Interview with Barry Kirby of K Sharp on What We Should Focus on If We Want to Preserve the Earth

Hello everyone, welcome to today's podcast. I'm Ian Peterman, host and author of Conscious Design book, and I'm here with Barry, consultant, podcaster, and ergonomist, to talk about everything you do. Welcome to the show.

Great, thank you, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, so I've actually been on your podcast, which was pretty great. I loved being on your podcast. So now it's my turn to learn more about you. So tell us, and you're involved in a few things, so tell us what you're doing and what ergonomists do.

That's a broad brush, but yeah, so I I run my own consultancy. It's called K Sharp. We're based here in the UK, and really we look at the future research, I guess, more than anything else. So we do—we're a human practice consultancy and a human-centered design, human-centered research consultancy as well. Fundamentally, we look at the defense industry at most, and we look at everything from, I guess, future strategy. What does the military look like in 2040? All the way through to designing. cockpits and cockpit design, so cockpit interfaces for pilots to use. So we get really involved in the entire spectrum of things, of looking at how we employ humans in the future, as well as, you know, what do they interact with and what do they play with. Thankfully, you know, through the pandemic we haven't seen any drop down in work. So in fact, we've been growing. So we're now at a— I've got a team of 7 around me, which is fantastic. But then we also get to play with future ideas as well. So because I've got a really good team around me, it's allowed us to think wider in what we do. And so we've been investing our own time and effort into coming up with sort of the future about what we think we should be looking at. And really the climate and climate change is something that's really hitting our thinking at the moment.

Right.

And so we've been developing this idea around climate ergonomics. So To go back to your other point, ergonomics is, I guess, the United Kingdom term for human factors. So looking at how people interact with technology and interact with systems and how we interact with each other. So we coined this term climate ergonomics to look at how we employ these human factor skills on a much broader domain. So basically on a worldwide domain, which is different to what we would usually do, because normally we would look at how things apply to the workplace or your home or to a particular piece of equipment or, or to a system. And so we, whilst playing with some ideas, we were like, well, why can't we apply all of that to the Earth, the world as a system? So, so we've been playing with that idea for about the past 8 to 9 months or so. Yeah, it kept us entertained.

Yeah, well, that is such an interesting because Yeah, you know, the ergonomics, as Americans know, really is just things and people. We have different words for spaces even. So when we say ergonomics, we're really like, well, how do you hold it?

Yes.

So, right, being able to apply. But what you're doing and extrapolating that to, well, we are users of the Earth basically, right? The Earth is a device that we're using. Which means that we can apply all these same kind of things. So you've been working on this for 8 months, kind of what you talked a little bit about how you led up to, like, well, you're trying to think of, you know, down the road, what's, what are things in the future that we should be thinking about now? So you started working on this. What, what has happened now that you began to apply the ideas of human-centered design and ergonomics to us and the Earth. What, what have you extrapolated from that? What's— what have you been able to explore in the last few months?

So fundamentally, what we've been looking at is this idea around, um, the interaction between us and, and the Earth. Because even when— even if you're not fully bought on board with this idea of climate change, because, you know, we've got climate change skeptics and things like that, um—

I will, I will say 80% of Americans finally agree on something, and it happens to be climate change.

Wow, I'm impressed.

I just saw— I just was told that, and I'm blown away because there's nothing else we agree on, but apparently that we've managed to find something in common now.

Excellent. Then hopefully the whole world is starting to come together with that. But even if we don't, even for those people who don't necessarily agree with the full-on effects of climate change, of what people think, you know, people think is going to happen, some people say it's scaremongering and things like that, We cannot deny that actually humans have affected the environment in which we live. So, you know, whether you agree with like the global warming, you know, that we've seen that there's been cycles of global warming in the past, even like pre— before our own evolution, we can't deny that we're accelerating that need. So my premise behind that was, well, if we're interacting and we're causing some of this change, then We are the things that are going to be able to either slow down or deal with that. Because I think a fundamental principle for me is that even if we don't tackle it properly, it's not going to affect the Earth. It's not going to in the grand scheme of things. The only thing it's going to do is make at worst us go extinct. The Earth will survive. The Earth will move on because it always has done. It's got it's been through a bunch of these evolutions. I mean, go and talk to the dinosaurs. Well, we can't because. know, the Earth evolved.

