I haven’t put an entry onto the blog for a while, as I’ve been busy wrapping up the completion of the Cochrane Sustainability Plan.  You can see the final plan here. 

The journey of developing the Cochrane Sustainability Plan has been quite remarkable.  Over a 4-month period, nearly 500 citizens contributed their views in the visioning process.  A group of 75 committed citizens were intimately involved in the process and were the real authors of this plan.  Over 11 months, these folks contributed over 700 hours of meeting time to help create a plan for the future of their community.  Most of that time was during a compressed 5-month period. 

In leading the process to create this plan, a key attribute of these citizens began to become apparent:

They were focused on getting it right as opposed to being right.

This is an important distinction – especially when trying to create a plan that an entire community can use to work together.  These citizens of Cochrane contributed a remarkable amount of time, knowledge and passion about their community, yet they were able to listen to one another and respect each other’s opinions.  Without this, the process would have devolved into a competition of superior ideas or views, rather than a collaborative effort for the future of the community.

Is this what you use to hold onto your ideas?

Often times, we tend to hold onto our ideas or viewpoints with a vice grip.  This is particularly prevalent with things that we care about.  Mixed in with this are elements of ego, open mindedness and past experience.  When the objective is to create as much common ground as possible, however, we need to take the long view of where we need to end up.  That’s what was so inspiring about the citizens of Cochrane in our process – they stayed focused on the long view and didn’t worry about being right all the time.  In your work, it’s an important question to keep in mind:

Am I trying to get it right or am I trying to be right?

- John, May 22, 2009

Labels: change, learning, sustainability

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Late January 1991.  My high school basketball team from Regina was in a Saskatoon locker room waiting to start the final of a tournament against a tough team from Edmonton.  Our assistant coach was harping on his usual message: the five guys on the court needed to know:

• what play we were running
  
• what each player’s role was, and
  
• what the overall objective was.

As he finished his speech, he coined a new phrase for his message: samepagedness. 

For the rest of the season, before every game, he would stress the importance of samepagedness.  We went on to win the city championship that year and earned a bronze medal at the provincial championships.  Cue Bruce Springsteen singing “Glory Days.”

Fast forward to the present day.  I use this story all the time in my work.  Why?  This captures what we are trying to do in our work with communities and organizations.  Whether developing community sustainability plans or organizational strategic plans, the objective is the same: create samepagedness.  If we are trying to mobilize as much action as possible to address the issues of our time, we need to continually develop samepagedness.  Different members of the community or organization need to know what we are trying to achieve and what everyone’s role is.

18 years after that season, I’m still using that lesson I learned.  I don’t miss those short shorts we wore on that team, but I sure would like some of that hair back.  Mine seems to be disappearing.

- John, April 29, 2009

Labels: collaboration, sustainability

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Labels: feedback, sustainability

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Labels: cities, complexity, sustainability

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Imagine that you ran into someone you know on the street and they asked you to tell them what sustainable development or sustainability was about.  You could answer it this way:

"Ecologically sustainable development can be thought of as changes in economic structure, organization and activity of an economic ecological system that are directed towards maximum welfare and which can be sustained by available resources." (From Braat, L.C., and Steetskamp, I. (1991). "Ecological-Economic Analysis for Regional Sustainable Development," in Ecological Economics, R. Costanza, ed. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 269-288.)

If you’re lucky, you’ll receive a blank stare.  If you’re talking to someone less patient, they’d probably be halfway down the block by the time you’ve finished.  If the objective is to make sustainability understandable and approachable, neither option is desirable.  A lot of folks that are passionate about sustainability – whether in their professional or personal life – tend to think of it only in the lengthy, academic terms exemplified in the definition above. 

In our work on the Cochrane Sustainability Plan, we developed three key phrases to capture how we were approaching this sustainability thing: 

• Think long term.
• Look at the whole.
• See the connections.

Now imagine again that you’ve been asked the same question on the street.  Which of the two options do you think would help people immediately understand sustainability and potentially get your conversation partner interested or even excited about it?

