Update:

This week I didn’t talk to anyone. Life has been wild.

Reflection:
We’ve been talking a lot about how initiative helps people to figure out what matters the most to them. This week, I was juggling a series of urgent and important client meetings and also tried to finish a few things with my job. I ended up reaching out to nobody and talking to nobody about my project. What that tells me is that in the larger scope of things, it’s not the priority in my life, even if it is meaningful to me personally. It means that perhaps it is meaningful, when I have extra time and bandwidth. Soon, as I shift my career focus away from tech and into personal finance, I am curious how it will compare then. I thought about several people I could reach out to and still didn’t as I woke up every day at 5:30am and went to bed exhausted between 11pm and 1am. I’m still not quite out of the woods just yet, but we shall see. More on this later as I follow up on this.

Exercise 10: Ten People of High Value

I considered this week who the 10 people in the field were, but all I could come up with is the one person at Powder River Correctional Facility who has the authority to say yes or no to my proposal. Even so, I didn’t make the call, because I wasn’t sure if I should hit them up right out of the gate and I remember Josh saying we sort of had 3 weeks to do this assignment but not really. My question is: do I need to find another 9 people to call first, even if they feel forced/ less directly involved than the one person I know I need to call? Is the answer right in front of me if I just crack open my Initiative book?

For what it’s worth, here’s my first draft at the script I’ll likely use to pitch the project to the VIPs:

Survival School is a new kind of support group that provides mentorship, life skills training, and alternative pathways forward for the incarcerated population. Survival School incorporates principles of triple bottom line sustainability and uses the Spodek Method—-an exciting new methodology with a proven track record-—as fundamental to the curriculum. Meetings ideally occur weekly but the frequency can easily be adjusted. Structurally, Survival School works on a rolling entry system, where participants can drop in and drop out as they see fit and as is allowed by the facility. Survival School:
• Helps the Department of Corrections fulfill its promise of rehabilitation
•. Helps correctional facilities maintain order by keeping the incarcerated engaged
• Helps outside communities by maximizing the potential successful reentry potential of returning citizens and minimizing criminality
• Helps the incarcerated population feel ready for life on the outside and connected to resources beyond the carceral system
• Helps the environment by utilizing intrinsic motivation

A pilot program is currently being designed for Powder River Correctional Facility. Before I ask for actionable advice, do you have any clarifying questions so far?

Exerercise 10: People of High Value

I did not speak to 10 valuable people. I did talk to people, I visited communities where I thought I was going to talk to people but in which that didn’t work out as I had envisioned. Nonetheless, I had a number of contacts that were helpful and that moved me forward on my project.

I had been referred by a priest here to a mission church in a pueblo outside of Merida. I think it was his thought that I could do something to “help” them as they are a community of very poor people. I spoke with the madre who is the spiritual leader of the mission and she was open and inviting for my visit. However, there was no opportunity for me to talk to the people of the community during my visit and on the way back to Merida she shared with me that she had spoken with some of the leadership people in the congregation and that what she presented to them wasn’t of interest to them. I don’t know what she said, but I didn’t have the chance to speak with them myself.

I then visited the “home” church that is in my neighborhood the following Sunday. I was hoping to speak with people in that congregation after the service but the service was a special celebration that joined the Spanish speaking and English speaking congregations and was therefore very long and I was unable to stay for further discussion. I plan to go back to try again to speak with people who may be interested in joining me.

1. I met the incoming Secretary of Citizen Participation (a position with the incoming City Council) in a small group setting. I had the opportunity to present my idea and he was enthusiastic about my project and had the following to contribute:
1) Get Mexican people involved.
2) Follow up with his office for possible support in school projects that include children’s art and participation.
3) Inform him of events, send photos etc.

