The Step-by-Step Guide to Sustainability Planning

How to Create and Implement Sustainability Plans in Any Business or Organization

Darcy Hitchcock, Marsha Willard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136552168
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Wirtschaftspädagogik

Sustainability is now the greatest business imperative, yet how do you actually develop and implement a sustainability plan if you aren't an expert?

From the authors of the award-winning handbook The Business Guide to Sustainability comes this highly practical guide to designing and implementing a customized sustainability plan in any business, organization or government department of any type and scale.

This step-by-step guide explains how to create a sustainability plan and sustainability report. Each chapter has two vital sections. The first contains background reading, tips and case examples to help you be successful. The second presents a set of methods each with step-by-step instructions and a selection matrix to help choose the best methods. The book also contains sample worksheets and exercise materials that can be copied for organization-wide use.

1
Preparing for Change

CONCEPTS AND CASE EXAMPLES

Before you embark on your sustainability planning process, we want to present you with some general concepts about change and the principles or conditions that contribute to successful implementation of new programmes in organizations. Introducing a change of any kind to an organization can be a delicate proposition. We have seen (and likely you have experienced) many failed initiatives. Our intent in this chapter is to arm you with information and strategies on organizational change so that your sustainability initiative will be largely protected from the common pitfalls of many change efforts.

Implementing a sustainability programme is, in many ways, the same as implementing any other change initiative. Perhaps your organization has been successful with past initiatives: re-engineering, total quality management, lean manufacturing, self-directed work teams or any other of the popular 20th-century management improvement strategies. There are valuable lessons to be learned (from both the successes and failures) that can be carried over and applied to your sustainability programme. Consider the general principles below that we have gleaned from over two decades of consulting with organizations.

Keys to success in any organizational change initiative

Every new initiative needs to be grounded in a solid business rationale. If it doesn’t make business sense to do – that is, if it doesn’t return some value to the organization – it will be difficult for people to make it a priority and likely to fall to the bottom of the list of things to do. Chapter 2 will help you to craft the business case in order to help ensure that it becomes and stays a priority for your organization. In addition, consider the following aspects as well.

Create a sense of urgency. There’s nothing like a ‘burning platform’ to incite enthusiasm, and it’s getting easier and easier to find one. A burning platform creates motivation to move forward because, in part, it makes it clear that the status quo is no longer viable. Does the recent spike in energy costs affect your business? Are your customers suspicious of your operations? What about the Kyoto Accord and climate change? One organization used pictures of its employees’ children as the backdrop to its sustainability kick-off meeting to emphasize the impact that it will have on future generations.

Find a champion and get leadership support. Ideally, you should find someone with some position of authority to champion your effort and to ensure that it gets the time, attention and resources it will require for a meaningful impact. The higher up in your organization your champion is, the greater the likelihood that your effort will have staying power. These people often go by the title of sustainability director or coordinator. In addition, you will eventually need top management support. We have never seen a change effort succeed and stick without leadership support. That doesn’t mean your effort has to start with leadership; but top management support and involvement are key to long-term success. This means that leaders need to not only talk about sustainability, but also back their words up with symbolic and substantive action.

Find a logical starting point. Sometimes the place to begin is obvious. If you are constructing a new building, adding a new production line or making other decisions with long-term ramifications, then start there. Often, though, you will have to consider the general scope of your effort; whether to start in a portion of the organization or implement it across the whole business. Is there a department that is eager and ripe for this? Is there a problem you are trying to solve or risk you are trying to avoid? Do you need a safe place to experiment, far from the glaring lights of the media or your customers? Are there certain departments or people who are raring to go? Think strategically about how broad your effort should be. Is it better to begin small and nurture the initiative or to broadcast your intentions organization wide and roll the whole effort out with a bang?

Sometimes, it’s best to start quietly, letting the effort evolve over time, starting by tucking sustainability into logical places, not making a big deal about it. This approach is appropriate when you don’t have a huge looming problem driving you to pursue sustainability and/or you don’t have top management support. This can also be a good approach if employees are jaded by past change initiatives and when your business case for pursuing sustainability is still developing.

In other situations, it’s best to broadcast that you are doing something new and make a big splash. In this situation, sustainability is discussed explicitly as an objective; audacious goals are set; everyone is expected to rethink what they do through the lens of sustainability. This approach is appropriate when top management has made an enduring commitment to sustainability and when it is important to signal a significant change of corporate strategy (e.g. to disgruntled customers, shareholders or the public.) This can also be an appropriate approach if you are trying to use sustainability to create a new, more empowered and committed corporate culture.

