Literally a different take on literacy
When trying to come up with a way to start this post, all that sprang to mind was a stream of clichés. The only constant is change… What a difference a day (more like 4 months) makes… That kind of thing. Needless to say, my career and the personal leadership project that I undertook as part of the MSt. in Sustainability Leadership — to develop a Carbon Literacy training course for Autovista — has not gone the way that I thought it would.
I left my job in October. I got an offer that made it feasible to branch out on my own and do something that interests me more than talking to dealers, leasing companies and OEMs about how they value a used car. I haven’t driven a car in 5 years, so cars genuinely aren’t the thing I want to spend all day discussing.
But nature, and the climate, and what we can all do to have an impact is. And that is where my personal leadership journey is starting to take me in surprising directions.
I was genuinely disappointed when I left Autovista.
With three committed and passionate colleagues, we had gather a wealth of material for our course. To meet the standard, a trainer needs to deliver ‘one day’s worth of learning’ on climate change, we could easily have spent a week and still not got through all the material we had pulled together. We needed to take a scythe to the course materials, but we were close to getting the course rolled out.
I had also convinced about half of the executive leadership to attend the course, even though that would mean punching a whole day’s training into their busy schedules.
It felt like I had made some good progress and then just had to walk away.
And then…
Checking something on the Carbon Literacy Project’s website one evening while compiling my handover notes, I came across a request for volunteers. They needed people to support the Carbon Literacy Project’s Action Day on the first day of COP26. Dozens of courses had been scheduled across the UK for that day and the Carbon Literacy Project needed people to help assess all the evidence that would be submitted and certify them as Carbon Literate.
https://carbonliteracy.com/carbon-literacy-action-day/
I was about to have a bit of free time on my hands, so I volunteered… and just before the start of COP26, I was trained as an assessor.
I have done a few sessions now and it is genuinely inspiring to read what people have learnt about on the course and how that has inspired them to walk a bit more, reduce their red meat consumption, buy more stuff second hand, reduce their business flights, get an electric car, change company procurement strategies… and generally lobby their friends, family and colleagues to do the same.
Meanwhile, as I start to pitch myself as a freelance consultant after 25 years of corporate life, I have had lots of conversations with people that are genuinely keen to play their part at home and at work. However, they just don’t know where to start. A day’s carbon literacy training gives them much of what they need initially. It won’t see them building a fully ISO accredit carbon tracking system, but it will get them to look at the flights they take and question whether they need to jump on a plane every time.
So I am starting to investigate whether I can create a Carbon Literacy course for my potential clients and add that to my portfolio of services. I’m just trying to understand what that would entail, but before long I may be a genuine, bona fide Carbon Literacy Facilitator. Who knows?
After the past four months, literally anything could happen.
