Welcome back to season 3 of How Could We?
Inspired by conversations we had with experts about the climate emergency, this season we’re digging into Climate Narratives, Confusion & Crisis and Radical Collaboration, three themes that are important to our work.
In this third episode – the season finale – we talk to Yiannis Chrysostomidis, Principal and Head of London Office at REOS Partners, a global organisation solving complex problems through the lens of radical collaboration. Yiannis’ work supports changemakers to help shift the root causes of societal challenges, such as climate change.
What does Radical Collaboration means in practise?
In this episode, Yiannis discusses how talking about power can feel like a taboo subject, the importance of storytelling and understanding cultural differences when building coalitions, and how ‘network weavers’ – hidden actors who may not be considered typical power brokers – are key for enacting change.
He says: “Power is taboo when you think you don’t have it. But actually, one thing that that helps is to recognise that everyone has power, even a person who can be in a relatively sort of lower rank, or position, for example, can have huge amounts of power in a process, they can obstruct the process in different ways. So actually, recognizing that everyone has power is really key.”
Yiannis also outlines the key elements of REOS’ Radical Climate Collaboration Guidebook and shares a few examples of some of the fascinating projects he’s worked on worldwide, including in Syria, South Africa and Mongolia.
This episode was presented by Anne-Sophie Garrigou & Stephanie Klotz and produced by Bárbara Mendes-Jorge.