Author: Migo Aguado

Working in an energy company, I am familiar with sustainability. However, it was when I took the graduate course “Sustainable Business Models” under Professor Paolo Azurin based on the book Reimagining Capitalism* by Harvard Business School Professor Rebecca Henderson that made me pursue a lifelong mission of involvement and learning in the vast field of sustainability. While there are many resources about it, I need to have a structured & practical learning journey, learn from different industry practitioners, and network with like-minded individuals in diverse fields. That’s why I applied for the second cohort of Learn2Lead Sustainability programmed by SustainablePH.

Learn2Lead is a practical 10-week hybrid learning program for sustainability practitioners centered on the theory and practice of sustainability management. Learn2Lead is offered to practitioners in any field or industry who want to develop the skills to become effective stewards of sustainability in their respective organizations. They provide the knowledge and tools to boost skills and improve business acumen within a wide range of sustainability and CSR-related topics tailor-fitted in the Philippine context.

*You can read my notes about the book here: https://migoaguado.com/2022/01/12/reimagining-capitalism/

Most modern businesses have exhibited holocracy, creative destruction, and fail-fast systems to adapt to changing environments, keep up with competition, and deliver value to customers as quickly as possible. Moreover, many companies undergo constant structure rationalization. These are embedded in a loose and flexible organizational structure with networked teams working together. Employers are always on the lookout for “team players,” “flexible skills,” and those who can thrive in “ad-hoc environments.” While this modern working culture delivered revenues, built organizational resilience, and globalized the workforce, Richard Sennett, a London School of Economics sociologist, claims that the new capitalism has corroded the human character. 

Continue reading The Corrosion of Character & Rise of Populism in The Modern Economy

Breathing might be the most underrated physiological process we undertake, consciously or unconsciously. The advent of mainstream mental health advocacies and studies about peak productivity and performance in a fast-paced lifestyle has made some scholars revisit proper, efficient, and effective breathing. James Nestor called these scholars “pulmonauts” in his book Breath. The most exciting discovery Nestor found out is that breathing techniques have been practiced in ancient times. Western modern medicine could only partially utilize this indigenous knowledge to find cures for modern lifestyle diseases. Modern science has a different framework that could dismiss anecdotal evidence from ancient texts. However, pulmonauts from different disciplines of medicine, speech pathology, dentistry, sports science, psychology, and even performance arts have uncovered ways humans can breathe how we are designed to breathe.  

Continue reading Breathing & Rediscovering Lost Knowledge

Reading The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (2019) by social writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer made me reflect on how leaders enact change in organizations. While Hoffer exemplified contexts in politics, activism, and religion, the same psychological forces play in a corporate setting. His thoughts are aligned with change management guru John Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model (1995). Let’s explore how Hoffer describes mass movements and how Kotter suggests enacting change. In this exploration, let’s qualify Kotter’s model to propose a corporate action similar to a mass movement.

Continue reading The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

I had no definitive goal when I was new to training and playing sports. Nike said to do it anyway. While there are merits to leaving your couch and lifting weights without overthinking, having no singular intention can muddle your progress. No, I am not even referring to having a program an athlete could follow–sure, one can be guided accordingly. Still, the absence of an explicit intention won’t reap the benefits of a supposedly structured training regimen. An intention is an area of focus you wish to practice or master within a progress framework. Say you want to run a marathon: a program is a set of running sessions of x number of kilometers. An intention is a particular running skill you have your eyes on during a session. This could be breathing, tempo, or pacing. 

Simplifying training with a simple intention is recommended because our brains cannot multitask. Research in neuroscience tells us that the brain doesn’t do tasks simultaneously, as we thought (hoped) it might. Instead, we switch tasks quickly [1]. Neuropsychologist Christof Koch further supports this in his book, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist. While the book offers an in-depth and technical exploration of the mind, it also puts practical insights for the reader. According to him, our minds generate a “spotlight of attention,” which is treated preferentially and can be detected faster and with fewer errors. With this, expectations, biases, and memory play a more prominent role in higher brain regions, and the impact of the external world weakens correspondingly [2].

