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"In modern competition, economic andsocial policy can and must beintegrated."Professor Michael Porter, HarvardBusiness School, Forward to:Tomorrow's Markets, GlobalTrends and their implications forBusiness

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The Natural Advantage of Nations (Vol. I): Business Opportunities, Innovation and Governance in the 21st Century

This book is about innovation, solutions, competitiveness and profitability.It is also about building environmental integrity and sustainability now andfor future generations. It draws a bold vision for the future and tells ushow to get there by building on the lessons of competitive advantagetheory and the latest in sustainability, economics, innovation, businessand governance theory and practice. The authors incorporate innovativetechnical, structural and social advances, and explore the role thatgovernance can play in both leading and underpinning business andcommunities in the shift towards a sustainable future. The result isnothing less than the most authoritative and comprehensive guide tobuilding the new ecologically sustainable economy. (more...)

Chapter 23 (Part 2) - Introducing the Pyramid: a versatile process and planning toolfor accelerating sustainable development through multi-stakeholder engagement

EDITORS’ NOTE: As many of the challenges we face in achieving asustainable future will ultimately call for wide involvement throughoutsociety we must find productive ways to work together. One of the world’sleading experts on achieving multi-stakeholder engagement forsustainability is Alan AtKisson and his colleagues at AtKisson Inc. We firstmet Alan at the Network of Regional Governments for SustainableDevelopment Meeting in Perth in late 2003, and being familiar with hiswork we invited him to mentor the development of our project and inparticular provide a succinct summary of his proven tools for achievingmulti-stakeholder engagement. Alan, author of Believing Cassandra, a bookon how to think and do sustainability, together with his colleagues R. LeeHatcher and Sydney Green have written the following piece to describe thetheory behind their tools, the different ways they can be used and providecase studies to illustrate how such a process can work in practice.

The challenge of sustainable development creates unprecedented demands for learning,thinking, planning and decision-making. Economic, social, and environmentalperformance must all be improved, usually all at the same time, and often against abackdrop of one or more critically negative trends. All too often, these trends acttogether to reinforce each other. As if that were not complicated enough, the challengeis often compounded by the need to work in diverse, multi-stakeholder groups, and toachieve consensus on a set of actions that everyone believes will actually produceresults. Finally, initiatives seeking to promote sustainability are often doing so under asense of time urgency, with limited resources. They do not have time or money towaste on suboptimal solutions or difficult-to-achieve agreements. Building on a dozenyears of work with sustainability and community development initiatives around theworld, we developed the Pyramid process to address these needs. While the Pyramidas an integrated process was first introduced in 2001, it is built on basic sustainabilitytools and methods that we have been using since the early 1990s.

What is the Pyramid?

At its core, the Pyramid is a framework and a process for strategic planning. However,the framework can also be used as a training programme for sustainable development;as a team-building process to build mutual understanding; and as a workshopstructure for building consensus on new goals and directions. The Pyramid incorporatestwo other frameworks previously developed by Alan AtKisson:

1. The Compass of Sustainability, a way of representing the different

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dimensions of sustainability, and of supporting true multi-stakeholderengagement acts as the base of the Pyramid.

2. The ISIS Method, a logical thinking process that helps groups develop amore systematic and strategic understanding of sustainable development.

The Pyramid combines these into a structured group process to provide training,planning or general decision-support for more sustainable outcomes. To set the stagefor understanding the Pyramid process, we must first discuss these elements in brief.

The Compass of Sustainability

North Nature South Society East Economy West Well-being

This simple wordplay is actually an adaptation of sustainability theory as first putforward by economist Herman Daly (and later reinterpreted by Donella H. Meadows).Daly proposed that these four elements, Nature, Economy, Society and individualhuman Well-being, were dependent on each other for their existence, and that eachelement was dependent on the one preceding it in a logical hierarchy. During a seriesof international meetings in 1999 on the topic of best practice in sustainabilityindicators, this hierarchy of dependence was challenged on a number of grounds. Forexample, in some cultures the overall Society is considered to be paramount, withindividual Well-being looked upon as secondary to social needs. Also, there are nowways in which the health of Nature is arguably dependent on stable economies andsocial structures.[8] Out of those meetings the Compass of Sustainability wasdeveloped to stress, instead, the inter-connected nature of these four elements: allmust be healthy for sustainability to be realized. The Compass metaphor also capturesthe sense of new directions that sustainability implies, as well as standing for theinclusion of all stakeholders: people come from all directions to participate in theprocess of sustainable development.