Exactly.

So what we're looking at is not only about can we stop climate change or can we change the pace of change, but actually even if we can't, how do we survive? We'll have to survive in a much more hostile environment. It'll be hotter and colder, it'll be, you know, the weathers will be much more extreme. So we will have to deal with how do we survive in that. So from a human factors perspective, we will have to be looking at things like better clothing, better technologies of how we interact with them, and things like that. So no matter where you sit on that scale, we will have to survive. To do that, we'll have to adapt, and we'll have to work out how to deal with that. So fundamentally, what we've been looking at right now is if we're going to try and halt things, and we've been told that we've got, what, 5 years to save the Earth, and, you know, these sort of phrases, right? Then you've got to look at saying, right, well, what can we do? And what can we do quickly? And where we started on that journey is, well, you know, the fundamental things about we as people, as humans, we have behavior, and we have attitude, and we have thoughts and beliefs. So really, what we try to do is to get people to change their behaviors to sort of be able to think that actually, stuff I do on a day-to-day basis, I can change my behavior, I can do something that is actually more proactive to reduce the amount of climate change. This is a difficult thing for us to do with climate change because it's such a big thing to consider. I mean, well, the Earth is massive, isn't it? What difference am I gonna make sat here that's going to change the temperature of the Earth by stopping it going up by that 2 degrees? It's a mammoth challenge.

Right.

So really some of the stuff we were looking at was saying, well, how can we influence that behavior to say, well, actually what you do does matter because when you look at what we influence, we sort of assume that it's somebody else's problem, right? We sit there and say, well, I can't do anything, but my government should be. My local council, my local municipal should be doing something about it, but I don't need to do anything because it's their problem. And if it's not my country's problem, because, you know, the UK, we're a tiny little country, especially compared to America, for example, or China or Russia. What difference am I going to make? You know, it's America's— America should stop Doing everything. And so we've got to kind of get over that. Yeah, we've got to kind of get over that. And because actually, if I do my bit, and you do your bit, and everybody, everybody comes together and does their bit, then actually we can make change, we can, we can make a difference, because it's only by collaborating and working together and stop posturing around whose fault it is, that we're actually going to come together and actually make a real difference. So we've engaged with this idea of behavior change. And one of the— we've again, we've reviewed a couple of different behavior change models. But what we want to get into is that practical idea. Because most people, most behavior change sits on a scale of pre-contemplation where I don't believe anything I do actually has an effect. And I don't need to change my behavior. Why do I? Why do I need to? Or then you want to get people from that. In fact, you'll be sitting there saying, well, actually, I don't change my behavior because it's somebody else's fault. But then you want to get people onto going through this process of actually, maybe I do want to make a change, maybe I can do— make a difference, maybe I can play a part in this, all the way through to actually, you know what, I'm going to do something. And it might be a small change, it might be recycling more, it might be you buying, you know, for your next car purchase, buying an electric vehicle as opposed to a petrol or a diesel vehicle. But at least you're thinking about it a bit more, to the point that you make that change. The biggest problem we have then is people maintaining that sort of change and maintaining that sort of lifestyle, because it's a bit like, you know, trying to get rid of any sort of addictive behavior. I mean, I'm not the smallest person in the world. I'm constantly going on like diets and, you know, trying to get fit and all that sort of stuff. And you sort of have that cycle of, right, I'm going to do something, and then you'll do something for a couple of weeks or maybe a couple of months. And then you get to it and say, well, how do I maintain that? And that's the difficult bit in all of this, is trying to keep people on that climate change journey. You have this thing called a termination phase where actually you recognize you don't need to maintain it anymore. It's just natural. It's a bit like if you say give up smoking or something like that, that you get to the point where you don't think about cigarettes anymore. You just don't want a cigarette. That's absolutely fine. Or you don't want another drink or anything like that. But rarely when we go through this behavior change do you actually get to that termination phase. So we have to keep people in that bit. So really what we've been trying to do is come up with methods and techniques to get people from this, where a good chunk of people are at the moment, where actually it's either something we don't believe in or take that next step. It's something, yeah, I want to do something about it, not entirely sure what, but yeah, I'll consider it, all the way through to making a positive change.

