Archive for “Sustainable behaviours”

If you’re trying to get fashion-crazy teens and young people interested in climate change, it makes sense to start where they are.  And that’s what Global Cool have done, in their Eighteen Degrees of Inspiration campaign.

But isn’t it superficial, missing the point, and above all not going to get the scale of change we need at a systemic level?

Well, according to Chris Rose’s VBCOP theory, starting where people are and eliciting changed behaviour for non-’green’ reasons is the most effective way to build up political space for systemic change.

Want to know more?

I’ve written about this in the environmentalist, and you can read that article here.

Growing Communities is an inspiring social enterprise which grows and trades organic, seasonal fruit and veg in Hackney, North London.  Transparency alert: I’m the chair of the Board.

It has three core activities:

• growing food, mostly salads, in its urban market gardens.  The salad bags and other produce are sold through its own outlets, which are…
• …a weekly organic ‘veg box’ scheme, with food going to around 3,000 people…
• …and the UK’s first weekly organic Farmers’ Market.

The organisation was first set up by a small group of friends and neighbours paying in advance for produce to be produced on a single farm: a classic community supported agriculture scheme.  Later, grant funding from sources like the National Lottery, the Esme Fairburn Foundation and the Bridge House Estates Trust provided the capital for starting up new initiatives.  Hats off to all of them!

Trading fruit and veg through the box scheme, and an entrepreneurial can-do attitude meant that Growing Communities could, after a short time, move to being self-funding.  This freedom enables it to be nimble and to change rapidly as it learns about how to make this alternative local food system work.  Its work has always coupled a radical and strategic vision, with a deeply practical approach.  Standing on its own two feet financially is a value as well as a tactic. It demonstrates to customers, members, suppliers and the wider world, that an alternative food system can work even in the current context.

It also makes growth possible – bootstrapping rather than dependent on grant funding and subsidies.

Good growth

But what does growth mean for an alternative enterprise like Growing Communities?

Its principles and structure (its box-scheme customers are voting members who attend AGMs in surprisingly large numbers and elect the Board a.k.a. ‘Management Committee’) mean that it is community-led.  So a growth model which involves moving into a new area and opening up a mirror image of the Hackney original isn’t good enough.  What about simply opening more outlets in Hackney, and growing the local customer base?  Yes, Growing Communities has done some of that, and intends to do more, with its satellite pick-up points for the weekly veg bags.  The things limiting the growth of the Farmers’ Market include limitations on the space where it is held, limits on the amount of produce small farmers and growers can grow, and a dearth of small producers who fit the exacting criteria: e.g. local, organic, and producers / growers who sell their own produce, not someone else’s.

Growing Communities wants to keep the community-led, local value while providing a stable and reliable market for sustainably-produced food which will enable more growers to build strong (albeit small) businesses.

The growth model also needs to be very lean – Growing Communities can’t provide capital funding or flashy materials, and it can’t expect fat franchise fees from the new organisations – which, like Growing Communities, will be social enterprises or some other form of not-for-profit structure.  And because every community is different, an emergent learning approach makes sense.

Mentoring and action learning model

So it’s adopted a growth strategy which involves closely supporting other organisations which want to set up their own version of the Growing Communities model. The first few ‘start ups’ will be intensively supported with workshops, training, resources (things like copies of the ordering system, model contracts) and hands-on problem solving.  As the ‘start ups’ get going, their learning and experience will be captured in a series of on-line briefings, which will then be available to the next tranche of start-ups.  There will also be on-line discussions, so everyone can learn from each other.

This programme is being funded partly from the organisation’s own resources, and partly by UnLtd, the social entrepreneur’s organisation, which has provided some funding already. As it progresses, the idea is that successful start-ups will also help to fund the programme of live support and detailed guidance materials, and deliver parts of it.

Interested?

If you’re interested in setting up a transformational pioneering food organisation, then check out the start up website here.

If you’re interested in what it means for a sustainable organisation to grow, without being beholden to short-termist shareholders, being in debt to a bank or being dependent on grant funding, then keep an eye on Growing Communities.

Was the shut down of air travel a right pain for you and your organisation?

Now that the ash has settled, there’s a great opportunity for you to use the recent disruption to discuss sustainable development with your colleagues. [And as if to prove the point that it's a good idea to be prepared, it's back - as of 08.52 @BST 4th May 2010.]

