2. Defining Sustainability

What do we mean when we say the word “sustainability”? How one person thinks about it might be very different from how another person thinks about it. Therefore, your first step in any sustainability plan is to define sustainability—why your company is doing this, what it means to your company specifically, how it adds business value—and settle on a common definition and language that all employees and stakeholders can both understand and get behind.

Employees will have questions and will want to know the following:

Is this a business driver or are you just trying to save the planet?

Is it about saving money or brand differentiation?

Are we doing this to appeal to younger, more socially and environmentally conscientious millennial consumers?

Is this about having a stronger connection with our community and other stakeholders?

Or are we just trying to do our part because we believe it’s the right thing to do?

Executives and management must answer these questions and explain the “why”: Why are we doing this, what is our company’s story around sustainability, what do we want to accomplish, and how can each employee play a part? They must communicate how all these actions around sustainability woven together will improve its social, environmental, and financial performance at the same time.

And there are literally dozens of other definitions out there. Some will resonate with your company whereas others will not. Therefore, while you are explaining the why, you need to define sustainability in a way that is true to your organization and is easily understood by all your employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

Depending on the nature of your business, sustainability could have a social, financial, or environmental bent:

If you are a retailer, sustainability might mean offering your goods and services at the lowest possible price so that all consumers can afford it. Or it might mean that all of your products are organic, fair-trade, local, non-GMO, and so on.

If you are like many companies that are just coming up for air after the financial crisis and the great recession, sustainability might just mean keeping the lights on and staying in business.

If your company mind-set is more focused on the environment, sustainability might mean saving money and the environment at the same time. Or it might be defined as producing the highest-quality products and growing the company while reducing your environmental footprint. Or it could mean greater profits while producing zero waste and zero emissions. It can be all over the map.

Or if you are a family or privately held business, sustainability might simply mean passing the company down to the next generation.

Don’t speak Greek! Or Geek, for that matter. How you talk about sustainability and the language you use is just as important as what you say. You have to put sustainability into terms that people can understand and relate to. Instead of thinking, This is really important and they need to know this! flip your mind-set and ask yourself, What does this person care about and how can we talk about sustainability in a way that they can relate to both personally and in their job?

Use the old MBA acronym WIFT—or what’s in it for them. Think about what is in it for the listener, not just what you want to convey.

This has been one of the major problems with the environmental movement over the past 25 years; it has often had the mind-set of trying to tell people what they should care about and why, rather than listening to people’s concerns, finding common ground, and communicating in a language they both understand about issues they care about.

For example, look at the Pacific Northwest salmon. For years scientists have been screaming about the potential catastrophic consequences to the salmon if we don’t change our practices. The problem is that regular consumers don’t care about farmed salmon weakening the genetic diversity of wild salmon, but they do care about how it tastes, what chemicals and dyes are used, and how it affects their health. These taste and health concerns are all impacted by the same root cause that scientists are worried about, so rather than engaging consumers around issues of genetic diversity, they should engage consumers on the issues they care about most.

Or to use a more recent business example, remember when the iPhone 4 came out? The first version was a huge bestseller, but there was a problem with the antenna if you held the phone in your right hand. Too often when you were making a call, the call was dropped. So when I went in to buy one, the salesperson was telling me all about the new features of the phone, including faster data, new apps, and a better camera, but the only thing I truly cared about was whether I could make a phone call without it being dropped! I kept asking about the antenna, but the salesperson kept talking about all the other benefits. He was not listening to my concerns nor was he framing the conversation around the thing I cared about.

It is no different when talking about sustainability. For whatever reason, people forget to ask themselves, Why would this person or organization care about what I am trying to tell them? Now, there isn’t a business-person in the world who will tell you that he or she enjoys polluting, generating waste, or threatening the biodiversity of our planet for their children. In fact, most people will tell you that they wish they could do more, but it’s just not in their job description.

That’s why tailoring both your message and your language to the person you are talking to is so important. If you want to be successful in getting your employees and co-workers to care about sustainability, think about what’s in it for them, and explain how integrating sustainability into their job will help these people be more successful in their day-to-day lives and deliver improved performance for their company overall.

Your primary role might end up being that of a translator, explaining the same concept in numerous ways throughout your company. If the language you are using isn’t getting through, you might have to tailor your message and utilize different words because whatever you are saying makes sense to you but not to others.

Table 2.1 Tailoring Your Language

Eli Reich, the CEO and founder of Alchemy Goods, believes that you need to “teach your employees, help them understand the language, help them understand the opportunity, and then let them make decisions.”²

Dawn Danby, the sustainable design program manager at Autodesk, adds that you need to “feed information back in a language employees and stakeholders care about and understand. When you do this, be sure to address both their fears and opportunities! Package it in a way that they get it.”³

For example, when dealing with executives, you cannot be heavy-handed, grandiose, or too “big picture” with your language. If they believe that their competitive advantage or purpose is based on technology, price, performance, or customer experience, you need to talk about sustainability in this context as well.

Another example is that of the engineer. If you are talking about sustainability in a general way and the engineer wants a specific technology solution, your language won’t work. Or if you are talking to a product designer who thinks from a customer/user perspective, making the business case won’t be as important to the designer as showing how the design solution will make for a better customer experience.

Lastly, it could be the wrong person delivering the message. Maybe the person is too corporate and doesn’t connect with the everyday employee. Or it could be the opposite and the person has too junior of a position to get the attention of the Board. Sometimes you just need to change the person who is delivering the message.

One of my clients has actually been very successful in deploying a data dictionary. Not only are people on the same page, but in situations in which a person leaves or a task is assigned to someone else, there is continuity of terms, words, and understanding, which minimizes confusion and increases the efficiency for everyone involved.

The same is true with sustainability. Develop an elevator speech that reflects what your company is trying to do on sustainability and embed it into your company culture. You want it to be short and sweet; something that your employees, volunteers, and Board understand; and easy enough to remember so that employees are able to communicate it with confidence when talking to stakeholders. This is especially helpful in situations in which there are new people or there has been turnover; being able to explain the company’s shared vision for sustainability will help continuously drive the message home and ensure that the torch is carried on. Table 2.2 gives you a few ideas on how to get input for your pitch.

Table 2.2 Employees and Sustainability

Make sure everyone knows why you are implementing sustainability.

Define sustainability and tailor it to your organization.

Make it easy to understand and simple for people to grasp.

Put your sustainability questions, opportunities, and actions into your audience’s language and use terms and words that the people you are talking to are familiar with.

Realize that you might have to be a translator at times.

Creating a common vocabulary within your company culture is essential.

Develop your sustainability elevator pitch and make sure that others can recite it easily.