Clearly, we don’t have long to bring down greenhouse carbon dioxide emissions very markedly before we hit devastating levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – with profound, effectively irreversible, effects upon our climate. Often, when people ask “Do we have time to shift values?”, they are posing the question in the context of the urgency of addressing climate change. In this context, we need to effect major changes in how our economies are run, and we need to effect them very soon.

In formulating a response to the challenge posed by climate change, it is important to hold in mind that these reductions in greenhouse gas emissions need to be (i) sufficiently ambitious; (ii) made sufficiently soon; (iii) sufficiently durable to be maintained for a long time to come.

Implicit in the question “Do we have time to shift values?” is the belief that some alternative strategy could perhaps provide the requisite ambition and durability, and deliver these emissions reductions in a short time-frame. Also implicit is the suspicion that, while the strategy of ‘shifting values’ may be sufficiently ambitious and dependable, it is likely to take a long time. Too long.

This blog, then, provides some responses to this important question.

Does Common Cause advocate shifting values?

Recall that values are important at two different levels. Firstly, in terms of which values are ‘engaged’ at any particular point in time. It seems that almost everyone holds intrinsic values at some level. There is also evidence that the majority of people hold intrinsic values to be more important than extrinsic values. This understanding, which is consistent with the evidence from social psychology, challenges the more simplistic perspective that – whatever the subtleties – people can basically be grouped into clear categories according to their dominant values in a way that predicts their behaviours and attitudes. This may not be the perspective that social marketers who use values surveys to segment audiences intend to create. But this view is often implicit in what they do, and it creates conceptual barriers to the more nuanced understanding shared by most social psychologists.

So at one level, the approach that we advocate with Common Cause is not about shifting values so much as engaging intrinsic values – values that are already there in almost everyone. At this level, then, it is not a question about whether we have enough time. Intrinsic values are there to be engaged now. For more evidence that this is the case, see our recent report, Communicating bigger-than-self problems to extrinsically-oriented audiences. You can download it here.

At another level, of course, we do look forward to a future where space is opened up so that intrinsic values can be more readily expressed at a cultural level. If this happens, it will be as the inevitable result of the repeated engagement of intrinsic values in the here and now, and the careful design of public policies, social institutions and business practices to make it easier to express intrinsic values and to tackle factors which currently promote extrinsic values.

Does appealing to intrinsic values imply trade-offs?

The second assumption implicit in the “Do we have time?” question is that there is a trade-off involved in appealing to intrinsic values: that somehow appealing to intrinsic values in order to motivate pro-environmental concern is likely to be counterproductive. This leads to the conviction that we are faced with a choice between a long hard slog to change values – with no guarantee that we’ll ‘get there’ in the end – and settling for easier, smaller wins.

We don’t see things this way. We have presented a lot of evidence that intrinsic values may be quite the best way of motivating pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour. We have presented evidence, too, that these values can be engaged among audiences who are relatively more oriented towards extrinsic values. We also know that appeals to intrinsic values are less likely to lead to collateral damage (where people adopt a specific pro-environmental attitude or behaviour in one sphere, only to be more likely to adopt an anti-environmental attitude or behaviour in another – maybe many others). So intrinsic values may well be the most effective way of motivating pro-environmental change in the here-and-now.

We need durable and ambitious change

It is not enough that we achieve emissions reductions soon. We also need to achieve them at a very ambitious level, and in a durable way – year-in, year-out, for a very long time to come. Most seasoned environmentalists are only too aware that, firstly, even where there is political will for change, the scale of change achieved is woefully inadequate. They are also aware that even those policy changes that are made can prove to be all-too-easily reversed when, as a result of an economic downturn, or a change of government, or some political crisis, hard-won environmental provisions are unpicked.

Ambitious change – for example, change that pushes beyond the short-term business case for sustainable development – will be premised upon intrinsic values. Durable change will be premised on strengthening public consciousness of the imperative to care for future generations, or the world’s poor, or other species. It cannot be premised upon some proxy for these values.

Consider, for example, the dangers of appealing to energy security in order to promote investment in renewables. This imperative is just as likely to be pressed into service to justify new investment in coal, oil shales, or deep-water oil. But more than this, appealing to security values may well undermine opposing set of values that underpin people’s openness to change: something that appears crucial for any society willing to accept a rapid low-carbon transition.