Source: AtKisson Inc

Figure 23.1 The Compass of Sustainability

To briefly define the points of the compass:

• Nature refers to the ecological systems and natural resources.

• Economy is the process by which resources are put to work to producethe things and services that humans want and need.

• Society is the collective and institutional dimension of human civilization,incorporating everything from governments to school systems to socialnorms regarding equity and opportunity.

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• Well-being refers to the satisfaction and happiness of individual people– their health, their primary relationships, and the opportunities they haveto develop their full potential.

These categories have been used to structure formal sustainability assessments andindicator systems.[9]The Compass defines what sustainability is; and Pyramid supportsusers through the process of implementing sustainable development.[10]

The ISIS Method

ISIS is an acronym standing for the four steps in a sequential strategic thinkingprocess – a process that is particularly well suited to the demands of sustainabledevelopment.

1. ‘I’ is for ‘indicators’. Indicators are signals that tell us something about the stateof a system. They reflect the status of critical elements in the system, and helpus determine how healthy that system is, and whether the trend is in a healthydirection. In assessing the health of your body, for example, a doctor first looksat common indicators such as your temperature, your blood count and whetheryou have any pain. If these reflect trouble, she might then look more closely.The combination of indicators is what usually tells the doctor what the trouble islikely to be. Indicators can be formal measurements, represented as charts,graphs and statistics; or they can be more informal, based on subjectiveperceptions. The Pyramid process can make use of both.

2. ‘S’ is for ‘systems’. Systems are groups of discrete elements that work togetherto make a whole. Systems are bound together by the laws of cause and effect,and governed by flows of information. A human body, a community, a rainforestor a company can all be thought of as systems. Understanding how the variouselements work together is critical to managing a system successfully. With theISIS method, using Indicators as a starting point, the user builds a systemsunderstanding of how and where change is possible. This creates a more soundfoundation for thinking about change itself.

3. The second ‘I’ is for ‘innovation’. Innovation is the process of developing andintroducing a change to a system. Any kind of change or intervention qualifies,from the application of a technology, to a change in the rules, to an alteration inthe information flows. Innovations do not have to be ‘new’ in any absolutesense; old ideas can be ‘innovative’ if they are new to the system in question. Atthis stage, groups can use catalogues of best practices, brainstorming andprioritizing to identify promising options for making change, and selecting amongthem. The best innovations are those that hit the most effective leverage points,causing positive change in each of the four Compass Points.

4. S’ is for ‘strategy’. Strategy is planning for the successful implementation of an

envisioned change. Developing strategy involves consideration of all the factorslikely to help or hinder the acceptance of a change, and the actions (includingcontingency plans) to be followed in seeing the change through to its conclusion.The more fundamental the change, the more critical it is to develop a sound andworkable strategy. Once a group has identified its priority change initiative, it canuse a variety of techniques, applied Innovation Diffusion Theory, ‘SWOT’analyses, etc., to develop good plans for implementation of that change.

The ISIS method ensures that change initiatives:

• are developed in consideration of all the relevant trends and issues;

• are targeted at those spots in a complex system where change is mostlikely to create the desired outcome, as well as other positive benefits;

• draw on the full range of possible alternatives, and the creative thinkingof a diverse group;

• are grounded in real-world thinking about implementation.

By following the ISIS method, the user stands a better chance of managing limitedresources wisely, and successfully creating a change in the target entity, a change inthe direction of sustainability.

What’s new about ISIS?

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ISIS may appear similar to other strategic planning frameworks on the surface; but inpractice, it is quite different, in ways both obvious and subtle:

• First, the focus on Indicators ensures that the whole group is exposed tothe widest possible range of available information about critical trendsaffecting the system in question. Traditional planning usually attempts onlyto identify ‘critical issues or problems’, many of which may be just thesurface of a more complex set of issues. ISIS-based planning looks forlonger-term trends as well, which may or may not be identified problems.Moreover, using the Compass of Sustainability ensures that the net is castas widely as possible to ensure that nothing important is overlooked.

