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3 April 2009

Low Carbon Innovation Workshops

The two LCIN workshops yesterday went extremely well, with full capacity on each.

The first, Long Term Environmental Strategy, was the more tricky for me as facilitator. When I asked the participants where they were at and where would they like to be, they all gave the same answer - "we haven't a clue". I had two choices, lecture them for an hour (and bore them to tears) or get them to think through the process stage by stage. I opted for the latter and it went very well, but it took a lot of patience to elicit the answers. We covered drivers (cost was surprisingly low on the agenda given the recession), baselines, targets, solution generation (including backcasting which no-one had heard of), filtering solutions, financial commitment, leadership and a little on staff engagement. That's quite a lot to fit into an hour with no powerpoint...

The second session was on eco-renovation of buildings. This time almost everyone at the table had some experience of the topic, so I could sit back a little and facilitate the discussion properly and there was some really great sharing of experience and expertise. We covered insulation, micro-renewables, upgrading HVAC systems, waste heat recovery (internal and external), natural cooling (particularly of server rooms), layout and user behaviour.

I also sat in on another workshop on "the boardroom imperative". My learning point for the whole day (every day is school day in this game) came from a guy from KPMG where instead of trying to find a fair financial incentive scheme, they have decided to give 50% of savings on paper use to charity. This has proved extremely successful and popular and avoids all the potential pitfalls of incentives payments going straight to staff. Genius.

Tags: facilitation, facilitator, low carbon innovation network, seminars

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

31 March 2009

Low Carbon Innovation Network, 2 April, Newcastle

I'll be facilitating two sessions at the Low Carbon Innovation Network on Thursday 2 April at Gosforth Park, Newcastle.

The sessions are:

1. Long Term Environmental Strategy, 10:00am

2. Green Building and Renovation, 11:20am

These events are really good and I always learn loads during the sessions. Recommended.

Tags: facilitation, low carbon innovation network

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13 March 2009

Phew, what a week!

It is weeks like this that I sometimes wish Terra Infirma was being hit by "the current economic situation" - we are flat out delivering projects, responding to queries from potential clients (2 in different time zones), getting The Green Business Bible into the right format for 'proper' publication, and doing all the dull business stuff to keep the taxman happy.

Highlight of the week was the Middlesbrough Climate Change conference where I was organising the workshops to make sure they did what the organisers wanted them to. During the workshops I was hopping from room to room, but I was able to sit in on the plenary sessions. Jeff Ridley from the Hadley Centre gave us the latest data on climate predictions, George Marshall of COIN gave a fantastic talk on communicating climate change, Joan Ruddock MP gave one of the better environmental speeches I have heard from a Government minister and there was an interesting session by video from Australia on what local Government can do. The whole thing was very well (and firmly) compered by Sara Parkin of Forum for the Future. There will be a report on the whole event, and, when I've finished compiling it, I'll post the link.

What I love about this job is there's always more to learn - I've been to hundreds of events like this and there is always a couple of gems you can take away with you. This time it was definitely George Marshall who castigated the standard 'pronouncement from above' approach to climate change communications and proposed three effective strategies:

1. Respect and reflect: make it directly relevant to core values of the audience (polar bears live far away so are useless as a symbol)
2. Peer to peer: use social norms and networks to engage people directly
3. Make action worthwhile: reward desired behaviour with money, status and/or fun

All food for thought!

Next week's schedule is looking a bit clearer, thank goodness, as there's quite a lot to get finished by the end of the month.

Tags: facilitation, green business bible, seminars, terra infirma, workshops

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21 November 2008

Yesterday @ LCIE Manchester

At yesterday's Low Carbon Innovation Exchange in Manchester I facilitated two sessions on staff engagement. Both sessions went really well, although like last month's event in Harrogate, there was a reluctance to move up the ladder of participation towards actually empowering staff to take action. The closest that participants had come to this was the use of suggestion schemes.

