Green Thread or Spinning a Yarn?
A while a go I mentioned an organisation which had ditched its environmental commitments and how it had fallen back from front runner to also ran. Well now they are bragging about “the green thread which runs through everything we do!”
What this appears to mean in practice is that they do business as usual and then scrabble around for a green angle to add to it. But, as I keep pointing out to them, you can’t push a thread. You can’t be proactive, you can’t drive new projects, you can’t innovate – at best you might pick the ‘least bad’ option in front of you. But more often than not it is greenwash pure and simple – the thread seems to be made of the same stuff than an Emperor once had some new clothes made from, because I can’t see it.
Cutting edge organisations set ambitious stretch targets which drive ‘green’ into the core of what they do. Don’t be tempted by the false seduction of green threads, cross cutting themes and other self-delusions, do it properly.