Similarly, consider citizens who have been conditioned to think of short-term economic growth as being more important than long-term environmental sustainability. This is a perspective that is likely to be promoted by subjugating environmental need to economic needs. Such subjugation is implicit in premising action to address climate change upon ‘green growth’ or ‘the business case for sustainable development’ or ‘competitiveness in new environmental sectors’. Citizens who have been conditioned to think in this way are surely less likely to express outrage when environmental regulations are torn up in the pursuit of greater economic competitiveness.

The most durable environmental changes will be built upon a set of values consistent with environmental concern. They will be motivated by intrinsic values.

What sort of future do we want?

Happily, these intrinsic values are also associated with stronger friendships and communities, and higher levels of wellbeing. Let’s set aside, for a moment, the question of what level of climate change we can avert, and what level we must now adapt to as inevitable. If our responses to all social and environmental challenges, and the way we adapt to living with them, are premised upon an appeal to our intrinsic values, then it seems that these responses will be more humane, our communities stronger, and our individual lives more fulfilled.

Conclusion

Overall, then, we reject the assumptions underlying the question: ‘Do we have time to shift values?’ On the contrary, we don’t have time not to appeal to people’s intrinsic values. We must immediately begin the process of building an ambitious response to environmental challenges, premising this response on grounds that are dependable for the long-term.

Do we have time to shift values? is a post from: Common Cause

As part of that, we have put together an action learning process, which will take campaigners through a five month learning and innovation process.

Who is this for: Campaigners from UK-based medium/large NGOs who interact with the public and/or partner organisations. Each campaigner will need a colleague from their organisation to take part in the process – so that we have 20 campaigners from 10 NGOs. You’ll need to be willing to try new things inside your organisation and to take some risks. If you feel stuck in your work but believe in what’s possible – then this is for you.

When is it happening: Full days on 23rd February, 9-11th March, 12th April, 10th May, 14th June, 12th July. We’ll happily approach your NGO leadership with you to negotiate time to take part.

What is the cost: None, though we will be asking you to host trainings at your organisation (if there is room).

How many hours per week does it need: 2-4 hours a week for reading, sharing insights with your learning partner, and documenting the process.

Download the pdf with full details and details here.

If you’d like to take part or have any questions – please contact me (Casper ter Kuile).

caspertk@gmail.com

07912 491812

Campaigners – Join Our Action Learning Process is a post from: Common Cause

Since the publication of Common Cause, campaigners have been asking themselves, ‘what does this mean for us and our work?’.

This month, twenty seven campaigners got together at Development House to hear more about some of the case studies we’ve profiled,  to build community, and start to think about what we’d like to be doing differently to align our campaigning with a values-based approach.

We heard from Morgan and his work with Waste Watch and from Guy and his work on advertising, then broke into smaller groups to dive into:

• What do we campaign on? Can we choose more systemic targets?
• How do we campaign? Is the way in which we’re working us preventing us from shifting power more successfully?
• Values and Frames theory and research – an in-depth conversation.

What did we learn?

• Applying systems-thinking can help us plan campaign strategy. (Thinking In Systems is a great first read.)
• Community development work has a lot to teach us when we’re thinking about building a community of activists or a network of supporters. Campaigning from a distance doesn’t allow us to build relationships well.
• The complexity of neuroscience – ‘the brain is mental!’

Questions that we raised

• Is it possible to work with a values-approach online?
• How can we break out of our comfort zones/issue bubbles?
• What would a campaign plan look like when using a values approach?

We’d love to have you join us next month – we’re meeting again at 6.30pm on Wednesday 15th February in London. Other groups are also starting up in Oxford and Bristol – get in touch if you’d like to be involved – caspertk@gmail.com.

Thanks to Tim and Morgan for hosting us, and Laurie for the fantastic home-made curry!

Tasty things to nibble on

Campaigning With Common Cause – What Did We Learn? is a post from: Common Cause

But, of course, people aren’t all the same, and it may be that there are some people who are simply impervious to communications which appeal to intrinsic values. We’ve argued that this is unlikely, because we all express all these values at different times – life, afterall, is a ‘dance around the values circle’!

But the original group of people who supported the Common Cause report – from COIN, CPRE, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and WWF – wanted to test this further. So we enlisted the help of some psychologists (at Cardiff University, and Knox College, Illinois) and linguists (at Lancaster University).

We have published the results of this research today. This report, Communicating bigger-than-self-problems to extrinsically-oriented audiences, demonstrates that a simple process of asking people for whom extrinsic values are of particular significance to reflect on the importance that they attach to intrinsic values can lead to marked changes in the way that they subsequently talk about bigger-than-self problems. For example, once their intrinsic values are engaged in this way, people who are normally more extrinsically-oriented are more likely to voice concerns about equality and justice, the moral imperative to address bigger-than-self problems, or to express a feeling of responsibility to others. Conversely, they are less likely to invoke self-interest or financial concerns.

