May 11, 2010
Recently I had the opportunity to speak with a group of college students regarding sustainability. They had a list of questions that were centered around career opportunities. Such as, what kind of jobs are available, what kind of education and experience are required and will sustainability persist or will it fade away?
It occurred to me during the conversation that these were the same questions I have been asked by companies and organizations. I told the students that many of the companies they were looking to go to work with were asking the same type of questions.
I gave an example of a company that recently directed two recruiters to me. They had told the recruiters to ask me what type of person would be needed to fill the positions and to see if I knew of any viable candidates.
I thought this was a little strange. They didn’t ask me if I was interested in the positions, but they wanted me to help them understand the requirements and find people. Wasn’t I good enough to work for the company in one of the roles? But my favorite call so far has been the one where the recruiter called and told me that she had been hired to fill a Sr. Sustainability Director position. She wanted to know if I could tell her what that was. Keep reading →
April 13, 2010
If you haven’t gotten your April issue of the Harvard Business Review, then go to your local news stand or book store and pick it up! Christopher Meyer and Julia Kirby have done an excellent job of presenting an article on corporate responsibility that is based on business strategy that even the toughest business leader can appreciate.
The title of their article is “Leadership in the Age of Transparency“, not one mention of sustainability, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy or green. They cut straight to the point, “Leadership”, the place where organizations want their brand! How many times have you sat through a corporate meeting and heard “We will position ourselves as the leader withing our industry.” Keep reading →
March 2, 2010
Thank you for all of the comments and emails. It seems that my last post, The End of Sustainability, contained something that many of you could relate with and have experienced in your careers. A good many of you wanted to know more. I was asked, “You only listed a few examples, could you give more examples of areas where I can look within my company?”
So, in this post we’ll go over a few and point you to other resources that you can use to help you spread sustainability throughout your organization.
Keep reading →
February 19, 2010
I was asked recently if this sustainability movement was over. I have to admit I was puzzled by the question. I asked my friend what he meant? He said, “You know, the leaked climate change emails, the Copenhagen meltdown,the head of the U.N. Climate Chief resigned, and BP, Caterpillar and ConocoPhillips not renewing their memberships in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. With all this bad news doesn’t that make you think that this sustainability thing has ran its course?”
That’s when it hit me. He thinks sustainability is only about climate change!
Keep reading →
December 29, 2009
Remember the expression, “You can’t see the forest for the trees”? That expression came to mind this past week during a discussion on sustainability.
I was having lunch with a colleague and she was saying that the Triple Bottom line should be described as “Profit, People and Planet”. I mentioned that it was most commonly referred to as “People, Planet and Profits”.
She said that we were saying the same thing, that it was just semantics and moved on to another topic. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I didn’t think we were really discussing semantics. Keep reading →
November 24, 2009
I was in a meeting recently and one of the designers in the room said “I think we should use the newest approach to design, biomimicry.” I almost fell out of my chair. “Newest approach?” This approach isn’t new. Da Vinci studied birds in flight to better understand how man could fly.
I didn’t say anything, and trust me, that took great restraint. I caught myself and realized that with all of the recent “green” and “sustainability” buzz going around some people were just now getting exposed to this and other sustainable development concepts.
Which brings us to today’s blog, “What is Biomimicry?”.
Keep reading →
October 26, 2009
In 1994, Interface founder and chairman Ray Anderson set an audacious goal for his commercial carpet company: to take nothing from the earth that can’t be replaced by the earth. Now, in the most inspiring business book of our time, Anderson leads the way forward and challenges all of industry to share that goal.
The Interface story is a compelling one: In 1994, making carpets was a toxic, petroleum-based process, releasing immense amounts of air and water pollution and creating tons of waste. Keep reading →
October 15, 2009
I’ve written about sustainability and its impacts for and on big business and large organizations in the past. I’ve tried to keep the topics focused on how sustainability can help them adjust or modify their policies, practices and procedures.
So, indulge me for a minute here. Too often we get caught up in the “Big Picture” of corporate activities and lose sight of the millions of little companies that are out there working every day to help us keep this economy turning.
On a recent business trip I stumbled on one such company, and it made me stop and think about the importance that these guys have on helping to create truly sustainable local communities and economies.
Keep reading →
October 8, 2009
Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’re gathered in a conference room, the senior leader in the room says that the purpose of this meeting is to establish your company’s environmental, sustainability, or recycling goals, pick your topic. Now here’s where it gets good. The meeting is scheduled for 30 minutes and she needs the goals for her meeting with the executives tomorrow.
Don’t laugh. I’ve been there. If you haven’t, good for you. You are one of the fortunate ones. I’m still surprised that after all this time we still have the mentality that goals can be pulled out of the air and then we act shocked when we are unable to accomplish the, often publicly, stated goals.
So, how do you go about establishing goals for your programs? Is their a better way? I think so and that’s what we are going to talk about. Keep reading →
September 23, 2009
Low hanging fruit…you’ve heard it before. When you are trying to get your organization started down the sustainability path, consultants and authors tell you to reach for the low hanging fruit. They want you to succeed, so they point you in the direction of quick wins. For many of them your waste stream is one of the first places they encourage you to look, and by waste stream they are referring to what you place in a dumpster. They talk about examining what it is that you are placing into the dumpster. They want you to be able to identify the items that you are throwing away and re-think how they got there. This is something you should do, but lately I’ve had several companies remark when I was introduced to them as the guy that is going to help us identify waste reduction measures say, “Oh, you’re the guy who is going to start our recycling program.” In my head, I’m thinking, “Oh, if it were only that easy!”
