Case study: Slowing down in order to speed up
As part of the publication of the brand new Catalysing Bank Climate Action: Lessons from the Inside report, we share key insights, lessons and anonymised case studies in this blog series.
This Climate Safe Lending Fellow shares how developing their leadership skills is helping them to progress the climate agenda at their bank.
A particular challenge climate intrapreneurs face is difficulty in finding the time and space to do the kind of deep, reflective thinking required to understand complex challenges and develop new solutions amidst the busy, fast-paced world of banking. On the Fellowship, we introduced Otto Sharmer’s Theory U, and the idea of ‘presencing’, which encouraged Fellows to actively make the time to slow down and let new insight emerge in order to be more effective.
One Fellow described how this approach is helping them:
Adapted from Theory U
“In peer coaching yesterday, the topic we worked through was feeling we don’t have capacity to do everything we need to do. I was too embarrassed to propose it, but I was feeling it, so I’m glad someone else did. It’s a massive challenge! Theory U is my biggest takeaway. I usually go straight to action because I feel that’s my only choice. Spending just a minute or two working down the ‘U’ and up the other side is a very powerful mental model for me.
“I now have a ‘U’ on a whiteboard which helps me to slow down – it’s a mental reminder. Anything I need to make a strategic decision on and feel I have no time to work on, I sit down, look at the U, spend some time being present and really think through all the options. I then spend the time at the bottom of the U to let new insight emerge and take fast action from there. Doing that has really helped me to clear out the backlog on some things, and stopped me missing out on other things.
“If we can’t do this, we’ll burn out. I don’t want to do that, I love my job way too much.”
CSL Fellow 21/22