October 2021 Inspiring Climate Action by Phil Driver

Public sector infrastructure and services generally do not have a major impact on mitigating or adapting to climate change or sustainability (exceptions exist).

A cycleway or a public bus service does not mitigate or adapt to climate change, in fact their construction often accelerates climate change. It is us riding our bikes on the cycleway or using the bus service instead of using our cars that mitigates climate change. A cycleway being used for recreational purposes is not contributing to climate mitigation unless the riders would otherwise be using their cars for recreation.

This presentation will use ‘PRUB-Logic’ to demonstrate that any actions project managers take to address climate change and sustainability must not just enable and empower users but also inspire us and our communities to change our behaviours. This means that project managers need to consider how the results of their projects will better inspire changed user behaviours.

Phil is a scientist, engineer, strategist and author of two books which describe the OpenStrategies system and its application in developing and validating large scale strategies. Phil recognises that communities change what they do either through compulsion or inspiration.

As project managers we generally do not have the option of compulsion in our toolkits so if we are going to influence large-scale community behaviours, we need to inspire people, especially with topics as challenging as climate mitigation and adaptation.

Phil’s approach downplays concepts like ‘compel’ and ‘manage’ and replaces them with the concepts of ‘inspire, enable, empower and facilitate’.

Phil assists communities to develop and validate compelling strategies as well as providing strategy courses in NZ, the UK and Germany.