Leading Team Development

Colin Beavan spends his life complaining and moaning about how the government is not doing enough to save the environment until the day he stops to examine his own life. No Impact Man is the name of a movie, a book, and a blog about the year in which Beavan and his family adjust their lives to have no net impact on the environment, all while living in downtown New York City. Although Beavan’s goal is to have a personal impact on the environment, his project garners worldwide attention and makes him a leader of the environmental movement, a dysfunctional team if there ever was one. After the New York Times runs a story about No Impact Man on the front page of the Home and Garden section, Beavan receives interview requests from around the world. He realizes this as an opportunity to lead people to make eco-friendly adjustments to their lives. He does not want to say the wrong thing so he consults other leaders of the green movement and the advice he gets is all over the map – an indication of the incoherence of the movement itself. Some leaders tell him he is turning people off by being so extreme. Others talk in terms of corporate America killing the environment. Beavan has to decide what he should do with his opportunity to lead the movement.

By attempting to have minimal impact on the environment, Beavan is faced with a number of challenges. First of all, having a two year old daughter poses a particularly hefty challenge in that he has got to ensure that she remains healthy and does not suffer as a result of his experiment. This includes making sure that the apartment remains in livable condition where the state will not take away their child or cite them for endangering her. With each change, Beavan has to ensure that she remains healthy and does not suffer as a result of his experiment. She needs diapers, milk, and protection from the extreme temperatures of New York. He has to find ways of satisfying these needs, which meant that he has to...