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Matt Lynch joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:
Matt\'s Final Five responses:
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I\'ll give the same advice that my grandma gave me: you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. I would say cultivate and\\xa0practice the skill-set\\xa0of active listening, and then related to that is go\\xa0seek out a mentor that can help you with dynamic group process and the skill-set\\xa0of developing a group design, processes that can facilitate productive meetings. I think if I was to boil down the job description of sustainability professionals, one of the, the minimum qualifications would be something along the lines of the ability to design an agenda that does not result in death by meeting.
I really think that this emergent, I don\'t know what to call it, I don\'t know if it\'s a practice or a lexicon, but there\'s this sense that we\'re getting from the field - the leading edge of practitioners are all talking about the need to look at, reimagine our sort of organizational design and the ways that we navigate these organizations. So I\'ve heard different language for it. I think Leith Sharp and her group are using the term "Flow State Organizations;" they\'ve connected with Janine Benyus who\\xa0is focused on the biomimicry world, and are now coming up with additional terms. Locally, I\'ve heard it referred to as a "network based organization,"\\xa0and I think that this tinkering with our human operating systems is by far the most exciting thing, another\\xa0exciting piece in the field of sustainability right now.
Hard to go with one. I\'m going to say Social Physics, a book by Sandy Pentland who is a mathematician using big data to study behavioral science at MIT. It\'s really transformed my understanding of how we make decisions individually and as a group.
This is specific to higher ed, but there\'s a great green schools list that has been in existence for over 10 years, you know when emails lists were a thing,\\xa0and this has survived because of its utility - and outside of Higher Ed, I\'ve actually have been a long time subscriber to a newsletter called Thoughts from the Frontline and it\'s published by a hardcore republican hedge fund analyst. I find his financial and geopolitical analysis to be fascinating. He called the mortgage market meltdown. It is not that norm of what a sustainability professional might be paying attention to. So it gives me this completely alternative viewpoint that I can bring back into this practice and I continue to find that a really valuable resource.
In our sustainability website is http://www.hawaii.edu/sustainability/and we\'re starting to focus on developing a larger social media presence as well so you can find us there well.
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