(opinion) Indicators for transition - what are they indicating anyway?

I was invited to participate in the facilitation of two workshops about indicators for transition.  Organised by the French foundation 'fondation des transitions’ in bordeaux end of August.

The event focused  on finding a way to track progress in sustainability, as there are a lot of 'trackers' and to avoid glossy annual reports blabla for example.

For the main take-aways of check the article on TOKVIL.Be blog related to public innovation

My own thoughts related to indicators were a little sceptic in the field of indicators on sustainable development. 

The Sustainable Development goals of the UN  (SDG) have a set of indicators;  I am quite fond of these SDGs , as they show show a direction to take, just like a compass. 

What appears to me more and more is that every organisations has its own and unique ADN, due to its experience, memberships, leadership;  therefore ‘one size fits all ‘will not work also related to indicators;  every organisation can only move with its own compass and at its own pace.   

My own intuition is that there is a basic system flaw in the trying to link an organisation to specific indicators;  the flaw is that organisations models will only reproduce the same 'systemic' errors, that have lead to  the current human-ecologic- financial tragedy.  Indeed trying to align 21st century indicators to a 20th century organisational and industrial model will not work.  Inevitably we need to reflect on the place of our organisation in the 3P model, look how to move the organisation and its ADN towards a sustainable future; SDG 8 - talks about decent work and economic growth.  On of the objectives is still to reach a 7 percent GDP growth by 2030.    If one looks only at this indicator, it will be missing out on a lot of elements and might even do acts that are totally not sustainable in the end. In terms of priorities it is therefore important to keep the order of the 3P in sight: first think about the future of the planet, within these limits develop human activities, and within these develop productive activities only.  In order to avoid that SDG reporting becomes a simple CSR year book activity,  the new narrative needs to be worked on:

Naomi Klein has provided interesting insights about this, telling that we need a new narrative, a narrative based on the human side and the ecologic entity.

Greta Thunberg message putting climate on top of the agenda is creating a lot of fuzz as she is shaping the 3P agenda by that, and not everyone is happy about that.  Her message should be clearly embraced, as it moves us clearly in to the 21st century.