Of course, none of this is to suggest that we can afford to be indifferent to variations between audiences. There are many ways in which different approaches might be used to engage different audiences on intrinsic values. But it does provide further evidence that it is wrong to imagine that people for whom extrinsic values are particularly important can only be engaged through communications focused on self-interest, wealth or social-status.

Communicating bigger-than-self problems to extrinsically-oriented audiences

Chilton, P., Crompton, T., Kasser, T., Maio, G. & Nolan, A. | January 25, 2012

A report summarizing the results of an interdisciplinary research project on expressions of social and environmental concern by people who attach greater than average importance to values of popularity, preserving public image, or wealth. This experiment was conducted jointly by researchers in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University and the Department of Linguistics at Lancaster University. It works with people selected from a large pool of citizens from the Cardiff area who attach higher-than-average importance to extrinsic values, and explores the effects of priming them with intrinsic values before interviewing them about climate change, loss of the British countryside, child mortality in developing countries, and domestic child poverty.

1.0 MB | 388 Downloads

What about people for whom extrinsic values are particularly important? is a post from: Common Cause

If you’d like to discuss these stories, or find out more about them, come along to the Campaigning with Common Cause get-together every second Wednesday of the month.

“How do we actually know what’s working?”

Waste Watch inspires and helps people to live more whilst wasting less.  Set up 24 years ago, it put recycling on the national agenda and led the country towards today’s improved waste policies. With 40 staff, it recently merged with Keep Britain Tidy. The team at Waste Watch have put values-thinking into the heart of the work they do, moving the idea of sustainability from windmills and recycling to a wider question of collective wellbeing and social justice. The video below gives a good sense of how they work with schools, businesses and communities.

I spoke to Tim Burns, Head of Waste Watch, and Morgan Phillips, who works on the Our Common Place project, about how redefining their work has allowed them to break free from a constraining focus, and how measuring broader impacts has improved the way they work.

What did they set out to do differently?

The team used to spend a lot of time making interventions, delivering a project and then walking away. Short-term funding projects meant that they’d run a campaign to share best practice, monitor the outputs and immediate environmental impacts without getting a good idea of what was really changing at a deeper level within the community.

Now, Waste Watch is measuring outcomes, rather than just outputs. This means monitoring the impact on the beneficiaries engaged in their projects as well as the wider community by looking at the;

• Confidence and skills of the participants
• Sense of connection between volunteers and their community
• What cross-barrier relationships have been built

Practically speaking, by collecting this data, Waste Watch now has an evidence base from which to apply for new sources of funding. They’re connecting the dots between the environment, mental health and community development – and widening their scope to have maximum impact.

What does that look like in practice?

The Our Common Place project is bringing this values-thinking into the heart of Waste Watch’s work. Engaging with residents living in large blocks of flats across 23 communities in London, Morgan and his team are following the enthusiasm of the residents in deciding what projects they work on. In one case, sewing classes have been set up, in another, a ‘help your neighbour recycle’ scheme. One of the most surprising projects is working with a youth club to look at how sustainability flows through everyday life, in one session young people analysed their favourite song lyrics to see what values they espouse. Morgan explains,

“We found that the best way to start talking about what’s important to people, their values, is to start where people’s interests lie. We’re trying to allow for self-direction in how we work with local communities.”

Nobody in the sector has cracked how to create successful recycling schemes in deprived housing estates, so there is a need for innovative approaches. Morgan will be sharing the results in the summer later this year. A key ingredient to the success so far has been working with local authority partners, in some cases leading workshops on the thinking that the Common Cause report puts forward.

What have they learned?

Leadership on this new approach has come from every corner of the organisation. They’ve found that in order to start to articulate values-thinking in their external work, the Waste Watch team had to first start to transform the way they work internally. This started with a much more inclusive approach to leadership where ideas and contributions came from everyone, as Tim explains,

“At Waste Watch now, everyone has been contributing to our new strategic direction, for example through our business plan or our approach towards change – and as a result there’s a much more inclusive culture. Its not just formally but informally too – there’s a lot of sharing lunchtimes, baking cakes for each other – we’re actually building a community within the office as well as within our projects based upon the values we all live and work by.”

What does this mean for us as change-makers?

