Kākou Conversations are about what CAN be done

Kākou

All of us. We are in this together.
Learn to speak the language of we.

Do not for a moment think I have been off on a tangent with my two recent postings here about our stewardship of sense of place, and of the environment.

My Kākou focus this month was to be on Kākou Communication, and the reason I feel the “Language of We” is so powerful: Kākou conversations are about what CAN be done. They are NOT about hand-wringing, or any such feelings of helplessness.

Yesterday, I quoted a small snippet of a speech done by James Koshiba, a Hawai‘i “social entrepreneur” I greatly admire. I was able to find a link to the full context of James’ speech, and today I’d like to share another excerpt with you, one which truly illustrates this idea of what a “Kākou Conversation” can be.

Kanu Hawai‘i began over two years ago as an informal conversation among about 50 young professionals in their 20s and 30s. And the conversation really revolved around two questions. One question was, What is it that we love about Hawai‘i? What is it that makes us want to live here, what is it that has led us to decide to put down roots in the islands? And the second was, What are the things that troubles us most about the way the islands are headed? What are the things we worry about for ourselves, for our children, and our children's children?

Those 50 people had a conversation that lasted over the course of several weekends, and developed a short inventory of things that answer those two questions: What do we love, what do we worry about. And as it turns out, those things were very familiar things. We love the environment here, we love the culture, we love the sense of community; we worry about an economy where it's hard to find living-wage careers, we worry about the environment and the culture, which we sensed were under threat in many ways. As it turned out, these were the same things that had been discussed for the last 30 years in Hawai‘i. They showed up repeatedly in community plans, in vision statements and government policies.

So one of the things we had to ask ourselves at the conclusion of this conversation was: Why hasn't more changed? If these are some of the same issues that have repeatedly showed up over the course of the last several decades, why hasn't more happened?

And we scratched our heads and we had no answer to that. As folks, just ordinary folks with not a lot of influence or power, we said, "What can we do a little bit differently to work on these really daunting issues?" What we decided was that in the absence of good answers, we would just go around the room, all 50 of us, and make one small commitment to some action in our personal lives to address these giant issues. We boiled them down to very bite-size pieces. So for instance, the steps might be something as small as taking a two-minute shorter shower at home, or trading in your car for a more fuel-efficient vehicle, or spending your money responsibly at a business that you think does business in an island-style way.

Those seem like really small steps, but shortly after committing to those things, we tallied up the impact of those actions. It turned out that 50 people each deciding to live their lives that way had a significant impact. For 50 people, a two-minute shorter shower ended up saving nearly half a million gallons of water a year. There was nearly a million dollars worth of discretionary purchasing power that we could direct to companies we thought lived by island values. And if we each recycle paper, plastic and glass at home, almost 15 tons of waste will be diverted from the landfill every year.

All things that we worried about, and all things that we could take small steps in our personal life to address. The lesson we took away from this was that small steps can have a significant impact, and if you start with yourself, it puts you in a much better position to start talking to others about the change you think should be made.

Here is a link to James’ speech in full: It is excellent.

Reflect: What conversations have you had lately, that you sense you will be able to look back on as James did with this one?

Imua (Go forward): What conversations can you initiate with the intention of them becoming a Kākou Conversation, creating the power of We?

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Here are three related postings:

• On the power of questions: Ask “Why?” Five Times.

• On revering conversation: Conversation is THE Tool for learning Kākou.

• On the full definition of Kākou: Communicating with the Language of We.

A Side Note: James Koshiba is one who could be called an Echo Boomer (he was born a few years earlier). As Greg Balanko-Dickson recently wrote: Who are Echo Boomers? They are the children of the baby boom and are known as Generation Y, the Echo Boomers, or the Millennials (choose your favorite label). They were born between 1977 and 2002. They are increasingly becoming known more and more as the Entrepreneurial or “E” Generation. ... and boy, do we underestimate them! I think James is one of their stars.