Bridges To Knowledge: A Blog by Barry Camson

Integrating Sustainability Concepts and Practices Into Business Education

 

The challenge of how to integrate sustainability concepts and practices into business education continues to occupy my thoughts.

Recently, I attended two helpful webinars that dealt with this issue. One was offered by Harvard Business Publishing. The other was offered by Ivey Business School. Both had interesting speakers and panelists.

One issue that these webinars discussed is the choice between creating a new stand-alone course dealing with sustainability or integrating sustainability ideas into existing courses. I am focusing on the later, though I do have a sense of excitement in thinking of what a stand-alone course might entail.

I believe that wherever and whatever one teaches and at whatever level one does so, one should seriously consider building in appropriate sustainability concepts and practices.

In my pursuit of integrating sustainability into existing courses thus far, I have some suggestions and examples which I would like to share.

1. Move beyond the use of paper handouts.

I am working hard to move beyond the previous workshop mentality where there was a paper handout for everything to now posting materials online and relying on students to access them appropriately.

I realize that I have to trust that students will take the initiative to access materials. I also have to remind myself that students are very much at home with doing this. This is aided by the omnipresence of university learning systems and their functionalities. Google Docs is also a helpful application in this regard.

Often students remind me when I stray with an occasional paper handout. At these moments, I once again become aware that change can be challenging because it requires letting go of the way we have gotten used to doing things.

2. Make use of sustainability-related business cases.

I continue to search for business cases that will cover course topics while also focusing on sustainability-related practices, issues or contexts.

As time goes on, there are more business cases that have a sustainability-related theme. Ivey Publishing, which creates and publishes business cases, is now tagging cases with reference to which of the seventeen U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) it relates to.

I am currently using a case, “Wilderness Safaris” (Harvard Business School, 2018) which discusses the use of a quadruple bottom line: commerce, conservation, community and culture in an ecotourism enterprise located at multiple sites in seven African countries. The case stands for the proposition that one can have such integrated, encompassing goals as a path to being successful and discusses the issues encountered along the way. In so doing, it provides an expanded view of success. The case also covers topics of business models, multiple stakeholder collaboration, and entrepreneurship in international business.

3. Commit to exploring the underlying assumptions of a sustainability worldview and apply these to current business issues.

There are a number of taken-for-granted assumptions which underlie our current worldview that can be revisited and compared to assumptions underlying a sustainability worldview. Doing this can have a high leverage impact on how we approach business issues.

One conversation that can occur here is to what extent we will continue to maintain the dualistic way of thinking that ends up positing humans vs. nature as opposed to a more integrative approach that sees humans as part of and interdependent with nature.

To a great extent science is a product of this dualistic world view that puts us in the position of an outside observer vis a vis the phenomena that we seek to understand. This should not be abandoned but supplemented with an appreciation of the times when this worldview needs to be updated to be more of an integral view that includes human as participant rather than observer.

Related to this is the idea of personal identity. The idea of personal identity and the sacrosanct boundaries that it fosters can be seen as an Enlightenment concept that while it provides value can be tempered by also seeing identity in terms of being in relationship and interdependent with nature. Joanna Macy talks about, “the sense of an encompassing self, that deep identity with the wider reaches of life” and “a process view of the self as inseparable from the web of relationships that sustain it.” (“Greening of the Self,” 2012.)

The older dualistic concepts lead to the idea that we can do whatever we want to nature as a matter of course because we are separate from nature. Business can take from nature at will and deposit its waste back into nature.

These older concepts can also limit our ability to learn from nature and its millions of years of experience. As revered as the Enlightenment has been, it is time to move beyond some of its ideas which are no longer in keeping with our current challenges and the world that we are trying to create.

All of this requires guiding students in revisiting such concepts and deciding for themselves to what extent these concepts remain useful. To what extent do these older concepts limit our current day business success? Would a circular approach to business and the economy, for example, which is more efficient in the use of natural resources and managing waste help business be more successful and our surrounding communities be more livable? Such a circular approach mirrors the life-death-renewal cycle of nature.

4. Reframe business practices to have more of a sustainability perspective.

The key reframing I believe is to see the purpose of business as enabling all of its stakeholders, including customers and employees to flourish (or thrive).

While this includes being profitable, it also includes providing healthy and equitable working conditions, supporting clean air and water in the surrounding communities where the business has its location and maintaining a low carbon footprint. It entails living in harmony with the surrounding natural environment. The U.N. SDGs are helpful here in covering what is necessary for such a desirable end result.

It is admittedly a challenge to reframe in such an encompassing way what makes for a successful business. On the other hand, it is hard to argue with the proposition that the result of doing business should be that those connected to it in one way or another should flourish. And common sense tells us that it takes more than profit to attain this.

If we don’t explicitly address this, it leaves growth as the de facto goal of business. Growth is a means that has prevailed recently but it does not necessarily reflect a desirable end state. Business education can support thinking about what is this desirable end state. This brings us to my next suggestion.

5. Explore the topic of what it takes to flourish or thrive.

What it takes for an organization or individual to flourish is a huge topic though it might be easily answered in a conversation at a back-yard BBQ. Deep-down, I imagine that we all know what it will take for us to flourish beyond our more habitual responses to such a question. The first step along this path may be giving ourselves the permission to honestly pursue this topic. Though the topic might be shocking at first in a business school curriculum, I imagine that students will warm to it. Exploring this actually helps us be more strategic because we will have a clear sense of where we want to end up and can then use approaches such as backcasting to figure out how to get there.

