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Sustainability action follows sustainability thinking.

Strategies and plans are important. They also change when they encounter reality. Your most powerful strategic tool in lies in the minds of your people.

Sustainability has become mainstream and technical courses abound on how to tick boxes and measure your carbon footprint. We don’t do that. We work with leaders and teams to catalyse a way of thinking that will help your organisation become more adaptive in the face of uncertainty.

How to do this effectively depends on your organisational culture.

Keynotes? Leadership interventions? Digital training? Team Talks? Train-the-Trainers? Certificates from leading universities? Action Learning? Retreats?

We do all of these and more. Let’s create a blend that works for you.

Simulate the System to Explore the Way Forward

“I found this systemic approach invaluable. Nicola supported me in my wish to hand over the organisation to new leadership with as little disruption as possible.”    Lisa Garson | Founder, Action Volunteers Africa

Have you ever used a coffee cup, a spoon and a saucer to explain something to a friend? You have simulated the system to make it simpler. We can use this approach to help individuals and teams understand the dynamics that prevent them from moving forward. It can also be used to test out options in a safe and controlled environment, before trying it in reality. Known as Organisational or Systemic Constellations, it is breakthrough method and highly valuable for organisations navigating sustainability transition. Here’s an overview of the process by John Whittington of Henley Business School.

Constellations draw on our innate ability to sense dynamics between things. They can be used to explore issues of leadership, strategy, structure and change, making tricky situations explicit and revealing options for moving forward. When working with organisational teams, we focus on roles and functions; when working with individuals, the session may include personal, family and ancestral relationships. Nicola uses them all the time in training and facilitation, but we can set up a specific constellation to address a particular problem or challenge. Find out more from Nicola.

When in doubt, try a dialogue!

“It’s been fantastic. I could carry on all night. ” Senior Analyst at Just Share, at the end of a full-day facilitated strategy review.

In traditional Africa, leadership was dialogic and collective; the shade of the Big Tree made conversation possible no matter how heated the subject. Dialogue still plays a critical role in sustainability integration.

Facilitating dialogue requires more than just getting people in a room together. We live in a culture that is mechanised, digitised and optimised for performance. This makes dialogue seem messy and inconvenient. This may be true but without genuine dialogue, transition will simply not be deep enough and your organisation will pay the price later.

Effective dialogues are highly designed but the outcome is not controlled. Getting this balance right requires experience. Using decades of experience, we have helped:

  • Shareholder activists Just Share review their strategy with their board and team
  • The Global Reporting Initiative facilitate leadership dialogues across the Middle East and North Africa
  • Shell and Deutsche Bank hear what their stakeholders actually think
  • Hundred of organisational teams see how their sustainability efforts help them to activate their humanity.

Our processes keep minds engaged through tacking tough questions, using embodied processes, exploring the underlying dynamics, and adopting a systemic view. We frequently use simulation to make this easy for all participants.

Contact Jonathon or Nicola to see how dialogue might help you find a way forward.

 

ANGLO AMERICAN, GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL, ISO, UNRISD, WOOLWORTHS
Kickass Keynotes and Creative Conversations

Talking leads to doing when inspiration and insight are delivered, simultaneously. Whatever the occasion, if sustainability perspectives are needed, we can help you make it work.

Nearly 20 years ago, Jonathon led the 2005 global multi-stakeholder negotiations for the development of the ISO 26000 Guidance on Social Responsibility. The process secured consensus – from more than 450 experts, 95 countries and 45 global organisations – on the principles and guidance for organisational governance, human rights, fair labour practices, the environment and consumer rights.

Jon and Nicola bring slightly different perspectives but are equally able to ‘shift the dial’ in any organisational context. Clients engage us because we speak our minds but back it up with meaningful data and real stories. We are cynical about the lack of progress over 50 years but still passionate about finding better ways forward. We have worked on the shopfloor. We appreciate that executives and leaders at every level face tough decisions in highly uncertain times. After nearly three decades of sustainability practice, we are starting to understand a bit about how organisations work.

  • Incite keynotes have inspired PPS, Woolies, Anglo American and the Green Building Convention.
  • We help design and facilitate events e.g. Global CSR retreats in Geneva and Bangkok for UNCTAD and GIZ
  • We facilitate expert discussions e.g. for Paris-based UNEP Industry and Environment Centre and UNRISD
  • We moderate at conferences e.g. for the Global Child Forum, Global Compact Network South Africa and CRES (Corporate Responsibility to Eliminate the Sale of Children).

Whether you have space for 10 minutes or 10 days, we can be there. Email Jonathon or Nicola to discuss what might be useful.

Basecamps, Retreats and Masterclasses

“Thank you for another outstanding workshop. You pulled together great minds to explore the issues we are working towards and provided useful tools with which to approach them.”
Vanessa Calvert | Partnerships Manager, Plan International Australia

Since 2005, across Africa, Oceania, the European Union and Middle East, Incite has been training companies and teams on ESG and Sustainability. It is part of what we do best and it brings us alive. Our learning work is always tailored, carefully designed for maximal impact and highly participative. They are invariably called “inspirational”.  We work across a wide spectrum: executives, practitioners, functional teams, stakeholders.

Jonathon and Nicola contribute extensively to Executive Education and MBA programmes, including UCT’s Graduate School of Business, Trinity College Dublin and University of Stellenbosch Business School, as well as  Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership where they are both Senior Associates.

Email Jonathon or Nicola to discuss possibilities.

DISTELL, IMPLATS, NAMDEB, BUSINESS SCHOOL DELEGATES
Patterning: An inclusive approach to focus the opportunity envelope

Imagine if all your employees could suddenly see patterns of sustainability potential. We can make this happen.

Win-win is a great idea. It is the only viable way to Accelerate your sustainability impact. At Incite we call it Profit-Enabled Impact. Circular Economy, Reverse Innovation, Base of the Pyramid, Creating Shared Value… there’s no shortage of theory. Over the years, and despite an embrace of Design Thinking, organisations have discovered that their win-win ideas are not as scalable as they’d hoped. Patterning was designed to help our clients get across this chasm.

To turn win-win possibilities into potential, we must find an effective focus. To do this, we open our eyes wide with a process that can include anybody in your organisation: from the CEO to the security guard. Ideator works on patterns and every human has an innate pattern-recognition capability. We see in patterns before we learn how to talk.

Patterning clarifies the opportunity space by revealing patterns in how you and your peers are already delivering Profit-Enabled Impact. Using Patterning:

  • Namdeb teams competed on finding Profit-Enabled Impact opportunities
  • Distell explored how scaling social impact could help them build better brands
  • Implats Rustenburg Operations used patterns to track their performance in Circular Economy
  • Spur Corporation focused their overarching sustainability framework on areas with potential for scale
  • Many delegates at University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), UCT’s Graduate School of Business and Trinity Business College, Dublin played Ideator games to explore the power of the profit formula.

Email Nicola to discuss how Patterning might support your integration process.