Saying is One Thing, Doing is Another: Implementing Sustainability Programs with Success

NOTE: You can read the entire guest column as it originally appears in Sustainable Business Oregon

If you have a tween or teen living under your roof, you’ll be able to relate to this: When I tell my daughter to clean up after herself, I can pretty much expect that it will not get done.

On the other hand, when I lead by example and help build a culture of cleanliness, this becomes self-gratifying and I get the critical mass I need to have a clean house — that makes my wife happy too.

If you work for a well-meaning company that talks a good sustainability talk but lacks on the execution, well, you may be able to relate too.

Getting to “Git ‘er Done.”

I have written about the foundational aspects of the triple bottom line and sustainability and the strategy of planning for it. But once the talking is done and the planning is complete, it’s time for the heavy lifting, time to “git ‘er done.”

It’s at this point that your staff might scurry for shelter like when the lights come on and the mice scramble to their hidey holes — unless you’ve already established a culture of change. It’s been proven time and again that when a company says that it’s going to implement a sustainability initiative, but lacks the cultural framework or inertia for stakeholder “buy in”, it’s less likely to succeed.

Why? First, in Bob Doppelt’s Overcoming the Seven Sustainability Blunders, organizational traps that can lead to implementation failures often stem from weaknesses in cross-organizational communication and empowerment. In this 2003 article, Mr. Doppelt (who is executive director of resource innovations with the Institute for Sustainable Environment at the University of Oregon) discusses the “Wheel of Change Toward Sustainability.”  This process shows how seven interventions can systematically deflect those blunders, and form a continuous reinforcing process of transformation toward sustainability. Communication, feedback loops and transparency are key elements to successful transformation.

Also, in William Blackburn’s indispensable Sustainability Handbook- The Complete Management Guide to Achieving Social, Economic and Environmental Responsibility, he points out three key elements needed to achieve the critical mass for sustainability program execution:

• Deployment into the rank and file.
• Integration with existing tools and resources.
• Alignment across the entire organization.

These critical factors place organizations in a position where all parts are pulling together. While top management commitment is vital to the success of any organizational change, it will fail without proper execution.  The foundation for implementation success then rests first on selecting a “cross functional” team, consisting of one or more talented and motivated individuals from across all organizational departments. This team will be well versed in the system elements, mechanics and will essentially be the “champions” by which the system can be deployed.

The rest of the guest column appears in Sustainable Business Oregon

Choose the Right Flavor: Ice-Cream, Sustainability & Business Innovation

Do you like your ice cream soft served or hard scooped?   What is your favorite flavor?  Do you like it straight up or with sprinkles on top?

So I heard on a very hot day recently with the kids at the ice cream “shoppe”.  This made me dwell over how my clients view sustainability.  You see, while a great deal of change has occurred in business over the years, sustainability is to the uninitiated as flavorful as the worst ice creams ever invented (http://bit.ly/aIuKYD).  Ironic that most of those flavors originate in Japan, the home of Lean, Quality Management Systems, Six Sigma, The Toyota Way, and all things continual improvement. Oh, BTW, there really ARE plenty of tasty ice creams and gelatos that are sustainably made (locally sourced materials, organics, community based giving programs http://bit.ly/dfGiaC).

The “look” and “feel” of sustainability then, depends on the level of enlightenment that a company has, the desired “end state” and on the depth of its resources to execute the change (see Joel Makower’s recent post in Two Steps Forward http://bit.ly/aTbzVz ).  So it’s important to note that while the main focus these days is on the environmental part of sustainability (i.e. “green”), that’s not the whole story.  ‘Sustainability’ embraces the legal, financial, economic, industrial, social and behavioral aspects of organizations as well as the environment.

