#ActOnClimate Requires an Organizational Skill We Generally Lack
In my mind the next twelve months are critical for all organizations who were involved in the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (UNCCC) to show each other, and the world in general, that all the talk and negotiation which took place in Paris in December at the UNCCC were not a waste of time. They have their work cut out.
I have spent my twenty-eight years of employment working for massive global corporations and have experienced firsthand how talking and planning is cheap and easy. We humans are great at having meetings and chatting about how wonderful things could be if we all just worked together with a common objective. After all, we convince ourselves, we work for the same organization and so working towards a common goal just makes sense! A conclusion so painfully obvious yet so hard to achieve. After the talk we take the next step and have workshops where we gather in a common location to make good use use of colourful sticky notes, markers and whiteboards to brainstorm, get out ideas and then narrow them down to those considered most attainable (by the way so much for great leaps forward and risk taking). The last half-day of a workshop will then be about ensuring that action items have owners - so critical we believe. We all agree that we'll work hard on the ideas, set up some sub-teams and have conference calls to follow-up and make it all happen! We then go for a piss on the town to celebrate the end of a successful session.
I've been to so many of these types of workshops that have not delivered on their promises. The reality is we get back to our local offices, get overwhelmed by the daily routines and issues and realize that we just don't have the time to implement all the great ideas that were agreed upon. A subset might in fact get complete but the whole fails regardless.
While a company with tens of thousands of employees in hundreds of countries is complex it pales in comparison to the complexity that the participants of the UNCCC face. Different levels of government, non profits, citizen groups, corporations, small and medium businesses spanning all industries, cultures, climates, languages - all the amazing diversity of Earth! This makes the frustrations I have felt so petty in comparison.
So all the talk is now over. The UNCCC agreements are signed. How many action items have been doled out to how many individuals? How many follow-up conference call are there scheduled? How many pints or, more likely given the location, glasses of wine were drunk on that last night of the conference on December 11th?
If there is one workshop where a commitment to completing assigned action items is important it was the UNCCC. While Earth may continue to orbit the sun long after we human beings disappear, I think that as a species we are trying to spend as much time on it as we can, no? Our species' longevity is at risk due to our past behaviour and ignorance. The good news is that we seem to have learned from our mistakes, or at least acknowledged them.
What makes this problem so ridiculously complex however is that we, as human beings, are terrible at working in teams even when we have quarterly measurable targets in place that directly influence our take home pay (i.e. the typical corporation). We could do so much more and generate so much more profit if we actually worked together in our relatively small companies. Only in rare cases do companies actually seem to get it done and realize all the possible benefits of cooperation.
This climate change problem is one that is hard to measure, does not have quarterly targets (at least not yet), involves people that do not share the same targets and include a result that is decades or more away and so just does not have the same kind of pressing attention that we give corporate targets. If Wall Street was hounding all the UNCCC participants in the same fashion that they hounded traded corporations it might be very different. Who will hold the participants of this greatest monstrosity of a workshop accountable for their action items?
It boils down to all of us reminding ourselves, our neighbours, our employers, our mayors, our presidents and prime ministers that we are holding them accountable. It also boils down to all of us acting and behaving and talking climate on a daily and continuous basis.
Gosh, we have the technologies and the brains to solve this....but do we have the will and organizational skills to make it happen?? So, again, this year is key. We need to start closing some of those action items now so that in December of this year we can proudly show progress.
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
I have spent my twenty-eight years of employment working for massive global corporations and have experienced firsthand how talking and planning is cheap and easy. We humans are great at having meetings and chatting about how wonderful things could be if we all just worked together with a common objective. After all, we convince ourselves, we work for the same organization and so working towards a common goal just makes sense! A conclusion so painfully obvious yet so hard to achieve. After the talk we take the next step and have workshops where we gather in a common location to make good use use of colourful sticky notes, markers and whiteboards to brainstorm, get out ideas and then narrow them down to those considered most attainable (by the way so much for great leaps forward and risk taking). The last half-day of a workshop will then be about ensuring that action items have owners - so critical we believe. We all agree that we'll work hard on the ideas, set up some sub-teams and have conference calls to follow-up and make it all happen! We then go for a piss on the town to celebrate the end of a successful session.
I've been to so many of these types of workshops that have not delivered on their promises. The reality is we get back to our local offices, get overwhelmed by the daily routines and issues and realize that we just don't have the time to implement all the great ideas that were agreed upon. A subset might in fact get complete but the whole fails regardless.
While a company with tens of thousands of employees in hundreds of countries is complex it pales in comparison to the complexity that the participants of the UNCCC face. Different levels of government, non profits, citizen groups, corporations, small and medium businesses spanning all industries, cultures, climates, languages - all the amazing diversity of Earth! This makes the frustrations I have felt so petty in comparison.
So all the talk is now over. The UNCCC agreements are signed. How many action items have been doled out to how many individuals? How many follow-up conference call are there scheduled? How many pints or, more likely given the location, glasses of wine were drunk on that last night of the conference on December 11th?
If there is one workshop where a commitment to completing assigned action items is important it was the UNCCC. While Earth may continue to orbit the sun long after we human beings disappear, I think that as a species we are trying to spend as much time on it as we can, no? Our species' longevity is at risk due to our past behaviour and ignorance. The good news is that we seem to have learned from our mistakes, or at least acknowledged them.
What makes this problem so ridiculously complex however is that we, as human beings, are terrible at working in teams even when we have quarterly measurable targets in place that directly influence our take home pay (i.e. the typical corporation). We could do so much more and generate so much more profit if we actually worked together in our relatively small companies. Only in rare cases do companies actually seem to get it done and realize all the possible benefits of cooperation.
This climate change problem is one that is hard to measure, does not have quarterly targets (at least not yet), involves people that do not share the same targets and include a result that is decades or more away and so just does not have the same kind of pressing attention that we give corporate targets. If Wall Street was hounding all the UNCCC participants in the same fashion that they hounded traded corporations it might be very different. Who will hold the participants of this greatest monstrosity of a workshop accountable for their action items?
It boils down to all of us reminding ourselves, our neighbours, our employers, our mayors, our presidents and prime ministers that we are holding them accountable. It also boils down to all of us acting and behaving and talking climate on a daily and continuous basis.
Gosh, we have the technologies and the brains to solve this....but do we have the will and organizational skills to make it happen?? So, again, this year is key. We need to start closing some of those action items now so that in December of this year we can proudly show progress.
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
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