Inside reflections from TNS Academy - The Sustainability Spa
Skrivet av Josefin Nyström, mars 29, 2011 - 3:27am
Reflections and conclusions from the course Sustainability for Leaders (Level 1) that was hosted in Stockholm 22-23 of March 2011, written by our student participant Annika Norell Bergendahl (through cooperation with Sustainergies who is aiming to connecting students and business to work towards sustainability):
Eight individuals. Five nationalities. Eight professional backgrounds. This is a story of a group’s journey – a journey towards a new set of skills, a journey full of powerful and convincing arguments for why sustainability concerns each and every one of us and a journey giving seven new teammates to collaborate with when continuing the work after the course’s check-out session.
Each one of us had a reason to be here. Some of us came with a hope of changing the world one day; some of us came to gain confidence in how to convince a stubborn boss or organization that a strive towards sustainability will be the way to survive in the future; some of us came to learn about the framework in order to implement it in our own organization and some of us came to gain self-confidence on the strategic journey towards a sustainable society.
What we received was a flexible platform to work with in order to tackle questions related to sustainability built up by four conditions, an ABCD framework and a five level model. What we gained was a return of investment in terms of shared knowledge and experiences, new partners for collaboration and tools to use for packaging and communicating sustainability in a conceivable way. What we all could agree upon was that this course is one way to guide us in the right direction - towards a sustainable tomorrow.
So what did we actually do? What could be worth sharing to people who are thinking of joining a course with The Natural Step (TNS)?
The TNS framework was discovered in detail and each part was examined by a combination of theoretical and practical exercises. We got to meet different members of the TNS team, each one of them with much experience of how to work with the framework in practice and how to adapt it to different situations based on the goal of the whole process. This gave a set of ideas of why each organization could benefit from a work to fulfill the sustainability principles – a potential of bringing profit to the organization, a strong marketing tool, a way to attract the best employees, operation in line with ethical and moral values, a decrease in material throughput as well as a source of innovation.
Besides the experienced TNS staff, the group members’ contribution should not be neglected. By asking questions, challenging the speakers, sharing experiences from real life and contributing to fruitful discussions, the group itself was a necessary element in order to achieve a successful outcome of the course. Below are some interesting quotations raised along our journey:
“Despite our different backgrounds in the field, this feels like being in a SPA of sustainability” and “Great to see an example (example in course: PVC) of how the use of science can provide neutral grounds between different stakeholders’ interests”.
To summarize the two days course I assume all of us agree that we could spend two more days without being able to capture all dimensions of the TNS framework. But more importantly, through this course we have all continued the sustainability journey that we had started just by applying for the course. But with knowledge comes responsibility; as leaders towards a sustainable society, what each one of us needs define is: What is my role on the way towards, and as a citizen in, a sustainable society?
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