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Mar 31 2012
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Good & Gasp, Impact Investing, Justice & Society, Social Enterprise, Sustainability

Good & Gasp #3 – Social Enterprise in Chinese, EcoMind, Common Wealth, Muppetgate, Human Engineering

Good & Gasp #3

Social Enterprise in Chinese, EcoMind, Common Wealth, Muppetgate, Human Engineering

Themes that caught my attention, interest or made my eyes roll while roaming the web world of doing good:

  • Social Enterprise in Chinese – 3 definitions of “social enterprise” in the same (huge) country?
  • EcoMind & Mental Myths – do the “end of growth” pessimists have it all wrong?
  • Common Resource Use Charges – should companies pay for polluting (and should we get some of the proceeds of such “common wealth” charges)?
  • Goldman Sachs’ Muppetgate – why do GS’ “muppet” clients keep coming back for more?
  • Human vs. Climate Engineering – should we consider genetically “making” humans more environmentally friendly?

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Mar 30 2012
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Good Thermometer, Polls

The Good Thermometer – March 2012

The Good Thermometer keeps track of what our Good Generation community is interested in reading and talking about.

Please take 30 seconds for 3 clicks and share what content you tend to read most, and what you would like to see more of in the future.

As always, results are shown instantly!

Thanks a lot again for swinging by, hope to see you again soon. Feel free to send a note if you got thoughts or suggestions!

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Mar 19 2012
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Career, CSR, Development, Good Archives, Justice & Society, Sustainability, Weekly Ponder

Good Archives #1 – Law vs. Justice, Respecting the Poor, Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Do Good Career Choices

If it’s true that the blogosphere is really skin-deep and that we tend to stay only on the first page of any blog, then perhaps there is some value in the ancient respected work of excavation and restoration.

To that end, I thought it might be useful to periodically dig up some previous posts and put them on a little list. Since most of the themes and questions on GG tend to be not time-dependent anyway, no dusting required! Also, some recently joined folks may find interest in them but would never in a million years bother to click through the history of this blog.

Topics in Archive #1:

  • Justice – Law vs. Justice in the Occupy Wall Street Movement
  • Poverty – Pity vs. Compassion when thinking about “The Poor”
  • Sustainability – The Right to Entrepreneurship vs. Sustainability
  • Careers – An Approach for Choosing a Do-Good Job
  • Reflections – Defining our Personal Boundaries for “Doing Good”

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On Justice

Law does not mean Justice (d’oh!) – Occupy Wall Street’s Core Challenge

  • What is the viability of the Occupy Wall Street Movement? In today’s society, is it possible to ask for justice (right or wrong) in a system where legality (rules and laws) is the official decision-making factor of a country’s rulers?

On Poverty

Respecting the Poor – What You Should and Should Not Expect from “Doing Good” Unto Others

  • How should we think about “The Poor”? What is the importance of periodically re-humanizing those we call “poor” people and what is the critical difference between “pity” and “compassion”? What’s at stake if we keep referring to those we seek to help as “the poor” without thinking about what that actually means to them (and what it would mean to us if we were in their shoes)?

On Sustainability

The Dilemma of Sustainability – Should Entrepreneurship be our Natural Right?

  • If we are serious about sustainability, should we start managing or impose stricter standards on the way every day in the world new companies get started that just add to the burden of resource depletion and emissions? Should the right to economic self-actualization overrule the need for environmental stewardship? How should we manage this unbridled activity especially in developing markets where people tend to be less educated or interested in sustainability?

On Careers

4 Steps to Choosing a “Good Career” (Part 1) – Scaling of Impact

  • How should we think about choosing careers in the so-called “do-good” jobs of social entrepreneurship, NGOs, philanthropy, impact investing, etc.? How can we make the decision as individually relevant as possible to our own desires and varying needs for ambitious results? Should we care more about how much impact we are having or how we feel about what we do?

On Reflections

Weekly Ponder #1 – Defining our Do-Good Boundaries: Will my Effort ever be Enough?

  • How can we define how much we should get engaged in the business of doing good or changing the world? Should we volunteer, work part time, work full time for our cause? How much of our effort is “enough” to achieve those goals? How much is “enough” for our personal satisfaction? What does this depend on?
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Mar 01 2012
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Good Thermometer, Polls

The Good Thermometer – February 2012

The Good Thermometer keeps track of what our Good Generation community is interested in reading and talking about.

Please take 30 seconds for 3 clicks and share what content you tend to read most, and what you would like to see more of in the future.

As always, results are shown instantly!