This ties in with other themes that have recently been discussed such as the role of humanities in a business curriculum. Should the business manager or consultant be conversant in literature, music or art?

Another theme finding its way into our business practices is that of wellbeing. Among the questions this topic raises is should we create more space in our lives for family, recreation, hobbies and being in nature.

The role of nature in education and in leading a fulfilling life as well as stress-relief and sanity (yes, sanity) is currently an increasing topic in the literature. I note a book which I recently saw advertised, “Last Child in the Woods,” by Richard Louv which is subtitled “Saving our children from Nature-Deficit” disorder. It may be that even older people need some assistance here.

6. Provide learning on business topics that support sustainability practices.

One such example is business ecosystems. The term ecosystems is being used more widely now but not necessarily by being explicit about its origin in a biological-ecological context.

We could start by being explicit about this connection. There is a good deal of literature on the principles which can be derived from nature which find residence in the ecosystem concept that we are now using in business.

I believe that it is important to remain congruent with the underlying biological-ecological basis while we seek innovative uses of the ecosystem concept. Otherwise, the term “ecosystem” runs the risk of being reduced to simply another way of describing business as usual or reflecting something quite antithetical to its biological-ecological origin. There are learnings from nature that are quite useful in our business ecosystems such as interdependence, ongoing adaptation, collaboration as well as competition, and diversity.

Transformation is another topic that has a relationship to sustainability. What I think of here is that the outer transformation that business literature often speaks about needs to be mirrored by the inner transformation of the consultant, manager and members of the organization. This can be related to the “Teal” organization that writers such as Frederick Laloux, Clare Graves and Ken Wilber have spoken about. There is a helpful discussion about this by Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm in their book “Regenerative Leadership” (2019). I teach my students that being open to one’s own inner transformation as consultant-leader is a part of supporting the transformation of an organization. This is an important theme in the courses that I teach. This approach will support our sustainability goals.

7. Get out of the classroom into nature.

Another way of saying this is to make nature our classroom. This is a growing edge in my teaching. I had planned an activity that fit with a module I was doing on epistemology — the various ways we know and how our goal should be to expand our ways of knowing individually and to expand the diverse ways of knowing resident in a team. I was looking forward to this activity of learning in nature. I imagined that the students would gain practical experience in how we know things about nature and Place. Place has an important role in Regenerative thinking and with the idea that a business should be in harmony with Place.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, the class ended up having to be on Zoom. However, in the process of scouting out a suitable site for this class experiment, I encountered some amazing trees on campus.

The interdependence of nature.

8. Educate ourselves as teachers in the field of business and sustainability.

Just as we have been educated in terms of the practices and ideals of democracy as a foundation for being a participating citizen in our democracies, we can educate ourselves to what is required to be a good global citizen in the context of sustainability.

There are so many paths that one can pursue in this regard depending on one’s interests. These paths include business and popular literature, webinars, video lectures, professional associations, guided activities in nature and courses.

Among the topics one can pursue are: Ecology, Regenerative Development and Design, Economics, Philosophy, Environment, Climate Change, Organization Development, Biomimicry, the Business Value-chain and Circular Economy, Psychology and Ecopsychology, Government, Urban Life and Development, and Permaculture.

The literature on the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals is now quite plentiful and includes specific applications to business.

For those interested in literature, I can suggest Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” in which Wordsworth describes his return from his busy adult life to a familiar place in nature from his earlier life.

Feel free to contact me. I am always happy to recommend a book or two.

I hope these ideas will be useful to others as I hope to continue to learn from our collective efforts as time goes on.

Next Steps - For The Intersection of Business and Sustainability in Business Schools

How does the integration of business and sustainability play out in business schools and in business education? How can we advance our collective intentions in this regard? Expanding and deepening our ideas about this can be helpful.

The Epistemological Basis

When one speaks of integrating sustainability with business in education or in corporate actions, it is helpful to spend some time looking at the underlying epistemological frameworks.

Business is based on a dualistic view of the world. This is the lens or filter through which an individual knows or makes sense of the world. There is business and its objectives and then there is everything else. 

The idea of business growth, business value and roi is based on this dualistic view. We are still trying to reduce and fit everything in the world into a profit and loss statement. What is left out is the "other," externalized - the other side of the duality. This provides license not to care about what is externalized. The world is viewed as resources to be made use of in an instrumental manner - what can be of value to the business. These include human resources - employees and nature.

Doing business has traditionally been based on a mechanistic view of the world which differs from the character of sustainability. We tend to put things in separate silos. Aristotle started this trend many years ago. Newton's work led to the idea that the world was a clock which one has to disassemble in order to understand it.  

Of importance to our discussion here, business also appears to be based on an experiential way of knowing.

Business school is primarily cognitive. Though we read cases in business school which reflect the experience of others, the process of absorption of cases is a cognitive one. In some curriculum, there are Practicums which are experiential. Beyond that, the learning process utilizes lectures which are cognitive ways of knowing.

