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Stimulating Change: An ISM Case Study
Sustainable Scotland Network, Keep Scotland Beautiful t: 01786471333 e: [email protected] Keep Scotland Beautiful is a registered Scottish charity No. SC030332
ISM1 case study tips
Individual
The workshops provided a structured and
safe environment for participants to feel
comfortable discussing their thoughts,
feelings and motivations about the topics.
The mentoring process helped the gurus to
develop their knowledge, skills and
confidence in using ISM. Over time ISM
theory and practice has started to inform and
influence their own thinking and behaviours,
possibly even becoming a habit!
Social
The workshops help attendees understand
different perspectives and build shared
understanding and norms.
Participating in an ISM workshop can help
free people from their normal work roles. This
makes it easier to raise and discuss difficult
(“elephant in the room”) issues during
workshops
Informal interaction between the gurus helped
them learn about ISM from each other and
consolidate their identities as ‘gurus’.
Material
The time involved in attending/travelling to a
workshop is a barrier for some staff.
Funding to deliver actions identified through
an ISM workshop may not be readily available
which can be a significant barrier to change.
1 ISM is the Individual, Social, Material approach developed by the Scottish Government to help design and develop low carbon interventions. Find
out more, including the range of ISM support available to public sector organisations at www.sustainable-scotland.net/lcb.
Topic
Staff use of electric bikes
Recycling within council HQ
Organisation
The Highland Council
Start date
April 2014
Contact
Keith Masson
May 2015 Page 2 of 10
Background Prompted by funding provided by the Scottish Government, Changeworks offered advice and
support to The Highland Council’s Climate Change team on using ISM to identify effective
behaviour change interventions.
The Climate Change team's remit includes oversight and delivery of the Council’s Carbon
Management Plan, Adaptation Strategy and the Carbon CLEVER initiative, which has the
target of a carbon neutral Inverness in a low carbon Highlands by 2025. A vital component of
this work involves building an understanding of existing behaviours and developing effective
policies and measures to encourage and promote low carbon behaviours. As a result, the
Climate Change team wanted to learn how ISM could support their ongoing work.
With additional funding provided by Highland Council Changeworks was contracted to train
and support members of the Climate Change team in using ISM. A range of support was
received including workshop facilitation plus training and mentoring on the use of ISM. This
enabled four Council officers, including two members of the Climate Change team (known
internally as ISM ‘gurus’) to receive training in ISM theory and practice. In addition, around 45
officers, including a selection of senior managers, have participated in one or more ISM
workshops.
Activity
Workshop 1 - Energy Efficient Behaviours
Changeworks facilitated the first workshop in June 2014 with support from SSN. The session
was designed to achieve two goals:
Provide delegates with an overview of ISM and a practical introduction to using the
model.
Provide insights into why officers do / do not practice energy efficient behaviours in the
workplace.
The workshop ran for around 2½ hours. After introducing ISM the model was applied
to the challenge of encouraging more energy efficient behaviours in the workplace.
Mentoring & Training
After the first workshop four officers from the Council’s Climate Change, Learning &
Development and ICT teams were selected for mentoring by Changeworks. The goal was to
up-skill these officers to a point where they could run ISM workshops independently.
“If we want change to stick we need to do more than communicate, communicate,
communicate – ISM provides the framework to be smarter about our approach to
more meaningful and sustainable behaviour change.”
ISM ‘guru’
May 2015 Page 3 of 10
As a first step these aspiring ‘gurus’ were asked to
identify a behavioural challenge they would like to
tackle during a workshop. A template was provided to
help officers use ISM to analyse the behavioural
problem they identified and filling this in aided
familiarisation with the model. Key questions in the
template included:
What is your challenge?
What is your behavioural question?
Who would you invite to a workshop to gather broader insights to this issue and why?
What do you think are the important ISM elements, barriers and possible solutions?
Participating officers were given a month to develop their ideas and complete the template.
Changeworks reviewed this work and provided both written and verbal feedback.
Two topics chosen as subjects for ISM workshops were:
1. Why are officers driving when there are top-of-the-range electric bikes available for city
travel?
2. Why do (and do not) staff recycle in offices at Highland Council’s headquarters?
Preparation for the workshops included identifying what each ISM factor might mean and
providing examples in relation to the topic.
“The ISM model is really
intuitive and this makes it
easier to use.”
ISM ‘guru’
“In terms of preparation, it was really important to have our own ideas mapped out in
advance of the workshop.
However, it was fascinating to see how these differed to what emerged during the
workshop. The differences highlighted the fact that using ISM in isolation does not
create complete solutions; that you haven’t really ticked all the boxes until you’ve
brought in other people and asked them what they think.”