2. I spoke individually with the woman in this office who is responsible for migrant relations. Her background is cultural anthropology and she had the following suggestions:
1) Clarify what your goal is. Is the goal “just” picking up trash? Is there a longer term idea or underlying value? This helped (again) clarify my intention to build community and raise awareness of not creating trash in the first place.
2) Get concrete with what you’re doing so others can join you now.
3) She suggested that I collect along a path of the cities “Puntos Verdes” (recycling centers) and I could then immediately have a place to dispose of the collected waste without taking it home.
4) There is a “cultural center” at the local coffee shop where we met that is new and that is an open space for community members to use in whatever “cultural” enterprise they would like. She introduced me to several people and suggested it might be a space I could use for meetings and introducing the project to others.

3. I returned to speak to a restaurant owner that stopped me in the street to ask about the progress and to reiterate his interest in the project.
1) Invite people to join me on Sundays and take photos.
2) Get a Facebook page up right away where info and photos can be posted.
3) Follow up with a graphic artist contact (he plans to go with me to make an introduction) to get a decal/poster designed and produced.

4. Radio reporter informed me that the interview he taped of me on the street was used in a radio program on community events, the first in a series of “La Ciudad que Queremos” (The City we Want”).
1) Provided a contact of a woman who is also involved in radio and other media suggesting she would do an interview in English about the involvement of expats participating in beautifying the city.
2) Offered further assistance with contacts when I want.

I have felt like I need to make some decisions about the project before proceeding with more conversations. I am at this point continuing with the idea of inviting others to join me on Sundays and to develop a decal or small poster that I can give to businesses and individuals who commit to maintaining their properties free from trash. I also will start a Facebook page that allows them to share their journey of “loving Merida” in photos and stories. I will do this as a step toward the solution I have already stated, as stated below.

New Problem: Same as old problem
New Solution: Hold a clean-up event in either one or both a church community and a school community based on city pride and stewardship. Establish a leadership group from the communities involved to develop the details of the event and to take ownership of it.

REFLECTIONS:
I have not found it easy to stay within the structure of the recommended exercise. As I take some further concrete steps, I think I will have further questions and will be better able to make contact with “valuable people” actually fruitful. I continue to feel encouraged by the response of people with whom I speak. I also find myself discouraged when I walk down the streets and am confronted with how big the problem is. At these times I go back to Zoi’s question about is the real goal trash (it is at least partially true) or something else. I want this to be a way to build community and consciousness. Community connects us in ways that increases our desire to take care of one another and consciousness also opens us to our part in caring for the environment around us. I continue to focus on the “task” of trash while keeping these foundational ideas in the front of my mind.

LIVING THE ‘ASK FOR ADVICE’ MANTRA

I’ve been time challenged to compete exercise 10 within the accepted timeline due to other commitments that were set months ago. BUT, I am not wavering in my commitment to do so, rather thinking through it carefully and adapting it into a near term real-life change project I have on the go. In my experience, the sooner I can integrate the INITIATIVE principles into the very fabric of what how and I’m doing, then the faster I change and increase my success.

So here is the story. Nine months ago I committed to giving a presentation at a Product Stewardship Society conference which ran last week. The topic I spoke about had to do with a live case study on leveraging the existing product stewardship function in an organization to enable greater sustainability practices. It is based on my efforts in the company I work for and which included the practice of the INITIATIVE exercises and my topic of employee sustainability engagement. The talk was meant to be an inspiration for product stewardship people in other companies to get more involved in sustainability and how to go about it.

Over the course of the past 3 months, I’ve been defining the business approach for the above and integrating the INITIATIVE principles into this talk. At the beginning of the talk I very clearly indicated my ask of the audience was to ask questions, identify gaps in my approach and give me advice on making it better. I had a full room of 45 people and at the end, the questions and helpful comments were overwhelming. The organizer had to kick us out of the room to run the next event.

The following are examples of the comments,
You are the only speaker (out of 42 or so) who asked for our input and advice.
We want you to come back next year and give us an update.
Can we start a help/working network to progress these ideas further?
What is your moonshot goal that you hope to achieve?
What advice do you have for smaller teams who get pulled in many difference sustainability directions?
An offer to put me in contact with the right person in DuPont (who I mentioned) about my idea to partner on a specific sustainability matter.

Companies in the room: Lockheed Martin, DuPont, Exxon, Johnson Controls, Shell, Michaelman’s, …..