The marvel of multi-disciplinary mingling

Howard Jones, pioneering Green activist of the NSW south coast stood up at the annual Raspberry Day get-together this year and said, in his rich, thoughtful voice: “Copenhagen isn’t really about climate change. It’s about cooperation.” Nice.

I witnessed a marvellous case study in cooperation – at a somewhat smaller scale - when asked to facilitate an intensive day of multi-disciplinary planning by Housing NSW this year. The aim was to figure out how to green the public housing estate in NSW: 60,000 dwellings covering 70,000 hectares (and some are awfully bleak).

We had 40 participants from a rich mix of professions - architects, landscape designers, community renewal staff, sustainability gurus, Housing NSW managers, community gardens facilitators - a smorgasbord of jargons and perspectives (but don’t ask me where the public housing tenants were…we obviously can’t achieve perfection overnight!)

The day began with the Minister for Housing, David Borger, saying his goal was to make public housing estates “places you’re proud to live in and happy to come home to.” (deftly expanding the ambit of “sustainability” into the social realm…where it absolutely belongs, after all: no grass-roots buy-in, no sustainment).

Next came 2 hours of inspiring 15 minute talks. Then we split the room into mixed teams of 5-6, each with a facilitator, and gave them a pile of plans and coloured pens. Two hours of brainstorming and mad scribbling later and we had 6 exciting plans for greening different kinds of housing estates.

At the plenary session, well-known sustainability guru, Michael Mobbs, was the spokesman for the team dealing with one big, grim, western suburbs estate.

He reported how each profession made its unique contribution to the plan:

- the architects showed how joining two roads and transforming a rough footpath could make it easy for tenants to navigate the estate;

- the landscape designers spotted two disused tennis courts along the footpath that could become a community garden and meeting place, shaded by a dense grove of trees;

- Michael Mobbs then explained how the temperatures in those areas could be cooled by 10 degrees in summer by water tanks and evaporation pools(!); and

- the community renewal manager showed how framing the changes around the tenants’ hot issues (crime and isolation) could bring them into the planning process;

Then the council guy finally piped up and said, more or less, “that won't work because the road is too narrow and the council garbage trucks will just knock those trees down.” Michael Mobbs’ response was “well we’re just going to have to have that discussion with council’s waste services manager” - illustrating perfectly how making change means continually expanding the conversation.

So, can we successfully bring together diverse professions with different strengths to plan together? And can their results vastly exceed what any single profession could achieve? The answer is “yes”.

Kuhn and Galbraith on habitual ideas

Regarding your thoughts on habitual ideas Karla...I thought you might enjoy the following quotes.

Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, wrote that an accepted body of knowledge “does not aim for novelties of fact or theory, and, when successful, finds none.” (p52)

 

Even when confronted by severe and prolonged failure “though they may begin to lose faith and then to consider alternatives, they do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis.” (p77)

J.K. Galbraith, in The Affluent Society, sought to explain the persistence of "the conventional wisdom". He wrote that “Numerous factors contribute to the acceptability of ideas. To a very large extent, of course, we associate truth with convenience – with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort and unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem.” (p7)

“Ideas are inherently conservative,” he concluded. “They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstances with which they cannot contend.” As a result. “like the Old Guard, the conventional wisdom dies but does not surrender.” (p17, p12)

Sources: Thomas S. Kuhn 1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Third edition 1996, The University of Chicago Press

 J.K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958) Penguin Books edition 1999

The short answer is that habitual ideas often provide pay-offs, in career, prestige, income, power and convenience etc for those who hold them. These ideas become part of people's identity, so its not surprising they defend them to the death. Such ideas are rarely defeated by frontal attack...they have to be slowly exterminated by the social triumph of better ideas!

- Les

The problem with Social Marketing - why you can't sell change like soap

If you work in health promotion or sustainability, you’ll have heard of “Social Marketing” and “Community-based Social Marketing”.

Lately I’ve noticed how these communication methodologies are being treated with almost magical reverence, as if they are the long-awaited silver bullets for the complex social, health and environmental problems we all struggle with.

I believe many of the expectations being placed on Social Marketing and Community-based Social Marketing are seriously overblown and it’s time social change practitioners reassessed their attitude to these practices.

Here’s why:

Of course you can market brands. But behaviour change is not like buying a different brand of beer, it’s about getting people to DO THINGS THEY ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH, DON’T WANT TO DO OR CAN’T DO, or they would already be doing them. Like parents letting their kids walk to school, or smokers quitting, or drivers switching to public transport.

These kinds of social, health and environmental behaviours are intractable because they are part of complex, “wicked” or messy social problems. That’s why they are still with us. They are intractable for very good reasons: they are fixed firmly in place by a powerful matrix of institutional, technological and social factors. To be effective change programs must therefore do more than just communicate persuasive messages, they must aim to modify those factors.

Paul Stern of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the UK’s National Research Council explains that many behaviours are simply not amenable to voluntary change: [i]

“This pattern of [contextual] influences implies that effective laws and regulations, strong financial incentives or penalties, irresistible technology, powerful social norms, and the like can leave little room for personal factors to affect behavior…”

In other words, when people have very little choice how they act, structural changes (like regulation, pricing, infrastructure, service provision, governance reform, social innovation, and technological innovation) should be the preferred approaches.

