Category: Business

Recently, I’ve spoken with several organizations that want to green their operations. There are many good reasons for pursuing this. Of course, efficiency in energy and material use is financially beneficial. A green perspective also unleashes hidden cultural potential. Shared meaning, care for the earth and future generations, and re-connecting with nature are just a few of the sometimes-overlooked benefits. Not to mention increased media exposure, since walking your talk gives you a standout position in your market.

While all this possibility swirls around, it can be a daunting to bring it to a landing and find what truly fits your organization and culture. I have helped several organizations make this transition from a wide, sometimes vague, field of possibility to a clear vision and specific plan of action. Along the way, we engaged interested parties, transforming them from onlookers – even naysayers – to active participants.

Powerful questions are an important tool in this work. There’s a wonderful story on the Towards2060 website that reveals this truth:

An answer is always the part of the road that is behind you. Only questions point to the future.

What do I mean by “powerful questions?” Consider three types of questions that correspond to three purposes of inquiry:

• To focus attention
• To connect ideas and find deeper insight
• To create forward movement

When the purpose is more accurately identified, the questions can be crafted intentionally. This is both more efficient and much more likely to engage people in a lively and productive conversation. Open questions and well-structured brainstorming allows the group to:

• Create a climate of discovery
• Suspend premature judgment and premature action
• Check underlying assumptions and explore beliefs
• Listen for connections between ideas
• Encourage diverse perspectives

Here are some examples of powerful questions, related to a project that involves not only extensive building renovations, but also a look at mission and operations.

• What’s important to us about green building; why do we care?

• What opportunities can we see in doing a green renovation?

• What do we know so far and what do we still need to learn about it?

• What assumptions do we need to test or challenge here in thinking about a green renovation?

• If success was completely guaranteed, what bold steps might we choose?

• What challenges might come our way and how might we meet them?

[Note: resource for powerful questions]

It gives us great joy to craft questions like this and to lead discussions that help organizations move forward powerfully on a green mission. Let us know how we can help you.

Week 22

We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

How refreshing! The future is not something we passively live into, based on past patterns or trends. The future is something we create. If we aren’t happy with the current state of things, we can choose to examine our underlying assumptions and beliefs. Every single human system on earth is created out of nothing but the stories we tell ourselves about the meaning of life, our relationships with each other and the planet, and our capacities for good or evil. This week: can you identify a limiting belief that keeps you from designing a future that you are fully excited about?

Related quote: “The best way to predict the future is to create it” ~ Peter F. Drucker

More:The Awakening the Dreamer symposium provides excellent background and lays the foundation for this work.

Read the Weekly Green from Week 21 here.

We always love to hear from you! How juicy is this quote for you?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_6iTCo5Ci8[/youtube]

FOUR YEARS. GO. is a campaign to catalyze and empower a fundamental shift in the direction of humanity, inspiring collaborative action, connecting individuals and organizations, and amplifying best practices and successes.

This campaign is inspiring an awareness of the urgency to shift humanity’s trajectory by 2014, before our destructive trends make that shift impossible. They are empowering individuals and organizations to set and reach goals that will cause a positive global tipping point by 2014, setting humanity on a new path toward a socially just, environmentally sustainable, and spiritually fulfilling future.

This may sound like pie-in-the-sky, but — IT’S NOT. It’s entirely possible — as long as we think in terms of possibilities, rather than probabilities. (To paraphrase Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Movement.)

Take a look at this site. Get connected. Join a campaign. Become an allied organization. We just did.

Week 21

Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand. ~ Confucius

As a teacher, I find this humbling. Given my own education and experience, these three actions and results are listed in order of difficulty. Telling and showing come naturally, but are not very effective to catalyze lasting change. This week, what are some ways you can involve people or at least show them, rather than just tell them what you see?

More: “Switch” is a fantastic book about the power of experience to shape change.

Read the Weekly Green from Week 20 here.

We always love to hear from you! How juicy is this quote for you?

Guest post by Hunter Richards, Accounting Market Analyst at Software Advice.

Greenwash (verb, \ˈgrēn-wȯsh\) – to market a product or service by promoting a deceptive or misleading perception of environmental responsibility.

Businesses have been launching major marketing campaigns to promote eco-friendly products, but many of their environmental claims end up being questionable at best. Green products are beginning to lose their credibility as consumers become more suspicious of greenwashing. To restore the reliability of environmental marketing and prevent greenwashing from getting out of control, we need to increase corporate transparency and adopt a clearly measurable method for determining the environmental record of a business. It turns out that new accounting technology could be a major part of the solution.

