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News & Views From the Front Line
Friday, 13 November 2009
Low Carbon Business Seminar - 3 December 2009
The Low Carbon Best Practice Exchange is running in Harrogate on 3rd December - a whole day of round table discussions and one-to-ones - a delightfully powerpoint free zone. I'm leading two sessions on staff engagement and environmental strategy and there are loads more. I know I've said it before - these are probably the best events of their type.To book your place, visit the LCBPE website.
Labels: low carbon best practice exchange, training, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 12:22
0 Comments
Friday, 16 October 2009
Business Opportunities in Climate Change Adaptation
I was running a CSR workshop with a major international engineering firm yesterday. Given the traditional engineers' reactive (and sometimes reactionary) approach to such 'soft issues' (I'm an engineer - I can say this!), their proactive, progressive attitude was a breath of fresh air. Interestingly enough, as well as the business opportunities we identified in climate change mitigation (cutting emissions), we discovered they were well placed to exploit opportunities in climate change adaptation - adapting to the inevitable changes that are already in the system.Adaptation is going to become more and more important. If someone has cooling or refrigeration plant, it is going to have to work harder and become more expensive unless you can develop innovative new solutions. Resilience to rising sea levels, floods and extreme weather events will require new engineering solutions (or relocation). Heathcare services will have to adapt to new patterns in the spread of diseases. All these changes are business opportunities for someone.
Labels: adaptation, climate change, csr, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:57
1 Comments
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Personal Journeys
I'm writing this on the train back to Newcastle, having left a rather unseasonally sticky London behind me. I'm smiling to myself at one of those fantastically tautological announcements only train companies can make:"I'm afraid we can't serve hot drinks from the trolley tonight. This is due to a malfunction on the trolley."
Glad they pointed that last bit out, cause it might have been, er, well... There was another classic on the tube yesterday.
"I'd like to apologise for the slight delay to your journey. The reason for this is we haven't been given a signal to proceed."
Again I felt much better informed for knowing that the driver hadn't just forgotten how to drive the train...
...anyway, speaking of journeys, I've been doing quite a few sustainability and related workshops recently. The gist of the sessions is always the same:
"to do sustainability properly you have to integrate it into all your business processes"
It has been fascinating watching delegates struggle with the fact that they might actually have to do something. They oscillate back and forth between the extremes of "this is not my problem" and "I'm up for the challenge". This is a personal journey they have to make and I (and you) can only gently help them on their way.
Some of their pronouncements sound like the train announcers above:
"Personally I'm not interested in sustainability. Because it's not something I think about."
Barracking them or patronising them would just send them back into their happy state of ignorance. You've just got to help them along the path - as always, questions are more useful than arguments. And as Confucious (or Lao-tzu) is said to have said - the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, so don't rush'em.
Labels: staff engagement, sustainability, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 18:06
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Wednesday, 30 September 2009
I'm on the train...
...down to Watford to run a sustainability workshop for senior NHS staff.I love the train - even going through as bland countryside as East Yorkshire. The early morning sun is casting warm light and long shadows across the fields and villages. And of course I can get on with writing this blog, continuing with the Green Executive and catching up on my e-mail action list using the convenient wi-fi internet access. And drink coffee. Who on earth would prefer to drive or fly?
Two people on the next row are discussing the difficulties of hitting their organisation's carbon targets. I'm not deliberately earwigging (perish the thought), but I've got a Pavlovian twitch anytime someone mentions 80% by 2050 in my proximity. From what fragments I've overhead so far I could make about half a dozen suggestions...
Labels: carbon emissions, sustainability, train, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 06:51
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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, 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.
Labels: facilitation, green business bible, seminars, terra infirma, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:36
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