Sustainability is integrative, integral. It is based on a world viewed as being mutual, reciprocal and interdependent where humans and their endeavors are seen as an integral part of the Ecological system. This is more of what has been an indigenous view of the world.

The Current Drama

The education system as the purveyor of various epistemological frameworks (though still mostly cognitive) is one domain where this overall drama of business and sustainability is being played out. There are now business schools, organization psychology programs, sustainability schools and even the beginnings of business-sustainability programs. Each embodies a unique epistemological framework from which they act. 

A deeper drama is reflected in the societal projection of its dualistic way of thinking onto the business environment and by proxy onto business schools. Since it is how we make sense of the world, it is not surprising when we project this schema onto everything in our surroundings, including race and religion. We then create structures which reify this projection and hold it in place.

Moving beyond this dualistic projection becomes another challenge in the integration of business and sustainability in business school.

A Deeper Integration

Speaking about the integration of business and sustainability is a useful handle in approaching this challenge. However, Claire Haase in her graduate thesis from The Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, speaks of the intersection of business and sustainability. (Haase, 2022) In this view, the elements of sustainability encompassing all of the UN SDGs, e.g. ecological restoration, climate justice, the welfare of surrounding communities can have a multiplier effect in enhancing the flourishing of business in a broader sense.

In the same vein, the intersection of business education and sustainability has a multiplier effect in producing "a more rounded view of what managers are supposed to do," (Haase, 2022) thereby creating managers more equipped to respond to the challenges of the 21st century. Course work that deals with issues of social impact covering challenges like income inequality or food security would support this. (Haase, 2022) 

All of this when applied to the concept of integration would imbue it with added qualities. The more intense and dynamic connections that result would also reflect ongoing relationships at an epistemological level.

So when one speaks of business and sustainability, my question becomes: is there a potential marriage to be had here and what would that look like?

Developing a Meta-Integral View

Can one speak of engaging with the Business framework and then engaging with the Sustainability framework with a fluid movement between the two? Daniel Wahl suggests a helpful process based on the approach set out by Goethe in Goethian Science (Wahl, 2005)

Wahl suggests that this fluid movement can be done with science and ecology. In practice, this entails moving fluidly back and forth between a dualistic stance where the human as observer is seen as outside the system to an integral stance where the person is recognized as being a participant within the system. At this level, I believe this is indeed possible. At a higher meta level, both ways of knowing are "held" at the same time within a larger Integral framework.

Can this larger Integral way of knowing be extended to a business school environment? What would it look like as applied to business-sustainability-ecology? Here, intersection becomes a portal to a potentially new educational experience.

Experience as a Way of Knowing

One avenue worth pursuing in this endeavor is the realm of experience.

Both business and ecology - a key component of a sustainable view have a presence in the experiential way of knowing. The typical Harvard Business School case enables the reader to learn from the experience of others which is the experiential part of one's otherwise cognitive effort of understanding. One who has been in business does experience and learn first hand.

Learning from nature can be experiential from a human point of view if one takes the time to do so. Goethean Science is an example of this (Wahl, 2005). A strong argument can be made that nature experiences and learns though not in the way a human might. Indigenous society "knew" from the experience of being in nature.

In moving beyond integration, one moves beyond the resulting juxtaposition which can often become limited such as incorporating an ESG framework in an organization or adopting net-zero goals where the epistemological framework does not necessarily change. The dualistic world is perpetuated. One continues to live in the old paradigm of financial value to the business where everything else is the "other" - an add-on to the business enterprise.

Terms like intersection or melding or some other helpful term (all of which are metaphors) might connote a deeper, more intensive symbiotic connection whereby success in an ecological framework in turn produces success in a business framework and visa versa. In this realm, there is mutual enhancement leading to a result where the entire ecosystem flourishes. As in an ecosystem in nature, the business gives more to the surrounding natural and human ecosystem than it takes.

This is a multiplicative relationship as opposed to the existing either-or way of seeing the interaction between the two areas of business and sustainability.

Current Examples

What might this look like?

Those few companies that are adopting into their strategy and operations a triple or quadruple bottom line are reflections of this. The different objectives, e.g. commerce, environment, community rather than being detractors from one another have the potential of being enhancers, thus having a multiplying effect. I would hope that as part of this strategy, there is a recognition and exploration of the different ways of knowing existing at the points of intersection.

And, what of that which is being played out at an experiential level at the intersection of business and ecology? What might this look like? 

One thing that comes to mind is the new Apple Headquarters which is surrounded by nature with walking paths and many ways of physical-sensory access. One can experience both doing business and living in nature at the same time. Ecotourism ventures are another example.

I think that this brings us to an entry way into a Wonderland where like Alice, we can begin to wonder what might go on in this realm of intersection or melding.

Experiencing

In the spirit of leaving the reader with an experience, I am providing several images from two poems by William Blake. Perhaps, they convey what might happen in this realm of experience.

 

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to

man as it is, Infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow

chinks of his cavern.

                    From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

                    From Auguries of Innocence

Looking For The Hidden Footprint Of The Covid Pandemic In The Classroom

Author and professor Zadie Smith writes poignantly about life during the Covid-19 crisis in her new book of essays, "Intimations." In one essay "A Hovering Young Man," she encounters a young person working at her university.

