My intention with this column is to introduce concepts, ideas and networks you’ve never noticed before as you wisely develop your sustainable businesses.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

Sustainability and women are inextricably linked.  This is not because of soft inclusive reasons, but for hard inclusive business reasons.  If interconnecting systems of operations, production, shipping, community involvement, environmental responsibility, and more are what we seek, the wider the variety of brains and human traits involved in corporate decision-making, the better. While we have a long tradition of rewarding linear and independent thinking, sustainability will demand a new priority on the relational and interdependent.

“Secret Sauce” – The CSOs studied were good at leading new initiatives and cross-functional teams, and understood how to translate external factors into internal opportunities.

“Strong External Affairs Background” – A significant number of those studied held an external facing role prior to being named CSO.

“Not Many MBAs” – The educational backgrounds of the CSOs studied were diverse. Most had Master’s level education, but there were only 4 MBAs.

Even before sustainability leadership was a concept, organizational leadership  experts/scholars (such as: Warren Bennis, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Linda Carli & Alice Eagly) were noting a shift in emphasis away from the more agentic, directive and hierarchical approaches toward a more relational, collaborative and communications-savvy approach.

I see holistic, relational thinking and the need for excellent communications skills reflected in the three Weinreb Group findings I’ve highlighted in this post, and in the case studies included in their report (such as: SAP, AT&T and UPS).  The secret absolutely does lie in an ability to lead through collaboration in multidisciplinary/cross-functional groups and to keep connecting what is going on externally to internal opportunities (and vice versa).  The fact that an external facing background may be important strikes me as evidence that organizations definitely do need to emphasize communications skills as they seek and nurture future sustainability leaders.  And, interrelated with both of those is this perhaps counter-intuitive finding that having an MBA is not an absolute CSO requirement.  Instead, leaders can come from a wide variety of education level and study focus areas.  It is in the individual’s unique combination of educational background, previous corporate position or other job experience, and his/her ability to connect internal and external dots that I see something new and noteworthy.

Sustainability is forcing the issue of where leadership had too-slowly been headed already.  The traditional leader, with his or her more directive, top-down, take-charge style, is not the type of leader who can handle the need for collaboration, holistic perspectives and long-term orientation that sustainability-focused corporations now face.

Research like that from the Weinreb Group is crucial.  With these findings, corporations should be able to better identify and develop their future leaders.  Furthermore, between the lines of this report (I highly recommend you read the full document) lies an even greater point, which is that there should be a whole new emphasis on previously under-prioritized holistic leadership skills and relational abilities in leadership talent.

Photo by Robert J. Pennington, courtesy RhizomeImages.com

Originally published in The Huffington Post, September 13, 2011

What if your thought leadership got you very little recognition today but contributed to an incredibly significant cultural shift that made a positive difference for generations to come? It is an interesting question at a time when business leadership should be poised to jumpstart the sustainability movement, but could a preference for “show” keep the desperately needed “shift” from happening?

A Businessrespect.net article about Upward Spiral, the Howard Schultz/Starbucks effort to stand against partisan divisions in Congress, explores this topic. The writer makes the point that the well-intentioned, Schultz-spearheaded campaign may be too quickly looking like a campaign for Schultz himself, and that could make the greater cause less successful.

To quote the article:

Entirely pragmatically — quiet influence is far more powerful. It means that once people have been influenced, ways can be found for them to rationalise the shift to their supporters by claiming authorship of their new position. It means that things can change, because the authors of change don’t feel they have to get the credit.

Therein lies the lesson: no matter how worthwhile the cause, businesses must be careful about the way the message is crafted and communicated, and be clear on whether their intention is a true perspective shift or a quick show in the public eye. Especially for the sustainable business evolution, the goal is for innovative thinking to be taken seriously and to inspire and empower others to continue working together for the change.

The legacy of Ray C. Anderson, founder of Interface Inc., presents a good example of the shift approach. Only recently passed away, this “radical industrialist” and sustainability pioneer first changed his own ways and then inspired other business leaders and large corporations to do the same. Though Anderson did get media recognition and gain a name for his crucial role in the business sustainability cause later in his own process, that attention was the result of the many steps he took and the steady influence he wielded all along the way.

What does this mean for sustainability thought leadership overall? Can slow, steady and relatively under-the-radar steps toward perspective shift win the race, or do we need Twitter-worthy cover stories and press conferences held by big-name business leaders to reach mass sustainability influence? At this moment in time, I believe we need to focus on the shift over the show.

Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, is another example of someone who, like Anderson, has made a huge difference in the broader sustainable business shift. Though his name is very familiar within the climbing/outdoor industry and to those closely watching the development of the sustainable economy, Chouinard’s less recognized work in helping develop cooperative business exchanges will likely matter more in the long run. Take the Organic Exchange as one example. Now called the Textile Exchange, Patagonia and Chouinard helped found this group in 2001, and its membership today includes big-name brands and retailers, as well as supply chain companies, reflecting a quiet shift of the entire organic cotton industry toward more sustainable manufacturing processes.

Additionally, I’ve recently learned of some other exciting, industry-shifting work being done in a slow, steady and under-the-radar way. Consider either the Sustainable Endowment Institute or the Green Sports Alliance, and you will be amazed by the thought leadership and “greening” strides that have been made in just the past five years. In the case of these particular nonprofits, the participating individuals are not getting the glory of media coverage and fame, but they are instead collaborating and forming innovative partnerships for the longer-term goals of sustainability in their fields. With the help of organizations like these, college campuses and sports stadium operations are now focusing on more sustainably constructed buildings, more energy-efficient facilities and grander recycling goals. When one campus can claim a better Green Report Card grade, another steps up. When one baseball team cites 80-percent recycling rates in their MLB Green Track report , the competitive spirit drives other teams to follow.

Ray Anderson took the quiet “shift” approach to sustainable business change, and Yvon Chouinard and these two organizations are now doing the same. Their work has the potential to influence masses of people and make history, if not today’s news. So what if the individuals within any of these new, sustainability-focused collaborations don’t get the credit? The point is that their collective contributions will have an impact beyond what any 15 seconds of fame could ever offer.

Before I go further, take a look at the 10th Collegiate Edition of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary definition #2:

…the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

In interviews and conversations I’ve had with (mainly male) sustainability leaders, I keep hearing about the necessity of empathy in their work.  At the most basic level, these people have to at least theoretically walk in the shoes of a lot of other people – and experience how those people experience the world – in order to make the right decisions and be able to communicate their corporate sustainability messages well.

Whether sustainability leaders need to understand and reach a board member, investor, customer, administrative or facilities staff member, general public/local community member, or any of the other possible corporate stakeholders, the best man or woman in the job will be able to see things from a lot of other perspectives. If not, he or she will quickly lose the trust of those stakeholders, and the decisions they either make or influence will not reflect the whole system of considerations necessary for sustainable business practices.

The ramifications of NOT working with or having empathy are huge!  So, why does it still seem like empathy is for sissies?

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink writes that empathy is one of the six essential (my emphasis) “R-Directed” (right brain) aptitudes needed in this, the conceptual age:

…in a world of ubiquitous information and advanced analytic tools, logic alone won’t do.  What will distinguish those who thrive will be their ability to understand what makes their fellow woman or man tick, to forge relationships, and to care for others.

And, more from Pink:

… Because it requires attuning oneself to another, Empathy (Pink’s capitalization) involves an element of mimicry…

Where else do we hear of mimicry?  In so many writings about biomimicry, and how important the examination of nature’s models and systems can be for solving human problems as we strive toward a sustainable world.

Empathy is powerful stuff, and being able to put it to use will be something at which the most successful sustainability change agents and leaders will need to excel.

To me, that means: Empathy is not “for sissies,” but it is “for Susties!”

While in Vermont last week for the final residency of my  Goddard College Master’s Program, I noticed something.  Whether it was in workshops or site visits, the “social” element of sustainability and corporate responsibility was what made those involved – speakers or students – “lean in” or get more passionate/animated.  This was something I saw in a workshop on inclusiveness for organizational development, heard  in daily student discussion around the cafeteria table, and witnessed during a site visit with the corporate consciousness leader at Seventh Generation.

Marketing communications strategies, resource efficiencies (and product design or development on that front) and technology are definitely among the really important things to talk about and explore on the sustainability front.  But, as humans, it seems like involvement in social issues and attention to social justice, gets at what might be a truly under-tapped muscle in many of us.  And, wow – do we seem raring to use it, if what I noticed last week was any indication!

All of this is to say, that part of our charge as people who want to further our respective company’s or organization’s sustainability pursuits is to pay attention to what gets our stakeholders (employees, customers, supply chain members and so on) really buzzing.  From there, we can build.

Of course, tending to the whole complex system of interconnected people/power/profit elements is the big picture. But, if the social aspects are the ties that most directly bind more of us – as humans – to the sustainability conversation, what does that mean for how we move forward in this journey?

But that’s what seems to happen.  Marketers try to take the easiest way out in communicating a very complex, all encompassing story of what their brand is doing, how it affects people and planet, and why it all matters.  Still, it is crucial for brands to more deeply understand how people think, act and behave with regard to the purchase and use of their particular product or service.   The steps needed to gain that understanding are where way too many brands take the shortcut.

