"If you're in a bad situation, don't worry, it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry, it'll change."
-- John A. Simone Jr.
Six Levels of Sustainability: What You Be is What You Get (6)
“Sustainability” is not always sustainable. Simply, doing and describing what you do as sustainable does not make it so. For organizations (and us, personally!) to be sustainable in what we do, we have to be sustainable in who we are and how we see the world. This gives us our best shot at doing something that is actually going to get or generate sustainable results. In the following series of six posts I will introduce the six levels of engaging in sustainability: Compliance, Conformity, Cooperation, Collaboration, Coherence and Constellation. We use these at Interkannections to help our clients clarify their current goals around sustainability and map out their paths for deepening their practice and impact.
Constellation is characterized by reaching across industry, sector and national boundaries to create “constellations” of organizations capable of making systemic level change that benefits a multitude of stakeholders including, of course, the constellation members. These constellations are characterized by high degrees of transparency and innovation in a rich learning, rich opportunity environment. They are driven by a strong sense of purpose to build systemic capacity wherever they may be operating.
Constellation
- Sustainability is internally driven and collaboratively realized in multi-stakeholder interventions
- Example sustainability activities: Kalundborg, a workable, meaningful approach to changing climate change, expanding Burgerville’s quality of supplier relationships throughout Cascadia, the “Integral Cities” movement.
- Being at Constellation innovating and organizing from an abundance mindset.
- What we see at this level is our capacity to effect systems level benefit and change with an array of other capable stakeholders.
- What we are doing is creating long-term value and resilience in the systems in which we do business thus making them and us more sustainable.
- What we get from Constellation is a strong, healthy, positive-value, business opportunity generating Value Web.
- Operating at Constellation is our best bet at sustaining the systems that sustain us and allow us to economically innovate and ecologically flourish.
We are just beginning to see Constellation level work emerge. The simplest way to imagine it is collaboration at a systems level. The project, instead of being clean tech. development project would entail a focus on a node or multiple nodes of the value web. Again, if the way Burgerville develops and maintains relationships with suppliers was expanded and implemented with a number of restaurants and suppliers across Cascadia we would be looking at a constellation-like scope and impact.
Tags: abundance, Burgerville, Cascadia, Coherence, collaboration, Compliance, Conformity, Constellation, cooperation, Country Natural Beef, integral cities, Interkannections, Kalundborg, resilience, sustainability, systems level change, systems thinking, transparency
Six Levels of Sustainability: What You Be is What You Get (4)
“Sustainability” is not always sustainable. Simply, doing and describing what you do as sustainable does not make it so. For organizations (and us, personally!) to be sustainable in what we do, we have to be sustainable in who we are and how we see the world. This gives us our best shot at doing something that is actually going to get or generate sustainable results. In the following series of six posts I will introduce the six levels of engaging in sustainability: Compliance, Conformity, Cooperation, Collaboration, Coherence and Constellation. We use these at Interkannections to help our clients clarify their current goals around sustainability and map out their paths for deepening their practice and impact.
Collaboration
At the Collaboration level a commonly occurring question is “why we are doing what we’re doing?” This is often driven by a desire to be more involved and inclusive internally and externally. Like Cooperation, external stakeholder engagement is still largely targeted and arbitrary although the quality of engagement is less transactional due to the collaborative nature of involvement.
- Sustainability is internally mandated and guides internal and external partner and project selection and areas of collaboration.
- Example sustainability activities: stewarding NPOs on good business practices, co-development of green technologies, cross-functional and multi-level internal initiatives, including NGO’s, local communities and other external shareholders in the project and product and service development process.
- Being at this level is focused on engaging with others in sustainable work. An organic expansion of Cooperation, we begin to reach out and look for opportunities to work together on targeted and selected projects.
- What we see at this level is the power and value in including and embracing multiple perspectives, multiple win relationships and transparency in our business.
- What we are doing is reaching out to and opening dialogues with suppliers, external stakeholders and, even, adversaries to include them in the scope of our sustainability practices.
- What we get from Collaboration are deeper relationships with external partners that typically involve learning and development on both sides. This tends to generate more impressive PR and better management of risk as multiple-win and longer-term relationships become more common. Internally, potential for organizational learning and greater innovation increases as information flows and is shared across functional and divisional boundaries.
- Remaining centered in collaboration is marked by multiple and fruitful initiatives and relationships that, though multi-faceted and value generating are not fully integrated and coordinated into our business, work and lives.
We believe that Collaboration is the first level of sustainability that may actually be sustainable. Companies that rate their sustainability or philanthropy efforts as very effective are those that engage and collaborate with other businesses and stakeholders. At this level we begin working in interconnected and mutually dependable and mutually influencing ways. Communities of interest and practice develop and become self-organizing and self-managing. We discover opportunities for new value streams and create the potential to dissolve adversarial relationships. Our style of work, interaction and value generation begin to leverage the value of systems thinking and self-organizing systems by mirroring the non-linear workings of open systems.
Tags: Coherence, collaboration, Compliance, Conformity, Constellation, cooperation, NGO's, organizational learning, philanthropy, self-organizing systems, stakeholder engagement, supply chain, sustainability, systems thinking, value stream
Enlightened Capitalism Calls for Capacity Evolution
Great article over at worldchanging called: Enlightened Capitalism: Building a New Corporate Consciousness.
Rachel Botsman writes that for corporations to make the shift to new, truly sustainable ways of doing business they need to look at the best practices of companies like Timberland, Seventh Generation, Eileen Fisher, Patagonia and Stonyfield Farm. I would also add Burgerville in Portland OR to this list of sustainable business leaders.
