My current home is in Bolton, Ontario which, for those who have not visited,  is a great place to live. Ontario has been a wonderful home to me and my family most of my life after starting off in Saskatchewan. In fact, if you have lived in any part of Canada, you know that you’ve been blessed.

But British Columbia, for many reasons, is where my heart is. This is where my parents are, as well as my sisters and their families, and it is difficult to express with the limited words of the English language the intense love I feel for them all.  B.C. is also where my entire family, including my brothers (one from China and the other also from Ontario) gather when we have family get-togethers. One of my brothers is also here right now. And I have some very dear friends here as well.

But there’s much more to British Columbia than family, as the many hundreds of thousands if not millions of annual visitors will attest. British Columbia is rich in resources; forests, mountains, clear glacial waters, fisheries, minerals, and the most spectacular scenary you will find anywhere on earth with it’s blend of rich green forests, majestic grey snowpeaked mountains and jagged coast lines reaching into the green-blue oceans all filled with life. The Okanogan region is a fertile ground for growing fruits of many varieties and the climate is temperate and ideally suited for vegetation and farming. It’s incredibly rich with green growth everywhere along the coastlines and in the valleys. They have old growth forests that boast some of the tallest trees in the world and rainforests in the northern regions of Vancouver Island that are rich in wildlife and biodiversity.  

More than just a pretty place, British Columbia also celebrates the many cultures that share this amazing province in the arts, crafts, music and lifestyles including the adoption of some of the wisdom and contributions of its indigenous peoples and the abundance of festivals of every kind. Everywhere I have traveled in British Columbia, and I preface this by acknowledging my sister Celia for introducing me to her incredibly wide circle of friends, the people of British Columbia seem somehow in harmony with their home, respectful of the place in which they live, many striving for a sustainable living while acknowledging and enjoying the bounties of the land with which they have been gifted. With no salt on winter roads, their cars remain intact for a considerable length of time and many take full advantage of this bounty by driving much older cars, a common sight in B.C. There seems to be, at least based on my limited observations, less of a sense of trying to keep up with the neighbors and more a sense of enjoying what is. Most of the new friends I’ve met are satisfied to drive a 10 or 15 year old car as long as it still works. And it isn’t just about cars. Many of the British Columbians I’ve spoken to are keenly aware of the damage that rampant consumerism can cause and strive to live a lifestyle which is more focused on values, developing friendships, enjoying the arts and nature, and providing services rather than focusing quite so much on material pursuits. The pace of life, at least on the island is just a little slower than other places in Canada. My other sister, Joy, described the complex recycling regime which she goes through in order to maximize the amount of recycled goods and minimize the waste going to the landfill and yet she tells me that there are many British Columbians who are happy to share in this recycling ritual just for the sake of preserving what they have.

To simply share the good of British Columbia would, of course, be a little inaccurate. British Columbia, like every place on earth has it’s challenges. One is that it happens to sit on a fault line that is shared with the entire west coast and it anticipates one of the biggest earthquakes the world has seen. Many studies are being done on earthquake detection, earthquake resistant structures, and sunami warning systems to minimize the impact, but when it hits, they will definitely be in for a shake that will stress the hearts and spirit s and test the ability of British Columbians to pull together and befriend each other through extreme hardship. We don’t know when it will happen, perhaps not in this lifetime.

British Columbia is also suffering along with the remainder of an ailing planet from environmental damage. Invasive species such as giant hog weed which competes well in open areas, pine beetles that ravage vast areas of the forest and which now survive the milder winters, raging forest fires caused by a extreme dought, landslides from extreme rain events, toxicity in farmed fish, coastal areas which have suffered from oil spills and pollution, and fisheries which are suddenly coming up short of various species, are just a few of the challenges they face. In it’s cities, it suffers from traffic conjestion and pollution (especially from those old cars which lack polution controls and burn oil), even though they are fortunate to have the ocean breezes which periodically cleanse the air.