He goes on to say that: “[however] when contextual influences are weak, personal factors…are likely to be the strongest influence on behavior.” However, if we are realistic, there are very few situations where contextual factors are weak. Every personal decision is thoroughly embedded on its context. Even a simple voluntary behaviour like “turning off the lights” is determined by technology and pricing.

The fact is, every effective social change effort has been predominantly structural. Improving the anti-social behaviour of drinkers, for instance, has required collaboration between police, community leaders and licensing authorities; physical re-design of venues; modified management practices; training for staff; advocacy; political leadership; and legislative change. Marketing has been the least important factor in the mix. Most solutions to “wicked” problems are like this. They involve multi-faceted strategies, and are very much about building relationships and re-designing practices, places and institutions, with marketing taking an important supportive role.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with good marketing. It’s a vital part of the mix. It spreads knowledge, creates interest, helps get people buzzing, and helps spark political action so that politicians get busy with the work of changing institutions and supporting technological innovation. It is an important handmaiden of change, but not the driver....

The rest of this paper is at www.enablingchange.com.au   It looks at the shape of successful interventions into "wicked problems", details weaknesses in the Social Marketing approach, and suggests an alternative approach.

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[i] Paul C. Stern (2005) Individuals’ Environmentally Significant Behaviour, Environmental Law Reporter News and Analysis 35 10785

How to bust silos

An article by Graham Winter, an Australian organisational psychologist, with some nicely expressed ideas about minimising organisational silos.


When initiatives failed
Our studies showed that when business initiatives failed, the 'players' were likely to be:

1. pursuing their own agenda: there was no shared bigger picture between units and little understanding or empathy for others, and leaders allowed conflicting agendas to prevail
2. avoiding and denying: employees avoided reality checks, there was a limited use of data in feedback and decision-making and the company had poor problem-solving practices
3. stifling communication: there was an absence of listening, e-mail was used as the main means of communication, there was a prevalence of hoarded information and alternative views were often dismissed
4. protecting their own turf: employees prioritised and planned in isolation, used their status to influence decisions and fostered inconsistency in processes and systems
5. playing 'I win, you lose': employees were blamed as soon as things went wrong, and success was rewarded inside the silos rather than across the company.

When initiatives succeeded
When business initiatives succeeded, the 'players' were likely to be:

1. sharing the big picture: companies created and shared one big picture, found common goals and synergies and focused on what was best for the organisation
2. sharing the reality: employees were focused on real performance, made fact-based decisions and had the tough conversation rather than avoiding reality
3. sharing the air: companies invited ideas from employees in every area of the business, and employees expressed opinions clearly and succinctly and listened to others
4. sharing the load: employees prioritised and planned together, were clear about roles and expectations and looked for common ground
5. sharing the wins and losses: companies paid close attention to joint results, learned and adapted together and rewarded true performance.

The dream team to tackle obesity

A recent US National Research Council report, Local Government Actions to Prevent Obesity provides a nice summary of the kind of interventions that have the best potential to tackle childhood obesity. 

According to the press release: “Many of these steps focus on increasing access to healthy foods and opportunities for active play and exercise.  They include:

- providing incentives to lure grocery stores to underserved neighborhoods;

- eliminating outdoor ads for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods and drinks near schools; requiring calorie and other nutritional information on restaurant menus; 

- implementing local "Safe Routes to School" programs; 

- regulating minimum play space and time in child care programs; 

- rerouting buses or developing other transportation strategies that ensure people can get to grocery stores; and 

- using building codes to ensure facilities have working water fountains.”

So, here's the dream team you'd need for a comprehensive attack on obesity at the local government level:

- an incentive manager;

- a regulator; 

- a building code planner; 

- a nutritionist; 

- a transport planner; 

- an educator; 

- a courageous politician or two to drive these changes through; and

- a facilitator, to pull it all together.

What to do about "habits"

My friend Karla rang me and asked if I knew of any research about "habits". I had a look (Google Scholar "psychology, habit") and discovered that the psychology of habit is seriously under-researched.

(Except for one article that argued that habit was "goal-directed automaticity".)

So I thought about it, and I think that habit might consist of at least 5 different entities. Interesting thing is, when you consider each entity separately you get some ideas about how to overcome what can seem to be ingrained habits.

1) Pay-off. Some habits are maintained because they "work". So, for instance, someone habitually accepts plastic bags at the supermarket, because that delivers ease and convenience.

Solution: make the practice less convenient, and it's alternative more convenient.

2) Obliviousness. Some habits are maintained because we aren't paying attention. For instance, I habitually ignore roadside speeding signs because I just don't see them (really!) The human brain only has so much attention to spread around, and we might be just habitually paying attention to other things (like our thoughts). [Google "salience"].

Solution: prompt people to pay attention to the matter.

3) Sunk costs (or 'loss aversion'). We may have invested a lot of money, time or prestige in a particular practice. Because humans naturally overestimate losses compared to potential gains, we often defend our investments to the point of stupidity. [Google "Loss Aversion"]

Solution: encourage people to consider the 'big picture' or 'long view' where the the long-term gain is worth the short-term loss.

4) Denial or resistance. Where fear of the unfamiliar causes us to avoid information about it, and resist pressure to change our behaviour.
[Google "Cognitive Dissonance" and "Psychological Reactance"]

Solution: increase the familiarity of the new practice.