That makes sense. So behavior— so you're looking at it and what you're seeing is behavior model is the quickest approach to it, right? If we all start making changes in certain behaviors, then we can actually see change, which is— it sounds right. It sounds hard though.

It is hard. So what we— what—

Not a pill. It's not a pill I can take. So no, no.

And it's going to be tough. But so what we then looked at was, right, well, where can we have the most influence to begin with? And so we started off with this. So if we just go straight for individuals, you living at home and things like that, well, that's difficult because you've got no sense of cohesion, you've got no sense of community. We don't live in communities in the same way as we used to. There's more online communities, but even then it's difficult. But also, then you look at, well, do governments do anything? Well, actually, no, they don't. Because governments fundamentally don't do things. They tell other people what to do, right?

Don't tell anybody that. We're all convinced.

Yeah, but governments are there to lead. Governments are there to inspire. Governments are there to, you know, to show that, to almost direct into what we do. But they don't, you know, it's not like they can sit there and scrub CO2 out of the air, because that's not what they're there for. So really, the biggest change we could make was with business. And, you know, you've got— if you've got very large businesses at the moment, climate change is very— is not only an impending problem, but it's actually trendy. If you've got— if you're a very large business, if you can sit there and say, well, I've got a vice president of carbon reduction or vice president of climate change reduction or something like that, you get then that bit of kudos at the moment. You get the— I'm fairly sure in the in these big hallowed halls where all these big CEOs and stuff get together, that they're comparing and contrasting just how important their climate change infrastructure is. So really we're not as bothered about them, if I'm honest, because the biggest majority of businesses are small or medium-sized enterprises. So anything up to sort of 250 employees, that type of thing. And so really them sort of businesses and know, you're like me, we both run our own businesses. We spend a lot of time being concerned, right? What's happening on Friday? How do I pay my staff? How do I make sure that my product's going out on time? You know, the latest bit of legislation coming through or anything like that. The problems are right in your face. Climate change is, you know, even by the estimations, the effects aren't truly going to come and hit for 100 years or so. It's my children's children that this is a problem for the species. It's not me trying to pay my staff on a Friday. So what we— but what we have to do is to try and make it into that bit of behavior change from a business perspective that allows them to bake it into what they do. So if we had a proposition there that we could sit and say, well, actually, I've got— I now see this process, this method, or this ideology, whatever it is, if I can bake that into what I do, that makes it fairly painless. and therefore I can know I've got greener credentials, I can meet my net zero carbon targets if they're being imposed, then we'll do it. If it's difficult like it is at the moment, I just don't know where to start. And I term this, we just can't make the first step. So what we've done is we've come up with a process, and it's nothing new. What we've done is basically take what we consider to be best practice from different disciplines, including systems engineering, enterprise architecture, agile development, and business change process modeling, to come up with a fairly simple process that allows people to evaluate what they can do, what they should do, and to achieve the targets that they want to make. And it's basically a 5-step process or 5-stage process, because once you're into it, it's evolutionary, it keeps on going, it's a cycle. But it allows you to sit there and evaluate, right, what do I— what do you do as a business? So what is it you're trying to change? So are you trying to change an entire business? So for us, we would look at our entire business, look at the boundaries of it, and say, right, that is what I'm trying to change. Or you might be part of a bigger business that just wants to change a department or a particular product or something like that. But it's a really important step because unless you can actually scope what it is that you're doing, you'll get distracted by, well, what's another business doing? What's my supply chain doing? Or something like that. You've got to be able to scope what you do. And that's taken straight out of quality management processes, being able to scope what's in your— what it is that you want to change. And the next step is to look at that and say, well, what do I have the influence? Do I truly have the ability to change things within whatever the scope of it is that I'm looking at? So if you're part of a small business, like me, I'm running my own business, I'd like to think I can control everything in my business. Sometimes my team might disagree, but in theory, I have responsibility and I can make decisions for my business. Great. Everything is within my control. If I've just been delegated from a big senior board and they've turned around and said, right, we need to have somebody who is now in charge of carbon reduction or climate change or whatever title you're going to give it, but they don't give them the authority or the finances or the communication tools, or whatever it is that they need to do their job properly, then what's the point in having a role in the first place? They might have the scope, but they don't have the influence. So they've got to have the mandate, they've got to have the financial imperative, they've got to have the ability to make change to meet the targets. So if we get them 2 bits sorted, then brilliant, we can, we can crack on to step 3, which is to work out and appreciate what you can actually change. And so we take this from agile methodologies where if you're into agile software development and that type of thing, you'll have this idea of a backlog. And so we have this idea of a— so the backlog is something where you take— it's an exhaustive list of everything you're going to do on a particular task. So we take that and we develop what we call our climate management model. And it's an exhaustive list of everything within the business, within the scope of what it is you're going— that you've laid out, that you can actually change. And it'll be different from different businesses. So it could be everything from lighting, it could be how do you do recycling, it could be do you switch the computers off at night, how much, where does your energy come from, is it sustainable energy supply, or is it, do you do it on site, have you got solar panels. And so you can look at all of these different things. And this is part of the challenge at the moment is giving people an almost generic list of things to choose from, but also to be able to add their own. Once you choose which ones you can affect, you can then put some— because we're in business, you need to do some sort of cost management approach to this, because you're not doing all of this.