• Second, the Systems step encourages a group to contend with thecomplexity of multiple cause-and-effect relationships, and chains of suchrelationships. While often confusing and difficult, especially in groups ofwidely varying experience, this is a critical step. Too often, planning effortsaddress symptoms, not causes; or proximate causes, and not root causes.The Systems analysis process creates a greater likelihood that a group willdiscover more effective ‘leverage points’ for creating beneficial change andhelp to build a complex shared ‘mental model’ of the target entity. Inpractice, multi-stakeholder groups tend to use the Indicators phase toteach each other about critical issues. They can interpret trends to eachother, based on their differing experience and expertise. At the Systemslevel, they may be teaching each other about critical connections betweentrends; but they generally also discover new analyses that would not havebeen possible (or at least easy to come up with) had they been working ontheir own, in single-issue groups, or in a planning framework more focusedon one area of expertise. At the Innovation level, groups do more than justbrainstorm possible good ideas, as they generate ideas that are likely tohave broad, beneficial, systemic impact, and then prioritize among thoseideas.

• Finally, at the Strategy level, groups put these ideas to the ‘real world’test, and build plans for implementation that are developed with the aid ofapplied Innovation Diffusion Theory or some other guide for enhancingtheir chances of success.

The ISIS method can produce, as a purposeful by-product, improved levels ofinterdisciplinary understanding and innovative thinking. When coupled with the Pyramidframework for running group processes, it can support group learning, planning, anddecision processes that are (to borrow language from NASA) ‘faster, better, andcheaper’.

How the Pyramid process works

The Pyramid process can be a very effective way to support and accelerate a group’sprogress on the sustainable development journey, from the initial engagement with avision of sustainability, through analysis and brainstorming, to a consensus on acredible and meaningful plan of action. Along the way, the process seeks to build ashared competency in trend analysis, systems thinking, strategic planning andconsensus development.

The Pyramid process generally starts with a presentation to set the framework,beginning with an introduction to the Sustainability Compass (or some whole-systems sustainability framework). When the Pyramid is being used in a planning process, theuse of the Compass from the outset will ensure that all Compass Points arerepresented at the table, helping to assure that the process is truly multi-stakeholder.The Compass also provides clarity of definition for what sustainability means inpractice, and it can be supplemented with specific visions and principles to guidethinking. The greater this clarity, the stronger the foundation on which the Pyramidprocess rests. When Pyramid is the basis for a training programme, groups areintroduced to sustainability via the Compass, and participants are then invited to sit in‘Compass Point Groups’. They are encouraged to choose a Compass Point that is nottheir usual point of reference, so they can get an experience of stretching to think fromother people’s perspectives. In both the training and planning context, the Pyramidprocess involves working through four levels corresponding to the four steps in theISIS method. The Pyramid narrows as it grows, and this is reflected in the process aswell: a large number of indicators are analysed to produce a somewhat smaller numberof key systems insights. Then a large list of brainstormed initiatives must also be

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narrowed down to a smaller number of genuine options that all can agree on. Finally,there are usually just a few options for different strategic plans that can lead tosuccessful implementation. In this way, the Pyramid process leads a group, step-by-step towards an all-important conclusion: an agreement to actually do something.

At the top of the Pyramid is the Capstone. In physical pyramid construction, thecapstone is the last, crowning piece. In colloquial English, the word has come to meana culminating event. The capstone of the Pyramid is Agreement. After working througha process of developing Indicators, analysing Systems, selecting Innovations, andcreating Strategies, the group must then agree to take action. In sustainabledevelopment initiatives, which are so often characterized by multi-stakeholderpartnerships, involving actors who represent different sectors, disciplines, or evencultural or political groups, the operative word is ‘consensus’. Without full, sharedagreement, implementation of even the most exciting ideas and strategies is not likelyto occur. Pyramid brings together many of the ideas and practices that have becomecentral to the concept of sustainable development. Indicator development, systemsthinking, and the applications of innovation theory to strategic action have all becomecommon to sustainability practice; Pyramid, with Compass and ISIS, brings thesetogether into an integrated process.

