Changing Minds: the primary challenge for implementing sustainability

Authors: Neill Allan Ian Turney

Abstract

This paper distils some of the lessons from knowledge management and information management most relevant to the implementation of sustainability.

Implementing sustainability invariably involves mindset change. It frequently requires different organisations or very different parts of an existing organisation to work together. At the same time it requiring individuals and groups, whether work or social, formal or informal to absorb and become committed to new ideas and perspectives. Knowledge from differing sources and disciplines needs amalgamating in order to generate wise policy and win hearts and minds of citizens and their employers.

It draws on both research and practical experiences with small and large organisations, and particularly the broad-based project underway with the Office of the Prime Minister in New Zealand involving more than 30 ministries, government agencies, ethnic groups and commercial organisations, using knowledge management to improve effective implementation of sustainability, from the generation of policy to the winning of hearts and minds.

Key content covered:

  1. How social, economic and environmental sustainability are affected by human organizations, responding as complex adaptive systems. What practical measures can be undertaken to improve risk and provoke commitment.
  2. The relationship between cultural layers and groupings and their impact on the generation of meaning. The relationships between values, beliefs, trust, understanding and behaviour in the context of sustainability. The management of information and knowledge to guide perception and change understanding and action.
  3. Approaches and actions that assist the generation of policy from accumulated wisdom, winning support from regional/local communities and for corporate responsibility for sustainability in the workplace.

Supporting Sustainability

Practitioners and researchers alike have found that sustainability is a complex goal requiring us to resolve many dilemmas arising from differing values and perceptions.

Integrating social, economic and environmental sustainability puts great pressure on cooperative working between public and private sector work and communities of citizens. For the public sector that involves managing the relationships between cabinet and ministries, public sector agencies, social and ethnic groups, and NGOs. For commercial organisations it means managing complex issues arising from organisational values, retaining commercial viability in the long as well as the short term and responding to statutory requirements.

If stakeholders are to be engaged and motivated to act their commitment must be won. This will normally involve replacing outdated paradigms

If policy is to reflect accumulated wisdom, systems, accompanied by social networks (formal and informal structures) must be adept at sharing, reusing and creating knowledge.

Organisational competencies must reflect these needs

The Voluntary Nature of Knowledge

Knowledge can only be volunteered, not conscripted (Peter Drucker)

As knowledge can only be volunteered, reasons for individuals and organisations to volunteer knowledge are key to knowledge sharing, and this can be one of the biggest challenges for the collaborative working that supports effective sustainability

We always know more than we can tell, and tell more than we can write down (Michael Polanyi)

We only know what we know when we need to know it (Dave Snowden)

For these reasons and because story conveys complex messages more effectively than other means of communication, there has been an increase in the development of storytelling skills and their use in these areas where changing mindsets is paramount. Drama has also been used this end.

Complex adaptive systems

An organisation can be viewed as a collection of workers pursuing a set of common purposes. Each particular worker in an organisation is also pursuing his or her own private purposes, and may be simultaneously pursuing many collective purposes with other workers inside and outside of the organisation. Such organization is archetypically a complex adaptive system. Complex because a degree of order has been create through individuals joining together with cultural norms limiting behaviours.

Random associations subject to a few rules give rise to both relatively ordered systems e.g. birds flying in formation, snowflakes, fractal images. The early complexity theorists built a simple computer model in which each bird followed three simple rules as follows:

a) follow the next bird;

b) match its speed;

c) keep a fixed distance from its neighbour.

The result was a model that mimicked the real behaviour of birds. The paradox is that simplicity allows an organic entity to self organize in the face of complexity.

Army Units have to operate in the field under circumstances where a command and control operation will not always work. However the battlefield commanders need to provide direction, instilling three simple rules as follows:

a) capture the high ground,

b) stay in touch and

c) keep moving

This is simple, but the result is a highly sophisticated sense-and respond mechanism..

But under other circumstances where the factors are unknown it can result in highly unpredictable outcomes e.g. the unexpected attack on the World Trade Centre 9/11/2001 or the Chernoble disaster. Though the resultant effects might not be as catastrophic we have all experienced emergence of events within organisations that defy the anticipated cause and effect relationships. The larger the organisation the more likely the occurrence of emergent events, so when dealing with sustainability issues often across organisations driven by a need to balance dilemmas arising from conflicting objectives, management of uncertainty is a key competence.

