Don’t go quiet…
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One of the advantages of working with clients’ employees is you get a glimpse of the view of companies’ sustainability efforts through their eyes. A common complaint, which I heard again this week is:
We won [big award] – there was a big fuss with the Chief Executive and all the great and the good – and then it all went quiet and we thought the attitude was ‘job done, feet up’.
But, as is usually the case, there was lots of hard work continuing on with no real let up. The problem is that once you’ve raised the public profile so high, it is very hard to maintain it at that level. Some of this is inevitable, however there are a couple of things you can do to prevent a post-success slump:
- Make it clear in all your communications that the success is merely one milestone along the road to sustainability and that you have more ambitious targets.
- Give this narrative to the great and the good so they’re saying it as well.
- Secure commitment from the great and the good to show up at times other than the great successes – for example giving out annual green awards or pep talks to staff.
- Ensure that leaders are talking about your whole programme when they speak to internal or external audiences.
- Keep inserting fresh stories into the narrative so it doesn’t get stale.
As an aside, those who give out green business awards do so with all the best of intentions, but they don’t encourage continuous improvement. I think league tables are more successful – think Greenpeace’s electronics company ranking or the now sadly defunct Sustainable City rankings from Forum for the Future. People who win an award aren’t incentivised to win it again the way that people who come top of the league want to maintain that position.