I’m pretty sure Johnson & Johnson did not intend for their ad campaign to explain why people start to engage with sustainability, but I’m certainly using their tagline that way. “Having a Baby Changes Everything,” was by no means first coined by J&J’s ad team, but their great black and white television spots (remember the cute baby being washed in the sink?) made just about everyone stop and watch (parent or no, I suspect).  And, that tag phrase well represents the distinct line in the sand of life, where you think one way pre-first baby and about 180 degrees differently as soon as baby #1 arrives.  That’s why this particular life transition can be so crucial for sustainability engagement and behavior change in humans.

And, that’s why new research from EcoFocus Worldwide about EcoAware Dads is helpful.  Their recent study found:

Already, more than 1 in 2 Dads always or usually factor environmental considerations into their purchase decisions, and another 32% sometimes do so.  Almost 9 in 10 say it is important enough to change brands to make a more eco-friendly choice and more than 4 in 10 are prepared to pay more for environmentally friendly products that get it right.

But wait, there’s more.  3 out of 4 of the dads studied also agreed that : “with each step I take to make my home or lifestyle more eco-friendly, it gets easier to take the next step.”

What this all says to me, is that:

- What we see in moms with regard to their growing “green behavior” may be more a matter of parenthood than gender. So, when you see “green mom” research, replace “green parent” for “mom” in all that you read, and you may gain insight into a broader segment of your customer base.

- “Having a baby” is only the start of changing everything, but it can be a powerful launching off point. The opportunities for sustainable brands is to be there, just at that life transition point, to help newly super-environmentally conscious parents maintain their “green” living momentum and continue to take such responsible steps in child rearing and household management (and beyond!).

- Finally, segmenting market research into studies of moms, dads, aunts, chess players, bike riders, and so on, makes for much more sexy and exciting business news soundbytes.  However, as a seasoned and discerning marketing brain, your job is to think about how some findings may be very true across market segments – and then dig and combine to develop your own insights from there.

We can learn about sustainable consumer/citizen behavior by identifying and examining the same life stages, roles and influencers we’ve long known to affect buying decisions in general.  The subtleties and hidden gems of understanding come from taking into account what may be making consumers even casually consider “greening up” in the first place – and then serving that at its root.

Given that, “having a baby changes everything” may be a good phrase to just pin up on your bulletin board, right in front of your nose.

Photo credit: Paul

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Americans, with help from “the media,” tend to exaggerate problems due to a) tradition – such thinking is embedded in our DNA,  and/or; b) sexy “sound byte-itis” – such thinking makes for more exciting cable news watching.  Gender continues to be one of those hot topics, with women’s leadership strengths currently appearing front and center.  That’s why I so appreciated Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times op-ed, “Don’t Write Off Men Just Yet.” He’s read and respected by many, and he tells it like it is.  It’s almost as if each of his columns could start with: “Now, let’s step back a minute…”  A man after my own heart.

In this piece, he seems to be saying that while there are differences between the sexes in who pursues higher education, who does better in math versus writing, and how each sex tends to learn, the differences are not as great as they are made out to be. And, the point really is how it all balances out (a macro view vs. micro view).  It’s like the gender pendulum I’ve written about lately.  We may actually be heading toward the sweet spot in how various gender and individual strengths are sorting out and combining for more powerful and lasting positive outcomes all around.  As Kristof puts it:

My hunch is that we’re moving into greater gender balance, not a fundamentally new imbalance in the other direction. Don’t hold your breath for “the end of men.”

There is  great wisdom for businesses and organizational change therein.  The key lies in celebrating the fact that women are catching up, but not pushing to “surge ahead” of men and toward imbalance in the other direction.  We already know that a world where one gender is way ahead of the other in terms of education, leadership strengths or “power,” for example, doesn’t work.  It is neither productive nor sustainable.

To build an economy of thriving and interconnecting systems of people, planet and profit, we’ve got to allow for and nurture an organic organizational gender balance.  There is no one rule, number or linear path for how this “should” look in every case. That already shows that “women’s ways” of thinking are catching up with, and balancing out, traditional thinking.  Together, we are improving collective business wisdom every single day.

