Comparto aquí una entrevista que me hizo Jessica Conrad, en el marco de una investigación con Prescilla Sossouhounto y Yannick Wassmer, que studian el MSLS, Master en Liderazgo Estratégico para la Sostenibilidad en el Instituto Tecnológico de Blekinge BTH de Karlskrona, Suecia.
Exploring the Cultural Dimension of the
FSSD
Interviewee: Pablo Villoch
March 24, 2017
Interviewer: [6:37] We know that you’re currently
located in Chile. Is this your home country?
Pablo Villoch: No. Now it’s the country that I call
home, however I was born in Spain. I was born in Europe. I was born in the
Basque Country in Bilbao. It is a city at the North of Spain. I was born in a
family of a Basque engineer and flamenco dancer from Andalusia, which are two
different cultures in the same country. So I had this intercultural sensitivity
before understanding that there was a word for it. I also was grown up in the Basque Country in a place
of terrorism and political violence, but finally it’s a cultural conflict. It’s
a conflict of identities—of those who feel more Basque than Spanish, and those
who feel more Spaniard than Basque. Finally, it’s not a political conflict, but
it’s about cultures and identities. [7:59]
Interviewer: Thank you. So you also shared your
company with us, and we looked at your company website. I’m wondering if you
can briefly describe the work that you do? It seems like it’s very
multi-faceted. You’re using backcasting and Art of Hosting and Theory U.
Pablo Villoch: [8:20] Okay, yeah. I will try to make
it brief because I […]
[8:26] a lot. Yes, Glocal Minds is an intercultural network of consultants and
facilitators. Our mission is to accompany the evolution of systems towards
sustainability. When we say “accompany” it means facilitate, design,
systematize. When we say “evolution” it means learning, development,
transformation, conservation. And when
we mean “sustainability,” you know the definition of that. And “systems,” we
work with universities, communities, companies, multinational SMEs, NGOs,
whoever asks for help basically and can pay our services. Sometimes even if
they can’t pay, we can also..we have a part that can be volunteer.
Interviewer: Nice. And is most of that work taking
place in Chile, or do you also work in different countries? [9:35]
Pablo Villoch: Yeah, in Chile is our headquarters,
which is this room where we do our meetings and our workshops. Today we have a
workshop this afternoon. By the way, we also fly and move around Chile. To the
desert, in the North to the jungles, to the Patagonia. We also go to Peru to
Ecuador. Basically most of Latin American countries. We have been working in
Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia. And there are two emerging
nodes of this network in Colombia and Mexico.
Interviewer: Colombia and Mexico, okay. Have you
ever done any work in Spain?
Pablo Villoch: Yeah, in Spain, well I go to Spain
every year—or every two years—just for family, just to see my parents and my
brothers. My last trip to Spain just was holiday. A few years ago in the
Basque—it was 2010 or 2011—I facilitated a workshop in the Basque University of
Mondragon. [11:10]
Interviewer: Great, thank you. That’s helpful
context and helpful just to provide a foundation for our next questions which
are more related to our thesis topic. First of all, we’re hoping that, perhaps
briefly, could you describe your sustainability journey for us? Is this
something that you always knew you wanted to work on, or how did you get into
the topic? [11:37]
Pablo Villoch: Yeah, my sustainability journey. Well,
I was born in the Basque Country in a post-industrial city. I was born at the
end of the 70s, and we had an industrial crisis in the 80s. So the basic source
of employment in the Basque Country was the iron, steel iron industry. So when
Spain entered the European Union, they suffered a crisis. My father, at the age
of 45, lost his employment, and we are four brothers.
Since
the age of 9 or 10 years old, I started going to summer camps. That was my
first experience with environmental education through experiential learning and
doing games to understand the interdependence of the web of nature. After that
I remember that my brother was a Greenpeace fan, so he draw for me the whales
and things like that. [13: 23] I remember that I was a child, and I had a clear
idea that I didn’t want to be an industrial engineer as my father because I had
heard that industries pollute. [13:37] Create pollution and pollute the
environment. So that was like a triggering idea in my childhood.
