MSLS applications are open!

Hello all! Hope you had a great festive season, mine was fantastic. I'll count some of the action when I can wrap my head around it again. This post is to give you some info about the programme I am taking, and I encourage you to jump on-board for an extraordinary year - you obtain an amazing master's degree, while studying with international colleagues in a beautiful part of the world!

Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) in Karlskrona, Sweden offers two groundbreaking Master's programmes. These programmes come with the great opportunity of being free for all EU/EEA and Swiss citizens.

Campus Gräsvik by the water's edge and close to nature trails.

BTH is a top ranked sustainability research and education institution currently recruiting bright, early – mid career professionals for their cutting-edge Master's programmes.

The Master's in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability (MSLS) and the Master's in Sustainable Product Service System Innovation (MSPI) are underpinned by the science-based Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (widely known as The Natural Step Framework), developed by scientific consensus and initiated by Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, MD, PhD, cancer scientist, Founder of the NGO The Natural Step (TNS). He is a professor of sustainability at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), and the chairman of the international research program Real Change.

Here is a TED sustainability presentation by Dr. Robèrt:

MSLS explores the baseline science of strategic sustainable development coupled with the skills required for organizational change. The programme produces graduates who can deliver organizational leadership for strategic change towards sustainability.

The programme is about taking a whole systems perspective. This means taking a view that is large enough in space (society in the biosphere) and long enough in time (as long as it takes). To this end, the programme has explored concepts for systems thinking, strategic planning, decision-making, organizational learning and change, transformative public policy, strategic business management, etc. from the context of how they may contribute to a sustainable society in the biosphere.

MSPI enables students to design and innovate for positive socio-ecological impacts of products, services, and product-service systems throughout their life-cycles. This programme produces graduates who can deliver outcomes that meet user needs while generating competitive advantages in the expanding sustainability-driven market.

The Swedish state kindly pays for tuition fees for these Master’s programmes for European students and courses are taught in English. BTH is located in the beautiful coastal city of Karlskrona, a UNESCO world heritage site on the southeast coast of Sweden.

Online applications open on the 1st of December 2010 and close 17th January 2011.

Please see our website portal www.bth.se/sustainability for more information. 

We've had an amazing time here since August 2010, check out my photos of many good times in Karlskrona:

http://picasaweb.google.com/105026054672533308619/Karlskrona?authkey=Gv1sRgCPfj3tq1upT-DA#

A massive party among others: Halloween

One of the most valuable aspect has been the presence of people from all backgrounds, and they all had something unique to bring; experience, world view, skills, which really allow you to challenge yourself; your thoughts and the way you 'operate'. Meet this kind of people here: 

http://www.bth.se/ste/tmslm.nsf/pages/057ae6e6825d553ac12577b400492877!OpenDocument

Being here also allowed for so many activities - often free and provided thanks to fellow student's expertise - yoga, pilates, rock-climbing, dancing (salsa, tango and more), hiking, ice-skating, snowboard/skiing etc...


On top of that, being in Europe means many enriching yet cheap trips; notably Paris and Stockholm on the way here, a cruise across the Baltic to Poland (for SEK480!! - organised by BTH), party in Copenhagen, NYE in Berlin, and a couple more to come - check out my photos page for illustrations!

I'll count some more when I get a chance, please forward this post to anyone you know might be interested!!

Happy new year!

Xav

Chillout in Karlskrona + education thoughts and talks

Chillout... or not!? Since Thursday: dinners, karaoke, snow-fights, basement after-parties, pool and hang out at cafe porslinan, pool club, drinking at home, stupid drunk messing around with jujitsu techniques, brunch, forest walk, rock climbing, movie night, museum, house work, work, exercise, yoga... phew: what a holiday!!

Well, since most of MSLS has fled Karlskrona and spread around Europe, we had to make the most of it. Coming back to Cafe Porslinan, thank you MSLS mates for making us aware of it! - literally downstairs from my place! There young people get together after school and can have a space out of school and home to be creative, play games, play music, paint, or do whatever they like. Everyone is welcome. They serve superb value-for money lunch (Karlskrona Kommun offices are just above), and cheap tea, coffee etc... They also organise many events; concerts, games nights (including LAN computer games) and other stuff. 

