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The roots of this question go way back.  Parts of it began to tug at me when I was in high school.   My parents were rooted in the Bible; they were Christian pacifists; they were active liberals; it was impossible not to soak up at least a part of their passion for a world that lived by a better set of standards.   They raised us in suburban Denver, but as my dad intermittently got himself elected to public office, including one term in Congress, I finished my high school years at Bethesda - Chevy Chase.   In the fall of 1960 I entered Harvard.  Ours was the class that bracketed John Kennedy's presidency - we were freshmen when JFK was elected President, seniors when he was killed.   That also was the era of nuclear weapons tests, civil rights demonstrations, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the early beginnings of the Vietnam War - without our realizing it at the time, the sixties were becoming The Sixties.  

In the years to come, I got a number of different worm's eye views on the larger society that we all live in.   As a taxi driver.   As a union officer for our 900-member cab drivers' union.   As a student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.   As a floor supervisor in a diesel engine factory.   As a consultant working on projects in a range of different industries.   As a dad attending innumberable PTA meetings and school board meetings.   As an analyst taking apart the Social Society reform issue and finding both parties deeply guilty of self-deception.   My resume includes the bottom-up frustrations of working cab drivers, and PTA parents; it also includes the top-down perspectives of Fortune 500 management consultants, and the intense number-crunching that goes with those assignments.   It's an inside-outside, from the bottom and from the top, mix of experiences and perspectives.  

It's also a weaving together of a calling - "what would a decent future look like?" - a series of jobs, and family life - the wonderful satisfaction of being a husband and a dad in a family I couldn't be more proud of.   Calling, jobs, family life.   By training, I'm an analyst; by upbringing and instinct, I'm an advocate.   In recent years I have begun to understand myself - professionally - as whole system reinvention analyst.   Whatever that means.  

And that almost brings us to this website.   There are two predecessor websites I might first call to your attention:   Common Sense on Social Security, one of the Internet's more highly-ranked websites on Social Security reform;   Simcivic, serving as the home for a Java-based simulation tool I created that makes it possible to compare different macro-level strategies for Social Security reform.

This website grows out a fun idea.   Put facts and graphs on big wallcharts and invite people to react to them.   There's something permanent about a three-foot by five-foot chart that demands attention.   It's not a "Now you see it, now you don't" Powerpoint slide.   Over time, I'd collected a fair amount of data about our local community; why not make it available on large wallcharts?   Here in Annapolis, we face some pretty tough issues.   In microcosm, we have much the same socio-economic tangle as much bigger cities do.   And, therefore, just as sharp a need for rethinking where we are and where we're going.   I acquired a large format printer, I ran off a number of wallcharts, I gave a number of talks.   And I learned, in doing that, that I had a deeper hope.   I wanted to bring my listeners to a point of realizing the importance of making a fundamental paradigm shift.   Yesterday's answers weren't working, we needed something quite a bit deeper.   And I also realized that large charts, by themselves, would never be a sufficient catalyst.   Hence the book - Fix the Whole Enchilada - that I am now working on.   In a book, there's ample space for explaining the sort of paradigm shift that's needed.

So here we are.   Explore the website - you'll find many of the charts I'm referring to.   And you'll also find, as they materialize, the chapters (draft form) for the book.   But it's not just a book about a paradigm shift for Annapolis, or any other one community.   It's an essay about the larger paradigm shift - from an acceptance of overlapping mediocrity - to an insistence that we set higher targets for ourselves, and mobilize ourselves to create a future that makes sense.   The human juggernaut on planet Earth has enormous promise - if we have the discipline to create a common good framework for our enduring journey on planet Earth.   And if we don't?   Not a pretty picture.

So what kind of credentials should someone have, if they wish to write a decent book about the common good and what it takes for the human family to steer itself in that direction?   I don't know.   It would probably be good if the author were a confirmed generalist.   A certain amount of time spent in sophisticated analysis inside large corporations might count for something.   As would a bit of time spent among working folks - cab drivers, say - serving all kinds of customers, at all hours of the day or night.   The sort of credentials, that is, that aren't very common.   Well, you'll have to judge for yourself.   Read the chapters as I hang the drafts up to dry on one of the neighboring web pages in this website.   Write, if you have feedback to offer.   If enough feedback accumulates, maybe I'll post some of it.

No, I'm not completely alone in doing this.   There is a Board for this nonprofit, and I do appreciate the moral support I receive from Jan Black and from David Merkowitz, and of course from my wife Martha.   There are a number of others, too - they'll receive due credit as the book gets itself finalized.   I appreciate all of them, and especially their patience with me.   The synthesis I'm offering here hasn't been self-evident until very recently.   Invention, Edison reminded the world, is about persistent searching, occasional discovery, and, eventually, with enough discoveries in hand, a workable product materializes.   And so it is here. Years of searching.   Enough good fortune in making discoveries that the process could keep moving forward.   Finally enough insight at hand that the book, in a sense, begins to write itself.

Steven H. Johnson
July 2007

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