After
that, I had a dilemma at the age of 18 when I had to choose my studies. [14:00]
So my dilemma was biology—more related to nature—and economics. Finally, I
understood that if you want to change the world, you must change the economy. So
I decided to study economics to understand how the world works, to understand
how the economy works, to understand how business works to change from within.
And in the business faculty I joined AIESEC, which is an amazing exchange
student association that works on sustainability, and that was the first time
that I heard the word “sustainable development.” It was 1995, and I remember
that we pushed in our university. We collected signatures and support of some
teachers to introduce a new subject in the university that was economics of
development in order to bring those issues into our studies.
So,
since that age, during my business studies, I had a foot in the business school
and another foot in volunteering. I volunteered as an environmental educator, peace
educator. I was volunteering with handicapped children, with elderly, with
gypsy communities in the South of Spain during summer camps. So I was an
explorer or the world of different social issues. [15:57]
Then,
the first time I’ve heard the word “intercultural,” I was in the fourth year of
my business studies. The dean of the business school, Monterrey Tech, an
important university in Mexico, he was offering scholarships for an exchange
program. So I had always been in love with Latin America, and that was the
first opportunity to see Latin America and to explore what intercultural means.
So I went to Mexico, and in Mexico I joined the hiking club, and I started
climbing mountains, and I climbed my first glacier. I read that the glaciers
were going to disappear, and in fact that glacier doesn't exist anymore 15
years later. [17:12]
And
then from Mexico I applied for a scholarship to come to Chile with UNESCO in
order to work on international cooperation. Trying to help NGOs and local
municipalities to apply for funds, grants, and help them in social development
issues. At that time I saw that culture was a key factor in the success of
development projects.
After
that, I worked for three years in organizational consulting. Basically I was an
economist working with psychologists facilitating leadership and team-building
workshops for multinational companies. [18:12] You know to integrate cultural
change. Basically at that time, my question was not only about how to change
economy, but it was also about how to change culture. So how to change
organizational culture. And that’s why I started studying how to change
organizational culture. Basically organizations are made of people, and people
are grounded by culture.
After
that, well, I forgot one milestone. After my time in Mexico, I volunteered with
indigenous communities in southern Mexico, and that was also a very meaningful
milestone about my encounter with “otherness,” or with other worldviews. I
think that was my first experience and approach about different worldviews with
indigenous communities in Oaxaca.
[19:23]
And
then in Chile, with this company, yeah, I started feeling again ‘the call of
the mountain’—what I call the ‘call of the mountain’. And literally I went to
work for three years in a mountain area in the Andes mountains close to
Santiago. I was there for three years as the director of sustainable tourism in
this mountain area. That was an in-depth immersion on local, territorial
approaches to sustainability, on multi-stakeholder style of building a shared
vision, understanding the local conflicts between the mining industry and local
communities, between the ski resorts and the glaciers and the tourists and the
scarcity of water the carrying capacity of the land. So that was in-depth
immersion journey of three years. [20:33]
After
that, well, I saw that I saw people at mining industry told me, “Hey, we
are doing sustainable mining.” And the skiers and the ski tourist industry said
“Hey, we are doing sustainable tourism.” So if everything is sustainable, then
nothing is sustainable. I started looking for a theoretical framework and
science-based definition of sustainability. I started searching for
scholarships and post-graduate programs to have a more theoretical framework,
and that’s how I found MSLS. Well, I applied to different programs in Canada,
New Zealand, and Australia, and finally I was accepted at MSLS, and we sold
everything with my wife. That was a car and a fridge, and we went with my wife
and our little daughter—she was nine months old—and we went to Karlskrona, and
we spent one year of our lives there. [21:57]
Interviewer: Wow, that’s wild! Thank you for all of
that. Really lovely story!