The idea is that it's a place where people can come together and really communicate and enhance social skills, as opposed to what our friend Behrad calls the 'facebook bullshit'. Sure, everything has its use, but nothing beats face to face and group interaction - ideas and information just fire and spread, the space is there.

We met a local named Max, in his 30s I believe, and he volunteers to help the kids (mostly teenagers) be comfortable and get things happening. We're all on holidays now so there's not that many of them around, leaving us to enjoy the spot for ourselves.

We've been there twice so far and just talking to Max gives a good 'breather' from our sustainability bubble. He's one sharp guy, never been to university, always been free to read and learn whatever he wanted - not biased by any specific systems or frameworks, growing to whatever suited him best. Today 3 of us had a good deal of conversation about education, funny because we had talked about that a few days before with another group. I think we can all agree that there is a lot of pressure on kids for performance in specific areas and I really appreciate this freedom to take time and seek what makes most sense for people as individuals. From there they can make their best contribution they can to society. The question is how do you provide the opportunity - 1st to everyone to explore a vast array of areas, 2nd to adequately provide the means for people to reach their potential? (within the many constraints you could think of in day to day life - for parents, supporting institutions etc..)

Also we talked about how grading in the education system is bad - kids forget about the value of their teachings because they freak out about the grades! Or people make use of there learning very well without having to spit it all out in a prescribed way - it may just be counter-productive to them! Yet you want to be able to make some sort of assessment. Even if they were given the opportunity to focus on what they loved most, if they are really inefficient for example, they might not be able to make a living out of doing that!

This is fairly complex but every problem has a solution, society is changing in many ways and old systems are crumbling. Most of you may have noticed that a couple of decades ago, if you had a degree, you had a job! - and if you didn't have a job in that case, it was likely because you didn't want one!! Today having a degree is far from guaranteeing a job. Sir Ken Robinson in this TED talk points this out and covers some of this topic - really worth a watch:

 

Good to challenge thoughts, discuss, hear from others, and hope you enjoy the food for thought anyway! Young people out there looking to make something meaningful of their time, get onto TED and listen to these brilliant people. I challenge you become one of them!! 

Make sure you create space, similarly in the case of mechanical inventions, they were often made in backyard sheds by people just free to interact and do what they do best.

I'll probably post again before Christmas, if not; God Jul från Karlskrona!

Express post: Movember, Snow, Thanks Giving, STM and Thesis

Hey guys
It's been a while since the last post I know. I also know why previous MSLS classes have called it "dark November": sun barely showing up every day, plus we're barely outside because we have so much work to do...

Since early November we had a blast none-the-less: Movember was a major highlight; this group of fine gentlemen grew a moustache for raising awareness and money for prostate cancer research:

Some of the so-called 'Mo bros' even kept their moustaches into december; mine lasted a week in that period until I rediscovered my face, which probably wasn't too bad after this:

I hope you won't have too many nightmares tonight. Anyhow, it was quite entertaining, and big up for Kristina (see the 1st photo above) for being our Mo-Sista - drawing a moustache on her face every day of the month. Crazy!

The snow arrived a few weeks back (can't believe it's mid-December now), I was going to post very shortly after taking pictures, but did get around to it. On the first day I was so stoked about it, everything was white!! Meaning more luminosity which is good. Being a tropical dude I'm currently fighting day to day with the images of blue lagoons and mango trees floating around in my head. So be it, at least the white Christmas is guaranteed!! - yes it is my first snow experience ever, obviously some people are not so excited:

Some more photos of snowed-on Karlskrona in this album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/105026054672533308619/Karlskrona?authkey=Gv1sRgCPfj3tq1upT-DA#

We also had an excellent Thanks-Giving diner party, organised by our American colleagues. It was awesome to have this experience here in Sweden, with American traditional dishes, a very multicultural crowd who shared thanks, songs and the like in Hebrew, Spanish, Russian, an Indian language I need to ask the name of, Mandarin, Maurician Creol and others. Stoked!