Attach your project to existing efforts. To avoid the ‘programme of the month’ cynicism, it can be helpful to explicitly link your sustainability efforts to familiar programmes in the organization. It’s often easier to add another consideration to an existing project than to generate the interest and energy in starting something entirely new. You may already, for example, have lean manufacturing or quality teams. If so, ask them to include broader sustainability-related issues in the work that they do. If your organization already thinks in terms of corporate social responsibility, then just refine the definition to include criteria related to the limits of nature. Do you have an environmental management system that could be strengthened to be a sustainability management system? Is your organization a long-time advocate of total quality management, lean manufacturing or related efforts? Do you have a longstanding practice of empowering employee work teams? If so, perhaps you can show how sustainability is a logical extension of them.

In Table 1.1, we list common existing organizational change initiatives and describe how sustainability can be dovetailed with them.

Table 1.1 Points of entry

Communicate constantly. Once you are ready to ‘go public’ with your efforts, you will need to be diligent about keeping people informed of what’s going on. Sustainability will likely be a new concept for many in your organization, so in addition to the constant stream of communication about your progress, you may also need to continuously educate people about sustainability and why it is important. We’ve learned that your communication efforts should involve multiple media (email, presentations, discussion groups, etc.) and include opportunities for two-way communication in conversations and meetings.

Share your results. While many of your projects may leave people feeling good about what you have done, they will have much more value if you have hard data to support your claims of success. Tracking the impact will not only maintain enthusiasm, but will bolster your ability to sell additional projects down the line.

Create opportunities for involvement. Eventually you will also need fairly wide involvement across the organization. This usually implies forming teams or committees to contribute to both the planning and execution of your ideas. We’ve also learned that you don’t need absolutely everybody on board. Critical mass seems to be around 15 to 20 per cent of the members of the organization. If you have the active involvement of at least that many people, you will likely affect an organization-wide change.

BOX 1.1 CASCADE CORPORATION: MAKING SENSE OF ALL THEIR EFFORTS

Cascade Corporation, an international manufacturer of forklifts, was a long-time advocate of empowerment and self-directed work teams. It deployed lean manufacturing principles to improve its efficiencies and to eliminate waste, and was already ISO 9000 certified and working on ISO 14001 at most sites. Its board cautioned the corporation to begin thinking more about social responsibility since its programmes appeared to be disconnected and disjointed. We showed Cascade how sustainability could be an umbrella to connect all of its efforts, while at the same time identifying additional blind spots that it should consider addressing.

BOX 1.2 OREGON MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY: GETTING BUY-IN FROM EMPLOYEES

When Nancy Stueber was promoted to president of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), she already knew she wanted to integrate sustainability within their operations. But her organization did not respond well to top-down edicts. Nancy needed to know if the employees would support this. So we helped her to form a diagonal-slice steering committee whose job was to study sustainability for a year, implement a couple of pilot efforts and then recommend a go–no-go decision. The steering committee, after analysing its opportunities, decided to focus on climate and waste. Since there was already an energy audit being conducted – which would have the largest impact on their greenhouse gases – they chose to focus on alternative commuting, in part because it would give employees a tangible way of participating in the efforts. This also helped them to address a local regulatory requirement for trip reductions. The zero-waste task force conducted a waste audit and provided data for each department and the organization over all. During the year, Nancy and the steering committee did a number of things to educate employees about sustainability and the organization’s efforts. After a year, the steering committee gave sustainability a thumb’s up. It is now one of OMSI’s strategic values, integral to its strategic planning efforts.

Manage personal transitions. Since the changes implied by a move towards sustainability have broad impact across the organization, you will need to be prepared to handle the impact of that on employees and to manage the personal transitions of the people affected. Transition management theory posits that people go through three predictable stages: a stage of loss for the old way of doing things (even when the old way was problematic or undesirable); a period of adjustment where they start to see the possibilities in the new methods; and, finally, a stage of acceptance and integration. Develop strategies that are appropriate to these stages to ensure that people manage the transition smoothly.

Manage external stakeholders. In addition to employee management, your initiative needs to take into account how the change will be experienced by your external stakeholders. Don’t forget to address the impact that might be felt by your vendors, your stockholders or your community. Each of these players has the ability to derail your efforts if sufficiently upset, as well as to contribute to its progress if they are involved and kept appraised.

Work towards system integration. Lastly, remember that like any significant change, the principles and strategies related to your sustainability effort will eventually need to be integrated within the fabric of the organization. In the end, it may require adjusting or adapting your core business systems, like those that control hiring, compensation, purchasing, contracts, accounting processes and the like.

Special considerations for sustainability initiatives

While sustainability initiatives share many of the same requirements for success as other change ...