Thanks a lot again for swinging by, hope to see you again soon.

Continue reading →

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Feb 19 2012
2 Comments
Career, Good & Gasp, Impact Investing, Social Entrepreneurship

Good & Gasp #1 – Encore-Stagers, Toil-o-preneurs, Impact Investing Bubbles

Good & Gasp #1

Encore-Stagers, Toil-o-preneurs, Impact Investing Bubbles

Themes that caught my attention, interest or made my eyes roll while roaming the web world of doing good:

  • Encore Fellowships – how to use the potential of OLDER people, instead of YOUNGER people
  • Toil-o-preneurs – innovations in solving worldwide sanitation problems
  • Civic responsibility – how to get Americans to find public jobs “cool” again (if ever)
  • Impact Investing troubles and bubbles – are we on an impact investing bubble since nobody seems able to find all those financially juicy deals that we’ve been promised?
  • Good (Business) Generation Gaps – discussion on the shift in generations towards doing more social good (btw, this was a “gasp” for me)

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Feb 19 2012
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Announcements, Good & Gasp

Announcement – Introducing Good & Gasp

Dear Good Generation,

We all are busy nowadays clicking on countless tweets, Facebook posts and blog news all over the web, and I would be the first to admit it’s a bit tiring as I’d love to find more summaries of interesting stories like the ones you get on Acumen Fund’s “Seen and Heard” and Echoing Green’s “The Buzz”.

In the spirit of “replicaneurship” (this past Weekly Ponder #5‘s topic), I would like to start something similar. That is, a weekly or periodic list of articles and discussions around the online ether that I found cool, interesting, or where I even left comments myself (“Good”) or that I found, rather uncool, superficial, superfluous, incomplete, or that made me simply angry (“Gasp”). Either way, I figure it’s a win-win for all. Readers (you) get another summary of “must-reads” or “must avoids”, authors get more traffic (for better or worse) and I might get the satisfaction of more people reading my raves and rants outside of this blog.

Oh, that reminds me. If YOU feel like being charitable, please forward me some good or terrible stuff on our favorite “do-good” and “careers” topics that you see on the net. I might check it out and include it on “Good & Gasp”.

For now, all the best roaming and reading for the next interesting story!

Sincerely,

Thien

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Feb 13 2012
2 Comments
Polls, Sustainability

Weekly Poll #3 – Achieving Sustainability: How Much Do You Really Care?

Weekly Poll #3:

Achieving Sustainability: How Much Do You Really Care?

To round out this week’s orientation on the blog around sustainability, capitalism, and what it all ultimately means, I was curious about how some of us rationalize or privately deal with the challenges that an increasingly less sustainable world poses. Personally, I ended this week’s post on the subject of zero-growth with an assertion that unless we somehow “overthrow ourselves” and change our assumption that more “stuff equals better lives” – instead of just blaming today’s corporations – we are inevitably heading towards a bad, bad place.

The practical reality of this appeal, as expected, is that it is of course significantly easier to articulate a problem and call to action than to actually, well, act on it. Assuming you buy into the idea of “overthrowing ourselves,” how would you propose we do this? How are you doing this already? If actions measure the degree of our “caring”, … how much do you really care, at the end of the day, that our way of life is guaranteed to be unsustainable, which will force either us or our children in our lifetime to make drastic, likely painful changes to what some of us consider necessary conditions for comfort and happiness?

But this week’s poll is not about understanding your recycling habits or asking for the number of organic tea labels in your pantry. More specifically, I am first interested if you agree with my assertion that the core problem of sustainability is based on our explicit demand for more goods, and if a change in this demand would have a greater impact than all corporate sustainability efforts combined. If you agree, then I am curious if you would be willing to change your habits even if nobody around you would. No judgment here, but I personally suspect this route is tough at best, if we look at it honestly.

As always, please do feel free to share any suggestions for future polls you may find interesting to learn more about your fellow Good Generation comrades and their views on various topics. I’d be happy to pick up on some of these ideas in the future.

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Feb 13 2012
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Polls, Sustainability

Weekly Poll #3 – Achieving Sustainability: How Much Do You Really Care?

Weekly Poll #3:

Achieving Sustainability: How Much Do You Really Care?

To round out this week’s orientation on the blog around sustainability, capitalism, and what it all ultimately means, I was curious about how some of us rationalize or privately deal with the challenges that an increasingly less sustainable world poses. Personally, I ended this week’s post on the subject of zero-growth with an assertion that unless we somehow “overthrow ourselves” and change our assumption that more “stuff equals better lives” – instead of just blaming today’s corporations – we are inevitably heading towards a bad, bad place.