Onto the work I was talking about, we had a Strategic Management towards Sustainability (STM) project to carry out with a company, in groups of 4 or 5. My group worked with a local ship-builder here in Karlskrona: Kockums AB: http://www.kockums.se/en/

The idea was to help the company move towards fully sustainability (which I will precisely define soon - in another post). We only had about 5 weeks for this assignment so we focused on a pilot project, a specific boat line designed for offshore wind-farm support. The environmental manager, composite department manager and project team members greatly helped us to conduct a thorough assessment of their performance and guide them towards sustainability. They were very happy with our work and will carry the strategic plan further - I might create a page about this as a case study. Here is our team before our final presentation today: from right to left: Reed Evans, Isabella Wagner and Ricardo Garcia - workoholics!!

We had other assignments within other groups, on specific topics within the field of social technology for (societal) change. They were all highly interesting so I'll try to make a post about these later).

Thesis is around the corner as well, Natalie Mebane (USA/Trinidad and Tobago), Gabriela Boscio (Puerto Rico) and I have formed a group and are refining ideas for research in sustainability in small island nations, with flexibility in application to other countries. It's quite exciting to get our minds into this new challenge right now and a few things are in motion - will keep you posted.

I'll close this post with an animation made by 3 of our colleagues: Maja Zidov (Serbia/New Zealand), fellow Mauritian: Jovin Hurry, and Andrew Campbell (UK/South Africa). It is for a competition entry to the Hub Zurich Fellowship Program, which is aimed at supporting social entrepreneurs (more details here: http://www.mladiinfo.com/2010/11/18/hub-zurich-fellowship-program-switzerland/). Really cool stuff and the results of some sleepless nights' worth of work:

The Perfect Storm: Competition Entry for The Hub, Zurich§ from Andrew Campbell on Vimeo.

Cross-oceanic contamination

Posting purely from outrage right now about something I don't think was ever even mentioned to me, even though I worked in the ship building industry for a little while. I never had to design a ballast system (among many other things...) so that must be the reason my experience didn't educate me on this topic.

Anyhow, here's what I found out today that is really important to share: ships carry ballast water for stability, compensation of lost weight by fuel consumption etc... in doing so, ballast tanks carry marine life among which some multiply into pest proportion. They are then carried like the merchandise or whatever the ships take with them, and infest the destinations.

This page from the International Maritime Organisation website (http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Environment/BallastWaterManagement/Pages/Default.aspx) points out that the spread of invasive species is now recognized as one of the greatest threats to the ecological and the economic well being of the planet. Follow the link to the article and it will explain.


Quoting Dominique Bourg, French philosopher recently interviewed by our colleague Ludovic Coutant (http://www.leblogdudd.fr/) "the first duty of a citizen is to be informed", hence sharing information is critical.

My question is why are such things not on mainstream media?? Well ships carry most of the goods we consume, so the stakes are super high!... At what cost do we take all this stuff that come from all over the world?? I hope with this blog to create a good repertoire of issues like this and investigate a bit more of what's being done and can be done about it...

Poland and Copenhagen!!!

More priceless memories were created in the last 2 weeks! Telling the full stories will take too long, and since pictures speak a thousand words I'll gladly let them do so.

Poland trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/105026054672533308619/PolandCruiseAndExpressVisit?authkey=Gv1sRgCNPC7aK4hIOYbQ#

Copenhagen trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/105026054672533308619/CopenhagenAndWhiteSensation?authkey=Gv1sRgCPuyi5zKzKz-qgE#

Big thank you to everyone present, what great experiences these were!! Hopefully the photo comments will answer some questions if you have no idea what it all was about. This Monday morning we were back to uni, with a loooot of work calling but the time is right to take care of it!

***EDIT***: check out this short vid about our Master's Programme!



Online applications start Dec 1st!

Oct 23rd to Nov 5th - Amazing!!

Hey all!! I haven’t posted for a while so I’ll tell the story of the last couple of weeks before I write again about sustainability.

As you may have noticed in the side bar on the right there are ‘labels’; categories of posts to make it easier finding them. The label ‘Day to day Sweden’ may have to be complemented by an ‘Amazing MSLS weeks’ label because it seems to be recurring – which is awesome!!

So! The week end of the 23^rd and 24^th was rather busy with group work on a ‘tools and concepts’ assignment – basically analysing things like ‘the Millennium Development Goals’, ‘the Happy Planet Index’, Local Agenda 21 etc... we then had presentations from Monday to Wednesday. We also had a final exam Friday 29^th to study for; busy week!

