Green Circle, Three Circle, One Circle
The diversity of views on the real value of sustainable development is largely explained by a similar diversity of views on what sustainable development means in practice. While most authorities have a similar understanding of the challenge of sustainable development, they respond to it in quite different ways. We observed three distinct approaches.
- Green circle response: some local authorities maintain an emphasis on environmentalism – the green circle. This leads to increased awareness of and action on environmental issues. Sustainable development is sometimes seen as a marginal activity in authorities with this view.
- Three circle response: others implement a combination of social, economic and environmental initiatives – the three circles. This leads to better integration of environmental goals with mainstream priorities but has an inherent danger of sustainable development being defined as ticking the three boxes without any real integration.
- One circle response: some authorities have moved beyond ‘three circle’ to what might be called ‘one-circle’ thinking. For these their response to sustainable development grapples with the joined up thinking and doing needed to deal with the complexities of improving quality of life now and for future generations. It is in these authorities that sustainable development has become an integral and valuable component of the authority’s approach.
Characteristics of a ‘one-circle’ organisation
We observed a wide variety of practices that, taken together, represent an ambitious model of how an organisation can successfully grapple with the complexities of improving quality of life now and in the future. At the same time they represent an achievable goal for any authority. All of the activities discussed below have examples of good practice in at least one of the authorities we visited. We have found it useful to group these activities into five broad categories:
- providing community and business leadership
- recognising collective aspirations as a proxy for sustainable development
- dismantling silo and power thinking
- getting their own house in order
- increasing their capacity to work through influence.
- Providing community and business leadership
There is a danger with a community led approach that the longer term and broader strategic issues can be over-ridden by short term, local aspirations. There is a need for community leadership which balances the longer term goals with the short term needs of the community. This is a challenging role but one that should inevitably be played by the local authority. There are three key areas of activity:
- Political leadership: this is vital for providing the long term, holistic view that is required to balance short term, local thinking. We observed this in a number of authorities, both positively where members are forcing a long term, wide-angle view, and negatively where they are insisting on a short term, narrow focus. Several authorities have mechanisms for helping members explore the long term implications of decisions. These include briefings on specific issues, and visioning or scenario planning events where members can review longer-term strategies for the area.
- Educating and informing the community: working to develop the capacity of the community to make informed decisions and choices is seen as a vital task in many of the authorities we interviewed. This work achieves two important results. It helps communities take part in complex decisions without being simplistic and it helps engage them to find solutions to the challenges they face.
- Indicators: these allow information to be presented in a way that is easy to understand - comparisons can be made and trends spotted, and developing the indicators can be a good way of getting people to think about what they want for the future.
Recognising community aspirations as a proxy for sustainable development
Many of the officers we interviewed agreed that sustainable development is difficult to define in a meaningful way. However several authorities have recognised that the collective aspirations of their community, when properly articulated, can be seen as a proxy for sustainable development.
This approach has two great advantages. It creates a response to sustainable development that is practical and action orientated. It is rare for a community to express aspirations that are theoretical or conceptual. The issues that concern people are never just environmental, social or economic but a jumbled and inter-related mix of day to day survival and long term aspirations. In fact, this approach does away with the need to discuss sustainable development at all, a major barrier in the eyes of many we interviewed. The second advantage is that the response is directly in tune with the real needs of the broader community and is much more likely to receive support from the community. This is in contrast to the outside expert view of sustainable development, often driven by environmentalists, which may not be resonant with the views of the community at large.
We observed three particular practices that support the above approach:
- Developing the skills needed to enrol/engage diverse groups: some authorities have recognised the need to develop the specific skills needed to reach out to the community and in particular to engage those sections that are often left unheard. This has led several authorities to invest in training staff in the listening and facilitation skills required to tease out and represent community views.
One chief executive admitted that sustainable development hadn’t reached the hearts and minds of all staff, although another claimed that “if you break open this organisation at any level you’ll find sustainable development written in at every point”
- Moving from consultation to dialogue: a related but more subtle shift in practice is the move from consultation to dialogue. The authority learns about what the needs of the community are while developing the capacity of that community to articulate its needs, as well as learning about what the authority does and doesn’t have the capacity to deliver. This assists the council to develop more considered plans and helps the community to start to take some responsibility for finding solutions as well as articulating problems.
