MIT we work on projects to solve climate
change tackle water scarcity advanced
renewable energy and now saying that
some of you are leaning in and eager to
hear what I have to say and some of you
are falling back saying oh here comes
another righteous environmental talk
because I’ve can trigger a background
conversation in your mind and in our
culture about my being an
environmentalist a University of Toronto
study made that background conversation
visible think of the traits that you
associate with a typical
environmentalist they pose that question
to a couple-hundred survey respondents
and this is what came out Treehugger
hippie liberal militant over-reactive
self-righteous zealous forceful
intolerant annoying crazy irrational my
favorite one is Harry when I read that I
always shave really well before I give
talks on sustainability so I’ve probably
been most of these things at one time or
another fair enough and this also
reflects something about our culture and
what happens when issues get polarized
tree huggers versus coal miners liberals
versus conservatives and it reflects a
set of very human reactions to facing
opposition and getting stuck if I am
passionate about an issue and I’m just
not getting where I want to go well
self-righteous zealous maybe a bit
intolerant of other people’s views
that’s exactly how I get it’s how we all
get when we feel forced to take sides
save the environment or our jobs pay
workers a living wage or have healthy
businesses black lives matter or blue
lives matter we live in a polarized
world so many of our issues are stuck in
a kind of gridlock whether that gridlock
is up there in the UN and Congress or
right here there are Thanksgiving dinner
tables in our workplaces our homes so
I’ve been very interested in this
question about how do we move forward on
the issues that matter when so much is
hanging in the air how do we break
through the gridlock you see I was born
and grew up in a town called Boulder
Colorado where you’re considered a wacko
if you’re not an environmentalist of
some kind that’s because you know you
grew up roaming around in these hills
when I was 8 years old
I fell in love with this little elusive
red flower called an Indian Paintbrush
when I was 9 I learned that the bark of
a lodgepole pine tree
smells like butterscotch if that doesn’t
make you a tree hugger I don’t know what
well and my dad and I climbing up over
this Ridge would look out over the city
of Denver and at the time it was one of
the most polluted cities in North
America and my dad would talk about the
problem and the solution we have this
brown cloud growing and looming over the
city but we can solve it with pollution
control devices and market-friendly
policies pragmatic guy is a businessman
from another view you could see the
Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility and
my mom she took a more direct approach
she’d go with her activist buddies and
lay down in the access road to try to
get the plant shut down and cleaned up
when I started my work as an advocate
and environment I took my mom’s approach
young graduate student at MIT joined an
activist student group wrote letters ran
petitions one night we cornered the
president of MIT on her bicycles and
said hey you should make sustainability
more of a priority we felt righteous but
we weren’t quite getting where we wanted
to go we got meetings with the
administration but not promises we got
faculty to sign our petitions but not to
change their teaching or their research
and we are looking around for a new
approach and then I met also Olivetti I
was in a meeting group of grad students
lobbying the school trying to get them
to move faster on lowering the carbon
footprint of our campus and Elsa was a
fellow grad student also passionate
about environment but she had the ear of
the administration in a different way
and at one point she looked at me and
she said you know it seems like your
approach here is someone should do
something or we’re here to tell you the
administration what you should do my
approach is we’re here to help my heart
started to race my stomach clenched
something in me was resisting this
notion if I took on we’re here to help
I’d have to take on more
responsibilities I might get overloaded
I might fail at the big goals that we
were setting out for ourselves and you
know what those were exactly the risks
that we were asking the administration
to take but that’s not how I was seeing
things because even when conversations
lose we have something to gain I was
getting to feel right and make see the
administration as in the wrong we felt
righteous about our goals certain about
our agenda and we got to stay safe
preaching to the choir among our fellow
allies and asking everybody else to do
the hard work on a sustainable campus
right righteous certain and safe work
like a like bait in in a trap it’s tasty
but it keeps you stuck so in that moment
I took a deep breath and I let it go
just for the moment and right away the
tone of the conversation started to
shift we noticed that the administration
had a lot of priorities and if they took
on campus energy it might distract them
from that other work so how could we
break that trade off and we started
finding ways for students to step up and
hack the
campus one team did a map of campus
energy use on the web another team had a
digital camera detecting when people
left their office lights on in a
building overnight and sent them a
gentle email in the morning to conserve
energy another team gathered waste
vegetable oil from the dining halls and
convert it into biodiesel fuel for
campus vehicles we called it students
walking the talk on energy and
environment and it worked the
administration also stepped up launched
the task force took some really
important steps toward a sustainable
campus with us as allies and then a few
of us turned our attention to the
management school where a group of
pioneering faculty were launching a new
course on sustainable business so we
rallied the students we got them
enrolling in the course and growing a
student club called net impact that was
focused on social and environmental
impact for MBA grads and as our efforts
grew we started to feel some resistance
people started to push back the
administration likes what we are doing
after all the mission of the school was
to develop a principled innovative
leaders who improve the world and
there’s also a lot of pressure from peer
schools from alumni from students
themselves to make sure students are
financially successful to attract the
best students you want to have high
starting salaries for your graduates and
some feared that if impact careers meant
going into nonprofits or government jobs
it might lower our averages and when I
heard this I felt right back into the
trap how could you be so careerist and
