Blue accountability
I had a long and fascinating conversation yesterday about building momentum in the North Atlantic blue economy. The key takeaway was that the "old" way of funding and governing Ocean innovation (whatever that is) doesn't serve the public as well as practitioners believe. Inclusion and cooperation are the way forward.
Inviting more people to the table has inefficiencies, which most people are not prepared for or interested in dealing with. When advocates talk about one community of academic, industry, conservation, and government united in defense of the World Ocean, I think about how hard it is to make decisions in an organization of 10-30 people with existing social and political affinity.
In all-volunteer community radio stations there is a spectrum of contributors, with three types that stand out. "Neophytes" are enthusiastic newcomers that just want to help in any way possible. "Jockeys" are seasoned entertainment or broadcast industry people that like to work pro bono and just do their thing. "Managers" like to get-shit-done, and sometimes created boundaries to help do that. And there's the board, but we don't talk about the board.
People either get frustrated and move on, or they become "managers", in what is supposed to be the flattest of flat organizations. If you have ever been in the Academy, gov't, or a business while they try to be flat, I am sorry. Mostly because moving on is a bigger deal, and the sunk cost fallacy keeps a lot of people trapped.
Bringing together orgs with parity might be possible, but they are still deeply hierarchal. So, a team of four orgs is mostly a team of four people, or at least was initiated by them. And we praise this, or at least reward Exclusivity. Because that's where ALL value comes from in our present economy. This might be changing, at least a lot of people are betting that it is. But there are still plenty of gatekeepers.
According to a friend, the optimal number of gatekeepers with which to form a cabal is seven. Too many more and the knives come out, too few and someone might be held accountable. If you are a secretive cabal, your work will be easier, because you can just do crazy shit and no one ever has to know.
The oath to join a secret cabal is called a non-compete and non-disclosure agreement. Inter-cabal communications are called mutual NDAs. Mutual NDAs only exist because eventually everyone realizes that Not Invented Here is a Really Bad Idea, and decide to "collaborate".
Not all ideas are good ideas, and even some good ideas have unintended consequences. So someone has to draw a line somewhere, but it shouldn't be about who gets to participate and make decisions. And if social entrepreneurship is going to play a part in making Earth a more hospitable Ocean planet, we can't be forming elite teams and exclusive clubs.
This is why the public statements "we have to keep the yahoos out" from an Executive Director of an industry association trouble me. Or private statements about entitlement to the Ocean based on family history. Or landowners that don't want to look at aquaculture.
All of these people feel that they have earned executive power by tenure. I was here first. But the first is rarely the penultimate, right? We learn that first is best very early in life, but that's only true in ranked competition, aka sports stuff. If winning the race doesn't matter, you can just do Great Work.
It's not enough to be working towards carbon neutrality or social justice, or even have achieved a personal nirvana. Especially in new ventures, because people always underestimate the investment and take shortcuts. Always. Always! Less than ten percent of startups succeed, and they must offset the damage done by the death spiral of the other ninety percent. See, the ninety percent said they'd get to Sustainability and Accessibility, like later or whatever. POST revenue. RIP what a waste.
When all you want to do is get in the Action, you justify things. All is fair and love and war. Big, hot topics like Climate Change and other Ocean Catastrophes tend to evoke combative and sentimental tendencies.
We can draw another lesson from radio. Advertising on non-profit radio is not advertising, it is sponsorship, and there is a very specific rule: "no calls to action".
I like this because it forces you to use factual statements about a sponsor, and defers to the listener to Make A Decision. There is a kind of magic in someone taking the initiative themselves. There is no magic in telling someone what to think.
In terms of these big ideas and the Blue Economy, I would like to also institute the policy "no calls to arms". I don't really want to unpack that, except to say that climate change is not a thing that can be killed, and none of our wars-on-x did much except justify hideous behavior.
What people want is accountability, I think. Adversarial encounters between Ocean agents are going to increase. SOME folks are entitled shits, but most are curious and open to things that are comprehensible. If all the things in the R&D pipeline for the North Atlantic pan out, there will be a huge increase in the number of vessels, structures, businesses, robots, and humans on/in the water.
All of them will be waiting for you to mess up and be held accountable. Do better. Communication takes courage.
By adopting observability as a policy, you prove you hold yourself accountable. To me that means you know (quantitatively) your effect on the world, you show that face publicly (and not aspirational marketing), and you plan for the worst. The rest will follow.
My gratitude goes out to everyone trying to make a difference.