Source: AtKisson Inc

Figure 23.2 Pyramid of sustainable development

Moreover, the structure of Pyramid guides a group through the process of first buildinga firm base of understanding, casting a wide net for relevant information and ideas,and then focusing and narrowing down to what is important, effective, doable andsomething that everybody can agree on. Throughout the process, Pyramid takes aninterdisciplinary, cross-sectoral systems approach. Strategic use of small group/largegroup discussion tasks mixes people together in different ways and supports theidentification of important linkages and leverage points. Groups get practice in sharingideas, expertise and experience, and in building consensus based on clear criteria. Forthese reasons, we believe Pyramid represents a genuinely new approach to grouplearning and strategic planning that is specifically designed for integrating sustainabilityinto planning, decision-making and design. This model uses sustainability as a value-added methodology to focus on the problem, issue, policy or project at hand. In ourpractice, clients have often found it to be an improvement over their existing strategicplanning methods in a more general sense.

Invented by AtKisson Inc in 2001, Pyramid has been used in a wide variety of settings,and in several different ways:

• As a training programme on applied sustainable development, Pyramidhas been used by UN-sponsored training programmes in Asia, sustainabilityeducation centres, and the US Army, among others.

• As a strategic planning framework, Pyramid has been used by our firmwith a wide variety of clients, both explicitly and in the background of ourown planning. Its explicit use has been with clients such as foundationgrant programmes and regional sustainability initiatives.

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• As a workshop model for bringing multi-stakeholder groups together,building a common understanding, and generating initiative ideas, Pyramidhas been used by sustainability initiatives at the city, regional andinternational level.

We present here three case studies that illustrate the use of Pyramid in practice, ineach of the three contexts described above.

Magic Eyes/UNEP: Pyramid training for Asian change agents

In early 2002, AtKisson Inc undertook a Pyramid training session, supported by UNEP,with a leading Thai NGO called ‘Magic Eyes’, the popular nickname for the ThaiEnvironmental and Community Development Association (TECDA).[11] The UNEP/MagicEyes programme brings professionals in the media or government together for fivedays of instruction and discussion. The Pyramid process and related tools compriseabout 40 per cent of the experience, and these elements of the training haveconsistently received very high evaluation scores from participants. In this and othertraining contexts, participants work in a simulation environment, with a pre-developedscenario, in this case, a South-East Asian village. The Pyramid process walks themstep-by-step through the sustainable development process, starting with a Compass-based definition of sustainability, and a review of the key issues affecting thecommunity.

Participants then break up into teams, one for each of the Compass points. For theduration of the exercise, they operate from the imagined perspective of a stakeholderwho is naturally associated with that Compass point. The groups then go through a setof structured presentations and exercises over the course of two days. They developindicators of the key trends for their community. They analyse how these trends linkto each other. They create ‘System Maps’ showing how specific clusters of trends worktogether, usually linking all four points of the Compass. They look for opportunities tomake system-wide change through innovative initiatives, and practise coming toconsensus on which initiatives they will pursue, and how. At each step, the groupsshare their learning, negotiate with each other, and physically build a model of aPyramid, which reflects (with both words, connecting lines, and sometimes artisticembellishments) the things they have learned and accomplished.

Source: AtKisson Inc

Figure 23.3 Workshop participants placing capstone on Pyramid

By the end of the workshop, they have a thorough and systematic understanding ofthe sustainability challenges facing a typical Asian community, and a clearer sense ofpossible strategic avenues for positive change. They have also gained experiencethinking and working their way to consensus about sustainability initiatives, anexperience that they can directly apply in their professional lives.

Baltic 21: Pyramid-based strategic planning

Baltic 21, more formally known as ‘Agenda 21 for the Baltic Sea Region’, is amultistakeholder, international initiative, with a formal mandate from the 11 PrimeMinisters of the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea (plus Norway and Iceland).