New research reported on by Miller-McCune’s Tom Jacobs may hold clues as to what has held women back from such careers thus far.  He writes:

A team of Miami University researchers led by psychologist Amanda Diekman has come up with a different explanation. In a paper just published in the journal Psychological Science, they argue women perceive STEM careers (those in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) as largely incompatible with one of their core goals: Engaging in work that helps others.

If perception of the science/tech career is one of the lone, geeky scientist sitting in a badly lit lab working on projects that have no immediate or “social” application, you can see why anyone with more social awareness might steer clear.   But, the needs of our sustainably-oriented economy create the perfect storm – where what we most need are science and technology-oriented brains rounded out by just such empathy.  There has to be an interconnectedness of the “geeky” stuff with the human stuff, or sustainability will not be sustainable.  Women in science and technology could be the embodiment of that connection.

As in so many cases within the sustainability realm, the issue seems to be one of communication.  If girls/young women better understood the connection between STEM careers and healthier communities or environments, a lot more of them would be signing up for such college degrees and heading into the many, many jobs of those types now becoming available.  In fact, companies are probably a bit frantic already, trying to find the right minds for exactly those current and future positions.

Interestingly, those companies may already be doing a much better job communicating their sustainability stories through branding and marketing campaigns.  And, consumers are responding.  Now, could similarly focused and relevant messaging be developed and distributed in the right places and in the right way so that women will also see future, attractive, career possibilities? Of course.  The truth is that women with an underlying desire to help others will be INTEGRAL to the mix of scientists and technologists that are already so core to our sustainable future.  They should be given the power to lead the way AND to teach their peers about the human side of science.

Photo credit: Malcom Bowman

My latest HuffingtonPost piece reflects the coalescing of my consulting and master’s program work toward a new research focus.  How can we take what we know about how women think to both develop better sustainable organizations and to better serve consumers supporting those organizations?  As always, my intention is not to say that women are the greatest and the only gender to combine systems thinking with empathy.  Rather, the fact that women are good at a kind of thinking so important in sustainable business is a clue to the bigger picture.  If your organization is reviewing and developing its sustainability efforts, this clue should help you source those best suited for your team: systems thinkers that embrace and reflect an empathic perspective on life.

An excerpt from my piece:

Women have generations of practice using and developing their empathic skills. When you combine that with solid business smarts, you get a sustainability powerhouse. It’s probably safe to say that without empathy, no business leader — male or female — would come to believe in the “triple bottom line” or the “people, planet and profit” mission. It’s the empathy extra that brings people and planet anywhere near the profit.

For those of you working in or with already well-functioning sustainability efforts, let me know if the empathic systems thinker is well represented, and how/where you’ve put that sort of mind to work.

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

Anyway…

As mentioned in Rahim’s article, the other three signs Cialdini’s team tested were, 1) saving energy for the environment’s sake, 2) doing it for the sake of future generations, and 3) the one most of us non-research types might suspect would be most effective: cash savings.  Isn’t this fascinating?  As I’ve mentioned in so many other blog posts by now, Cialdini’s “social proof” has two components: 1 – uncertainty about which behavior is appropriate (need to see others around you doing the behavior), and 2 – similarity, or the need to see that others, and preferably those very much like you, are behaving that way.

A few examples Cialdini gives from his now classic book, INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasion, include: tip jars (bartenders “salt” them by putting in some bills before they set it out for customers),  “best-seller” of “fastest-selling” marketing messages (I don’t need to explain this for you, my very marketing-oriented readership), and – this is perhaps most compelling (and incredibly creepy), the methods by which Jim Jones’ teachings created a cult.  Powerful stuff, that social proof.

Those of us driven to “inspire” citizen behavior change toward sustainability may be a tad disappointed that “saving the environment” or “helping future generations” doesn’t really work – or work yet.  But, the point is to start where people are – to be pragmatic with persuasion methods.  Perhaps the most baseline guide for human decision-making is the quick look-around at others.  Social proof is a “method” that can be called on quickly and automatically.  Cialdini writes that social proof “provides a convenient shortcut for determining how to behave.”  That shortcut can be used for good, but can also be used for bad -  to leave people who use that shortcut “vulnerable to the attacks of profiteers,” as he reminds us.

