In the final episode of series 2 of our Leading Tourism's Transition podcast series, we are joined by Birthe Menke to reflect on the learnings from the previous discussions and share first-hand perspectives of futures thinking in the tourism industry to drive the green transition.
In the final episode of series 2 of our Leading Tourism's Transition podcast series, we are joined by Birthe Menke to reflect on the learnings from the previous discussions and share first-hand perspectives of futures thinking in the tourism industry. The focus is on sustainability and how this is currently being addressed within the tourism sector. We explore the industry's readiness to look ahead and consider different scenarios, and ultimately how to create better engagement where everybody benefits from creating a future where tourism is seen as a force for good.
You can listen to the episode here 👇
Birthe Menke is a PhD fellow in sustainable tourism development and co-design at the University of Southern Denmark. Her PhD analyses how tourism professionals incorporate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their strategies.
The series began with Peter Bishop who gave a general introduction to futures thinking and foresight. He talked about how working with futures is an attitude that can be taught through using skills-based approaches. In comparison, Ian Yeoman is a futurologist in the tourism sector and explains his belief that foresight is limited to an exclusive number of experts in the field. He stated his view that futures thinking should be part of a DMO's role to enable them to assist tourism businesses and maintain a level of oversight and understanding as to the current challenges faced by the industry.
Ian took the perspective that the future can be predicted, while Peter saw the benefits of being open to unexpected events. These contrasting perspectives show the different levels of futures thinking that individuals can employ themselves and consider when to consult others on a project.
There's a range of prominent opinion leaders in futures thinking and foresight whose work is always highlighted, irrespective of whether it's a general outlook or specific to the tourism sector. In tourism, Ian's elaborate casework with destinations and specific types of tourism enables him to look towards 2050 because he has spotted the main mega trends unfolding in the world and considers how they will affect the sector. On the other hand, individuals such as Peter are on a mission to reach the masses and encourage people to use their innate ability to think ahead about how to make their preferred futures a reality. Facilitating this mindset helps people to stop fearing change, with lots of free resources available that can help people start to connect with the subject.
DMOs are willing to plan and seek opportunities about what is on the horizon. However, this tends to be with a specific timeframe in mind and focused on the immediate future. When considering longer timeframes, symbolic round numbers are often selected. The tourism industry tends to be narrowly focused on meeting organisational objectives by a specific date and setting out step-by-step approaches. There is usually a bit of room for inspiration about other possible outcomes and different scenarios which businesses don't always fully explore.
Creative thinking isn't currently integrated into professional practice for a large number of organisations. Looking so far ahead into the future seems to require a certain degree of willingness to go into the unknown and say things out loud that others may not agree with because they live in a slightly differently composed reality. This influences the types of jobs in the tourism industry as a pragmatic approach is followed by companies carrying out things they know how to do, namely helping people to escape their daily lives and have a good time.
Imaginative aspects are closely linked to product development in tourism and the industry should find ways to incorporate this mindset. However, such a change in working practices is difficult to measure and identify a monetary value for incorporating imagination within strategy development processes. However, developing futures is a participatory undertaking; people cannot make futures alone. This aspect of projects makes it difficult to receive funding because it's not possible to determine what the final outcome will be or the timeframe required for implementation. Adding another level of uncertainty by asking people to imagine something else might also divert from what's going on and lead people to become critical of current actions. There is a need to find ways to appreciate parts of a process that cannot be economically predicted in advance.
Businesses need to demonstrate results and justify their performance. There are always investors, whether it's direct investment or co-investment from governments or businesses. Companies need to demonstrate a return on investment within a specific timeframe that everyone feels is acceptable and generates adequate profits.
However, we are currently seeing large shifts within tourism and sustainability is becoming a priority. The majority of DMOs are incorporating sustainability into the narratives about their destination and highlighting how society and the natural environment can obtain benefits from the tourism sector. Nevertheless, this does cause challenges such as the risk of greenwashing. Going forward, short-term timeframes and specific outcomes cannot be used to address the real underlying issues around sustainability and the role destinations can play in reducing the ecological impact of the industry.
