Leadership & Organizational Culture
Fostering support for agency adaptation efforts through leadership and organizational culture ensures that adaptation is advanced throughout all levels of the agency. Leadership from agency executives and local elected officials is essential in driving adaptation, establishing adaptation as an agency priority can codify this leadership, and garnering the public and political support necessary to fund and pursue adaptation strategies. Targeted approaches must be taken in order to effectively motivate and mobilize leaders in different roles to work in collaboration towards shared adaptation goals. Cultivating adaptation leaders and building a culture that values adaptation are long-term investments that are needed to effectively respond to future climate variabilities, the cascading and compounding nature of climate impacts, and the quickly evolving adaptation space in California. Creating a culture that values internal coordination and empowers staff at all levels can enable an organization to more smoothly and effectively advance adaptation efforts throughout communities.
Initiation
Review climate adaptation plans of other government agencies to identify policies, begin to coordinate between departments on adaptation, and prepare overview briefing for executive leadership on adaptation.
| Identify and informally reach out to executives about climate change risks. | |
| Identify executives (e.g. agency leaders and department heads) that would recognize the importance of addressing climate change risks and adaptation concerns. Consider starting with department heads of climate-sensitive sectors (e.g. Emergency Management, Planning, Public Health, and Public Works).
Provide justification for work on climate adaptation. Prepare overview briefing and speaking points for executive leadership on incorporating adaptation in agency activities. Broadly articulate local and regional climate change risks (e.g. extreme heat, displacement, depleted water resources) and the value proposition of investing in adaptation activities by drawing on existing resources. Highlight policies and mandates such as SB-379 that require local governments to consider climate impacts and develop adaptation strategies in their General Plan. Draw from recent impacts from extreme weather events to demonstrate potential consequences of future changes in climate. Review leadership programs and principles from other communities to identify potential leadership peers to share with executives. Demonstrate how other jurisdictions are taking action to adapt to climate change (e.g. share existing resources or news updates from other jurisdictions). |
|
| Identify priorities and interests of elected officials and connect to climate change. | |
Demonstrate how climate change is connected to local elected officials’ priorities by:
|
|
| Identify models of strategic plans and goals related to adaptation. | |
| Review strategic plans and goals from other local governments that have incorporated adaptation to identify replicable strategic policies. Review adaptation principles and approaches that have already been developed/are being utilized by other jurisdictions and prepare a summary. Prioritize reviewing plans and goals from municipalities that share similar climate risks or community characteristics and are located in the same region if possible. | |
| Internal adaptation champions undertake informal efforts on coordination and collaboration. | |
Engage across departments on adaptation-related efforts on an ad hoc, project-by-project basis by:
Create a list of departments whose work may be sensitive to climate change risks and/or might be involved in adaptation-related initiatives (e.g. Emergency Management, Planning, Public Health, and Public Works). Conduct a stocktaking of departments’ adaptation-related activities to date, share among departments, and identify opportunities for efficiencies and collaboration. Identify climate change risks (e.g. extreme heat) that require or can benefit from coordination across multiple departments (e.g. public health, emergency management, and transportation). Begin to engage departments around these priority risks. |
|
| Identify ad hoc opportunities to build internal awareness about climate change and resilience. | |
| Review existing programs and organizational activities to find connections to climate change (e.g., leverage transit employee benefit programs and employee wellness programs to encourage walking and biking instead of driving).
Identify existing internal climate change mitigation efforts (e.g., energy conservation) or related efforts that can be leveraged to provide an entry point to raise awareness about climate impacts and adaptation. |
|