Aspirational Goal Setting: Documented Pros and Cons

I love the work by Ott Scharmer on practicing servant leadership. There is quite a detailed account in his book Theory U. A new way of forming goals that sets aside the flip charts and boardrooms. For a primer see Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
by Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers, 2004.

Here's Scharmer's web-site @ MIT: http://www.ottoscharmer.com/publications/books.php

Theresa Southam

Theresa Southam
Canada
www.southamconsulting.com

As a member of a community, my local community as well as the human community, I am finding the Transition Towns Concept very motivating. It makes sense to me to motivate a community by approaching a common goal (one which is in essence a goal for all humanity) I think this concept is both personally and communally empowering. That empowerment leads to a sense of purpose beyond ourselves and translates into sustainable actions as well as building both personal and communal resilience.

If you are not familiar with this concept you may want to look at www.transitionculture.org.

Cynthia Chapman
member of the human community

Cynthia Chapman
Ms
Australia

Also have a chat with your local Living Smart facilitator-
http://www.livingsmart.org.au/

leah knapp
Town of Mosman Park
Australia

Look at Donella Meadows' newest book on systems theory, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008). And Bob Doppelt's Leading Change Toward Sustainability. Both look at the high level importance of changing goals as a point of leverage in a system. You can also look at how aspirational goals will fit the level of consciousness of the people in the system by referring to psychological development work by Loevinger, Tobert, Pfaffenberger, Marko, Wilber, Cook-Grueter, Kohlberg, Kegan, Hall and many others. Schmidt and McEwen in their research article Mindsets (http://www.avastoneconsulting.com/MindsetsInActionReport.html)reference many of these researchers to exemplify that aspirational change will be driven by the level of consciousness of the leaders of groups/organizations. I'm working on a new hypothesis that organizations can make systemic changes focused on raising the level of consciousness of the people in an organization, including the leaders that will facilitate the changes we all see as necessary in sustainability. Once you measure and understand the level of consciousness or worldview of the organization, in general, you need to adjust the goals to one level higher to draw people into an internal change process that allows them to improve sustainability efforts. Aspirational goals, therefore, are directed at a vertical, capacity improving level of development of people rather than a horizontal efficiency type of development.

Eric Johnson
Principal
Alderspruce Sustainability Consulting Group
United States