Thinking broader and long-term was an interesting part of the process during X. Design Week 2022 when the SDGs were translated into alternative statements; for example, not looking at a world without poverty, but a world with enough for everybody. This brought to the fore that a lot of people have difficulty relating to the preferable futures that the SDGs envision and that company strategies should be working towards. This dissonance between the long-term future and short-term strategies means that many people don't have an idea of the kind of world that will be created through their own sustainability efforts. Humans are conditioned to solve problems as we are aware of the things that don't work and the various pain points faced by businesses as opposed to what the future might look like and how tourism can play a role in shaping it.
Looking at the situation from the opposite perspective and turning sustainability into a future state provides a vivid and relatable perspective that can easily be imagined. Creating narratives of what the future could look like is an aspect that is often overlooked in strategy development. Turning the narrative around from wanting to reduce certain negative aspects of tourism towards understanding the positive aspects and opportunities can completely change the way the industry moves forward with its actions. The transition from sustainability initiatives being oriented to the past towards being focused on the potential for creating a better future is a different conversation, opening the opportunity for using the industry's knowledge about sustainability in new and innovative ways.
Empathy is a big part of design work and is something that needs to be brought to the table when reviewing the current state of the world and multiple ongoing crises. Younger generations should be supported to cultivate empathy as it is not a skill that people are automatically equipped with. Training is needed to incorporate and continuously develop the inclusion of empathy within an organisation's work.
People have different capacities to exercise and demonstrate empathy and project teams should understand which members have strengths in this area. For example, someone who is artistically inclined might experience and visualise empathy very differently than someone who is used to a quantitative environment. As an industry, we should look towards how we can engage these different levels of empathy among different professions and how to include this within the conversation so that more people understand and relate to the type of work undertaken by the sector.
When explaining what the tourism industry is about, people always refer to the importance of the welcome and the significance of people. Tourism is about creating individual experiences and exceptional interactions. In essence, tourism is about the power of human touches, personal connections and the exchange of perspectives. However, the industry doesn't always find it easy to incorporate these human elements into the work done. There is a need to incorporate what the industry sells into day-to-day working methods.
Tourism is largely built from a prioritisation of care, inviting someone to visit a new place and demonstrating respectful behaviour towards guests and nature. Unless the industry can find more ways to demonstrate care and empathise with more than just humans, then the industry will quickly use up the natural resources that it relies on.
Thinking beyond tourism, the systems for preventing the impending environmental catastrophe appear to be broken. Tourism wants to play a role in the solution, but it is hard to clearly delineate how it can contribute to this goal. Nevertheless, there is a lot of enthusiasm and excitement within the industry about the transition towards a sustainable future. There's a need to be able to work with both extremes of view because on some days people question whether their contribution is able to make a difference, and on others are inspired when someone shows the impact their work had on helping them to understand the world differently.
A large part of the motivation driving sustainability action is identifying an organisation's intentions and being reminded of the impact of the initiatives without feeling accountable for the macro level impacts at an individual level. In the grand scheme of things, organisations work on relatively small and meaningful projects, but it is the combined actions of the industry that makes a difference. Navigating these different sustainable actions can be a challenging task, but it's important to recognise that organisations are cultivating small niches of impact. There is the potential to grasp macro level thinking and escape from narrow niches of focus to think about solutions that are larger than the industry.
Tourism leaders have made strong statements about their commitment to sustainability, which is directing momentum to overcome the challenge. However, design-based leadership is a different aspect altogether to develop more targeted sustainability programmes that solve a wider range of tourism's impacts. Strong leadership is about participatory processes; it is not exclusively a top-down role. Leadership enables dialogue, especially in discussing differing opinions because unless people can argue for what they stand for and outline their conflicting views, then the industry will continue along the same path.
