The Vision Pioneers Blog

by Miriam Garvi

This week I am writing from the red sands of the Sahel.

Coming to this part of Africa is like traveling to distant times where life was about sustenance and survival, with no advanced technology to govern our existence. It brings out what I take for granted in everyday life, reminding me again of the framed existence of my Western mind.

In order to conceive of anything that is truly new, we need the courage to go beyond our realities framed by technology, culture and experience and move up to a level where there is freedom to ask a simple question: if nothing existed, how then would we like things to be?

Vision pioneering is about starting from the invisible where there is freedom to envision the qualities we are looking for. It is with such clarity that we can use our knowledge and potential to achieve something that will enrich our existence.

by Miriam Garvi

The other day my landlord company sent me and every other tenant the annual 10-page survey on customer satisfaction. I sighed as I opened the thick envelope, thinking about how readily companies will make use of the customer’s time and how seldom this seems to lead to any improvements.

Well, besides your typical customer satisfaction survey, this company wanted to know our housing wish list…

«How do you want to live?» This question should really be rephrased into «What are you willing to pay for?» to reflect its true meaning. A display of quasi-concern that is used like a thermometer in order to determine which future course of action is chargeable on the customer’s account.

When business is reduced to sterile transactions, then ‘customer care’ has little to do with taking pride in providing a product or service that is good, useful, purposeful for the client. Instead it takes on the meaning of effectuating what will directly impact bottom line.

So many qualities are lost in a visionless, penny-counting world. Is this a price we are willing to pay?

by Miriam Garvi

This week’s news have been dominated by the less flattering aspects of ethanol production and combustion.

Since the mass diffusion of the car, radical ideas on how to address everyday needs of transportation and mobility are rare to come by - despite undesirables such as traffic congestion and pollution. As ‘inconvenient truths’ fuel anti-global warming trends, biofuels are being promoted as the sound alternative for any citizen adhering to social responsibility.

But how can ethanol production be a sustainable solution when it is so inefficient that more energy has to be put into the process than what comes out of it? Or when agricultural land is reclaimed for biofuel production thus threatening to make large parts of the world’s poorer, rural population dependent on the World Food Program?

Is this the best we can do? Economic interests aside, when fear drives innovation we are walking backwards into the future. We find ourselves embracing solutions which are not sustainable in the wider perspective. And which upon careful scrutiny may reveal themselves to do as much harm as good - depending on whose interests and needs are in focus.

Vision pioneering is about taking radical steps towards improved fulfillment, driven by a vision of the purposeful rather than avoidance strategies. There can be no progressive thinking unless we shift focus from the products and technologies that we know to those invisible qualities we want to enjoy.

by Miriam Garvi

Earlier this week I was in Norway doing research for a book project I’ve been working on. Among the people I met was an elderly couple who had spent most of their working lives pioneering hospital care in the mountain areas of Taiwan.

They told me the story of how what is today a modern teaching hospital started with one man who took it upon himself to set up a small ‘treatment center’ of bamboo huts even though he had no other resources than his own drive and determination to do what was needed.

Today taking a professional stance often translates into arm’s length involvement. But then we forget something fundamental: one person’s dedication may be all it takes to set something in motion that can have a strong impact once it comes to fruition.

by Miriam Garvi

Look at this picture. Nothing but bare skies over a bare, snow-covered landscape.

But beyond what is captured by the camera lens is a moment rich in satisfaction and peace, a moment of untouched open space that awakens the hope of new beginnings. A breather from all the musts and the matters of course that frame our everyday life.

In our relentless pursuit of knowledge, we assemble everything we think we need to know about the ‘how tos’ and the ‘how not tos’. But this structure of fragmented pieces robs us of a quality so fundamental that it is known by the smallest child: that childlike innocence that allows us to believe in the unwritten page of new beginnings.

All too often what we see is blocking our sight. Unless we make room for the invisible qualities of life they will fall into oblivion, quenched by conventional professionalism. Vision pioneering is about unwritten pages and new beginnings: to start afresh by allowing fulfilling qualities to be brought out into the world. It is about new seeds taking form, germinating and growing so that we may be enriched not just monetarily but in a wider, human sense as we experience true fulfilment.