During that time we were faced with a major threat: the potential departure of our good Israeli friend Sar Gross on Tuesday 26^th. Sar is not in the MSLS program but came with his girlfriend Tamar who is (pretty sweet move in my books). Being unemployed and in an uncertain situation here he nearly went back to Israel. Luckily he decided to postpone his departure for the moment and hopefully we can make him stay till next June so we still have the guy around to learn from and enjoy his enthusiasm and wit!!

Friday 29^th evening then, we were all well ready to 'PAR-TAY' (Pearlman 2010): celebrate the completion of Period 1 of the MSLS program! Our teacher Dr. Broman had organised a salsa night at the town’s concert hall with a band of Cuban Friends - I’m lacking words here; he and his wife had probably made friends with them some years back and they’ve been coming to Sweden for various shows I presume: what a pleasure it was to put our salsa skills to the test!!!

Main people ready to go :P

The setting

Mrs & Dr. Broman

Saturday some of us did a workout on Lango, one of the islands Karlskrona spreads onto. Saturday night: Halloween party. Another great gathering, I was so tired though I felt I was talking rubbish the whole time... even to Jane, a MSLS 09 graduate, who is the one who gave MSLS info to Murdoch University – where I went looking for sustainability masters advice!! Although being somewhat socially inept it was amazing to meet her. Here’s a photo of the group on the night:

Sunday!: Lunch at Kim’s (the one who made those beautiful photos of Karlskrona – link in the ‘Karlskrona Part 1’ post). Really good to see him better about 1 week after a bicycle accident that could have been nasty. He’s a hard nut! His brother was here and told us about democracy engineering which he teaches at universities in Strasburg and Freiburg – really interesting. I haven’t made time to look into it deeper yet, will post links here later.

Sunday evening: Good flavour Latino party. Carolina (one of our tango maestros) made me dance with her in front of everyone haha!! Apparently it was good but my repertoire is still quite limited... Ricardo took her for a demo after.

That brings us to Monday this week - day off (thank God). Still busy though! Meeting about a conference for which we want to write a paper, hang out with Maja who was keeping Alicia's dog for the week-end. Good fun chasing rabbits in the park!!
Tuesday we had introduction to 2 new courses (units) part of Period 2: Advanced Societal Leadership (ASL - elective) and Strategic Management for Sustainability (STM). Tuesday evening: indoor rock climbing with the usual crew, followed by a surprise party for Sar's prolonged stay, held at Gustavo's place (Brazilian colleague), organised by Tamar and Maja. Great success!!
Intro to Engineering for a Sustainable Society (ESS – elective) on Wednesday, I won’t do this one because it’ll be stuff I can pick up later, but there will be some interesting lectures to attend.

As part of the STM unit we have a big project to do with a real organisation, for us to find! I had been in touch with Austal, my employer till June this year. We had to finalise groups and partner organisations by Friday this week, and till Tuesday I still didn’t have an official reply. So I joined another group that was actively speaking to many companies. It turns out that the next day Austal agreed to collaborate with us... cool, but we’re in good progress with a German company (ampleman) and a shipyard here in Karlskrona – let’s see what happens.

Thursday was my 25th Birthday! Busy day at uni starting with Goran Carstedt in the morning, (former CEO of Ikea and Volvo, who spoke to us about organisational learning), followed by a group meeting, then an hour at a talk/Q&A with the US ambassador in Sweden, mostly concerning sustainability and Swedish-American relations, then we had a Webinar with Bob Willard, a leading expert on the business value of corporate sustainability strategies (Bio here:  http://www.bth.se/ste/tmslm.nsf/pages/a5bbf5cbc998e921c1256de3003aac43!OpenDocument). 

What a day! Dancing class at 6:15pm, pizza for dinner with those that were there, then we had drinks at Dana, Danielle, Phil, Chris and Jame’s house – super cool offer from Danielle to gather there! Next: Karaoke at the Fox & Anchor!! Great times, definitely one of my best birthdays and huge thanks to everyone for the wishes and being there!!! Some photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/105026054672533308619/25thBirthday?authkey=Gv1sRgCPqct8DV8r6g0AE#

This morning we had a meeting with the Environmental Manager of the shipyard in Karlskrona, we discussed the project and presented the framework that we would use to assess the company’s performance from a full sustainability perspective, establish a vision of success towards sustainability, and how we would proceed to elaborate a plan to reach this goal.

