In a recent study, the UN Global Impact, 93 percent of the 1,000 CEOs in 27 industries surveyed see sustainability as important to the future success of their business. Yet, only 33 percent report that business is making sufficient efforts to address global sustainability challenges. It’s no wonder that training employees in sustainability strategies has grown in priority.
However, chances are that your organization comprises employees who ardently reduce their environmental footprints (drive less, eat less meat, plant vegetables instead of lawn, etc.) and those who enjoy making fun of those who ardently reduce their environmental footprints. So, when your organization is looking to save money from reducing wasteful materials and processes (“Lean”) and to conserve natural resources (“Green”), how can you motivate both types of employees to get onboard?
Connect Passion to Profit
By connecting Lean and Green programs to employees’ passions (whether for trees or business competitiveness) and training them in profitable sustainability strategies, you can bring nearly all employees together for a common cause: benefit for the organization and the environment.
Tables 1 and 2 summarize viewpoints and passions you might find among Treehuggers (Table 1) and Non-Treehuggers (Table 2), and how to turn them both into effective “profitable sustainability” advocates in your organization.
Table 1: Leveraging “Treehuggers’” Perspectives for Creating Profitable Sustainability Programs
|
Potential Viewpoints and Passions |
Connect to Profitable Lean and Green Programs |
|
“Organizations should do the right thing for society and the environment.” |
Coach in how to forecast cost savings and new revenues to come from each sustainability idea, substantiating each assumption rationally. |
|
“Consequences should go to organizations that are not responsible.” |
Model how to enumerate risks of failing to carry out specific sustainability programs, such as being out of compliance (fines, market blockages, even prison for failing to comply with some laws) and being left behind by more aggressively sustainable direct competitors |
|
“Some people in this organization will never support sustainable practices.” |
Brainstorm on how to excite people about innovation: creating processes and products/services that will provide true competitive advantages by reducing costs and, therefore, prices, or by creating efficient products that attract customers wanting to reduce costs. |
Table 2: Leveraging “Non-Treehuggers’” Perspectives for Creating Profitable Sustainability Programs
|
Potential Viewpoints and Passions |
Connect to Profitable Lean and Green Programs |
|
“I’m too busy executing company business initiatives to spend time on sustainability.” |
Demonstrate how identifying waste reduction through the lens of sustainability will strengthen the company’s Lean Six Sigma program. Connect the dots between “design for environment” and greater efficiency and reliability. |
|
“I’m focused on beating the competition, and can’t take my eye off the ball.” |
Report on specific direct competitors’ sustainability advances: perhaps impressive carbon-reduction results, press about the CEO’s sustainability leadership, products and services that are five times more efficient than other products. |
|
“Sustainability is too ‘touchy-feely’; give me something measurable to tackle and ‘show me the money.’” |
Embed in compensation packages variable pay tied to achieving quantified sustainability results. Make profitable sustainability and demonstrated competitive levels of corporate responsibility required criteria for promotions. |
Now to the methodology for getting both camps to enthusiastically come together to develop a high-ROI, five-year sustainability roadmap. Here’s how to coach both types of employees in a unified approach.
Everything Measurable
Numbers can be a fabulous focus for organizations—an effective equalizer for people who are involved because they like preserving nature and people involved because they want to drive fiscal responsibility. Train people in sustainability with a numbers approach, and the result will be impressive, measurable results for profit and planet.
A clear, cohesive direction toward profitable sustainability is best guided with a roadmap—one that comprises numerous initiatives with measurable annual financial (forecasts of monetary savings and new earnings) and environmental conservation (estimated units of CO2 emissions, gallons/liters of water, number of trees, and other savings) goals. We start with a fun organization-wide contest to generate “Lean and Green” ideas, and form a team that researches the best ideas, gains managerial buy-in, and plots the initiatives on the five- (or 10-) year roadmap.
