Long term vs short term in Sustainability
In Sustainability, we talk a lot about lengthening our mental timescales – ‘building cathedrals’, making products longer lasting etc. And while this is great, we also have to be cognisant of the fast-moving world around us. Two of my clients have recently been blindsided by the sudden upsurge in public interest in plastic waste when they were focussed on building a low carbon/low waste legacy for future generations. Overnight, coffee cups have become THE measure of Sustainability performance in the public mind.
I’m a great fan of ‘and’ thinking rather than ‘or’ thinking. We need those long term strategies, planning and capital investment, but we also have to bear in mind that the perception of others can and does change rapidly and we need to keep abreast of that.
So what are our already overloaded Sustainability Managers to do? Well, if you have a champions’ network – and most of them are under-utilised – challenge them to solve the short term stuff. They’ll appreciate something positive to do!
If you don’t have a network, you can spontaneously invent one by running a competition between sites/divisions/teams to tackle a short term problem – ‘The Coffee Cup Challenge’?
The benefits of these approaches is that you can respond very quickly when the latest green thing comes flying over the horizon.