Cy-the-IT-guy accosts me (usually from behind) as I walk through the square, with his inimitable energy, slightly exophthalmic, puggish eyes, and irregularly coiled, unpredictable Afro, so like my own. The last time I saw him he was on a hoverboard. He appeared suddenly, speaking in his runaway manner, with as little preamble as he had manifested physically. If I didn't look down he appeared to be levitating at my side, a twenty-first century daemon, or a surveillance officer, sent from some NYU central authority to shadow me as I walked.

The style of Cy was youthful exuberance, it was a kind of giddy joy so irrepressible.

The enviable style of the young is little protection against catastrophe.

Long before this crisis they were living with little hope of institutional or structural support, contending with perilous futures, untenable debt, fear. When, in the classroom, they insist on their personal styles, in a manner all too easy to find obnoxious - and causing the predictable generational friction - I have to remind myself to remember this: their style is all they have. They are insisting on their existence in a vacuum.

A woman in her forties has lived long enough to see the dreams of childhood - hoverboards! - appear in the streets.

But the young man in his twenties is still in peak dreaming season: a thrilling time, an insecure time, even at the best of times. It should be a season full of possibility. Economic, romantic, technological, political, existential possibility. Yes, among all the various relativities to be considered, age is one that can't be parsed. The style of Cy - the style of all young people - now radically interrupted.

What is it like to have always seen, in your mind's eye, apocalypse in the streets of New York, and then one day walk out into those streets and find - just as it is in your personal hellscape - that they are now desolate, empty and silent?

This portrayal of the impact of the pandemic on young people and on the author herself has stayed with me as I have endeavored to teach such a group of young people in a Masters program in Organizational Psychology. You might say that it even haunts me.

I have searched in vain for the footprints of the Covid pandemic amongst this group. In the end, I have realized that there are indeed footprints, but they are hidden. Hidden from me and, perhaps, hidden from them as well.

The students can speak about the benefits or deficiencies of being on Zoom. There are frustrations voiced about going to visit family in other countries during breaks - figuring out airline logistics and quarantine rules in both coming and going destinations.

What there has not been are discussions of the impact of the Covid pandemic on their development as young adults. What there has not been are references that go beyond descriptions that any member of society could use such as: depression, momentary breakdowns.

Even as they strive for greater powers of understanding and articulation in a program such as the one they are in, there seems to be a dearth of language that relates their experience to the pandemic. After all, what do they have to compare it to. This is the first time at their given age, in this kind of a program, at this particular point in their life. They cannot say, "the last time I was twenty-three, things were much different."

Even as a professor, it is difficult to know to what I can attribute specific phenomena in the classroom. Is it the usual lack of preparation, the usual balancing of multiple priorities, the usual grappling with identity issues at a new developmental point in their life? Or is it something much deeper, more amorphous?

Having read a good deal of literature on the overall impact of the pandemic and specifically its impact on the lives of younger people and become aware of issues such as depression and even suicidal ideation, it is possible to conclude that something is afoot. There is a cloud that is passing over the lives of young people.

Zadie Smith hints that something happened in the progression of development of young people. Professor of Psychology, Michael Mascolo, says that "development happens through our relationship with others and the world and that in this development, we are each other's teachers." What is the impact on this development of young people due to multiple quarantines, isolation, lack of opportunities for association in school and community? Are we seeing the footprints of this in today's classrooms?

It occurs to me that what is missing may be a specific language that can give voice to the unique situation that young people are in. Like the canary in the coal mine that can only tweet or die, today's students can only issue some inchoate growl or lapse into depression or heightened anxiety. Just as the poor canary cannot say, "Excuse me, but I think there has been a sudden deterioration in the air in here," they have neither the perspective nor eloquence to put into language their unique experience.

Such a language would help students process emotionally their current experience, e.g. grief, anger, anguish. (Smitsman,2021).

I wonder if there could be such a language. There needs to be a way to put their experience into words and if no current words exist, then to develop the language that helps here.

Such a language would have to accomplish three things.

First

The language has to cover the predicament that young people find themselves in. What language can describe their current experience? Here I am speaking of the unique demands that life is placing on them perhaps unlike any previous experience. Maybe it is a language of metaphor, stories or pictures.

Second

The language has to cover their needs - individual and collective. What are they really asking for at this point in their life as they attempt to make their way under the cloud of Covid? What would be helpful? How can we assist them beyond having some general compassion and empathy which certainly will be of value? 

Third

Lastly, is the ability and willingness for each person to speak in the new language. There also needs to be places to have the conversation and with those of us who are responsible for teaching them.

Though this task may not be easy, it may help to uncover the hidden footprints of Covid in their student experience and in their life.

Are you aware of examples of useful languaging? Please let me know.

Footnote: Once we respond to this challenge, we can again turn our attention to the even greater footprint that exists in their life and, in fact, all of our lives which is the impact of climate change. That, however, is for another essay.

Steps to a Regenerative Perspective, Part 1

 

I think a wonderful place to start in terms of developing a regenerative perspective is simply with being human. I think the most human thing we can do, as well as perhaps the most spiritual, is to encounter each other's face. When I say "encounter each other's face," I am being a bit philosophical.

To encounter someone else's face is to see the face and also the person behind that face. It does require us to pause in our path long enough to engage in a process of seeing and wonderment. It is to see the uniqueness of that person. It is to wonder about the questions they have, the feelings they feel, and how they experience their life on this planet. From a more spiritual perspective, it may be to see how the Divine manifests in them.