Pablo Villoch: Sorry, I tried to be brief, but it’s
impossible!
Interviewer: No, I really enjoyed it. Thank you. So
it sounds like you learned about the FSSD, the Framework for Strategic
Sustainable Development, before coming to MSLS, and then you understood it
better at MSLS. Is that correct?
Pablo Villoch: [22:23] Yeah, I basically I read some
PDF documents about the FSSD, but I didn’t understand it until I was in Karlskrona.
So
in that time, once I ended my time in the mountains, I went back to the city
and started teaching about local sustainable development at the university. In
2008 I founded Glocal Minds, but it was in a latent state, a standby state,
until we came back from Europe. That was at the end of 2010. So during the last
7 years, I’ve been both teaching in different universities sustainability
leadership, facilitation, participation. I’ve been also doing facilitating
process, participatory process, and also intercultural coaching, helping expats who come to Chile to understand the
Chilean culture.
Interviewer: Oh, excellent! Well that’s right up our
alley, obviously. And I wonder if you...It sounds like from your email you have
been applying the FSSD in some of your facilitation work. Is that true? Are you
applying it with your clients? [24:06]
Pablo Villoch: Yes, I mean, our clients don’t say,
“Hey, we want FSSD!” Our clients ask for “Oh, we have a challenge. We need to
build a vision. We feel confused. We are doing many things, and we don’t have a
systems approach.” So I would say that I am teaching the FSSD in different
universities to companies, to people who work in different companies. So I am
using the FSSD as content, as a main framework or approach to sustainability in different post-graduate
programs in local universities, and also in Ecuador. I’ve been doing some
workshops there. And not all of my client use FSSD. I would say that we use a
lot the backcasting approach. Basically the FSSD is a strategic thinking
approach toward sustainability with the principles. However if you use the
backcasting approach, it’s a great strategic thinking framework for whatever
problem it is. Most of our clients work on social issues, so basically the
environmental principles—the first three SPs—are maybe not so relevant for
them. However, reflecting on...using this backcasting approach, going to build
a shared vision, and then go back and have a baseline, have a participatory
co-creative process of the solutions—that’s very meaningful for our clients.
[26:24]
Interviewer: Okay, great. Thank you for clarifying
that. So now we have a few questions that are more related to the cultural
dimension. And, just as a reminder, we’re interested in the cultural dimension
because the sustainability challenge is a global challenge. When we look at it
from that perspective, it really becomes clear that sustainable development
will require collaboration across traditional divides. Just as we learn at
MSLS. In our initial literature review,
we noticed that the link between culture and sustainability is relatively
unexplored, but the literature also says that cultural values and cultural
perceptions need to be considered when working toward ecological or social
sustainability. So that means that people’s cultural backgrounds and worldviews
will intrinsically shape how development is defined and how the future
envisioned, just as you described. So uncovering the gap in the literature was
part of the motivation for us to explore this cultural dimension of the FSSD
and its application.
So
I have a few questions for you related to that, and the first is, Can you
describe an experience when you noticed the influence of the local culture on
your application of the FSSD?
Pablo Villoch: [28:17] Hmm, Yes, I can. Yeah. I will
tell you a story. One time, it was about six years ago in a local indigenous
community in the South of Chile. It is called Quinquen community [Quinquen,
Lonquimay] in southern Chile. Their
Indigenous culture is called Pewenche. Pewenche means the people of the pewen. Pewen is the sacred tree of
these people. That project was executed by WWF. It was funded by the Public
Innovation Agency. So the aim of that project was to build with the local
community a strategic plan to develop a community-based ecotourism plan in
their land. That was one of the first indigenous communities that was still
officially stewarding a big piece of land with amazing valleys and forests.
That was in recognition of their role in the protection of the land. [30:07]
But in some ways, they have some conflicts, internal conflicts, within the
community about opening to tourism or not opening to tourism.
So
at that time, they asked me to help them in the facilitation of the process.