The issues that we face today require widespread understanding and collective action.  Sustainability provides an approach and mindset that can address these issues in a holistic manner.  We need as many hands on deck as possible.  If you’re a “sustainability nerd” (which I would consider myself), then think about how you make sustainability approachable.  It’s something we need to constantly think about and work on. 

In an earlier blog entry I talked about the importance of feedback.  The next time you’re explaining sustainability to someone, look for the feedback.  If you see someone’s backside walking down the street as you’re doing this explanation, you know you need to try again.

This is a bad sign if you're trying to explain sustainability to someone.

- John, April 6, 2009

Labels: communication, sustainability

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If you were talking to an English person and you asked them to put a bag of groceries in your boot, you’d watch them go to your car.  If you asked a North American the same thing, they would look down at your feet.  Then they would likely follow that up with a rather confused look.  They might even ask a simple question like, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Same word.  Same language.  Completely different meaning.

In our work at Intelligent Futures, we are continually trying to understand the language of the communities and organizations that we work.  Every community and organization is unique and has its own context – including history, pressures and language.  The key is taking the time to listen, rather than pushing your language and interpretation down someone else’s throat.

This approach to language is important because it shows respect for the existing experiences and knowledge of the people you are talking to and working with.  If you’re trying to work with people to make change in a community or organization, you need to know your stuff, but you also have to be able to listen and adapt.  Language is vital to this.

A good example of this is in our work with the Cochrane Sustainability Plan.  During a meeting with the Culture Citizen Action Group, we were trying to identify indicators that they could recommend for the Sustainability Plan.  Early in the process, the group struggled to understand what this meant and frustration was setting in.  Rather than going academic and verbose, we explained that we were simply looking for “measures” that will tell us how we’re doing.  That simple shift in language from “indicators” to “measures” made all the difference in the world and the ideas began to flow instantly. 

This is a very intelligent, energetic and committed group of citizens.  There was no shortage of brainpower in the room.  The usual language that these folks typically use just doesn’t include “indicator.”  That’s probably a good thing.  I’d rather chat with someone at a cocktail party who doesn’t use the word “indicator” on a daily basis anyway. 

If we were to impose our initial language on them, the work wouldn’t have progressed, the participants would have been frustrated and future buy-in and action could have been compromised.

Think about language and the context you’re in.  Otherwise, you might see the boot.  And I don’t mean the English version.

- John, March 26, 2009

Labels: communication, sustainability

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I just got back from Iqaluit - Nunavut, Canada’s capital city - as part of a climate change adaptation project through the Canadian Institute of Planners.  It was my second time there and during a drive-around tour, I was reminded of their local infrastructure setup and how a good portion of the houses in Iqaluit get water and remove their sewage.  Because parts of their communities do not have piped servicing, they have to receive their water and sewage services by truck. 

Each house in these areas has a light at the front with a red bulb.  If the light is out, it means they need water.  An illuminated red light means that they have an adequate amount of water.  Five days a week, a team of five trucks will head out on their assigned route and look for houses with that light out.  They will fill the water tank until the red light flips back on, letting them know the tank is full, and then move on to the next house.

Not quite a red light district like the infamous one in Amsterdam.

 Even on a stormy day, you can still see the red light is on at the right side of this house in Iqaluit. 

Iqaluit’s system got me thinking about the importance of information within bigger, more complex systems – whether it be our cities or natural systems.  Systems experts call this process of information dissemination “feedback”.  In Iqaluit, this information then causes the action of refilling the water tank.  This system of cause and effect is known as a “feedback loop.”  Another good example of a feedback loop is your nervous system.  If you put your hand on a hot stove, your nervous system creates a feedback loop from your fingertips to your brain to tell you to move your hand.  These feedback loops are vital to understand the world around us and to adjust our behaviour accordingly. 