Whichever way you look at it, a low-carbon economy (whether forced on us by peak oil or chosen as a planned way of mitigating climate change) will mean a drastic reduction in cheap air travel.  Your colleagues may feel this is too far off, or too fanciful, to plan for.  But the shut down actually happened.  So it’s a great way in to discussions you might not have been able to have before April 2010.

Here are 11 questions to structure a discussion about your organisation’s dependence on air transport – and how you can reduce it over the long term.

1. What was disrupted?
2. What was enhanced?
3. What did we do differently, that worked really well?
4. What did we do differently, that was a right pain?
5. What contingencies did we have in place, or put in place, in case the shut-down had lasted for twice as long?
6. Or ten times as long?
7. What would we have done if we’d had a week’s notice?
8. What would we have done if we’d had a month’s notice?
9. What would we have done if we’d had five year’s notice?
10. What will we keep doing differently anyway, because it worked better?
11. What will we build into our medium and long term planning, to help us be ahead of the game when air travel again becomes more expensive and less available?

With the skies over Europe still (rather blissfully) free of planes, more people will be thinking about meeting by phone, video conference, telepresence or web-meeting.

Like Fay Ripley and this groovy crowd in the dothegreenthing video strange meeting, part of their stay grounded strand.

On the cheap

If you have skype then teleconferences for a small number of people are possible at very low cost. If there are only two of you, you can video call using skype.

I expect that providers of web meeting software will find their free trials taken up a lot this week.  Free trials are available on Citrix GoToMeeting , Webex and DimDim (which also has a totally free product).   Acrobat Connect is free for small meetings – three people maximum.  Elluminate.com is aimed primarly at a teaching / training situation, but their vRoom product is free for up to three people to meet.

Top tips

If you aren’t used to this way of meeting, but have been forced to change your plans, here are some top tips for teleconferences.

Before the call

Ensure that someone takes responsibility for preparing and chairing the call – including

• confirming start and finish times.
• compiling an agenda and circulating it to everyone in advance.  The agenda should be descriptive – that is, for each item, it should be clear what the ‘task’ is to be undertaken in relation to that item (hear an update, share views, reach a decision etc).
• ensuring that it’s clear what preparation is expected for the meeting (e.g. circulating a paper, reading the paper, etc).
• sending round details of the number to call, any associated PIN, and whether the number is toll-free.
• ensuring that someone has agreed to take a note of key decisions and action points.

All participants should make sure they are calling in from somewhere quiet and with minimum distractions.

Let the chair know if you cannot make the call.

At the start

When you join the conference, announce your presence.

At the start of the call, make time for

• a round of introductions
• confirming the agenda and altering it if needed
• confirming the end time
• discussing and agreeing any ground rules

During the call

• During the teleconference – and this may sound laborious, but it really helps – for each item or point, the person chairing should give everyone a chance to contribute by going around the group in a set order, e.g. alphabetical order of first name, (with people ‘passing’ if they like).  People should say when they’ve finished on each point, so that others don’t interrupt or get twitchy about how they’re going to catch the chair’s eye.
• If the conversation is flowing more freely, people should state their name when talking.
• Keep interruptions and distractions to a minimum – rustling, snuffling, chewing, tapping, side conversations all add to the background noise for everyone.
• Some conference call systems have a ‘mute’ facility, which automatically mutes people’s phone lines when they are not talking.

At the end

At the end of the meeting, make time for

• a final round of checking that there’s nothing else people would like to raise
• confirming action points
• confirming the arrangements for the next meeting
• feedback on anything that needs to be done differently at the next meeting (process review)

Others’ tips

Gillian Martin Mehers has blogged about preparing for a video conference.

Facilitate Proceedings blog about virtual meetings.

If you’re interested in exploring how to facilitate really good group interactions online, there is also a curriculum for an online facilitation course, developed by Nancy White.

Practising for transition?

After the 7-7 tube bombings in London, there was a surge in the number of people cycling.  This rise was sustained, and London still echoes to the swish of cycle wheels.  Over the next few days, as people are forced to find ways of doing business without flying, perhaps some of the experiments will be so successful that they’ll be added to the set of options which are considered ‘normal’.  Maybe we’ll look back and discover that we were experimenting and practising for transition to a low-carbon economy.