In a workshop at X. Design Week 2022 about the role of the DMO in 2050, people stated that they felt inhibited by politics and it was hard to bring national leadership because of their public mandate, despite their numerous ideas and drive to bring about change. It's possible to provide spaces for people to talk about their thoughts in ways that bring excitement and a reflection on their own actions. Such situations help to endorse participatory leadership and question the effectiveness of other leadership models that do not bring the desired effects.
Leaders need to be open to hearing criticisms of their work and listen to other people's opinions on what aspects aren't working as planned. Including external perspectives allows people to be much more honest and direct about their opinions, desires and frustrations. Senior management's view of desirable outcomes may not be aligned with those of everyone else and space should be created to have discussions in an open and friendly manner.
When holding meetings behind closed doors, people feel empowered to say what they really think. Creating pluralistic ways to examine and review things and fostering a culture of critique is needed to create a sense of empowerment. At its core, leadership is also about enabling people to express themselves and be confident in their ideas.
Rather than considering the SDGs as an idealistic objective, people can become empowered by realising that they are actually included within the SDGs and will benefit from the protections that the sustainability agenda aims to bring. Following this, understanding what futures we are heading to is important to see if people have an image of the world that they are building with their strategies.
Strategies should be shaped by constructing an image of the ideal future and then deciding on the actions that will help to realise it. However, there is some entrenched thinking by some people in the industry who believe that such an approach to taking the time to rethink the future of leisure doesn't solve an industry problem.
The futures that we are heading towards are not the most extreme scenarios that can be imagined. Considering the multiple crises that are occurring, some don't appear to be threatening enough for people to take action. There is a need for everyone to fully understand the stake they hold in the future and their role in working towards a solution. Everyone should be taking action to create a better world, irrespective of whether they have been educated in futures thinking.
Creating an open invitation to think about different scenarios and various actions to tackle both observable challenges and those that are further on the horizon is part of the required mindset shift. Building a desired future is something that means different things to different people depending on cultural differences and the state of development across the world. Countries that are rapidly diversifying are designing a future that is ideal for them. Such an approach should incorporate society in the process.
As an industry, we should consider if a design-based approach can be incorporated for identifying solutions to the worsening climate crisis. In tourism, it is hard to find examples of imagining a future and creating strategies to reach them. While at face value strategies appear proactive, they are in fact often reactive. Strategies tend to be about staying ahead of competitors rather than going in a completely different direction to shape something unique.
The purpose of using design-based approaches is to listen to diverse perspectives and learn new things that hadn't been previously considered and see things in a new light. There is an opportunity to understand things differently as we implement actions. When having discussions, it's important to think about the people that will attend meetings and how to include them in the conversation. Organisations should experiment with participatory formats and learn how to overcome the Zoom fatigue that occurred during COVID-19. There is a clear need to delineate the different aspects that people take for granted and take a step back to see how things can be done differently.
As an example, when running the Sustainability Leadership Programme, the DTTT team learnt about people's motivations for joining these training sessions. There were two drivers for making such a decision. Firstly, to receive a certificate and demonstrate their accomplishment. Secondly, to make a public statement at an organisational level to highlight participation in a highly regarded learning environment and gain key sustainability leadership skills. Therefore, contrary to expectations, the passion for the subject and building a community didn't appear to be the leading motivator. This meant using empathy to understand the reasons behind these motivations.
Capacity is a constant challenge and organisations should understand their ability to do something that doesn't deliver instant results. For example, some people found the Sustainability Leadership programme disappointing because it explores the broad topic of sustainability and generates ideas of how organisations can approach this issue, but doesn't give specific and exact outcomes.