5) Social identity. Where someone's social identity is wrapped up in a practice, change can threaten their identity and relationships, so naturally they actively maintain that practice (a case of denial, really).

Solution: connect the new practice to people's values.

The uncanny similarity between counterinsurgency warfare and social change

Just got my issue of Campaign Strategy eLetter. Chris Rose mentioned David Kilcullen's 28 Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency so I looked it up. (Kilcullen is a former Australian Army lieutenant colonel who served in Iraq as a senior counterinsurgency advisor and now works for the US State Department).

It's uncanny how closely these hard-edged lessons in counterinsurgency warfare resemble sensible lessons in running social change projects. Just have a look. I suppose we should have suspected that, after all think about Sun Tzu's "The Art of War".

I especially liked his "4 What-ifs". See if this resonates with your experience of trying to get things done in the real world.

Four What Ifs

The articles above describe what should happen, but we all know that things go wrong. Here are some "what ifs" to consider:

What if you get moved to a different area? You prepared for ar-Ramadi and studied Dulaim tribal structures and Sunni beliefs. Now you are going to Najaf and will be surrounded by al-Hassan and Unizzah tribes and Shiía communities. But that work was not wasted. In mastering your first area, you learned techniques you can apply: how to "case" an operational area, how to decide what matters in the local societal structure. Do the same again - and this time the process is easier and faster, since you have an existing mental structure, and can focus on what is different. The same applies if you get moved frequently within a battalion or brigade area.

What if higher headquarters doesn't get counterinsurgency? Higher headquarters is telling you the mission is to "kill terrorist", or pushing for high-speed armored patrols and a base-camp mentality. They just do not seem to understand counterinsurgency. This is not uncommon, since company-grade officers today often have more combat experience than senior officers. In this case, just do what you can. Try not to create expectations that higher headquarters will not let you meet. Apply the adage "first do no harm". Over time, you will find ways to do what you have to do. But never lie to higher headquarters about your locations or activities: they own the indirect fires.

What if you have no resources? Yours is a low-priority sector: you have no linguists, the aid agencies have no money for projects in your area, you have a low priority for funding. You can still get things done, but you need to focus on self-reliance, keep things small and sustainable, and ruthlessly prioritize effort. Local community leaders are your allies in this: they know what matters to them more than you do. Be honest with them, discuss possible projects and options with community leaders, get them to choose what their priority is. Often they will find the translators, building supplies or expertise that you need, and will only expect your support and protection in making their projects work. And the process of negotiation and consultation will help mobilize their support, and strengthen their social cohesion. If you set your sights on what is achievable, the situation can still work.

What if the theater situation shifts under your feet? It is your worst nightmare: everything has gone well in your sector, but the whole theater situation has changed and invalidates your efforts. Think of the first battle of Fallujah, the al-Askariya shrine bombing, or the Sadr uprising. What do you do? Here is where having a flexible, adaptive game plan comes in. Just as the insurgents drop down to a lower posture when things go wrong, now is the time to drop back a stage, consolidate, regain your balance and prepare to expand again when the situation allows. But see article 28: if you cede the initiative, you must regain it as soon as the situation allows, or you will eventually lose.

That all sounds like great advice!

How calculating eco-footprints undermines good behaviour

I always felt a little uncomfortable about the idea of calculating my own ecological footprint...now I know why:

In an experiment with 212 undergraduates, Psychologists Amara Brook and Jennifer Crocker found that for those "not heavily invested in the environment", negative feedback about their ecological footprint undermined their environmental behaviour.

"Rather than changing their ways to protect the environment, the results of this study suggest that these [people] may give up on their efforts to protect the environment", they wrote.

However for those "more invested on the environment", calculating their ecological footprint promoted more sustainable behaviour.

This research was reported in USA Today, but doesn't seem to have been formally published yet because I can't find it on Google Scholar.

However if you're keen you could email Amara directly on atbrook@scu.edu and maybe she'd send you a copy.

It's easy to guess at the mechanism at work: a straightforward (and, when you think about it, fairly predictable) case of DENIAL (aka Cognitive Dissonance).

Incidentally, while I was tracking down info on Amara Brook I stumbled across a "Conservation Psychology" website with an amazingly detailed collection of resources, including a huge number of scholarly articles on the subject: http://www.conservationpsychology.org/resources/articles/

The USA Today article also reported some interesting research, by Elizabeth Nisbett and John Zelenski at the Carleton University in Ottawa, that found that people tend to systematically underestimate how much happier they'll feel from spending 15 minutes outside, and overestimate how happy they are being inside.

A crib sheet for program planners

It's a hell of a job thinking outside the square. One thing I've noticed in strategic planning sessions is that educators often have trouble thinking beyond "awareness", PR types beyond "change attitudes", engineers beyond "building stuff", planners beyond "plans of management" and so on.

So here is a crib sheet for those participants who need a little help to think outside their professional bubbles.

It's at http://www.enablingchange.com.au/crib_sheet.pdf

I especially designed it for Step 3 in the Enabling Change process, where a diverse group of participants select intervention points in the "system of improvement" (a.k.a. "program objectives").

There are just so many ways to change the world!

A nice way to think about the choice between voluntary and structural approaches to changing people's behaviour

Paul Stern of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education at the UK’s National Research Council, proposes a sensible way to strategise the choice between involuntary and structural approaches to influencing peoples’ environmental behaviours.

