Green Changemakers: Community is Everything

In my recent article, I began to explore why Green Changemakers, a ‘second operating system’ in organisations, has the potential to move us forward with momentum towards a greener future. 

As we take all that we’ve learned from the pilot* out into other regions, sectors and nations, we know that change momentum can only happen in community.

There’s the wider cross-sector community, coming together beautifully across FE and HE via events, co-working and social media, enabled by infrastructure organisations EAUC, JISC, Association of Colleges (check out National Green Week 17-21st March and The Education and Training Foundation, who recently launched a new Specialist Status in Education for Sustainable Development. FE and Skills is like no other sector in its capacity to create communities which operate from the grassroots, embracing infrastructure support, as the work of AmplifyFE ably demonstrates.

And changemaking communities (that ‘second operating system’) are essential within organisations, if good intentions are to move with momentum to sustainable change. Not a formal committee, entangled in the main operating system, the demands of compliance and the day job. Not a fixed team, which will always be limited in its ability to reach out into every tributary of an organisation. And certainly not a single person in a ‘Sustainability Manager’ role. There are some brilliant Sustainability Managers in FE, bringing ideas, co-ordination and energy. The investment is appreciated – but no-one can do this work alone and the danger is that once someone is in that role, we leave them to it. Our command-and-control structures – vital for delivering what we’re paid public money to do – do get in the way, but it’s perfectly possible to run both operating systems alongside one another, with a little changemaking imagination.

To understand why changemaking is vital, we need to return to the concept of potentia, which I’ve written about for FE News before. It’s a changemaking power, distinct from the potestas we conventionally recognise as power and along which lines our organisations – and society – are structured. Potentia is located in the individual and realised in community. 

I’ve also written about how Golden Unicorns are the people in our organisations who have that joyful potentia energy and at the same time carry a deep understanding of how the organisation operates – and how it can operate differently for sustainable change. The Green Changemakers programme, piloted at Fircroft College of Adult Education and part of the West Midlands Green Skills Roadmap, teaches changemaking skills that influence the culture and systems of organisations and unlock the potentia in others, creating new Golden Unicorns, colleagues who are powerfully motivated to play their part, not just do their job. 

The research is clear: estimates of increased productivity when people feel valued, appreciated and motivated – when they are Golden Unicorns – range from 13% to 25%. Not working harder, working happier. We need those percentage points, to be able to drive the major stuff while the day job is slapping us round the face.

Experiencing collective potentia is a powerful motivator and it works in community. Momentum needs pause, as well as potentia, or else our changemaking light will quickly burn out. Being engaged in a project with other Golden Unicorns is energising (we all know what that glorious buzz feels like). At the same time, when you need to rest, others are there to take up the work. Exactly the sort of distributed leadership we see when geese fly overhead in their ‘V’.

So don’t burden changemakers’ wings with long, agenda-laden meetings or micro-management. A quick meeting to check in against KPIs is all that’s needed, then trust the changemaking community to flourish where it will. Our Green Changemaker community is a WhatsApp group! Recording the work happens elsewhere. 

If FE and Skills are serious about stepping up to the challenge of leading a greener future, it’s clear that we need an operating system that enables the release of community-powered potentia. Developing changemaking capacity within the organisation is a brilliant first step towards this.

By Dr Lou Mycroft, Green Changemaker

*Funded via LSIF by the West Midlands Combined Authority in 2024.