Assumptions are used as the basis for every scenario and these need to be challenged to open the learning opportunities. Design thinking is about designing the desired outcomes. In technological environments, this tends to be about how to drive conversions and encourage bookings. However, design thinking can be used to solve bigger problems by making conscious and sustainable choices. This is an area of conflict since there is a need to define what is meant by an outcome and the process for reaching a goal. People try to create solutions from the start of the discussion based on their assumptions and do not leave any leeway for incorrect beliefs or to reflect on other ways to reach the same goal.
Changing the focus of conversations is a delicate matter as people don't like being told how they should approach thinking about the future. People have known about scenario planning since the 1970s, but still don't fully consider what the future will look like. People have been studying sustainability for half a century and lots of errors have been made.
There are intergenerational challenges where people are uncomfortable with learning new approaches. Young people and females tend to be more accepting of new processes, while men are usually in positions of power and don't like being questioned. It can be politically challenging to create the space for futures thinking. Younger generations expect more from the tourism industry in terms of combatting sustainability. These expectations for overcoming specific challenges as an industry and becoming more ethical tend to get lost when making decisions.
Navigating decision-making can be challenging as it involves managing egos and personalities. This involves creating balance and considering the right level of sentiment in personal engagement. Everyone has a unique perspective on any scenario, which brings richness to the discussion. There is also a need to understand the barriers to implementing co-design processes.
Understanding the motivations behind pushback within the organisation is important to learn how to have discussions about the barriers to participation. People are not closed off from having conversations about the future and such situations can be facilitated through personal conversations about people's own stakes in the future, such as the world they'd like their grandchildren to live in. When organisations understand where pushback is coming from, then it's possible to find ways to have conversations about how to encourage the inclusion of more voices into developing a vision for the future.
There are sometimes huge differences in values between companies and their employees. People should think honestly about whether the organisation they represent aligns with their individual values. If it doesn't, then people should consider whether there is a need to part ways. As organisations grow, historical views become more important and integrating new approaches becomes much harder. Employees should consider whether they have the patience to go through the full process of initiating longstanding change. Individuals should take responsibility to identify the right time to motivate and drive change in an organisational context at a macro environment level.
There are nuances everywhere when considering the implementation of sustainability initiatives and human skills and relatability need to be brought to the forefront. Tourism itself is very proficient in engaging with the unknown - which is at the heart of what the industry is about in terms of exploring new cultures. As an industry, this exploration of the unknown should be leveraged within organisational decision-making processes and bring a new purpose of willingly encountering unknown futures and making them preferable.
When making strategies, organisations tend to focus on the return on investment in the immediate future. Strategies tend to be reactive and it is essential to understand their underlying assumptions. Businesses should become more accepting of the ability to learn about sustainability while they are implementing initiatives and not expect instant results from their actions. Incorporating uncertainty can help organisations to be more creative and benefit from product development opportunities. There should be a renewed focus on identifying approaches to envision ideal futures and shift away from identifying the challenge that society aims to overcome.
Sustainability is a key priority for the tourism industry, with industry leaders releasing strong statements on this topic. Nevertheless, there is a dissonance between sustainability initiatives and organisational outlook on the future. There is an enthusiasm for the industry to become more sustainable, though people also question if their efforts have an impact. Therefore, collective action is essential to driving change at a macro level so individuals do not feel responsible for the entire shift required. The tourism industry focuses on niches of impact and can take a broader approach to combatting climate change.
Organisational politics can often be a constraint to developing sustainable tourism initiatives. Senior leaders should be shown their individual connections to the SDGs and the stake in the future that this creates. Sometimes there is entrenched thinking within the industry and managers should be open to hearing constructive criticisms and listen to external perspectives to enable a pluralistic approach to management. Leadership involves enabling people to contribute towards a joint effort, understanding cultural and intergenerational differences and respecting the different values of individuals.
Participatory dialogue and design-based approaches are essential to identifying ideal futures and possible scenarios. Leaders need to manage different personalities and egos in order to initiate change. This can be achieved through facilitating empathy to be more inclusive of people's differing opinions. Empathy is a skill that people should be trained in and managers should understand which team members have strengths in this area. From a sustainability context, being empathetic requires considering the intrinsic value of the environment.