This will hopefully lead to the suspension of judgment, respect, caring and all of the things necessary to trust and join with them in a collaborative endeavor. It will lead to a recognition as a mentor of mine once said, that "each person's truth is truth."

Beyond this, encountering and seeing each other's face is an attitude and practice that can lead us to be able to encounter the face of each animal we meet, each bird, each tree, each insect. For example, I am familiar with each cat in my neighborhood and there are many. Each has their own stance, their own personality, their own proclivities, their way of expressing themselves.

With the use of a little imagination, one can move on to encountering and seeing the flow of a river - wondering where it is coming from and to where it is going - seeing the personality of the river. I remember sailing on the Charles River in Boston and I can tell you that the river has its own character enough to even have a song written about it.

My belief is that unless we can see and encounter each of these, we will not be able to care enough about them to engage in the process of regeneration. This is the first step to a regenerative perspective. Even wanting or striving to do this, is an important step along the way.

Creating Synergy Between Education and Sustainability

How can we create enhanced value in our teaching as well as in our sustainability efforts? I am suggesting that we explore the reciprocal relationship between them.

I gained a important awareness about this at a webinar that I recently attended that dealt with the role of Place in sustainability work. This was in the service of focusing on the regeneration of ecology in a section of the state of Ohio.

Place has been defined by some writers as:

"The unique, multi-layered network of living systems within a geographical region that results from the complex interaction throughout time of the natural ecology and (human) culture." (Mang and Reed)

This conversation about Place has often arisen in the course of work dealing with regenerative development and design.

There were a number of both academics and people working in organizations in this webinar. At one point, someone made the comment that we should view Place from the perspective of each of our disciplines. I found this comment very impactful. It would certainly bring a richness to the exploration of the role of Place. It would bring a freshness and immediacy to our teaching, for example bringing in the disciplines of art, music or literature as perspectives on Place. This is what I have been striving to do in my teaching. This comment provided an interesting framing to my work.

I teach in a Masters program in Organization Psychology. The goal of this program is to develop OD consultant and managerial skills on the part of participants. I have endeavored to make connections with sustainability in one of my courses in order to support the use of skills offered in the course in the pursuit of sustainability.

Bringing an Organization Development (OD) perspective to a discussion of Place gets us into issues of how to design for complex change, how to work with many divergent agendas, and how to mobilize the commitment of people who work and live on the land. It opens our eyes to the reality that land and the people who live and work on it are not just objects to be moved about as part of a cognitive design process or even ignored.

On further reflection, I identified a nuance to this framing of my work. More than bringing an OD perspective to the discussion of Place, I think I am bringing a perspective of Place to our work as OD consultants and managers. In this regard, Place becomes an umbrella term for a regenerative and ecosystem perspective which looks a how all can flourish by attaining a deeper alignment.

OD has always been a field that has prided itself on its life-giving potential. This perspective of Place makes it even more so - in a way that connects to what is deeply embedded in each of us - our connection to Place, the people and species connected to Place and the stories that embody all of this.

Recently, I have noted that a number of workshop sessions have started out by honoring those who lived on the land before us, for example indigenous people in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. There is a sincere effort to connect to their naming in the Place as we move forward in our endeavors. Some Ecovillages have picked indigenous names for their Place with the permission of indigenous elders.

There is a growing effort to recognize how Nature does things in our efforts to design how we will work and live upon the land. We note how the land is replenished, sustained, drained, protected. Using this as a lens for our work helps us literally to be grounded in what is most enduring in our lives and work.

 

Touch Points and Deliberations, 2021

How can you analyze touch points along the customer journey as part of a design process? Are there contemporary models that can be illuminating in analyzing touch points in the process of design?

This article will review a few of these models and then arrive at practical and theoretically sound questions that can be used as a basis for analyzing and redesigning touch points as part of a customer journey and the surrounding ecosystem of value co-creation. This falls within the approach that I have been describing in previous posts about adaptive design for collaborative ecosystems.

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a contemporary paradigm in developing innovative approaches to rendering service and products to clients and customers. It has been applied by IDEO to product development; by REOS Partners to global societal issues; and in the UK to improve government services. Others have adapted it to healthcare environments such as in the case of the Fairview Medical Center  as described by Winby, Worley and Martinson. The Design Thinking, Innovation Lab approach is now in use by many others.

The Design Thinking methodology centers on the customer journey and customer experience. It focuses on touch points that occur along the customer journey. Touch points are specific points where the customer engages with the providing enterprise in order to obtain goods or services. Ethnographic research is utilized to follow the customer and actually be with the customer along the customer's journey and at each touch point.

In ethnographic research, the customer is placed at the center of the analysis which seeks to understand what the customer is trying to accomplish. The analysis delves into the customer's context as part of exploring the customer's experience. Inquiry looks at the context of the customer with regard to how their lifestyle, emotions, support systems, family, etc. impact their needs and experience. The goal is to arrive at a deep understanding of their point of view in the customer's own language. Otto Scharmer refers to this process as one of dialogic interviewing. Essentially we learn to "walk a mile in their shoes."

Key questions in understanding touch points are as follows.

