Personal Action Plan Template
Pre-Program Exercises
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Welcome
From all of us at the Harvard Alumni Climate and Environment special interest group (“HACE”) welcome to the
Harvard Climate Action Training. We’re thrilled you’re here, and continuing your journey as a sustainability
advocate and transforming your organizations.
This Personal Action Plan Template (“the Template”) will guide you to create an action plan to begin to combat
climate change within your organization, while being mindful of environmental sustainability and environmental
justice. The Template can be:
• a tool to record and make sense of the information you’ll get through the Training Sessions;
• a framework to prioritize action and focus on areas where you’re most likely to make an impact; and
• a presentation you can share with others to incorporate their views and gain their support.
Scope of the Action Plan Template
The Template is designed for a busy individual (you) to begin to act within your organization. It assumes your
organization doesn’t yet have a full climate or sustainability strategy and needs leadership (you again) to get
them started.
Climate is the focus of the Template. The tools can be applied to the broader scope of environmental
sustainability. As you proceed, you should also take a view beyond your organization to consider environmental
justice and how people and communities around your organization are also affected.
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Overview of the Template
Sections of the Personal Action
Plan
Pre-work
Motivators
Understand your motivations and your organization’s
starting point
Session 1
Issues
Select an issue that you want to work on
Session 2
SWOT
Assess your your organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities And Threats
Session 3
Stakeholders
Identify your stakeholders and allies
Session 4 & 5
Plan
Set a SMART goal and make your plan
Using the Personal Action Plan
Template
Start with a draft and iterate. You can return
to exercises throughout the Climate Action
Training.
Begin with information you know already
and learn in the Climate Action Training.
You can dive deeper with additional
research if you need.
You can do this work alone, but you’ll do a
better job and build community by
engaging with others, including in Small
Group Actions Sessions.
The Template has plain formatting so you
can easily cut and paste into your
organization’s format if needed.
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Pre-work
Motivators
Understand your motivations and your
organization's starting point
The purpose of this pre-work is to deepen your
understanding of your motivations for joining the
Climate Action Training, and of your organization’s
actions and attitude in relation to climate change.
Here are some ADDITIONAL RESOURCES if you would
like to go deeper:
•
Watch ‘How to transform apocalypse fatigue into
action on global warming’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5h6ynoq8
uM
•
Read ‘The Journey to a Sustainable Business
Whitepaper’
https://www.erm.com/insights/the-journey-toa-sustainable-business-navigating-the-roadahead
Understanding where we start is essential to moving
forward and building a realistic action plan.
There are three exercises:
• Self reflection
• Talk to some colleagues within your organization
or industry
• Identify your organization's current attitude(s) to
climate change
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Pre-work
Motivators
Exercise 1: Self-reflection
Instructions:
• Take a moment to think about what brings you the most joy and meaning: Your relationships & family? Your
experiences of the world? The wellbeing of your community?...
• These are your sustainability motivators. They are the reasons WHY you would invest in sustainability and
combat climate change.
• Now think how climate change could impact these important motivators.
• Express these in some way – either write them down in the table, draw a picture or make a video that tells the
story.
• You’ll have an opportunity to share these (if you want) in your Small Group Action Sessions.
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Pre-work
Motivators
Climate change motivators
These things bring my life
joy and meaning…
Climate change could
impact them by…
<Insert a picture or a drawing that represents one
reason climate change matters to you>
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Pre-work
Motivators
Exercise 2: Talk to colleagues
Instructions:
• Talk to three people in your organization or industry with different functions (e.g. operations, finance, HR,
product, sales...) and ask them five questions listed in the interview guide.
• The goal is to learn, not to convince them of anything (yet).
• If you find an ally, you may want to involve them somehow in the Climate Action Training.
• It’s OK if people do not know answers to every question, that is also information.
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Pre-work
Motivators
Baseline interview notes
<Person/Title A>
How is climate change
impacting our organization,
our vendors/clients, our
industry now?
And in five years?
What are our organization’s
greatest contributions to
human-caused climate
change1?
What is our organization
already doing/planning to do
to combat human-caused
climate change?
What else would you like to see
our organization do to combat
human-caused climate
change?
1. Human activities cause climate change in two main ways. First by releasing ‘greenhouse gasses’ such a carbon dioxide and methane. Second by releasing
fine particles into the air (air pollution) that retain heat. Black Carbon (or soot from burning things) is the main one in this second category.
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Pre-work
Motivators
Baseline interview notes
<Person/Title B>
How is climate change
impacting our organization,
our vendors/clients, our
industry now?
And in five years?
What are our organization’s
greatest contributions to
human-caused climate
change1?
What is our organization
already doing/planning to do
to combat human-caused
climate change?
What else would you like to see
our organization do to combat
human-caused climate
change?
1. Human activities cause climate change in two main ways. First by releasing ‘greenhouse gasses’ such a carbon dioxide and methane. Second by releasing
fine particles into the air (air pollution) that retain heat. Black Carbon (or soot form burning things) is the main one in this second category.
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Pre-work
Motivators
Baseline interview notes
<Person/Title C>
How is climate change
impacting our organization,
our vendors/clients, our
industry now?
And in five years?
What are our organization’s
greatest contributions to
human-caused climate
change1?
What is our organization
already doing/planning to do
to combat human-caused
climate change?
What else would you like to see
our organization do to combat
human-caused climate
change?
1. Human activities cause climate change in two main ways. First by releasing ‘greenhouse gasses’ such a carbon dioxide and methane. Second by releasing
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fine particles into the air (air pollution) that retain heat. Black Carbon (or soot form burning things) is the main one in this second category.
Pre-work
Motivators
Exercise 3: Identify current attitude(s)
to climate change within your
organization
Instructions:
• Understanding where your organization starts is essential to identifying the best opportunities for action, and
how to communicate internally with key decision makers.
• Read the five approaches to sustainability and their indicators on the following slide. Listen for these in your
conversations within your organization.
• In column 3, identify your organization’s main approach. Different people inside your organization may have
different approaches: you can also include these in column three.
• To go even further you could also research and include your main competitors.
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Pre-work
Motivators
Organizational attitude to climate change
Attitudes to
climate change
How organizations within each category think/act regarding sustainability
Compliance-driven
•
•
Focus is on compliance/managing regulatory risks and meeting reporting requirements.
Internal leadership typically from Environmental, Health and Safety professionals.
Stakeholder-driven
•
•
Focus is on avoiding/responding to external pressure (e.g., investors, customers, media).
Internal leadership often comes from Marketing and Communications.
Risk-driven
•
•
Focus is on reducing climate/sustainability risks on existing operations.
Finance and investor relations are often fully involved or leading the agenda.
Growth-driven
•
Focus is on climate/sustainability as a growth driver, competitive differentiator or source
of new markets.
Internal leadership from CEO and/or C-Suite.
•
Vanguard
•
•
•
Select for your
organization
Focus is on environmental or social impact as an intrinsic goal, not only as a pathway to
business outcomes.
Willing to prioritize environmental or social goals over commercial goals.
Internal leadership from CEO and C-Suite.
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Note: This framework has been adapted from ’The Journey to a Sustainable Business Whitepaper’ developed by ERM