Michael Sales
I'm a general futurist who tries to stay focused on the long view and major trends,. I consulted across a variety of economic sectors with a focus on strategic leadership development. While I've been mostly an applied educator and social scientist, I have published a bit. For example, I co-wrote "Life Sustaining Organizations -- A Design Guide" with Anika Savage. This is a methodological guide to an original process that integrates systems thinking and scenario planning that could be applied to any big decision issue. We applied it to the topic of creating organizations and projects that people love to join in this instance. Given "The Great Resignation," this work which is about ten years old continues to be highly relevant to current conditions.
The Security and Sustainability Guide (securesustain.org) is currently my major project. The Guide begins with the assumption and assertion that you cannot have security without sustainability and you cannot have sustainability without security. Here's a link to a presentation about the Guide I gave in December 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj_lW9s0Zu0
I'm also presently doing some thinking and writing about the plague of white supremacy. (https://sites.google.com/view/michael-sales/the-zombie-named-dixie)
I am also a climate activist, who, like many, want to preserve a livable climate for our children, subsequent generations and all life.
I am semi-retired and I'm no longer out to impress anyone about anything, but I love to learn. Like most of us, I'm sure that there is much more I could say, but I think I'll stop here, at least at this point.
Supervisors: My doctoral thesis, "Action Skills for Radical Democratic Organizations," was supervised by Chris Argyris. , I worked with Barry Oshry for 25 years., and I've also worked with Michael Marien, editor of Future Survey for the World Future Society, for the last 20+ years.
The Security and Sustainability Guide (securesustain.org) is currently my major project. The Guide begins with the assumption and assertion that you cannot have security without sustainability and you cannot have sustainability without security. Here's a link to a presentation about the Guide I gave in December 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj_lW9s0Zu0
I'm also presently doing some thinking and writing about the plague of white supremacy. (https://sites.google.com/view/michael-sales/the-zombie-named-dixie)
I am also a climate activist, who, like many, want to preserve a livable climate for our children, subsequent generations and all life.
I am semi-retired and I'm no longer out to impress anyone about anything, but I love to learn. Like most of us, I'm sure that there is much more I could say, but I think I'll stop here, at least at this point.
Supervisors: My doctoral thesis, "Action Skills for Radical Democratic Organizations," was supervised by Chris Argyris. , I worked with Barry Oshry for 25 years., and I've also worked with Michael Marien, editor of Future Survey for the World Future Society, for the last 20+ years.
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This revolution certainly appears to be well underway, leading to a contest between 21st Century Green (or Sustainable) Capitalism, valuing the triple bottom line of People/Planet/Profit to some degree vs. 20th Century Industrial Era Capitalism that adheres to a single bottom line and narrow accounting measures. But the revolution is a quiet one that is underappreciated, due to fragmentation and lack of leadership. Hopefully, if well-publicized and widely discussed, the January 2017 Better Business, Better World report of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, making a strong all-win business case for pursuing the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, could provide a large boost to the necessary revolution. In turn, this could energize the larger system of more than 1000 sustainability-related organizations that are identified in the August 2016 Interim Draft of The Security & Sustainability Guide. We are not yet winning the struggle for sustainability in our era of great and intensifying uncertainty and danger. But with cities and responsible business taking the lead, and with more horizontal thinking that includes broad consideration of security issues, the necessary revolution can become more visible and thus accelerate.
The ways in which the profound prejudices of the Confederate slave system continue to pollute the American landscape are at the heart of this essay. Some personal reminiscences about being a native son of the South are combined with a reading of history that focuses on the consequences of Abraham Lincoln’s death for our current national condition. Specifically, I am concerned with how America’s untreated pathology of white primacy persists and the growing threat it poses.
This case study tracks the 15 year evolution of an arts organization that gave its members the right to engage in all organizational decision-making activities. The objective of the research was to test the hypothesis that the broad right to participate in organizational processes would increase organizational engagement and effectiveness. The hypothesis was disproved. The results indicated that various political groupings emerged in the organization and that the members of these constituencies did not have the action skills or cognitive frameworks needed to create success.
The organization, which once had many hundreds of members and performed an important function for a large arts community, no longer exists,
This revolution certainly appears to be well underway, leading to a contest between 21st Century Green (or Sustainable) Capitalism, valuing the triple bottom line of People/Planet/Profit to some degree vs. 20th Century Industrial Era Capitalism that adheres to a single bottom line and narrow accounting measures. But the revolution is a quiet one that is underappreciated, due to fragmentation and lack of leadership. Hopefully, if well-publicized and widely discussed, the January 2017 Better Business, Better World report of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, making a strong all-win business case for pursuing the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, could provide a large boost to the necessary revolution. In turn, this could energize the larger system of more than 1000 sustainability-related organizations that are identified in the August 2016 Interim Draft of The Security & Sustainability Guide. We are not yet winning the struggle for sustainability in our era of great and intensifying uncertainty and danger. But with cities and responsible business taking the lead, and with more horizontal thinking that includes broad consideration of security issues, the necessary revolution can become more visible and thus accelerate.
The ways in which the profound prejudices of the Confederate slave system continue to pollute the American landscape are at the heart of this essay. Some personal reminiscences about being a native son of the South are combined with a reading of history that focuses on the consequences of Abraham Lincoln’s death for our current national condition. Specifically, I am concerned with how America’s untreated pathology of white primacy persists and the growing threat it poses.
This case study tracks the 15 year evolution of an arts organization that gave its members the right to engage in all organizational decision-making activities. The objective of the research was to test the hypothesis that the broad right to participate in organizational processes would increase organizational engagement and effectiveness. The hypothesis was disproved. The results indicated that various political groupings emerged in the organization and that the members of these constituencies did not have the action skills or cognitive frameworks needed to create success.
The organization, which once had many hundreds of members and performed an important function for a large arts community, no longer exists,