On Collaboration, Partnerships and Sustainability
I spotted a New York Times article today* that speaks to the “women’s ways” or right-brain guided ways of thinking that sustainability seems to be ushering in for a lot of companies. It is incredibly exciting to watch the likes of GE’s Jeff Immelt, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and executives from Xerox and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, as noted in the article, start to push for partnership on clean energy. Of course, sometimes attempts at partnerships can come from a wrong-spirited place (BP and oil spill responsibility), but let’s focus on the positive here!
In the past month or so, I’ve heard about so many clever partnerships in the sustainability space that I am officially accepting the role of collaboration cheerleader! Here’s one example that John Viera, Ford’s Director of Sustainability and Environmental Policy, reminded me of when we talked at Sustainable Brands 2010. Cars used to be manufactured in a very vertical, competitive and secretive way (look where that got us), but the lights are going on – thanks to sustainability pursuits - and companies, exemplified by Ford’s partnership with Microsoft for electric car management software, are partnering with technology companies to improve their vehicles. Another one of my collaboration cheers goes to the Organic Cotton exchange, for pulling together a rather odd assortment of corporations and doing very progressive things.
Brilliant examples. Why’d it take so long for the smart people in so many companies to start seeing things this way?
Here’s my gender expert take: To pursue sustainability you have to think holistically. You have to step back and realize that you can’t get to the incredible and innovative future of your products without some collaboration. I submit this is the right-brain (sometimes referred to as “women’s way”) thought process finally seeping through. Where the more traditional, left-brained approach presents an immediate and linear picture: “We want to win, costs be damned!” The longer term, more interconnected, systems-thinking based, right-brained approach is more like: “We want to succeed for a long time and not hurt the environment or our communities.” One sounds like a warrior and the other sounds like mother nature.
According to the aforementioned NYT/Greenwire article by Michael Burnham, the clean energy industry, for one, is now even trying to take the synergistic collaboration idea a step further and form a partnership with the government (!). The idea is to form an “energy strategy board,” which would develop an “Energy Challenge Program” described this way:
The program should be structured as a joint venture between the federal government and the energy industry, according to a “business plan” the executives plan to hand policymakers today. The program — which should be co-funded by the public and private sectors at an initial level of $20 billion over a decade — should focus on the transition from pre-commercial, large-scale energy systems to integrated, full-size system tests.
Until now, sharing the work and sharing the benefits is a concept our business culture has seen as idealistic or childish. Sustainability is what nudges the 180 degree turn toward exactly that idea – corporations functioning in community – bettering themselves and the broader world. And this is just the way right-brain, holistic, interconnected systems-minded people think.
How about this for my new cheer? “Systems Thinkers U-n-i-t-e! UNITE for the susty fight!”
*Thanks to MaddockDouglas for tweeting the story.
Photo credit: roderiderob via Picassa