She lists the following practices as key to making and maintaining the shift to sustainability:
- Abolishing the term or notion of “Corporate Social Responsibility”: Couldn’t agree more. The thinking behind CSR tends to create a separate culture of giving, donating and contributing to causes. It is often a band aid approach instead of a coherent, organization wide commitment to generating value.
- Shifting from linear to systems-based thinking: The world is neither linear nor solid. Everything is connected, constantly changing and affecting that around it. Markets are fluid and unpredictable. We, our communities and organizations are open systems. To understand them and their interactions requires systems thinking capacity and competence.
- Teaching employees new types of collaboration: Creativity and innovation emerge from the chaotic soup of interaction and interrelation. This requires unlikely and unconventional partnerships and communication. Co-opetition in place of competition.
- Showing respect for employees: Why, if everyone I speak with wants a Theory Y workplace, do we have so many Theory X organizations? People want empowering, life-enhancing relationships and work. Yet what we often create for each other are demotivating, controlling and dispiriting working conditions. Showing respect means finding a way to help employees live and work in fully engaged and healthy ways.
- Empowering employees by helping them to make a difference: Increased capacity for performance needs learning, development and sincere support. When people can see how to and actually do make a difference in or outside of work they grow in unpredictably wonderful ways.
- Setting goals that challenge the imagination: No waste! Try that one on for size.
- Using transparency to solve problems: It’s amazing how many problems remain problems simply because no one is willing to discuss them. Or, we just shut them out. Many problems are actually not problems at all. They’re dilemmas or polarities that need to be managed. Understanding that can free many of us from the dark traps our problem avoidance routines put us in.
Tags: Burgerville, capacity evolution, creativity, csr, Eileen Fisher, enlightened capitalism, innovation, Patagonia, Seventh Generation, Stonyfield Farm, sustainability, systems thinking, theory x, theory y
Evolving Sustainable Leadership
In my previous post on the evolution of sustainable leadership I wrote:
The evolution of sustainable leadership is commitment to a process of self development that begins with “me” but necessarily expands to include and transcend “me.” The deeper we dive, the broader we roam, the richer our understanding of our place and purpose.
So how does this process work? The short answer is it must necessarily work in different ways for different people. Though the aim may be the same, we start from different places, different life spaces and conditions. Yet there some constants. One of those is capacity.
To deepen our capacity means to target our capability to perceive and act from what we are learning. At Interkannections we view this as the journey of capacity evolution where G, I and T-shaped leaders become H, A and U-shaped leaders. Here, again, there are many paths up the mountain. However, it would be foolish to ignore some well-worn trails:
In “integral” speak this means being able to leverage what is called a 4Q perspective: deepening and balancing insight gained from perspectives on the self, the self and others, the world and our actions in it, and the systems and processes we create and in which we are embedded.
Peter Senge has popularized systems thinking as a way to access the meaning to be made from inter-relationship.
Otto Scharmer uses “Theory U” and presencing to take individuals and groups on learning journeys that allow them to access and leverage intuitive inter-connection and insight.
At Interkannections we employ all of the above-when necessary-to help our clients make the shift from their current patterns of thinking and behavior to a more sustainable, life giving, value generating way of living and engaging with the world.
The key in evolving your approach to leadership and your life, in general, to a more sustainable one, in the end, is, of course: YOU. You have to want to take on the challenge, have the will, discipline and commitment to evolve. You must have the courage, wisdom and humility to learn and seek out experiences and teachers to help you evolve.
And, most importantly, YOU can start, NOW.
Tags: capacity evolution, Otto Scharmer, Peter Senge, presencing, sustainability, sustainable leadership, systems thinking, Theory U
On the Subject of Gas Prices…
Another C+C News Update. Found this while browsing links from the Wall Street Journal article referenced in Shifting the Focus Away from Oil. Called AP IMPACT: What makes up the price of gas?, it starts off as a fairly linear description of the crude oil refining process and its impact on prices. However it quickly digresses into a number of vignettes on the other elements of price people are paying at the pump. One interesting story sheds some light on the non-rational, non-linear elements at play:
Kelly Bosley, who manages Rutter’s, doesn’t even have to look across the highway to know when Sheetz changes its price for a gallon of gas. When Sheetz raises prices, her own pumps are busy. When Sheetz lowers prices, she has not a car in sight.
She calls Rutter’s headquarters to report the competition’s new price and wait for instructions.
“I call a lot of times and say, ‘They went down, hurry up! Hurry up! Call me! Call me!’ Or it could be where theirs goes up, and I’ll say, ‘Take your time! You know, I like being busy.’ But I have no control over that.”
You think you feel helpless at the pump?
The point is its not poor Ms. Bosley who’s responsible or the greed of the oil companies or the oil producing nations. It is a constellation of interlinked, inter-related phenomena that inter-influence each other. Ms. Bosley, the oil companies, oil producing nations, increase demand for oil in China and India, car sales in those nations and others, the fluctuation of the dollar against other currencies, unemployment rates, etc. are all to “blame”. A cause becomes an effect and vice versa. Linear reasoning in this wicked mess will only up our frustration and sense of powerlessness in the world.
We need to take a few steps back and see that we are dealing with a complex system of relationships. It is the interaction of these relationships that affect the price of gas.
Try this: put all the causes in the article in different areas on a piece of paper and start drawing lines between them as you think of connections. You have just made a crude map of the system. As you can see it is definitely not of the linear, cause and effect family of problems. The next step is studying the nature of the connections between these diverse elements. From there it is possible to design an entry point for an intervention to alter the system. More on influencing and affecting systems later.
Tags: complexity, gas prices, oil prices, systems thinking