In mid-June, the Compression Institute hosted a meeting of business leaders and forward thinkers at the Plantary on East Third Street in Lexington to discuss the necessity of creating new pathways to sustainable businesses. In attendance was Robert “Doc” Hall, author of the book Compression: Meeting the Challenges of Sustainability Through Vigorous Learning Enterprises. Hall’s analysis finds our civilization’s conduct of business at a stage where, to be sustainable, the business world will require major adaptations to new conditions and realities.
Since the explosion of European colonialism and the onset of the industrial revolution, Hall explains in his book, unlimited expansion has been the primary model for business growth. He lists a whole set of assumptions belonging to the expansionary model of business and concludes that those assumptions will no longer lead to sustainable business. To achieve sustainability, he says, the business paradigm must shift from one of “expansion,” the idea of unending growth with more and more resource consumption, to one of “compression,” which he defines as “the art and science of improving quality of life while reducing resource use and eliminating toxins.”
“I did not come at it from an environmental background,” Hall wrote in an email, “but from a lean industry background. The question was what do we really need to do to cope with the shortages and environmental messes that one could see were coming on us? All you had to do was look at what was happening to the world as a physical system, rather than through the business overlay that is the usual lens through which most business people perceive things.”
Hall has impressive academic and business-world credentials: more than 30 years teaching and professor emeritus at Kelly School of Business, Indiana University, combined with a background in manufacturing (Eli Lilly and Union Carbide) and founding membership in the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. He taught what may have been the first accredited MRP (materials resource planning) course to be included in an MBA program. He had an early introduction in the 1970s to the Japanese management system that would become known as TPS (Toyota Production System). His consequent familiarity with lean management led him to write his 1982 book, Zero Inventories, and he toured the United States introducing the new management ideas to U.S. business leaders.
A central message of Hall’s current book is that businesses need to become “vigorous learning enterprises,” continually adapting to changing conditions and understandings while serving missions for the betterment of society. Profit would no longer trump all. Employees, society and the environment will be lead beneficiaries of a new system of values.
“The author did not reach this conclusion quickly,” writes Hall. “Expecting others to instantly concur is unreasonable. But we cannot afford to wait much longer to start on this new path.” Hall has set a goal for the Compression mission: to use half the virgin materials and energy by 2040, with 2000 as the baseline year.
“The goal is to do better with less, not more with less,” he said.
Among attendees at the Lexington meeting were Lilllian Press, founder of Kentucky Governor’s Scholars; Len Press, founder of KET; Lee Burroughs, plant manager at Truseals Technologies in Barborville; Jack Kelly, former CEO of the World Equestrian Games; John Stempel, former director of UK Patterson School of Diplomacy; and Jason Delambre and Bobby Clark, cofounders of Midwest Clean Energy Enterprise. Also present was Jack Ward, a cofounder of Compression Institute who has a background in global business enterprises. David Veech of Louisville, also a cofounder of Compression Institute, led the meeting with a PowerPoint presentation of principles and concepts and facilitated a lively roundtable discussion that touched on diverse subjects from mission-connected employees at every organizational level to peak oil and other energy issues to the importance of engaging political leaders with the Compression mission.
“One of these days, we’ll have enough people coming regularly and get beyond introductory material,” said Veech. Compression Institute has had about one meeting per month in Kentucky since last December. Meetings have happened in Louisville, Frankfort and Lexington.
Bobby Clark has been at four meetings.
“Every time I go,” said Clark, “I learn something different about preconceptions I’ve had. With my green entrepreneurial work, I’ve been acutely aware of the role each of us can play in reducing what we consume. These meetings bring together different perspectives, and we need that. This is about a group that exchanges ideas to learn better ways, in terms of sustainability and compression, to do business.”
The Kentucky meetings are among the first in the country for Compression Institute. The institute provided the template and worked with the Center for Innovative and Professional Learning at Ramapo College, N.J., to create a Certificate in Sustainability Leadership program that is based on Compression Thinking. A Summer Institute will be held from Aug. 13-17 in Boulder, Colo.
For more information and meeting dates, check online at www.compression.org.