3 Sustainability Stories We're Reading This Week

At Strategic Sustainability Consulting, we're constantly collecting and curating sustainability news stories. At any given time, we have 100-200 stories in our Evernote folder. The best ones get turned into blog entries here, with others going out to our Facebook page, Twitter feed, and LinkedIn stream. Occasionally, though, there are just too many great articles to share individually. That's when we turn to the time-tested "round-up" blog. That time has come again, so here are some of the best stories we're reading this week:

”What If You Could Truly Be Yourself at Work?” by Tony Schwartz (Harvard Business Review) - "Increasingly, however, the everyday experience of corporate life can be overwhelming in and of itself. In addition to whatever stresses we bring from home, including not getting sufficient sleep, we're deluged with email, running from meeting to meeting, skipping meals, and working longer and more continuous hours than ever. Is it any surprise we're struggling? Worse yet, in most workplaces the unspoken expectation is that we will check any strong emotions we're feeling at the door."

”6 tips for escaping the matrix cage – and maximizing materiality” by David Korngold (GreenBiz.com) - "Unfortunately, it can be easy for the materiality matrix to become a cage—a lockbox for good intentions that never see the light of day. One company might spend a lot of time developing the matrix, but never do anything with it. Another might rush to put the matrix on paper but fail to use the process to obtain valuable input and commitments. Yet another might fill out the two axes and then discard them because the output does not address other dimensions of concern."

“3 guideposts for assembling a sustainability report” by Cora Lee Moony (GreenBiz.com) - "How do you know whether [sustainability reporting] will be worth it? It depends upon how much thought is given to materiality. The care and attention given to materiality is a key difference between a first report that is ultimately viewed as an expense, and one with tangible returns."

What are you guys reading this week? Leave us a comment here, or join the conversation on Twitter (@jenniferwoofter). 

How to Become a More Effective Sustainability Leader

In the Inc. article, 3 Things All Great Leaders Know About Themselves, author Les McKeown argues that great leaders continually seek to know themselves better. And since we're always looking for ways to help build the capability for our clients’ in-house sustainability leaders, we were intrigued to see the three questions that McKeown says will "yield immediate (positive) results in how you lead."

Do you typically undershoot or overshoot? The single most immediate area for self-awareness improvement I see in most leaders is to gain a clear understanding of how they set goals (formally and informally). Again and again I work with leaders unaware that they are consistently playing small ball (setting goals that are way too conservative given their talents) or forever overreaching (setting goals they won't achieve, causing disappointment for themselves and exhaustion in their team)...Once you know which is your tendency, the key of course is to recalibrate your goal setting. If you're undershooting, set your goals higher, step by step. If you're consistently overshooting, lower them, little by little. Once you've hit your sweet spot and are consistently hitting near or at the goals you set, you will of course want to start edging those goals upward. Nothing wrong with that--pushing goals based on a record of consistent success is a good thing.

This is a great question not just for individual sustainability practitioners, but also for the entire sustainability team. When setting energy, waste, and water goals, are you too conservative or too aggressive? Why do you lean one way or another? What are the pros and cons of your approach? 

Is your tendency to analyze, fix, or delegate? The second area I see leaders gain the biggest advantage from understanding is in knowing how they respond when things go wrong. Broadly, there are three possible responses: analyze what just happened; "just fix it"; delegate responsibility for fixing it to someone else. (These broadly map to the Processor, Operator and Visionary styles of leadership, respectively.) If in most cases you respond with a mixture of all three possible responses (some analysis, some direction, and some delegation), then all is well. If you consistently responded by going straight to one option (analyze, fix, or delegate), then you have a challenge ahead--you're taking a knee-jerk, and hence blinkered, approach to problem solving.

How do you resolve sustainability challenges? Do you have processes in place to thoughtfully evaluate problems so that they do not recur? Have you built a talented team around you who can pick up the slack and address problems on their own? Are you able to quickly and efficiently fix problems when they crop up?

Do you usually say yes or no? This last one is easy to analyze but just as profound: Do you consistently say yes to everything that comes your way, causing you to overcommit and underdeliver? Or do you consistently say no, building a reputation as a stick in the mud and missing opportunities to innovate?