But, if you are reading this, you are here to do some sustainability good.  So, how can we, in each of our various – but interconnected(!) – business ventures, put social proof to work?  We can communicate our sustainability stories better, and reflect the truth in just how many of our customers/members/employees are already demonstrating the behavior we’d like to promote (and – clearly – that means buying our more responsibly designed and produced products in a lot of cases).  Like the “beat the Jones’s” approach that Cialdini seems to be proving, we can also tap the competitive spirit that exists (whether we acknowledge it or not) among human beings.

The race to the top of energy efficiency and other sustainable living and business practice goals can be fun and social!  Let’s all learn more about, and use the concept of “social proof” to make participating in that race the only human option.

*Thanks to @Think_LED (on Twitter) for ensuring I noticed today’s NYT piece!

While I have not yet read the book, following are two points Strauch made in that interview, and why I think there may be sustainability implications:

1) Bi-lateralization.  Younger people tend to use one side of their brain to learn and another to recall.  But, as people age, their brains are more likely to use both sides of the brain to do both tasks.  Along similar lines, research into how women make purchasing decisions, too, cite a more “holistic” process of integrating the linear (left hemisphere thinking) with the relational (right hemisphere thinking).  The sustainability angle?  To think and engage with sustainability, you’ve got to be able to get your brain thinking more bi-laterally.

2) Exercising your frontal cortex.  One way to keep your brain highly functioning is to push it, by doing such things as: “creating a disorienting dilemma,” confronting ideas that are different from your own, or, talking with people with whom you disagree. All of these “challenges” sharpen your brain.  The sustainability angle?  For a lot of business types (and consumers, as well), thinking sustainably is indeed a “disorienting dilemma.”

The connections my own perhaps overly active brain made were these:

- While we’ve got to love what the younger generations bring to the table in terms of passion and enthusiasm for sustainability, we middle-agers may have brains that predispose us to better see all sides of the story and the mission.  Like the younger generations, we are very excited about green for green’s sake and want it to happen NOW.  However, we have the more holistic view that helps us step back and possibly make compromises in order to get to that longer term sustainable ideal.  We are more allowing of the long journey, because we’ve been on it longer.

- It isn’t just me and my marketing to women background.  It makes sense that the way women more naturally think aligns with how we sustainability-advocates would like all business people to start to think – more holistically and more EVERY stakeholder-aware.  What can we all learn from that realization to move sustainability forward?  I believe that women’s buying ways are a great filter both for understanding the sustainably-minded consumer and for training business brains to integrate sustainable practices.

- Finally, being IN the sustainability field is great exercise for our brains!  It automatically puts us in disagreement with a whole host of conventional business thinkers.  It forces us to learn new things almost moment to moment.  If we’ve got long experience in business done the old way, sustainability can be incredibly disorienting .  If all the other fascinating ideas and solutions that come from thinking sustainably weren’t enough, we can selfishly and simply give our own brains major frontal cortex exercise!  (Maybe Barbara Strauch will write her next book about the amazing ways our brains end up changing culture?)

Needless to say, those of you who have been reading my work for years know that my throwing out something new to ponder is par for the course.  I wonder if my brain knew I needed to get into sustainability long before I actually acknowledged it?  Anyway – your counterintuitive “Learned On” lesson for the day is that middle age may well help you engage with and understand sustainability better.  Now, go out and use that oh-so wise brain to make your company smarter too!

When a consumer hears or reads that “others think this is the way to go/product to buy,” that may be all it takes.  And that’s one reason marketers have gotten so savvy in their use of testimonials, or in the care they take to select actors of several different looks/races/ages  for ad campaigns.  People like to “see themselves” in the existing group of those who buy iPods (of course) or among those “billions” who buy burgers at McDonald’s (though this may be changing).

What might this mean for engaging more citizens as consumers and business decision-makers with the concept of sustainability?  We’ve got to leverage the social proof that plenty of other people are already embracing it.  Cialdini points out that the principle of social proof works best under specific conditions which include “uncertainty” and ” similarity.”

It sure seems like there’s been a lot of proof that we need to start managing resources and paying attention to the environment.  Still, many today remain uncertain that changing their lifestyles and worrying about the planet, for instance, is really necessary – or personally applicable.  So, how might social proof kick in?  Writes Cialdini: “Without question, when people are uncertain, they are more likely to use others’ actions to decide how they themselves should act.”