There is much to be learnt from how Waste Watch are applying an understanding of values in their work. Other case studies have picked up on the important implications for the culture of an organisation, and this is clearly something to which Waste Watch are responding. What is most exciting perhaps, is how values-thinking is infusing their project work, and opening up possibilities for new alliances with different sectors and organisations.

Importantly, the team understands that intrinsic values are already important in the lives of their audience – the question is how to engage with them, not to tell people how to live. Discussions about ‘sustainability’ aren’t likely to be the best starting point.

Contact

Tim Burns

tim.burns@wastewatch.org.uk

020 7549 0300

Campaign Case Study: Waste Watch is a post from: Common Cause

The report can be downloaded here.

DECC report on ‘energy behaviour’ is a post from: Common Cause

Since the publication of Common Cause, campaigners like me have been asking themselves, ‘what does this mean for us and our work?’.

Last week, eighteen campaigners got together at the Bank of Ideas to share stories of learning, build a community, and start to think about what we’d like to be doing differently to align our campaigning with a values-based approach.

Campaigners sharing stories of learning

What did we learn?

• NGOs have an enormous role to play in supporting and legitimising movements that emerge – and cannot be orchestrated by NGOs.
• Looking back at how we each got involved in social change work helps us think about how we invite other people in. A focus on personal relationships, meaningful actions, and personal growth keeps us engaged and will encourage others to join.
• The current economic and environmental crises are opening space for us to talk about values and what kind of world we want to see.
• We can learn more from each other when we’re able to be honest about what isn’t working.

Questions that we raised

• How can NGOs start collaborating instead of competing?
• How are movements like Occupy shaping our values? (The BBC have asked the same question!)
• Is it possible to lobby and work from a values-approach?

Thanks to everyone who came – Samantha, Gavin, James, Nic, Matt, Farida, Coralie, Sanda, Laurence, James, Mareme, Guppi, Clifford, Roy, Anna, Katrien, Nicolas and Paul.

We’d love to have you join us – we’re meeting again at 6.30pm on Wednesday 11th January.

Campaigning With Common Cause – What Did We Learn? is a post from: Common Cause

The 56-page report is being launched to coincide with soul-searching in the aftermath of the Durban Climate Change Conference. It addresses the crucial question: how can governments work to create greater political space for proportional responses to environmental problems?

Supported by WWF-UK and Oxfam, the report argues that past and present political objectives have not succeeded in deepening public concern about climate change and poverty. Without such concern, technical policy interventions will never enjoy the public support and momentum that they need.

The report, Different Politics, Same Planet: Values for sustainable development beyond left and right, written by David Boyle, Tom Crompton, Martin Kirk and Guy Shrubsole, is highly critical of current approaches to environmental policy, saying that these often crowded out ordinary people.

It calls for a radically different approach to policy making in the future, one that taps into the cultural values of people and their communities in determining responses to today’s profound social, humanitarian and environmental challenges.

Writing in the Foreword, Phillip Blond argues: “The left has vacated the space that previously valued the inherent beauty and intrinsic value of the natural order, prioritising instead extrinsic values such as material wealth or a utilitarian calculus of leisure and utility.

“The right similarly appealed to extrinsic values through its adoption of market-driven strategies. The natural became a commodity that was to be addressed in a purely instrumentalist manner, with some advocating its protection not in terms of inherent worth or transcendent value, but on purely economic grounds.”

The report dismisses criticisms that such values lack support and are the pursuit of a small minority.  Rather, it points to evidence from psychology that these values are there in all of us – if politicians only found the courage to appeal to them.

Martin Kirk, Head of UK Campaigns at Oxfam, says: “The environment and development movements are energised by a concern for others, which psychologists have shown to be virtually universal. And yet, too often, governments have run scared of speaking to these values, preferring to ‘sell’ concern for the environment and poverty on the grounds of narrow self-interest. This is profoundly counterproductive.”

David Norman, Director of Campaigns at WWF-UK, says: “Public support for government action on the environment is built upon much the same values that underpin public concern for the NHS or universal education. We must begin to situate people’s natural concern for the environment on a bigger political canvas.”

The report seeks to shift the centre of gravity of political debate. It calls for a shift in the way that politicians frame international development and environment policy, advocating that they appeal to – and help strengthen – people’s inherent sense of what is right for future generations and the global poor.

Talks on carbon emissions not enough: governments must lead a shift in values, says new report is a post from: Common Cause

If you’d like to discuss these stories, or find out more about them, come along to the Campaigning with Common Cause get-together every second Wednesday of the month.

“We’re not tied to what it looks like, we’re tied to what works.”