In a new open source book, The Sustainable Business, by Jonathan Scott (http://bit.ly/bGhyu6), he describes seven key elements and criteria needed for organizations to evolve and meet the truest definition of a sustainable organization (the 7-P application model).   Briefly, the 7-P’s of sustainability are:

1. Preparation – setting the stage for change (both physically and psychologically) and understanding what the reformer is up against when trying to implement profitable, long-term business practices while accepting the breadth and depth of this subject (e.g.: the financial implications of sustainability and the fact that it is not about being independent).
2. Preservation – encompasses two areas: internal (collecting and displaying real-time measurement) and external (keeping ahead of laws, pending legislation, trends, and developments).
3. Processes – sustainable belief systems, philosophies, business models, and thought patterns that help match a business with customer demands, core capabilities, and best practices.
4. People – accepting the importance of training and education and working diligently to avoid the wasting of people, specifically: employees (who seek security and motivation), stakeholders (who want a return on their investment), customers (who want safe, value-laden products), and the world community – including the two-thirds of humanity who are currently left out of the global economic loop (who desire jobs and inclusion) and who represent an economic force all their own.
5. Place – the buildings and places where work is performed and/or products are sold.
6. Product – ensuring that goods and services are free from unnecessary waste (‘non-product’) and toxins – and designed so that the materials, energy, and manpower that comprise them (and their packaging) are treated as investments and continuously reused.
7. Production – the physical, mechanical, biological, and chemical processes used to transform raw materials into products or services – and transport them.

Building on his Scotts multi-dimensional perspective on sustainability program development, three principal objectives of a sustainable organization must, at a minimum:

• Minimize Resource Consumption, and
• Avoid Damage to the Environment, while
• Meeting Business Goals, Human Needs and Stakeholder Aspirations

So how does one get to there?  One way is through a systematic framework like an ISO 14001-based Environmental Management System (EMS).  While ‘sustainability’ is a guiding principle to keep organizations on track as an EMS is executed, an EMS is the framework – a set of processes and tools for effective mission accomplishment.

Supposing as Scott and Makower suggest that an organization wants to go beyond the environmental leg of sustainability and include the social and financial aspects as well…all good!  However, without the resources to make the leap and a systematic process to keep on track, the outcomes could be disappointing.  So before you leap, plan ahead.  Build a system to plan, implement, measure and check progress of the initiative.  Look for the quick wins.  Build an innovation-based culture and reward positive outcomes.  Measure, manage, report and build on the early wins.  Build the initiative in manageable chunks.

In summary, the keys to unlocking value through implementing sustainability initiatives require positioning through:

• Identifying marketplace trends that reward innovation toward sustainability
• Optimizing the linkage between sustainability, environmental and business objectives
• Creating a systematic process and  internal champions that can drive the system from the inside out
• Establish a manageable performance measurement system that demonstrates ‘triple bottom line’ results
• Building assurance systems for compliance and credible and transparent public disclosure.

Are you ready for that ice cream cone?   What’s your appetite?   Single or  double scoop?  Sprinkles on top?

Using Sustainability Metrics to Drive Business Performance, Innovation and Stakeholder Satisfaction

Environmental metrics were not much of an issue when I started as a young environmental coordinator at a Utah coal mine 30 years ago. The few environmental metrics I used were mainly driven by regulatory-agency permits, inspections and audits.  How many spill occurred this month?  How many fines did we get this quarter?  Did we exceed waste water discharge requirements? Our entire environmental compliance philosophy was driven by permit limits, rules and regulations.  My company was actually more concerned about environmental pollution and managing impacts of operations on the environment than most companies in a large western state at that time.   But at that time, there was a major disconnect between environmental performance and business performance. Environmental protection was seen by management as a cost “sink”, and not as an integral part of conducting business. Metrics weren’t designed to optimize our environmental performance or to understand the long-term impacts of our decisions on either our business or the environment. All decisions were made within a limited point of view.

Like the mining company I worked for, and like most businesses today, it’s clear that the ship has turned.  Companies are looking strategically at how environmental performance can have a direct impact on the bottom line of an organization.  Some are even taking a top-line approach to business success by accounting for social, natural and financial capital (http://bit.ly/93VBWG). Drivers such as globalization of markets, customer and shareholder preferences, regulatory pressures and business process re-engineering can claim a role in this sea change of decision-making.  This approach has fundamentally changed the way companies operate, design, manufacture, and distribute products.

Why Measure Anyway?