Continue reading Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist

Once taken for granted under the assumption that it’s humanly innate, storytelling has become a critical competency in humanity’s endeavors toward sustainable development: We want to urge people to participate in development initiatives through the stories we tell. Although painted with urgency, sustainability feels like a marathon mission instead of a shock-and-awe sprint. This is challenging for storytellers: stories need to be compelling enough to encourage action, and compelling stories need to feel urgent. How do we tell relatable, action-oriented stories with a long-term deadline with many protagonists? Stories need to have high stakes, highly urgent, and highly challenging, usually with a “hero” protagonist listeners are rooting for [1].

Maria Ressa, in her book How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future (2022), illustrates that journalists have the privilege and responsibility to tell these stories. While many sustainability topics revolve around carbon consumption and technological innovation, Ressa argues that journalism is the bedrock of development. Factual stories create integrity in elections. Integrity in elections creates a healthy democracy. A healthy democracy creates inclusive development.

Continue reading How to Stand Up to a Dictator

My high school Physics teacher told us not to be afraid of the subject as it is just “reality in mathematical terms.” His words relieved me immediately as my worldview was so simple back then. However, in two decades, adulting, career, and midlife crisis came along with social media, artificial intelligence, and big data. It feels like reality is constructed and deconstructed daily, and I mindlessly observe the constant chaos around me. Revisiting and familiarizing myself with mathematics can help me understand the reality that was once so simple to me back then. 

Continue reading The Ten Equations That Rule The World

These are my notes and favorite highlights from the book Principles For Dealing With The Changing World Order (2021) by Ray Dalio. In addition, I’ll share three excerpts, three suggestions from the author, and three personal reflections.

Three Excerpts

On the cyclical nature of history: As I studied history, I saw that it typically transpires via relatively well-defined life cycles, like those of organisms, that evolve as each generation transitions to the next. By seeing many interlinking cases evolve together, I could see patterns and cause/effect relationships that govern them and could imagine the future based on what I learned. These events happened many times throughout history and were parts of a cycle of rises and declines of empires and most aspects of empires.

Continue reading The Changing World Order

I am neither a history major nor a history expert, but I find history fascinating. The last few books I read are about it. One theory seems to be recurring: history, particularly in politics and capital markets, is cyclical. We don’t see much of it since each cycle transcends one generation. This poses a problem for short-term popular elections because they are won with 1) narrow perspectives vs. sustainable solutions and 2) immediate feelings vs. long-term rationality. Today, our cycle is probably favoring populist leaders, for better or for worse.

But one thing is certain: cycles end. And it’s never the majority or the powerful who breaks the cycle—it’s the small yet progressive faction of individuals. More likely than not, history eventually comes after those who have taken advantage of the system at the expense of the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized.

Yuval Noah Harrari, a contemporary historian, argued that “…numbers alone don’t count for much in history. History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather than by the backward-looking masses.”

This is what helps me sleep at night but not because it’s a utopian illusion. Historians saw it: We may repeat history for the worse, but history can also repeat for the better.

To my fellow members of the “weaker” faction of the electorate, we are granted the power to be creative, progressive, and future-oriented. These were explicitly exhibited in campaign rallies. We still have the power to shape history. And no type of election can take this power away from you.

Ang namulat, hindi na muling mapipikit. Mabuhay ang mga tumitindig para sa Pilipinas!

These are my notes and favorite highlights from the book The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions (2020) by Jeffrey D. Sachs. I’ll share three excerpts, three suggestions from the author, and three personal reflections.

Three Excerpts

On addressing Globalization: “Throughout history, it has been important to understand the threats arising from globalization (disease, conquest, war, financial crises, and others) and to face them head-on, not by ending the benefits of globalization, but by using the means of international cooperation to control the negative consequences of global-scale interconnectedness.”

Continue reading The Ages of Globalization