Multifunctional/Multiregional Teams for Diversity
Many trainers are well-schooled in—in the words of UC Berkeley Multicultural Education specialist Craig Alimo—“active and inclusive instruction, particularly when engaging with issues of diversity.” Given conflicting views about sustainability in organizations, trainers would do well by considering the range of Treehuggers to Non-Treehuggers as “diversity” of backgrounds, values, politics, and the like.
Sustainability teams are most effective when their members are from a variety of functions (finance, HR, marketing, product design, manufacturing, facilities, etc.) and multiregional (with representatives from some of the other cities and countries in which employees reside). This not only helps engage the entire organization in profitable Lean and Green strategies, but also helps incorporate a variety of perspectives. Successful, diverse sustainability teams demonstrate to the organization’s members that everyone can get behind reducing costs, increasing competitive advantage, and helping to protect the environment.
Especially in multiregional organizations, choose sustainability training tools that can be used from any location and at any time. (See Training magazine’s August 22, 2013, online article, “Design for Environment Training Leads to Lean and Green.”)
Coaching in Communication
Sustainability strategies are still new to many organizations—similar to when the Quality movement and Lean Six Sigma programs were new decades ago. The best way to steep an organization in sustainable thinking in every task and every day is to communicate about it constantly.
But those in the “Treehugger” camp will need to be coached differently about using communication to inspire “Non-Treehuggers” and vice versa.
Train those whose instinct is to speak and write from their passion about the environment in using business language:
- Point to profitability gains from reducing the use of unproductive resources.
- Identify risks for not getting on board, such as regulations and competitors getting ahead.
- Excite people about innovation, because sustainability is new enough that it requires all of us to innovate new products, processes, and procedures.
And coach the “Non-Treeehuggers” to weave sustainability goals into initiatives they already comfortably promote:
- Demonstrate how Lean Six Sigma programs can be enhanced by using a “Green Lens” to identifying “muda” (waste).
- Make a competition for developing and meeting sustainability goals—with fame and/or money as the prize.
- Show how competitors are getting ahead in sustainability, and fire up the competitive spirit.
Remove Politics
Would you like to avoid time-wasting, unproductive discussion about politics when employees should be furthering their assigned objectives? If so, keep politics, politicians, religion, and debates about global warming out of trainings, presentations, and executive statements. Instead, focus communications on themes that most everyone can agree on: to reduce waste of materials, processes, equipment, paper, water, transportation, and electricity throughout the organization and its products/services, so the company is more profitable, products more competitive, regulations followed, and the environment more able to sustain life. Or, far more briefly, let’s surpass our competitors in reducing costs and achieving higher sustainability goals.
While training Treehuggers and Non-Treehuggers in profitable sustainability, avoid not only politics but also inconsiderate and divisive comments. One team member at an organization’s forest cleanup event made a joke about her peer’s gas-guzzling SUV (“13 miles per gallon!”). The SUV owner reacted defensively, an audible argument ensued during an otherwise tranquil teambuilding event, and the two now are avoiding each other instead of working collaboratively to meet organizational goals. It’s not unheard of at competitive organizations that one small joke or comment leads not only to withdrawal of support but also to sabotage of goals. Train people in avoiding unnecessary conflict and setbacks.
Be a Pioneer
Just as sustainability is a relatively new initiative at corporations, so, too, is training people in sustainability strategies a new field. You can be a pioneer!
Leverage the pointers above to create a first-class, effective training program for Treehuggers and Non-Treehuggers. The reward will be knowing that you are a driving force in bringing about financial and environmental benefits throughout the organization.
Keynoter, author, and thought leader Pamela J. Gordon wrote the book on Lean and Green for the tech industry and co-developed design for environment training DfE Online. Since 1987, she has been CEO of Technology Forecasters Inc. (TFI), a strategic consulting firm helping tech companies thrive through best practice supply chains and profitable sustainability. For more information about DfE Online, visit http://www.TechForecasters.com/DfE-Online. Gordon serves as a judge for CleanTech Open and is an instructor at the University of California Berkeley Extension.
