A Baker’s Dozen: 13 Sustainability Ideas for 2013
Well Happy New Year everyone! We had what every refers to as a ‘quiet’ Christmas and New Year, but I’m sure fellow parents will agree with me there is nothing quiet about a household with three kids aged 3 months to 5 years. Anyway, as the decorations come down and the cake starts to run out, it is time to focus our thoughts on the year ahead. Here are my 13 recommendations for your sustainability New Year’s Resolutions:
1. Make sure the board is on board and fully signed up – preferably making personal and specific commitments to drive sustainability forward within their own sphere of influence;
2. Review the relationship between authority and responsibility for sustainability in the rest of your management structure and make the necessary changes to improve alignment;
3. Review the commitments and approaches of your sectoral rivals and work out what you will need to do to leapfrog/stay well ahead of them;
4. Review and refresh all your sustainability communications to make sure they are fresh, fun and relevant to the day-to-day experience of your employees;
5. Review and refresh your employee engagement to adopt Green Jujitsu principles – working to employees’ strengths rather than trying to correct weaknesses;
6. Put together a workshop of a cross section of employees to identify physical and bureaucratic barriers to sustainability – and then terminate them with extreme prejudice (the barriers, not the employees);
7. Give up on any venture which has either never worked, or has done as much as it can – eg voluntary environmental champions – thank those involved for their efforts and refocus your energy where it will make a difference;
8. Do some backcasting – create scenarios of how your sustainability goals could be implemented in, say, 2018 or 2023, and work backwards to see what you need to do and stop doing now;
9. Give your supply chain a shake up – sack a few suppliers who aren’t taking sustainability seriously, particularly any who are a liability to your brand reputation;
10. Train your buyers in sustainability and task them, along with design/engineering staff if appropriate, to develop a significantly more sustainable supply chain;
11. Engage with HR, not only to ensure the alignment in point 2, but to ensure sustainability is embedded into recruitment, induction and personal development functions;
12. Give up on all those generic dull powerpoint-heavy conferences and find those fora where you actually interact with your peers and learn from each other through facilitated discussion;
13. Sharpen your own saw: get some training or coaching which will stretch your thinking and push you to new levels of success.
So pick a few of these (no 13 is mandatory, by the way) and drive them through to make 2013 your most successful and rewarding year yet!