In the final episode of series 2 of our Leading Tourism's Transition podcast series, we are joined by Birthe Menke to reflect on the learnings from the previous discussions and share first-hand perspectives of futures thinking in the tourism industry. The focus is on sustainability and how this is currently being addressed within the tourism sector. We explore the industry's readiness to look ahead and consider different scenarios, and ultimately how to create better engagement where everybody benefits from creating a future where tourism is seen as a force for good.
You can listen to the episode here 👇
Birthe Menke is a PhD fellow in sustainable tourism development and co-design at the University of Southern Denmark. Her PhD analyses how tourism professionals incorporate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their strategies.
The series began with Peter Bishop who gave a general introduction to futures thinking and foresight. He talked about how working with futures is an attitude that can be taught through using skills-based approaches. In comparison, Ian Yeoman is a futurologist in the tourism sector and explains his belief that foresight is limited to an exclusive number of experts in the field. He stated his view that futures thinking should be part of a DMO's role to enable them to assist tourism businesses and maintain a level of oversight and understanding as to the current challenges faced by the industry.
Ian took the perspective that the future can be predicted, while Peter saw the benefits of being open to unexpected events. These contrasting perspectives show the different levels of futures thinking that individuals can employ themselves and consider when to consult others on a project.
There's a range of prominent opinion leaders in futures thinking and foresight whose work is always highlighted, irrespective of whether it's a general outlook or specific to the tourism sector. In tourism, Ian's elaborate casework with destinations and specific types of tourism enables him to look towards 2050 because he has spotted the main mega trends unfolding in the world and considers how they will affect the sector. On the other hand, individuals such as Peter are on a mission to reach the masses and encourage people to use their innate ability to think ahead about how to make their preferred futures a reality. Facilitating this mindset helps people to stop fearing change, with lots of free resources available that can help people start to connect with the subject.
DMOs are willing to plan and seek opportunities about what is on the horizon. However, this tends to be with a specific timeframe in mind and focused on the immediate future. When considering longer timeframes, symbolic round numbers are often selected. The tourism industry tends to be narrowly focused on meeting organisational objectives by a specific date and setting out step-by-step approaches. There is usually a bit of room for inspiration about other possible outcomes and different scenarios which businesses don't always fully explore.
Creative thinking isn't currently integrated into professional practice for a large number of organisations. Looking so far ahead into the future seems to require a certain degree of willingness to go into the unknown and say things out loud that others may not agree with because they live in a slightly differently composed reality. This influences the types of jobs in the tourism industry as a pragmatic approach is followed by companies carrying out things they know how to do, namely helping people to escape their daily lives and have a good time.
Imaginative aspects are closely linked to product development in tourism and the industry should find ways to incorporate this mindset. However, such a change in working practices is difficult to measure and identify a monetary value for incorporating imagination within strategy development processes. However, developing futures is a participatory undertaking; people cannot make futures alone. This aspect of projects makes it difficult to receive funding because it's not possible to determine what the final outcome will be or the timeframe required for implementation. Adding another level of uncertainty by asking people to imagine something else might also divert from what's going on and lead people to become critical of current actions. There is a need to find ways to appreciate parts of a process that cannot be economically predicted in advance.
Businesses need to demonstrate results and justify their performance. There are always investors, whether it's direct investment or co-investment from governments or businesses. Companies need to demonstrate a return on investment within a specific timeframe that everyone feels is acceptable and generates adequate profits.
However, we are currently seeing large shifts within tourism and sustainability is becoming a priority. The majority of DMOs are incorporating sustainability into the narratives about their destination and highlighting how society and the natural environment can obtain benefits from the tourism sector. Nevertheless, this does cause challenges such as the risk of greenwashing. Going forward, short-term timeframes and specific outcomes cannot be used to address the real underlying issues around sustainability and the role destinations can play in reducing the ecological impact of the industry.