He writes:

“The influences on environmentally significant behavior…can be roughly classified as shown in Table 1. Generally speaking, the stronger the contextual influences (those toward the top of the table), the less important are the personal factors toward the bottom.

“This pattern of influences implies that effective laws and regulations, strong financial incentives or penalties, irresistible technology, powerful social norms, and the like can leave little room for personal factors to affect behavior…

“The pattern of influences on behavior also implies that when contextual influences are weak, the personal factors at the bottom of the table are likely to be the strongest influence on behavior.

“Also, when the contextual factors cannot be changed, the personal factors may provide the only levers on behavior, even if they are weak or only apply in restricted situations.

“In most real-world contexts, both contextual and personal factors are involved in shaping environmental behavior, so a variety of factors are potentially available for bringing about behavior change. For example, the environmental impact of traveling to work is usually shaped largely by the location of home and of workplaces, the availability of public transportation, the fuel economy of an individual’s motor vehicles, and habit. But even with behavior that is as strongly context-determined as commuting, personal factors can matter, particularly at key decision times. These include the times when people obtain new vehicles, make choices about their maintenance, and, particularly when their homes or workplaces change, making it relatively easy to form new commuting habits."


TRANSLATION: When people don't really have much choice about their behaviours, focus on structural change.


He also suggests some principles for designing interventions:


“The complexities of person-situation interactions and a careful reading of the research lend support to a set of general principles for behavior change such as listed in Table 3.

Paul C. Stern (2005) Individuals’ Environmentally Significant Behaviour, Environmental Law Reporter News and Analysis 35 10785

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/Environmental%20Law%20Review%20PDF.pdf

Why most of us buckle up

Just found this great graph in WHO's 2004 World Report on Traffic Injury Prevention (yes, I know, get a life).

It shows how high profile law enforcement has made a big difference to buckling up behaviour, for 80% of Fins at least.

Of course that's still 20% of Fins NOT buckling up..a lot of people.

Incidentally eleven US states now exceed 90% compliance. In New Hampshire, the only US state without mandatory seat belt laws (true to its motto "live free or die"), the rate is 63.5%. In Australia it's 90% - 97% for those well-behaved Victorians.

Arrg! Not in the face, again!

Arrgh! No. Not. No. Port Phillip City Council's Youtube ads are supposed to influence people not to piss or vomit in public. http://www.youtube.com/user/portphillipcouncil

Ok..we're talking about drunk people here. Do drunk people even remember what they saw on Youtube last night? So maybe the aim is get other people talking...and I guess it might have, after all it's not typical council fare. And the point of that is?

I feel like opening a whole folder on "in your face theory". That's the theory that says that, if people aren't doing the right thing, then they need to be slapped in the face. And if that doesn't work, punched in the face. And if that doesn't...thumped a whole lot harder. It's an amazingly common theory...a kind of atavistic monument to bad parenting. Is there any evidence, anywhere, that this theory does anything other than reinforce bad behaviour? No. But it just keeps on coming.

How about, instead of validating bad behaviour, we asked ourself what good behaviour might look like - good bystander behaviour for instance - and validate that. The "Tosser" campaign and the RTA's "little finger" speeding campaign have a go at that. If you want to improve the standard of public decency in Fitzroy, the an "I love Fitzroy" approach, demonstrating good bystander behaviour, is likely to be way more effective.

If you want to disgust people, how about lower their resistance to the message with a light touch: http://osocio.org/message/what_did_mama_say

And if you really HAVE to use irony...try to be funny. Like http://osocio.org/message/buy_a_tribute_to_the_person_that_you_killed

If you want to create a viral message, light and funny really does travels faster and further than grim and disgusting.

The power of the world's best question

Steph Twaddle, Community Relations Officer at Environment Bay of Plenty writes:

"I was in Sydney on the weekend and saw huge flags on Darling Harbour and newspaper ads proclaiming: What would you like to change?

"There was no branding for any government agency or business so I checked out www.whatwouldyouliketochange.com.au. Price Water House Coopers are gaining huge amounts of community input on a huge range of issues, from all sorts of people. It’s worth a quick look."

"What would you like to change?" - That's a question you hardly ever hear from government...and PWC is getting flooded with answers, about everything!

It's hardly connected to a credible change strategy, I mean, they're an accountancy firm for heaven's sake...but it just goes to show people's hunger for being asked a really great question!

I wonder what government agencies and councils would learn if they stopped worrying about what they might hear and let rip with some really strategic questions?

Facilitating a community consultation for Warringah Council in the last couple of months, we got to pose some big strategic questions to workshops of randomly recruited residents, like: "If more money was available in the council budget, how would you spend it on?" and "If there was less money, what would you cut?" and "What should council be doing that it's not doing now?" The results were surprising, affirming, and useful, since they are exactly the same questions that councillors themselves must struggle with.

Self-determination of babies

Watching a little person grow is fantastically emotionally rewarding...and educational.

At just 4 months little baby Jarrah is doing a great job validating Self-Determination Theory. That's the theory of motivation that says we're motivated to do things that increase our:

a) autonomy (seeing our actions arise from personal choices rather than outside control);

b) competence (being able to control our environment so we get predictable outcomes); and

c) relatedness (authentic participation in our social world).

The easiest way to measure motivation is to observe the time we freely invest in a given activity without getting bored or distracted.

