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News & Views From the Front Line
Monday, 15 June 2009
Feedback from the Low Carbon Innovation Exchange
As promised, some notes from last week's Low Carbon Innovation Network. Numbers were slightly depleted due to the Tube strike which brought central London to a standstill.I facilitated two sessions:
1. Long-term Environmental Strategy
In this session we had a food wholesaler, a recycling company, an energy monitoring system company and 2 consultants (including myself). It was very clear that companies were getting started by identifying and exploiting 'quick wins', but were struggling to convert this momentum into a long term strategy.
The most interesting point from this was that the maximum time frame that participarts were working to a 2 year timeframe - so anything over this was regarded as "long-term". This was reflected in the tendency for the conversation to drift into operational issues rather than strategy.
2. Empowering Staff to Take Action
We had 3 council officers, 3 from industry and 3 consultants including myself and an organisational psychologist. The latter worried me a bit as I was an engineer talking about her area of expertise, but she agreed with the vast majority of what I put forward.
Many of the participants had done the basics - setting up committees, appointing green champions and running awareness events. We discussed ways of making this fun for people - quizzes, clothes swaps and green away days were some of the examples given.
When I asked whether anyone had witnessed a manager showing leadership in this area there was embarrassed silence until one of the consultants recounted a business she knew where the directors had built an ethical business from scratch, recruiting only people who would be committed to those values and behaving in a low carbon manner always.
No-one had really tried getting their staff to generate solutions (I distributed the Terra Infirma brainstorming tool to help those who wanted to try).
As always I really enjoyed the sessions and I'm always trying to stretch the people who come along out of their comfort zone. But I'm getting frustrated that while participants think they are really making progress, they're not really breaking through to making a real difference to the way they operate.
Labels: low carbon innovation network, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:17
1 Comments
Friday, 5 June 2009
Don't forget...
...I'll be facilitating those two sessions at the Low Carbon Innovation Network, next Thursday, 11 June at the Olympia, London.Just to remind you, the sessions are:
1. Long Term Environmental Strategy, 10:00am
2. Empowering staff to take action, 3:30pm
My summaries of previous events can be seen here and here. Of course, I'll be posting a summary of next week's sessions here after the event.
Labels: environmental strategy, low carbon innovation network, staff engagement, training, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:58
0 Comments
Monday, 18 May 2009
More low carbon workshops with yours truly
Once again I'll be facilitating two sessions at the Low Carbon Innovation Network, this time on 11 June at the Olympia, London.The sessions are:
1. Long Term Environmental Strategy, 10:00am
2. Empowering staff to take action, 3:30pm
These events are really good and I always learn loads during the sessions. If you want some info about previous events, see here and here. Highly recommended.
Labels: low carbon innovation network, staff engagement, strategy, training, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:30
0 Comments
Friday, 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.
Labels: facilitation, facilitator, low carbon innovation network, seminars
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
0 Comments
Tuesday, 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.
Labels: facilitation, low carbon innovation network
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:14
0 Comments
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Low Carbon in Harrogate
I spent yesterday at the Harrogate Low Carbon Innovation Exchange. I do like these events as there is a minimum of Powerpoint and a maximum amount of networking and information exchange.I got drafted into a panel Q&A session as one big business bod didn't turn up. A bit like Have I Got News For You, you do get to see the questions beforehand, but in my case 'beforehand' meant 'while the chair was reading out the biographies' rather than overnight. But it was fun and I even let the other panelists get a word in edgeways... occasionally.
I also chaired a roundtable discussion on empowering employees with delegates as disparate as steel stockholding, higher education and fashion retail. We developed a list of possibilities for raising awareness and influence behaviour, but I was a bit disappointed I couldn't coax the others into more of a discussion about true empowerment. In addition, to a person, none of them had a budget - they had to go cap in hand to their boss for every project. Looks as if there's a long way to go.
I do recommend these events - if you are interested check them out here.
Labels: empowerment, low carbon innovation network
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:17
0 Comments
Friday, 10 October 2008
Update: Low Carbon Products & Services Seminar - 22 October 2008
There are still places left on my Low Carbon Products & Services Seminar, Harrogate UK, 22 October 2008. Click on the link to see the fantastic deal we are offering in conjunction with the Low Carbon Innovation Network.Labels: eco-product, low carbon innovation network
# posted by Gareth Kane : 05:40
0 Comments
Friday, 27 June 2008
Big Business & Carbon Offsets
Interesting views on Carbon Offsetting from some big corporate players at yesterday's Low Carbon Innovation Exchange. At a panel discussion with the UK CSR/environmental managers of HBOS, Harper Collins, McDonalds and IBM, the first two found carbon offsetting a useful tool as it added a stronger economic driver to cut carbon (opponents of offsetting accuse the concept of allowing organisations to 'buy forgiveness' for their 'carbon sins').On the other hand, McDonalds thought that people would deride them for offsetting as a gimmick and IBM decided the money would be better invested in internal low carbon projects.
Quote of the day was from Ashley Lodge of Harper Collins. One of his colleagues advised him to make the low carbon agenda "more stilettos than sandals." Damn right.
Labels: carbon offsetting, csr, low carbon innovation network
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:06
0 Comments
Friday, 18 January 2008
Terra Infirma on Tour!
I'll be appearing all round the country in 2008, leading training sessions for the Low Carbon Innovation Network at their Exchange Events.There is a huge amount going on in each event - a range of training sessions in the morning and discussion groups in the afternoon. My particular session will be on the business opportunities arising from the low carbon economy and how best to exploit them.
If you interested in this agenda, the events are certainly worth a look.
Labels: low carbon innovation network, marketing, terra infirma
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:39
0 Comments
A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