• What are the emotional highs and lows of the user?
• What role does the surrounding context of the user: life style, culture, relationships, support systems play in creating their experience?
• What is the user's experience and how does this compare to what they would perceive as an ideal experience?
• How do technical processes support this?

Service-Dominant Logic (S-D Logic)

What may be missing in our current approaches is a conceptual underpinning which addresses our contemporary world that increasingly looks at value in terms of the knowledge and skills exchanged. This can be either exchanged directly or indirectly by being embodied in goods. I believe this conceptual underpinning is provided by the growing discipline of S-D Logic set out by Vargo and Lusch (2004, Journal of Marketing, updated in Vargo and Lusch (2016, JAMS) initially with regard to the field of marketing. In endeavoring to apply the S-D Logic approach to the field of redesign, there are a number of factors that can be considered in the process of analysis. I believe that these can be applied to a given touch point.

S-D Logic talks about an exchange. The exchange has been described overall as an exchange of services or more specifically as an exchange of resources especially of skills and knowledge. Key here is a focus on how these resources are accessed, adapted and integrated.

The questions that I believe can be asked in an S-D Logic view fall into the following categories.

• Accessibility: How accessible are actors and resources to the customer from the network surrounding the customer? How can this network of actors be reconfigured to make resources more accessible?
• Adaptability: How are resources customized to fit the needs of the customer?
• Integration: What actions does the customer take to help realize value from the resource - to co-create their own consumption experience?

Knowledge Management

As one delves into the S-D Logic approach, one notices some similarities to the field of Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management conceptualizes steps in the process of knowledge absorption and use which is what S-D Logic describes in terms of an exchange.

• Knowledge development, acquisition, generation, exploration. This consists of activities which bring to light knowledge that is new to the individual, group or organization.
• Knowledge transfer, knowledge absorption. This is the movement of knowledge from one location to another and modification of the knowledge in the receiving unit.
• Knowledge retention, integration, exploitation. The knowledge becomes embedded in routines, processes, communities.

My Approach to Touch Point Analysis

The following represents what I would want to inquire into and impact as part of a touch point analysis and redesign. These questions benefit from all of the past work by others set out here.

• What knowledge, skills and resources are exchanged. By whom?
• What is the accessibility of knowledge, skills, resources and necessary people. How does the configuration of the network surrounding the user impact this?
• What is the user experience: current and ideal?
• Where and how does the actual experience of the user deviate from the expectations of the ideal?
• What activities does the customer-user and others perform including those people in the user's social context that impact value to the user?
• How can IT devices and platforms best support value to the user?
• What are helpful institutional supports, e.g. roles, integrating mechanisms, effective communication.

With these questions as a basis, one can hopefully begin to analyze the touch points along the customer journey as a basis for future redesigns.

How can you analyze touch points along the customer journey as part of a design process? Are there contemporary models that can be illuminating in analyzing touch points in the process of design?

This article will review a few of these models and then arrive at practical and theoretically sound questions that can be used as a basis for analyzing and redesigning touch points as part of a customer journey and the surrounding ecosystem of value co-creation. This falls within the approach that I have been describing in previous posts about adaptive design for collaborative ecosystems.

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a contemporary paradigm in developing innovative approaches to rendering service and products to clients and customers. It has been applied by IDEO to product development; by REOS Partners to global societal issues; and in the UK to improve government services. Others have adapted it to healthcare environments such as in the case of the Fairview Medical Center  as described by Winby, Worley and Martinson. The Design Thinking, Innovation Lab approach is now in use by many others.

The Design Thinking methodology centers on the customer journey and customer experience. It focuses on touch points that occur along the customer journey. Touch points are specific points where the customer engages with the providing enterprise in order to obtain goods or services. Ethnographic research is utilized to follow the customer and actually be with the customer along the customer's journey and at each touch point.

In ethnographic research, the customer is placed at the center of the analysis which seeks to understand what the customer is trying to accomplish. The analysis delves into the customer's context as part of exploring the customer's experience. Inquiry looks at the context of the customer with regard to how their lifestyle, emotions, support systems, family, etc. impact their needs and experience. The goal is to arrive at a deep understanding of their point of view in the customer's own language. Otto Scharmer refers to this process as one of dialogic interviewing. Essentially we learn to "walk a mile in their shoes."

Key questions in understanding touch points are as follows.

• What are the emotional highs and lows of the user?
• What role does the surrounding context of the user: life style, culture, relationships, support systems play in creating their experience?
• What is the user's experience and how does this compare to what they would perceive as an ideal experience?
• How do technical processes support this?

Service-Dominant Logic (S-D Logic)

What may be missing in our current approaches is a conceptual underpinning which addresses our contemporary world that increasingly looks at value in terms of the knowledge and skills exchanged. This can be either exchanged directly or indirectly by being embodied in goods. I believe this conceptual underpinning is provided by the growing discipline of S-D Logic set out by Vargo and Lusch (2004, Journal of Marketing, updated in Vargo and Lusch (2016, JAMS) initially with regard to the field of marketing. In endeavoring to apply the S-D Logic approach to the field of redesign, there are a number of factors that can be considered in the process of analysis. I believe that these can be applied to a given touch point.

S-D Logic talks about an exchange. The exchange has been described overall as an exchange of services or more specifically as an exchange of resources especially of skills and knowledge. Key here is a focus on how these resources are accessed, adapted and integrated.