One part of the process, that was how to build a strategic marketing plan
within the strategic plan. So at that time, my intervention in that program was
around six months. Every month had to go there and facilitate a one-day
workshop, and I also spent a few days with them building trust. That’s very
important. Especially with them. Especially when you are a foreigner.
So
the application of the FSSD at that time… First, I will zoom in. I will
“double-click” in one session when we built a shared vision. That was a workshop—a
three-hours workshop—with elderly people of the community with women and with
three young men. [31:57] We did it in the school, in the local school. There is
a beautiful wooden building in the middle of a sacred forest. Amazing. The kids
were there during the morning. We arrived sooner, so we asked the children to
draw their vision. What was the community they wanted for their future. So all
these indigenous kids draw the drawing, draw their place the same as it is now.
So the message was very clear to the adults to say, hey, the kids of the
community want a future that conserves our land, our trees, our rivers. So in
that moment, before we started the workshop, we pasted the drawings at the
entrance so the adults can see the drawings before starting the workshop. And
we did a world cafe. We did a world cafe in order to build a shared vision.
However, in that culture, women self-inhibit. They inhibit themselves to speak
aloud in front of men. So we had to create a safe space for women to express their dreams. It was the same World cafe, the same questions,
but at different tables. So there were tables for men, tables for women with a
female host for women, and a male host for men. Because if we cross-pollinate,
and if we mix them, then we could lose their voices. And in that project it was
not our role to change that part of the culture. So we considered that.
I
would say that during the harvesting of the world cafe, one the elders told us
that from the worldview, time is not linear. Time is circular for them. So, for
them, they cannot talk about future without talking about the past. For them,
stewarding the peace and harmony in the land is preserving past. In order to
preserve the future, you need to preserve the past. To honor their ancestors,
to honor their traditions. So that’s they way they think. That’s the way their
worldview is about putting first the past, and that’s why they start all of
their meetings honoring their ancestors, honoring their traditions in order to
preserve the future. [35:38] So basically to do a strategic planning approach
in a linear way is very different. Because in some way, when you are building a
shared dream, well, that shared dream is also a memory of the past. So the
projection of the dream is equal to the past in their worldview. [36:08]
Another
cultural aspect that was very important in that process is to involve the
spirits in the process. Yeah. That’s something that no MSLS, no MBA, no
master’s degree will prepare you for! How to engage, how to involve spirits in
a strategic planning process, participatory process. We needed to involve the
spirits. We needed to ask the spirits for permission to start the workshop. And
finally, after a few months of facilitating workshops, we saw that the elders
were more reluctant, were more afraid of opening the community to tourism. And
the youngsters, the teenagers were more open, because some of them have
Internet, some of them have Facebook. But finally, after lots of talk around
the fire and having mate, which is this local infusion, they told us that what
they were more afraid about. Their biggest fear is that the foreigners, the
tourists, come to the forest, and they don’t ask for permission from the spirit
of the forest. The spirits will be angry, and they will go away. That was their
biggest fear. So, well, our proposal was what if we make the tourists ask for
permission to the forest? What if we oblige the tourists to have a local guide
and we put a sign out with three languages—English, Spanish, and their local
indigenous language, Chedungun[38:15]—to ask for permission for the spirits? Ok! And with that condition they
accepted. They were willing to accept that condition.
So
I told this because in some way the FSSD is a science-based definition. It is
difficult to involve spirits in that kind of science framework, scientific
framework. However, it was very
meaningful for the success of this process.