Common steps to useable understanding

Figure 1 shows the impact of new and unfamiliar information on the generation of meaning. The following steps can be observed

a) Look for recognised categorization

b) If not found look for recognised patterns

c) If lacking or confusing look for a hypothesis

d) Test hypothesis

e) Refine or reject hypothesis

f) Draw conclusions on meaning and implications

Perceived relevance acts as a filter on possibilities generated in the brain. What is accepted and what is expressed are a subject to cultural influences and interpersonal relationships (including the impacts of peer-peer and superior-subordinate relationships). So some ideas can be expressed or suppressed dependent on the conditions. The complex messages and dilemmas often associated with managing sustainability and the need to change mind sets are strongly affected by this process.

Information and Knowledge systems

Integration of knowledge and information systems is a necessity if effective use is to be made of knowledge assets to create greater understanding and derive policy from wisdom. There is a range of knowledge processes taking knowledge from peoples heads, converting it to information and combining it with information from other systems, before converting it back to knowledge in other people’s heads.

From there the knowledge can only give rise to value if it is applied and adopted. (See Figure 2)

Information systems contextualise data and provide distribution. Good systems

a) create awareness of the presence of the information

b) present information with a high degree of relevance to the user

c) have high levels of Usability

Because knowledge is an asset held in people’s brains, good knowledge systems are strongly culturally dependent. They typically involve:

a) a culture in which information is converted to value-producing utilisation

b) a culture in which individuals wish to volunteer and exchange their knowledge and that it will be valued

In Figure 1 we drew attention to the importance of perceived relevance (so affected by culture) and its filtering effect, which is frequently the cause of differences in meaning perceived by different individuals.

Managing Dilemma

Dilemma might be defined as views taken about resolving a problem or creating a policy involving seemingly opposing values.

Sensitive management of dilemmas with the aim on creating synergy from the polar differences can be extremely effective. For example we want cars to be high performing but safe; economic on fuel but accelerate fast; compact yet roomy; or computers that are complex and multifunctional yet user friendly. Often with sustainability the dilemmas prove more complex and difficult to create synergy so having countryside that is tranquil and unspoilt yet available for quad bikes and shooting is more testing on the political and creative wit of managers.

If our aim is to fulfil the 5 R hierarchy of sustainability

Redesign

Replace

Reduce

Refine

Recirculate

Then we are to conform to the eco-efficiency approach (borrow-use-return) then our first step would be to gather our knowledge and be innovative in redesigning products, processes, services and physical spaces (building, infrastructure ). The key long-term is to redesign our economic systems so that energy and raw materials are extracted from nature without environmental or socio economic harm and do not contain toxic or bioaccumulating substances. Our manufacturing, transport energy and infrastructure systems would be environmentally benign and by-products or end-of life materials fully sequestered or technically recycled for continued use by industry, or perhaps within biological systems for reintroduction to nature.

In the search for synergy strongly held views that give rise to the dilemmas could be disruptive and unresolved conflicts tend to diminish individual and group energies. But trust improves with frequency of contact and greater acceptance of the reasoning behind diversity of views. So over a period of years the battleground between Greenpeace and some organisations has moved from aggressive confrontational to rational dialogue, and to consultation prior to decisions for action.

Dilemma management and conflict resolution techniques or even processes like six-hat thinking can all be used to avoid weak compromise and focus on capitalising on the benefits arising from the differing perspectives.

Thus:

Values working together make the organization more powerful.

Reconciling values leads to better products and services.

We need to create synergy from the poles of the dilemma

Cultures

What is a culture? A culture might be described as the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people. At national or tribal level it is used, consolidated and reused over generations through striving by individuals and groups within the community

The essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values.

There is a dynamic relationship between individuals and a culture

Individuals are influenced by the culture

The culture is influenced by individuals

Organisations typically have an overriding culture although sometimes subcultures within the organisation dominate and culture at the corporate level is difficult to define. In most organisations there are formal and informal structures, which comprise task-oriented (formal) or like-minded (informal-self organising) groups that create their individual culture. This may align with, or differ from the corporate culture.

Values

The core of a culture is its values. Many values remain unconscious to cultural members who hold them. They are frequently not voiced by members of the group, but remain implicit. They are broad tendencies to prefer a certain state of affairs to others (in their own context: good-evil, right-wrong, natural-unnatural, respectful-disrespectful, parochial-cosmopolitan). They are significant in driving or restricting actions of members. Values often cannot be discussed and can only be inferred from the way people act under different circumstances.

Groupthink

High trust and concerted values may bring good cohesion within the group but there can be problems

Perhaps the most well known team-working problem is the problem of ‘‘groupthink’’ identified by Irving Janis. Janis during a study of high-level strategy teams in the USA which had made some seemingly non-rational decisions in relation to critical situations. He found that this was related to excessive conformity pressures that built up within these teams. He labelled this phenomenon ‘Groupthink’ and identified a number of symptoms associated with it as follows:

• Illusion of invulnerability: members believe that past successes guarantee future successes

(and so take extreme risks.)

