Founder's Statement

What is CAPSI's core message?

          “Whenever I hear that we need a national dialogue, as in, we need a national dialogue on gun control, police reform, or voter rights, I wonder, where exactly would we have that dialogue? In the newspapers, on social media, in our courts? These venues are not equipped for national dialogues. So, my team set out to develop an effective forum and methodology. CAPSI is that urgently needed institutional model for governments, businesses, and citizens to co-create policies, plans, and investment strategies for a sustainable world. Our IntelliSynthesis® method optimizes participants’ time by gathering collective intelligence across sectors, stakeholder groups, and jurisdictions while preventing any vested interest from controlling or narrowing the dialogue or its outcomes. Now, we have an effective forum for having a national dialogue.”

                                                                                                                              -Michael Sussman

The Continental Action Plan for Sustainable Industry (CAPSI) is the forum where stakeholders in Canada, the United States, and Mexico convene to create and implement action plans to redesign our industrial systems. This is the breakthrough society needs to solve the urgent challenge of expanding economic vitality while preserving our environment. CAPSI defines industrial systems as the complete set of commercial, policy, and planning activities that deliver materials and products for modern civilization’s survival and satisfaction. Redesigning industrial systems begins with establishing collective goals and pragmatic measures to guide progress. Too often, industrial sectors operate in fragmented silos striving to reach arbitrary, and at times, conflicting goals.

As a society, we aren’t lacking intelligence. What we are lacking is a communication framework that can build solutions without being derailed by excessive competition, mistrust, and vested interests focused on short-term profits and maintaining power. Over thirty years as trusted advisors working with thousands of partners from industry, government, academia, and community organizations, OnTrackNorthAmerica has developed a powerful tool for mobilizing the knowledge, intelligence, and goodwill that are all around us.

When people shift from a competitive to a collaborative mindset, they can create policies, programs, and commercial opportunities that provide for the collective good. Some might claim we lack the trust and cooperation to overcome our current competitive economic system. A profound societal shift is needed. If not transformed, this mistrust will cost us and our children the chance of a sustainable and profitable future. Fortunately, when we approach conversations in commerce, governance, and community in an open and accepting way, we inspire that trust and cooperation. It is time to reorient around trust, collaboration, and coordination.

This is not just starry-eyed idealism. Anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and economists have all published extensive research showing that people are naturally oriented toward cooperation. In fact, it is our ability to cooperate that has allowed us to create a functioning society and alter our environments to meet our needs.

We can create a profitable and sustainable whole-systems approach to industrial systems using this collaborative method. Despite preconceptions, addressing all elements of a system makes it easier, not more difficult, to build consensus and develop action plans. The more you identify, measure, and consider elements of a system, the more you can turn its interactions into positive synergies rather than unintended negative consequences. New solutions appear that would have otherwise been concealed. The more voices included in the collaboration, the greater and more lasting the return on stakeholders' investments.

Climate change is teaching us that the energy driving all supply chains must not only be clean, but used more efficiently if we are to survive. Clean air, clean water, natural resources, transportation, and land must all be considered integral parts of our industrial supply chain system. For example, look at how transportation has typically been planned, or more accurately, not planned. Long-established and emerging supply chains still depend on individual shippers' and receivers' indiscriminate siting choices, regardless of the transportation inefficiencies those choices impose. Transportation must be a primary consideration and align with the most efficient and sustainable mode choice when planning industrial systems. Railroads, ocean carriers, freight forwarders, ports, trucking companies, distributors, and shippers operate in a competitive, and in some cases monopolistic, mode, neither of which allows for the collaboration needed for supply chain efficiency.

The supply-chain failures and economic consequences during COVID saw goods stalled for months at ports and intermodal transfer points. As a whole-systems expert in freight transportation, OnTrackNorthAmerica welcomes the Biden administration's massive public investment in infrastructure. Unfortunately, we see little intelligent foresight in the public and private capital surging into North America. More truck-and-highway-centric industrial and supply chain development overwhelms road investments. At the same time, rail's indisputable efficiency and sustainability advantages for long-haul and heavy transport are being overlooked.

In co-creating the design of CAPSI, stakeholders continue to envision, articulate, and commit to shared goals. We establish agreement on the principles, protocols, and desired outcomes while inviting complete representation. Everyone who impacts and is affected by industrial systems is a stakeholder. As individuals, we can only go so far; together, we will reach our highest potential by tapping into our collective intelligence.

         “These are powerful ambitions. Thankfully, we now have the tools to produce actions for success. Time is of the essence, so the action planning phase of CAPSI has begun. We live in a critical moment of looming environmental catastrophe alongside the rising concern for expanding economic vitality. The whole system’s approach to redesigning industrial systems will deliver both environmental and economic sustainability. Join us in CAPSI for a brighter future!”

                                                                                                                 -Michael Sussman