Here's the evidence:

Baby Jarrah's time to boredom or freak-out:

- playing on the baby bouncer (see pic)= 35 minutes [= autonomy and competence]

- playing with mum or dad = no limit [= relatedness]

- interacting with toys = 3 mins [= none of the above, they're just dumb toys]

QED!

"Grass is dumb" and other brilliant campaigns

Some ads that brilliantly breathe life into old-hat messages by taking delightful and unexpected angles.

Denver Water tells us something unusual about grass...

http://osocio.org/message/grass_is_dumb/

Keep California Beautiful demonstrates an exceptionally heavy use of irony to protect beaches...

http://osocio.org/message/lets_trash_the_beach/

UK NGO Green Thing kills that swede (OMG I love this!)

http://osocio.org/message/ninjin_the_way_of_the_vegetable_assassin/

Save water - piss in the shower!

A surprising water saving strategy and a marvellous TV ad from Brazilian NGO, SOS Mata Atlantica Foundation, working to save the Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlantica)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ_DNc1zbxI

Why multi-disciplinary teams might save the world

What works best: involuntary or voluntary change? Like all dichotomies, a little of each is the correct answer.

Even though I’m a ‘behaviour change’ guy and I think ALL change is behavioural, I’ve come to believe that 90% of behaviour is in turn driven by physical, social and technological settings. But communication, participation and marketing are nevertheless integral because a) public participation drives political change; and b) it’s no good having great technologies if no one uses them.

This 2007 statement by 28 concerned social scientists neatly summarises a case against dismissing voluntary behaviour change in favour of an exclusive focus on policy and technology:

In part, they wrote:

“Dismissing the importance of small personal behavior choices in favor of a sole focus on policy change is a big mistake:

• Small behaviors are important not only for the direct environmental impact they have, but because they often lead to more and more pro-environmental behaviors over time.

• Numerous psychological studies have shown that people are more likely to agree to take a big action if they've previously agreed to smaller, similar actions.

• People reject scary messages like the danger of global warming if they don't think there is anything feasible they can do to fix it.

• Restrictive policies engender resentment and actions to restore threatened freedoms, such as ditching the policies themselves or creative disobedience. Witness efforts to dismantle the Endangered Species Act, and the creative efforts to skirt its requirements.

“The history of racial policy and WWII demonstrate the importance of both policy and voluntary actions. Much public debate and many small individual actions transpired to make racial discrimination less and less socially acceptable in the century and a half before LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Try telling descendents of those rescued by the underground railroad that it didn't matter. Even in the more urgent crisis of WWII, in addition to the mandatory policies, mass persuasion campaigns encouraged voluntary actions. Politicians realized they needed public support for the war effort, and for legislation.

“Remember the "We can do it!" poster encouraging women to join the labor force? The victory gardens? Voluntary actions provided direct physical support, strengthened the norm of supporting the war effort, and boosted morale. Both voluntary action and policy changes were crucial to winning the war.”

One reason we have this pathological separation between policy and the social sciences is that policy-bods and communications-bods hardly ever work together. I’ve said it lots of times, I’ll say it again: “scratch a supposedly insoluble real world problem and you’ll find an institutional failure.” Multi-disciplinary teams aren’t just fun, they might just save the world.

Walking to school: how to make it feel safer

Walk to School programs have a checkered history. A large recent program in inner Sydney schools, for instance, focusing on educational interventions, produced ‘mixed results’ for major a 2 year effort.

Yet here is an example from Queensland that met with outstanding success.

Just check these results, for a 12 month effort.....(see graph).

I just had a look at the evaluation of this program and one thing stands out: getting the SETTING right.

Before the project began, the Travelsmart team conducted a site audit at the Tewantin school, along with officers from the Qld Transport Road Safety Office and Noosa Council. The audit resulted in an agenda of road infrastructure improvements around the school. Specifically: speed signs, road markings, threshold treatments, and intersection improvements, all focused on safety. This physical investment (amounting to $78k) “to improve the environment for walking and cycling around Tewantin School meant that there were little physical barriers to address”.

The Travelsmart program then rolled out, with a volunteer parent-teacher working group and $27k spent on activities including an access guide, a poster, a cycle skills course, teaching units, a TravelSmART competition, a staff Walk to Work day, a Walk and Ride Wednesday, an interschool class challenge and a celebration assembly.

This points to a valuable principle of behaviour change projects: a major factor that enables behaviour is THE SETTING…a principle that goes way back to the Ottawa Charter (‘Creating Supporting Environments’) – one that’s now very well recognised in health promotion projects.

Most of the Trewantin TravelSmart activities focused on ‘salience’ (bringing cycling and walking to front-of-mind) and ‘buzz’ (getting people talking). However I suspect at least two would have had a big impact on self-efficacy: the changes to the physical road setting around the school , and the cycle skills course. These would have changed the environment-of-decision-making for parents, lowering their fears of letting their little ones walk or cycle on their own. After all, it's largely mothers who make the decision about how to commute to school, and safety is a big consideration. A 2005 study in the American Journal of Health Studies noted that a "theme that emerged from all three focus groups was one of (real of perceived) personal safety issues and concerns, including recent or memorable kidnappings, crimes in the neighbourhood, and heavily trafficked streets." It concluded that distance, safety and traffic concerns were the biggest influences on travel to school choice.

