Atelier WeekNotes w/c 22 & 29 Jan 2024 (oops)
Market research offered. Needing to fit into funder categories. Using project & intention trackers. Climate Majority Project. Let down by Labour, already? SoSS. UCL Module.
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (a studio for initiatives at the frontier of generating a better future). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
Lots of people have been complaining about January being too long. For me it was too short -- not least because some unavoidable deadlines clashed with some family situations (being a single parent widower of teenagers is exactly as much fun as you'd think). Anyway, the good news is that this latest WeekNotes is a bumper edition, more like a FortnightNote.
This week fortnight covers:
PRIORITIES
1.Offering-challenge-resourcing fit
Market research offered
Needing to fit into funder categories
2. Organising for abundance
Using project & intention trackers.
0/DETECTING
One to watch: Climate Majority Project
Let down by Labour, already? Strong disappointment-to-rage, but have we lost the capacity to imagine better?
IN THE ATELIER
SoSS / Transformative Pathways: pilot started.
UCL Module. Two more lecture highlights: an innovation typology; and, business responses to sustainability crises.
How can the Atelier of What's Next be of service to you, and your purposes? We'd love to hear from you. Perhaps you have a challenge or idea to put in the studio. Maybe one of our existing topics appeals to you. What if you love to make new things happen by being part of the studio? Or if you have feedback or comments that would improve this deck. Either click the button below or email davidbent@atelierwhatsnext.org.
Priorities
1.Offering-challenge-resourcing fit
Market research offered
A friend of a friend, who worked at a Big Management Consultancy before escaping into the development / philanthropy world, has offered to do some market research in their spare time. The research question:
Who else thinks they are doing what the Atelier is doing? (Roughly: venture, and initiative, building for sustainability; strategy advice for systemic change.) Put another way, what does the Atelier need to differentiate itself from? How should the Atelier differentiate from the ‘average’ strategy process?
Who funds those 'competitors'? Who has the intent and capacity to invest in this?
What language is being used?
I am very, very grateful for the offer, partly because a second person is less likely to be biased by motivated reasoning. Of course, I know this kind of 'pro bono' work can easily slip down the priorities. But the person in question has said that I should chase them, and given a timeline to do so.
Even before any findings come in, I already have a nugget of insight. The concept of the Atelier of What's Next' is sufficiently intriguing that a highly expert, and very busy, person is willing to offer their time to improve it.
On the substance, the act of talking the research brief brought some things to the surface. For instance, unlike a lot of systems change institutions, the Atelier is not focused on one specific domain. It does not own, say, public health or food security. Instead, we have an assumption that there are many ongoing processes of change happening, especially in key topics which are critical to a thriving future and which are currently stuck.
Part of the Atelier’s hypothesis (which may turn out to be completely wrong) is:
It can offer a process-led capability which will help those at the frontiers of those change processes.
As the disruption and challenges ratchet up, people who have resources and intentions on key topics will look for new ways to drive change forward.
WHAT NEXT
Waiting, and then chasing the person for their findings (/progress) in mid-March.
Needing to fit into funder categories
A different kind of nugget came from interviewing Molly Webb, founder of Energy Unlocked, an energy market accelerator, for the Innovating for Sustainability series (interviews to get the dirt under the fingernails of sustainability innovation practitioners).
In the interview (to be released in the coming weeks), Molly talks about one lesson of the last few years: you must fit into funders' pre-existing categories, if you want them to fund you. Energy Unlocked doesn't sit cleanly in a box the funder understand. And that has been a problem, one she is addressing now.
Now, the Atelier also doesn't fit neatly into existing categories. So, I imagine this will be a challenge for us too. One solution might be to have sub-parts which do cleanly fit into existing boxes: a venture builder function, a strategy consulting arm, and so on. Then we can say "you can understand (and fund) this one bit; we know how the rest fits together but you don't need to worry about that."
WHAT NEXT
Consider explaining the Atelier of What's Next in terms of different sub-parts, to better match with what funders (and others) already understand.
2. Organising for abundance
Using initiative and intention trackers
In January I set up two trackers, one for the initiatives in the Atelier, and another for the 2024 objectives of the Atelier. Seeing as it was the end of January, I have updated those trackers, creating new actions for myself.
I haven't figured out a clear and colourful way to share them. So, I won't put the trackers into this WeekNote FortnightNote (I hope to in the future). My reflection is that, although cumbersome, having the trackers has helped me to keep in mind more of the strands of work across the Atelier.