The Otesha Project UK mobilises young people to create social and environmental change through their everyday lives. They run cycle tours every summer – helping young people to live low-impact lives and inspire others using workshops and theatre in schools, youth clubs and communities. They also incubate youth-led Change Projects and anchor the East London Green Jobs Alliance.

Otesha has five permanent staff, and three interns who are paid a London living wage.

I spoke to Founder and Project Director Liz McDowell and Communications and Fundraising Director Gavin McGregor about their transition to a flat, shared-responsibility structure.

What did they set out to do differently?

Otesha staff have used consensus decision-making for a number of years, and there is a strong culture of facilitation and anti-oppression work. On paper, however, the charity had a CEO and a clear hierarchy. Because of this, it wasn’t always easy to work truly alongside each other; the CEO was responsible for staff appraisals, for example.

The team decided they wanted to move to a flat structure to bring consensus decision-making and shared responsibility to the core of how Otesha works. This would also be reflected in team wages, meaning a flat salary for the whole team.

They recognise that this is an experiment. They know that they probably won’t get it right the first time and are not tied to what it looks like, but are instead tied to what works. “This feels like it’s the way it should be run” explained Liz.

Why move to a flat structure?

• Share the workload, and thus responsibility: Particularly in the early start-up phase, the workload fell disproportionately on Liz. This additional workload then also meant her voice carried more weight in communal decisions. Now, tasks such as HR, office management, and finance are distributed among the permanent staff, and rotate every two years so that everyone understands and can manage each of the administrative tasks.

• Organisational resilience: As Liz, the founder, is moving back to her native Canada within the next twelve months, there was a clear need for organisational sustainability. From now on, new staff members are explicitly requested to stay for at least four years to ensure deep knowledge transfer.

• Reflect their values in practice: As a youth-led education organisation, it was important to give interns more responsibility in the team – they are now part of the consensus decision-making process. Moreover, Otesha uses consensus when they lead trainings and on their cycle tours, so using it as a core team reflected how they trained other groups to work.

• Focus on impact rather than growth: There is enormous pressure for new enterprises to scale up quickly, with a burst of new employees as fast as possible. A flat model would likely not work on a larger scale, though there are some examples. Otesha sees ‘reaching scale’ as having an impact on the wider sector, not as organisational growth. Their work on green jobs, collaborating with businesses, trade unions, educators and other NGOs is a good example of what this looks like in practice.

What did people think about it?

• Internally: The team was excited and ready for the transition. Trustees have been supportive, though some apprehension remains. What brought a lot of support from the board was the focus on organisational sustainability.

• Externally: There’s been a lot of interest from academics – a group of MBA students created the initial proposal for their new organisational structure, for example. Other social enterprises have questioned the model.
  

What surprised the team most?

For Liz, the transition felt like a huge weight off her shoulders, the job itself became much more enjoyable. Before the change, her leadership role could often become a lonely one, but the team feels much more like a community now. “Everyone is in everything together”.

Another surprise has been that this transition seems to be unique. “These are values that so many charities sign up to – to find out that we’re trailblazing is really surprising.”

What have they learned?

• Involve everyone from the beginning – especially the trustees. People care about what they help to create.
• This process doesn’t work well with freelancers joining for short amounts of time. A stable core team is fundamental.
• Have patience. This is a slow process, and if it is sped up unnaturally, it will fail.

Otesha has embedded its organisational values into the every-day decision making processes, meaning that a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility will endure beyond any individual staff members. By weaving together ways of working that encourage equality and friendship, Otesha is building a network where intrinsic values are prioritised.

What does this mean for us as change-makers?

If we want to work with values, it is clear that Common Cause has implications not just for what we do in the ‘outside world’, but also how we run our organisations internally. Organisational structures in the third sector – including management structures, decision-making processes, pay-structures and incentive schemes – will all have an impact on the values that third sector employees come to hold as important.

When we start to incorporate an awareness of cultural values into our activities, we will need to also begin to examine the values embedded in our own internal processes.

Contact

Gavin McGregor

info@otesha.org.uk

Campaign Case Study: The Otesha Project is a post from: Common Cause

In this animation, produced for The Center for a New American Dream, Tim discusses how America’s culture of consumerism undermines our well-being. When people buy into the ever-present marketing messages that “the good life” is “the goods life,” they not only use up Earth’s limited resources, but they are less happy and less inclined toward helping others. The animation both lays out the problems of excess materialism and points toward solutions that promise a healthier, more just, and more sustainable life.

The High Price of Materialism is a post from: Common Cause