Thinking broader and long-term was an interesting part of the process during X. Design Week 2022 when the SDGs were translated into alternative statements; for example, not looking at a world without poverty, but a world with enough for everybody. This brought to the fore that a lot of people have difficulty relating to the preferable futures that the SDGs envision and that company strategies should be working towards. This dissonance between the long-term future and short-term strategies means that many people don't have an idea of the kind of world that will be created through their own sustainability efforts. Humans are conditioned to solve problems as we are aware of the things that don't work and the various pain points faced by businesses as opposed to what the future might look like and how tourism can play a role in shaping it.
Looking at the situation from the opposite perspective and turning sustainability into a future state provides a vivid and relatable perspective that can easily be imagined. Creating narratives of what the future could look like is an aspect that is often overlooked in strategy development. Turning the narrative around from wanting to reduce certain negative aspects of tourism towards understanding the positive aspects and opportunities can completely change the way the industry moves forward with its actions. The transition from sustainability initiatives being oriented to the past towards being focused on the potential for creating a better future is a different conversation, opening the opportunity for using the industry's knowledge about sustainability in new and innovative ways.
Empathy is a big part of design work and is something that needs to be brought to the table when reviewing the current state of the world and multiple ongoing crises. Younger generations should be supported to cultivate empathy as it is not a skill that people are automatically equipped with. Training is needed to incorporate and continuously develop the inclusion of empathy within an organisation's work.
People have different capacities to exercise and demonstrate empathy and project teams should understand which members have strengths in this area. For example, someone who is artistically inclined might experience and visualise empathy very differently than someone who is used to a quantitative environment. As an industry, we should look towards how we can engage these different levels of empathy among different professions and how to include this within the conversation so that more people understand and relate to the type of work undertaken by the sector.
When explaining what the tourism industry is about, people always refer to the importance of the welcome and the significance of people. Tourism is about creating individual experiences and exceptional interactions. In essence, tourism is about the power of human touches, personal connections and the exchange of perspectives. However, the industry doesn't always find it easy to incorporate these human elements into the work done. There is a need to incorporate what the industry sells into day-to-day working methods.
Tourism is largely built from a prioritisation of care, inviting someone to visit a new place and demonstrating respectful behaviour towards guests and nature. Unless the industry can find more ways to demonstrate care and empathise with more than just humans, then the industry will quickly use up the natural resources that it relies on.
Thinking beyond tourism, the systems for preventing the impending environmental catastrophe appear to be broken. Tourism wants to play a role in the solution, but it is hard to clearly delineate how it can contribute to this goal. Nevertheless, there is a lot of enthusiasm and excitement within the industry about the transition towards a sustainable future. There's a need to be able to work with both extremes of view because on some days people question whether their contribution is able to make a difference, and on others are inspired when someone shows the impact their work had on helping them to understand the world differently.
A large part of the motivation driving sustainability action is identifying an organisation's intentions and being reminded of the impact of the initiatives without feeling accountable for the macro level impacts at an individual level. In the grand scheme of things, organisations work on relatively small and meaningful projects, but it is the combined actions of the industry that makes a difference. Navigating these different sustainable actions can be a challenging task, but it's important to recognise that organisations are cultivating small niches of impact. There is the potential to grasp macro level thinking and escape from narrow niches of focus to think about solutions that are larger than the industry.
Tourism leaders have made strong statements about their commitment to sustainability, which is directing momentum to overcome the challenge. However, design-based leadership is a different aspect altogether to develop more targeted sustainability programmes that solve a wider range of tourism's impacts. Strong leadership is about participatory processes; it is not exclusively a top-down role. Leadership enables dialogue, especially in discussing differing opinions because unless people can argue for what they stand for and outline their conflicting views, then the industry will continue along the same path.
