Broadening Horizons
Everybody looks at the world through their own ‘frame’ – the psychological filter that blots out the majority of stimuli to concentrate our attention on what matters.
One thing the sustainability practitioner must realise is that, when it comes to sustainability, some people’s frame is extraordinarily narrow. At the HR event I attended last week, someone said “The only sustainability issue HR can get involved in is commuting.” They simply hadn’t thought about recruitment, behaviour at work, training, personal sustainability objectives or employee engagement.
For those of us who eat, sleep and breathe sustainability, such a narrow view is unbelievable. Trying to ‘correct’ a narrow viewpoint, however, is dangerous – you can’t nag or humiliate someone into taking a broader point of view as the shutters will come down instead (although I personally struggle to fight the temptation, I have to say). Green jujitsu says you need to get people to work it out for themselves.
You can accelerate this process, not by saying “No, that’s not the case”, but by saying “Another issue HR can get involved in is communicating our sustainability culture during recruitment.” If you let the conversation go for a bit and then make another suggestion, everyone will soon start to explore the breadth of the topic. And that’s when sustainability gets under their skin.