ISM ‘guru’
“There is no right or wrong answer in response to ISM influencing factors, so this
enables people to speak more freely, which is a good thing! If you are looking to
change people’s behaviours you need that kind of honesty from the get-go.”
ISM ‘guru’
May 2015 Page 4 of 10
Carbon CLEVER conference
The Climate Change team delivers the annual Carbon CLEVER Conference. The theme in
2014 was “Working Together for a Low Carbon Highlands”. The event in November 2014
provided an opportunity for public, private, and voluntary sector organisations to come
together to reflect on progress, share good practice and identify opportunities for future
collaborations.
The conference highlighted progress made within the Highlands and mapped out directions
for future work. It focused on the success that can be achieved through collaboration and
included an introductory ISM session.
Workshop 2 - electric bike use
This workshop built on the mentoring process with delivery being shared between
Changeworks and one of the gurus. The focus of the workshop was the Carbon CLEVER
Cycles e-bike hire scheme, officially launched on the 18th August 2014. This is a collaborative
project between The Highland Council, Co-wheels car club and SSE Power.
The scheme provides a total of 12 bikes for hire (from £1.75 per hour), at two locations in
Inverness: Falcon Square and the Council Headquarters in Glenurquhart Road. The e-bikes
assisted pedal power gives cyclists confidence to tackle hills, headwinds and junctions with
greater ease than a traditional pushbike.
Four of the 6 e-bikes at Glenurquhart Road are
block-booked for Highland Council staff to use for
business journeys during office hours. In addition
to reducing grey-fleet journeys, carbon emissions
and costs, use of the bikes promotes active travel
and better health and wellbeing.
Initial uptake proved to be slow despite four e-
bikes being free for staff use. Therefore, an ISM
workshop was held to ask “Why are officers
driving when there are top-of-the-range electric
bikes available for city travel?” A cross-section of
staff and management were invited to attend the
workshop held on 18th November 2014.
Feedback generated during the workshop was sorted into ideas relating to the Individual,
Social and Material contexts and prioritised for taking forward as actions.
Workshop outputs are summarised in the figures below. Reasons for using e-bikes are in
green and reasons for not using them are in red. Key reasons are highlighted in red boxes.
“People appreciate that behaviour
change is difficult to do and do
well. Through learning about ISM,
delegates recognised that it
provides a framework to enable
this to happen more easily and to
influence behaviours in a more
positive way.”
ISM ‘guru’
May 2015 Page 5 of 10
Changeworks continued to provide mentoring support
and peer-to-peer learning was helped by the proximity
of two Gurus within the same office space. This really
helped the Gurus to become familiar with the model and
embed ISM into their thinking and practice.
Workshop 3 - recycling at council headquarters
Changeworks led this workshop in March 2015, with support from one of the gurus. This
provided an opportunity for the guru to gain experience in leading elements of the workshop
with expert support on-hand.
The invitation list for the workshop was drawn from a wide cross-section of people involved ‘at
the coal-face’ every day and with the capacity to recycle more often.
“Facilitating this workshop
will be a baptism of fire in
some ways, but you can’t ask
for better experience!”
ISM ‘guru’
May 2015 Page 6 of 10
The behavioral question considered during the session was:
“Why do (and do not) staff recycle in offices at Highland Council HQ?”
Workshop outputs are reproduced
below. Key elements identified
during the workshop are highlighted
in red boxes. Reasons for recycling
are listed in green text and reasons
for not recycling are in red text.
A number of the ideas generated
during the workshop are likely to be
implemented, subject to budget
availability. For instance, there is a
proposal to provide and promote
the use of a standardised suite of
recycling bins across the Council’s
operations.
“Two key questions to ask when deciding who to invite to
a workshop are ‘who do we think we’ll get the most out
of and who will be best positioned to make the most of
the workshop’. The value in the model is having a diverse
range of opinions / experience in order to draw out a
good range of interventions.
The gurus worked together as a team to identify who we
should invite to the workshop. In the end a good range of
managers and officers came along.”
ISM ‘guru’
“I have only been part of one ISM workshop,
which was focused on recycling, but I thought
it was a great tool to help facilitate discussion
and could be used on any topic for any team.
It was very inclusive and got the brain ticking
over to the point that even I felt that I could
give a valuable contribution on a topic I didn’t
know too much about. It made you think
about your own habits and barriers to doing
or not doing something…most of the time we
are creatures of habit but this tool definitely
made me stop and think about the whys and
why nots”.
ISM workshop attendee
May 2015 Page 7 of 10
Key points The Highland Council has been using ISM to support the delivery of its climate change
programme for around a year.
Over this time, approximately 50 officers from across the Council have been involved
in ISM workshops, including a number of senior managers.
