Month: August 2023

Reflecting

The combined efforts of our cohort of climate action change leaders have inspired me with their variety of change leadership plans designed to help our communities build resilience to climate change. I learned something from every one of my cohort’s presentations and in their totality, they’ve revived my sense of cautious optimism.

Making a group wish for our future climate on the Larabanga Mystic Stone

I started CALS 505 – Leading Change in the Context of Climate Change from a place of emotion, mostly passion for change, and I learned to use a logical structure to get to an actionable project. I learned that the power of being able to tell your story of change succinctly will go a long way to making it a reality. Practicing in front of a trusted peer group instilled a sense of confidence in my ability to tell the story while also identifying areas that I still need to work on.

My climate action change leadership story is centred on building resilience. Resilience is a strategic goal of the company I work for and it’s also a term I used in my letter of intent when I applied for the Climate Action Leadership Program. The need to balance resilience as a metaphor against resilience as a measurement is one of my biggest learnings from developing my Climate Action Project Plan. Reflecting on my presentation I believe I was able to impart the facts but the metaphor of how the project contributes to organizational resilience continues to be an area for me to work on.

My conclusion after presenting my project, and watching others present theirs, is that finding the sweet spot between telling my story while making sure the audience has the key facts, is tough. There is no one right way. While there are communications formulas and tips, ultimately personal style, and where you are in your change leadership journey, will influence the presentation. Not every telling of the story needs to feel like a success. The simple act of telling the story and getting feedback helps dial it in. Watching others with a critical eye, and discussing with peers, are invaluable learning exercises, painful as presenting may feel to some of us.

We need narrative to help others visualize our plans in a way that make them relatable. Yet, working in the nebulous world of metaphors is not easy. I think I learned a bit more about using my authentic voice in my work and yet I still feel a disconnect between my professional voice and my natural one. Hopefully, through practice, I’ll find my way to selecting the appropriate voice in the moment I need it. Getting comfortable with my voice can be practiced and will require not just developing a vision statement but learning how to ‘own’ it.

Using a linear thinking tool like the Kellogg Foundation’s logic model (2004) will help me to keep the components of my theory of change organized. It will also help me to refine it as I progress through future iterations. I also need to keep design thinking front of mind to continue to improve the vitality of my vision and to make sure it meets the needs of those who will be impacted by my project. Finally, I’ll continue to use systems thinking as I learn more from the study of the complexity of the climate impacted future ahead of us. I’ll continue to span the horizon for leverage points that can help me make the project a reality and achieve the impact I’ve been working so hard towards. 

I entered the MACAL program while continuing to work so that I could open a new door without closing the one behind me. I’m planning on the same approach for my next steps. I’ve had many conversations about Climate Action over the last 16 months and this will continue. I’ve been able to progress the project that I had in mind before starting the MACAL program. This course helped me to develop a strong change leadership plan that I will continue to refine and tailor in a way that I feel confident bringing forward as a proposal. My hope is to get the initiative at least established and tested within my current organization and then to continue to champion climate action initiatives.

References

Dreier, L., Nabarro, D., Nelson, J. (2019). Systems Leadership for Sustainable Development: Strategies for Achieving Systemic Change. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/mrcbg/files/Systems%20Leadership.pdf

Greenberg, S. S., & Karak, M. (2020). Using Design Thinking to Tackle Climate Change When ‘What You Know No Longer Works.’ Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://doi.org/10.48558/PQ3Z-M311

W.K. Kellogg Foundation. (January 2004). Logic model development guide. https://wkkf.issuelab.org/resource/logic-model-development-guide.html

Integrating ideas across industry and cultural practices

I’m designing a project to implement a Climate Futures Design Team to both support sustainability reporting and to develop ideas for potential transformative climate solutions as an evolution from incrementally responding and  adapting to climate change.

multicultural hands on a tree representing cross cultural team work

This is the final project for the course, Leading Change in the Context of Climate Change.

The goal of the project is to develop idea propositions for equitable, transformative change which requires the team leader to consider approaches that help the team to act responsibly to all other beings, in other words, to do the work to ‘right relations’ (Gram-Hanssen, 2021). The biggest challenge that I see emerging out of this is with integrating ideas across industry and cultural boundaries.

For lessons learned in cross cultural practices I looked to research conducted, in part, by Albert Marshall, a Mi’kmaw elder, who introduced the concept of Two-Eyed seeing in 2004. Since its introduction, there has been a strengthening consensus across Western and Indigenous researchers that successful integration of Western Science and Traditional Knowledge is fundamental to getting to equitable, transformative solutions (Hathaway, 2020, Bartlett & Marshall & Marshall, 2012).

