Transcript EAUC Annual Conference 2011, York Positive Deviance: A strategy for our times

EAUC
Annual Conference 2011,
York
Positive Deviance: A strategy for our times
Sara Parkin,
Founder Director, Forum for the Future,
11th April 2011
From Here to Sustainability:
how long have we got?
1972
Sustainable Development
The First
Earth Summit
60 years to go?
2072
Sustainability
the trend
Now
We have to get on track within the next 10-15 years, so it
is THIS generation that has to act decisively
What I will try to do
• Explain ‘positive deviance’: what is it and why it’s the
strategy for NOW
• Offer some reasons to scream … and some reasons to
cheer
• Suggest the solutions lie in systemic change
• Infrastructure of responsibility: there is no ‘they’
• Leadership role of HE in difficult times
• Encourage you to buy my book!!
Positive Deviant:
A person who does the right thing for
sustainability, despite being surrounded
by the wrong institutional structures or
processes and by stubbornly
uncooperative people
Perverse:
Obstinately in the wrong; wrongheaded;
against the evidence; turned aside from
the truth (Chambers Dictionary)
REASONS TO SCREAM
Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, Tate Modern
Unsustainable development = huge problem
Shrinking supply side
Growing demand side
1946
2.2 billion
1972
3.6 billion
2010
6.9 billion
2035
8.6 billion
2050
9.2 (10.5) billion
“Normally, large, aggressive, predatory mammals are rare –
humans have broken this rule”
Colin Tudge, 2005
Unsustainable development:
symptoms of a whole system failure
+ Loss of biomass
human
economy
takes
50+%
and diversity
+ Mineral depletion
+ Excess fossil fuel
consumption
+ Waste overdose
+ persistent poverty,
Injustice. inequality
= dangerous feedback
on economy; on well-being; on
security; on life itself
Persistent poverty and inequality
• 1.4 billion live on less
than £1.25 a day
• ¼ children dangerously
undernourished
• 2.5 billion poor or no
sanitation
• etc.
“a hungry man is an angry man”
Bob Marley
Soft policy ground overhead and underfoot
Overhead
• Copenhagen fails and Cancun disappoints
• Losing fight with ‘big’ energy/food/finance
• Missing the Millennium Development Goals
Underfoot
• National government confused
• Local government doesn’t ‘see’ HE in Big Society
• HE bluff called – the price for autonomy will be exacted
REASONS TO CHEER
Things can only get better …?
• UK Climate Change Act/Committee on Climate Change
• Resilience and systems change on the agenda – in
social/economic as well as environmental science
• Sarkozy Commission and GDP recalculation
• We know for sure there is no ‘them’ – and that
implementation (of anything) is local
• The majority of people are worried – and education
influences action (ESRC, March 2011)
‘[globally] culture, identity and politics are going local’
Jeremy Greenstock, Former UK Ambassador to the UN
Transformational CSR
Parkin (2010) p127,
Some organisations, especially companies, get it
Eco-efficiency
Quality Management
Licence to operate
1.
reduced costs
2.
costs avoided
3.
optimal investment strategies
4.
Better risk management
5.
Greater responsiveness
6.
Motivates staff
7.
Enhances intellectual capital
8.
Reduces costs of compliace
9.
Enhances reputation with stakeholders
Forum for the Future
But how many universities ‘get it’?
• how many see sustainability as strategic opportunity?
• or even as a basic ‘must have’ for students paying top
dollar for their ‘experience’ and a degree fit for 21st
workplace challenges?
•or feel a leadership responsibility in difficult and potentially
chaotic times?
ROLE OF UNIVERSITIES
“The goal of education is to form the citizen. And the
citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-found his
(sic) civilisation.”
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy 1888-1972
Universities are the same as any
business - but different?
Same
• good governance and business management is expected
• responsibilities to stakeholders (students, funders of
research, taxpayers, charity law, donors etc.)
• perception of public impacts on reputation
• students (like employees/customers) choosing on SD
criteria
Different
• operate for public benefit – are social enterprises already?
• product is graduates and ideas – and future leaders?
• recognise enhanced responsibilities in radical change?
Students and employers want it
Students
• majority (over 80%) first year students think sustainability
skills will be important to employers (HEA/NUS 2011,
Forum for the Future 2007/09)
• Harvard Business School students sign ethics code (HB
journal June 2009)
Employers
• 70% businesses agree gap in leadership skills for a
sustainable economy ‘will become one of the most pressing
challenges facing UK business in the next five years’.
(BITC, July 2010)
• … but few know how to ask for what they need
University as a Social Enterprise
students & staff
graduates & ideas
+
+
energy, materials
waste & pollution
-
finance
economic benefit
+
+
campus, curriculum, community
Delivering public and private value
in a way that contributes to
sustainable development
Q. We know what to do, why don’t we do it?
The crisis is in implementation’
Kofi Annan, 2002
A. It is about people, not the environment!!
1. Understand need for new behaviour
2. Have knowledge and skills to behave
differently
3. Right behaviour is recognised and
rewarded
The hope and failure of education
Subjects and disciplines fragment knowledge, so
slow up understanding about a fabulously
interconnected world - of which we are a part …
… so wonder we are sustainability – illiterate!