Interviewer: Wow, okay well your story elicited a
couple questions—some new questions. It’s a wonderful story, and it’s so
helpful for our project. So it sounds like you maybe were able to do some
advance research to understand some of these dynamics? Probably not the
spirits. It sounds to me that that’s something you may have discovered during
the process of the project. Is that true? And I guess my question really is how
much can you learn about the culture in advance? Do you try to do that? And how
much do you adapt your process as you’re going? [39:47]
Pablo Villoch: Yeah. Prior to going to Karlskrona, I
studied post-graduate intercultural studies and local development. I had read
hundreds of books on indigenous mythology. It’s something that I am personally
excited about. However, I had no idea about the gender dynamics within that
community. I had read about the circular perception of time, but I never faced
the challenge of doing a strategic planning in a circular worldview in circular
time. I had read about the spirit. In
their worldview, everything has a soul. The stones have a soul. The river has a
soul. Spirit. However, I had never imagined that I should invite them to...or
that I should ask for permission for that.
So,
yeah, definitely maybe you can read about, but only theoretically. The most
important thing during the process as a practitioner is to be open, to be
curious, to be compassionate in order to understand what is really meaningful
and important for them. Basically
working in sustainability is about working on what matters. And for them,
spirit matters. [41:48]
Interviewer: And I’m curious about exactly how you
find that out, too. Does those kinds of things emerge when you’re facilitating
a big group process? Or do those things emerge more in one-on-one
conversations? Or is it really dependent on the situation?
Pablo Villoch: [42:07] Yeah, I think it’s very
intuitive. I would say that especially...I don’t know in other cultures, but
Latin American cultures are cultures of informal conversations. Much of the
process is built through informal conversations, one-to-one, in small groups.
Then in the workshop you prepare the scenario to make it formal, however most
of the “cooking” process is previous to the kitchen. You need to pre-cook the
process, and that means a lot of informal conversations with communities,
gaining validity with informal leaders. Especially with indigenous communities,
they have a distributed leadership. So they have a leader for spiritual issues,
a leader for conflicts, a leader for strategic things. So it’s important to
build trust with all of them.
Interviewer: Thank you. So my next question, it
sounds like you’re primarily using backcasting to do this visioning, but I’ll
still ask this question, which is are there specific elements of the
FSSD—whether that is backcasting or the sustainability principles—that require
special attention when applying the framework in different cultural contexts?
Pablo Villoch: Yes, especially in a continent as South
America where there is a social awareness about social issues. This continent has
some of the most unequal countries, where the divide between the poor and the
rich are huge. In terms of the order of slides, I put the social principles
first. I haven’t changed my slides yet. Are you still using the social human
needs approach? With Max Neef?
Interviewer: Yes.
Pablo Villoch: Yeah, I’m not using Merlina’s
principles yet. I will soon change that slide. And I use Neef’s needs, because
Manfred Max Neef is Chilean. As he is from Chile, Chileans feel that they have
a local connection. So I would say, yeah, putting social first. I know that
social and environmental are both important and intertwined, however in this
country it’s important to put social first and then environmental. It works
better. I faced some resistance when I put environmental first. The
environmental principles first.
What
else is important to consider? Yeah, the wording is quite scientific.
“Systematically increase of blah blah blah substances”. When you put it into
Spanish, it’s very scientific. It works for an academic context. Tt works for a
corporate context. But if you are working with NGOs, with grassroots movements,
you really need to be very visual, be very pedagogical, try to avoid
technicalities. I would say put it into street language. I would say that,
yeah, the idea of the FSSD is to engage people, to empower themselves, to collaborate,
to build a better future. If we create a very scientific jargon, and we cannot
speak the local language, then you create a divide. The idea is to bridge those
divides, not to create separation.
Interviewer: Great, thank you. Have you noticed any
impact of culture on the way people understand sustainability or engage in the
process of the FSSD?
Pablo Villoch: Yes. I would say, for example, Chile.
Chile is a country where every year we have earthquakes, big fires, floods, and
we are having them more and more because of climate change. Well, there is no
evidence of the correlation between earthquakes and climate change yet, but
Chile is a country of plenty of natural disasters, or human provoked disasters.