As such, having checklists expands the capacity fo the system (as argued by the Checklist Manifesto).
WHAT NEXT
Keep using (and updating) the trackers.
Find a way to put them into the WeekNotes which shares them with colour.
0/DETECTING
One to watch: Climate Majority Project
I interviewed Rupert Read about the Climate Majority Project (CMP) for the Powerful Times podcast. I was already part-way through the book, which is excellent. Speaking to Rupert convinced me that this is an important intervention for us all to be aware of.
It's purpose: “support a climate-concerned majority of citizens to respond in meaningful, relevant ways to the climate and ecological emergency, catalysing a widespread shift, already underway, towards mainstream climate action and, ultimately, system change”.
So, getting out of the radical bubble to the majority. But still keeping the urgency and depth of ambition. That will be a tough combination to maintain (the acceptance of the urgency and depth of ambition is important in separating the radical bubble from the majority).
Four strands of work:
1. Narrative Shift toward truthfulness (a la Greta Thunberg's call for honesty).
2. Creating cultures of awareness and resilience (so people equipped to cope with climate anxiety).
3. Tangible Pragmatic Action. People directing themselves, mostly at work or in their local communities. CMP in particular believes that work on local adaptation is important, both for the physical security and for building people's engagement with all 4 strands.
4. Building Shared Understanding, so that all can see their contribution as part of a wider effort.
CMP is and intends to remain small itself. So, it has an incubator of various projects, all of which trying to reach mainstream audiences. One focus this year: getting businesses to campaign for more regulation.
CMP is trying to do something important and hard, so, of course, is not perfect. (Rupert is trying hard to engage beyond his normal bubble, including appearing on GB News with Nigel Farage. And he still comes across as a philosophy professor and former Green Councillor.) But an exciting prospect, and brave of him to leave a steady job and the status of the radical bubble.
WHAT NEXT
Release the Powerful Times interviewee as soon as I can.
Return to CMP afterwards, what can I do to help?
Let down by Labour, already?
News gradually (and confusingly) broke over the last few weeks that Labour was walking back from the investment in green infrastructure and industrial policy. The Guardian reported Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, as saying that, while the party would like to spent £28bn a year on green investment, it will not be bound by an “arbitrary” number.
I have two, contradictory reactions to this: 1.strong disappointment (to rage) but…2. have we lost the capacity to imagine better?
1.Strong disappointment-to-rage, but...
On a straight read, this is a poor decision that prefigures an administration that will be bullied into failure by the right wing press.
UK is on a path of unmanaged decline for lots of reasons, most recently the Tory focus on the rentier class (returns from existing assets) over innovation (returns from new assets). (Put another way, when it comes to the interests of pensioners who’ve paid off their mortgage and other members of the ownership class, this is a very successful government.) As Will Davies says: “Britain’s capitalist class has effectively given up on the future.”
The only route out I can see:
A) Government borrowing to invest in public infrastructure and services plus industrial strategy, especially for Net Zero mitigation and adaptation/ wider resilience, all to crowd-in business investment despite the headwinds of Brexit and decades of low productivity growth.
B) Using the honeymoon just after the election to lay out a narrative frame that dominates the next decade of politics, namely that long-term security for all comes from investing now (same strategy as Osborne-Cameron did with austerity in 2010, opposite message).
This decision on £28b implies Starmer-Reeves have none of the intellectual heft, the narrative campaigning skill, nor political courage to take on incumbent power. (Starmer has had backbone facing down the Corbynite left.) All Labour governments get less radical in power do to ‘events’ plus a deeply biased media landscape. They are starting to this process while in opposition. An extremely bad sign.
I fear they will not give the economy a short-term boost, which means they open the door to whichever Far Right-adjacent, climate-denying culture warrior is Tory leader, perhaps voted out by an embittered, cynical and desperate electorate after just one term.
Martin Wolf in the FT was more measured but reached a similar conclusion (£):
"If [Labour] keeps to its cautious approach it risks presiding over another period of stagnation. if it shifts to radicalism [only after the election], it will be rightly accuse of acting without a mandate. Either way the cynicism of the public is likely to grow. At worst, posturing will go on substituting for radical policy, leading to a prolonged stagnation and declining public confidence."
So, livid doesn’t begin to cover how I feel about it.
2. ...have we lost the capacity to imagine better?
