intuited is that it seemed, in this case at least, to suggest that lobbying could be employed when the “case” with the public had been lost, so let’s turn to the lobbyists for help. Thus, it’s “too late.”

The perception of lobbying may be worse than the reality. My sense, now with the benefit of reflection, is that it is out of step with emerging values shifts, and for organizations who see it as their salvation or at least a key strategic option, it is worth some consideration as to how, or whether, it fits in the tool kit.

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: Consumershift, integral, lobbying, postmodern, values

The role of values in interpreting values

December 6, 2012 by Andy Hines 1 Comment

Came across an interesting example of how two analysts/organizations looking at the same data can interpret it quite differently. As we’ve discussed in this blog and in ConsumerShift, one’s values/worldview influences their interpretation of events and data. A bit of irony in this case is the influence of values involves a case of interpreting a study of values. The Washington DC local affiliate of CBS reported: Study: American ‘Values’ More European Since First Obama Term. It opens with: “Although a transatlantic cultural gap still exists on certain issues, many Americans have started to think more similarly to Europeans since the beginning of President Obama’s first term.” As I read the piece, I felt like it was aligned with a key message of ConsumerShift that that the US is becoming more postmodern, and since Europe, particularly Northern Europe, is more postmodern than the US, it follows that US will look more like [Northern] Europe.

I figured I’d check the key source, Pew, and look at the data myself. The title of the story on the Pew site it was linked to was: “Anti-Americanism Down in Europe, but a Values Gap Persists.” Hmm, that seems a little different? The story notes: “…despite Obama’s re-election at home and continued popularity in Europe, his presidency has not closed the long-running transatlantic values gap. Instead, on issues such as the use of military force, religion, and individualism, Americans and Europeans continue to disagree.”‘

Okay, so which is it — are we getting closer or still far apart? Reading a bit more closely, it does seem to suggest that a gap persists, but there is some movement towards greater alignment. The interesting point to me was how the the two stories focused on different pieces of data that generated different headlines and emphasis. It reminds us to be ever-alert for the influence of values on interpretations, even when studying values themselves! Andy Hines

Filed Under: Future Hype, Values Tagged With: consumer understanding, Consumershift, europe, Pew Center, postmodern, values

Postmodern values and women in leadership

November 27, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

Came across an interesting post on “golden skirts” which noted that “the European Union has walked back from a proposal to require all publicly listed companies in the EU to fill 40% of board seats with women.” In the piece, it notes the high rates of women in Board leadership positions in the Scandinavian countries. Readers of this blog and ConsumerShift, I hope, were not surprised, and likely made the connection to the high rate of postmodern values in Scandinavia and Northern Europe.

The post chose to focus on a University of Michigan study found that in 2002 when the law was first introduced in Norway, companies saw a 2.6% drop in company value – suggesting this was a result of hiring women with less management skills in order to comply with the law. We won’t take on that argument here, since our focus is on how the emergence of postmodern and integral values is reshaping the landscape of the future. We indeed anticipate a greater role for women in leadership, and are not at all surprised that it is showing up in N. Europe first. I’ve given talks over the years where I’ve urged audiences to “get in touch with their feminine side,” to highlight the more compatible fit of feminine values (whether held by women or men) to the emerging network world, noting that masculine values fit better with the declining hierarchical command-and-control model. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumer understanding, Consumershift, feminine, leadership, scandinavia, values, women

The commodity identity continuum

November 20, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

One of the interesting insights that emerged from Consumershift was the commodity-identity continuum. It suggests that the postmodern and integral consumers are informally sorting their purchasing decisions along a continuum. The commodity pole is for those offerings that are not viewed as important to identity. For these products and services, which consumers don’t care much about, they choose what is fastest, easiest, and cheapest. They need to make the purchase, but just want to make it as quickly and painlessly as possible with cost in mind.

The identity pole is the opposite, in which the offerings are seen as fundamental to one’s identity. These products and services, and the relationships in which they are embedded, mean a lot to people because they are seen as part of their identity. Thus, thus they invest their time and money on those. For example, one buys a hybrid vehicle because they are environmentally conscious. They may spend lots of time doing research and shopping, even in the case of a relatively inexpensive purchase, because the offering says something about who they are. For instance, coffee beans may be carefully chosen because quality coffee is important to their identity. At the same time, a relatively high-dollar purchase at the commodity pole, such as a new car, may be made rather quickly, because to them a car is simply a means of transportation. These consumers may spend a lot of money on identity items and then scrimp on others; thus the phenomena of spending big money on a designer items but cutting costs on “essentials.”

For businesses, or any organization that offers a product or service to customers (including non-profits, government agencies, and educators) it might be a useful exercise to sort where your portfolio of offerings fall. Are you heavy on the commodity or identity end? Would your portfolio benefit from a re-balancing? Those at the commodity end are relatively “low maintenance” but often operate at razor-thin margins. Those toward the identity pole are higher value-added, but require more investment. So, where do you want to play in the future on the commodity-identity continuum? Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: commodity, consumer understanding, Consumershift, identity, values

Some thoughts on World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Values

November 10, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

It’s good news that values are on the agenda of the World Economic Forum, with the formation of a Global Agenda Council on Values. And it was good news to read on their site that they are aware of and drawing on the World Values Survey.

On their redesign framework, they ask: “How can the political constituency for international cooperation be expanded by cultivating a shift in values.” A lofty and noble goal, which brings to mind a recent discussion we had in our Alternative Perspectives class at the Houston Futures program. We talked about how one approach is to deal with values “where they stand,” that is design strategies that acknowledge people have different values that require different strategies and approaches. The other is how to “cultivate a shift?” We agreed it would be helpful to expand the reach of second-tier Integral (and beyond) values, drawing on the great work of Don Beck and colleagues with Spiral Dynamics. And awareness-raising is critical here, perhaps all we have in terms of cultivating a shift. But we should probably recognize that it’s a long-term deal – we’re not going to shift people overnight, thus we circle back to the importance of the first strategy in dealing with people where they are.

A second point, and perhaps more of a cautionary note is in order here, regards the “challenge of identifying a unifying value or set of values that could underpin the global redesign effort.” Given the differences in where people are, I suspect that an attempt to identify universal values will not be successful. What is more likely is settling on a list of “virtues” that we’d all agree are good things, but not likely to be of much help. In ConsumerShift, I tried to distinguish values and virtues, by suggesting that virtues touch on questions of right and wrong. Our collection of virtues comprise our character. Virtues are the positive traits in relation to what is considered good or proper within a cultural context, and are manifested as character. Important, yes, but there is less disagreement on virtues and such a list will make us all feel better, but we’ll still be left with differences in values. A quick sum of the major differences in values is in the figure below

I submit that values in differences in values are significant and must be addressed, and urge the Council to not detour into virtues and dodge this tough issue. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: Consumershift, global council agenda on values, spiral dynamics, values, world economic forum, world values survey

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