It was fantastic to hear that they do take it seriously since there is more and more pressure, whether from customers, legislation etc... to perform business within the environmental and social constraints of sustainability. ‘Constraints’ in a sense that the rules of the game are changing, thereby making great business opportunities in terms of savings, innovation, competitive edge with respect to new market demands, not mentioning compliance to new legislation and other aspects. A really exciting opportunity for us and a first glimpse of the consulting work feeling – SUPA!! So we got the partnership if they’re happy with security checks on us. Great work Isa, Reed and Ricardo!!

That's it in short for this post! Hope you’re as stoked about the content as I am!! This week end will be quiet, lot of reading to do, then I’m going to Poland by ferry from Sunday evening, returning Tuesday morning.

Aloha!

Xav

Leadership Essay

This is a question we had to answer in no more than 3 pages with double spacing. 

What does leadership mean to me?

Introduction

To me leadership starts with a devotion to an objective, the confidence that we need to go somewhere, or achieve something for a certain purpose. Hence, leadership starts with a commitment. Personal values must also drive this commitment, if it doesn’t resonate with your personal values, you cannot carry your message through to other people, or perhaps you can, with difficulty. When we think of leadership we may think of leaders as powerful and charismatic people, however I believe that anyone can be a leader by committing to an objective and developing a certain set of skills.

People

Leadership is about interacting with people in such a way that generates a common understanding, goal, or vision. A leader typically promotes understanding, inspires and motivates people to act toward a defined objective.

Leadership is demonstrated in uniting people by clarifying values and affirming shared ideas. In many cases these components may already exist, just not being visible enough. By appealing to shared aspirations, it is possible to envision possibilities and create a common vision (Kouzes and Posner 2007).

From a ‘follower’s” perspective, having understanding and being motivated can both be annihilated by a realization that nothing allows them to act. Leadership goes with giving people the tools to do what they are inspired to do; connecting people and creating a network of resources, facilitating relationships, convey the required information or offering training where needed. People are then empowered, motivated to act.

An aspiring leader must also have sufficient competence in the area he operates in. He must also be someone who keeps people interested by always learning, experimenting, looking for ways to improve; challenge the current processes.

Once these actions are in place, a leader should always follow up and communicate with his team in a positive way. Consulting the team, being able to take feedback, criticism, and allowing people to take the lead when appropriate creates an inclusive culture, one of participation.

Attributes

For leadership to emerge, honesty must exist. Honesty must be kept between people as much as to oneself. An aspiring leader should know his strengths, weaknesses, and limits. These can be pushed in various ways; gaining experience and using personal development tools.

It is often said of leaders that they display charisma, making them appear confident and convincing, motivated and enthusiastic. A ‘not-so-charismatic’ person aspiring to lead may regard this as a disadvantage; however I believe commitment yields charisma.

The idea of devotion to an objective also entails that the aspiring leader understands that she/he is serving a purpose, and must not systematically bring focus on her/him self in the role of a ‘leader’.

I believe it is not necessary to worry about results if you are confident that you are doing the right thing towards the objective; that is what will ensure of the quality of the results.

 Moral considerations

During a conversation with colleagues, the idea of leading for right or wrong reasons was discussed. In the case of dictators, the same rules as those discussed before are applied; they could not get to their goal on their own. Dictators would have needed confidence and a certain ‘charisma’ to convey their ideas to certain people, who would then be willing to follow them. The followers were also empowered to take actions and saw benefits for doing so. Even in such cases, I would argue that these people would have to be honest to each other, however more complexity may arise in some situations; this topic is beyond the scope of this essay.

Conclusion

This brief description of behaviours suggests that leadership is created from an initiative to bring people together to achieve something, while ensuring everyone involved is truly happy to do so. As Dr. Carstedt points out, people are happy to take part in an undertaking that is meaningful to them. Leadership is present when sparking people’s will. Dr. Robert points out another key ingredient which is credibility: if people cannot foresee a meaningful benefit or result of their involvement, they will be much less willing to commit.

Hence, I believe in the idea that “leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. It’s the quality of this relationship that matters most when we’re engaged in getting extraordinary things done” (Kouzes and Posner 2007, 24).

Bibliography

Kouzes, James M, and Barry Z. Posner. 2007. The Leadership Challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.