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Centre for Sustainable Leadership
Enabling Transformative Change: Frameworks & Practices for Sustainability Leaders - A Social Ecology Perspective – Oct 2016 – Sydney – Centre for Sustainability Leaders
- Reframe Economics as a subset of Social; & need to include Personal; reflect on Neoliberalism effects
- Embrace Confusion as the precursor of Profound/Elegant Simplicity (understandings and actions); beyond Deceptive Simplicity
- Construct & use triangle/pyramid models to identify key factors & clarify thinking
- Broaden & deepen your thinking beyond your habitual awareness & the limited known (cleverness-focus) to the vast unknown (wisdom-focus) & possibilities
- Realise that evidence-based decisions are limited (to the known), & so are rarely wise
- Move from ‘problem measurement, control & narrow outcome ($) focus’ to ‘integration, balance & attention to all outcomes/feedback’
- Learn – decide – act – observe outcomes – question – investigate – learn…(the unknowing/knowing – learning/acting spiral)
- Engage in whole-person (head, heart, hands & ‘soul/spirit’) consideration & engagement
- Progress through Rachel Lauer’s 5 epistemes (levels of understanding): from recognition of ‘x’ to beyond it
- Avoid common & patterned responses to problems (denial, postponement, blame, measurement…)
- Learn/apply from the most developed to less developed areas/situations
- Use Hill’s ESR model for enabling problem minimisation (beyond Efficiency & Substitution to Redesign)
- Work with complex systems (in profoundly simple [in time, place & conditions-specific] ways)
- Enable the psycho-social evolution of our species: from fear-based socialising/manipulative to love-based enabling
- Reward & enable rehabilitation, recovery, repair & maintenance of systems (not just production focus)
- Recognise & work with each of the 5 stages of change (from ignorance to life-affirming lifestyles)
- Discuss values & feelings before progressing to plans & actions (Heron 1992. Feeling & Personhood)
- Realise that personal transformation is the foundation for sustained organisational & global transformation
- Use triangle of influences on values & actions to understand & work with change (person, past, present)
- Recognise RD Laing’s double hypnosis & act from core (unwounded/healed) vs. from wounded/[mal]adapted selves
- Use the framework for envisioning & planning change (from beyond one’s lifetime back to now)
- Use strategic vs. yes/no questioning (Fran Peavey)
- Use the ‘Lying to Change the World’ exercise & strategy (far superior to conventional ‘visioning’)
- Use Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Analysis (driving & restraining forces [int. & external]/strengthen & weaken)
- Identify, prioritise & work with the most important limiting factors for achieving sustainable change (empowerment, awareness, vision & values vs. just information, resources & institutional supports)
- Commit to ‘small meaningful initiatives you can guarantee to complete’ (vs. unachievable ‘Olympic-scale events’)
- Identify & involve collaborators, allies & mentors
- Use sharing, inclusion & public celebration for enabling social change (making wellbeing contagious!)
- Identify appropriate ‘political’ Supports, Rewards & Penalties for enabling change
- Brainstorm the 5 ‘Whats’ for change (from what to stop to what to do new)
- Recognise the importance of personal and contextual specificity
- Enable progress from: fear-based socialising/manipulating to love-based enabling:
- problem focus to deep redesign/design
- exclusionary & hierarchical social institutions to participatory ones (co-operacy)
- Recognise the importance of commitment & ‘stickability’
- Engage in ongoing reflection & synthesis; & use humour appropriately & wisely!
