In This Chapter
This chapter will help you to develop a plan to make your business sustainable.
Now that you have the basic understanding of what sustainability means, why it is important, and what changes are arising in the marketplace, you need to determine how you want to integrate these concepts into your business. The first step in executing any sustainability initiative or program is to determine where you want to go. Create your vision and define your goals.
Starting with your vision ensures that you take a strategic approach in the design of your program as well as implement a backcasting process. Normally, we use forecasting to plan by examining what has worked well in the past and building future strategies based on those concepts. Backcasting takes the opposite approach by determining what you want to create first and building your strategies based on achieving your vision. This is an important distinction for creating a green business because if you want to see real changes in the current system, you must think and design in new ways. Based on the plethora of statistics outlining the distresses on our shared socio-ecological systems, we already know that if we keep designing based on the current ideologies and frameworks, we may not reach a sustainable society in time.
Note
Backcasting is a reverse-forecasting technique that starts with a specific future outcome and then works backward to the present conditions. It is a tool with which to connect desirable long-term future scenarios to the present situation by means of a participatory process.
Forecasting is the process of analyzing current and historical data to determine future trends. This planning tool helps management cope with the uncertainty of the future. It starts with certain assumptions based on the management’s experience, knowledge, and judgment.
(Source: Online Business and Financial Dictionaries and European Commission Joint Research Centre Online Foresight Guide)
The Natural Step’s funnel diagram from Chapter 2 is a good depiction of why it is important to first set a vision and then backcast to redesign based on new thinking. The vision helps us as business leaders and community members move through the funnel to a brighter future. If the vision is based only on actions from the past, our new reality may not be different from our current reality. However, if we base the vision on future ideas, where we have put aside our doubts, fears, and assumptions, our new reality has the potential to be vastly different from our current reality.
The following diagram illustrates the step-by-step process for creating a sustainability initiative or program in an organization, which includes these steps:
Determine your vision.
Backcast from the future state of your vision to the current reality of your business.
Examine your current operations (inputs and outputs).
Develop your strategies (sustainability strategic plan) to help you move from where you are to where you want to be.
Now let’s explore how you actually create your vision. This is where the fun begins, so be creative and future-oriented.
According to Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline (Doubleday Business, 1994) and a thought leader in organizational learning, an organizational vision is most effective for all persons in a company if they share it and it is a reflection of each person’s own individual vision. Senge writes that it “provides the focus and energy for learning,” enabling employees to feel a sense of commonality, exhilaration, courage, aspiration, and the ability to take risks and experiment with new approaches. It is used as a guiding force so when difficulties, challenges, and unexpected turns in the business arise, people still have a fundamental understanding of the company and the long-term strategy for the future.
A shared vision helps everyone in an organization understand how he or she individually and collectively contributes to the success of that company. This can greatly impact the effectiveness of external communication to clients and customers by creating a coherent and congruent message.
Therefore, when you begin the process of developing your sustainability vision, gather a team that represents different levels and departments in your organization, which will help you create a message that will resonate with the majority of your employees.
These tips will help you gather a team for an effective visioning session:
Find people who have an interest in sustainability or are already integrating sustainability into their work or home activities.
Gather people from different departments and with different positions in the organization; have a mix of ages, skill sets, mindsets, and titles.
Get support from management, and have a few members from upper management present for the visioning session.
Convene only 8 to 10 people for the session—too many people lead to less productivity.
Visioning is best done in person and away from the day-to-day work environment; the face-to-face contact enhances the creative process and leads to a more successful shared vision. Therefore, whenever possible, organize an off-site, facilitated one- or two-day retreat to develop your sustainability vision and goals.
Sustainability is a value-based term. No definition can possibly encompass all cultures, nationalities, world views, races, businesses, and so on. We all have different boundaries, so what may be true for me may not be true for you. For example, Company X may place high emphasis on transportation and be comfortable giving employees bonuses for taking public transit to work. Company Y may believe that providing healthy snack options in the kitchen is most important for their employees, so they would not be willing to give bonuses based on transportation choices. Both companies are choosing their strategies based on how they define sustainability and what is important for them, and both choices are valid depending on the culture, the structure, and the management of each company.
Most organizations use the Brundtland definition (see Chapter 1) in defining sustainability for their businesses. However, when you break down the definition, consider what is meant by “needs” and how long into the future you are planning for. The more clarity you have in understanding sustainability for yourself and your business, the better positioned you will be in the market.
