6. Management Support Is Essential
Every company I’ve ever worked with has been full of bright, intelligent, and passionate people who want to find ways to operate more sustainably, but they are held back by a combination of things—time, resources, budget, and authentic management support. Employees need to see management walking the talk in a sustained and consistent fashion, backing up their words with actions, decision making, budget, and time.
People Need to See, Hear, and Feel Leadership Support
I’m often reminded of a story about W. Edwards Deming when the quality movement was taking off in Japan in the 1970s and early 1980s. A CEO once asked Deming to speak to his leadership team and educate them on ways to increase the quality of the company’s processes and products.
The CEO introduced Deming to his leadership team and told them that he wanted them all to listen to what Deming said, buy into what is being taught, and then be ready to implement it next week. Then the CEO walked out of the room.
Deming paused and then walked out after him.
In the hall the CEO asked Deming, “What are you doing?” To which Deming replied that the CEO had just undermined the importance of the whole thing by walking out. In fact, Deming told the CEO that he refused to give the training unless the CEO turned around and went back in. Which he did.
I think the Deming example is important because the same is true with sustainability. Management cannot just say that sustainability is important; it has to demonstrate its commitment through its actions.
Employees will become disillusioned if they feel as though they are being asked to do something but leadership won’t provide the time or resources or show the commitment necessary to be successful!
Therefore, if management is claiming to give you full support but in reality they aren’t, show them a different issue within the company that is a priority, and then compare and contrast the level of engagement you are receiving to show them the gap between their actions and words.
There are multiple ways for management to demonstrate that support, and according to Dawn Danby, the sustainable design program manager at Autodesk, “There is a big difference between ‘thou shalt do’ from the CEO and ‘you have management’s blessing.’”1 Either way, it’s important for management to show support for sustainability by doing the following:
Showing up and making themselves visible
Providing budget
Providing time and resources
Walking the talk and reinforcing their message
Incorporating sustainability into decision making
Providing “air cover” so people can prove things out
One of my favorite examples of management showing support is that of Lyell Clarke, the CEO of Clarke, a leading product provider for the large-scale building cleaning industry. The company was about to embark on their sustainability journey and Lyell wanted to create a moment that his entire management could galvanize around. He wanted to acknowledge that they didn’t know 100% what they were getting into, but that they were going to do it anyway. So at his leadership meeting, he had his entire management team jump into a pool at the same time. This provided a camaraderie-building moment that employees related to, as management was literally jumping in with its own two feet around sustainability.
Budget
We’ve all heard the phrase “Put your money where your mouth is!” It’s true. If you are serious about sustainability, you need to fund it.
Companies that succeed not only create the positions and give authority to their green team and sustainability managers, but provide them with budgets to actually get things done. Budgeting is truly where the rubber meets the road. A company cannot say that sustainability is a priority and then give it a measly budget. If a company wants to implement sustainability and make it stick, it cannot be an unfunded mandate.
Just as one cannot expect the sales and marketing departments to be able to drive new business without a budget to pursue new leads or ideas, companies cannot expect much to get done without a budget for sustainability. I like to say to executives, “You can’t have champagne taste with only Bud Light money!”
For example, one of my best friends had a sales job at a multimillion-dollar outdoor retailer and was also given the title of sustainability manager when the company realized it needed to take action. The problem, though, was that he was only given a budget of $10,000 and was told that he could spend only four hours a week on sustainability. What kind of message is being sent? Probably something like, “We’d like you to do all that you can, and, even though it’s really not too much of a priority for us, we still expect you to deliver results.” Needless to say, not much has progressed in terms of sustainability.