Have fun with your experiments.

Small print: I don’t have any business connection with any of the products mentioned, nor does their presence here imply any endorsement etc.  Just blogging to be helpful.

I was pointing people towards the six sources of influence in some behaviour change training recently, and went back to some original sources to remind myself about the distinctions between the six sources.

To recap, the six sources are arranged into a two-by-three table, with ‘motivation’ and ‘ability’ divided into personal, social and structural.  In this explanation on the VitalSmarts blog the two ‘social’ sources of influence have been merged.  This bothered me – is there really so little distinction between social motivation (peer pressure) and social ability?

It seems to me that the distinction is brought most sharply into focus when critical mass is needed to make a behaviour viable.  Want to buy more locally-produced food?  A farmers’ market or a local veggie box scheme needs a critical mass of producers and customers to be viable.  Setting up a lift share scheme?  You’re going to need more than two members.  Freecycling?  Hackney Freecycle has over 17,000 members (yes, really) generating about 1,500 messages about free stuff for giving and taking a month.

Now this kind of critical mass isn’t going to be important for all the behaviours you want to change, which is probably why the distinctions isn’t so clear in some of the descriptions.  But where it is, then special attention needs to be given to recruiting the mass.

• How will you make it as widely-known as possible?
• How will you make it simple for people to let you know they’re up for it?
• How will you make it easy to store information about a pool of people and then ‘activate’ them you have enough mass to start things?
• And how will you use their good ideas and information to shape the system, so that it works for enough of them?

There’s a virtuous circle which can come into play here.  This was brought home to me by a stakeholder engagement planning meeting which I ran last week with a community organisation which has been awarded substantial funding through the Low Carbon Communities Challenge.  We did a quick brainstorm of all the non-carbon related ‘social capital’ in their village – the formal and informal organisations which bring people together and build a sense of community.  The population is about 2,000 and the group came up with over thirty formal groups, clubs or regular events (one for every 67 people!) and a host of informal groupings.  Active community organisations build community channels and hubs for conversation.  Members will have more connection with each other, and more trust, than people who are merely residents of the same place.  So a critical mass of ‘warm’ people is much easier to find.

I was bowled over by how many active societies there are, and we all felt very positive about the potential for drawing on this wonderful resource for the low-carbon activities the group has planned.

Actions we take which help build community – in our neighbourhoods or workplaces – all add to the web of interconnections which form fertile soil for future behaviour change.

Strands of work on stakeholder engagement and behaviour change have been woven together in a couple of different pieces of work I’ve been doing with public sector clients recently.  I’ve ended up developing some new frameworks and adapting some existing ones to help people clarify their aims and plan their campaigns.

If you want to influence someone to change their behaviour, there are models and approaches which can help.  For example, the six sources of influence help you identify the right messages and pay attention to the surrounding context which supports and enables – or discourages and gets in the way of – the desired behaviour.

When you are working for a public body (the NHS, a Government department) and you are trying to influence the behaviour of people who you have at best a distant relationship with (mothers, or people who buys cars) then you will go through a multi-stage process:

1. Should we be trying to encourage this behaviour change, which we see as desirable?
2. If yes, what role(s) should we be playing (legislator, educator, convenor, funder etc)?
3. If yes, what are the most effective ways of influencing the behaviour?

Should we encourage this behaviour change?

Given current discussions about social engineering, this question is important.  It might seem entirely obvious and uncontroversial to us that wanting to promote energy efficiency that more efficient light bulbs should be promoted.  So obvious that we don’t stop to consider possible unintended consequences or misunderstandings.

So an important early stage is to engage stakeholders in helping to inform the decision about whether to encourage a particular behaviour change at all.   For this, classic stakeholder identification and mapping techniques (e.g. see figure 1 in this paper from WWF) will help ensure that you hear from more than the usual suspects.

Stakeholders can share perspectives about the policy goals, identify which behaviours might help to achieve them, and whether action to encourage those behaviours is a good idea.

What role should we be playing?

Some public bodies draft new legislation and regulations, others deliver services.  Some enforce regulations and others provide advice and public education.  Some bring other organisations together, convening conversations and partnerships.  Others commission and fund research.  There are lots of roles that public sector organisations could play in a given situation.  Which role or roles make the most sense, in meeting the policy aim in question?