At the same time, it is worth looking back in history to understand how our ability to imagine the future can be conditioned by our experiences in the present. On Twitter, ‘think tank guru’ Sam Freedman (
) made the point that a month before the 1997 landslide the Times was saying there was little evidence of positive enthusiasm for Labour, and criticising Blair’s safety-first campaign.In response, academic Alexander Clarkson argued "much of the UK public as well as political, media and civil service elites had become so used to Tory dominance that they lost the capacity to imagine what life under Labour government could be like", adding that what defines 1978, 1996 and 2023 in UK domestic politics is "a sense of stasis with people struggling to imagine impending alternative political paradigms that then eventually become dominant after an election".
My build on all was that I’ve been saying to my friends:
Yes, I too am struggling to be inspired by the opposition leader in this moment.
But that might tell us more about how we are in this moment, rather than the opposition leader.
So, my livid reaction might…tell us more about how I am in this moment, rather than about Labour and how they will govern.
That is not to give Starmer-Reeves a free pass to make stupid mistakes. But it is to acknowledge that there is a limit to my quality of judgement, because I am conditioned by the current circumstances (a government of posturing incompetence and internal strife).
Plus I can see Britain undeveloping before our eyes (to use a phrase coined in two blog posts by Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute in 2019 - Part I and Part II).
IN THE ATELIER
SoSS / Transformative Pathways
Concept. Use the horizon-scanning and sense-making techniques being developed on the State of Sustainable Shipping for similar situations. All posts with this project here.
Latest. Step: 4/DEVELOPING.
Now the funding for a pilot phase has been announced (more here), quite a lot of the last few weeks have been taken up making the pilot phase happen. In the next few WeekNotes I will share more details.
Entered for ‘Anticipation 2024’
I entered a paper on SoSS into one of the leading futures conference, Anticipation, which this year is in Lancaster. The abstract:
The leading shipping companies know that the industry has significant negative impacts, not least on climate, while also being vital to a global economy. They know that the industry must change, but there are structural and institutional barriers. One way to address those impediments is through roadmapping.
This paper will describe an attempt, called ‘The State of Sustainable Shipping’ (or ‘SoSS’), by The Sustainable Shipping Initiative, an NGO with members who are leading companies in the industry, working with the author. We are piloting a method which aims to accelerate change on specific sustainability issues within the maritime sector, by tracking and challenging the industry’s progress in ways that stimulate action.
As such, the SoSS project is using futures methods as a vehicle for sense-making across the industry, and as an informal part of maritime governance. The paper will describe our efforts to make SoSS act as an intervention for social justice, through its process and content, but also the challenges of doing so, especially given the reliance on incumbents.
The method itself draws on, amongst others: the STEPS Centre’s Transformative Pathways; the Multi-Level Perspective of sectoral change; technology roadmapping; the scalable, participative ethnography of Cynefin’s Sense-Maker approach; and a pre-existing roadmap to sustainable shipping.
The paper will draw out lessons from the experience on using anticipation in a real world context, including: an (early) evidence of influencing investment decisions; power dynamics and their challenges; any effects of pre-existing frames about the future, whether of the convenors (SSI and the author) or the participants; plus, what went wrong and how to adjust going forward.
The long-term intentions are: the SoSS is an on-going feature of maritime governance; and, the method is applied by others in their own settings.
WHAT NEXT
Keep developing the pilot.
Fingers crossed on Anticipation. (I'll hear about whether the paper is accepted later in the year; the conference is in September.)
Assembly a contact group of advisors, especially from the futures community.
Share more about it next time.
UCL Module
I am doing a weekly key insight from the Masters module I co-teach on 'Innovation and Sustainability in Business', collected under this heading. Since the last WeekNotes there have been two:
Situating the module's perspective -- part 2
A working definition of sustainable business.
A working definition of innovation.
Highlight: Every approach to ‘sustainable business’ is innovation, at some level (which goes into some length on our innovation typology).
For completeness:
Beneath the jargon, innovation and sustainability in business is highly political.
We will see pockets generating a better future and cynical attempts to defend a failing status quo.
1. Business responses to sustainability crises -- here
The recent history of ‘sustainable business’.
Relating to the academic literature.
Highlight: Stakeholder Capitalism, which goes into greater depth on:
What are we contrasting with?
Background of stakeholder capitalism.
The difference with shareholder capitalism.
Some challenges of putting stakeholder capitalism into practice.
Stories from the UK context.
Cooperatives as a version of stakeholder capitalism.
Now in use with for-purpose business approaches.
WHAT NEXT
Nine (!) more lectures to write highlights for.
Use to pitch the book idea. (Suggestions of publishers gratefully received.)