What to Do When the Budget Is Less Than You Need
As with most initiatives, the reality is that at first you probably won’t have all the funding you want to accomplish all that you need to do. So what do you do when the funding is less than you need? Get creative, be entrepreneurial, bootstrap, and find allies. I’ve found that working in this space requires people to be innovative and sometimes scrappy because you must be able to work across the company to find areas of common ground with other departments. For example, if you are a sustainability manager and you cannot get funding for a CSR report, but you know you need to deliver one for a certain stakeholder group, then you might have to reach out to the following departments for help because they might share your interest and have the following motivations:
Human resources: They want to highlight sustainability in their recruiting efforts, especially with millennials.
Investor relations: They need to respond to SEC guidelines and shareholder resolutions and respond to questionnaires from to SRI funds.
Marketing and public relations: They want to tell their sustainability story for their brand.
Supply chain: They might want to influence and inform their value chain.
Sales: They respond to customer or vendor questionnaires, such as the Walmart scorecards.
The Battle between Budgets
One of the trickier budget issues you will run into is what to do when one department’s actions impact another’s budget. How do you navigate a situation where an action helps your department but may end up negatively impacting someone else’s?
Or what should you expect if you ask someone to make an investment from their operational budget this year and the payoff isn’t going to show up until next year or the year after? Even though this might make sense for the company overall, they are going to be hesitant because this might make their department look bad and they might suffer because of it.
Mary Kay Chess has experienced that “asking people to think about the business and getting them to think more broadly about other departments and the rest of the company is very difficult. The larger the company, sometimes the harder it is to get people to do that, especially if it hits their budget directly and that’s what they are being evaluated on.”2
This will be the case, so be prepared for it. First look for ways to get sustainability improvements and actions built into the capital budget so that both of your departments can reap the future rewards of potential better operating margins when the benefits start occurring. But if you cannot do that, as mentioned previously, try to find common areas of interest and look for opportunities where your budget and actions can positively impact what others want to do in their departments. This will build allies.
For example, the CSR director at one of our retail clients, who had been struggling with a skeptic in the company’s facilities department, found out that this individual’s main concern was that he didn’t want to give up any part of the budget for fear of getting a lower budget the next year. The CSR director found a way to use some of the sustainability budget to help fund some facility improvements that would help “green up” their headquarters and generate an operating savings for this individual’s department. This turned the skeptic from being one of the biggest roadblocks to being the director’s biggest cheerleader and supporter.
Make It Part of the Normal Business Cycle
Getting sustainability initiatives into the normal business cycle and budgeting schedule is also key.
From experience, I’d say for the majority of my clients, sustainability is usually a bit of an afterthought when it comes around to budgeting in their first or second year. Just like anything else, sustainability needs to be included in the normal budgeting cycle. As companies mature around their sustainability efforts, this will become second nature; however, it is something to be aware of when just getting started.
Developing Your Own Internal Fund
Another way to protect the budget of future sustainability projects is for the company to create an internal revolving fund.
The idea is that sustainability gets funded with initial seed money and the savings from these projects then funds future investments. This is a self-sustaining way to ensure that projects continue to move forward and aren’t prone to the annual budget battles at headquarters or management’s shifting priorities.
For example, Harvard created a revolving Green Loan Fund that has been quite successful. It is a $12 million fund that “provides upfront capital for projects that reduce Harvard’s environmental impact.” Projects pay back the loan from their savings within five years. It has funded 192 projects, loaned out over $15.1 million, and has achieved $4.8 million in savings with a median ROI of 29.9%.3
If you do this, make sure that the fund is hands-off to other departments, so that your savings don’t get raided, and you can continue to make investments over time.
Dedicate Time and Resources
Although having the budget is incredibly important, surprisingly it’s a lack of time and resources that most of my clients have cited as the roadblocks to actually getting the job done. Since the financial crisis, employees have been working longer and harder than ever before. Many people have been working the equivalent of one-and-a-half or two jobs while employers have been slow to hire. This has been to the detriment of many motivated individuals or companies because people simply haven’t had the time or energy to work on sustainability issues.