With a system that is as (relatively) simple as Iqaluit’s water system or your hand on a stove, these feedback loops are fairly straightforward and provide the necessary information nearly immediately.  The trouble is that many of our natural and human-made systems are very complex, so there isn’t the direct relationship between one element to another.  An example is in the issue of traffic and how we build our cities.  Many people assume that there is a simple relationship between the amount of roads and traffic flow.  Gridlock?  Just build more roads!  Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.  Transportation and traffic issues are a complex mix of city design, housing location and density, employment location, transit service, fuel costs, local economic makeup, personal choice and cultural norms.  Just to name a few.  There’s also the issue of “induced demand” – the phenomenon where building new road capacity actual creates demand for more road capacity.  Thus, the saying that “solving traffic problems by building more roads is like solving your weight problem by buying bigger pants.”

So what to do about it?  In these complex systems, it is necessary for everyone (including and especially our leaders) to find the deeper causes for issues that we face.  A good way to do this is to act like a 3 year-old and ask “why?” a few times.  Let’s give this a try:

We have gridlock in our city.

“Why?”

Because there are too many vehicles on the road at the same time.

“Why?”

Because they are all leaving the same area and heading to the same area all at once. 

“Why?”

Because we have separated where people live and work through our zoning.

In just 3 “why’s” we were able to get to a deeper cause than if we just reacted to a problem.  You could dig even deeper, but just this level of inquiry will allow you to make decisions at a more meaningful level.  Many times, people don’t have the time or the right job description to look for those deeper reasons.  Very few jobs reward understanding complexity.  This ends up causing us all trouble in the long run.

The other difficulty with complex systems is that there is often a lag time for getting the information (the feedback) to understand the consequences of decisions.  In the traffic example, the zoning decisions likely happened decades before the gridlock showed up.  In the meantime, the overall culture of the community may have shifted to a car-centric one – creating even more decisions that would eventually lead to the current day gridlock. 

Now what?  We need to continually work to shift how we perceive problems and look for solutions. 

In an interesting 2006 TED talk, Jamais Cascio, co-founder of WorldChanging.com articulated this very well.  He stated that one of WorldChanging’s goals was to “make the invisible visible.”  This is a great way of putting it.  If we can do a better job of understanding the nature of our systems and see the connections, along with doing a better job of understanding the feedback loops, then many of the invisible causes or consequences in our world will become more visible.  At the end of the day, we will make wiser decisions.

So while many of the issues we face are daunting and complex, our communities, organizations and institutions need to transform how they think to find the connections between the parts of our world and positively influence the decisions they make.  We all need to look for – and create – the red lights like in Iqaluit.  

- John, March 15, 2009

Labels: complexity, feedback, sustainability

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Labels: capacity building, organizational change, sustainability

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"Aggressively patient"

This was the best term I heard in 2008.  It came from Bob Willard – a renowned expert on the business case for sustainability.  I first heard this while participating in a sustainability leadership training program called LEAD (Leadership in Environment and Development) in Toronto this past summer.  In trying to make our communities, businesses and organizations more sustainable, this is a quality we need to have – aggressive patience. 

What does this term mean?  In my view, it’s about staying the course and not getting easily flustered when things don’t go exactly as planned.  It’s about being vigilant and being ready to seize opportunities when they arise.  It’s about constantly reading the situation to understand the context you are working in.

In many ways, “aggressively patient” captures the dichotomy of trying to work towards a more sustainable future.  Think of the fable about the tortoise and the hare.  Slow and steady wins the race, right?  In many instances, that’s the case, but here’s the trouble – many of our organizations, communities and businesses are slow to change. Understanding the drivers for change within a context will allow you to be patient and make meaningful change happen.  The approach to change is often like the tortoise. 

The problem is, many of the issues we face – such as climate change – are moving at the speed of the hare.  Unlike the hare, however, these issues are not stopping for a nap.  In the climate change example, the speed of the hare is moving faster than the world's most acclaimed climate scientists predicted. 

That’s why I love the term “aggressively patient.” It represents the most impressive qualities of both characters in the story - the patience and determination of the tortoise with the aggressiveness of the hare.  We need more people that have this quality if we’re going to effectively tackle issues of sustainability. 

Do you have the ability to be aggressively patient?

- John, February 16, 2009

Labels: change, sustainability

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