Think about your own boundaries and what is important for you in relation to these three questions:
Who are you working for—your community, family, shareholders, stakeholders, all species, animals, and so on?
What would you like to sustain or achieve?
How long would you like to provide benefit and make an impact in the world?
Another key aspect in defining sustainability is to determine your core values. Build these values into your vision and messaging to give authenticity to your statements and better connect to your stakeholders.
Before entering the visioning session, have each person determine their top five core values. Sharing core values enables you to determine what gets people out of bed in the morning and why they are passionate to work in your organization. Once you have all the values, write them on a board and see where there are overlaps and differences. This will help you determine what excites and motivates everyone, and how to incorporate that language into your message.
Next, narrow your list of values to a total of five or six. These will be the values that you work from as you build your vision and goals. Five good questions to assist in this process are:
What would your organization look like if it encouraged employees to live up to these values?
How would your organization be different if these values were prominent and practiced?
As a leader in your organization, what does it mean for you to champion sustainability?
How do you show you are walking the talk and inspiring others?
How are you integrating sustainability into your personal and work life?
Depending on your answers to these questions, you may want to adjust your values and choose values that will help your organization embrace a different culture or new practices. These are important discussions, so take time to have these values conversations.
The following are two ways to develop a green mission statement:
Use your existing vision and values as a starting point for your green statement.
Start anew and create something different than your existing company vision.
The choice you make depends on how your company is structured and how you view sustainability.
For instance, if you desire to integrate sustainability into every aspect of your organization, it makes sense to rewrite your company vision to include sustainability. However, if you plan to start with a green team or separate department and build your program step-by-step to spread throughout the company, it’s best to start with a new statement and build it into a broader vision later.
Either way, when thinking about your business and your own sustainability vision or guiding principles/values, think systemically (for instance, how your business interacts with different systems and what influence you have on those systems). To create a vision or statement that will hold true for a long period of time and lead to real change, it is important to consider how your choices affect other systems (society, environment, economy) and what it means for you to take an integrated bottom-line approach (see Chapter 1).
One way to start thinking of your business from a systemic perspective is to answer the following list of questions. Because you are visioning, answer the questions as if you are already in the future and have obtained your goals for your company. Push aside limiting beliefs, assumptions, and negative thoughts. Imagine what you will create and how you will feel as part of your future organization.
Purpose
Why does your organization exist?
What is the value of your work?
What benefit does your work bring to society?
Stakeholders
How does your organization relate to people, community, shareholders, customers, and so on?
How does your organization help people meet their needs?
Organizational Structure and Culture
What words do people use to describe the culture of your business?
What is the structure of your organization?
Internal and External Practices
How does your organization determine who to work with, where to get materials from, and how to function on a day-to-day basis?
Relationship to Natural Environment
How does your organization interact with the local ecosystems?
How does your organization utilize different materials and resources from the natural environment?
What does your organization do with its waste?
After you answer these questions, find the key words and/or phrases within your answers that inspire, excite, and motivate you. Then use this language and your core values to build your green mission statement.
Going Green
The following are examples of green mission/vision statements:
Guayaki works directly with growers to deliver unique and beneficial products that enhance personal health and well-being. Our goal is to create economic models that drive reforestation while employing a living wage. (www.guayaki.com)
At Arketype, we believe that architecture is a means by which lives can be enriched, individuals can be inspired, and futures sustained. We achieve these benefits with our clients by basing our work on a set of values. (www.arketypearchitects.com)
Assessing your current operations is critical for understanding how to move forward with greening your business. If you do not know where you are in terms of material use, energy use, water use, waste consumption, and the receptivity of personnel in your organization to change, it is difficult to set realistic goals and metrics to track your goals.
An assessment helps identify the different systems in your organization and clarify how these systems function. For example, a few systems you may identify are purchasing, building management regulations, transportation norms, employee communication norms, recycling and waste norms, and energy and water usage. The assessment helps you evaluate each of these systems and determines if they are functioning optimally or if you need to change them.
When doing your assessment, keep in mind that a green business accomplishes the following:
Saves energy
Conserves water
Reduces waste
Minimizes travel
Buys green
Builds community
Increases employee engagement and leadership
Take some time to consider how you would examine your organization based on the previous seven categories. What are the important questions to ask?
These three basic questions are good for looking at how you use everything within your organization:
Where does it come from?
How do we use it?
What happens when we are finished using it?
