 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Is There a Champion in Your Corner?January 25, 2012Last week, I wrote about the Natural Step process that helps guide organizations to go green. One of the references in the Natural Step’s Sustainability Primer is Bob Willard’s 2009 book, “The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook”. Bob Willard, a resident of Toronto, Canada, is a well-known author and presenter on sustainability for business settings. The Natural Step Primer stresses the importance of organizations having individuals who will step up and be champions for sustainability. When our office undertook the effort to apply for LEED existing building certifications for several of our legal office buildings, I recall that we were asked, “Who are your champions who will help collect the information needed to complete the applications?” That stuck with me—the notion that it takes the vision coupled with the commitment to achieve a greener office. For each of our green objectives, we have been fortunate to have one or more people volunteer to serve as leads on the projects, in effect they were the champions. People are willing to be champions when they share a vision and are comfortable that they have the knowledge and ability to succeed at achieving an objective that moves the organization closer to its vision. When I reflect on the objectives our team set for our green efforts in the past few years, we went through a process that made our team aware of our starting point and the benefits we could realize if we advocated changes in our business practices, supported new measures, or sponsored events to engage our employees in reducing our carbon footprint. I think the time we took to educate ourselves and others so that we shared a common understanding was important to the ultimate successes we’ve attained.
Like other organizations which have been engaged in going green for some time, we’ve picked the “low hanging fruit”. To further advance our sustainability goals, we need to tackle policies and practices that are more complex. For example, it’s one thing to buy office supplies with recycled content-- Done! Check! It’s quite another thing to set a policy standard that suppliers implement sustainable policies all the way up their supply chain (from sourcing, to production, to transport, to packaging and disposal). Or, it’s one thing to offer discounted mass transit passes to encourage employees to commute by bus or train, but it’s not so simple to institute a teleworking program that allows a large portion of the workforce to avoid commuting to the office once a week. Yet, these and other alternatives to lower our carbon footprint are the “next up on the agenda” issues for offices who espouse sustainability as a worthy imperative.
There is no straight line to green; there are many different ways to be greener. Remember, this is a journey and what will work for one office may not work in another. We need to understand the unique culture of our offices before we can prioritize which measures are most likely to garner support and have the greatest positive impact. And we need champions. We need people on our green teams who have the desire and determination to undertake the work of marshalling the facts and the figures and present compelling proposals to decision-makers. To learn more about the “Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook”, click here.
|
||
