Case Study Assignment for Leadership for Sustainability

Example Assignment Based on the Book Leadership for Sustainability Hull et al. Island Press

Leadership for Sustainability: A Case Study Project of Leadership in Practice Purposes and Learning Outcomes - Deepen your understanding of collaborative, connective, adaptive leadership practices that work on wicked sustainability challenges.

- Apply a sense-making tool called 3SO, designed to help sustainability professionals organize their understanding of wicked situations: Stakeholders, Strategies, Systems, and Outcomes.

- Communicate complex ideas. Produce a story that shares lessons you think meaningful to an audience of your choice using a medium of your choice (i.e., written or video).

- Explore how organizations, places, and people relevant to your profession and career are responding to the Anthropocene. Focus your college studies accordingly.

- Apply a systems-thinking perspective.

- Practice team and project management skills.

Assignment (individual or team) - Read Chapters 8-15 of Leadership for Sustainability to see examples of case studies that you will craft in this assignment.

- Identify a situation to study: You may change/refine the topic as you learn more about it but need to start somewhere. A list of illustrative project topics is provided in the Appendix, but don’t feel limited by those topics. The project MUST meet the following conditions: a. The topic must relate in some way to sustainability challenges of the Anthropocene reviewed in chapter 2 of Leadership for Sustainability and/or one of the Sustainable Development Goals. b. The project must involve specific lead actors/organizations. That is, there must be people/organization/stakeholders doing something so that you can describe their motivations, actions, capacities, etc. It is recommended, but not required, that project that involves people and organizations from at least two sectors, ideally all three: business, government, and NGO sectors. Cross-sector collaboration is preferred because that is where some of the most innovative work is occurring. For ideas, see the Appendix. c. The project must involve actions that attempt to change things. It should NOT be a study or a research project. d. Manageable scale. Like Goldilocks, you must select a project that is “just right,” not too big nor too small. A nation is probably too big for a class project. An individual person or your bedroom might be too small. The

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Example Assignment Based on the Book Leadership for Sustainability Hull et al. Island Press best scale for a case study is something where you can identify some of the specific actors and actions. See the example case studies. e. You must be able to tell a story about leadership for sustainability.

Ultimately you will want a case study that allows you to answer the following questions: ▪ What sustainability challenge is being addressed and why is it important?

▪ Who are the key actors, what outcomes do they want, and what are their motivations for wanting these outcomes?

▪ What happened? What was done? What strategies were used to create desired outcomes? Who did it?

▪ How did the system respond? What changed? Why or how did it change?

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Conduct a Sensemaking Analysis a. Read chapter 7 and use the 3SO sense-making strategy to guide your sensemaking efforts. It is probably easiest to begin with analysis of the stakeholders’ interests and influence and then describe the strategies those stakeholders are using. Then try to explain the outcomes they want and the system attributes they are trying to change (i.e., what levers are they pulling and why do they think impacts will occur). Iterate back through all sensemaking categories (stakeholders, strategies, system, and outcomes) because stuff you learn about one category reveals stuff about other categories. b. You can complete this assignment entirely by reading/researching material already written and presented online. Note that some of the websites listed below have case studies with most all the info you need. c. But you are encouraged (and rewarded with a grade bump) to talk to someone involved in the case. Tell them you’re doing a project on leadership for sustainability. If they nibble, then set up a Zoom, hit record, and have a discussion. Be sure to send them a few questions in advance of the zoom, so they can be thinking about it, keep it short (< 1 hour), and send them a thank you! If you’re finding it interesting, then ask them to recommend someone else you should talk to and if they would make an introduction. Repeat.

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Submit Final Case Study Report: a. The story may be told in traditional written, case-study format like those in the book or some more innovative media such as video, website, song, …. It just needs to be digitized and accessible. If written, then ~ 1,000 words, if a video, then < 15 minutes. Be intentional about your audience: is it general college students,

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Example Assignment Based on the Book Leadership for Sustainability Hull et al. Island Press technical engineering professionals, business investors, your parents, grade school children…? b. Tell a story about leadership for sustainability. Begin with a “hook” that gets your audience interested. Inspire them. Get your reader thinking “hey, that’s so cool people are doing that! I could do something like that!!” c. Keep it simple. Skip over the mundane details (that’s what the appendix is for) but be sure to cover the following basic topics (but not necessarily in this order): ▪ What sustainability challenge is being addressed and why is it important?