The questions that I believe can be asked in an S-D Logic view fall into the following categories.

• Accessibility: How accessible are actors and resources to the customer from the network surrounding the customer? How can this network of actors be reconfigured to make resources more accessible?
• Adaptability: How are resources customized to fit the needs of the customer?
• Integration: What actions does the customer take to help realize value from the resource - to co-create their own consumption experience?

Knowledge Management

As one delves into the S-D Logic approach, one notices some similarities to the field of Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management conceptualizes steps in the process of knowledge absorption and use which is what S-D Logic describes in terms of an exchange.

• Knowledge development, acquisition, generation, exploration. This consists of activities which bring to light knowledge that is new to the individual, group or organization.
• Knowledge transfer, knowledge absorption. This is the movement of knowledge from one location to another and modification of the knowledge in the receiving unit.
• Knowledge retention, integration, exploitation. The knowledge becomes embedded in routines, processes, communities.

My Approach to Touch Point Analysis

The following represents what I would want to inquire into and impact as part of a touch point analysis and redesign. These questions benefit from all of the past work by others set out here.

• What knowledge, skills and resources are exchanged. By whom?
• What is the accessibility of knowledge, skills, resources and necessary people. How does the configuration of the network surrounding the user impact this?
• What is the user experience: current and ideal?
• Where and how does the actual experience of the user deviate from the expectations of the ideal?
• What activities does the customer-user and others perform including those people in the user's social context that impact value to the user?
• How can IT devices and platforms best support value to the user?
• What are helpful institutional supports, e.g. roles, integrating mechanisms, effective communication.

With these questions as a basis, one can hopefully begin to analyze the touch points along the customer journey as a basis for future redesigns.

Towards a Practice of Flourishing

 

 

The Practice of Flourishing

A growing practice of flourishing can be identified in the thought-leadership of key organizations as well as in the practical, hands-on activities of some businesses and communities. In a way this represents a vast expansion of the Quality of Work Life (QWL) initiatives in the later part of the 20th century to the forms of organization which organize our current work lives. Even more significantly, this represents an extension to the communities and ecosystems which contain these efforts and the lives of people and Nature within them. These Quality of Life efforts are captured in the term flourishing and are reflected in the integrated efforts that are part of it.

The Era of Job Diagnosis and Design

The approach utilized in the past of focusing on the motivation and satisfaction of employees within a particular organization, while valuable, has become outdated. This is not to say that it is no longer of importance. Nor, is it to say that factors utilized in the past as part of an assessment of work and jobs are no longer valid. To some extent, many of these factors have become baked into current practices. These are factors such as skill variety, autonomy, feedback about work and use of teams. However, today's world is radically different from the world of 1975 when Hackman and Oldham first published their findings about job design.

In addition, ideas about participation in job design which were new in the 1970's have since become embedded into the participative practices of job crafting.

The Contemporary Discourse

We now need to be looking at expanded value chains and value networks in assessing the kind of jobs that people have. Organizations are beginning to be held morally, if not legally, responsible for labor practices in their value chains. Beyond this, conversations are now occurring about clusters, ecosystems and even bioregions as the purview of assessment.

The language of job motivation and satisfaction has become a discourse about employee wellbeing. I believe that the latest evolution of this is the idea of flourishing. And, significantly, the discourse is not being limited to employees of a given organization, but is being extended to those in their value chains and in the surrounding community or ecosystem as well. For this flourishing to occur, multiple factors in the local and global ecosystem have to be considered touching on breathable air, sustainable water, adequate food, CO2 emissions, and various forms of equity. Beyond these, there is also an increasing conversation about non-human flourishing as well.

Creating Shared Value

Michael Porter has been writing about "creating shared value" which reflects a wider scope of attention. His perspective represents moving beyond a singular focus on economic activity as the driver of corporate success. Porter points out that we need to recognize that improving the social conditions of workers and communities can also be an important driver of both the company's success as well as improved conditions in the community. (Porter, M, Kramer, M, "Creating Shared Value," Harvard Business Review, 2011)

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's)

The larger discourse of flourishing is very much tied up with the sustainability movement. The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals recognize that wellbeing and flourishing touches a variety of aspects of life and not just human life. The inherent assumption to this is that progress on any one goal requires progress on other goals.

For example, progress on goals of Decent Work and Economic Growth (#8) requires progress on Good Health and Wellbeing (# 3), Quality Education (#4), Gender Equality (#5), Zero Hunger (#2) and Clean Water and Sanitation (#6). This is an inherently integrated approach.   

One Planet Living Principles

Other approaches also help to add to this discourse about flourishing.  Oneplanet.com lists Ten One Planet Living Principles including: Health and Happiness, Sustainable Water, Zero Waste and Local and Sustainable Food. Oneplanet supports entities and communities who are developing plans around one or more of these ten principles.

The discourse about flourishing involves the identification and definition of desired qualities and an integrated way of implementing, measuring and reporting the attainment of these qualities. Measurement is of importance in a business context and in making the case to funders and citizens about progress.

