home » It’s about execution

It’s about execution

by Paula | 12 October 2008 | permalink | comments
Tags: peak oil, entrepreneurship
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Another peak oil conference season is in full swing. I read the various blog and op-ed reports with some interest, on the lookout for new information but finding little beyond updated statistics and the omnipresent calls for relocalization, everywhere, right now. Outside my neighbor blows leaves into a big pile with a noisy, giant hairdryer; I think to myself, he’s going to wish he had those kilowatts back.

My little town is not prepared for peak oil. Nor is the bigger town 10 miles down the road. Nor is my state, my geographic region, or most of my nation. The only American towns making preparations for peak oil, it seems, are a handful of wealthy enclaves out west and in the northeast. Aside from these no visible progress has been made in the seven years since I first tuned in. Relocalization has barely spread beyond the original dozen or so municipalities that have served as ground zero for peak oil preparations since the beginning of this decade — this, in spite of a respectable level of peak oil coverage in the monopoly media.

Seven years is a long time. Way too long. How can this be?

The relocalization movement is stuck, like a broken record, repeating itself over and over. It is a closed loop that permits new voices only occasionally, and only on the grounds that they do not deviate too far from the sole, pre-approved message: Community. Community. Community.

This myopic obsession with community has stunted the relocalization movement’s growth and prevented most towns and municipalities from moving toward anything resembling preparation. When newly-convinced, would-be relocalizers jump online to find out what they can do, they discover that unless they are obscenely rich or dig hunting with an atlatl, their only option is to build a communal garden and hope the warm glow of egalitarian democracy will be an adequate substitute for heating oil. Community might be swell in California, but it is not exactly a rallying cry in Arizona, Nebraska, Pennsylvania. And so without alternatives, nothing gets done at all.

Absent from any such discussion is acknowledgement of the role of business — especially small business — in relocalization, perhaps best evidenced by the perplexing lack of a “business” category at Energy Bulletin (as if local farmers, PVC retailers and biodiesel co-ops are not businesses). The consequence of this exclusion is failure to accomplish what we in business call execution — that is, getting off our duffs and making things happen.

Business is acutely concerned with execution because it is a prerequisite for profit (or just to break even). The steps required to bring ideas to fruition are the heart of every business undertaking without exception. Financing, workflow development, iterative prototyping, distribution, promotion, growth, adaptation, evolution — businesses, particularly successful small businesses, deal with such things on a daily basis and are fully versed in the art of navigating rapid change effectively. Market activity is a very different nut to crack than academics or activism; the relocalization movement’s prohibition against business voices has retarded its efforts, and has atomized individuals whose collective acumen would propel relocalization to widespread adoption.

Peak oil now appears to be fully upon us and there are as yet no executable options for the vast majority of people in the world. Few have the resources to atlatl-ize or invest their way off the runaway train; and woe to every person whose community lacks a critical mass of activists to implement the approved relocalization agenda. A lot of us — a lot of us — have despaired because we thought we were just screwed. No peak oil meet-ups in our towns; no way to get to Oregon in a hurry; stuck in an apartment — guess that’s it then, see you on the other side. But this is not the case at all. “Community” is no solution for us because peak oil is, fundamentally, not a community problem.

Peak oil is a business problem. “Communities” are markets, and relocalization represents a market shift that requires capital and must produce a return on investment. Economic networks — local or otherwise — are created by entrepreneurs seeking to profit from the sale of goods and services. Without this foundation execution will never happen on the scale it needs to. Happily, the foundation is already built; it does not need to be re-invented, brought to the masses through education, or vetted through self-appointed authorities. It does not require people to like you or approve of your opinions. It gives individual persons the power to effect real, measurable change across wide swaths of population. It is an organic, self-organizing system that has worked on both large and small scales, in one form or another, in diverse cultures and among people of every sort since before the Neolithic revolution. It cannot be suppressed. It will always be there, functioning with or without political approval.

Relocalization is the task of the entrepreneur. Our role is to identify and capitalize on market opportunity, just as it has always been, and we do not need to organize anyone but ourselves to accomplish execution.

My primary goal for this blog is to motivate the entrepreneurial execution of adaptive ideas by identifying potential opportunities, amplifying useful concepts, exploring new strategy, examining alternative success metrics, getting in tune with the changing nature of the market, and sharing innovative business models. Any entrepreneur who can adapt rapidly enough to the coming changes will pull through, and will by extension help his or her community pull through what promises to be an unprecedented crisis.

My secondary goals for this blog are to spark a conversation about peak oil among a wider small-business audience, and to put an end to the isolation in which peak oil aware entrepreneurs, like me, are likewise undoubtedly sweating bullets. I have every expectation that with access to business-relevant peak oil information, and to each other, my fellow entrepreneurs can and will weave tremendous opportunity out of tremendous crisis, and in the process give birth to new kinds of thriving, post-petroleum economies.

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