Logic Builds Agreement, But Not Commitment to Climate Action

Why Climate Predictions are Not Enough to Foster Change

We like to think we are logical people, but it's not true.

When I first started my consulting firm, I received mentoring from Alan Weiss, who began his career as a trainer for Kepner-Tragoe. He taught KT’s analysis methods for problem solving and decision making, then built a consulting practice to help executives make better strategic decisions. The methods lead to clear, logical decisions. But Alan's experience showed that wasn't enough to get executives to take the right actions.

“Logic makes people think but emotion makes them act.” 

For an engineer or scientist, those are tough words to hear.

We want to believe that we make fact-based decisions ourselves, and we get frustrated when we see others make illogical decisions based on incomplete information — especially others who have power over our time and resources. We are trained to use mathematics, analysis tools, and experimentation to gather the facts, and then make the best data-driven decision. It seems like our logical arguments should always win, if our decision-making models are rational enough.

Some of the decisions we make in science and engineering are like that — especially at the level of detailed design. For many of the thousands of decisions that go into a product, logic works well enough — but not always. For your potential customers, it's almost never true.

To make a difference, your ideas need to be picked up and put into action. For those who have the ability to decide whether or not to help, especially if you must influence another decision-maker to spend time or money that is in short supply, or if the decision has a negative impact on anyone, a logical argument is not going to be enough without taking into account the need to build commitment.

Logic Builds Agreement — Not Commitment

It’s easy to agree — it’s much harder to invest. If you have built a rock-solid logical argument, but allowed no reason why the decision is important enough to implement, no room for people to share their concerns, and no apparent acknowledgement that the decision will have an impact on others, you may find it hard to get commitment.

People may demonstrate their discomfort by disputing your facts or chains of logic. If you respond to the surface argument, you may find that there is nothing you can say that will satisfy them.

You may find that decision makers refuse to accept your proposal, no matter how good it is, because there are more important priorities to them. In the worst case scenario, they agree with the decision in principle, but not in practice. You might find that they approve the project — but give you no money or people to do it. You may find that implementers put your project at the bottom of their to-do list. Everyone agrees it’s the right decision but no one is committed to carry it through.

Commitment is especially important for climate tech because a lot of the solutions we need the most require early investment for long-term payback. This is the opposite of what financial markets demand: quick ROI. It's only after a technology has matured that it starts making economic sense.

Most Climate Tech Is Not Economical — Yet

Once economies-of-scale, public policy, and consumer demand start to kick in, adoption can move fast. Until that point, you're relying on people's good will, and desire to care for the planet. None of that is logical, and for many people, the extra money and time required is a luxury they don't have, even if they want to do the right thing.

In the early adopter phases, before a climate solution becomes economical, we don't just need agreement — we need commitment from people with the resources to become our early success stories.

How Do You Build Commitment?