During New York Climate Week 2025, climate leaders gathered online for an interactive workshop: Building Influence Without Authority. Using the LEGO® Serious Play® methodology, participants explored how to strengthen climate action by mapping challenges, understanding stakeholders, and creating bridges between different perspectives.

For city teams, consultants, and sustainability leaders, the session was a reminder that influence in climate action doesn’t always come from formal authority, it comes from clarity, collaboration, and the right tools.

Why influence without authority matters in climate action

Climate challenges often involve complex networks: governments, private sector, community groups, NGOs. Rarely does one actor hold full decision-making power. That’s why building influence without authority is key for advancing local climate initiatives.

The workshop showed three steps that any climate leader can apply:

1. Map your challenge: Define what the issue is, who’s involved, and where it’s playing out.
   
   
2. Step into their world: Understand the perspectives, pressures, and priorities of other stakeholders.
   
   
3. Build the bridge: Identify common ground and create solutions that serve shared interests.
   
   

The LEGO® Serious Play® method as a tool for climate innovation

 By using LEGO® bricks as metaphors, participants engaged in a different type of dialogue, one that fostered creativity, storytelling, and active listening. This methodology is increasingly used in climate leadership spaces because it breaks down silos and helps people express ideas that might be difficult to articulate with words alone.

How cities can apply these lessons with digital tools

Influence grows when cities can present clear, trusted data and actionable insights. That’s exactly what CityCatalyst, developed by OpenEarth Foundation, provides.

With CityCatalyst, cities and consultants can:

• Build a full, GPC-compliant GHG inventory in weeks, not months.
  
  
• Combine local inputs with satellite and validated third-party data.
  
  
• Generate implementation-ready reports for CDP, ICLEI, and other platforms.
  
  
• Focus on climate action, not just data collection.
  
  

This ability to translate complex information into clarity mirrors the lessons of the LEGO® Serious Play® workshop: influence comes from helping others see the bigger picture.

The Building Influence Without Authority workshop highlighted how climate leaders can create impact without formal power, through empathy, clarity, and collaboration.

At OpenEarth, we believe the same principles apply to data-driven climate action. That’s why we built CityCatalyst, an open-source platform designed to simplify the entire climate data journey for cities.

👉 We’re currently offering a 2-month free trial of our GHG Inventory Module

 Apply for your free trial today and discover how CityCatalyst can help you move from data to action, faster, smarter, and with greater influence.

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