Doing it all is too expensive.

It's not free. And also, what's the benefit to the business for doing so? So you've basically got to put it forward as a business case. So for each individual item you want to change, you need to be able to understand, right, if I want to change all the light bulbs in the office. If you've got a small office, it might be dead cheap to do, it might be quick to do. If you're running a multimillion-pound corporation, then it might be a bit more expensive. So look at all— look at— tally up your costs, work out how long it's going to take you to do it. And what is the benefit to the business? Because whilst we might have external drivers such as achieving net zero and things like that, you might have internal drivers within the business that are better. Because, you know, it might give you better publicity or something like that. So once you've got this exhaustive table list, then we're into good change management stuff where you don't do everything at once, but you pick 2, maybe 3 of the top items that you've— out of your exhaustive list and say, well, I'm going to achieve them 3. And certainly with the first ones you do, you want to pick ones that you probably know you can succeed at because nothing brings success like success. So if you do your— if you achieve, even if you just pick one and say, right, in 3 months' time we're going to change all of our light bulbs to LED ones because they're better for the environment and they save us money. So we do all that, you go through that, maybe 3 months later you come back and say, right, have I changed all my light bulbs? But the important bit about this is whether you have or haven't achieved it, you still communicate that to everybody in your organization. And if we do that, Brilliant. You've got to still communicate it in a way that means something to everybody. So on the shop floor, if you've reduced your carbon output by maybe 5% or something like that, then that means nothing to anybody on the shop floor because what does their job do— how does that relate to carbon output? So you've got to take whatever you do and make it communicated in a way that actually means something to them. So it might be how much waste they've done, how much waste they've throw away because of what they've done on a machine or whatever it is, you know, if they've been switching their PC off at night, then they can see, actually, that's had a measurable input, measurable result. And then you just go and keep in that cycle of, right, if you've achieved the one thing, take the next thing off the list and make that work. But it means it's in control of the business, then they can see what they're doing. It's not— they've broken the problem down, it's measurable, they can communicate it at all levels. And it means it means something to them. It's not just this big beast of you must go net zero or whatever the particular government is pushing at the time. And so it allows them to then take that first step, which is so critically important.