For example, what is emerging in some conversations in places like Chile, we
need to focus more on resilience, on collective resilience, on territorial
resilience, on organizational resilience. Here in Chile, to be sustainable, in
order to sustain your business, in order to be sustainable, we are exposed to
so many disasters that here in order to be sustainable you need to be resilient
first. So I’m starting to explore the connections between sustainability as an
approach that prevents damage, and resilience as an approach that assumes that
damage will come, [49:20] which is the case of this country.
What
else in terms of impacts. Well, especially in Latin America, there is like a
green bias. When you talk about sustainability, people think green, people
think environment, and people are blind about the social dimension of
sustainability. People still see a tradeoff between environment and society,
and they don’t see it as interconnected. [50:00]
What
else? And also, yeah, especially most of Latin American countries, their
economies are based on extractive industries. Latin America is a continent that
extracts raw materials, such as oil, wood, fish, fruits, and vegetables, and
exports to the world. Especially Chile is a main producer of copper. Half of
the Chilean economy is copper. In order to extract one kilogram of copper, you
need to destroy one ton of mountain. [50:54] I would say that in most of these
extractive economies, there is extractive culture. That’s not about take, make,
waste. It’s about take, take, take. Take and export. Take and export. And even
we say that Chile exports copper and imports copper wire. Exports wood and
imports furniture. Chile exports paper and imports books. So all of the added
value is created somewhere else. So there is not local industries. Basically
the local industries are focused on extracting and taking raw materials from
the earth’s crust. So when we start talking about the first sustainability
principle, you can see the “grunt grunt grunt” the movements in the seats in
the audience. Because it’s something that deeply puts them in a discomfort zone
because you are telling to their face that the economy is not sustainable.
I
remember that I shared this concern with Kalle, and he told me, “Hey, talk with
them! They are smart, they are intelligent.” Yeah, I’m still struggling with
that. I think working with mining companies...I would say that culture, not
only national culture, but also organizational cultures it’s something we need
to work with. Because organizational cultures are based on worldview, and I
think that is something we need to understand. Because especially with local
governments, they say “Hey, we need to extract today the copper, because that’s
how we’re funding our public free education for all.” So they use the
extractive speech in order to justify their social expenses. [53:23] So, yeah,
I think there is still a lot of work to do.
Interviewer: Well, I think in this most recent
response just about the different elements of Chilean culture that may be
challenging to work with as a sustainability practitioner to the unexpected
cultural elements of the indigenous community—whether it’s gender dynamics or
working with spirits—you’ve encountered a lot of challenges as a sustainability
practitioner! I wonder, based on all of that experience, what leadership
qualities and/or competencies you feel are necessary for working in different
cultural contexts?
Pablo Villoch: Wow, I love that question! [54:13]
Yeah, definitely. Leadership qualities in order to work with sustainability in
diverse cultures. Definitely, first, awareness. Self-awareness of your own
biases. It’s a paradox because you can only be aware of your own biases when
you are exposed to a different culture. Asking yourself about your own culture
is like asking a fish what’s the color of water. That’s impossible because
water is always there. A fish of sweet water will not realize that sweet
water—I don’t know if that’s the technical word—will realize that sweet water
is not the universal water until this sweet water fish goes to the sea, and it finds
the salt water. So whatever we think is natural is cultural, and whatever we
think is natural is natural until we notice
that it’s cultural. We can only notice that when we face the other, when we are
immersed in another culture.
So,
first. Leadership qualities. Be aware of your bias. So that means travel.
Travel a lot. Question your own beliefs. [56:08] Your own worldviews. Be open
to that. Another quality I would say is empathy. Not only emotional empathy,
but cognitive empathy. Worldview empathy. It’s about not only connecting with
the emotions of people, but also connecting with their worldview—with their way
of thinking about what matters to them, how they see the world. What else? I
would say that could be named as cultural sensitivity.
Yeah,
what else? It’s something that the experts call not only intercultural dialog,
but also inter-epistemic dialog. Have you heard about that?
Interviewer: No, can you say a word about that?
