CHAPTER 6 DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
6.12 Prospects for Co - Creating Processes
170 tendencies within the WMU and the LSU. Given this situation limited prospects exist for stakeholders within the MM to be brought together to support one another to engage in co- presencing activities.
6.11.3 Recommendations on Co – Presencing Processes
Key role players within the MM would need to participate in sensing processes designed to enable them to let go of their old self and habitual ways of seeing that prevent them from working together with other stakeholders within the Msunduzi waste management system in order to achieve the highest future possibility of the system.
The stakeholders of the Msunduzi waste management system would need to support each other in order to enable each other to access their creative potential so that each of them can do the work that they love to do and collectively bring into being the highest future
possibility of the Msunduzi waste management system.
The stakeholders of the Msunduzi waste management system would need to establish a safe collective holding space in which they can support each other to make sense and to advance the work that they are undertaking to improve the Msunduzi waste management system.
Scharmer (2009a, 410) refers to such spaces as “Circles of Presence” in which core players hold one another in the highest future intention. Specifically they would need to look at the present from the highest possible future that can emerge within their system and do all that they can to bring that future into being.
171 interviewed. It is interesting that the majority of stakeholders identified prototyping activities that seek to make improvements to people rather than to waste management services directly as a means of reaching the highest future potential of the Msunduzi waste management system. It suggests that the stakeholders instinctively believe that people create systems and that by improving people through education and institutional transformation, systems can be changed.
An analysis of the stakeholder‟s preferences for service delivery prototyping activities indicates that the majority of stakeholders would like to prototype source separation collection services and composting of organic waste. None of the stakeholders identified prototyping conventional refuse collection services and waste prevention approaches. These types of preferences could be the result of recognition by stakeholders that conventional refuse collection services have been subjected to intensive prototyping across South Africa and the world whilst the small sample size of the business sector could account for the lack of interest in waste prevention prototyping activities.
Scharmer (2009a) suggests that prototyping is about moving into action before the all the elements of a project have been fully figured out and having the confidence to improvise along the way and undertake deep learning as a result of doing and sharing these experiences with other core players. It will be very interesting to observe whether the key stakeholders within the Msunduzi waste management system are able to operate in prototyping or fast cycle learning contexts which function on the basis of failing early to learn quickly. Given the emphasis placed in our context on intensive planning, quick success and the desire to expose government failures it will be challenging for all stakeholders within the Msunduzi waste management system to engage in prototyping activities.
6.12.2 Conclusions on Co – Creating Processes
The majority of stakeholders believe that prototyping activities should focus on learning about how to enable people to change waste management systems and this is reflected in the majority of stakeholders wanting to become involved in environmental education prototypes and institutional transformation prototypes. The majority of stakeholders have identified the need to educate young children on environmental issues in order to ensure future generations are able to develop and maintain an ecologically sustainable way of life.
172 The transformation of the WMU and the LSU into high capacity institutions managed in terms of conventional business principles is considered by the majority of stakeholders to be critical to enabling the Msunduzi waste management system to reaching its highest future potential.
The prototyping of source separation collection services has been identified by a significant number of the stakeholders interviewed due to the lack of previous experience with such services and the lack of tacit knowledge amongst the stakeholders to enable effective provision of such services. This service provides an ideal opportunity for utilising the U process to undertake presencing and prototyping processes in order to create innovative practices that could be embedded within the transformed WMU of the future.
The prototyping of processes to compost organic waste is considered to be a priority amongst a significant number of the stakeholders interviewed due to the potential of such processes to mitigate against climate change drivers and the potential value that compost has to poverty alleviation projects involving food gardening.
The prototyping preferences of the different stakeholders revealed that the majority of stakeholders within the Msunduzi waste management system have a very common vision of the highest future possibility of the waste management system. Some of the factors that prevent collective action to create this future are likely to be centred on the social complexity or conflicts of interest, essentially who would benefit and who would lose from creating this kind of future. Another divisive factor would be the different perspectives held around dealing with emerging complexity, according to Scharmer (2009a) this would essentially be situations where the solutions to problems are unknown and the problem statement is unfolding.
6.12.3 Recommendations on Co-Creating Processes
The stakeholders of the Msunduzi waste management system need to form a small
prototyping team of least five key players from the system. According to Scharmer (2009a), the five people that must be included are the owners of the problems at hand, people with
173 front line experience with the problems, people who represent people without voices in the system but who are most affected by the system, creative outsiders and activists.
According to Scharmer (2009a) creative economics should be the basis of all prototyping activities, in terms of the principles of creative economics a person would need to give all they have and all they are to an essential project before everything will be given to them.
According to Scharmer (2009a) creative economics is usually at the heart of every profound innovation in science, business and society.
According to Scharmer (2009a) the key virtue required to navigate through the right hand side of the U is the practical integration of head, heart and hands which will prevent mindless action, endless reflection and too much talk.