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Government agencies, business, research institutes and civil society are all activelyengaged. When it became time to renew the Prime Ministers’ mandate for Baltic 21,the group’s steering council (called the ‘Senior Officials Group’) created a strategicplanning process and Working Group. After performing its own extensive historicalreview, the Working Group engaged AtKisson Europe AB to support them in developingthe new strategy. The Group adopted the Pyramid process and ISIS methodology.Baltic 21 had already been working with indicators for several years, and soparticipants quickly understood the value of bringing a systematic and logicalframework to bear on the complex issues they were facing in the region. The Pyramidprocess was used both in the planning meetings themselves, and as the workshopmodel for a stakeholder workshop in Riga, Latvia, in January 2004. During the courseof two days in Riga, 30 representatives from government ministries, private sectorgroups, inter-sectoral initiatives and NGOs worked together to produce a proposal for anew strategy for Baltic 21.

At each step of the Pyramid process, participants made important contributions to abroader understanding of sustainable development strategy in the Baltic Sea Region:

At the indicator level, participants reviewed the existing Baltic 21 sustainabilityindicators for the region, but then augmented these with a list of some 20 other trendsthat were critical to understanding regional issues.

At the systems level, they worked in small groups to analyse a handful of key trendsin terms of their connections to other trends, through chains of cause and effect. Thisallowed them also to map the key decision points or influence points (‘leverage points’)where focused effort could bring about system-wide positive effects. The Systemslevel, in particular, contributed to a set of ‘Key Insights’ that ultimately framed thegroup’s new strategy proposal.

At the innovations level, the group brainstormed a long list of new and existing ideasfor targeted initiatives to effect change at those points of influence, and thenprioritized them according to a set of criteria that fitted Baltic 21’s identity as aregional, multistakeholder forum for collaboration. A preference voting exercise wasused to bring the most promising ideas to the top of the list.

Finally, at the strategy level, small groups took the top-ranked initiative ideas, fleshedthem out, performed ‘SWOT’ analyses on them, and developed proposals forimplementing those ideas in the context of a coherent overall strategic vision, whichhad emerged from discussions after the Innovations level.

Source: AtKisson Inc.

Figure 23.4 Agenda 21 for the Baltic Sea Region participants in Pyramid process

In summary, the proposal was to:

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• Redevelop the Baltic 21 steering council, the ‘Senior Officials Group’, intoa ‘thinktank’ for sustainable development issues in the region. This groupwould work through existing international channels to more directly informand influence policy decisions.

• Create a set of ‘Lighthouse Projects’, larger-scale initiatives that wereregional in scope and demonstrated the value of sustainable developmentin visible, tangible terms.

• Develop a ‘Baltic 21 Fund’ and other innovative funding mechanisms tosupport these projects with money, working through existing EU, regionaland national funding sources.

By the end of this workshop, there was already a Capstone Agreement in place: astrong consensus, among essentially all workshop participants, that this proposal wasthe most effective role for Baltic 21 to play, given its identity and the strategicchallenges of the Baltic Sea Region. The proposal left intact those elements of Baltic 21that were working well, dropped some less-useful elements, and refocused theinitiative’s limited resources in a more powerful direction. The group recommended thatthe proposal be developed further by a Working Group and presented to the SeniorOfficials Group and other regional decision-makers in time for consideration by thePrime Ministers at their June, 2004 summit meeting.

While the proposal was amended somewhat in the lead-up to the Prime Ministers’summit, the strong consensus developed at the Riga workshop was still present in theproposal’s final version.[12]

Woodford Correctional Centre: Pyramid workshop for new initiative development

One of the most innovative applications of the Pyramid process occurred in anAustralian correctional centre. In a day-long planning workshop, a group of 20 staffcame together from every division of the prison. The purpose of the workshop was toexplore ways to run the prison according to ‘triple bottom line’ sustainability principles.The result of the Pyramid process was a proposal for a new set of industries for theprison, work that inmates could perform that would support their rehabilitation,contribute to society and reduce the prison’s consumption of resources and impact onthe environment (see Figure 23.5).

Figure 23.5 System map from Pyramid workshop, July 2003

Using a set of indicators developed for the occasion from prison records, the groupmapped the energy, waste and water flows; the prison economy (its economicproducts include catering services as well as rehabilitated citizens); and the socialsystems that support training and development of inmates while maintaining a safeand quality work environment for prison employees. The systems analysis led to theinsight that prison industries were the key leverage point in the system, that is, the

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most powerful place to introduce innovation. A change in the kinds of jobs prisonersperformed could close waste and resource loops, reduce environmental impact, providemore beneficial economic products, improve training and rehabilitation opportunities forprisoners, and enhance the quality of life of prison employees.