Well, I think that's huge too, what you talked about is relating it, right? Because it's great, we're achieving X, but if your team on the floor doesn't Doesn't care, or doesn't— you know, maybe they do care, but if you're not communicating in a way for them to relate to, then it's really hard to get behind it. Which means that when you do try to do the next thing, and maybe it requires, you know, turning off all the computers at night, you're not going to get your team to say yes to that. They won't, they won't buy into it as much if they don't understand what it means. And it's, um, I was just talking to somebody about, about, you know, how do you communicate that? And one of the things that they brought up in carbon, even, even the idea of carbon footprint is still like a little etheric, right? You talk about, well, 1 pound of carbon, what is— What does 1 pound of carbon mean, mean to me? Like in my daily life, it's not like I, I collect carbon somewhere and I just put it in a pile and eventually get up. I've I've contributed a pound of carbon today, uh, from somewhere. Like, that's not— it's not relatable. And they, they brought up, uh, water. Water consumption is one that we all— we all drink water, we all, we all know how, how that relates. So that's— that was something that, um, this company, Last Object, they're, they're looking at how can they translate what they're doing into water because it connects, because people can understand Well, we're not, you know, whatever carbon footprint, we cool the numbers there if you, if you want to go figure out what that means. But we're saving X number of gallons of water by switching, by using this product. And then that becomes a much more— I know what a gallon of water looks like. I know, I know what it does. It becomes so much more relatable. And there are— they're already seeing more positive response from people going, oh, that's great. I know what that means. I know, I know, I know what I've done now.

It's, it's so important to, to do that. It's about, you know, we as, um, as humans, we want to be able to relate what we're doing and make it, make it right, you know. Um, and, and it allows us to go on the journey as well because you can see targets. You can— I mean, um, when you— when people are doing weight loss and things, that you let them know, you know, that they've lost weight, but that even the point of losing pounds of weight doesn't really mean anything until you show them like a pound of sugar. Or something like that, you know, a measurement that they usually like, you've lost that amount of weight, there you go. You're like, oh, oh yeah. But what's really important in the business perspective, it's something that we didn't really think about until more recently, is that level of influence. And where does that directive come from? Because you sort of sit there and go, well, in a bit like we talked about governments providing leadership, you know, What does senior management do? What does the management board do? Well, some people on the shop floor would give you their own view about what they believe the senior management does. But the main thing that they do is provide inspiration, leadership, and policy. And they drive that through the business, or they should do if they're any good.

Right. That's what they're supposed to be doing.

Yeah. But they don't sit there and do that day-to-day management of people on the shop floor. Unless you've got, you know, the smaller, even like the flatter organizations, they still sit there and drive leadership. They don't necessarily, they don't provide that hands-on management. But then, so then the people at the shop floor still don't necessarily— they're not necessarily motivated. They look at the big slogans from the leadership team and things like that. And they're like, yeah, okay, we'll see what your next big slogan is tomorrow, and things like that. Really, the key actors in this is that middle management layer, because they can make or break how we implement these types of policies. And it's not just climate change policies, it's any sort of policies within the business. Because if the if the middle management are not truly bought into what's going on, but have been given directives, targets to meet, and all that sort of stuff. So we've seen this historically with things like implementing health and safety policy, maybe IT security policies, where they sit there and say, you must do this because you're being told to, big stick type stuff. They'll sit there and the attitude that they give across to their shop floor workers, their teams, they'll be like, oh, The management says we've got to do this, so we've got to do it. We'll do the— and what that ends up in, you'll get just enough effort to meet the targets just so they don't get beaten by it, but they're not enthusiastic about it. They don't really see it as a core principle or anything like that.

So if we come up with their own ideas around it either, there's never innovation or, oh, we figured out a better way to do it while we're implementing it. It's just— The letter— I've met the letter of the law so that I won't be fired. That's it.