▪ Who are the key actors, what outcomes do they want, and what are their motivations for wanting these outcomes?

▪ What happened? What was done? What strategies were used to create desired outcomes?

▪ How did the system respond? What changed? Why or how did it change? d. Include an Appendix ▪ Lessons learned. A separate paragraph by each team member.

What did this project about sustainability and leadership teach me about my major, my career goals, some course I took, something I already studied, or something else relevant to my life?

▪ References: List of references from where you obtained the data and to which a reader could look for more information. Contact information about anybody you interviewed.

▪ Final 3SO. Finish up what your draft 3SO by adding additional information and cleaning up the presentation.

▪ Teammate review (using a rubric that teaches good teamwork skills. e. Review another team’s submission Evaluation: - F (< 60%) Nothing turned in, no evidence of thought.

- D (60-70%) Not all parts of the assignment turned in on time or parts missing.

Poor teammate review. Little evidence of the time it takes to find, research, think about, and synthesize material related to the case.

- C (70-80%) All parts of the assignment turned in on time. Evidence of basic understanding of each topic. OK to Good teammate review.

- B (80-90%) All parts of the assignment turned in on time. Evidence of considerable digging and researching. Evidence of synthesis, critical thinking, and understanding the material. Excellent teammate review and all parts of the assignment completed on time.

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Example Assignment Based on the Book Leadership for Sustainability Hull et al. Island Press -

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A (90%+) Above and beyond the assignment, such as: interviews or additional data collection, integration of new material beyond required, deep research, connections made to material covered in other parts of the class, exceptionally polished and creative storytelling, alternative media for storytelling such as a video, â&#x20AC;Ś. Plus, excellent teammate reviews and all parts of the assignment completed on time.

Note: A one letter grade deduction will occur if you are missing a review of teammates OR missing review of another team.

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Example Assignment Based on the Book Leadership for Sustainability Hull et al. Island Press

APPENDIX Example Topic/Project Titles Below are listed just a few sample project titles or starting places for projects. Don’t feel restricted to examples from this list. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Making Neighborhoods Great Places for all Kids to grow up.

Coca Cola’s efforts to reduce vulnerability to water scarcity at one of its plants or in some part of its supply chains.

Budweiser’s efforts to sustainably source hops as climate changes.

A city’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions An organization’s sustainable product purchasing program Farmer Joe’s efforts to sequester carbon and regenerate soil productivity.

Poverty reduction in my hometown by groups C and D Water, Sanitation, Health (WASH) projects in a developing country Promoting bike riding to mitigate climate change.

Promoting electric cars by making charging station accessible.

Promoting renewable energy policies Citizen Climate Lobby’s efforts to promote bi-partisan climate policy Promoting oysters or crabs in the bay by organization A and B Company Y’s efforts to make supply chains resilient Community X’s efforts to adapt to sea level rise.

Electric Utility ABC’s efforts to install a smart grid or motivate conservation behavior by customers.

ABC’s efforts to change diets in XYZ. University dining hall efforts to reduce and compost food waste.

Organizations with published case studies you can use: They’ve done most of the work for you! You can extract most all the info you need from these published case studies. ● ● ● ● ● ●

MIT Sloan Sustainability Case studies World Business Council for Sustainable Development Georgetown Climate Center Case Studies Oikos collection of case studies Climate Resilience Toolkit Case Studies CDP case studies

Example Organizations with lists of cool projects Just about every major company has multiple sustainability initiatives. So, do most every government agency at all levels of governance from local to national. And there

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Example Assignment Based on the Book Leadership for Sustainability Hull et al. Island Press are countless environmental nongovernmental organizations doing all manner of cool things. Some of the bigger NGOs have lots of their projects documented. This list is just a tiny, illustrative fraction of folks doing cool projects. ● The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education: ● Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay ● Chesapeake Bay Foundation ● Certification and Standards o Marine Stewardship Council o Forest Stewardship Council o Rainforest Alliance: Follow the Frog ● Environment and Energy Leader ● Environmental Security at the Stimson Center ● Innovation Forum ● Menus of Change ● World Resources Institute ● WorldWildlifeFund ● Smart Growth America ● Roundtables o Sustainable Beef; o Sustainable Soy ● World Bank Projects

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