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 give an in-depth review of how to do a sustainability assessment of your organization.
After you write your vision and assess your current operations, you can create your green goals. Both the vision and the assessment can help you determine your targets and what will be important to evaluate and change in your organization. Before writing down any goals, reread your vision and review the results of your assessment. Every goal you create should be in alignment with your vision, helping you move from where you currently are to where you want to be. You may want to categorize your findings from your assessment so you can determine theme areas for your goals. For example, if you find that your janitorial staff throws your recyclables into the trash or your employees do not understand what is recyclable and throw batteries away, you might develop a theme category around waste reduction. You can then develop a few goals underneath that category.
When determining your goals, be realistic. There’s no point in making goals that are unattainable; this only leads to frustration and less support for your green initiatives as you begin to implement them.
Also keep your goals to a short list. Write down only the goals you can attain in your allocated timeframe. It’s easy to get carried away and end up with 50 goals to achieve, so narrow your list to the 6 to 10 most important goals.
Think of your goals as commitments. You are committing to do some activity as an organization by a specified time. The clearer you are with defining your goals and keeping your commitments, the easier it is to be transparent and accountable for your actions and to involve more people in the implementation process.
Sit down with your team and discuss what you realistically can achieve in six months. To begin the process, use a whiteboard to brainstorm ideas and divide the board into two columns: one for six months and one for one to three years. When thinking of your goals, remember to accurately factor in how much time you will allot to individuals who will be working on these tasks so your goals are achievable. For instance, if one of your goals is to reduce your waste outputs by 5 percent, take into consideration, at a high level, who will be in charge of this task, what effort it will take, and if six months is a reasonable timeframe. If, after talking through the goal at a high level, you determine that it would be hard to achieve in six months, move it to your one- to three-year category.
When writing your goals, keep these questions in mind:
Is this goal in alignment with our vision?
Does this goal help us move from where we currently are to where we want to be?
Does this goal support our definition of sustainability and our values?
Does this goal help us turn our weaknesses into strengths?
Repeat this process every six months so you stay on track to achieve your long-term goals.
By now, you probably have a few goals listed in your one- to three-year column. These goals can be broader and bigger in scope because you have more time to complete them.
Here are some questions to think about:
If you begin implementing your six-month goals, what changes will you see in your organization?
What will you be willing to commit to in the next six months or a year?
How ready is your organization for larger and more complex changes?
What is the best way to move you closer to your vision?
The following table is an example of a brainstorm around goals:
Theme Category | 6-Month Goals | 1- to 3-Year Goals |
|---|---|---|
Waste Reduction | Educate staff on recycling Determine current recycling system Clearly mark recycle and garbage receptacles | 10% waste reduction Install a composting system No disposables in office |
Employee Engagement | Create a green board in common area Form a green team | Train all staff on sustainability Build an incentive program to encourage employees to contribute to green efforts |
Water Usage | Create a green blog Track water usage Conduct a water audit | Install low-flow toilets Install waterless urinals Install low-flow aerators on sinks |
Before beginning your strategic plan, look at the cost-benefit analysis of your goals. This will help you prioritize your goals and see what will be your “low-hanging fruit,” the least costly goals you can implement right away. To determine the costs and benefits, use a model or program that quantifies each item or simply write a list of the positive and negative factors. Either way, subtracting the negative from the positive will indicate the viability and feasibility of the goal. The real trick in performing a good cost-benefit analysis is to determine all the costs and all the benefits and properly quantify or label them.
In your analysis, you can also include the environmental factors as an indicator for the benefits (termed environmental cost-benefit analysis). That is, look at how your goal will enhance local communities and save natural resources and then rate the quality of that benefit to society.
Note
According to the Online Business Dictionary, cost-benefit analysis is a technique designed to determine the feasibility of a project or plan by quantifying its costs (the total money, time, and resources associated with an activity) and benefits (value or usefulness).
Environmental cost-benefit analysis is the evaluation and comparison of capital and environmental costs of a project to estimate its relative merits and demerits.
Another reason to conduct a cost-benefit analysis is that you can determine the amount of payback from your programs. For instance, if you were to install low-flow toilets and low-flow aerators on sinks, you can calculate how much time it will take to break even from the changeover. This greatly helps in determining the feasibility of certain goals.
From your goals and your assessment, you can start developing your green or environmental policies, which further assist in maintaining alignment with your vision. Green policies can help you better communicate your green messages internally (employee handbook guidelines) and externally (proof that you are taking actions to be green). They can also assist you in getting buy-in for your green efforts if they are collaboratively written.