Well, the two old axioms state that “you are what you measure” and “what gets measured gets managed”.  Without a way to establish an internal benchmark for continual improvement, it becomes harder to innovate, advance and proactively respond to stakeholder expectations.  Key advantages to monitor and measure environmental and organizational performance include:

• Setting Effective and Value-Added Priorities
• Benchmarking to Continuously Improve
• Encouragement of Bottom Up, Organization-wide Innovation
• Reinforcing Personal and Organizational Accountability
• Strengthening Strategic Planning and Goal-Setting Processes
• Improved Internal and External Communication

Metrics can do one of two things: They can tell you what you should do, or they can tell you what you should have done. If you use them to tell you what to do, you’ll be using them to measure your successes. But if you use them to tell you what you should have done, you’ll be using them to measure your failures. So clearly it’s the first approach, not the latter, that forward-thinking companies should focus on.

The Advent of Verification and Triple Bottom Line Focused Metrics

In the not too distant past, as I noted above, environmental performance was primarily based upon a company’s compliance with local, state or federal permits and environmental regulations. With the advent of the ISO 14001-2004 Standard and Specification and its companion guidelines over the past 15 years, companies are taking a broader look at the ways they measure environmental performance (http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_14000_essentials). In addition, the ISO 14031 Guidelines on Environmental Performance Evaluation provide for establishment of measurable and verifiable environmental performance indicators (EPIs) appropriate to any public or private enterprise.

Many of the potential benefits from linking environmental and economic performance depend on the ability to integrate environmental management practices into the normal course of a company’s operations.  The ability to quantify environmental performance in a meaningful way is critical to the effectiveness of this integration.

Adding to the mix of the benchmarks for environmental indicators are the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)  (http://www.globalreporting.org), Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) http://www.gemi.org) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBSCD) guidelines (www.wbscd.org).  Each of these measurements and reporting frameworks provide for reporting on the sustainability-economic, environmental, and social – dimensions of an organizations activities, products, and services.  More recently, Joel Makower (@makower) and the staff at GreenBiz.com (@GreenBiz) have been engaged with UL Environment to develop and commercialize a company-level standard for sustainability. This latest effort is being initiated in an attempt to harmonize all three of the above approaches and dozens of others into one global, measurable and verifiable third-party standard for sustainability (http://bit.ly/ajHxKy).

What to Measure and How to Frame the Message

Do your performance metrics have you tied up in knots?  Once organizations decide they have to do more measuring then the key question becomes: What do we measure and how do we measure it?  A few tips:

1. Measure things that add value to organizational decisions. Measuring for the sake of measuring is a waste of time.
2. Think about ways to measure things differently that your competitors.  Novel and unique metrics are just as important to differentiating you as your products.
3. Measure at a minimum the same way others around the world were measuring, as this assures that globally focused metrics are harmonized.
4. If you are a large company with multiple department, divisions or sites, the metrics of the individual parts must be able to be “rolled up” in a way that addresses the entire organization but still meets site or department specific needs.

When establishing appropriate measures (whether they are social, environmental, operational or financial), consider that metrics must be:

• Representative
• Understandable
• Relevant
• Comparative
• Quantifiable
• Time-based and Normalized
• Unbiased and Validated
• Transferable

Also, make sure that the metrics address the needs of all internal and external stakeholders in other words, your employees, customers, local community, government and shareholders.

Finally, good metrics if applied properly will foster innovation and growth.  Focus on continuous improvement as the primary driver for monitoring and measuring performance. If metrics don’t add value, they will not support continuous improvement and eventually will not be used.

Summary

Many of today’s environmental metrics evolved from the end-of-pipe command-and-control regulatory approach that has been implemented in a piecemeal fashion over the past 30 years since I joined the environmental profession. Why let regulatory agencies drive the key performance metrics that in turn drive business performance?  While compliance is a key benchmark for environmental performance, don’t stop there!

In this highly competitive, quickly changing and unstable business climate, organizational success requires agility.  Success also depends on having the correct set of metrics in place to gauge progress in meeting short and long-term business objectives.  Measuring performance with a sustainability lens is just one of the new responsibilities that companies can quickly embrace to nimbly drive organizational value.