Most people started with simple 'switch it off' schemes. Using surprise tactics is increasingly popular - chocolate mysteriously appearing overnight on the keyboards of switched off computers with no explanation has been tried and tested. An interesting variation is an unexplained green sticker on 'off' computers and a red one on 'on' computers - it would take staff a few days to work out what was going on.

Other successful tactics included educating people about savings at home, providing cycle purchase schemes and holding one-off green fun events.

The groups concluded that effective communication requires a mix of channels (intranet, e-mail, newsletters and posters had been used) and careful understanding of culture and language. One multinational reported that their overseas HQ, obviously not understanding the sarcastic nature of the phrase in English, wanted to call their sustainability engagement programme "In Your Dreams"... they were quickly educated why a new name was required in the UK.

Interestingly there was a lot of grumbling about getting senior management to engage and show leadership on sustainability - an MD launching a sustainability campaign then choosing a gas guzzling company car was one example of not walking the walk. We got into discussing guerilla tactics to get things moving - mainly focussing on economic benefits of energy saving actions, or using the popularity of green schemes amongst staff to embarrass the higher echelons of the organisation.

A great event - the participative powerpoint-free environment leads to maximum learning and minimum boredom. I'm already looking forward to next year.

Tags: communications, facilitation, facilitator, staff engagement, sustainable business

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23 April 2008

Facilitation is not for wimps...

One of the services Terra Infirma offers is facilitation. I'm just about to change the entry on this site for it as it sounds a bit flowery and, well, wimpy. Most people have a picture of do-we-have-to away days and token public consultation. Well it can be used for these, but it is a powerful weapon with applications way beyond that.

Facilitation really means group working using an outside agent to guide the process from problem definition to solution. We're starting to integrate it into our projects where we can as it gives the client ownership of the solution, rather than the traditional consultant's report/dust trap/shelf filler. I've used facilitation in the past to help large rooms of industrialists come up with solutions that have diverted many thousands of tonnes of 'waste' into useful and lucrative uses.

But like many people facilitating, I was winging it, frankly, using common sense, trial and error, and no little charm . So, last week I went on an excellent course run by Resource. The course has confirmed my approach was broadly good, and it has given me a whole new armoury of tools, techniques and skills. These will be available either for stand alone sessions, or as an enhancement to our 'Lean, Mean & Green' and 'Low Carbon Business' programmes. So if you want to create sustainable change (in both senses of the word sustainable) in your organisation, get in touch.

Tags: change management, facilitation

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22 February 2008

Back(casting) to the Future

On Tuesday I took the role as facilitator for the Durham Waste Awareness Partnership annual creative day. The Partnership consists of waste officers from Durham District and County Councils. It was felt that previous creative days had started getting repetitive, so they wanted someone to come in and shake it up a bit. Enter Terra Infirma.

I decided to do a bit of backcasting, that is, designing an idealised future and working out how to get there. This contrasts with the normal approach of forecasting where you start from the current situation and try and think of things that will improve it. The advantages of backcasting are:

- it frees the mind to think the unthinkable;
- you don't focus on current barriers;
- it is participative;

and, not least,

- it is good fun.

The process is:

1. Decide the endpoint you want to achieve: in this case, zero residual waste in wheelie bins.

2. Draw up a number of future scenarios which demonstrate this future: in this case we looked at two households, both time poor, but one cash rich and one cash poor. For each we did two scenarios - one where the household consumed roughly the same stuff as today but did things better (like recycling) and one where we could radically change their consumption patterns.

3. Think up clever ideas of how to achieve those scenarios.

The day was a success - we did come up with a (small) number of things that no-one had considered before, plus a huge raft of stuff that some councils were doing and could be applied to members of the Partnership.

If I could go back and change one thing I would have been stricter on following the backcasting process 'rules'. There was a tendency to fall back into the habit of forecasting when we got to stage 3.

Overall, feedback from the attendees was very positive and they really enjoyed the opportunity to think differently - hopefully they can take some of that back to their jobs even when they're back in the world of full e-mail in-boxes, voicemails and intrays.

Tags: backcasting, facilitation, facilitator, waste minimisation

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