What do companies need to survive?

I was invited to speak at a London unconference event hosted by Informatology with a focus on “New Media @ Work”.  The organisers asked us to speak using a curious new format called Pecha Kucha which imposes a 6 minute 40 second limit on speaking time comprised of 20 slides, each delivered in 20 seconds.  A big challenge if you have a lot to say.

After the conference a couple of my speaking colleagues, @johningham and @tquinlan who enjoyed the theme of my talk Tweeted this;

joningham RT @tquinlan: @ixtlan Great stuff, but still a bit organisation-bad, socialpeople-good. Do orgs need structure/C&C or do they actually use social? #iy10 Thursday, 29 April 2010, 3:56 pm - Reply - View Tweet - Retweet - Direct Message

tquinlan @ixtlan Great stuff, but still a bit organisation-bad, socialpeople-good. Do orgs need structure/C&C or do they actually use social? #iy10 Thursday, 29 April 2010, 3:52 pm - Reply - View Tweet - Retweet - Direct Message

'A bit organisation bad' came from this slide;

So I'm compelled to respond with just one or two examples of why companies (who in the USA now have the rights of individuals) are not set up to be good, responsible citizens of the world and why command and control organisation is actually killing the planet.

A recent article about a whistle-blower working at BP who as long ago as 2008 made representations about the safety of the oil rig that just blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, who was summarily fired for daring to suggest the following;

Even worse, 95 percent of Atlantis' subsea welding records did not receive final approval, calling into question the integrity of thousands of crucial welds on subsea components that, if they were to rupture, could result in an oil spill 30 times worse than the one that occurred after the explosion on Deepwater Horizon last week

Then there's the recent US Senate hearings on Goldman Sachs' manipulation of the financial markets and the *possibility* of facing criminal charges for what amounts to economic crimes against humanity.

That article ends with;

That in the crisis of 2009 the mounting evidence of fraud, conflicts of interest, indifference to suffering, repudiation of responsibility, and systemic absence of individual moral judgement produced an administrative economic massacre of such proportion that it constitutes an economic crime against humanity.

Here's the slide deck of that Pecha Kucha talk.  Enjoy.

Change comes from within (Pecha kucha)

View more presentations from Leon Benjamin.