Absolutely. Yeah. And because people will see it's just yet another thing we've got to go through in order to blocking us from doing our job. You'll get that sort of attitude. Whereas if we can get them on board with the idea, and it's already baked into the ethos, the leadership of the company, and so much so that that middle management layer has bought into it, then you'll get from the shop floor workers, not only them complying and trying to do the job properly, but as you quite rightly point out, actually coming up with their own ideas about how they could do it, because nobody knows their job better than they do. And so if we turn to them and say, right, we're trying to reduce waste because of this knock-on effect to the environment, we think we're going to do it like this because we want to do it, and we'll have targets around it, that's brilliant, but actually if we really do this, then it's a bigger thing, then you'll get them enthused and they'll be coming around and say, well, you said we could Change, you know, reduce waste by this. But actually, have you thought about doing it like this? I sit here and watch this happen every day. And I've always thought I could do this. What could we do that? I don't know. But here's, you know, maybe a bit of money to go and try it out. Or, you know, let's put it on a trial for 6 weeks and see. And so then that becomes their own target to hit, and they become part of that process. And they'll feel involved and get social reward out of it. It doesn't have to be with these type of things, you can almost gamify it as well. Using gamification techniques, you can set teams against each other and departments against each other with these sort of targets. Because you can have just a simple leadership board— sorry, a simple leaderboard to put these sort of things in play. And they'll, they'll, they'll work with it. And if they're bought into it, they'll compete. And therefore the business wins. But it's got to be done in a way that brings them on board. Because what you don't want is what you see in some, say, I've seen it recently in some fast food chains, where they try and get fast food chains to compete against each other about how quickly they deliver the drive-through. It's like, well, how does it relate? So how does one fast food chain, say, where I live here in South Wales, compare against one that maybe lives in North Wales, or maybe in England? And like, well, that's not relatable to us. We don't care. We're just trying to get— we're just trying to get through the grind of the day. It's just on a TV, you know. But how— so we need to, you know, it isn't just a quick fix. We've got to do some stuff with it. But if we can get people enthused and motivated, then we can do this thing.

Yeah, well, and you bring up a good point. I was talking to someone about, you know, brands like mission, vision, values, how you get it through a company. And they brought up, he'd done it at a few different companies, and they would always come up with, you know, their strategy Like, here's our vision and mission. Whenever they shared it with the rest of the team, like all the workers, they would come back with a whole different set of what they thought it was. And that community of, okay, well, let's have a conversation. Let's make this something we're building together. Then it became something that actually decisions could be made around. And you knew that upper management, middle management, anybody in between, worker, they all actually agreed on it once you involved everyone in a conversation. And I feel like that's— that applies so well to this too. This is— it's a mission. It's an ex— it's sometimes an extra mission on top of your normal day-to-day. But if you can get everyone on board, then you're gonna have, have a cohesion with with the company that you might not have seen before in other areas. And you'll get all those great ideas. And yeah, that guy that's sitting there watching it happen every single day is going to be able to say, oh yeah, I've had an idea for 5 years. You have just been waiting for it to be applicable. And now it is.

Yeah. And they might have had this idea for a long time, but never had an avenue to think that it was worthwhile because unless bought into the rhythm, into the ethos and the values of the business, then why would they even bother? So yeah, you're right. It's this, if we bring people into it, I mean, I did it with my own business when we first started out, sitting there saying, right, I kind of know what it is that I want to do. And this is my vision for where it is, but I don't know how to communicate it. And so very small team at that point, which also included my wife, which has its own challenges. But we sort of sit there going, right, well, this is what I think we should be, but how do we communicate that? How do we use, you know, simple words to communicate what we're all about? And I think it was more valuable because I had in my head kind of what I wanted, but then it's once you start reflecting on other people's views on it, then it becomes richer for it. And it's not only the output of what you get, but it's the fact that everybody now feels like they've got a stake, they helped shape what you're doing. And therefore, they'll help you deliver that. And not only will they help you deliver it, when you get new people join the business, or outsiders come and reflect on what you're doing, they'll defend it, because it's partly theirs. And make sure the right behaviors pervade through the business and through the product and services you're delivering.

Yeah, and it makes it, it makes it easier When you have that kind of cohesion, if you have those, those shared values, then when it comes to maybe making a hard business decision, you'll make the one that actually matches the mission rather than, well, the division over here just went, went off and decided their own thing based on their own, their own idea. And you won't have, you know, you'll, you'll immediately lose cohesion as soon as that happens. If If something like that happens. So yeah, I think that's a good— all good points you're bringing up. So with this process you've created, right, you're able to help walk people through it. How are you rolling it out? How are you— are you doing this consulting? Are you— how would somebody get a hold of this and implement what you guys are doing?

