Approach Philosophy
Brief
"The problem is not that we have too many problems. The problem is that we cannot see the interconnections between them." – Daniel Shmachtenberger
Our approach is centered around developing meaningful relationships with individual people over time. We achieve this by growing a mutual understanding of the unique set of technical, economic, and social challenges faced by those who we work with. Through this process of relationship building, we aim to develop an holistic understanding of our collaborator’s mission, vision, and active initiatives currently serving the end addressing to the climate crisis (polycrisis).
Once a mutual understanding has been developed, we begin to tailor a set of interactive workshops, consulting services, and coaching sessions relevant to the organization we are working with. The depth and complexity of this work can be adjusted from an afternoon workshop to several years of sustained work. The near-term goal of our collaborative process is to plant the seeds of future systemic change in the heart’s of those who we interface with. We seek to help participants unlearn typical ways of ‘problem solving’ that lie at the root of the problems we are attempting to solve, breaking a 2500 year cycle of anthropocentric thinking.
Ultimately we hope to build strong relationships and systems of accountability with our clients / collaborators over an extended period of time. The systems change work that we help our clients engage in functions best with consistent-experiential-learning and a willingness to re-visit interdisciplinary concepts across a wide range of situations.
The work carried out by Climate Paradigm is most effective when participants incorporate strong systems of accountability, engage continuous learning over time, and take enough space to genuinely slow down and contemplate something ‘new’.
Detailed Approach
All work carried out during our collaborative process will carry the premise of curios and compassionate investigation into our collaborators unique dilemmas. We understand that systems change is exponential and deeply personal work and are cautious not to pressure participants towards immediate change. Instead, we empower our clients to take meaningful steps towards change, within a comfortable window of tolerance that considers their current culture, priorities, and capacity.
At the project onset we will work through a series of case interviews with key members of the team to establish a trusting dynamic and a mutual understanding of the organization’s knowledge base, vision statement, active initiatives / projects, and goals. Most importantly, we will look at the socio-economic or technological dilemmas that may posing a challenge to the direction that the team wants to move in. We will also assess the work our prospective clients have done with respect to reconcilliation and Indigenous education within their organization, making recommendations for training to complement our work as it fits.
After defining where the team is currently at with respect to where they want to go, we look at the deeper layers of the organizational culture, climate anxiety, and current sentiment organization’s staff and stakeholders with respect to climate change. This layer of inquiry adds definition to the economic risks, cultural edges, and the current window of tolerance often associated with systemic change work.
The end of this layer of inquiry is threefold:
Build a sense a safety and a culture of reciprocal curiosity as a container for working through potentially challenging topics.
Set a pace of change that will nurture sustainable integration of new interpersonal skills, technical tools, and regenerative frameworks.
Collaborate with stakeholders at every level of the organization to cultivate a sense of collective agency over the new initiatives.
After establishing relationships and sense of mutual understanding we will begin to develop a bespoke series of collaborative workshops, trainings, and coaching sessions tailored to your team and industry. Ideally we work with our clients through a series of workshops that take participants through an arc of deconstructive heart work, followed by a process of building mental resilience; only converging on solutions-oriented thinking once we have developed a new foundation for doing so.
Our work typically begins with a standardized set of pre-emptive workshops which serve to develop a sense of safety and trust within the team, ahead of doing any deeper work. We have found this to be a critical step in the professional setting to develop a sense of shared values on challenging topics.
This set of pre-emptive sessions will serve to:
Develop mutually agreed up guiding principles for sessions (e.g. methods for conflict resolution, personal boundaries, sensitive topics, etc.)
Teach self-care tools to cope with any sensations of overwhelm that have the potential to arise in doing this work.
Provide techniques for unfolding polarizing topics like climate change with compassion, careful empathy, and curiosity.
Once a sense of ground and collective empowerment has been established we will begin to work through several pillars of development depending on our client’s needs:
Futureproofing (Technical, Social, Economic)
Mental Resilience and Climate Psychology for Professionals
Conceptualizing Regenerative Frameworks for Business
Integration of Climate Coaching Techniques and Skills
Envisioning Organizational Ecosystems
Systems Thinking (Putting it All Together)
Earth-listening and connective nature practices
The final phase of our work involves developing a web of non-tokenized eco-gestures that have the potential to develop into meaningful projects and paradigm shifting change if nurtured over time. In other words, we will collectively develop a set of tangible day-to-day actions and social contracts to maintain the learning done during the workshops. We will also provide a platform for team members to pursue lifelong learning on these topics, apply new skills and knowledge, process grief, develop a deepened sense of purpose and autonomy at work.
When relevant, we will collectively develop a set of R&D areas and a backlog of projects targeted at identifying goldilocks technologies, opportunities for integrating regenerative economics into the supply chain, and projecting the organizations current / proposed offerings into several risk mitigated futures.
We place high value on maintaining ongoing relationships with our clients and offer active check-ins, accountability services, and advanced workshops to continue building towards a climate resilience future. For participants seeking deeper work, we are connected to wide range of facilitators and consultants who offer specialized interpersonal techniques and are a natural progression to work done with Climate Paradigm Collaborative.
History
Although incorporated in 2024, the conceptual framework, mission, and vision of Climate Paradigm Collaborative have been in development since the fall of 2017.
The seeds for Climate Paradigm Collaborative were planted while studying environmental philosophy and learning of the terms ‘technopoly’ and ‘anthropocentrism’. These terms define a technologically obsessed society who considers themselves separate from nature and holds subconcious / conscious belief that technology is the solution to humanities social, environmental, and economic issues. In the modern western world, these views fundamentally underpin a large majority of corporate and political decision making and have been studied to lie at the socio-psychological foundation of the web of global crisis known as the polycrisis.
Through the combined study of engineering and environmental philosophy, it became apparent that humanity owned the technological and economic means to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, but there were social and psychological barriers in place preventing wide-scale implementation of these solutions.
In 2020 a precursor organization called ‘The Sustainability Association of Victoria’ was founded by Nick Couture and served as a platform for social impact think tanks and climate grief circles in downtown Victoria over the span of two years.
Engagement in this initiative eventually led Nick to the field of Climate Psychology. This sub-discipline studies the paradoxical problem of why humans appear to be stuck on a trajectory towards irreversible climate change (i.e. hothouse earth).
From these studies, a few key opportunities for driving meaningful change within today’s corporate ecosystem became clear:
- The concept of the polycrisis is rightfully terrifying and results in an array of numbing responses such as denial, willful ignorance, distraction, apathy, paralysis, or activist burn-out.
- The majority of people living in the global north lack the conversational skills for constructively discussing polarizing topics like climate change.
- We have lost the ability to slow down and listen to our hearts / the voice of the earth as a way of supporting rational decision making.