Two articles caught my eye recently that reflect this idea of having to invest more time/money to understand consumers in the sustainability realm:

1) A GreenBiz piece by Freya Williams on how green may have become too “girly” for men:  The “quick fix” to this would be to do a 180 and make green marketing a lot more outdoorsy and manly.  But, is the polar opposite approach really taking into account what’s going on with men and women in the sustainable marketplace?  No.  It doesn’t consider where men and women have already been and gotten very stuck in their own journeys – long before sustainability became a concern – and due to embedded traditional gender stereotypes.  The either manly or girly perspective never really worked in marketing, but sustainability is forcing the issue further.  The short-cut for marketing green products would be to go back and forth with over-gendered campaigns (like so many campaigns have done before them).  The investment or journey-acknowledging approach, and the one that is so key for sustainability, will leave the gender extremes behind and launch from common human values and common ground.  It takes a lot more work to do that well.

2) A Sustainable Cities Collective article about how well-placed, informative signage has increased the amount of walking done in London:  Catching people at key decision-making locations like this exemplifies a long-term investment in the complex journey of understanding people and engaging them with sustainability.  The way humans behave and change their behavior was taken into account, and the campaign wisely delivers easy to read maps, exact time/distances lists, and highlighted shops along the way.  No simple “be green and walk more” marketing campaign would have sufficed.  Understanding what might be keeping human beings from making a decision to walk more involved a systems approach.  Finding out the “why” was likely a big front-end investment, but it will surely make a powerful difference in whether or not the walking promotion succeeds in the long run.

Doesn’t such investment in understanding consumers seem more complicated at a time when marketers/brands don’t have the extra resources?  Perhaps. But this is where those of us who do this work need to stop and check ourselves.  Take the time, do the research, engage yourself (and your team) in the journey of discovering the most effective way to communicate your brand’s sustainability story to the human beings you want to reach.

It IS a long journey, but investing in deep consumer understanding will positively influence the whole of your brand’s sustainability systems – and will more likely reach and SUSTAIN its connection with existing and future customers.

This seems like a great reminder that some of the people we – as those who feel certain our take on sustainability is right – are trying to persuade are also very certain in their opposing views.  A perfect storm for trouble, if ever there was one.

To continue with Schulz’s line of thought on this point (page 164 in the book):

If imagination is what enables us to conceive of and enjoy stories other than our own, and if empathy is the act of taking other people’s stories seriously, certainty deadens or destroys both qualities. When we are caught up in our own convictions, other people’s stories–which is to say, other people–cease to matter to us.  This happens on the scale of history (a specific person’s story is always irrelevant to zealots, unless it serves the ends of the group), but also happens to each of us as individuals. If you doubt it, listen to yourself the next time you argue with a family member.  Leaving behind our more thoughtful and generous selves, we become smug, or patronizing, or scornful, or downright bellicose. And that’s when we are fighting with people we love.

To me, being aware that this dynamic may be in play could help us, as sustainability communicators, to develop messaging that doesn’t pit certainty directly against certainty (and go nowhere).  Instead, being aware of this should help us really listen to (and hear) the stories of others even as we hold to our beliefs. The hope is that if we admit there might be even a teeny bit of wiggle room with regard to our own convictions, the people we are communicating with may in turn feel less threatened and allow for a bit of wiggle room themselves.

Why present this thought of the day?  Because those of us in this field and reading this post may have to be the first to become vulnerable in our certainty, in order to increase the likelihood of engaging more people in sustainability discussions at all.

Be Transparently Green for Sustainability's Sake

It is not often that I come across such a straightforward example of an organization’s marketing to women thought process.  And, when that case study can be used to provide insight for  better reaching sustainability-minded consumers, it’s all the better.  So, it is with Eric Sass’s recent MediaPost piece which commented on the Wall Street Journal’s clever, and it would seem, fairly successful, marketing to women efforts.  (I know this is meta meta thinking and media covering media – but bear with me!)

As the article puts it:

Anyone who has read The Wall Street Journal regularly over the years can’t help but notice a decided shift in the tone and content of the print newspaper and the Web site, which has grown to include more non-business content: culture, lifestyles, leisure activities, and the like.

Some sort of overt outreach to the women’s market was not what worked here. It was what the WSJ did transparently that made all the difference.

In fact, the one overt “for women” thing the WSJ did was the big, admitted misstep.* As noted by Sass, though the media group did at one point introduce an online “Journal Women” section, it “has since been quietly scrapped.” (If they’d asked me in advance, I could have saved them that trouble…)  But therein lies the difference between transparent – which would be adjusting content and tone, for example,  versus visible (if not overt) – which would be a label or sign that shouts about how this over here is “for women,” so you should be reading it if you are a woman!

