Our approach is pragmatic, scaled to your business, and focused on getting you results. There are three key areas in which we work:
1) Know the impacts.
This is a two part process:
a) know the impacts ON your business of sustainability issues: There can be strategic choices due to scarcity of materials/energy; changes in market demand due to governmental or retailer initiatives; and increases in insurance costs. As well as the practical financial impacts of requirements to take responsibility of your product once your customer is finished with it, or the cost of managing the waste from your offices and operations. and
b), know the impact OF your business on the environment and society: where are the big impacts of what you do, and who cares about those impacts?
For example, one packaging company found that 40% of its negative environmental impacts – particularly CO2 – came from the use of one material – that represented only 4% of their feedstock… Since CO2 comes largely from fossil fuels, it was clear that they suffered a double risk: the increase in materials cost due to energy, and the further increase in materials cost due to the increasing cost of emitting CO2. Until they had measured the impacts, they had assumed that the areas of focus had to be transportation and operations, but it turned out these were tiny compared to the choice of materials… Armed with this information they were able to establish a partnership with an environmental group to ensure the sustainability of their key material sources. This made them a safer partner for their customers.
We assess these, and help you clarify what you want to focus on immediately, and what you want to keep an eye on, or establish longer term targets for…
And, we assess where you can get a jump on competition. Let’s be honest – most people aren’t looking at this seriously yet. But sustained earnings only come if they’re based on sustainable practices. Reducing your costs, shifting your focus to more sustainable materials, and reducing your reliance on fossil fuels, will all make you stronger sooner, and establish you as the preferred and wise partner to your customers.
2) Speeding up profitable Implementation
One of the most frustrating things is to see exactly where you think the company needs to be going, and then find that people are dragging their feet, muddying the waters, and making progress slow and difficult. It doesn’t have to be that way. We work with you and your people to build a common understanding of direction and how that translates into everybody’s work. And then we go another step – and make sure that people know enough about the environment and sustainability that they start contributing their own ideas on how to do things more environmentally, more inexpensively, and more productively. For example:
At Wal-Mart they had long had a stand-off between marketing and operations: marketing wanted bright lights shining onto the freezer, because this made products more attractive, and increased sales. But operations complained that the heat from the lights made their freezers work twice as hard to keep products frozen. The extra work made for extra heat, and they had to get extra air conditioners to keep the ambient temperature acceptable. When Wal-Mart took a stand for sustainability, the guy responsible for the freezers and air conditioners could make his case in terms of money, energy and CO2; marketing could see the value of using warm fluorescents in the freezers instead; and for good measure they printed a sign for the freezer door explaining how they had reduced CO2. Lower cost, better profile, and increased sales. True sustainability, from the ground up.
Managing change
People like to say that nobody likes change. We would believe that if we hadn’t seen Walkman come and go; i-Pods become ubiquitous, and mobile phones explode the market for phones. People make amazing changes voluntarily if they see the value. In fact, consider that there are tens of millions of blogs; tens of millions of twitter accounts; and hundreds of millions of pages on Wikipedia in 160 languages – all contributed, edited, formatted, annotated and cross-linked by volunteers.
We work with you to elicit that kind of fervour and engagement from your staff – so that they come to work excited about contributing. Not grudging about following the rules.
One of the difficult things about becoming sustainable is that you don’t really know what that will look like exactly. A company we worked with needed to become leaner while differentiating itself. We held sessions with all staff in which we had them first talk about what really mattered, then start to build three dimensional models of what the new company might look like. And then each team had to explain their model to the other teams. Finally we remixed the teams, they each had to build on the existing models to make it better thought out and more coherent. By the end of the day, understanding of roles and contribution between units in the company and among team members had increased enormously. Most importantly, almost a year later, the models are still visible in a common area, and people use them to initiate new people in the company, and explain how things really work, and what has changed because of the new focus. Morale is high, dialogue is high, and people are focussed on moving forwards, not clinging to the past.
Communicating with stakeholders
No company exists alone, like an island deep in the ocean. Instead, we are all jostled by demands from government, customers, employees, community, suppliers, NGOs, quasi governmental organisations, planning authorities, tax collectors, and the like. Often, a conversation with someone from a different industry or from a different sector is like talking to somebody in a language you cannot understand. You can be frustrated that you’re not reaching understanding, and the temptation can be high to refuse to engage. But actually, dialogue with stakeholders most often turns stakeholders into ambassadors. And when an NGO is holding you up as an example of what works, they are a thousand times more credible than if you try to make the same point yourself. So developing ways to work with NGOs – defining which ones matter to you, which ones have influence, and which ones are interested in constructive relationships, is rewarding – both economically and emotionally.
We have facilitated interactions between WWF, for example, and trade associations; or environmental groups and the plastics industry. Having worked for government, NGOs, small companies and multi-nationals, we help translate each sector to the other, and design and facilitate meetings and interactions to ensure fruitful dialogue, and the establishment of trust.
3) Maximising effectiveness
In the end, the strategy, the support for change, depends not just on ‘people’ but on individuals. And some will have greater struggles than others in helping the company reach its goal. We support you and support them through trainings and coaching to establish leadership skills, and ensure that diverse opinions are used as a basis for fruitful discussion, not eliminated as ‘not the way we do things around here’ – the kiss of death when it comes to moving in a new direction.
Building Leadership and Effectiveness
We coach managers and staff to build your employee’s and team’s effectiveness. Coaching for Great Worktm improves your time-strapped manager’s effectiveness while improving their staff’s performance – and all in 10 minute bites….
Benefiting from Diversity
Springboard builds leadership and competence among the women in your organisation, helping them find ways to provide greater value to you and the business.
If this makes sense to you, and even better – if this inspires you, contact us directly. (Want to know more about who we are? Click here to get a snapshot view…)
And if you’re still unsure whether this is really for you, you may be stuck in a dangerous myth about sustainability. What myth? Click here to find out.