Multicapitals and Integrated Reporting

The multicapital approach goes beyond the Economic, Social and Environmental goals of a triple-bottom line approach to posit five types of capital which can be accounted for. While the focus in this multi-capital approach is on capital rather than goals, this does reflect a wider purview of what to consider in the creation of value. It also stresses the importance of an integrated way of thinking, doing business and reporting.

The providers of financial capital are interested in the value an organization creates for itself and the value it creates for others while it is affecting the value the organization is creating for itself. This assesses value over various time frames. It enables looking at the interdependencies and trade-offs among capitals as part of a business model tailored to the external environment as value is created, preserved or diminished.

The specific delineation of capitals can vary. For example, the breakout below does not have a separate category for Intellectual Capital which others do include.

These types of capital are:

• Natural: Air, land, water, minerals, flora, fauna, ecosystems and other natural biophysical resources that humans and non-humans rely on for their well-being;
• Human: Knowledge, skills, experience, health, values, attitudes and ethical duties;
• Social and relationship: Teams, networks and hierarchies working together and their shared knowledge, skills, experience, health and values;
• Constructed: Material objects, systems or ecosystems created by humans;
• Economic: This can be internal or external. Internal financial capital refers to the pool of funds available to a company, including debt and equity finance. External financial capital consists of all funds available to parties outside an organization that a company can choose to access. 

The capitals need to be set out in an integrated reporting structure. This avoids the either/or dilemma that has been part of modern day business: profit or people; profit or the environment. This reflects that an enterprise operates in a world of complex supply chains and business relationships and ongoing technological change all of which is within planetary boundaries.

With respect to planetary boundaries, value is interpreted by reference to thresholds and parameters based on evidence about the carrying capacity and limits of resources on which stakeholders and companies rely for wellbeing and profit. One consequence of this is that problems like the disposal of waste or CO2 emissions and their cost cannot be externalized and exported to other parts of the value chain or the globe.

Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics sets out an insightful approach to both the carrying capacity of the planet in different areas as well as areas where inequities are suffered by groups of people on the planet.

Wilderness Safaris and the 4 C's

Another interesting application can be found in the Harvard Business School case, "Wilderness Safaris: Ecotourism Entrepreneurship," where the business sets out their own multi-pronged and integrated approach to company value. (Austin, J, 2018). The company calls this the 4C's. The C's are: Commerce, Conservation, Community and Culture. These are described in terms of impact on multiple levels of system: the individual, the corporate entity, portfolio of businesses, the community and national levels. All of this is discussed in the business case and the various annual reports with regard to the ecotourism context of Wilderness Safaris at various sites in Africa.

Both in the very tangible plans set out on the Oneplanet.com website and in this business case, flourishing can be seen to have a very tangible, concrete and measurable aspect to it though sometimes the measures are qualitative narratives of progress.

The Wilderness Safaris case raises the issue of what it takes for a business enterprise and its stakeholders to flourish. Is it possible and if so, what mechanisms will enable this? What values provide a foundation for this. And, how could we apply these approaches to our own lives, organizations and communities?

I believe that the discourse of flourishing inheres in the many conversations in which the business model of Wilderness Safaris was set and implemented, in the feedback and measurement that evaluates the actions of this company and in the lives of people in the relevant ecosystems.

In pursuing this, here are some specific questions about the case to consider:

1. What is the Wilderness Safaris business model and its key elements?
2. Is the 4C framework working for WS? Are the 4 C's aligned with one another or in tension? How has WS gone about balancing them?
3. How essential is integrated reporting to WS's approach?
4. To what extent has WS and its stakeholders flourished under its business model and 4C approach? How does the business model support this? (Looking at stakeholders including: communities, clients, staff, ecosystem - nature, wildlife, government and investors.)
5. Based on all of this, do you have some ideas for a theory and practice of flourishing for your own business, life or community? How do you imagine that this would motivate the participation of your stakeholders?

 

The Role of Diversity in Creating Conversations About Sustainability

This article was posted on The Earth Project which is the blog for my project dealing with sustainability. It can be found here.

A Parable of Potential

In a previous blog article, I set out a quote by Antonio Gramsci which provided a definition of hegemony. Gramsci said, "hegemony means that certain ideas, favorable to the dominant capitalist class were often so deeply ingrained in social and economic processes that it was hard for most people to penetrate the idea fog, and even to think about a new direction - to say nothing of contemplating whether another system is possible."

As I sit here contemplating all the different and hopeful initiatives we are daily creating to deal with climate change and the other negative impacts on our Planet, I get the feeling that I remain within the idea fog as perhaps are others. It seems to me that many of the solutions we are developing - however well-intentioned they may be still exist within Gramsci's idea fog. We cannot seem to move ourselves out of our old habits and paradigm.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Having spent a good deal of time reviewing countless articles on industrial symbiosis, the circular economy and everything in between, I have come up with one overarching reaction which is: Be careful what you wish for.

It is challenging to take even a modestly critical view of what are important ideas and initiatives in our effort to alter our industrial framework to reduce the effects of climate change and other deleterious impacts on the environment. My defense is to quote Aristotle in saying, we should try to follow the "Golden Mean" - everything in moderation.

In this case, this is more an admonition to think carefully about what we are doing and not simply jump into action without considering fully the implications of our efforts. We obviously cannot afford to be inactive. However, we should try not to rush into unthoughtful action allowing our enthusiasm to get us into other - though different predicaments.