Abundance by Design - Rocky Mountain Institute

Strategic InfluenceTHE LATE GREAT SYSTEMS THINKER DONELLAMeadows said 1 that the least effective way to intervenein a complex system is changing the numbers (taxes,subsidies, standards); then changing the materialstocks and flows; then regulating negative feedbackloops; then driving positive feedback loops; thenchanging information flows; then changing the rules ofthe system (rewards, penalties, constraints); thenchanging the patterns of self-organization; then shiftingthe goals of the system. The most powerful intervention,she said, is to change the mindset of the peoplewho make the rules. At RMI, we call this “strategicinfluence,” and we do a lot of it.About two-thirds of the Institute’s staff is involvedin all manner of publishing, from reports and clienttargetedadvice to books, magazine, and newspapercontent, to in-house pieces (including this one and ourthrice-a-year RMI Solutions newsletter). Our op-eds,commentaries and analyses are seen worldwide. Wemaintain a website with thousands of pages of content,hosting 630,000 visitors in the past year. Each week,staffers field more than 100 email and 25 phoneinquiries from the general public, many mediainquiries, and several visitors, and offer tours of RMI’ssuperefficient headquarters building (to an estimatedtotal of more than 70,000 visitors so far). But evenmore effective than all these “wholesale” and “retail”activities may be our thought leaders’ one-on-one andsmall-group private interactions with the world’smovers and shakers.What sorts of folks do we influence? Heads of state,leaders of some of the world’s largest companies, topjournalists, senior civilian and uniformed military leadership.A sampling from our CEO’s speaking venuesfor the past fiscal year includes Fortune’s AspenBrainstorm, TED Conference, FiRE Conference,Cosmos Club, U.S. Department of State, Aspen andMontreux Energy Fora, Brookings Institution, PacificCouncil, Council on Foreign Relations, Baker Institute,Maguire Energy Institute, Houston Forum, HighlandsGroup, numerous senior Pentagon briefs, NavalPostgraduate School, International Energy Agency,Tokyo University, Japanese Diet, Hong Kong Universityof Science and Technology, Engineering andConstruction Contracting Association, and MerrillLynch’s network of 200+ automotive financial analysts.Now mix in senior meetings with a half-dozen each ofmajor automakers and oil companies, noted financiers,White House officials, Senators and senior Capitol Hillstaffers of both parties, governors andpolicymakers from many states, cities,and countries. Add new publicationsin such places as Time, Newsweek, Scientific American,and Encyclopedia of Energy. Season with interviews andstories ranging from Reader’s Digest to Rolling Stone andfrom The Economist to the German magazine Focus. Stirwell. And now remember that RMI has not one personbut 40–50, many with deep expertise, strong reputations,extensive networks, and diverse venues. Just onWinning the Oil Endgame, for example, their talksincluded Pentagon engineering conferences, a dozendays of three-continent financial-community events forCLSA (the research arm of Crédit Lyonnais), Harvardand Stanford Business Schools, World Presidents’Organization, CALSTART, AltTrans, and more. That’swhy, as a thought leader and influencer, the Institutecan punch above its weight.Much of RMI’s credibility, especially in the privatesector, comes from its business results. An academicthink-tank’s work would appear in Energy Policy,Science, Nature, and Annual Reviews but probablynot Harvard Business Review and Fortune (we do allthe above). It’s because our work yields solid profitsfrom new solutions to old problems that businessleaders, and the civil society with which they coevolve,take note.Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with saying:“Preach the Gospel continually. If necessary, use words.”Rocky Mountain Institute communicates its solutionsin many ways, but it’s the practical manifestations ofand the business buzz from our fieldwork, more thanany eloquence of our words, that most changes themindset of the people who make the rules.121 “Places to Intervene in a System,” Whole Earth, Winter 1997,www.wholeeearth.mag.com/ArticleBin/109.html.