Two-Eyed Seeing is the gift of multiple perspective treasured by many aboriginal peoples and explains that it refers to learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing, and to using both these eyes together, for the benefit of all

Bartlett 2012, citing citing Bartlett 2006, 2011, 2012, Bartlett et al. 2012; Hatcher et al. 2009, Iwama et al. 2009; Hatcher and Barlett 2010; Marshall et al. 2010, IISH website,  P.335

To achieve this objective the leader will need to include Indigenous representation to co-design potential future solutions in a way that helps weave ideas across western and Indigenous worldviews. This is a challenging objective for a couple reasons. First, this project has a strong information systems foundation and Indigenous people are under-represented in STEM education so getting Indigenous team members could be challenging (IndigeSTEAM. ND). Second, the demands on Indigenous community member’s time are many and are increasing. A couple of examples are the time demands related to changes on the regulatory front in B.C., such as the implementation of UNDRIP and the Modernization of the Emergency Management Act.

Given the time constraints, one option that might work would be to create, or to connect with, an Indigenous advisory council. This idea of bringing together a knowledgeable group of stakeholders across Western and Indigenous communities was presented by Bartlett et al. as a lesson learned from decades of research into integrating western science and Indigenous knowledge (Bartlett et al., 2012). Their lesson is based on academic research, which could be tested in an Industry environment to determine viability.

Finding or establishing such a council would take time and could be done in parallel with establishing the organization’s internal team. Keeping Indigenous principles in mind, Bartlett et al. extend the principle of two eyed seeing to multiple eyed seeing, explaining the belief that no one person has more than a small piece of knowledge and that we need to tap into the collective consciousness (2012). This concept aligns to what in Western research is referred to as Transdisciplinarity (Corman & Cox, 2020). Bartlett et al. describe how their research maps to transdisciplinary research, describing the key characteristics of relating to social issues, integrating across disciplines, and participatory research (Bartlett et al., 2012).

My project is also embedded in the renewable energy industry as a response to the challenges emerging from the broader societal energy transition. Research into iterative risk management within the electricity sector has identified the value of integrating transdisciplinary knowledge into the process to meet the demands of climate change impacts, both for the Utility and the population it serves (Gerlack et al., 2018).  Research in this area has been unable to find examples of cross sectoral collaboration (Gerlack et al., 2018), which means that this challenge will continue as transdisciplinary approaches are tried and tested. While this research was centered in risk management practices, the researchers have made a case to shift away from what they refer to as a fragmented approach, to consider greater collaboration beyond the utility sector (Gerlack et al., 2018). This shift would not only open the opportunity for new perspectives but would allow for a shift from risk at the center to one of uncertainty at the center. This would support designing for the uncertainty inherent to Climate Change projections and open space for collaborations around scenario-based analysis, leading to the benefits that come with developing strategic foresight.

However, there are benefits with starting with a small and agile team which can be done by starting in the center of climate risk management and at the intersection of the common interests of Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation practices. This would provide the leader with an opportunity to start from practical, established business functions, centered in managing risks, before creating a bridge to broader objectives, once trust in the leader, the team, and the outcomes that they achieve, is further established.

References

Bartlett, C., Marshall, M., & Marshall, A. (2012). Two-Eyed Seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(4), 331–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-012-0086-8

Corman, I. & Cox, R. (2020). Transdisciplinarity: A Primer. Royal Roads University. https://commons.royalroads.ca/macal/wp-content/uploads/sites/88/2021/04/MACAL_Transdisciplinary_Thinking03-31-21-3.pdf

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). (2022, Oct. 18). Indigenous science. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/science-technology/indigenous-science.html

Gerlak, A. K., Weston, J., McMahan, B., Murray, R. L., & Mills-Novoa, M. (2018). Climate risk management and the electricity sector. Climate Risk Management, 19, 12–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2017.12.003

Gram-Hanssen, I., Schafenacker, N., & Bentz, J. (2021). Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations.’ Sustainability Science, 17(2), 673-685. Retrieved 10 May. 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00960-9   

IndigeSTEAM. (ND). Indigenous perspectives in STEM & STEAM opening doors for all. https://www.indigesteam.ca/

Institute for Integrative Science and Health. (ND). Two-Eyed Seeing. http://www.integrativescience.ca/Principles/TwoEyedSeeing/

Irwin, T. (2021). Transition Design: Design for systems-level change. American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) National Conference. Terry Irwin [Presenter]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=KEzrqICi7hI

OECD. (ND). Strategic Foresight. Web Page. https://www.oecd.org/strategic-foresight