In a workshop at X. Design Week 2022 about the role of the DMO in 2050, people stated that they felt inhibited by politics and it was hard to bring national leadership because of their public mandate, despite their numerous ideas and drive to bring about change. It's possible to provide spaces for people to talk about their thoughts in ways that bring excitement and a reflection on their own actions. Such situations help to endorse participatory leadership and question the effectiveness of other leadership models that do not bring the desired effects.
Leaders need to be open to hearing criticisms of their work and listen to other people's opinions on what aspects aren't working as planned. Including external perspectives allows people to be much more honest and direct about their opinions, desires and frustrations. Senior management's view of desirable outcomes may not be aligned with those of everyone else and space should be created to have discussions in an open and friendly manner.
When holding meetings behind closed doors, people feel empowered to say what they really think. Creating pluralistic ways to examine and review things and fostering a culture of critique is needed to create a sense of empowerment. At its core, leadership is also about enabling people to express themselves and be confident in their ideas.
Rather than considering the SDGs as an idealistic objective, people can become empowered by realising that they are actually included within the SDGs and will benefit from the protections that the sustainability agenda aims to bring. Following this, understanding what futures we are heading to is important to see if people have an image of the world that they are building with their strategies.
Strategies should be shaped by constructing an image of the ideal future and then deciding on the actions that will help to realise it. However, there is some entrenched thinking by some people in the industry who believe that such an approach to taking the time to rethink the future of leisure doesn't solve an industry problem.
The futures that we are heading towards are not the most extreme scenarios that can be imagined. Considering the multiple crises that are occurring, some don't appear to be threatening enough for people to take action. There is a need for everyone to fully understand the stake they hold in the future and their role in working towards a solution. Everyone should be taking action to create a better world, irrespective of whether they have been educated in futures thinking.
Creating an open invitation to think about different scenarios and various actions to tackle both observable challenges and those that are further on the horizon is part of the required mindset shift. Building a desired future is something that means different things to different people depending on cultural differences and the state of development across the world. Countries that are rapidly diversifying are designing a future that is ideal for them. Such an approach should incorporate society in the process.
As an industry, we should consider if a design-based approach can be incorporated for identifying solutions to the worsening climate crisis. In tourism, it is hard to find examples of imagining a future and creating strategies to reach them. While at face value strategies appear proactive, they are in fact often reactive. Strategies tend to be about staying ahead of competitors rather than going in a completely different direction to shape something unique.
The purpose of using design-based approaches is to listen to diverse perspectives and learn new things that hadn't been previously considered and see things in a new light. There is an opportunity to understand things differently as we implement actions. When having discussions, it's important to think about the people that will attend meetings and how to include them in the conversation. Organisations should experiment with participatory formats and learn how to overcome the Zoom fatigue that occurred during COVID-19. There is a clear need to delineate the different aspects that people take for granted and take a step back to see how things can be done differently.
As an example, when running the Sustainability Leadership Programme, the DTTT team learnt about people's motivations for joining these training sessions. There were two drivers for making such a decision. Firstly, to receive a certificate and demonstrate their accomplishment. Secondly, to make a public statement at an organisational level to highlight participation in a highly regarded learning environment and gain key sustainability leadership skills. Therefore, contrary to expectations, the passion for the subject and building a community didn't appear to be the leading motivator. This meant using empathy to understand the reasons behind these motivations.
Capacity is a constant challenge and organisations should understand their ability to do something that doesn't deliver instant results. For example, some people found the Sustainability Leadership programme disappointing because it explores the broad topic of sustainability and generates ideas of how organisations can approach this issue, but doesn't give specific and exact outcomes.
Assumptions are used as the basis for every scenario and these need to be challenged to open the learning opportunities. Design thinking is about designing the desired outcomes. In technological environments, this tends to be about how to drive conversions and encourage bookings. However, design thinking can be used to solve bigger problems by making conscious and sustainable choices. This is an area of conflict since there is a need to define what is meant by an outcome and the process for reaching a goal. People try to create solutions from the start of the discussion based on their assumptions and do not leave any leeway for incorrect beliefs or to reflect on other ways to reach the same goal.
