Transforming Value Chains Towards Sustainability

This project engages the value chain as a holarchy—of nested wholes of greater and greater depth—and develops leadership capacity at each fulcrum point of that holarchy. One Sky has sought to activate the emergent nature of transformation towards greater perspectivism throughout the value chain: fostering more trust between business partners and moving product to market more swiftly, as well as foster a shift towards greater investment in community wellbeing, workers rights, and environmental wellbeing.

The One Sky team took its integral leadership curriculum from our work in West Africa and adjusted/aligned it to be used in Peru and Bolivia. Our core team includes Michael Simpson, Gail Hochachka (Canadians) and Cesar Moran (Peruvian). Cesar was the previous Executive Director of the Amazon Conservation Association, has a Masters from Yale in Social and Ecological Systems, and is also an Aikido sensei. Alex Streubel (Colombia) and Marcia Kodama (Brazil) joined the team as Integral Coaches, and Santiago Jimenez (student of Genpo Roshi, able to facilitate Big Mind).

Approx 28 people involved, who come from every point in the value chain: local harvesters, leaders of indigenous peoples' associations, landowners with large brazil nut concessions, people involved in shelling, buyers and sellers, and some individuals from the public sector (government offices who regulate various aspects of the brazil nut trade) and from the nonprofit sector (NGOs in the region who support brazil nut harvest due to the fact that it can both serve conservation and community development objectives).

Methodology and Design

In terms of our curriculum for this, and the methodology we are using, here's an overview:

We have five retreats over the year. Each one is designed with the quadrants in mind, with both activities and pedagogy reflecting first-person, second-person, and third-person perspectives. 

We are using various 'loops' of learning (a la Torbert), both learning direct facts, as well as learning about one's way of thinking and being, as well as learning about the deep principles at play behind phenomena. 

We've lightly held a U-Process (a la Scharmer) in which we brought the group to, and then rested at, the bottom of the U without predetermined goals and habitual reactions, and will begin some prototyping between the end of retreat 2 and retreat 3. Integral Coaching occurred in November 2013 and some perspective-taking and shadow work with Big Mind occurring in Feb 2014.

The entire program is designed with an ego-centric, socio-centric and world-centric flow: enabling people to be challenged and supported individually at first, and then increasingly expanding that out into the groups' social-identity and beyond into world centric principles and intentions. The fourth retreat culminated in some fascinating self-generated strategies for sustainability. The fifth and final retreat will be held this coming September.