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Monday, 8 March 2010
People Power
I've just seen a quote on marketeer Seth Godin's blog, attributed to Carnegie:"Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors......Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory."
There seems to be two approaches to sustainability - technology oriented and people oriented - and I always believe that the AND is important - you have to do both (hence my brainstorming tool).
But fundamentally everything is about people. People create technology, people implement technology, people operate technology. When a resource has a cost - that is a societal (peoples') value - you could argue that nature would put a higher value on a kilo of dung than a kilo of gold. So we always have to look at sustainability through the human lens.
I have a saying: the barrier to sustainability is six inches wide - the width of the space between our ears.
Labels: staff engagement, stakeholders, sustainability
# posted by Gareth Kane : 10:05
0 Comments
Monday, 1 February 2010
Questions, Questions
My (soon to be) three year old is starting to assert his independence. This morning there was a big row because I forgot to let him carry the Weetabix box to the breakfast table. Howls of outrage resulted. How did I get him to calm down? I asked him "how many Weetabix would you like?".The secret is in the very last character of that last sentence - the question mark.
It's not just children who respond to the calming effect of being asked a question. I use the technique to deal with all sorts of situations and it is great for dealing with recalcitrant staff when implementing environmental strategies. A question is non-threatening, flatters your companion, and engages them in conversation.
Look at these pairs to see how the question version is more persuasive than the declaration:
"We must go green! Everyone is doing it!" vs "How are we going to compete against green rivals?"
"We must cut waste!" vs "How can we cut our energy, waste and water bills? Any ideas?"
"Pollution incidents must be eradicated!" vs "What are the implications of a pollution incident?"
It works, doesn't it?
Labels: environmental strategy, staff engagement
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:07
1 Comments
Monday, 7 December 2009
Feedback from the LCBPE, 3rd Dec
I had a brilliant but exhausting day at the Low Carbon Best Practice Exchange last Thursday. A late train led to a missed connection wiping out my planned acclimatisation/caffeine hit period before I was straight into the my first workshop, Empowering Your Staff. As with the second session it was over-subscribed and I was relieved not to keep everyone waiting.During the session, I used Arnstein's ladder of participation to lead the attendees away from beating staff over the head to making them part of the solution - by getting them involved in developing solutions and delegating power as low as possible in the organisation. What always hits me about this session when I run it is the fear of getting staff involved - a lot of excuses were made why this just wasn't possible. "Empowerment" has become a bit of a cliché, but few people are really doing it. Getting client teams involved in developing solutions is the basic technique at the core of much of our consultancy work now as a. it gives better solutions and b. buy-in is automatic. We know it works.
There's always something new for me at these events and when I shared Northern Food's colour coding of machinery technique, one attendee from a food company pointed out how this could solved language barrier for her - her company has 32 different native languages on the factory floor. I hadn't considered that as a barrier to engagement before.
The second session was on long term environmental strategy. I got the participants to analyse their organisation using the sustainability maturity model. All agreed that they would have to move to the full integration level to address sustainability properly. We then discussed the difference between forecasting and backcasting in developing strategies and I got them to describe a vision of their business in 2020 to get them into the backcasting way of thinking.
As well as the two sessions, four people had requested individual meetings with me (two because they couldn't get on the first session). I also interviewed Nick Coad, Environmental Director of National Express, for The Green Executive - a really interesting guy, describing himself as "a failed elephant tracker" - and caught up with the two clients I had invited to the event who appeared to have really got lots of value it. My last meeting at 3pm was cancelled, so I finally got a wander around the stalls and then got out for some fresh air before getting the train home.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - these events are brilliant. Learning, sharing and networking are maximised and, while there were some powerpoint driven seminars in side rooms, I got through the whole day without hearing the words "I'll just get the technology sorted, and then...".
Labels: environmental strategy, green executive, low carbon best practice exchange, staff engagement
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
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Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Personal Journeys
I'm writing this on the train back to Newcastle, having left a rather unseasonally sticky London behind me. I'm smiling to myself at one of those fantastically tautological announcements only train companies can make:"I'm afraid we can't serve hot drinks from the trolley tonight. This is due to a malfunction on the trolley."
Glad they pointed that last bit out, cause it might have been, er, well... There was another classic on the tube yesterday.
"I'd like to apologise for the slight delay to your journey. The reason for this is we haven't been given a signal to proceed."
Again I felt much better informed for knowing that the driver hadn't just forgotten how to drive the train...
...anyway, speaking of journeys, I've been doing quite a few sustainability and related workshops recently. The gist of the sessions is always the same:
"to do sustainability properly you have to integrate it into all your business processes"
It has been fascinating watching delegates struggle with the fact that they might actually have to do something. They oscillate back and forth between the extremes of "this is not my problem" and "I'm up for the challenge". This is a personal journey they have to make and I (and you) can only gently help them on their way.
Some of their pronouncements sound like the train announcers above:
"Personally I'm not interested in sustainability. Because it's not something I think about."
Barracking them or patronising them would just send them back into their happy state of ignorance. You've just got to help them along the path - as always, questions are more useful than arguments. And as Confucious (or Lao-tzu) is said to have said - the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, so don't rush'em.
Labels: staff engagement, sustainability, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 18:06
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Friday, 5 June 2009
Don't forget...
...I'll be facilitating those two sessions at the Low Carbon Innovation Network, next Thursday, 11 June at the Olympia, London.Just to remind you, the sessions are:
1. Long Term Environmental Strategy, 10:00am
2. Empowering staff to take action, 3:30pm
My summaries of previous events can be seen here and here. Of course, I'll be posting a summary of next week's sessions here after the event.