• Collective rationalization: members collectively rationalize away information that

contradicts their assumptions.

• Illusion of morality: members believe that they are all moral and so could not make a bad

decision.

• Shared stereotypes: members dismiss evidence that is contradictory by discrediting the

source of that information.

• Direct pressure: sanctions are placed on members who do dissent from the majority

opinion, for example, using assertive language to enforce compliance.

• Self-censorship: members keep quiet about any misgivings they have so that they do not

voice concerns.

• Mindguards: members screen out information from outsiders where this might disconfirm

the group’s assumptions and beliefs.

• Illusion of unanimity: given these other symptoms it appears that there is consensus

within the group, even though there are many of those involved who do not agree with the

Groupthink alters perceptions of reality and meaning and therefore the quality of knowledge exchanged. So higher levels of trust are, in these circumstances, associated with lower levels of validity.
Similarly experiments about relationships based on high trust can mean that evidence, which runs counter to beliefs, is explained away, (Fazio & Zanna, 1981) ignored, deemed inaccurate, or uninformative (Ross & Anderson, 1992), or reinterpreted as positive reinforcement (Holmes, 1991; Robinson 1996). Small successes may lead to low levels of attention even to critical knowledge (Sitkin ,1992). Also if it is ambiguous or incomplete it is more likely to be used to reinforce pre-existing beliefs (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973)

Macro and Micro management

At both macro and micro level trust is an issue. Knowledge sharing is associated with building reputation, with sources of knowledge needing to be credible. To accommodate diversity policies and leadership need to minimise ‘groupthink’ and encourage the search for alternative perspectives and opinions if meaning is to be extended.

At a macro level key issues for management are both to be responsive to but also to shape organisational culture and subcultures. A strong value basis that is not necessarily vocalised but recognised by staff through behaviours they experience will enhance alignment.
Other key areas are:
provision of supporting tools and systems
support for learning processes
development of informal networks

Micro management - the management of interpersonal relationships – tests the emotional intelligence of participants. Those with high emotional intelligence respond better. Individuals make judgements on what is important to do or ignore, to express or suppress, to believe or reject based and this affects their expectations of themselves and others. There diversity of traits within individuals, used profitably can lead to insights, but poorly handled will lead to discounting of information.

Some Governance Issues

Sustainability is creating a rapid change in the basis of valuation. Increasingly longer-term viability is being associated with sustainability indices, and in turn these have an impact on stock valuations. More than 80% of the FTSE top 250 is now moving to triple bottom line reporting and the initial PR benefit from demonstrating corporate social responsibility is being replaced with active programmes to validate claims of sustainability stewardship. Some typical moves seen are:

FROM

/

TO

Closed. Financial Reporting

/

Open Triple Bottom Line reporting

Physical & Financial Capital

/

Economic, human, social, natural capital

Tangible owned assets

/

Intangible borrowed assets

Exclusive governance

/

Inclusive governance

One-way passive communication

/

Multi-way active communication

Opponents

/

Complementors

Rights

/

Responsibilities

Plans

/

Scenarios

Responsibility to point of output / Stewardship throughout life-cycle

Modified from Elkington, J (1999), Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, Capstone, Oxford

The New Zealand Experience

"Sustainability is not something that a government department, local authority or other public agency has sole responsibility for making happen. Sustainability is achieved when organisations, businesses, communities and individuals all take responsibility for the resources they use, the energy they consume, the waste they produce, and the impacts they may have on biodiversity.

Values, cultural and ethical frameworks are critical to the implementation of sustainable development. Tangata whenua have strong cultural and spiritual connections with the environment, natural resources and places that need to be respected and provided for.

Good information is needed to monitor and review progress. Work is already underway to develop a set of sustainable development indicators for New Zealand. Such indicators must be meaningful and useful to local authorities, businesses and communities."

The programme with the office of the prime minister, the relevant agencies, ethnic groups and commercial organisations is assessing the states of development , developing cross working practices and creating more integrated working through visioning, storytelling and dilemma management. It is at an early stage of a programme in excess of six years.

Conclusions

•The breadth of knowledge across complex cross-linkages between government bodies, other organisations and citizens requires new competencies to create motivation and action. That action will, in turn, be dependent on levels of understanding and meaning generated.

•The inherent dilemmas will make it very susceptible to the positive and negative properties of complex adaptive systems and their management

•Building on values and trust, knowledge management provides the methodologies and programmes to grow these competencies and yield value

Bibliography

Allan, N., (2003) The Unspoken World , KM Challenge 2003, Standards Australia, Sydney

Allan, N et al(2003), PD 7501:Managing Culture and Knowledge – Guide to Good Practice, BSI, London