10 Tools & Techniques To Change the World from the Inside

Here, briefly, is my advice to college graduates seeking to employ social justice and change, and to use their idealism within the economy to earn their own way, make a living, and still change the world "from the inside".  If any famous people are planning Commencement addresses and haven't started, feel free to use this.

Twitter is a good utility. I usually praise it for its "search box", you can find breaking insider news if you ignore the "feed" and search for something.  Amazing links show up.

Another good thing is that forcing yourself to make a point in 140 characters can make for better journalism.

Here are my 10 Techniques to "Change the world from the inside", something my friends told me would be impossible when I left Fayetteville Arkansas to attend an MBA program in Boston.  You can choose something, some industry you want to change, and make a living doing so, and in the process actually alter the way the entire world does and sees things in the industry.

In order (Tweets below posted in reverse order).

Tool #1 Humility.   
Tool #2 Math and Secondary Research.
Tool #3 Psychology (including your own)
Tool #4 Networking
Tool #5 Humor (can combine with #1)
Tool #6 Scout Everyones' Perspective (clients, suppliers, regulators, everyone)
Tool #7 Pacing
Tool #8 Statistics and risk analysis and lifecycle analysis (see #2)
Tool #9 History of the field
Tool #10 Be a good citizen.

More

"Dad only knows how to talk about things that interest him."

My dad only knows how to talk about things that interest him.

If you tried to talk about something unique to you, he'll listen, but he is casting hooks, looking for things that would bring the conversation back to his list of topics.

It sounds horrible?  But wait.  Among the things that interest my dad were Greek logic, Roman history, mid-20th century psychology research, Russian literature, Dickens, John Jacob Niles, and 20th century India.  To name a few.

He has no email address, no Facebook presence.  For someone who taught "mass communications" (MassComm), he's uniquely unplugged.  But as his kid, growing up in the '60s and '70s, I would say I was exposed to more things than the kids across the street.

I confess I'm a lot like my dad in regard to listening.   The things that interest me are less historical, more future oriented.  Sustainability.

Some of us who are agents of conscience find ourselves less interested in other peoples mundane problems, or in discussions about the weather.   I don't share my mundane problems either.  Nor does my dad, so much, except to fit in with other people talking about their mundane personal problems.  He'd rather be speaking about his personal heroes, the people who shaped him, than about his ills and setbacks.  We'd be better communicators if we split our time equally with everyone else in society, worrying at least half the time about things that worry other people in the conversation.

Worry comes from cognitive risk, and if you are talking to other people who want to spend half the time talking about "shark attacks", rare and unlikely fears, turned into obsessions, you are supposed to compromise.  The likelihood that a sea container exported by a Nigerian from the UK is going to be burned by kids at dumps is pretty low.   But if that fear, that message of export impropriety, has been marketed everywhere to everyone, a polite conversationalist will want to give it equal time... But there I go again.

Dad was really good at watching cartoons with me.

Government and Recycling International

"Avoided disposal costs" economics, which I helped pioneer in the 1970s and 1980s, has turned "toxic".

Normally, economically developed economies throw out more and more waste (garbage) as consumers gain confidence, buy new, and discard things of marginal value which take effort to maintain.  When your neighborhood is wealthy, no one wants your "free" black and white television, and it goes into an attic or basement or garage.

Hong Kong Modern Lined Landfill SE New Territories

As my generation became aware of population growth, finite resources, and habitat consumption, we were alarmed.  We wanted to save trees, to avoid mining, to save endangered species, preserve habitat, and conserve energy and carbon.  Recycling was a concrete, conservative, karma yoga way to do all of those things.

It seemed risky to say I'd get a job "recycling".   At the time, Recycling was akin to dishwashing. I didn't know anyone wealthy doing it (unless you counted the same mills switching to using virgin material according to price points).  The economics of making more money collecting scrap were at odds with providing the scrap more cheaply, which is what the Big Picture wanted.  Recycling needed to be plentiful and cheap to win over mill consumers, and not owning a mill, I was at the collection end of that equation.