Interestingly, there was little enthusiasm at Tewantin State School for formal walking, cycling or car-pooling programs because of fears that parents would be unwilling to volunteer for those duties. Informal arrangements were preferred – a useful lesson.

An nice touch was writing "TravelSmart Coordinator" into the job description of the newly appointed Deputy Principal.

The evaluation doesn’t seem to have been published, but you can probably get a copy from Graham Lunney, TravelSmart Manager, Queensland Transport.

You could ask him for a copy of the TravelSmart School Training Manual that was developed from the program.

TravelSmart Noosa’s web page gives a summary of the project.

Is change social? Well, yes.

Nice article on research that shows how Quitting smoking travels (like practically everything else) through social networks of people who know each other.

http://socialmediatrader.com/smoking-and-social-networks

P.S. We keep being surprised by this kind of research, but the insight goes right back to the very start of diffusion research... a simply written, plain English, article written by Bryce Ryan and Neal Gross in a humble rural sociology journal in 1943...

To see it, go to http://chla.library.cornell.edu then search under "diffusion" with the author names "Ryan" and "Gross". Their article is in Rural Sociology Volume 8.

Climate Change and sharing control

Since 2006 a unique (as far as I know) COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT climate change project has been under way in Castlemaine, Victoria. Now the results are in.

As the team included a number of facilitators, it seemed natural to make it a COMMUNITY DEVEOPMENT project…one that would work bottom-up (tho’, inevitably, it ended up being partly top-down as well). This implied handing over maximum control with the local community, and this is the shining glory of the project, as Geoff Brown’s report shows.

It illustrates a golden rule of social change: sustained change depends on shared control.

Below are some excerpts from the report summary.

See the whole report at Geoff’s web site: www.yesandspace.com.au/?p=705

And see some interviews with participants: www.youtube.com/castlemaine500

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In 2006, the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance (CVGA) secured the Victorian Government’s support to fund a behaviour change program that would test - by engaging a significant proportion of a township in household energy reduction - whether major savings could be achieved and measured at the regional level. The objective was to get 500 households to commit to a long-term process that required active participation and input to achieve a 15 to 30% reduction in energy consumption.

Both parties agreed that this process should be documented to assist other townships in their development of locally focused projects.

With active support from the Department of Sustainability and Environment, the CVGA called for expressions of interest from townships with populations of between 5,000 and 10,000 residents (with access to reticulated gas). After short-listing, Castlemaine was selected, and a program of activities including workshops, home assessments, community conferences and a local leaders program (to support activities beyond the project timeframe) began.

Castlemaine 500 also had a strong focus on building community capacity and leaving behind a legacy in the Castlemaine community after the initial funding had ceased. To this end, the project ran a number of leadership activities with a core group of participants and attempted to broker partnerships with key groups in the community. This side of the project has proved very successful, with some of the leaders going on to organise their own events, take part in a participatory evaluation and coordinate a network of interested people. Leaders have reported a range of new skills and knowledge as a result of their involvement in the project.

One leader was awarded the citizen of the year award for her work to assist households to reduce energy in her own community. Another leader has become the C500 coordinator, employed through the local Community House, completing the handover of the project to the local community.

In 2008, the efforts of the Castlemaine community were internationally recognised by a United Nations World Environment Day award.

Of significant interest in our findings is that the creation of social spaces proved to be one of the most influential aspects of the project. Participants reported that the opportunities to talk with each other and share their knowledge and experiences were vital to their capacity building processes. Events such as Energy Smart Workshops provided opportunities for participants to learn from and interact with each other.

Both the Energy Smart Workshops and Home Energy Assessments were highly useful as a way of supporting participants as they learned to change their behaviour and reduce energy use. Specific tools like the Home Energy Assessment Tool (HEAT), Home Energy Action Plan (HEAP), a free energy smart thermometer and a project letterbox sticker were also regarded as highly beneficial. This pilot project was always about much more than measuring reductions in energy consumption, and the feedback validates this.

Additionally (and unexpectedly), two new projects emerged in the project’s second year. The Kyabram (Ky Can Do Thatg) and Ararat (Ararat Energy Savers) projects were instigated by the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance (CVGA), delivered in part nership with regional partners and funded by the Department of Sustainability and Environment. The newly appointed coordinators of both the Kyabram and Ararat project workers became involved in C500 leadership activities, with their plans heavily influenced by the lessons learned during the C500’s first year.

Notably, a number of other townships (large and small) expressed an interest in developing a similar model in their local area. Valuable learnings from these projects are described on pages 26 & 45 of this report; further detailed (and useful) information is available at the CVGA’s website (www.cvga.org.au).

While the C500 project has been very successful in achieving many of our goals, it also encountered many hurdles and challenges.

The initial target of signing up 500 houses proved overly ambitious, with a final tally of 351 households formally registered to C500. At the outset, the project steering committee bounded eligibility to households within the postcode 3450 [population about 6400]. After significant community feedback this restriction was expanded to include 3451 [population around 4500], however, the project struggled to attract households from these parts of the Castlemaine community. Spin off projects at Kyabram and Ararat and a significant level of interest from other townships illustrates that the numbers were large, even if not formally based in the Castlemaine area.