This is probably the biggest challenge we see with sustainability strategies -- either they are scattered all over the place, or focused on a single issue. The truth is that an effective sustainability program needs to be built around a handful of high-impact issues that matter to the company and its value chain. This means that sustainability leaders must 1) understand what issues matter to the company and its stakeholders, 2) be able to prioritize those issues, and 3) develop initiatives that support and integrate those issues into the day-to-day decision-making processes of the company.

How does your leadership profile stack up against these questions? Are these the right questions to ask? Are any questions missing? (One of the people who commented in the original article suggested that the question, "how do your employees communicate with you?" should be a fourth question.) Leave us a comment here, or join the conversation on Twitter (@jenniferwoofter).

5 Questions to Ask a Sustainability Consultant Before You Hire Them

Eight years of sustainability consulting experience have taught us a bunch of things. For example, never reserve the last airline flight of the night, unless you want to risk spending an unplanned night at the airport hotel. 

But perhaps the most important thing we've learned is that the #1 factor in determining the success of a sustainability consulting engagement is NOT technical expertise. Shocking, right? Don't get us wrong, technical expertise is really important. But it's not the make-or-break factor that affects most consulting engagements.

The truth is that fit is the most important factor you should be looking for when hiring a sustainability consultancy. When we talk about fit, what we mean is whether or not the people you'll be working with are aligned and congruent with the way you work and your organizational culture.

To put it another way, most of the time it's relatively easy to find consultants who have the sustainability know-how you need. But consultants who are the right fit are going to be dramatically more difficult to find.

To help speed up the process of determining fit, try asking prospective consultancies the following questions: 

1. What makes you think that your sustainability consulting firm is the right fit for us?

Listen carefully to this answer. Nine times out of 10, the answer you hear will be all about the consultancy -- about their technical credentials and about their past experience. What you should be looking for, however, is an answer that speaks directly about YOUR organization. Do they demonstrate an understanding of the challenges you're facing? Have they asked probing questions to get at the heart of your needs, or rushed to present a proposal that reflects "their way" of doing thing? Can they reflect back to you the real reasons that you're looking to hire a sustainability consultancy?

2. How do you measure the success of your sustainability consulting engagements?

In our experience, this is an often-overlooked issue. Most proposals will specify deliverables -- a report, a carbon footprint, etc. But few will take the next step and clearly outline how they (and the client) should judge the success of the consulting engagement itself. It can be extremely helpful to make sure you're on the same page here. For example:

Bad: "We judge the success of the engagement based on client satisfaction." (Really? How will you measure "satisfaction"? Who is the "client" in this case -- the CEO, the average employee?)

Good: "The success of the engagement will be determined by this question: can 90% of incoming questions about sustainability (from retailers, customers, etc.) be answered within one hour?"

3. Who will be working on this project?

Fit is important at the organizational level, but also at the interpersonal level. Make sure that you have met the people who will be working on the project. The most important person will be the account manager (or the project manager) -- the person who will be your primary point of contact on day-to-day matters. But it's also helpful to jump on a video conference (seeing them in person makes a huge difference here!) with the entire project team.

4. What obstacles do you see in reaching full and effective implementation of most engagements?

This question gets at two important things. First, a good consultant will be able to quickly and clearly identify common obstacles that they will come up against. If they don't have a good answer, you should take that as a big red flag. Second, a consultant's response to this question will give you a heads up about what kind of interpersonal, time management, scope of work, and other problems they may encounter. Every consulting approach has its weakness, but you should go into it with open eyes. What you're looking for in a good fit is a) a consultant who thinks proactively about the challenges that will inevitably occur and b) a consultant who will work together with you throughout the engagement to quickly surface and resolve obstacles that stand in your way.

5. What kind of status updates should I expect to receive from you?

Lots of sustainability consulting occurs remotely -- in fact, you may find that only 10-20% of billable project hours are spent onsite at your facilities. That means you need to get comfortable with working in a non-face-to-face relationship with your consultant team. So before you commit, find out how often they expect to be in contact, what forms of communication are preferred, and how they deal with regular status updates. There is no right answer here, but the key is to discuss the options and find a mutually agreeable working relationship.

If you are in the market to hire a sustainability consultant, we hope that you'll contact us for a complimentary consultation with one of our lead consultants. We love working with new clients!