On the sustainability front, sometimes the “this is green” label is what really bugs consumers.  It is that visible or overt proclamation, along with the presumption that said brand or company sincerely knows that this is important to you, which makes people run the other way.  Instead, shift the features of your brand’s products or start reporting on more of the socially and environmentally responsible good your company is doing, all without the “this is green” placard, and you will reach sustainability-minded consumers transparently (and effectively). Voila.

In this way, you are letting the consumer find his or her unique “green” relevance in what it is your company is doing.  No one told them anything or decided what they needed to do or to buy in order to “be green.”  In fact, if you asked them, they’d probably not say they were “green” consumers anyway, but instead admit to being smart and socially aware citizen purchasers.

Just as the shiny new object has for years been the “women’s market,” brands are now trying to connect with the latest and greatest shiny new object: the “sustainable market.”  Take a lesson from the Wall Street Journal (I never imagined I’d suggest such a thing), and look at the content, tone and style of whatever it is you are delivering (product, service or marketing, etc.). Do those things speak the language – word, tone and style – of your sustainably-minded customers?

Though there are examples out there of media or brand initiatives that are akin to a “Journal Green” effort, those will soon be considered short-sighted.  Integrating the sustainability shift into what you already do well, and letting consumers identify it on their own, is the most effective and long term way to reach sustainable minds.

(If you are up for learning more about transparent marketing, you may want to take a look at Don’t Think Pink, the book I co-authored.  Though written about the women’s market specifically, the concepts easily convert for better reaching the sustainable market, as well.)

*Worth note: Perhaps, the slightly less business-y WSJ content actually does have something to do with business, so the definition of business is what has actually shifted (& thanks to culture)? Culture and lifestyle developments certainly do have something to do with what people buy and how the economy functions.

Photo credit: Rob Lavinsky

I agree with his general point, but what I’m interested in now is the difference between proclaiming it so and continuing to strive to make it so. The first seems to come from an understandable topic fatigue and frustration at how long it seems to be taking so many corporations to tend to CSR/sustainability.  Can’t we just be done already?  The second, continuing to strive to “make it so,” may be where we all need to get comfortable…a place that is a lot less decided or done.

Just as human beings individually and uniquely process new ideas, so to will every organization or corporation have very unique ways of coming to terms with and integrating social and environmental responsibility.  Having patience for that process, and continuing to help support it however it goes along, is the name of the game.

I know, I know… we are all excited to get to the next and better word to describe these concepts, and to pursue the more sophisticated or “next step” efforts in sustainability and CSR!  But, remember “we” are a pretty teeny tiny percentage of business thinkers and leaders out of the masses who have yet to absorb and integrate such concepts throughout our thinking and actions. That is not to say that anyone is smarter or better than the other here, but just to recognize the PROCESS of it all, on so many levels and with so many variables.

At its core, sustainability may not even be “the word” at all, since it seems finite – as if there could ever be this thing “sustainability,” and when we reach it, we’ll all be done.  Instead, what we are all really pursuing, and always will be-with no end point, is “sustainable development.”  That is to say – development of ourselves as decision makers, development of our businesses as more efficient energy users, development of employees toward these purposes, development of markets rather than flat out “growth,” and so on.  The subtleties should be enough to keep us thinking, passionate and motivated for forward motion.

The forward motion comes in the striving to make sustainability/CSR obsolete, even if we never live to see the day of completion.

With that in mind, I took notice of what Adam Bryant wrote about Google’s research on leadership for today’s issue of The New York Times.  While the “building better bosses” directives developed by Google’s “people analytics” teams were by no means earth-shattering, the importance of people skills, and their priority over the technological skills so emphasized in the past, did reflect a notable shift.

For much of its 13-year history, particularly the early years, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone. Let the engineers do their stuff. If they become stuck, they’ll ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place.

But Mr. Bock’s group found that technical expertise — the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep — ranked dead last among Google’s big eight. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.

People skills are demanding more attention in leadership chronicles overall, and a heightened level of social, human-to-human, awareness and ability to communicate with many different audiences is crucial to sustainability leadership, more specifically. (Books by Paul Hawken, Ray C. Anderson and Bob Doppelt can serve as resources on this.) So, what is the “chicken or egg” connection? Which comes first?

Does the integration of sustainability into business culture and processes cause companies to prioritize people skills, or does a new perspective on people skills bring sustainable agendas to the business forefront? This question fascinates me, obviously, but that isn’t the point.  The exciting part is that something is giving more credence to the fact that people skills matter a lot (and to me that also means they won’t continue to be stereotyped as a”woman’s” strength so much).  If sustainability is forcing the issue, all the better.