Once you’ve determined that you're going to take your organization in a more sustainable direction, what are some of the first steps that you can take? Well, you might begin by surveying where you are, determining what the key sustainability challenges are in your industry and then benchmarking by comparing yourself to the best practices and to leaders in the industry. You want to keep track of where you are but also understand where you're not measuring what you should be measuring. At that point you want to begin the process of acculturation, so, spreading the message of sustainability throughout the organization. And the best place to start is actually by listening and trying to understand where you are through the eyes of your stakeholders. So you might hold some town halls to elicit information, questions, ideas from your own employees. You might bring together panels of customers who have written in, who have strong opinions on sustainability and what your organization ought to be doing. I think as you accumulate information, it's important not to be defensive and to accept openly the suggestions that people provide. Important here is to understand that wisdom is everywhere in organizations and to never confuse formal education with wisdom as it pertains to sustainability, because there are people everywhere in an organization that have a very passionate interest in sustainability. So once you've assembled the ideas from speaking to people and getting data on hand, you want to find a few areas for your first initiatives. Good, non-threatening places to start are about resource efficiency: reducing paper usage, water usage and recycling. Look for the low hanging fruit. There's a documented case of a pharmaceutical company whose factory’s lights were on 24/7. There wasn't even a light switch. So simply installing a light switch and turning the lights off at night saved the company thousands of dollars. So you want to engineer some wins, and as you do this you want to understand that symbolism matters. So people that work for you will expect you to adhere to the same type of goals and limitations that they are to on the job. As you begin to talk to people it's important to tie these initiatives to drivers of performance. So many things aren't done necessarily for the moral imperative, but because they drive improvement in areas that people can relate to. So, reducing resource usage is about driving down unit cost. Implementing policies that keep people happy is about reducing turnover and keeping H.R. and training costs to a minimum. So once you have some advancements and some accomplishments under your belt, you want to share that progress, you want to send the message broadly and deeply, you want to celebrate at every opportunity. So when you have company get-togethers and other dedicated events, you want to recognize the individuals that have contributed, either through their actions or their ideas to sustainability. As you communicate to people what the company's accomplished, you want to use terms that individuals can appreciate. They may not understand fully what a carbon footprint is, but they will understand how many gallons of fuel the company has saved by moving to more fuel efficient cars in its fleet. They may not appreciate how many reams of paper you saved, but they will appreciate how many acres of trees haven’t been cut as a result of your actions. You also want to begin to tie that message to the strategic goals of the corporation more generally. The next step is to develop measurement and reporting systems. Remember what gets measured gets done, so you want to have very careful measurement systems in place. You may at this point want to implement an environmental management system. A formal environmental management system will allow you to articulate your goals and then follow up and measure your progress and meeting those goals as the company moves forward. As this process unfolds you want to promote social learning. So you want to implement initiatives that engage employees even if they have small impacts because they can promote buy-in and change the culture to one of environmental sensitivity, competence and action. So after your momentum has taken hold, you want to put in place challenging but achievable goals with respect to sustainability, something that employees can relate to but also something that is tied to their compensation, and in that way you'll get their attention of course, but you will also send the signal that the company is very serious about moving towards a more sustainable future. What are some stretch goals that an organization can consider once it has created that momentum for sustainability and experience some wonderful first steps forward? One thing that it can do is engage stakeholders. So there's a wide range of stakeholders that an organization can interact with. But it can meet with them and develop collaborative projects. For example, an area that's often difficult for companies to have a great grasp of is upstream operations. So if their supplies come from far flung places where they're not familiar with the context, an NGO that is familiar with that context can help them improve their situation and take supply standards up to a higher level. Some organizations that are particularly forward-thinking have actually placed NGOs, non-governmental organization representatives on their corporate board. It's not something that an organization does lightly, but it has been done in the past. I think organizations that are trying to really push themselves also are scanning the environment and looking at small entrepreneurial companies for sources of inspiration and change. So in any industry, there are likely to be some small players that have social responsibility and environmental stewardship at their core. They oftentimes are implementing ideas and policies now that only make it to the mainstream companies later. So by maintaining a conduit through which information flows between you and these companies, an organization can acquire ideas for what's next. Companies also can pursue greater levels of transparency. One reason they can do this is that initially they've implemented some measurement program. So they can create a Global Reporting Initiative, a compliant report that lays out their sustainability goals and tracks progress towards that. As you do that it's important to understand that nobody expects every indicator to go exactly in the desired direction, that's not the real world. But by providing transparency, warts and all, companies can acquire a reputation for being honest. An important question for companies is also whether to seek environmental certifications. These might be as simple as ISO 14001, which would help to regularize and formalize environmental management systems with a certification that guarantees that the process is audited so it's kept in place. It is particularly valuable to pursue product certifications if those are valued by your customers in the marketplace. Now when you choose a certification you want to understand that there are oftentimes many competing certifications. There may be a dozen different environmental certifications in the coffee industry, for example. The best and most valuable one is likely not going to come from the industry itself but rather directly from a third party or something that is developed with the inputs of a third party, because these are more trusted in the marketplace. A company has to decide the proper governance structure for sustainability, that is, who owns sustainability within the organization? On the one hand, many companies have created a chief sustainability officer. The advantage of this of course is that it's the responsibility of a single person in the organization. If you do this that person can act as a clearinghouse for sustainability related programs and information. It's important that that person not be positioned many many levels below the chief executive officer but rather if possible, to report to that person directly. That sends a strong signal to the organization that sustainability is taken seriously. An alternative is to try to embed it more deeply in the organization, and the positive here of course is that it becomes everybody's job. But one has to stay on top of that to make sure that in fact accountability is still in place and that people do take this seriously and that the company is meeting its goals and in an important way moving forward. With these kinds of improvements in place, a company can begin to integrate its environmental activities with the brand, creating some synchronicity between its leading programs and branding of its goods and services. Here you want to be on the lookout to connect with leading edge consumers, consumers that take sustainability and social responsibility very seriously. It's a good sign if those people are attracted to your product, if they're writing blogs about it or recommending online that their friends consider buying your products. There's a lot of opportunity in the marketplace, particularly for small entrepreneurial firms because of the lack of trust and reputation issues that we often see with large mainstream companies. It is a world of opportunity, and you always want to think that at the end of the day for your sustainability program, it's about winning in the marketplace. OK, a few final words. First of all, it's important to understand that this is as much about cultural change as it is about the strategic challenges. You want to embed this within your organization and develop the kind of tacit knowledge and routines and skill building that will create an organization that's difficult to imitate but will also take on its own momentum. Remember to direct that change to well understood drivers of organizational success. Don't give managers something else to worry about sustainability. Tell them that here's a tool, for example, to reduce turnover. Here's a tool to drive down production costs. Then you'll get their attention. And then finally, keep your eyes on the prize. This is all about marketplace opportunities, and we've just taken the first steps towards what is going to be a very deep and long-lasting change in the marketplace, and you want to position the company to take advantage of those opportunities.