Note
According to the Online Business Dictionary, an environmental policy is a public statement of an organization’s philosophy, intentions, and objectives regarding the environment.
We cover development of environmentally friendly policies further in Chapter 4.
Your vision, assessment, and goals are the backbone for developing a plan to move you forward and keep you on track. A strategic plan helps you document, track, and monitor the different sustainability initiatives rolled out in a fiscal year and assists you in communicating to and getting buy-in from your staff.
The four steps to a plan are:
Prioritize your goals.
Develop strategies to achieve your goals.
Create a timeline for achieving your goals.
Determine roles and responsibilities.
Let’s examine each of these steps in more detail.
Prioritization is essential for a strategic plan because it helps you develop your flow and narrow your focus. A long list of goals may be overwhelming; therefore, breaking down the list into smaller pieces gives momentum to the plan.
Take your goals table and prioritize the goals in your six-month column first. Is there a logical order for accomplishing the goals? For instance, will achieving one goal help you accomplish another goal faster?
After you prioritize your six-month goals, start on your one- to three-year goals. It may be helpful to create a spreadsheet to start tracking your goals and how you will accomplish them.
Action Plan for Specific Goal worksheet.
(Courtesy Miriam Karell)
The key in developing strategies to achieve your goals is to know how to measure your progress. That is, for each goal, determine the method in which you will know if you are on track with your targets. For example, if you have a goal to educate all employees on your recycling system, how will you determine you have succeeded? One way you can determine success is by sending out a survey to assess whether people understand the recycling system. Another way may be to monitor how many people use the recycling receptacles in the office. Whatever method of measurement you choose, you need to define it from the beginning.
Another aspect to consider when determining your strategies is to think about how you will involve your staff in the implementation process. This is crucial to the success of your initiatives. The more your employees feel included and valued throughout the process, the easier you will accomplish your goals.
For instance, Company A has a green team that is taking the lead on getting the organization to make more sustainable purchasing decisions. One idea is to switch the snacks in the break room from candy and cookies to only organic fruits and nuts. If the green team suddenly makes the switch without warning the staff, there is a greater likelihood their initiative will be met with complaints and attacks. But if before rolling out the initiative they invite all employees to a dialogue about what changes they would like to see and if they would eat fruit and nuts, the green team will have an easier time making the switch.
In general, people resist change, and no one likes to be told what to do or forced to do something without an explanation. Often, changes in organizations come from top management. A sustainable approach is to make the process as inclusive as possible and help management communicate the message in an inviting, educational, and participatory way.
When developing your strategies, you might use the preceding figure to help organize the information and structure the flow. Think about all the tasks you must accomplish in order to complete the goal. Write down all the tasks, even if some seem obvious. It is best not to make assumptions and then later discover a key piece is missing.
Developing a timeline can be as simple as filling in a due date, as outlined in the previous figure, or you can use a project management program to produce a chart.
Whatever method you use, it is important to factor in preparation time, meeting time, communication time, follow-up time, and the actual time it takes to work on the item. It is always better to overestimate than underestimate.
If multiple people will be working on one strategy, make it clear who is responsible for what component of the task and how much time you anticipate it will take.
When determining roles and responsibility, encourage people to volunteer for what excites or intrigues them. This will make for a smoother progression and help everyone remain accountable for his or her tasks.
Accountability is essential for achieving your goals. According to Doug McKenzie-Mohr, a pioneer and leader in the field of community-based social marketing and author of Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing (New Society Publishers, 1999), the most effective way to make a commitment is in a group and in written form. Therefore, the best way to ensure that you establish appropriate roles and responsibilities is have people write out the tasks they will accomplish as well as state the commitments to the group.
Another way to make sure everyone stays on track is to have bi-weekly or monthly update meetings where the employees involved present the status of their tasks.
As you begin to implement your goals, remember to celebrate your successes along the way. Whether it’s in the form of a thank-you note, a party, a high-five, or simply a smile, we all like to feel that we contributed to something meaningful and significant.
Before beginning any sustainability program or initiative, define sustainability for your business.
The first step in becoming a green business is to set your vision so you know where you want to go.
As you develop strategies to achieve your goals, factor in how you will engage your employees and include them in the implementation process.
Taking a strategic approach to becoming a green business helps you prioritize your goals, develop strategies, create a timeline, and determine roles and responsibilities.