What

1
Whats money got to do with it?

• Using Action Research
• to challenge the power of the system

2
Whats money got to do with it?

• Who creates the vast majority of money in the
  economy?
• The Treasury?
• The Royal Mint?
• Banks and Building Societies?
• The tooth fairy?
• What do banks say?

3
So What?

• Some Assumptions ..
• The current money system is somewhere on a
  continuum from encouraging to necessitating
  growth
• There are limits to growth
• Based on these assumptions
• There is a view that traditional financial
  institutions are a significant part of the system
  that is driving the growth that is reducing
  sustainability

4
My inquiry

• How do I engage the directorsof a large
  financial institution in a conversationabout
  the inherent unsustainability of the business
  they run (and are passionate about)?

5
The Power of the System?

• Dimensions of Power (Cynthia Hardy)
• Decision making power
• Non-decision making power
• Symbolic power (used to make sure conflict does
  not arise)
• The power of the system
• works to produce certain advantages without
  being consciously mobilised
• is about unconscious acceptance of ...values,
  traditions and cultures
• is often about supposedly neutral, functional
  constructs

6
My inquiry reframed

• How do I work with themto challenge the power of
  a systemwhose power we are dimly, if at all,
  aware of
• (and from which we all benefit!)
• ?
• How do I engage with people who construct their
  world differently, on a topic that really
  matters to me
• ?

7
My Story the process

• With the Executive directors (2006 -2008)
• Several cycles of different reading
• 7 workshops at offsite meetings
• 4 cycles of 1 to 1 meetings
• Plus 10 full day sessions with different groups
  of people from around the business (2007)
• Eventually connected to
• The Sustainable Finance work being convened by
  WWF
• An investigation into financial exclusion
• An attempt at a co-operative inquiry?

8
My Story outcomes?

• A big step forward in terms of environmental
  consciousness and action
• An authentic desire on the part of the directors
  to do something, to be a tempered radical
  organisation
• Continuing time with the executive despite the
  credit crunch
• Organisational engagement in the sustainable
  finance work
• And Business as Usual!

9
My story why did they even listen?

• Making myself vulnerable
• Here is a truth about me I dont know what to
  do.
• My journey
• The fact that had done, and was doing, a real
  job
• Not preaching
• Personal capital if I took it seriously, there
  might be something in it, and
• An external would not have had the same impact.
• A foot in the door (my MSc project)
• Inquiring with them, not at them or on them
• And yet ............................

10
My story explicit (co-operative) inquiry?
11
A Question .....

• Do we want to pursue some kind of inquiry into
  the current money system and its impacts, so that
• we can better understand our impact on
  sustainability
• and therefore understand
• what, if anything, there is that we want to be
  tempered radical about
• what we might choose to do to accentuate the
  positive and mitigate the negative

12
Responses to the question ......

• ranged from .....
• the inquiry is vital for all sorts of reasons
• to
• stop inquiring and come with a proposal and fast
  forward to what an alternative would look like

13
My story two worlds

• In the room at the latest workshop
• And a conscious parallel

14
The obvious can be very difficult to see
15
Some reflections.....

• This is about challenging how people construct
  their worlds
• You dont have to be CSR to do this - (in
  fact.......)
• This is hard, detailed, work
• Its hard to maintain a sense of agency (will I
  have made any practical difference?)
• What is my obvious but difficult to see?
• Lock in can be in peoples heads, even
  intelligent, caring peoples heads

16
The End