Want An Invite To The Party?

I recently met up with someone I worked on a project with over 10 years ago. It was a sustainability project and at the time we faced significant opposition to the now obvious idea of delivering a sustainable event. Although we laughed about facing that opposition we also spoke about how it was personally frustrating to hear people who had once been an obstacle to change suddenly speak out in support of it. It is a complicated range of emotions because the alternative to the change challengers becoming the change champions is that the change challengers keep challenging and change never happens and that is not the solution for our planet!

A few years ago I found myself venting about the same thing to another friend and explained it to her as “when climate change is happening at an extreme level I will be the one throwing a huge ‘ I told you so party’.”

I’m not proud to admit that I keep a mental list of who is on my invite list for that party. Most recently I have been taking time to consider how I rethink this ‘ party’. Its not a win win situation for me, the planet or my party guests! My rethinking requires something I think alot of long time sustainability professionals will be coming to terms with - a grace and ease in people being able to change their minds. In other words a shift away from the ‘I’m right, you are wrong’ or ‘I win, you don’t’ common social frameworks and an acceptance that those change challengers could change their minds at any point and at some time there will only be change champions.

In practical terms I am noticing how my conversations now use language about a shared future we have and terms like ‘consider the business case’ or ‘ take the opportunity to show leadership’ are becoming terms of the past. The world has changed over the last ten years, that is a good thing and no one likes a righteous person so I’m canceling my ‘I told you so party’.