Some ideas are an instant hit. Some don’t stick at all. And some—ones you thought hadn’t stuck—are simply taking a long time to grow.
Today, I’m running training for a group of engineers who are passionate about moving beyond warm words around the climate emergency. The material I’m drawing on comes from a course Constructivist ran back in 2020, titled Training on What to Do After Declaring a Climate Emergency.
Back then, the IPCC’s 2018 report on climate breakdown and ecological collapse had captured the zeitgeist. Across all levels of the profession, engineers (and other humans) were beginning to confront the net impact of their work and the urgent need to act.
Hundreds of firms signed up to various Built Environment Declares statements. These were terrific initiatives, requiring board-level sign-off and firm commitments from signatories.
The big question, of course, was: What happens next?
At Constructivist, we recognised that following those declarations, someone—usually at associate or associate director level—would be tasked with spearheading the initiative within their organisation.
Our mission has always been to design and deliver training for engineers (and other humans) who are bravely reshaping the construction industry in the face of the climate and ecological emergency—working towards a future where our industry creates thriving in its wake.
And so we developed and delivered Training on What to Do After Declaring a Climate Emergency. We ran it twice. Then Covid hit, and everything went quiet.
In many ways, that course planted the seed for what became our next and most successful initiative: the Regenerative Design Lab. For that, I am immensely grateful.
But I’ll admit, I’ve also felt disheartened. It seemed like the original framing—seizing that moment of change-making energy—hadn’t stuck.
Then, recently, I started hearing from graduates of that original programme. They told me about the lasting impact it had on their work, how it gave them confidence to take bolder action in their designs, and how it inspired them to push further.
And today, I’m running a workshop with a client that draws directly on the ideas from that same programme.
Like the seeds of different tree species, some ideas grow quickly, while others take much longer to take root. The challenge is, unlike with trees, it’s much harder to know from the outset which ideas will spread quickly and which will turn out to be slow-growing.
What’s important is that don’t judge the ideas that we have planted too quickly.