Listening to the views of stakeholders in relation to that question is enormously helpful.  And those stakeholders may be professionals who work in that field of expertise – but removed from the coal face – or they may be practitioners on the ground whose direct experience can bring a dose of reality to the conversations.

A great example of this is the Low Carbon Communities Challenge, launched on Monday 8^th February.  It will (amongst other things) draw on the experiences and insights of 22 communities which are being funded to install energy efficiency kit and renewable energy equipment en masse in their areas.  They’ll also be encouraging people to adopt low-carbon behaviours.  Each community will be doing something different, guided by its particular circumstances and enthusiasms.  Excitingly, each community will also be asked to identify the barriers to and enablers of progress, in particular what government could do differently to make this kind of low-carbon push as successful as possible across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I’m delighted to be a facilitator on this project.

What are the best ways of influencing this behaviour?

A cool analysis of the system of players and pressures which lead to the current patterns of behaviour is a good starting point, and involving a team (including some stakeholders) will help ensure that the picture built up is rich and complete.

In a workshop a few weeks ago, we used the classic ‘pestle’ headings to brainstorm the pressures and players which influence a particular behaviour which my client is interested in changing.  Let’s say that the behaviour is keeping one’s car well-maintained, so that it runs as fuel-efficiently as possible.  Specific behaviours include keeping the tyre pressure optimum, and removing the roof box when it’s not needed.

In the workshop, people identified players and pressures and wrote them on post-its, sticking them up under the headings of Political, Economic, Social, Technical, Legislative, Environmental and Other.  The headings and team-work both help to ensure that no aspect of the system is forgotten.

Once that was done, we stood back and looked at the results, and pictures were taken on a camera phone.  Then I invited people to bring the post-its to a big blank sheet of paper, and to begin mapping the relationships between the players and pressures, starting with “the most interesting” element of the system.  [The idea of asking for ‘the most interesting’ came from a book about coaching which I’ve been reading.]

One post-it was brought to the empty map, and was soon followed by others.  Lines of connection were drawn, and amid the chaos some patterns emerged.  Most importantly, the team realised that these behaviours were more like DIY and home maintenance than like ‘eco’ behaviours, so when targeting different audiences they should seek our market research which segments people according to things which are relevant to that kind of behaviour, rather than segmentations which have been developed with an environmental purpose in mind.

Mapping stakeholders for behaviour change

This brought us smoothly to looking at which stakeholders to engage as a priority, to add muscle to the campaign to  influence people to adopt (or reinforce) the desired behaviours.

Many of these stakeholders were ‘players’ identified in the earlier exercise.  Some were organisations and people who the team thought of as the system was being mapped.

As a variation on classic impact /influence matrix, and building on the ‘who can help me’ matrix which I use with organisational SD change champions, is this diagram.

Brainstormed onto post-its, stakeholders are then mapped according to the team’s view about their influence and attitude.

You then overlay the coloured ‘zones’ onto the matrix, and these are linked to typologies of engagement like the ladder of engagement.

The people and organisations which are the highest priority to engage with, are those who are highly influential and have the strongest opinions (for and against) the desired behaviour change.  In-depth engagement which involves them directly in designing and implementing the behaviour campaign will be important.

Those in the ‘enhanced’ zones need to be involved and their opinions and information sought.

Those in the ‘standard’ zone can be engaged with a lighter touch – perhaps limited to informing them about the campaign and the desired behaviour.

The workshops helped these clients to identify new stakeholders, reprioritise them, and consider more strategically who to engage and to what purpose.

I’ve been mulling over the meaning of  ‘resolution’ as the New Year crept up on me.

Plot resolution

Sometimes, a resolution can be the end of something – like when Poirot gathers everyone together to explain who the murderer is.  The threads are drawn together, the loose ends are tied up.  The plot is resolved and that chapter of the characters’ lives closed.

Perhaps, as Auld Lang Syne is sung, some New Year’s resolutions are to do with leaving family feuds behind as people close the old year neatly.

Resolving dilemmas

In the field of stakeholder engagement – particularly the part of the spectrum I’m happiest in, where the aim is co-enquiry and co-creation, and the approach is closer to dialogue – resolution is often about understanding dilemmas and choices, and finding the win-win.