Keep reading →
May 25, 2009
Thirty-two years ago today, Stars Wars was released. A generation would be exposed to a new type of motion picture and the seed of sustainability was born within me. The funny thing is, I just didn’t know it yet.
I know it sounds strange, and no I am not a Sci-fi fanatic. I was however one of hundreds that where waiting in the longest line I had every seen wrapped around the Bel-Air Cinema that wonderful summer night in Mobile, Alabama.
I have wondered how I could write about sustainability and how I could share the experiences I have had over the years working with waste minimization, environmental and social causes. Tonight as I clicked through the channels I stumbled on “Star Wars”, I stopped to watch and it hit me! This was the movie that contained the scene that I had used to finally win over executives at one of the largest retailers in America. Keep reading →
May 26, 2009
Ok, so what does a movie have to do with the “Seed of Sustainability”? That’s the question that I got after my last post. It is a simple answer really, Storytelling!
Remember, we had done the corporate speak, we had our crisp and clean PowerPoints and pages of statistics and we had gotten no where. What I had forgotten was that I still had to persuade the audience to allow me to move forward. I had to get them to relate to what I was telling them and to make my information their information. Keep reading →
May 27, 2009
“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think.” – David Ogilvy
Last week I was at a conference and I was asked what was one of the main things I would suggest that people do when they start talking about sustainability initiatives. I think I surprised everyone with my answer. I got the impression that they were looking for some deep insight that would part the murky sea of sustainability. I told the moderator that I would recommend that they talk about sustainability in the same language that their coworkers and managers used. Keep reading →
May 29, 2009
What is sustainability? That’s a question that I get asked over and over. When I’m asked that, I want to give them a good-old Jethro Gibbs whack to the back of their head. You know the one I’m talking about. Mark Harmon, NCIS, whacking Tony on the back of his head whenever he says or does something stupid.
Yes, I know. I can’t walk around whacking people on the back of the head. Not really a sustainable activity for long-term employment.
So let’s start here: Keep reading →
June 12, 2009
“Green is the new black”, “It’s not easy being green” or “Clean and Green” take your pick. It seems like we have an abundant supply of green marketing slogans and they get the mainstream press. I guess it makes sense, they are marketing materials and companies are paying big bucks to get their message heard above everyone else’s. I think that this may also be one of the reasons why so many people only view sustainable development as a marketing activity. There is even a website that is dedicated to evaluating green advertising, greenwashingindex.com.
So, what is greenwashing? Keep reading →
June 1, 2009
For years we in the business world have had an adversarial relationship with the environment. Think about it, we even call it Environmental Compliance. Compliance, doesn’t that mean that we are meeting the established rules. We saw it as a cost of doing business, something that we had to do. We didn’t look at it as a possible area of differentiation, innovation or cost reduction. It was just a problem child that we had to deal with. Keep reading →
June 9, 2009
Herman Daly
So, why all of the fuss now over this thing called sustainability? You hear it everywhere, people are talking about it at meetings and conferences are being held in its name. What was the tipping point that brought this concept to mainstream America. I’ve heard it described as the perfect storm; Katrina, Al Gore’s Oscar and then the Nobel Peace Prize.
This may have given the environmental issues of the planet press coverage, but what about the Social and the Financial aspects? What caused them to be pushed to the boardroom and news desk? Asked another way, have the Social and Financial aspects been pushed to the forefront? Keep reading →
July 6, 2009
One of the questions that I like to ask when I’m working with a company on their sustainability program is “How do you define sustainability for your organization?” This is not meant to confuse or anger the VPs, Directors and Mangers in the room, even though it quite often does. Keep reading →
July 9, 2009
In 1994 John Elkington coined the term, “Triple Bottom Line” (TBL). He has written that he was looking for a new language to express the expansion of the environmental agenda that his company SustainAbility had been focused on. John felt that the social and economic dimensions that had been presented in the Brundltland Report needed to be addressed by his firm in order to affect real change.
TBL framework allows an organization to focus on not only the economic value they create, but also on the social and environmental value they create or decrease. Keep reading →
July 14, 2009
When starting to look at using sustainability as a business strategy it is not surprising that many organizations first start looking at their waste processes. Keep reading →
July 31, 2009
Growing up in the United States I’ve heard America referred to as “The Land of Plenty” or “The Disposable Society”. The quote “Go West young man” was often said to me as a young man, maybe jokingly or perhaps they were serious, while I was wondering what to do as I grew up. (And before you email, yes, the quote first appeared as the title to the 1851, Terre Haute Express editorial written by Mr. Soule and is often credited to Mr. Greeley.)
These expressions implied to me that we were living in a limitless country. Free to use what we wanted, expand as we wanted with no thought to where the next supply of “stuff” was coming from. Keep reading →
August 11, 2009
One of my favorite television programs is the Andy Griffith Show, and one of my all time favorite episodes is “Bargain Day”, or as some refer to it, the “Call the Man” episode. In the episode Aunt Bee, searching for a bargain, buys 150 pounds of meat from the new butcher in town only to have her freezer go on the fritz! I love this episode so much that I designed a training class around it.
So now you’re wondering how in the world does Andy Griffith fit into business, sustainability or strategy?!? Keep reading →
September 8, 2009
Over and over I have the same discussion with sustainability professionals, they want to know what they can do to enhance their presentations to fully engage their listeners, to open their audience’s mind to the possibilities that exist. Many times when they have a chance to talk about what they were doing or what they were planning to do within their organization they felt as if their message and plans were falling on deaf ears. Their audience was constantly checking their blackberry’s or looking as if they wished they were in any place other than sitting in a room listening to him or her speak.
Sound familiar? Keep reading →