Britsh Columbia has so much to offer but it has even more to protect. It’s vast resources are here to be used and even shared, but managing those resources to ensure sustainability is essential. Thoughtful and reflective planning which adopts the attitude shared by our indigenous friends and neighbors, that the earth is one country, that we are part of the environment, not separate from it, will help us to develop an attitude of service and reverence for our home (i.e. this planet) that will prevent us from claiming it to be our own and believing that we can exploit or abuse it’s resources without limits.

If you’ve never been to British Columbia, visit, you will not be disappointed.

Garth Schmalenberg

P.S. Feel free to share this article with your friends and neighbors by e-mail or by directing them to this site.

Benefits of Carpooling

What are the other benefits of carpooling? First, you make friends, get to meet someone new and get to know them well because you see them on a regular basis. Second, you get to share costs of commuting. If you still have a car, at very least you save on gas. If not, you may get to save on repairs, insurance and other costs. Third, if you’re riding with someone else, you may get a little more time to sleep before getting to work. Fourth, in many cities you save time because you get to use designated carpool lanes. Fifth, if your company supports carpooling, you get to leave at a regularly scheduled time(and for reasons I’ll explain later, this is also good for the company). Sixth, you help to save the planet. In the battle against climate change, you get to reduce carbon emissions by sharing a ride directly (more riders is better) and by reducing average commute time for everyone, you help every vehicle on the road because all of them enjoy a slightly shorter commute time. Yes, as even one car comes off the road, there is just a little less congestion and every other car benefits a little and contributes a little less carbon.

Getting your Company Involved

There are many ways to participate in car-pooling and there are many direct and indirect benefits to the company for doing so, not the least of which is your company’s contribution to reducing CO2. But before you roll-out a carpool plan, it is like many other projects, you need think about how to inform staff and management on the benefits to them and to others. Following are a few steps to consider:

1. Have a sustainability speaker come in to do lunch and learns.
   (Most of us who are involved in developing Future Oriented Leadership and Sustainable Cultures would love to speak to your organization)
2. Have a sustainability speaker at a sustainability program roll-out meeting 
3. Find other ways to educate employees on the urgency of reducing their CO2 contribution, and guide and encourage employees to activitely participate.
4. Have a means to measure and report on impact so that you can promote the benefits to others.
5. As with all other organizational changes, this change is behavioural and requires some adjustment. Train managers ahead on the benefits to the organization and to the planet so they will support the plan and deal with any minor inconveniences appropriately (e.g. like having to let employees go home at scheduled times in order to meet their rides). Employees benefit from less stress commuting so are more productive during working hours. Managers benefit from being more organized and respecting their employee’s time rather than randomly overworking them.
6. Speak to other businesses who have successfully implemented Carpooling plans.
7. Post your own carpool sign-up lists and promote car-pooling internally.
8. Promote car-pooling by giving incentives such as prefered parking spots to those individuals who make the effort.
9. Sign your company up on a Carpooling site.

Businesses who are interested in the environment can sign-up on one or more of these software packages including the one offered by the local communities (in Toronto and surrounding area, Smart Commute) and make their offices as destination points, making it easier for willing riders to find each other.

Getting Involved as an Individual

Many Cities including Toronto and surrounding communities make carpooling software available for free to users. You can sign-up and get matched to someone with a similar route and time automatically. If you live in the extended GTA or Hamilton area, you can sign-up for free through http://www.smartcommute.ca. For individuals in other locations, it is well worth your time to do a little searching to find carpooling web-sites.

If you’ve never done it before, give carpooling a try. You may actually enjoy it.

A few other ideas for reducing carbon related to communiting.

For some companies, another easy option for contributing to carbon reduction is by permitting flex hours, which allows employees to drive at non-peak communing hours, thereby reducing congestion, travel times and CO2 emissions.

Tele-commuting is an even better option which gets cars off the road entirely. As with all other changes in employment practices, implementing tele-commuting will require some thought and possibly new equipment and tools but it can work very effectively with side benefits for employees and it can also be a tremendous retention tool for keeping forward thinking employees.