I’m not sure how this might apply to New Year Resolutions.  I guess there would need to be a lot of exploration and reflection in the autumn and winter months in order for a resolution of this kind to emerge bang on schedule on 31st December.  This kind of self-imposed yet public deadline can help coordinate the efforts of the various people involved – although it doesn’t seem to have been useful at Copenhagen.

Making your mind up

Related to resolving a dilemma is the idea of coming to a conclusion about a choice or decision.  When you resolve to do something, you are consciously committing to a particular course of action.   When Lady Macbeth urges her wavering husband to “screw your courage to the sticking-place” she’s encouraging him to strengthen his resolve and take an action which is irreversible.   The scene ends with Macbeth reassuring her “I am settled”.

This kind of resolution must surely lead to significant and rapid action – delay might ‘unsettle’ the resolution.

Conference, I move

Many years ago, I had the dubious honour of being part of a team organising the formal annual conference of a UK NGO.  Its particular semi-democratic structure meant that every year we had ‘motions to conference’ which, if passed, became ‘resolutions’.  Some people took the standing orders of the conference very seriously, and were helpful in making sure that we stuck to our rules.  Others found the debating and voting process old-fashioned and restrictive, frustrated by the way it turned interesting choices and genuine puzzles into win/lose combats.

These sorts of resolutions bind an organisation – they settle arguments and commit people to action.  Some organisations are very good at wriggling out of the commitments quietly at a later date.  Perhaps the resolution was worded loosely, and is open to interpretation.  Perhaps the process was flawed allowing the resolution to be set aside.  Perhaps the people charged with actioning the resolution have new information which wasn’t available at the time, and feel justified in ignoring it.

These are excuses – if the people implementing the resolution really agreed with it, they wouldn’t find ways of wriggling out of it.  They’d find ways of pushing it through.

This is beginning to sound a bit more like most people’s experiences of New Year’s resolutions : commitments which aren’t really commitments, where even weak excuses are seized on as explanations and justifications for broken promises.

New Year’s resolutions as explicit commitments to change behaviour

I’m working with two different clients on behaviour change at the moment, so I’m particularly interested in the parallels between New Year’s resolutions and other ways of encouraging or supporting changed behaviour.

There’s an important point to notice here:  New Year’s resolutions are, in theory, voluntary.  They are related to a change in behaviour of the person making the commitment.  For both my clients, the behaviour they want to change is other people’s behaviour (staff, contractors, consumers).  This seems to me to be a crucial difference, and one which I’m keen to explore more with them and in my wider practice.

Having acknowledged that, what are the parallels between New Year’s resolutions and behaviour change programmes?

One striking parallel is the relatively low chances of success combined with a kind of complacent optimism!

I notice over and over how people go into behaviour change work as if they believe that making a commitment and announcing it means that it will happen.  Too often, very little effort is put into preparation, planning and prior engagement. The supporting activities, positive feedback and physical resources are missing.  (See here for a posting about the six sources of influence which help catalyse and reinforce new behaviours.)

Fortunately for us all, the appropriately named Prof. Richard Wiseman, psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, reveals the secrets of keeping your New Year’s resolutions.

Prof. Wiseman’s four top tips are:

1. Break your goal into a series of steps, focusing on creating sub-goals that are concrete, measurable, and time-based.
2. Tell your friends and family about your goals, thus increasing the fear of failure and eliciting support.
3. Regularly remind yourself of the benefits associated with achieving your goals by creating a checklist of how life would be better once you obtain your aim.
4. Expect to revert to your old habits from time to time. Treat any failure as a temporary set-back rather than a reason to give up altogether.

There are six more tips on his blog.

Incidentally, it’s worth noting the two categories of resolution: acheiving a goal (in our case, let’s use the 10:10 campaign goal of  ‘cutting carbon emissions by 10% in 2010′) and changing a behaviour (for example, not eating meat on Mondays).  Paul Maisey’s blog on New Year’s resolutions concentrates on setting well-formed, congruent and authentic goals.

One of the comments on the Prof.’s blog astutely observes:

You have to really want the new behaviour, not just the ultimate outcome.

