Mark Gordon
Mark is an experienced entrepreneur and business executive with over 25 years’ experience in fields as diverse as the military, publishing, software, web development, and nonprofit management. Among other things, Mark has launched two national, four-color trade magazines; a book publishing company; a web development firm; and an art institute. He has also written for several national publications, is a published poet, a blogger, and for seven years hosted a nationally syndicated radio program. He is the incoming president of the Rhode Island Executives Association, and he serves on the boards of the WARM Center (Westerly), and Oceans Aquarium Research and Science Center.
Currently, Mark is CEO of Mimer Energy New England, a subsidiary of Mimer Energy AB, a global energy development firm.
Mark’s involvement with PathTree comes by way of prior contact with Fred Presley, a founding partner in the Resilient Futures Network. Following intensive personal training in the Resilient Futures framework, Mark began helping Fred work on his idea for an application of that framework for communities, organizations and individuals.
Mark brings to PathTree a record of business innovation, creative management, and broad experience in finance, marketing, publishing, and web operations. As importantly, he is a committed student and practitioner of whole systems thinking.
READ MARK’S BLOG ENTRIES BELOW!
For the past two years, we’ve been assisting organizations and communities to become more resilient by incorporating whole-systems thinking into every aspect of their enterprise, from strategy to daily operations. Whole-systems thinking is a habit of analysis and decision-making that looks at the interrelationships of the constituent parts of a system rather than narrowly focusing [...]
“The systems view looks at the world in terms of relationships and integration” -Fritjof Capra
Okay, now we probe to the very core of systems thinking: connectivity. You’ll recall that in our first discussion, we defined a system as “an integrated set of elements that perform a desired function.” That’s not the only definition of a [...]
Until now, our brief explanations of systems, scales, shocks, and flow have been little more than table-setting. With conditions, we begin to move into the heart of whole-systems thinking, which is all about assessing conditions, mapping connections and capabilities, and achieving life-capital in a flow with change.
As we noted in our discussion of shocks, systems exist [...]
Every system exists and operates in a wider context characterized by ever-changing conditions. Automobiles, for instance, operate on roads that may be bumpy or smooth. Thermostats monitor temperatures that alternate between warm and cold. Cell phones are tapped, dropped, tossed, and sometimes submerged. A political system is shaped by scandal, war, or the economy. Your body’s [...]
A system can be defined as an integrated set of elements that perform a desired function.
Although systems vary in complexity, they all share some basic elements. A stock flows into the system and is subject to some form of control, such as rate or temperature. The stock is then catalyzed or depleted in some form, [...]