Posts tagged “Change agents”

One of the things we do at the one-day Change Management training workshop is to look through a decision tree (aka flow chart) to see which approach to change might be most effective, given the starting point of each person on the course.

Questions to ask yourself include:

• what’s my mandate?
• what is the stated position of my senior team / Board, and do they know what they’ve signed up to?
• how much of an appetite is there amongst my colleagues?

The flow diagram is explained in this article, first published in the environmentalist.

The next workshop is on 20th July in Leeds – why not book to join us?

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?

Ever been in a meeting where everyone is sure they’ve tried everything, and nothing works?

And nothing will ever work?

And it’s everyone else’s fault?

Sure you have!

Tempered radicals and other internal change agents face this kind of situation alot.  So do external consultants, activists and coach / facilitators.

“The eco-champions meetings I go to are a real groan fest!”

When I was faced with this heartfelt description in a training workshop, we spent a bit of time coming up with ideas.  But I was sure there must be some even better approaches than the ones we suggested.

So I posted a question on two great forums: AMED (the Association of Management Education and Development) and IAF (the International Association of Facilitators).

The useful suggestions from fellow facilitators, coaches and OD (organisational development) professionals gave me a lot of chew on, and the result is this article.  It was first published in the environmentalist, and has also been reproduced in the IAF Europe newsletter.

Your own experiences and suggestions are very welcome!

Not groaning,

Penny

We have three dates in the diary for this one-day workshop, which I’ve been running since 2005.

The day is very interactive, with everyone sharing a specific sustainability challenge which they are working on, and using various frameworks and exercises to explore and understand the challenge better.

During the workshop, people

• Hear about some theory on organisational change and approaches to change, including a scale of strategic engagement, visioning, identifying key players, choosing a change strategy, identifying barriers to change and planning first steps.
• Apply this to their own organisational sustainability challenge.
• Hear from others in a similar situation, discuss common challenges and discovering sources of further information and support.

As you’d expect, the contents have evolved since I ran the first one.  But the approach is still one of making selected bits of change theory as accessible as possible to people, and giving them time to work on their own particular situation during the workshop. And everyone still gets a free copy of the workbook, so they can carry on making their own notes and using plenty more exercises and frameworks at their own pace.

If you’d like to come along, you can book through IEMA’s website.

London: 28th April 2010

Leeds: 20th July 2010

Newcastle upon Tyne: 12th October 2010

Well as promised, here are my thoughts having attended the morning of the IEMA Conference 09.

Speeches

- I’d gladly hear Jonathan Porritt again.  He talked about the need to get off the hedonic treadmill, and the challenge of getting marketeers to sell austerity.  His slides are here.  I’m intrigued that he found Dr Steven Chu’s speech to the Nobel Laureate’s symposium inspiring – because JP says the speech was about energy efficiency.  And in the words of Theodore Roszack,

…prudence is such a lacklustre virtue.

I couldn’t find a way to read, hear or watch Secretary Chu’s speech (please let me know if you know of one) but the symposium site is here.  The other insight which caused me to stop short is that, apparently, family planning is the single best intervention in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, from a cost benefit point of view.

I didn’t really understand what Lord Jenkin was trying to tell us.  Insufficiently relevant, at least to this member of the audience.  Sorry.

Peter Jones is always interesting, although his acrobatic mind can leave me behind sometimes.

Skills for Change

The workshop I ran was an hour’s worth on skills for change.  I chose to focus on inter-personal influencing, through mirroring body language, asking facilitative questions, and sharing the six sources of influence that I learnt about through the ‘all washed up’ video which I’ve blogged about here.

The handouts from the session are here.

It was a lot of fun – it’s amazing how quickly you can find three things that you have in common with a total stranger – and I hope stretched some people to think beyond ‘awareness raising’ as a way of influencing others.

I hope that it also helped people to be braver about networking later in the day, because making connections and building trust within a group such as this one, composed of IEMA members and fellow-travellers, will – in the long run – have far more impact than speechifying.

At an action research seminar organised by Bath University, Dr Gill Coleman shared a work-in-progress: a learning history of the iconic eco-factory built by MAS Intimates in Sri Lanka.

By coincidence (if you believe in it), someone from MAS had been a student on the Post-Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Business (on which I’m a tutor) so I was intrigued to listen to this detailed inside story.

I’ve written more (in the environmentalist) about learning histories as an ‘intervention’, and about the eco-factory here .

Good.  Then I’ll begin.

Stories are a powerful way to get your message heard.  And telling our own stories is a powerful way of helping us to make sense of our experiences.

The story you tell might, when you examine it, be unwittingly framing a situation.  Change the frame and you may see something different.

Making sense of stories and unravelling their role in building better understanding between us are just two of the themes covered in my article on stories for the environmentalist.

Read on.

There’s a neat metaphor for understanding the delicate relationship between a change maker (be they in a formal leadership position or leading from the middle) and the rest of the people in an organisation.

Imagine you are connected to the rest of the organisation by a big elastic band.  As you move off in the direction of more ambitious, radical change, the elastic stretches.  The pull on the others may be just enough to get them moving and bring them with you.  You stay a bit ahead, to maintain momentum.

But if you go too far ahead, and they aren’t ready to move so fast or such a distance, then the bounce goes out of the elastic, the tension rises and -ping- it snaps.

As a result, there’s nothing holding you back!

But, unfortunately, there’s no-one moving in your direction any more, either.  And, if you look back now, you’ll see that you’re alone.

This article I wrote for Croner helps you check that you’re involving people properly.  They’re happy for me to include the original here, as long as I say this:

“This report was published as part of Croner’s Environmental Policy and Procedures, a resource designed to guide organisations through setting up an effective environmental management system.  For more information on this and other products published by Croner, go to www.croner.co.uk or telephone 020 8547 3333.”

Which I’m happy to do.

This Autumn’s IEMA workshop, Change Management for Sustainable Development, will take place in Leeds in November.  As you’d expect, the contents have evolved over the four years since I first ran one.  But the approach is still one of making selected bits of change theory as accessible as possible to people, and giving them time to work on their own particular situation during the workshop.

And everyone still gets a free copy of the workbook, so they can carry on making their own notes and using plenty more exercises and frameworks at their own pace.  They can also use these exercises with colleagues and in teams, to help get insights from a broad range of perspectives, and to build a coalition of change agents.