Pablo Villoch: Epistemé is
a greek word
that is to do with “epistemology.” That is the way we know. The way we know
what we know. So last year, I co-facilitated a workshop with some academics and
scholars with the indigenous intercultural university whose mission is to
“interculturalize” the academic world. They are introducing...they are
infiltrating indigenous wise people in the faculties of different traditional
universities. So they say that they want to go beyond intercultural dialog.
They need to have an inter-epistemic dialogue because it’s not only about
Chilean culture or European culture, it’s also about holistic worldview and
scientific worldview. The scientific worldview has this bias of mechanistic,
positivistic, rationalistic way of understanding things. Indigenous worlds are
more open to validate intuition, non-linear knowledge, or spiritual tradition
as a valued way of knowing. So for them...So inter-epistemic could be like
faith, spirituality, religion dialog with science. That’s also inter-epistemic
dialog. Inter epistemic dialogue: It's a dialogue between different ways
of knowing...
(I recomend to read Boaventura de Sousa
Santos, a portuguese sociologist who created the concept of
"Ecology of knowledges", where scientific rationale knowledge
can be in dialogue with community embedded common sense... "Decolonizing
knowledge to distribute power") http://www.boaventuradesousasantos.pt/media/Introduction(3).pdf
Interviewer: Wow, what a great concept! I’ve never
heard of that before. Thank you for introducing us to it.
Pablo Villoch: Yeah, maybe it’s something you will not
read about at BTH. [laughing]
Interviewer: Yeah. [laughing]
Pablo Villoch: Yeah, engineering and mechanical
faculty.
Interviewer: Yeah, probably not. Oh, that’s great.
Thank you. [laughing] Kind of along
the same lines, I wonder what advice you might give to a practitioner of the
FSSD who is preparing to work in a different cultural context for the first
time?
Pablo Villoch: What advice I would give to someone who
is?
Interviewer: An FSSD practitioner who is preparing
to work in a different cultural context for the first time?
Pablo Villoch: Yes, perfect. [1:00:13] Maybe this is
something that your advisors would not like. Who is your advisor?
Interviewer: Do you now Pia?
Pablo Villoch: No, no I don’t. [laughing] I have no biases.
My advice—with a lot of love to the MSLS tribe and BTH—is forget FSSD! I
mean...first, build trust. First, listen genuinely. First, ask questions that
matter. First, connect with people. First, be humble. Be generous. And then,
once you have been working with people, and you have been building
trust...maybe this is my own bias because Latin American cultures are very
relational. Because Latin American cultures put relations first. Whereas when
you first build relations, you build trust, then you can make business. In
other cultures you first make business, it’s more transactional. Then once you
build trust after the business, then you build a relationship. [1:01:58]
However, that’s what I could say.
In
order to be successful as a FSSD practitioner, be humble. Be curious. Ask
questions. Ask questions that matter. Be appreciative. Yeah. Ask people what
matters for them. If they matters their family, their business, or their
future, then you can say “Hey! I have an amazing Swedish methodology that can
work for building a shared vision within sustainability principles.” I think
that’s that. Don’t put your FSSD first. Put people first. Put their feelings
first. I think that’s a more cultural sensitive advice I can give. [1:03:04]
Interviewer: Thank you. So then it’s interesting to
ask you this next question, which is if there’s something that you would change
or maybe add to the FSSD to make it easier to translate to different cultural
contexts, what might that be? [1:03:23]
Pablo Villoch: Yeah. It’s something that I’ve been
doing myself for the last seven years, and it’s something that MSLSers have
been doing through their thesis projects. I see that people have been
using...that have been combining...I would say that we were pioneers in our
thesis. We used the Theory U as a methodological framework for our thesis, so
I’m always combining Theory U with Art of Hosting with FSSD. And I see that last
year’s theses have been working on it. I saw some theses with The Weave, with
the Lotus [1:04:23]. They have been doing a great job combining it. So I
probably know how they work with it. It has been evolving. I see that it’s also
evolving. I would say that in the Five Level Framework (5LF)...for me the 5LF
is a lens to observe, to understand. But it’s very important to understand that