And, if those “others” that people are observing are similar – for instance, they seem to be middle class and married with two kids in grade school – all the better. “The principle of social proof operates most powerfully when we are observing the behavior of people just like us.  It is the conduct of such people that gives us the greatest insight into what constitutes correct behavior for ourselves.”

This occurs both in the realm of citizen/consumer and in the realm of business.  I remember how quickly many not-at-all skincare-related brands started to copy the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty’s “real women” approach a few years back.  Whether it was wise or not, other industries that were uncertain about how, or whether, to market to women saw an established brand doing it, so they too took the plunge.  And, the more brands did that, the more additional brands followed behind.  Marketing to women had been important before, but it seemed to take that sort of nudge to get corporations to MOVE on it.

To be clear: knowledge of this social proof principle can and likely will always be used for the… how shall we say… “less than honorable” sell.  But, what we can acknowledge is that a sustainable way of life and thinking is still an uncertainty for a large number of people.  So, those folks, as consumers and business minds, are very likely looking around at “people like them” to get the social proof they need that pursuing sustainability is the thing to do.

So, consider leveraging the powers of persuasion in the direction of sustainability.  Will you and your brand/organization be there to further the proof?

Let’s connect some dots: One of the reasons people begin to think seriously about sustainability is that it literally hits home- in terms of household energy use.  There’s nothing like the rising costs of winter warmth and lighting, for example, to shake us out of our blase-ness.  Working to keep those costs low is likely particularly compelling for those who manage the “operations” of the “facility.”  Whomever sees and arranges for the payment of those bills is at the front line.  If that person is also very conscious of daily family comfort, energy use becomes that much more important – and challenging.

This person sounds suspiciously like a woman and is probably a mom, but what else may be influencing her awareness and decisions?

If figuring out how to engage more citizens on sustainability is important now, and I firmly believe this is the case, beginning with the “facility management” minds of working women, in particular, should be a focus. A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research study, commissioned by Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) and the Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment (WCEE), is worth note on that front.

A few of this 2009 study’s general findings:

• 77 percent of women take primary or equal responsibility for paying their electricity bills (with high percentages, whether married or unmarrried).
• 91 percent take dominant or equal responsibility for using less electricity at home.
• 97 percent have taken steps to use less electricity at home.

And, women business owners lead the way:

• 98 percent of women business owners have cut their electricity use at home.
• 77 percent have done the same for their businesses.
• 79 percent have made their businesses environmentally friendly.
• 87 percent strongly or somewhat favor clean energy and efficiency initiatives.

This would seem to suggest that the trend toward more women in the workforce, the recession-inspired household cutting back, and the rising consumer awareness  of -and increasing education about -sustainability creates a perfect, positive sustainability storm.

Women tend to think more holistically, integrating the linear/rational with emotional, or the left brain with the right.  This makes it a tad difficult to separate their work days from their home lives, as it all tends to flow together.  (In the case of energy efficiency that may be a really good thing.)

What if the women who own businesses (and that number is rapidly rising) are all the more primed for energy use behavioral change?   These women are super aware of how that which serves their business bottom line might also serve their household facility management bottom line – all the while keeping “constituents” (family or staff) happy and productive.

The implications for marketing energy efficiency and the related technology today are huge.  Focus on the biggest influencers, and reach them where they are already very concerned about your industry (where it hurts most immediately).  Women who own or manage businesses, and who may more likely be moms (and read green mom blogs!), will be at that market’s core.

***On a related note: a new study finds that people much more easily engage with the concept of “energy efficiency” than they do with “climate change.”  One is immediately felt (like a Vermonter’s January natural gas bill) and the other seems abstract and more like someone else’s problem.  Dave Thier, the writer of the AOL News article on the study, quotes one of the researchers:

“It’s a little bit disconcerting to me that Americans are more comfortable expressing their preferences as consumers than as a citizens,” said [Ed] Maibach.

Here’s a clip from my VPR commentary on the topic (and yes – we recently did have a 59 degree day here in Vermont!  Talk about visible, immediate and personal…):

Essentially, the idea is that, if climate change were visible to the naked eye, people would feel threatened enough to act.  Instead, climate change is invisible.  Unless, of course, we consider an early December 59 degree Vermont day to be a neon sign, as some of us do.

The VPR link for both the text and audio format is here.  I’d love to hear your thoughts (or examples of how such topics are being brought “home” for consumers).