Justine Burt - The Great Pivot: Creating Meaningful Work to Build a Sustainable Future

Copyright 2019 by Justine Burt

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please email .

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

Published 2019 by MP Publishing
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-935994-34-3
E-ISBN: 978-1-935994-33-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019902752

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To be of use from CIRCLES ON THE WATER by Marge Piercy, copyright 1982 by Middlemarch, Inc. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Dedicated to Chris and Matthew

I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

Marge Piercy
To be of use

I n 2017, an epiphany hit me while touring a gothic cathedral on vacation in Northern Spain. As my family and I learned the cathedrals history, I realized part of the reason were not building a sustainable future fast enough in the United States, and it has to do with our short-term time horizon, which lies in marked contrast to the much-longer time horizon of the cathedral builders.

The beautiful Santa Maria Cathedral is perched atop a hill overlooking the town square and has been the pride of Vitoria-Gasteiz since construction was completed in 1437. Think about how the original architects, patrons, and workers of the cathedral saw their role in history: they knew they would not be around to see its completion, yet they worked together to create something awe-inspiring and majestic for future generations. It would be their legacy.

Six centuries later, the cathedral started showing its age. In the 1960s, the water that had seeped into the foundation for centuries had begun to compromise the buildings structural integrity. Interior gothic arches started to lean visibly, and a large stone block fell out of the ceiling onto the altar, smashing it. Concerned about the long-term viability of their architectural treasure, the community rallied to secure funding for renovations and began this careful work. Teams reinforced the foundation, braced the arches, and rebuilt the altar. The community wanted Santa Maria Cathedral to last for several more centuries.

Walking through this masterpiece, with its detailed stonework and stained-glass windows, I mused over how people in the 14th century had considered deeply their impact on the future, and how the town over the last 50 years had been working diligently to reinforce the cathedral as their legacy and gift to distant generations. But what are we in the United States doing to benefit people centuries from now? Will the inheritance of future generations be climate change, mass extinction, and a degraded natural world?

We have to do more to forge a different path, I thought. If we are to lengthen our time horizon and claim our place in history, we must devote more resources to steering society in a more sustainable direction.

We are building renewable energy systems, retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency, creating a circular economy, and restoring natural systemsits just not happening fast enough to get ahead of the destruction. We need to step up our efforts. We must invest in more resilient systems that can bounce back after a natural disaster or other shock. That should be our legacy and our gift to future generations. And it all starts by pulling back our perspective and taking a longer view.

There are two types of people who can make this happen: those who want to do meaningful work and policymakers in a position to facilitate meaningful job creation. This book is written for both of them. Together, these two groups can create stable, middle-class jobs (that cannot be outsourced or automated) in the private, non-profit, and government sectors, which in turn will give millions of lives a sense of purpose and will stabilize our relationship with the planet that we rely on for our survival.

Those moments wondering how future generations will look back on our time are part of the origin of the title The Great Pivot. Environmental activist Joanna Macy coined the term the Great Turning to express the idea that we need to turn away from the linear, non-renewable, extractive, polluting trajectory we are currently on. We must ask ourselves, do we want future generations to look back at our time as the Great Unraveling, or should we instead choose a more sustainable path so that our grandchildren see this era as the Great Turning? We are at this crossroads, and we have the power to determine our destiny.

The other element of the title borrows the term pivot from the startup world. When startups launch, they work from a draft of their business model. As the team builds the company and attempts to validate their business model, they may at some point realize that if they do things a little differently, they might have a financially sustainable business on their handsand this is when they pivot. By making some changes in their offering or how they run the business, the pivot will allow them to realize a replicable and scalable business model. Thus, combining the terms great from the Great Turning with pivot from the world of startups, we arrive at the Great Pivot.

Our societys current business model is not sustainable. The conventional ways we generate energy, transport people and goods, extract materials and manufacture products, grow and distribute food, and treat natural systems cannot be maintained. We need to pivot. Doing so will:

1. Address the crisis in the world of work

2. Scale up the building of a sustainable future

3. Create meaningful jobs that people so desire

4. Generate more sustainability projects in which the financial sector can invest

By making the Great Pivot, we will establish the legacy of a sustainable society for future generations and, within our lifetimes, create meaningful work for millions of people.

The term meaningful work refers to jobs that bestow a sense of purpose on the people doing them. Some may call the jobs detailed in this book green jobs, but The Great Pivot seeks to put a finer point on the term by calling them meaningful jobs. Whether we call them meaningful or green, we have much work ahead of us to build a sustainable future, one that will allow us to live in balance with our environment.

Theres a story about three people breaking rocks by the roadside. When a passerby asks what the first person is doing, he responds, Im breaking rocks.

When asked, the second one says, Im feeding my family.

The third one says, Im building a cathedral.

A sustainable future needs us to make it happen: generations not yet born are depending on us. By embracing and implementing the vision and blueprint of the Great Pivot, we will serve as the cathedral builders that future generations need us to be.