So in theory, I should be able to become now a consultant in climate ergonomics and Hold this process tight to my chest. I'll only give it to you if I'm gonna, if you're gonna pay me a million pounds or something. Foolishly, potentially, but actually I think the right thing to do—it's freely available. So if you go, if you search for climate ergonomics, or you search for on the Chatterton Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, which is the institute that helped us promote it—if you search on their website, there is this guide called Climate Ergonomics, or the Business Guide to Climate Ergonomics, and that's freely available. It goes through the steps of what it is each part of it's meant to do with some labeling and stuff. It's a short guide. It's not meant to be War and Peace. It's not meant to be like a big thick textbook. It is a handrail. And so we've had a number of businesses already. In fact, it's been one of the fastest downloaded guides that the Institute's ever produced. So we, I know that businesses are taking it on and we're getting really good feedback on it, that they've been able to implement it. They're using it as a talking point to act as a catalyst around. And so really, for this short journey we, that we've had, like say it's been about 7 or 8 months that we've been doing this, the, to have a guide out there already that people, that businesses are using and organizations are looking at, and we've got certain government ministers looking at it as well. then that's been like a huge bonus into what we're doing. But then what we're doing is basically just spreading the word. So we've been doing a number of engagements with other human factors organizations. So this week I was talking to the Human Factors Ergonomics Society in America. And we've had exposure in Australia and Iran and a couple of other places. Basically to share it because fundamentally this whole, as we've talked about, this whole climate change issue, is everybody's problem. And so, you know, you know, we, like I said, could have sat there, and we could have sat there and said, right, well, how do we get the most money out of this we possibly can? And we're like, well, hopefully, you know, it's one of these things that if we can get it done right, then we'll still be here in 5 years to actually offer our main services. So we kind of took a more altruistic approach. And so hopefully we do that. We've got the ergonomics conference coming up in, in April. And we're presenting a whole lot of sustainability work around that, that will allow people to talk more about what we're doing. Because just because we're doing this right now, I'm not saying that I've got all the answers. I'm getting more and more questions.

But what we're trying to— that's the best kind of question, it always gets you more. So yeah, exactly. You're winning at that then.

Well, yeah, I think the idea is that we're going not only within the human factors world but broader, is turning around saying, right, you're doing some great work, you're doing some great work. There's a lot of really, really good work going on, but how do we glue it together? How do we make sure that everybody who's doing some stuff knows what everybody else is doing, and therefore we can look at it and fit it together and, and actually exploit it? And this is one of the reasons why I thought, as human factors practitioners, really had value to add because whenever we get involved in a project, no matter what the project is, we tend to be that discipline that glues a lot of other stuff together. So we get the engineers talking to the project managers, get talking to the users, talking to supply chain and things like that, because we tend to want to ask questions amongst all of them and tend to, you know, we— that's why we're generally quite good at running things like scrums and things like that because we tend to turn around and say, right, well, you said this and you said this, they're different. What, can you talk to each other really quickly and just come up with a common answer? Or do you know what they know? And, you know, that, and that's what I sort of hit with these conversations was, you know, we've got some environmental psychologists doing some really fabulous work around behavior change and things like that. And then we've got some other practitioners developing things around green ergonomics. So things, what, you know, how do you apply ergonomics in an office in a green way? So how do you help reduce paper usage and things like that? So really specific around the workplace. And I'm like, well, that's great, that's fantastic, and there's a really fantastic book on that. How do we apply that at a world level? How do we apply that at a global level? And you're talking about these practices being done on a behavior change. So you psychologists need to talk to you practitioner come together and smash it together and make, make it work. Make it better. That's really what I'm trying to do. Yeah. So hopefully we can do this going forward. Like I said, we've got the conference coming up. We want to try and create more, more material in a way that's more engaging. So it's all very well producing papers and guides and thick weighty books and which all that sort of stuff that when you're living at home, you've got no interest in reading. You're that busy trying to work out. and what's going on. Because this is the third factor that we're kind of really interested in, is the effect of poverty, the effect of discrimination, the effect of equality. Because those people who we are now guilt-tripping into having to do stuff for, those families generally who have the least, and they're trying to work out, you know, how are they going to pay the bills at the end of the week, how are they going to feed the family, how are they going to do this, and now we're trying to get them to save the planet as well. You know, that's how, how does that work? So—

