Climate Change and Change Management

Been putting together a presentation outline for the Chesapeake Bay Organizational Development Network entitled, What’s Climate Change have to do with Change Management? Hmmm.. that would be everything.

There are numerous “laws” of change management that can impede change efforts if ignored. Three of these laws are worth noting when examining the status of climate and energy legislation: The Law of What Is, The Law of Resistance and The Law of Imagination.

The Law of What Is simply means meeting people where they are. This means ensuring that the starting place for any change effort is not your destination, but the shared experiences that define the reality of those who will need to be part of the change. “It’s the economy, stupid” is that starting part.

Any change effort will always have forces for change and forces for sameness, hence the Law of Resistance. Fully embracing the resistance is the only way to move beyond it – what organizational development specialists call the “paradoxical theory of change.” Resistance is a natural byproduct of change – it’s something that should be respected, not destroyed. Ignoring it doesn’t work either. What’s so interesting about the current state of affairs on energy and climate legislation, is that the political resistance doesn’t match what Americans want. Poll after poll reinforces Americans interest (especially among Independents) in reforming our energy policies. The fact is – what Americans are concerned about -- jobs, the economy, dependency on foreign oil – can all be addressed through reforming our energy policy and addressing climate change. It is the pathway out of economic anemia. And yet, resistance, largely sitting on partisan fault lines, isn’t going away. The forces for sameness are still winning.

Add to this, the phenomenon of “system justification” described in Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on Climate Change, by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, at Yale Environment 360 -- the more one hears about the need to change, the more one hunkers down and justifies the existing system – aka lifestyle. This is particularly true when talking about climate catastrophe. There has always been a fine line between communicating the perils of inaction on climate change and keeping people hopeful that there are solutions they can see and understand.

In a good read, “Stranger than Fiction: Avatar, Copenhagen and the Politics of Climate Change, Anthony DiMaggio quotes Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” (By the way, I don’t agree with his take that Copenhagen was a failure, see December posting, “Why Copenhagen Was A Success.") The difficulty Sinclair refers to is all about resistance – and it’s not just the Exxon executives resisting because their job depends on it or those Senators resisting because their corporate donations depend on it – it’s still millions of Americans who resist because they fear change – and think their jobs and lifestyles depend on not changing. Which brings us to the next law, The Law of Imagination.

We need to capture the imaginations of the American people about how their world can be different and better. The “imagine a world where America leads the clean energy revolution … where once shuttered manufacturing plants are buzzing with activity … where the air is cleaner… where we don’t have to worry about our energy sources running out. .. where we don’t send our hard-earned tax dollars to foreign countries, …. where the economy is strong and jobs are plentiful… ” We still have work to do to paint this picture in a way that finally allows people to stop holding on to the same so they move toward the change that’s needed. We also need to capture the imagination of obstructionists who could actually be turned into heroes by delivering a jobs bill that improves the economy and the environment at the same time.

We need to become master storytellers, communicating a positive, aspirational narrative, moving more Americans into a world they can see themselves in, a world they don’t want to miss out on, a world they will want to demand for themselves and their children. We simply can’t get the reform needed without more Republicans, Independents and Democrats demanding the economic opportunities they deserve -- and that can result from passing climate and energy legislation.