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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
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Friday, 31 July 2009
More on Marksies...
Yesterday, I interviewed Richard Gillies, Director of CSR, Plan A and Sustainable Business at Marks & Spencers for my second book. He gave some really great insights into how and why they're delivering Plan A (because there is no Plan B), including their first eco-factory in Sri Lanka, which you can see on the Telegraph TV video above.
The company is somewhat coy about what return they have got on their initial £200m five year programme of improvements. The official line is that it has been "cost-neutral, moving into being cost negative". The main reason why they don't want to be candid on this is that the main driver for Plan A is to reinforce the 'trusted brand image' of M&S, rather than deliver cost savings, and they don't want to appear to be mercenary by trumpeting financial savings. But it goes to show that, if you do it properly, green business won't cost you, but save you money.
Richard said that he saw Plan A as a change management programme, but of all the change programmes he has delivered before, this has been the easiest one to sell to stakeholders both within and outside the business. However there still was a language barrier between the 'CSR junkies' and the 'commercial animals' even though their interests were aligned.
His prime piece of advice was "seeing is believing - show people examples to get them on board".
Wise words from a leader in the field.
Labels: green marketing, marks and spencer, plan a, richard gillies, stakeholders
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:07
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Monday, 8 December 2008
Weekly Tip #37: Managing Expectations
This is the latest of a series of tips extracted from the Green Business Bible e-book:One trap that many fall into when working with stakeholders is to raise expectations too high. If stakeholders start to believe that they have ultimate say, they will get very angry if and when they are told they can’t have what they want. Tell them clearly:
We are listening to you, but at the end of the day we have to make the decisions, and sometimes we will disagree.
Labels: green business bible, stakeholders, tips
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:35
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
