As I’ve said before, our big theme in 2017 is Sustainability Conversations as this is where we believe breakthroughs lie. But the critical question is how do you get the right people interested in having that conversation in the first place? The answer lies in our old friend, Green Jujitsu.

Green Jujitsu is the art of framing Sustainability in terms which each audience will find irresistible. That means finding the overlap between Sustainability and that person’s/those people’s perspective on life. So for an Technical Director talk technical solutions, for a CFO talk £/$/Euros, for a CEO talk competition.

In practice this means the following:

• Engineering an opportunity to start a discussion on their terms (“Can you help me with something?”);
• Using their language, imagery and idioms, not impenetrable Sustainability jargon;
• Put the ball in their court by asking killer questions (eg “our competitors have just launched a non-toxic version of our product, how should we respond?”);
• Listen to their responses and encourage them to keep trains of thought going by asking follow up questions (this is essentially how I do my client coaching and it is very powerful).
• Summarising conclusions and next steps at the end of the conversation.

Key to all this is realising that Sustainability success will not be so much about how well you do your job as how well you can get other people to do their job. Let them take credit for success even if you’ve had to drag them kicking and screaming to that point.

We’ll be discussing sustainability conversations and green jujitsu in more detail on our webinar on 18th January – more details here.