That's a great point. That's a great point to bring up. Yeah, why are we, why are we forcing the already struggling to add more, add more to what they're doing? And this whole social part, I think, is huge too. Like, that's, that's something that I strongly believe in is not just, you know, environment is great, but if we're all unhappy and having crappy lives while doing it, then we're not really— nobody's going to want to do it in the first place because it's all adding just more to us. So if we're not improving the societal end of things, are we really improving? Like, are we? Because if we're making it so we're going to last longer as a species, do we want to make it so that we have a worse society? That just doesn't sound appealing long-term for any of us. Well, you're right.

I mean, when you look at all futuristic films, everything from Star Wars all the way through, you know, they all sort of focus on a society that is very, very dull to be in, but very, you know, there's the extreme poor and the extreme rich. And so if we're, if we're going to try and make them changes, they've got to be changes that are worthwhile. And so really, what we're trying to do is turn around and say, right, well, if we want people to make changes, we've got to show them a way, in a way that is meaningful. I mean, who doesn't love things like TikTok and all that sort of stuff at the moment? So why don't we actually put the messages that we're giving into them sort of forms that we do? So we try to look at things like infographics. And really, how do we get— so rather than governments telling us what to do, what about building our communities back up again, and working on a community basis to share ideas and empower community leaders in that way? So there's some of the bits that we're trying to drive through and develop at the moment. But we're trying to get more people on board to do that, because as much as I love doing it, then we still got to do a day job and try and fit that in. So this is a convoluted hobby. So how do we, how do we still do the day job but still produce some, some meaning and tangible stuff in a timeframe? Because we've been given, you know, that 5 years, which is now 4 years. To try and, you know, 4 years to save the Earth. So yeah, it's an interesting challenge.

Yeah, the timeline definitely adds a challenge level to it that doesn't make it quite easy. But I don't think it's unachievable either. I wouldn't say that it's unachievable. If you look at, you know, how How we made some shifts drastically in 2020 for a pandemic. We're capable of doing crazy amounts of things as a species if we just all unify on one, or mostly unify. Not everyone agreed with everything, but if we mostly unify, if 75% does something together, we can do huge things. So I think it's, I think it's achievable, but very soon deadline.

It is, it's like one of them that you see on other projects, you get, right, you got this deadline, then if it looks like it's slipping a bit, it's maybe not that much of a big deal, you can probably negotiate it and things like that. But the whole end of the world thing, that fairly, that feels like a much more important deadline. But like I said, right, right at the beginning, it's one of these things that even if the deadline isn't a big, isn't quite what we make it out to be, because people will you know, talk about that. Even if we miss the deadline, we are still going to have to do something because we've got to survive in whatever the future world looks like. So there is still that whole piece of, right, okay, even if we miss that deadline, we're not just going to sit there and say, oh well, never mind, you know, let's get back on burning the fossil fuels and things like that. We've still got to do— we've still got to live and, you know, enjoy life, and we're only going to do that by taking a sensible approach to our impact on the climate.

Right. Well, this is amazing. I'm very happy you guys are doing this. And hopefully more people join you so that you can keep doing your day job while doing this as it grows. For anyone that's wanting to get a hold of you, work with you, where's the best places to do that?

So you can find me on Twitter @bazamiskalkay. I'm all over LinkedIn. So social media, I'm not a difficult person to find. If you search for climateergonomics.com, then that will take you to a page on our website. Or, you know, as you mentioned at the up, I run my own podcast, so you can search for 12:02, The Human Factors Podcast, and you'll find me whinging on there about this. So yeah, anybody who wants to get in touch, I'll be more than happy to engage.

Fantastic. And we'll, we'll make sure there's plenty of links on, on the, on the description with this episode as well. So it'll be easy. It'll be easy to find you. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to chat with me.

No, that's fantastic. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.