Never before has there been a time like there is today. Climate change and groups such as Extinction Rebellion are in the news on a daily basis. Anyone who does not accept climate change should in my opinion be labelled as moronic as the current American President. Having said that, I may as well get this of my chest now.......
"If you don't agree that Trump is a moron, you are also a moron"
The Rock star, Sting once sung, “There is no historical precedent to put the words in the mouth of the President” Well the historical precedent is right here, right now. Look at the data. Every year new temperatures and rainfall records are being set. The arctic is being melted at a rate not seen before and the Fuckwit Trump claims it to be fake news.
Not satisfied with this, Trump then compounds the problem by reopening the American coalmines previously closed by Obama. Proof enough that he is without a doubt a complete and utter moron. Well done America.
This leads me on to why culture change can be so difficult. Why should people make a concerted effort to adopt a more sustainable way of working/living when Trump is firing up coalmines? For me it comes down to the old management model circle of concern, circle of influence.
Yes, we are all concerned by Trumps lack of climate action but we cannot influence that. We can only influence what we have an impact on. Perhaps a good sales pitch for a Culture Change programme would be….
“Do you consider yourself to be as Dumb as Trump? So why behave like him?”
Whilst walking through a clients’ office this week I noticed a massive stack of paper boxes by the photocopiers. My initial thought was. "What happened to the paperless environment”?
Thinking about this I can’t help but wonder why are we still recording information on paper? Particularly with the technology, we have so readily available. Maybe we need a culture change?
Think of the carbon cost of paper! We as dumb humans cut down trees to make paper. This alone is damaging to the environment we live in. We then ship the paper to where it is needed. Yet we each typically part with £30 a month for a device that can easily record more data than we could ever write down. So why are we still using paper? Are we really this stupid?
Perhaps this is another reason why culture change is so difficult to affect. We are literally too dumb to appreciate the benefits. Maybe it is because we are creatures of habit. If we are creatures of habit, maybe this should work in our favour. Logic would suggest that if we have the ability to create bad habits, we must also have the potential to create good habits.
So maybe the solution to successful culture change programmes lies in understanding how habits become habits in the first instance. Time for an extreme example. How does a heroin addict become a heroin addict? No one grows up wanting to be a heroin addict.
People become heroin addicts because heroin is F****** addictive as hell. Not because people have fallen on hard times or weren't hugged enough as a child. For example if you took a wealthy, healthy incredibly happy person and gave then two hits of heroin they would be addicted. The addiction is because of the chemistry involved.
Does this mean that to make a culture change we need to get chemical? To a certain extent I think it does. We need to channel into those thoughts (whether it be chemical or not) that enable addiction. Is it possible to be addicted to saving energy? I firmly believe it is. I have been addicted since 2003.
The difficultly of culture change is the energy savings are too often perceived as being so low they fail to fire our brains with enough adrenaline to create the necessary addictive neuro responses we need to enable that change.
Therefore, the answer lies in demonstrating the significant energy savings that are attainable through behavioural/cultural change campaigns. We have all come across those change programmes where we have been encouraged to turn off lights in unused areas. Have we ever been informed of what this simple action could actually save?
I am aware of one London based university that researched the feasibility of employing someone just to go around switching stuff off. This particularly university quantified the impact of this role as being worth £33,000 per annum.
Here lies the oxymoron of culture change. Cultural change is easy as long as we can clarify the end result as being worthwhile. For example, when we write a business case for an LED lighting upgrade we absolutely make sure we quantify the energy savings.
We do this to ensure the project has the best chance of being funded. However, when we launch a culture change programme we never quantify the savings. So should we really be surprised when people don’t get on board???
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