Posts tagged “the environmentalist”

It won’t have escaped your notice that not everyone in the UK loves wind turbines.  So if you’re planning to add to our renewable energy capacity, you might want to think about how to involve your neighbours early on.

In 2005 my article (pdf) in the environmentalist described some interesting initiatives specifically designed to help those promoting or planning wind energy developments, to engage their stakeholders.

…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.

Too often, I meet with people who see stakeholder engagement as a more sophisticated way of selling their messages to potential critics.

That’s not the game I’m in!

Don’t bother asking people what they think if you’re not willing to change your plans as a result.

This article explains why you need to act in good faith when you’re listening to your stakeholders.

Update: November 2010

I’ve been using a new categorisation recently with good effect, courtesy of Lindsey Colbourne and Sciencewise:

• transmit – “straight comms” – one way, putting out a message about something which has already been decided or already happened.
• collaborate – work together to co-create an understanding of the situation, problem, possible solutions, implementation plans and so on.
• receive – “extractive research” of the kind perfected by social researchers, market researchers etc.

There is absolutely a role for all three, and many processes or even single events will include ways of doing all three.

But if you want buy-in, and want those implementing the outcomes to want to do so, collaboration is the way.  And more fun, IMHO.

Facilitator and blogger Myriam Laberge has explored this a bit too.

When we write a blog post, draft a leaflet, design a poster or click ‘publish’, it’s important to think about who we’re trying to reach, and what will get through to them.  This isn’t just about the mechanisms, it’s also about the tone of voice, the words we choose and the messages we decide to present.

Sometimes we get it right, by chance or intuition.  Sometimes – especially when we’re trying to reach out beyond people like us – we fall flat on our faces.

Here’s some ways that you can segment your audiences, to make sure your talking gets heard.  The article was first published in the environmentalist.

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.

Update

Here’s a round up of stories about climate change, from the good people over at the Centre for Alternative Technology.

Some years ago, the stalwart John Brady – who I first met at a training workshop with The Natural Step – invited me to write a column for ‘the environmentalist’, the magazine of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA).

The column has the wonderfully open and yet curiously specific title of ‘engaging people’, and it has enabled me to pursue one of my passions: bringing insights from the fields of organisational change, learning, stakeholder engagement, communications and psychology to the technical specialists who are working on environmental improvement.

Update, March 2011

‘The environmentalist’ has a new website, where you can access all the articles online (although not the entire archive).  Most of my articles are also somewhere in this blog (tagged “the environmentalist”).

There are quite a few courses on offer in the UK to help people speak in public more confidently, knowledgeably and effectively about climate change.

This article which I wrote for the environmentalist examines two of them, focusing on the key points that the trainers are trying to get across.

If you’re a sustainable development communicator who works face-to-face – as a trainer, facilitator, speaker or internal champion – then you’ll want to know how to reduce the environmental impact of those face-to-face events.

Walking the Talk (an article I originally wrote for the environmentalist) looks at some ways that venues, practitioners and the meetings industry in the UK are trying to reduce their carbon footprint and tackle other environmental impacts.

Update

November 2010: A useful blog post here from GreenBiz.com, simple steps to greening your meeting has some more ideas.

April 2011: blog post from Coro Strandberg with a link to a guide to sustainable meetings developed in Canada by The Co-operators, an insurance and financial co-op.

I spend quite a lot of my time working with clients to engage stakeholders around topics related to sustainable development.

This might be working with coastal communities to figure out how to respond to rising sea levels.  It might be chewing over new approaches to public transport.  Or it could be examining how the market for supplying domestic energy can be adjusted to reward companies for selling less energy or lower carbon energy.

I also run a lot of training courses for people who want to learn more about stakeholder engagement and to develop their facilitation skills.

DAD / ED is one of the most useful models I know for helping learners and clients understand the difference between traditional communications – Decide, Announce, Defend (Abandon) – and an approach which engages stakeholders: Engage, Deliberate, Decide.

This article I wrote for the environmentalist, published in February 2009,  explains a bit more.