Changing the focus of conversations is a delicate matter as people don't like being told how they should approach thinking about the future. People have known about scenario planning since the 1970s, but still don't fully consider what the future will look like. People have been studying sustainability for half a century and lots of errors have been made.
There are intergenerational challenges where people are uncomfortable with learning new approaches. Young people and females tend to be more accepting of new processes, while men are usually in positions of power and don't like being questioned. It can be politically challenging to create the space for futures thinking. Younger generations expect more from the tourism industry in terms of combatting sustainability. These expectations for overcoming specific challenges as an industry and becoming more ethical tend to get lost when making decisions.
Navigating decision-making can be challenging as it involves managing egos and personalities. This involves creating balance and considering the right level of sentiment in personal engagement. Everyone has a unique perspective on any scenario, which brings richness to the discussion. There is also a need to understand the barriers to implementing co-design processes.
Understanding the motivations behind pushback within the organisation is important to learn how to have discussions about the barriers to participation. People are not closed off from having conversations about the future and such situations can be facilitated through personal conversations about people's own stakes in the future, such as the world they'd like their grandchildren to live in. When organisations understand where pushback is coming from, then it's possible to find ways to have conversations about how to encourage the inclusion of more voices into developing a vision for the future.
There are sometimes huge differences in values between companies and their employees. People should think honestly about whether the organisation they represent aligns with their individual values. If it doesn't, then people should consider whether there is a need to part ways. As organisations grow, historical views become more important and integrating new approaches becomes much harder. Employees should consider whether they have the patience to go through the full process of initiating longstanding change. Individuals should take responsibility to identify the right time to motivate and drive change in an organisational context at a macro environment level.
There are nuances everywhere when considering the implementation of sustainability initiatives and human skills and relatability need to be brought to the forefront. Tourism itself is very proficient in engaging with the unknown - which is at the heart of what the industry is about in terms of exploring new cultures. As an industry, this exploration of the unknown should be leveraged within organisational decision-making processes and bring a new purpose of willingly encountering unknown futures and making them preferable.
When making strategies, organisations tend to focus on the return on investment in the immediate future. Strategies tend to be reactive and it is essential to understand their underlying assumptions. Businesses should become more accepting of the ability to learn about sustainability while they are implementing initiatives and not expect instant results from their actions. Incorporating uncertainty can help organisations to be more creative and benefit from product development opportunities. There should be a renewed focus on identifying approaches to envision ideal futures and shift away from identifying the challenge that society aims to overcome.
Sustainability is a key priority for the tourism industry, with industry leaders releasing strong statements on this topic. Nevertheless, there is a dissonance between sustainability initiatives and organisational outlook on the future. There is an enthusiasm for the industry to become more sustainable, though people also question if their efforts have an impact. Therefore, collective action is essential to driving change at a macro level so individuals do not feel responsible for the entire shift required. The tourism industry focuses on niches of impact and can take a broader approach to combatting climate change.
Organisational politics can often be a constraint to developing sustainable tourism initiatives. Senior leaders should be shown their individual connections to the SDGs and the stake in the future that this creates. Sometimes there is entrenched thinking within the industry and managers should be open to hearing constructive criticisms and listen to external perspectives to enable a pluralistic approach to management. Leadership involves enabling people to contribute towards a joint effort, understanding cultural and intergenerational differences and respecting the different values of individuals.
Participatory dialogue and design-based approaches are essential to identifying ideal futures and possible scenarios. Leaders need to manage different personalities and egos in order to initiate change. This can be achieved through facilitating empathy to be more inclusive of people's differing opinions. Empathy is a skill that people should be trained in and managers should understand which team members have strengths in this area. From a sustainability context, being empathetic requires considering the intrinsic value of the environment.
.webp)