Green Buckeye

One of the many hats I wear is that of an organization development (OD) and process consultant. This week I'm attending a conference of OD people with a deep interest in "whole system change" methods. These are participative methodologies that typically aim to get lots of organizational or community stakeholders into conversations with each other on a topic that is intended to shift the organization or community in a new desired direction. (The shorthand used to describe this is "getting the whole system in the room.")

While the conference's primary focus is on the methods themselves, there are strong secondary currents emerging around the questions of "how can we best contribute our process knowledge and skills to issues that matter" and "what issues matter most?"

It might interest you to learn that global climate change has been identified many times throughout the conference as one of the issues that matter most. Today seven conference attendees from four continents (Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America) convened a special breakout session to share sustainability success stories from their communities and ideas for spreading those stories.

It's always exciting to discover people who want to share their talents to contribute to the greater good. What are people in your field doing about climate change concerns? I'd love to hear about it!

(Photo by Nancy White)

Labels: climate change, inspiration