Pattern Lab ­ a tool for Sustainable Development

Pattern Lab – a tool for SD

The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do.

-- Al Gore, Nobel Acceptance, December 10, 2007 The planet isn’t waiting for humanity to get its sustainability act together. On the other hand: if we could implement today everything we already know (in principle), we’d be much further along the road to a sustainable society. The reasons why we are not collectively effective at putting our knowledge to work are connected with patterns of thought and patterns of behaviour; for instance, a basic, dysfunctional pattern is the belief that change is a linear process.

Pattern Lab is a tool to help us to learn quicker, and to become much better at putting into practice what we learn – for instance by supplying models and tools for nonlinear change. It’s a ‘triple-loop learning’ tool for all stakeholders in the SD process.

When to use: before, during or after a sustainable development project.

Objectives o To uncover embedded patterns of thought and behaviour that hold us back, and limit us to making changes – however good – that are far less than the potential best. o Double-loop learning: to enable us to learn from our own experience, positive and negative. o Triple-loop learning: to enable us to formulate what we learn in ways that are meaningful and easily accessible to others. o To build on learnings from others, so that each project leap-frogs its predecessors. o To liberate dormant creative forces (empowerment) focused on discovering functional alternatives to dysfunctional patterns (‘turnarounds’).

Global Action Plan (GAP) International Brovägen 9 SE-182 76 Stocksund, Sweden

tel +46-8612 1440 www.globalactionplan.com secretariat@globalactionplan.com

Process Four steps: Describe, Analyse, Synthesize, Describe 1. By depths interviews of major stakeholders, create a shared picture (benchmark) of the project and its most important patterns.

2. Analyse and identify both functional and dysfunctional patterns, drawing on the benchmark and on a bank of generic (underlying) patterns.

3. Create characteristics of patterns that would be more functional, and synthesize them into guidelines for improvement.

4. Document new and revised generic patterns for the pattern bank.

Triple-loop learning Triple-loop learning entails members developing new processes or methodologies for arriving at re-framings. It manifests itself in the form of "collective mindfulness" as members of an organization discover how they and their predecessors have facilitated or inhibited learning, and produce new structures and strategies for learning.

All local units of learning are linked together in one overall learning infrastructure which increases the fullness and deepness of learning about the diversity of issues and dilemmas faced. Competencies and skills are further developed that allow for the use of this infrastructure. Characterized by the question: Can we participate in making well-informed choices regarding strategy, objectives, policy?

Pattern Language The emergence of new patterns is a fundamental property of complex systems. The discipline of generative pattern languages aims to capture the patterns underlying successful projects and use them to establish organisational structures and practices: pattern analysis has shown that most highly productive organisations exhibit the same patterns of organisation, process and introspection. These patterns are missing from organisations that are less productive or less successful.

There is thus nothing new in taking a pattern perspective to organisational analysis.

What is novel about the work here is its attempt to use patterns in a generative way for community development. Pattern language puts into communicable form (or language) detailed patterns for project design and execution. In the words of Christopher Alexander et al: Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.

Looked at in this way, "a pattern is an encapsulated story of a successful practice, optimized for rapid location and re-use of knowledge relevant to the type of problems that the practice resolves". There are structural patterns and process patterns for development, which together may be described as forming community or business architecture.

At least one structural Pattern Language/Library exists for ’sustainable community’ – http://www.conservationeconomy.net/ Our concern is to produce a language and library for the transition processes, which is a new approach to use of Pattern Language.

Marilyn Mehlmann, December 2009 Pattern Lab – a tool for SD.docx

2