Appetite for Change » Sustainable development

Are Merchants of Fear Needed?

Christophe Lastennet — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:28:11 +0000

Within the climate change general debate, some are being accused of deliberately installing fear and making profits of it. I don’t intend to comment the profit aspect here but the question of carrying alarming messages is an interesting change management problem for any types of change within any types of organization.

As far as I’m concerned, things are clear: making people change requires both the installation of that famous sense of urgency (Kotter Step 1) AND to define and share a positive vision of a bright future (Kotter step 3). The combination of these 2 elements is essential: without a vision, a sense of urgency is just enough to make people move but without knowing where to go they risk falling back to inertia. Without a sense of urgency, a vision may not be sufficient to make people quit a situation feels comfortable.

Installing a sense of urgency requires factual elements about the past and present, credible scenarios for the future, communicated in such a way that touches people’s emotions. Within climate change, Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” is, I believe, a “best practice” of urgency communication. Interestingly enough, when you go on his climate crisis website, the material that is now shown is much more actions and solutions oriented.

My change management teachers at IAE Aix en Provence would tell the students that establishing a sense of urgency doesn’t suddenly start and stop. It’s an on-going process to make sure again and again that people don’t succumb to the temptation of going back to old habits. At the same time, planning, visioning and empowering gradually become key change levers.

Leaders in business or elsewhere, need to listen to those who are trying to communicate an urgency to change, and, should it be factually credible, need to define the way forward. They will then be able to rely on those people who will have had the courage to tell a truth difficult for other people to hear.

Implementing a sustainable development initiative

Christophe Lastennet — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:49:00 +0000

I’d like to share with you a few slides which purpose is to give some hints for successfully implementing a sustainable development initiative, viewed from a behavioural change angle. Acting “greener” is something relevant to many of us (it should even be all of us) and is very much about how we can install new behaviours. I’d be very interested in your (constructive) feedback and comments.

Sustainable development Initiative

View more presentations from Christophe Lastennet.

Change management needed to greening corporate travel

Christophe Lastennet — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:03:00 +0000

Changing our behaviours to reduce our carbon footprint is a key and sometimes difficult challenge for us individuals and businesses. Air travel represents 2% of the world’s total CO2 emissions, which may seem insignificant at first but is in fact a lot if you compare it with cleaner means of travelling. As an indication The Impact of Tourism on Climate Change (Peeters, 2007) reveals that European tourists use air travel for 20% of their trips, which yet accounts for 75% of the total tourism transport CO2 emissions (interesting to note the Pareto principles applies here).

The Green Travel Summit held on 23-24 March in California, came out with the top 10 challenges to greening corporate travel, of which 6 are directly related to change management issues, as highlighted below:

1. Where to begin

2. Perception vs reality regarding costs

3. Overcoming resistance to change

4. Buy in from senior management

5. ROI*

6. Securing budget

7. Reporting standards and metrics*

8. Green washing: truth vs fiction

9. Buy in from both the planner and the supplier

10. Communicating and educating all relative stakeholders

* to me directly related to change management as measuring and communicating successes and benefits is a key component

More details here