Whilst the energy monitoring strategy yielded only small numbers of households with reliable, pre and post electricity and gas data, these small sample sizes still allowed us to make conclusions about overall changes in energy consumption across C500 households. However, comparisons between different sub groups of households and project interventions were not possible. Results indicate an overall reduction in gas consumption in C500 households by approximately 15%, and a reduction in electricity consumption by approximately 8%. It’s important to keep in mind that small sample sizes limit our ability to be more specific.

The results presented in this report clearly point to the complex nature of behaviour change projects and the difficulty involved with attempts to attribute project activities to influencing ‘impact level’ data such as energy consumption. In our view, the project does demonstrate tangible outcomes - despite the difficulties encountered in proving concrete reductions in energy consumption (and greenhouse gas emissions). Our findings identify the need for projects of this nature to carefully consider their approach to behaviour change and to factor in the social context in which change occurs. There is also a need for future projects to be more prepared for the unexpected, to be flexible and adaptive and to conduct monitoring at various levels, using a mixture of techniques. Above all, projects of this nature must be committed to building ownership within the community. It is hoped that this report, which has strived to tell both the good and the more difficult aspects of delivering a behaviour change program, is a useful tool for other townships across Victoria as collectively we face the challenges of a changing climate.

Against communication

Here's part of a conversation I'm having with a Luke Wright, a journalist who's writing about communicating change:

Well of course communication is vital however even the cleverest communication is a waste of effort if it does not meet a vital condition - that the communication is part of a conversation about things that matter to the audience. So, even though I've spent my professional life as a communicator, I don't talk about communication any more, I talk about conversation. A good conversation is, of course, two way, about concerns, stories and solutions that matter to both sides of the conversation. The commonest reasons communication campaigns fail is that they are only about things that matter to the sender, not the receiver; and treats the receiver as a passive vessel for 'truth' to arrive. The vast majority of social marketing campaigns fail for this reason - they are little more that government agencies having elaborate conversations with themselves.

Even though you want to run your story as about communication, I'd like you to ask yourself whether you may be perpetuating 'message fetish', rather than opening up a new and interesting discussion.

In the Arabic smoking story*, for instance, what mattered was the time spent listening to the concerns of Arabic-speaking people and hearing some of the solutions they had spontaneously innovated to their own social dilemmas around smoking, then depicting those solutions in an ad campaign that acted as a virtual conversation, providing solutions to matters they already knew were at stake in their lives. The interesting work was the listening and spotting answers to problems people were experiencing. The communication was not unusual or remarkable. It was just how the solution was packaged. What makes a gift great is how it fits into the peoples' hopes and dreams, not the packaging. In this way, the ad campaign packaged up just the right gift, and the art was in selecting the gift not choosing the packaging.

* See "The Art of Stickiness" chapter on my web site.

The sweet balm of denial

A friend of mine, a self-employed engineer who freely admits to being more than a million dollars in debt, recently told me that the start of Global Financial Crisis thrust him into a period of gloom. Doom-laden headline after headline ground down his optimism and zest. Then, after a few months of depression, he made a terrific decision. He chose to ignore the news. To be specific, he stopped watching TV news. He just blanked it out.

The effect was dramatic. His spirits lifted. He got on with his life. He found that new business kept coming in. His work got done. His mortgage got paid. He discovered that the GFC was something he could safely ignore.

It seems that a lot of Australians may have made similar choices, for the Australian economy has weathered the GFC far better than any economy in the world. According to the Reserve Bank, consumer confidence dropped less than in the other major economies; businesses retrenched fewer workers; and business investment remained surprisingly high.

Instead of slashing their wrists, Australians may have just stopped paying attention to the news and got on their lives.

Denial is a well studied psychological phenomenon (just Google “cognitive dissonance”). As psychologists understand it, denial is all about protecting the self or identity. When someone is presented with information that challenges their identity they experience mental discomfort or dissonance. There are two ways to reduce that discomfort. They can either change their behaviour or they can avoid that information in future. Since avoidance is almost always easier and less risky than change, most people choose avoidance. Or, as J.K. Galbraith put it, “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

Denial gets bad rap. Being “in denial” is supposed to be an example of mental feebleness. But there is a potent connection between denial and economic prosperity.

Behavioural economists George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, in their book Animal Spirits, How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism, make a great point about confidence. Confidence, they wrote, is the key “animal spirit” in an economy: “When people have confidence they go out and buy; when they are unconfident they withdraw, and they sell.”

Confidence, they pointed out, is not just a certainty that good times will keep rolling. The word comes from the Latin fido, meaning “I trust”. But trust is not a positive form of mental activity. It’s actually a form of mental inactivity. It consists of not thinking about consequences, of hoping for the best, and assuming that someone has done the risk management. Trust is a low energy mental state and it’s easy to see why that’s so. If we worried about everything in life, we’d go mad. We’d be paralysed with doubt because of all the agonisingly complicated uncertainties surrounding every decision. Lack of trust, that is, the active mental state of mulling over consequences and worrying about details, is something that inhibits economic activity. Trust, that is, not thinking much about the consequences, is therefore much more than bliss, it’s one of the root causes of national prosperity.

Denial is nothing less that the choice to return to a state of trustful ignorance. Being in denial, far from evidence of feebleness, is therefore a fantastic strength. Think about it. Without denial would there ever have been a successful rebellion or revolution in history? No. It would all be too confronting. Worrying about the ranks of muskets and cannon lined up against them would have terrified all those potential revolutionaries into helplessness. And there would never have been a paradigm-challenging idea: no renaissance, no heliocentric theory, no electricity, no penicillin, no stapler. Without denial of the near certainty of failure, all the revolutionaries who made our world would have stayed at home. True, denial can sometimes be a weakness. But very often it’s a great strength.