So it’s crucial to find behaviours which you enjoy (or could come to enjoy) which contribute to meeting the goal.

My resolution

So I’m off to do my dull old exercises which will, in time, allow my knee to recover sufficiently that I can get back on my bike and feel the wind in my hair as I travel fast and carbon-neutral to meetings.

1. SMART – do them five times a week.
2. Tell people – well I’m telling you now.
3. Remind myself of the benefits – hang my cycle helmet on the back of the office door.
4. Treat lapses as temporary set-backs not as a ‘broken’ resolution – I resolve to do this.

And the bonus – how can I want to do the exercises for themselves, as well as wanting the ultimate outcome?  Listen to the radio, award myself a star each day.

And I further resolve to share the Prof.’s research with my clients, when we come to develop approaches to behaviour change.

Happy New Year!

Update

25th Jan – and I’m keeping up with the exercises.  The stars I put in my diary each time I do the stretches are proving motivating.  So far I’m slightly ahead of my goal, which was to do the routine five days out of seven.  And the outcome?  I cycled up to the farmers market on Saturday!

I’m keen to use more ‘e’ in meetings.

Teleconferences mean live conversation without the travel.  Add in some kind of live editing of a shared document (like google docs), and everyone can see the notes being written in real time, just like flip charts in a workshop.  Share some video or slides, and everyone is viewing the same input.  Include video calling (e.g. using  skype), and we can see each other as well.

I can see that there’s loads of potential to reduce participants’ carbon footprints (probably) and include people whose other commitments mean that adding travelling time onto meeting time would mean that they couldn’t attend at all.

Toe in the water

So I’m making a concerted effort to experience e-meetings of all kinds as a participant.  I joined a webcast (lecture and panel discussion) a couple of days ago, and I’m attending a webinar on how to design good webinars next week.

I’m also adding in some virtual elements to meetings which I facilitate.   Some tips on good teleconferences, built from that experience, are available here.

Spontaneous blending

Trainers sometimes talk about ‘blended learning’, which includes traditional face to face workshops with virtual elements like a web-based discussion space or a module delivered by email.

In a workshop I ran over the summer, there was a fascinating example of spontaneous blending of methods.  The group is a community stakeholder group, set up to represent local interests during the early phases of developing plans for a flood defence.  During a half day workshop, the group was looking at maps showing alternative sites for the defences.  Timescales for the project are very tight, and this workshop was taking place during a very short window of opportunity for people to feed comments back to the organisation which is developing the plans.  So the pressure was on the participants to ensure that they were accurately reflecting the views of the wider constituencies that they were there to represent.

One innovative participant whipped out a camera phone and took pictures of the maps.  Within seconds they could be sent to people who weren’t at the meeting, and their comments relayed back.  I don’t know whether this meant that their views made it ‘into the room’ during the meeting, or whether it simply gave them a head start in discussing the plans after the meeting.  In any case, it set me thinking about how much wider groups of people could be involved, if we can come up with ways of using technologies like camera phones and texting, which are ubiquitous.

What if this person had stuck to the ground rule about keeping mobile phones off during the meeting?

I’m enjoying dabbling my toes in this pool.  I’m readying myself to dive in!

…the North Wind and the Sun?

In Aesop’s fable, these two characters argue over who is the strongest, and decide to settle the matter by seeing who can get a traveller’s cloak off his back.

For those of you unfamiliar with Greek tales, the denouement can be found here.  And while you read it, you might reflect on our behaviour change strategies – and which are most effective.

I get uncomfortable when greener-than-thou environmentalists criticise others, because of their supposed hypocrisy.

I think it leave us all vulnerable to a similar criticism, and seems lacking in empathy.

That doesn’t mean that I think we shouldn’t pay attention to our own environmental footprint.  What it does mean is that when we are reflecting on our practice as change-makers of one kind or another, we can be a little more sophisticated, and avoid judging ourselves (and others) as either eco-sinners or saints.

In my own work, I’ve been able to help fellow climate-change champions to reflect in a structured way on their personal and collective environmental footprints, and how to manage the (inevitable) incongruence between what they espouse and their personal negative impact, using a workshop format.

That workshop format, and the results, are described in Being the Change for Climate Leadership, first published in Organisations & People, the journal of AMED (the Association of Management Education and Development).