there is an observer who observes through that lens. So from my understanding
it’s very important to draw...to be explicit about the observer who observes
through the lens of the 5LF to see the system and this arrow and the vision and
the principles. Because the observer is the one who is embedded on culture. The
observer is the one who has mental models, who has beliefs, values, awareness,
consciousness, faith. So in some ways, as the FSSD is more in the rich field of
natural science of biology and oncology, the observer is a blind spot
[1:06:05]. So, yeah. I think that my main suggestion to change how the FSSD is
being taught is about including the observer. Because it’s to recognize the
subjectivity of all these parts [1:06:24]. I remember that Goran Broman showed
in one of the first lessons a slide with a spectrum
with two poles (objective approach, natural science vs subjective approach, social
science)
and situated the FSSD closer to the first pole [1:06:42] He recognized that the
FSSD is much closer to the worldview of natural science, assuming that there is
a real world outside of us and we can measure it. However, when we work with
culture, culture emerges from inter-subjectivity sciences. So the intercultural
encounters, intercultural meetings, the cultural communication are
intersubjective. So it’s important to be aware. That’s why it’s important to be
aware of the observer, because it’s the observer who has this bias. And
finally, if we are talking about leadership, leaders are people. Leaders are
people who are grounded, consciously inserted in cultural contexts. Does that
make sense?
Interviewer: Yes, it does make sense. I’m so grateful
that we’re talking because I feel like a lot of the lessons you’re sharing are
things that I can take with me when I leave MSLS. So thank you! It does make
sense to me.
And
actually that’s a good segue because my next and actually last question is what
advice do you wish you would’ve received when you were preparing to apply the
FSSD for the first time?
Pablo Villoch: I ask you to repeat the question,
please.
Interviewer: Yes. What advice do you wish you
would’ve received when you were preparing to use the FSSD in a different
culture for the first time?
Pablo Villoch: [1:08:50] I think it’s the same. I
would say, be patient. Be patient because your clients will not ask you to
apply the FSSD, the framework. Be patient. Be connected. Create your own tribe.
Especially if you are in a country or in a city or in a region, where you are
one of the only crazy guys or people who spent one year in Sweden, and you are
part of that Swedish mafia, you are the only one in your city or your country
or your continent. I’m thinking of your mate Prescilla, for example. If she
comes back to her country, don’t feel that you’re alone. There will be many
moments of loneliness. You will feel like a prophet that is bringing some
prophesy. You feel like praying alone in the desert. So be prepared for that,
and the way of being prepared for that is build your own tribe. Invite people
to follow, to work with because I think that sustainability leadership is for
brave people. It requires courage and all the words that you know for that:
braveness, value, courage. So, yeah, in order to be persistent and courageous,
it’s important to feel part of something bigger. A network, a community, a
conspiration. So for me, yeah, that could be the main advice. Be patient. Be
wise. Don’t feel alone. You will feel alone, but you are part of something
bigger. We are part of the world transition team.
Interviewer: The world transition team! I love that.
[1:11:56]
Pablo Villoch: Be aware that we are a part...I don’t
know how many MSLSers there are now, but we are part of the same team. And we,
this generation who are living on the earth now, regardless our culture,
regardless our backgrounds, we are a part of that. It’s our role. It’s our
challenge. And we need to have some sense of urgency, and also historical patience. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah, well, thank you! It’s been such a
nice experience doing these interviews because we’ve gotten to have connection
with people who are part of the world transition team out in field. Thank you
so much for all of your anecdotes and your stories. Is there anything else that
you’d like to add that we didn’t talk about, or that I didn’t ask you?
Pablo Villoch: [1:13:10] No, I only want to thank you.
You and all your team. Say goodbye to Prescilla... Big hug for the next steps
in your thesis. I know it can be challenging, but there’s light at the end of
the tunnel!
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