This past week, we closed the first Call for Expressions of Interest for the newly formed Sustainability Transition Lab program at The Natural Step Canada. It has been an amazing learning opportunity.

We are receiving feedback that our approach to the Expression of Interest process itself is creative and is unlike other RFP or proposal submissions. Since releasing our Call for Expressions of Interest, we have been speaking with candidates, hosting their questions, and immersing ourselves in the depths of their ideas. We’ve attempted to understand the change agents behind the ideas, their cultures, their passions, and why they are willing to put such skin in the game here.

Each candidate possesses a curiosity for learning and applying new ideas. They all want to make change. They all have identified that they cannot tackle the complexity of the sustainability challenges before us alone – we need to do it together. We need to gather unlikely allies around an issue, shed our logos, check our egos, and work towards change.

We are also hearing that what The Natural Step Canada is offering is of significant value to this space of change. The J.W.McConnell Family Foundation tasked us with hosting three labs over the next three years. Why us? Because we’re out to test a hypothesis: that a framework for strategic sustainable development has value within multi-stakeholder collaborations aimed at addressing complex sustainability challenges; that backcasting from credible, science-based sustainability principles is helpful to define the basic constraints of a successful endeavor.

What I’ve been hearing recently - at a Partnership Brokering webinar, at the Accelerate: Collaborating for Sustainability conference, and from Expression of Interest candidates - is that a compass point to get us to true sustainability is badly needed in order for us all to effectively collaborate on addressing complex sustainability issues. When we use the sustainability principles as a frame for our end goal, and when we’re really honest about the state of current reality, we effectively establish ‘creative tension’ when we juxtapose those two states. This creative tension will help motivate change. It pulls us forward.

The Expressions of Interest have also given us the privilege of being able to see a myriad of project ideas. I have been astounded and inspired by the amazing work Canadians are doing to change the unsustainability of the status quo.

So what’s next? We have several fantastic proposals in front of us – selecting just one is clearly not going to be an easy task. We are lucky enough to have the support of a prestigious advisory council who will help us identify the next leverage point within these potentially game-changing projects - which project do we invest in to tilt a system-change in Canada to accelerate the transition to a sustainable society? We’re aiming to make our selection in September and our announcement in October. In the meantime, we rest in the faith that there is wonderful change-enabling work continuing across Canada.