The practical reality of this appeal, as expected, is that it is of course significantly easier to articulate a problem and call to action than to actually, well, act on it. Assuming you buy into the idea of “overthrowing ourselves,” how would you propose we do this? How are you doing this already? If actions measure the degree of our “caring”, … how much do you really care, at the end of the day, that our way of life is guaranteed to be unsustainable, which will force either us or our children in our lifetime to make drastic, likely painful changes to what some of us consider necessary conditions for comfort and happiness?

But this week’s poll is not about understanding your recycling habits or asking for the number of organic tea labels in your pantry. More specifically, I am first interested if you agree with my assertion that the core problem of sustainability is based on our explicit demand for more goods, and if a change in this demand would have a greater impact than all corporate sustainability efforts combined. If you agree, then I am curious if you would be willing to change your habits even if nobody around you would. No judgment here, but I personally suspect this route is tough at best, if we look at it honestly.

As always, please do feel free to share any suggestions for future polls you may find interesting to learn more about your fellow Good Generation comrades and their views on various topics. I’d be happy to pick up on some of these ideas in the future.

Continue reading →

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Feb 07 2012
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Announcements, Forum, Good Profiles

Announcement – Introducing the Good Profile

Dear Good Generation,

After a bit of preparation, I am excited to finally bring you the “Good Profile” series, which features the voices of fellow members of our do-gooder community. They may be a few years out active in the field as entrepreneurs, employees, consultants, and more, or they may also be students just at the beginning of their “do-good” careers.

What they have in common with you is that they too thought hard about what they wanted to contribute, and went through their own reflections, experiences or rationalizations for why they do what they do now. For some, the answers were obvious as to what their path should be. For others, they may still not be sure if what they do best fits what they wish to accomplish in terms of impact and change in the world. But they are taking a chance, nonetheless.

They all come from different backgrounds that some of you will hopefully identify with as not being too different from your own. They all had alternatives and choices for career paths but for some reason chose to get into the “do-good” business. They all, not unlike you, are talented, bright and with a unique set of values that they wish to align their world to.

Lastly, one important note. If you know of people, including yourself, whom you think would make for a great Good Profile, please tell me or click the “Good Profile Sign-up Sheet“ on the bottom menu of the blog. Tell me a little about yourself or the person you have in mind. If it’s you, leave me a contact e-mail. If it’s someone else you are referring, I will ask you for an introduction if their story seems interesting. I am periodically looking for representativeness across do-good sectors or occupations, among professionals (mid-career or entry-level) or students (undergraduate or graduate all okay). Whether you are someone in the field or just looking for the way and have a unique perspective or struggle that you can articulate, I would love to hear about it.

This is also a great opportunity for you to raise awareness about your organization although the emphasis is clearly on you.

For now, hope some of you find the profiles helpful to your own reflections.

Sincerely,

Thien

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Feb 04 2012
3 Comments
Justice & Society, Reflection, Sustainability

In Search of Meaning – Why Intellectual Curiosity is Not Enough

Key Questions in this Post:

  • Why can intellectual curiosity change the world but not necessarily make it better?
  • Why should we consider shifting from the pursuit of the “Cool” to include the pursuit of the “Good”?

Oftentimes, when I look at a job description for just about any industry and my eyes move down to the “qualifications” the candidate should bring, I notice this one bullet that reads something like “strong intellectual curiosity.” Back in the day I thought this simply referred to the idea of being interested in as many things as possible. Later, when I got into consulting, I realized it referred more to the ability to tolerate and endure boring projects when you were staffed in something that could not be further from intellectually stimulating to you. For instance, if you were originally passionate about media and technology companies in Silicon Valley, but got assigned to work for six months at a mining company in Canada or a wood polish manufacturer in the U.S. Midwest, having “intellectual curiosity” meant that you would be less likely to jump off your hotel window on a depressing, cloudy Wisconsin Sunday afternoon.

But today I don’t want to talk about intellectual curiosity as a mere ability to endure the inane. Instead, I want to examine it in its classical sense as what most would consider a very positive driving force for intelligent people to engage in productive activity. However, I want to assert that for recent centuries it may have been dangerously overrated just about everywhere in the world… at the expense of something more important. I will argue that despite the marvelous inventions that we have been afforded by raw intellectual curiosity (and talent), overall many of us motivated by our talents and intellectual gifts do not necessarily find ourselves happier or at greater inner peace. Something is missing. But what?

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