Encourage biking to work. This is not only good for reducing carbon, it can help to promote health of employees. Providing showering and change facilities is helpful but not always required. Definitely providing a safe place to lock bikes is helpful.

Government Involvement

For Governments, besides providing access to carpooling software, they can consider implementing tax breaks for companies that can demonstrate CO2 reduction by either actively working towards helping employees travel at non-peak hours, engage in carpooling, promoting carpooling plans and enabling telecommuting.

Some governments have also paid individuals for traveling at non-peak hours by charging other commuters congestion charges for traveling during peak hours.

Many governments have created special lanes for carpooling and of course for bicycles.

The Car Pooling experience

Not everyone who tries car-pooling has a great experience, but most do. At this momemt, most of my work is done at off-peak hours or from my home, However, every car pooling experience I’ve had has been very positive and well worth the effort. If you haven’t tried it, make the effort. In almost all cases, the benefits easily outweigh the negatives.

All the best,

Garth Schmalenberg
web:  http://www.hbi-leadership.com
e-mail: garth@hbi-leadership.com
Phone: 416-919-6598
twitter: http://www.twitter.com/gschmalenberg

If you find these idesas valuable, please share them through your favorite bookmarking site or by e-mail. Also , please share your comments and any links to carpool web-sites that you’ve found helpful.

Bertieg Consulting is run in a way that is more sustainable and quite different than most organizations.  It is based on a methodology called Open Agile, developed by the company, and which is implemented and continuously evolving within their organization.

Open Agile is a new method of Organizational management based on Agile principles but which are adapted for Organizational activity. One part of the process which is very different from traditional Organizational methodologies is the systematization of reflective learning which is much deeper and more consistent than with traditional approaches.

Learning about the methodology is one thing, becoming a skilled practioner is something else.

As an advocate of continuous and systematized learning, I congratulate the Bertieg team for their accomplishments and have offered to contribute to them in their efforts to evolve their process.

For business leaders interested in creating sustainable organizations, reflective learning followed by pragmatic value based actions are practices which ensure that goals are established, acted upon and learned from.

Open Agile promotes concepts of transparency, truthfulness and consultative decision making all of which are essential elements in building a truly sustainable organization. While holding these principles as core to the process, it also incorporates a framework for holding and sharing the learning. The result is a continuously improving organization.

For more information on Open Agile and Bertieg Consulting, see http://www.openagile.com or http://www.berteigconsulting.com

Garth Schmalenberg
416-919-6598

As the severity of the earth’s situation becomes more apparent and the benefits of sharing are recognized, more and more companies are participating in this project knowing that they stand to benefit from utilizing each other’s intellectual property. Rather than starting from scratch, they are able to more quickly find solutions to some of their challenges add their own intelligence to ideas which have already been patented by another company.  A similar concept has been used in the IT world through open source.

Creating a culture of sustainability will require new ways of thinking for all of us.  As the requirement for answers to our shared the dilemmas becomes more critical, companies will have less time and less resources available for their own individual research. It will be those companies who are willing to work together to find solutions, that will ultimately dominate the market. 

Similarly, within companies, the need for cooperation between individuals and departments is at an all time high.  Organizations who have developed cultures of unbridled internal and external competition will suffer the consequence of falling behind to who have developed a culture of consultation, teamwork, sharing, joint venturing, knowledge management and continuous learning. 

Municiple, regional and national governments who have learned to work effectively with other government organizations, NGOs and Businesses, who have learned to foster cooperation and respect, who have mastered consultative decision making and who share the responsibility of decisions made, will ultimately lead those who are underdeveloped in these capacities.

The call to action for all of us, is to learn and discover new and better ways work together, to recognise that the solution to many of our challenges, both economic and environmental, are  global in their nature. Let’s view our shared dilemma as an ideal opportunity to learn how to work together. 

Whether we like it or not, much of our fate on this planet will ultimately be shared.

Till next time,
Garth Schmalenberg

PS: Web-sites related to sharing initiatives
WBCSD Eco Patent Commons – http://www.wbcsd.org/web/epc/
HBI Leadership – http://hbi-leadership.com