“As recyclate is not weighed or measured it is not currently possible to reliably assess
the impact of the measures identified during the workshop. It may be that this needs to
be addressed before we can take meaningful action.”
ISM ‘guru’
May 2015 Page 8 of 10
Four ‘gurus’ have received mentoring support to help them understand and assimilate
ISM use into their work. Mentoring is comparatively new in this context, so future
initiatives may need to adapt and improve the processes and content used with the
Highland Council’s gurus.
Four workshops have been
run as of April 2015 and more are
planned.
Around 75% of officers
were able to attend the workshop
they were invited to. However, for
some, the duration of the
workshop presented a barrier to
participation.
The size and geography of
the Highland Council area makes it
difficult to involve officers from
across the organisation in the
workshops.
Feedback from workshop delegates has been overwhelmingly positive.
A selection of workshop outputs have been used to inform subsequent planning and
action.
Some of the interventions identified during or as a result of workshops may be
challenging to deliver, either because funding is not currently available or because
support from partner organisations has not been secured. Going forward, it would be
useful to open up workshops to stakeholders to gain their input, perspectives,
engagement and buy-in.
The use of ISM as a tool to support thinking and inform action is starting to become
reflexive for the ‘gurus’. For instance, one guru recently used ISM to structure her
thinking about how to reduce the volume of paper used across The Highland Council.
Through this exercise she realized that printing budgets were centralized, meaning
that individual departments do not currently face any financial consequences if targets
are not set and then met. As a result of this work, printing budgets have now been
decentralized, meaning individual departments now pay for and manage this. This shift
in accountability has led to a dramatic drop in the volume of paper used across the
Council.
This example illustrates how ISM principles and approach can become a natural
framework for individual problem-solving and decision-making.
“An ISM workshop provides people with
an opportunity to be 100% honest about
how they feel about a particular topic,
which is extremely powerful.
Giving people the opportunity to be open
and honest, even when their managers
are present, allows the group to dive
deeper into the real issues. ISM provides
a framework that helps people to really
understand behaviours and what shapes
them.”
ISM ‘guru’
May 2015 Page 9 of 10
What’s next? An ISM workshop is planned involving the Executive Leadership Team of the Council.
The Depute CEO is seeking to embed organisational values across the Council and
would like to use ISM to help explore the challenges and develop a strategy. The
workshop will likely be facilitated by one of the gurus.
A network of around 65 businesses and third sector organisations has formally
pledged to support Carbon CLEVER. The Climate Change team is considering
whether to introduce these organisations to ISM to see what benefit they might gain
from using the tool in their own work environments. Whilst this idea is still at a
formative stage, one suggestion is for the Carbon CLEVER team to offer ISM training,
mentoring and support to interested organisations.
The gurus are considering running one or more mini-ISM workshops at the 2015
Belladrum Festival. This work could focus on the uptake and use of electric vehicles
across the Highlands.
There is also interest in using ISM in schools to help tackle commonly encountered
challenges in the school environment. Pupils could also be taught how to use ISM to
equip them with a problem-solving model for life.
May 2015 Page 10 of
10
Supplementary information
ISM
ISM is the Scottish Government’s Individual, Social, Material approach. It was developed to
help build stronger policies and programmes to support Scotland’s transformation to a fair and
flourishing low carbon society.
ISM is…a simple framework for informing approaches
to behaviour change and decision-making;
…it can be used in a workshop, within a team, for a
project, by a partnership or by an individual;
…when you need to analyse an existing problem or
challenge; design or evaluate a plan, project or
programme; or consider broader organisational change;
and…although it was developed with low carbon
behaviours in mind, ISM can be applied to a range of
behaviour-related agendas, including health and
wellbeing.
ISM case studies
This case study was produced by Ansons Consulting and commissioned by Keep Scotland
Beautiful as part of the Sustainable Scotland Network’s support for public sector bodies in
using ISM to help:
Design, develop and evaluate interventions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions
arising from the public sector estate, functions and service delivery; and
influence collective efforts across public and cross-sector partnerships to promote,
support and encourage low carbon behaviours in the workplace, at home and within
our communities.
Other case studies are available at http://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/sustainability-
climate-change/sustainable-scotland-network/low-carbon-behaviours/resources/.
Sustainable Scotland Network The Sustainable Scotland Network supports public sector action on climate change and
sustainable development. The Scottish Government provides funding to Keep Scotland
Beautiful to develop SSN. Keep Scotland Beautiful is a multi-faceted organisation operating
across the spectrum of environmental issues, from littering to climate change. The charity
operates in three main areas: sustainability and climate change, sustainable development
education and local environmental quality. SSN sits within KSB’s sustainability and climate
change portfolio.
