Every morning this week I’ve walked past a parked car belonging to a meter reading company. The back of the car is plastered in stickers telling us how eco-friendly it is, but every morning the driver has been sat inside reading the paper with the motor running. Tut, tut.

This illustrates two things:

• From an environmental point of view, you can invest in all the green technology you like, but if your employees aren’t engaged in the process, and changing their behaviour, it won’t matter a fig;

• From a public relations point of view, if you’re going to talk the talk, you’d better make sure that everybody is walking the walk or you’ll get egg on your face.

Most importantly, it demonstrates the need to get everybody signed up to your sustainability programme. The ideal is for every employee to be a sustainability ambassador – if that sounds pie in the sky, try speaking to any employee of InterfaceFLOR and you’ll get a pleasant surprise at the zeal for all things green.

My ‘green jujitsu’ approach is designed to achieve this by working to employee’s strengths, interests and habits to make them part of the solution rather than seeing them as part of the problem. So how might it help bring this errant driver back into line? Assuming the culture of a meter reading company has a big focus on data, a first step could be to provide some statistical feedback on fuel consumption. Further steps could include challenging all drivers to develop plans to reduce their consumption, and running a competition between teams to deliver the biggest reduction – inject some fun and peer pressure into the equation. And then they might see some real progress – even when no-one is looking.