Now you have to wonder, since Australians have retained their economic confidence far better than Europeans and Americans, what makes us such superior denialists? Americans in particular seem to have gone into a blind panic. I’m just speculating now, but one explanation might have to do with our native self-doubt. Without swollen egos, there’s less far to fall. Stick a pin in Americans’ party balloon and the result is mass hysteria. Deflate our party balloon, and, deep down, we're just not that surprised.

Another explanation may have to do with how sensible we are. Denial, you see, is always easier when it's backed by some evidence. Australians, like practically everyone else in the world, would have been startled into alertness by the sudden collapse of the US economy. Most of us aren't idiots, so before slipping back into the sweet balm of semi-consciousness we would have looked around for some evidence that it was safe to do so. We saw: a government confidently and aggressively responding, local institutions not collapsing and NO ONE ELSE PANICKING. There's a well-established principle in the social sciences called 'social proof' which can be expressed as 'if the people around me aren’t acting like there's a problem, there's no problem'. Thanks to a few comforting real life observations, Australian's seem to have decided that it was safe to lapse back into trust and get on with their lives. What became a contagion of panic in the US and Europe became a contagion of denial here, and we're all the better for it.

Yes, denial: our saving grace; our life boat in a storm; our national treasure. Let’s give it the respect it deserves.

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This piece is not just frivolous. Denial is something change agents struggle with every day. Denial has it’s own logic: it’s driven by the fear of not being able to manage the unfamiliar. Trying to “drag people out of their comfort zones” is a recipe for failure simply because the human capacity for denial is infinite. A solution is to focus on increasing people’s confidence or self-efficacy (in other words, EXANDING their comfort zones), an approach which minimises the fear that drives denial!

* Malcolm Edey, Assistant Governor, Reserve Bank of Australia, The Economic Landscape in 2009, www.rba.gov.au/Speeches/2009/sp_ag_040309.pdf

Permission to innovate

Institutions tend to be lousy innovators.

Why?

Partly, I think, because power-holders don’t put their reputations on the line to push novel ideas. Also, nowadays, because employees are so crazily overworked after decades of so-called ‘productivity’ reforms.

Innovation, like all things, needs permission and a space to thrive.

I stumbled across this nice example of a public corporation that's doing it right.

South East Water in Melbourne has a board at the entrance to their staff cafeteria that records the passage of staff-initiated innovations from ‘raw idea’ to ‘evaluated’ to ‘testing’ to ‘project’ to ‘success’.

Beautiful!

It’s a conspicuous signpost that says ‘permission to experiment’, and ‘we value your ideas’.

(Thanks to the energetic Rebecca for posing with the board.)

In love with a CEO

Not really, but I was tempted after hearing Dr Kathy Alexander, the CEO of the City of Melbourne, talk at a local government emerging leaders forum. I took five pages of notes in 20 minutes. She has uncommon common sense and uncommon candour, perhaps because she started her career as a psychologist, then a health promoter, then a health CEO before becoming a city manager.

A few (heavily paraphrased) notes:

As a health promoter in South Australia she listened to women in an isolated community talk about the stale fruit and veg being sold expensively by the only grocer in the neighbourhood. When they suggested getting a bus to drive to the fruit markets, she arranged the bus, effectively putting a group of feisty women in competition with the local grocer, who finally rose the occasion and lowered the price of his offerings.

What a good idea – using a health dept bus to drive people to a fruit market instead of a hospital.

Her view on council customer surveys: “I think surveys are just cheating”. (Because most council managers word them to justify the status quo).

In charge of a regional health promotion unit, she got her staff onto the streets and interviewed 7,500 residents, asking them one main question – “what three things would make your community healthier”. So many pointed to the noxious 24/7 air pollution from a Sims Metal plant in town that she took the plant on on, supporting the formation of a citizens’ action group that successfully took the state government to court to enforce air quality standards. No longer able to ignore the community in this safe seat the state government later launched a major community development program.

To the perennial problem of councillors who think they are elected to make decisions without community’s input: “Community engagement is a way to find the right political answer.”

To the perennial problem of what to do about moribund community advisory committees, without causing a riot by simply closing them down: Reopen their membership, BUT ALSO redefine their terms of reference: instead of ‘advising’ on the views of young people or indigenous people or whatever, their role is to ‘oversee engagement’ with those groups. Brilliant.

The “Colleen Communities” of this world, the “usual suspects” who sit on innumerable council committees, can “become incredibly powerful and fight like crazy to stop real community participation.” You can never make any engagement process truly representative, but every increment of diversity makes it more representative. Broadening the voices drowns out “Colleen Community”.

A great community engagement strategy is to “make your problem their problem”. So, if you have a devil of a job balancing a budget, ask community forums to balance it for you. She told the story of a recent state-wide consultation in Victoria about setting the balance of expenditure in health care. 40 community forums (called ‘boards’) were set up, and, overwhelmingly recommended spending more on preventative health. Even a father whose son had been saved in an intensive care ward said that more money should be shifted from high cost clinical intervention to prevention.

Her conclusion: “A fundamental principle of community engagement is being willing to give up some power.”