At the end of the process, the workshop group had come to consensus on a proposedset of three new industries that could work within the special requirements of acorrectional facility. These were:

1 vermiculture composting;2 aquaculture fish farming;3 hydroponic vegetable gardens.

These systems could absorb wastes from the existing catering services, while addinghigh quality products to those services, reducing the cost of importing food and otherinputs. They would expand the skills base of prisoners and prepare them for jobs inmarkets that are expected to expand. And they would help to create more pleasantwork environments for the whole prison community (see Figure 23.5).

At the time of writing, these proposed new industries had passed a feasibility study bystate officials, and prison management had begun seeking expressions of interest frompotential developers. If successfully implemented, this industrial retrofit could amountto a revolution in thinking about how prisons can be run sustainably.

Concluding words from Alan AtKisson

While Pyramid is still a new process, it has already been used successfully in manydifferent contexts and cultures. It has proven itself adaptable to a number of differentsustainability frameworks, from ‘Triple Bottom Line’ to ‘Natural Step’ to our own‘Compass of Sustainability’. From the reports of users, we can say that it has producedsatisfying, and in some cases quite exemplary, results. There is no easy way of testingthe model to determine whether it accomplishes its stated purpose of ‘acceleratingsustainable development’. Such a test would require the close of observation of twovery similar organizations or communities, one using the Pyramid process and theother not, over a defined period of time; and then comparing the results they achievein measurable terms. Such a test does not seem practical or possible.

However, the testimonials of clients lead us to believe that the process works well on avariety of levels. Workshop leaders and participants report that the process:

• teaches them to think in a clear and systematic way about whatsustainable development means, in tangible terms;

• helps them understand the complexity of the systems they work in, andgives them critical insights about how, and where, to make changehappen;

• stimulates them with new ideas and creative thinking about what kinds ofchange are possible;

• supports their understanding of how different stakeholders view theissues, and broadens their perspective;

• makes it easier to achieve consensus on what actions are the mostappropriate and effective next steps; and

• gives them a sense of energy and enthusiasm to pursue the difficultwork of sustainable development.

Pyramid can also function as a longer-term strategic framework. At each level of thePyramid, users can bring in a variety of other complementary tools and methods. Forexample, GRI reporting can be used at the Indicator level. More sophisticated systemdynamics modelling can be applied at the System level. A wealth of organizational andmanagement consulting techniques can be used at the Innovation and Strategy levels.By sitting on a base of clear principles and visions, and leading diverse groups througha disciplined ‘building-up’ process of information gathering, systems analysis,innovative thinking, strategic planning and consensus development, Pyramid can helpany organization seeking to make sustainability a meaningful reality.

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Next Part

The development of this book and its online companion was made possible through access toresearch, peer review and funding from over 20 organisations, companies and government

departments, together with the mentoring from over 75 experts and leaders in the field. TNEP is verygrateful for this support and proud to welcome you to the Online Companion for The Natural

Advantage of Nations.

Foundation Partners in the research, development and review of the book.

References

8. Meadows, D. (1998) Indicators and Information Systems for SustainableDevelopment, Sustainability Institute, Hartland Four Corners, VT. (Back) 9. AtKisson, A. and Hatcher, R. (2001) 'The Compass Index of Sustainability: Prototypefor a Comprehensive Sustainability Information System', Journal of EnvironmentalAssessment Policy and Management, vol 3, no 4. (Back) 10. The Compass is not the only sustainability framework that works with Pyramid; theTriple Bottom Line (TBL), Economy-Environment-Equity (EEE) and other sustainabilityframeworks can also be used depending on the context of the application. (Back) 11. The name 'Magic Eyes' grew from TECDA's popular anti-litter campaign of the early1990s, which had the slogan 'Magic Eyes are watching you'. (Back) 12. Readers can review the documentation for the entire process, as well as the resultsof the June 2004 summit, online at www.baltic21.org. (Back)

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