focused on money we’re trying out to
save the world here then I took a deep
breath and I let that go and we asked
ourselves what did they value that we
may have undervalued and we noticed that
we cared about some of the same things
we wanted an effective social and
environmental advocates and we wanted
them to get paid well for their work we
wanted people to be influential inside
the business world as well as outside
we all wanted to break the trade off but
the apparent trade-off between impact
and financial success so we all started
working together creating together new
curricula materials new courses that
taught marketable skills in operations
and strategy and entrepreneurship and
Finance woven together with
sustainability we found ways for
companies and alumni to do well and do
good and the results have been great the
students have signed up for the courses
and droves the administration sees
sustainability as a priority our
graduates are going to companies like
Nike and the gap in Abyan Bevis
champions of sustainable business and
now they’re having their own
conversations with their CFOs and
investors with their customers and
suppliers to help advance their agenda
and sometimes they face resistance
pushback even gridlock so how could we
equip them to break through I got lucky
when I met Gabriel grant graduate
student at Yale in an environment like
me an expert in getting stuck and the
two of us started poking fun at
ourselves and then we brought others
into the conversation we’ve held
workshops with more than 2,000 people
over the last six years and we ask
people to reflect on conversations where
they have gotten stuck you see people
care about big environmental social
political issues but those show up in
more mundane ways in conversations close
to us with a roommate or a spouse about
recycling and can’t we get the right
thing into the right bin or with mother
or a sibling about eating and diets and
eating less meat or with co-workers
about hiring somebody who would increase
the diversity of the team and what we
see in all these contexts and the lesson
that we’ve learned is a lesson that was
hidden in our work at MIT that breaking
through gridlock is about breaking the
trade-offs people fear they
have to make we see this over and over
again when conversations break through
it’s because people get present to each
other’s values they embrace the tension
between different goals and generate new
ideas the hard part is getting that
conversation started so we found a tool
that’s very useful in which I’m going to
share it eat it today
it’s called contrasting you draw a
contrast between how they expect you to
show up and what you’re there to do
between the trade-offs they fear they
have to make and the new possibilities
that you are there to open I’ll use my
example sometimes at MIT we had to say
we had to acknowledge you know given
your past experience you might expect me
to get stuck feeling right righteous and
certain in my own views or to stay safe
among my allies you might think that I’m
going to pursue solutions that force us
to trade off or diminish starting salary
financial success business acumen like
previous efforts when we define impact
too narrowly as nonprofit jobs what I
really want is to be of help to advance
the visibility and impact of the school
and our graduates and to work with staff
and faculty and students and alumni in
doing that so let’s work together to
find creative ways to break the real or
perceived trade-offs this kind of
contrasting has been very helpful in the
small innovations that we have been able
to do but it’s also central to some of
the bigger innovations of our time you
know if I say to you hey I’ve got this
great fuel-efficient car I want to sell
you it’ll save you money it’ll reduce
pollution it’ll lower your carbon
footprint you’ll say great and then
there’s this other voice in your head
like it’s not going to be a little
anemic and
chorong when I hit the accelerator pedal
because I bought myself one of those
well Tesla is in that conversation with
our culture right now they’re saying you
might expect that but that’s not what
we’re here to do we’re here to deliver a
car that has the thrill of a luxury
support sedan with the footprint of a
Prius or let’s say I want to sell you a
mutual fund filled with socially and
environmentally responsible companies
yeah but isn’t that going to slow the
growth of my retirement fund or our
pension fund you know companies like
Generation and ups and MF s they’re in
that conversation with their investors
and customers right now and they’re
saying look you might expect that
trade-off because past funds have done
that but that’s not what we’re here to
do we’re here to increase returns by
capturing the exciting possibilities of
environmental technology reducing social
and environmental risks and that
conversation is working it’s breaking
through to investors and customers but
we have so much work left to do so many
big issues in our culture you know how
can we solve climate change and
livelihoods in energy producing
communities the black lives matter blue
lives matter the question is how can we
create public safety and social justice
at the same time the health care debate
how can we create guarantee universal
access and individual choice we don’t
have answers to these questions we don’t
even compose the questions right yet
there’s so much work left to do now the
good news is that the power is in your
hands it’s in all of our hands because
what we’ve seen is that people break
through gridlock when they have the
courage to confront the issues that
matter with the people that matter to
them and so I’ll invite you to think of
a conversation where you have gotten
stuck think of a real example hold it in
your mind
notice what you’ve been standing for
notice that you also might have that
tendency to be right righteous certain
locate the bait and let it go then
clarify values get clear on what they
value and what you really want can you
articulate both with the same clarity
and passion then draw the contrast
acknowledge their fears let them know
that you’re not there to trade off their
values for yours you are there to
embrace the tension use that tension
between different values to generate new
ideas and possibilities that neither of
you could have done alone this is hard
work in in our polarized world we’re so
hot the the voltage is so high we just
avoid these conversations entirely
because we’re afraid of getting zapped
but what if we thought about that
polarization as a kind of energy
electricity a healthy tension between
different values I’m not saying we have
to agree on everything but we can
disagree creatively we can make that
energy do work we can break through the
gridlock one conversation at a time
thank you [Applause]