The U.S. is a leader in financial accounting, but we need similar strength in environmental accounting to prevent misleading green marketing campaigns.  The recent development of Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) software enables companies to track their carbon emissions and identify opportunities for waste reduction. The full development and mandatory adoption of ECA software will make it much more difficult for businesses to cover up their environmental records. As carbon footprint transparency becomes more widespread, carbon accounting could become the new measure of a company’s environmental impact. When the information is released to the public, green marketing campaigns can cite concrete evidence to regain consumer trust.

But for ECA software and environmental accounting adoption to effectively make greenwashing obsolete, we need constructive action in five main categories:

• Clear government action on regulations – like increased coverage of the EPA’s Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule, which requires companies that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of greenhouse gases annually to disclose their emissions figures to the EPA;
• Adoption of carbon accounting principles – stricter requirements for disclosure of standardized corporate emissions for a precise way to examine a company’s environmental record;
• Expansion of Scope 3 emissions accounting – mandatory inclusion of suppliers’ emissions and other indirect sources (Scope 3) in environmental reports would prevent under-reporting <http://gizmodo.com/5120854/dells-carbon-neutrality-is-really-a-bunch-of-cow-poop>  of emissions and more quickly spread general adoption of carbon accounting throughout the supply chain;
• Better green business incentives – using ECA software to identify more eco-friendly savings opportunities – like tax incentives – can make it cheaper to truly go green, making greenwashing less tempting and putting real sustainability initiatives in the best economic interests of a business;
• Demanding, informed consumers – demanding the numbers, while boycotting the greenwashers, forces businesses with green marketing campaigns to prove their sincerity. Greenwashers won’t be able to hide any longer when consumers take this final step.

To learn more about ECA software and greenwashing prevention, read the full article, Software to Hold “Greenwashers” Accountable

Week 19

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Beauty is love made manifest. Approaching a problem with such open-heartedness brings in all the inspiration, creativity, and quantum leaps that are available to us. We are all born geniuses, so when we admire genius in someone like Bucky Fuller, we acknowledge that potential within ourselves. This week, how will you choose to tap the fullness and flow of your natural genius?

More: Bucky Fuller was wonderfully quotable. Read more quotes here.

Read the Weekly Green from Week 18 here.

We always love to hear from you! How juicy is this quote for you?

When I work with clients, whether on a design project or a sustainability initiative, I notice that people tend to go straight to technologies, strategies, and solutions. These certainly have their place, but they are not enough to sustain the project or the change campaign over the long haul.

Why not? In any creative venture when multiple variables are considered, we hit walls. Roadblocks. Stumbling points. Especially in collaborations, which basically covers everything in the world of business. (Isn’t it odd how effective collaboration is not generally taught in school? More on that another time.)

The most efficient way out of those impasses is a clear sense of purpose – in other words, knowing your “why.” Organizations that have a clear sense of why leave people inspired and excited about solving tough problems. On the other hand, if you are overly invested in specific what’s and how’s, it is very difficult to see new possibilities when a problem inevitably arises.

The importance of knowing not only WHAT we are creating, changing, or doing, but WHY, is put very elegantly by Simon Sinek in his book, “Start With Why.” Full disclosure: I haven’t yet read the book, but his website has some great video and downloads that explain the very simple concepts.

Sinek’s “Golden Circle” is a great visualization: three concentric rings with “why” in the center, then “how,” and finally “what.” Why is, fittingly, at the core. In his words, “why” speaks directly to our emotions, which is the place in our brain where decisions are made. When we align intuition and emotion with abstraction and planning, it’s a powerful combination.

As an example, Sinek points out, Martin Luther King had strong beliefs about justice and human rights. That was his “why.” He happened to live at a time when a great movement was stirring; that was the “what.” In his many inspiring speeches, he spoke about what he believed, and that became contagious. When he stood up to make his famous speech on the Mall in Washington, D.C., he didn’t say, “I have a plan.” He said, “I have a dream.”

I recently asked a client – a commercial photographer – to tell me her “why.” Here it is: “I suppose my “why” has to do with living what I believe, despite the personal costs. When I die I want to know that I have lived a life without hypocrisy. My success will not be measured in dollars, but rather in promises I have kept.”

I know her to be someone who conscientiously walks her talk. In her photography work, she switched to digital before anyone else – motivated initially by the environmental benefits. When she hired me to help them renovate an old barn into a gorgeous photo studio, the priorities were energy efficiency, salvaged and non-toxic materials, and solar hot water heat. She just seems to have an innate sense of how to prioritize and live her values through all aspects of her business. As she says in a recent blog post, “I have come to a cross roads on my career path and want now more than ever to wade into good-for-the-world commerce.”

What’s the “green why” in your project, green campaign, or brand? How clear is it to your clients, customers, and employees – both present and prospective?