- Aligning organisational priorities with the aspirations of the community: it seems almost perverse to suggest that there are authorities whose priorities are not the same as their community they serve. Sadly this is acknowledged to be the case by some. However we observed many striving to align their own priorities with those of the community they serve.
Dismantling ‘silo and power’ thinking
Sustainable development requires an inherently joined up response. There are significant barriers to this for any authority because of the many forms of ‘silo’s and power structures’ that exist. We observed several ways in which groups either compete, fail to communicate or are downright antagonistic to each other.
We observed several authorities where the priorities of the community, members and officers were openly acknowledged as being different from the other. We also came across authorities that acknowledged the difficulty they were having in breaking down the barriers between services and disciplines within the authority and with other service providers:
- Cross cutting mechanisms: many authorities stressed the importance of developing mechanisms that force cross-cutting reviews and interdisciplinary working. As one chief executive put it, “We have to slice the organisation up somehow so that we can manage services, but we also need mechanisms to join everything back up by taking slices in the other directions.” Whatever way services are organised there must be other mechanisms that cut across the organisational divisions, both within and outside the authority.
- Developing the skills needed to work in partnership: we found that those authorities considered to be models of good practice in partnership working often have a higher awareness of the need to develop the skills required for this. Some have recognised that the skills required to make partnerships work are different from those needed to make progress within the organisation and have proactively started to develop the interpersonal and ‘soft skills’ this entails.
Getting your own house in order
Many authorities believe it is vital to set an example of good practice. This relates strongly to the authority’s capacity to provide leadership and to influence others in the community:
- Getting the internal culture and systems right: there can be considerable tension between the corporate view of sustainable development and the reality throughout the organisation. One chief executive admitted that although the corporate strategy said all the right things about sustainable development, it hadn’t reached the hearts and minds of staff throughout the organisation. On the other hand a few authorities claimed that “If you break open this organisation at any level you’ll find sustainable development written through it at every level”
- Making sure actions support priorities: all the authorities we visited take at least some direct action they would describe as contributing to sustainable development. Examples include improving the energy efficiency of buildings, improved access to public services via the internet, and integrated sustainable development reviews of major developments.
Working through ‘influence’
Almost all the authorities we visited see their ability to influence others as an increasingly important factor in their success. The typical view is that the services and resources needed to deliver on key priorities are rarely entirely under the control of the local authority. To be successful they must learn to influence other service providers:
- Developing relationships: all the authorities we visited found this important and useful. However we found some variation in the depth of these relationships. For example some authorities see their partnerships mainly as a way of sharing information and to align action plans to avoid duplication. Others were more committed, in some cases showing a willingness to ‘bend’ spending plans so that more can be achieved through genuine partnership.
- Developing the skills needed to work through influence: although many authorities have individuals who are highly skilled at working through influence there is often no realisation that these are lacking elsewhere in the organisation. That is why so often in the same authority we saw some projects work well whilst others floundered. In one authority the chief executive claimed that the authority was very successful at partnership working - other members of the senior team pointed out that many partnerships the authority had developed were faltering. It emerged that the chief executive had a talent for running partnerships that was in short supply elsewhere in the organisation.
- Breaking down professional boundaries: one specific point made by several authorities was the need for professionals to relinquish control. As one chief executive put it, “We need to learn to listen rather than tell – particularly the professionals.” Some authorities put an emphasis on shifting the role of professionals from setting the agenda and providing expert solutions to responding to an agenda set by the community.
Conclusions
Although the practices discussed above represent an ambitious model they are an achievable goal for any authority. Any chief executive who is serious about mainstreaming sustainable development might find it useful to discuss these five questions with her or his senior team:
1. How do we provide the leadership required to balance short term and long term, local and global issues?
2. Do we understand the collective aspirations of our community and is that what we are helping to deliver?
3. What mechanisms do we have for cutting across tribal boundaries both within and outside the authority?
4. Have we done what we can to build sustainable development into our culture and make our actions support the community’s priorities?
5. What skills and resources do we need to increase our capacity to influence others in delivering the community’s priorities?
If you would like support in building your organisational capacity in driving sustainability forward, please contact one of our team.
On behalf of the SustainUs and AtKisson Teams I wish everyone a very happy, and safe Christmas and hope that 2005 is an even more sustainable year than 2004.
Regards,
Michael Lunn