Labels: environmental strategy, low carbon innovation network, staff engagement, training, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:58
0 Comments
Monday, 18 May 2009
More low carbon workshops with yours truly
Once again I'll be facilitating two sessions at the Low Carbon Innovation Network, this time on 11 June at the Olympia, London.The sessions are:
1. Long Term Environmental Strategy, 10:00am
2. Empowering staff to take action, 3:30pm
These events are really good and I always learn loads during the sessions. If you want some info about previous events, see here and here. Highly recommended.
Labels: low carbon innovation network, staff engagement, strategy, training, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:30
0 Comments
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Breaking bad habits in the workplace.
Last Friday I reviewed John Ehrenfeld's brilliant book Sustainability by Design - its central thesis is that we have to disrupt society's addiction to consumption. At the same time I have been inundated with requests for staff engagement sessions. My response tends to be, yes you could pay me to browbeat people over their lunch break, but they'll just go back to their desks and their same old habits.The same principle of breaking bad habits applies to staff as it does to society at large:
1. Disruption - stop people and make them think about their actions
2. Realignment - change the system to make good habits easier than old habits
3. Reinforcement - providing consistent leadership to ensure the good behaviour becomes a habit
This isn't easy and it'll take more than a lunch hour to achieve.
Labels: staff engagement
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:55
0 Comments
Friday, 21 November 2008
Yesterday @ LCIE Manchester
At yesterday's Low Carbon Innovation Exchange in Manchester I facilitated two sessions on staff engagement. Both sessions went really well, although like last month's event in Harrogate, there was a reluctance to move up the ladder of participation towards actually empowering staff to take action. The closest that participants had come to this was the use of suggestion schemes.Most people started with simple 'switch it off' schemes. Using surprise tactics is increasingly popular - chocolate mysteriously appearing overnight on the keyboards of switched off computers with no explanation has been tried and tested. An interesting variation is an unexplained green sticker on 'off' computers and a red one on 'on' computers - it would take staff a few days to work out what was going on.
Other successful tactics included educating people about savings at home, providing cycle purchase schemes and holding one-off green fun events.
The groups concluded that effective communication requires a mix of channels (intranet, e-mail, newsletters and posters had been used) and careful understanding of culture and language. One multinational reported that their overseas HQ, obviously not understanding the sarcastic nature of the phrase in English, wanted to call their sustainability engagement programme "In Your Dreams"... they were quickly educated why a new name was required in the UK.
Interestingly there was a lot of grumbling about getting senior management to engage and show leadership on sustainability - an MD launching a sustainability campaign then choosing a gas guzzling company car was one example of not walking the walk. We got into discussing guerilla tactics to get things moving - mainly focussing on economic benefits of energy saving actions, or using the popularity of green schemes amongst staff to embarrass the higher echelons of the organisation.
A great event - the participative powerpoint-free environment leads to maximum learning and minimum boredom. I'm already looking forward to next year.
Labels: communications, facilitation, facilitator, staff engagement, sustainable business
# posted by Gareth Kane : 15:41
0 Comments
Monday, 22 September 2008
Weekly Tip #27: Feedback
This is the latest of a series of tips extracted from the forthcoming Green Business Bible e-book:You can't visit a major industrial site without being confronted with a huge sign telling you how long it's been since the last incident. Why not take a leaf out of their book and provide continuous feedback on environmental performance? You can use display screens, your intranet or plain old graphs on a notice board near the water cooler or any other suitable media - just keep it simple and clear.
Labels: feedback, staff engagement, tips
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:53
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Monday, 11 August 2008
Weekly Tip #26: Loosen the purse strings
This is the latest of a series of tips extracted from the forthcoming Green Business Bible e-book:Provide a small fund (say £100 a year per employee) for any member of staff to implement a green idea. Most won't take it up, but it will give some freedom for those who are interested to act.
Labels: staff engagement, tips
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:57
0 Comments
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Why environmental performance matters more, not less, in an economic downturn
Two things happened to me yesterday that made me think about this:1. someone asked me if they thought the environmental sector would be hit by the so-called 'credit crunch' and associated economic downturn.
2. I filled up my diesel car's tank with fuel for the first time in two months and nearly passed on on the forecourt when I saw the cost.
It is fairly obvious that a good response to an economic downturn is to cut costs. If you have a 25% profit margin, then every £1 you save in your operations is worth £4 of sales.
The biggest cost in most businesses is staff. But if you cut staff you have to pay redundancies, you lose the investment you have made in training and development, and you hit the morale of those you retain. Plus, when things improve, you will have to rush around recruiting and training new staff which is both an additional cost and a delay which could cost you market share.
On the other hand, there are only ever benefits from reducing waste, energy costs, water costs, transport costs, raw material costs etc, etc. So if things are getting tight, why not divert some of that 'redundant' staff time into identifying and eradicating environmental costs? If you do it right, they should more than pay for themselves - and you will continue to see the benefits when sales pick up with the increased margin.
Labels: energy, raw materials, staff engagement, transport, waste
# posted by Gareth Kane : 05:18
0 Comments
Monday, 31 March 2008
Tip of the Week #8: Staff Committees
This is the eighth in a new series of tips extracted from the forthcoming Green Business Bible e-book:It is well understood that cultural change is vital to any sort of business improvement. Why not go beyond the usual training/awareness sessions and set up a staff committee to scrutinise every element of your business for environmental improvements?
Another tip next Monday!
Labels: staff engagement, tips
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:30
0 Comments
A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
