Sustainability change agentry with Alan AtKisson

Silently we walked up the stairs, back to the lobby, leaving the orange, wool thread star in the grass overlooking the Baltic Sea bay. Who would dare to break the serene silence, put us all back on earth and stress that the party is over? We’ve now got a party to organize in the real world and we just reinforced our team.

From August 17 to 23 I participated in the first ISIS Academy master class in Sustainability Change Agentry in Stockholm, Sweden, run by Alan AtKisson and his associates.

Just 20 kilometers East of Stockholm’s city center, a group of 14 people + 7 faculty from four continents, between 27 and 65 years old, gathered to be taught the ins and outs of the ISIS method for doing sustainable development and the associated tools to guide the four steps in the process. And there was the “inner school of change,” by Axel Klimek, to reflect on your own paradigms and behavior, recognize behavior types in others and putting these insights to good use to be more effective throughout an ISIS process.

During the weeklong master class we ran through indicator definition, pyramid building, systems dynamics and strategizing for change. We played games to experience hands-on what the theory means in practice, what natural resistance to change we’re likely to encounter. We had group discussions, systems modeling sessions and even optional meditation. At the end, all had to be converged in a personal strategic plan. No, we couldn’t just stay there and talk about sustainability, which would have been no punishment with these people on that location. Now go and do it. How are you going to realize the change you envision, that’s the leading question in the plan? Making the plan proved the effectiveness of the structure of ISIS and its associated Accelerator tools.

Now, almost two weeks later, the time in Sweden still remains in the front of my head. I can feel it, dispersed right under my shell, but there’s some twinkling close to the thalamus is, too. What stands out to me was the confrontation with the process going on in my head, autonomously organizing and interpreting the dense input flow. Several evenings we had group discussions, in which everyone was given the chance to reflect on the day: what does it mean for you to be a change agent? What’s on your mind? What do you take with you from what we did today? That kind of questions. Repeatedly, I was surprised by the variety of what other classmates and faculty brought to the table. How could I be comforted by the fact that we as a group just let the stock of fish in the see collapse in a simulation game? Why do I need to lick a raisin, while out there the megatonnes of carbon dioxide are flowing into the atmosphere unabatedly and the starving continues? I didn’t always understand or agree with what was said immediately, but it happened to me multiple times that, while lying in my bed awake in the early morning Swedish summer light, the things that have been said started to make sense to me more and more. I could link them, see the commonalities and the differences, clarifying and enlarging the picture. Had we not had this diverse a group and had we not had this atmosphere stimulating the open sharing of feelings and insights, much valuable learning would have passed me by. But we had and so I could suck in the extensive experience embodied by my classmates. I felt lucky, and young.

Session with Axel. Photo: Alan AtKisson

View from Graninge, the master class location. Photo: Alan AtKisson

Piotr Magnuszewski teaching systems dynamics. Photo: Alan AtKisson