Which in turn means everything is constructed
to support wrong behaviour
‘infrastructure of responsibility’
(Scheffler, 2001)
Go miles beyond CSR: The case for university
leadership for sustainability
1. Urgency
2. Intellectual capital
3. Institutional power
Urgency: no silver bullet –
just millions of right actions
Now
Business as usual
GtCO2e
+ Build natural capital
84
STABILISATION
TRIANGLE
+ Build human capital
+ Build social capital
- Lower birth rates
42
- Use FEWER resources
10-15 YEARS TO
SHIFT TO
STABILISATION
TRAJECTORY
+ Be ultra-efficient
0
1956
2006
adapted from Socolow & Pacola, 2004
developed in Parkin (2010) The Positive Deviant
2056
2106
Intellectual leadership
All the evidence and policies we need to transform to a
sustainable way of doing things is there, in UK
universities, but that body of knowledge is:
• not joined up or coherently presented
• not speaking to others in a “language” they can hear
• not recognising that this is a social project
• not producing sustainability literate graduates to the scale
needed
21st Century Leadership
TAME
WICKED
CRITICAL
Grint (2005)
PROBLEMS
Triandis’ Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour
Beliefs about
outcomes
Attitude
Facilitating
Conditions
Evaluation of
outcomes
Norms
Roles
Social factors
intention
Self-concept
Behaviour
Emotions
Affect
Frequency of
behaviour
Habits
(1977)
New habits feed new behaviours
‘We don’t have habits, they have us’ Elizabeth Shove 2003
We want to do right thing, but can’t practically. The
‘facilitating conditions’ are not there
Practices have:
material infrastructure
meanings
competencies
Institutional power
Universities are large businesses/institutions and
individually (in localities) and collectively (nationally
and internationally) potentially very powerful:
• institution (or multi-institution) level trials and exemplars
through action-research (Carbon Reduction Commitment
etc, new business, social, economic models, new curricula,
partnerships)
• whole institution demonstrations of what works
• collective influence on policy (with evidence, speaking
coherently unto power?)
The infrastructure of responsibility
Schaeffer 2001
Companies
Citizens
Government
Publically quoted,
Large privately owned
SMEs for profit, etc
social enterprises
charities, churches,
clubs, law courts etc
National, local,
NHS, Schools etc
macro
meso
micro
macro
meso
micro
macro
meso
micro
Step One
Step Two
Step Three
Step Four
Sustainable
What has each of these organisations and groups to do
Enterprise
before their only undertakings are those that contribute to
Heaven
sustainability?
See for example: Steve Waddell ‘Realising global change: developing the tools; building
the infrastructure’ The journal of Corporate Citizenship Summer 2007, 26
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather
than despair convincing”
Raymond Williams, 1921-1988
Think rapidly and radically
CAMPUS
CURRICULUM
COMMUNITY
FINANCE
INFRASTRUCTURE
SOCIAL
HUMAN
NATURAL
What can I do to
contribute to a
more sustainable
way of life?
Principles of practice:
Be
Practice
Exercise
Think
Plan
Distil
Mobilise
ubunto
positive deviance
compassion
in systems, about resilience
outcomes and strategies
wisdom from data deluge
imagination, in yourself, others
How HE can grow contribution
CAMPUS
CURRICULUM
COMMUNITY
FINANCE
pensions
accounting
destination
university
Procurement for
resilience
INFRASTRUCTURE
new build &
refurbish
experiential learning
transport
SOCIAL
good governance
‘retrofit’ workforce
with sustainability
literacy
Business links
Share space
HUMAN
Staff training
one-stop green
information
carbon reduction
All graduates
sustainability
literate
Low-carbon
innovation
partner with
Local government
bio-mass increase
waste reduction
wildlife orgs, etc
NATURAL
HEPS Nov 2003
Measure what matters
• contribution to sustainability
• ubiquity
• influence
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not
everything that counts can be counted.”
Albert Einstein
WHAT WILL THE FUTURE
HOLD?
“History is a race between education
and catastrophe.”
H G Wells (1866-1946)
A strategy for our times
‘the hallmarks of tomorrow’s world
will be scarcity – of land, water,
oil, food and “airspace” [for
greenhouse gases]’
‘ leadership matters, no trend is
immutable … timely and wellinformed intervention can
decrease the likelihood and
severity of negative developments
and increase the likelihood of
positive ones.”
The Perfect Storm
Beddington, 2009
US National Intelligence Council
November 2008
‘Positive deviance’ is the only leadership
strategy from now on.
… because …
… if unsustainability is the consequence of lots of
unknowingly wrong decisions and actions, then
sustainability will be the consequence of lots of
knowingly right decisions and actions.
Sara Parkin, Positive Deviance, forthcoming
Thank you for listening!
“Do the right thing. This will gratify
some, and astonish the rest.”
Mark Twain
ww.forumforthefuture.org
registered charity no. 1040519
Positive deviance internally
Sara Parkin, From HEPS
Final Report 2004
Positive deviance: externally
Sara Parkin, From HEPS
Final Report 2004