Even for the no-cost low-hanging fruit, like adding sustainability criteria and questions to your vendor agreements or having your IT department set all the printer and copier defaults to double-sided, employees just didn’t have the time or go-ahead from supervisors to pursue them.
A common theme I hear with firms, especially as they are just getting started on sustainability, is that they have the support of their boss “as long as it doesn’t take time away from their current job.” This kind of thinking is unrealistic because how can someone work on something but only if it doesn’t take time away from their existing work? This means they have to work on it after hours, during lunch, or on their free time.
This is not management support. In fact, it is exactly the opposite: It’s confusing and it sends mixed signals. Managers cannot give support to measures and then not allow employees to have the time or resources to implement them.
Of course, in the short term, employees can work extra hours and pull heroic efforts, but eventually their energy and enthusiasm will begin to wane and they will burn out or lose heart. Half measures will only produce half results; resources need to be dedicated.
Provide Time to Innovate
Companies need to provide the time, space, and “air cover” necessary for people to innovate, try new things, and occasionally fail when trying to come up with new solutions. At 3M, for example, “technical staff spend 15% of their time on projects of their own choosing and initiative.”4 This was the type of thinking that led to the development of Scotch Tape and Post-it Notes. I’m not saying that you have to devote 15% right off the bat—you might want to start with between 1% and 5%—but this is the type of time investment that can be very beneficial and applicable toward innovation around sustainability.
Prove It Out. Small Wins Build Momentum
You don’t have to bet the farm all at once. Prove it out first!
If you are struggling to gain management support, develop a pilot project or prototype to prove out your ideas. I can honestly say that when we try to build management support with each of our clients, one of the first concerns executives have is about making a radical change that will alter their business model, company culture, or way of life.
For example, when I first met with one of our contractor clients, right off the bat the client asked, “If we start down this whole sustainability journey, are you going to want to turn us into a bunch of Prius-driving vegetarians?” Of course we weren’t, but this was the client’s fear. So we had to start small and prove it out to create buy-in.
Telecommuting is another common “prove it out” example. For most service- and office-based businesses, one of their largest environmental impact areas is the emissions generated from employee commuting. Companies typically first look at offering benefits such as bus passes or van pools, but the biggest opportunity, often at the lowest cost, is to offer telecommuting or WFH (working from home) as an option. This can require the biggest mind-set change from management for two reasons: (1) they simply cannot get past the worry that employees are slacking off at home; and (2) although the manager might generically support a program, when it comes to the manager’s department, often it is a belief that “my employees need to be there every day.” The unfortunate reality is that managers typically empower and trust their best employees around the office, but for some reason, that trust doesn’t always extend to employees when they are working from home.
Business Case: Work from Home
“Deloitte LLP offers most of its 45,000 employees nationwide the option to telecommute as many as five days a week. As leases came up for renewal, the consulting firm was able to reduce office space and energy costs by 30%. In fact, Deloitte saved $30 million in 2008 after redesigning facilities to accommodate mobile workers who don’t need permanent desks.”5
At Cisco Systems, with 65,000 employees in 92 countries, $1 billion was saved in 2.5 years through videoconferencing, but their real payoff is considered to be retention due to increased work-life balance and decreased traveling and thus decreased time away from families.6
Small Wins Build Momentum
Small wins help build momentum and demonstrate the possibilities that sustainability can bring to your organization. Just as in baseball, while everyone wants to be the home run hitter and swing for the fences right off the bat, realize that if you hit a few singles first, that will better set you up for home run opportunities later.
When trying to gain management support for your sustainability ideas, first figure out the business benefit. The actions that save or make money and also have sustainability benefits will gain acceptance more quickly than others with less quantifiable benefits.
Dave Low, the director of sustainability practices at Kidder Matthews, confirms that small wins are essential to building management support. “You have to do more than show an anecdote. If you can win business and bring revenue to your company through sustainability, that will help to gradually shift the culture of the organization. Nothing makes the case better than results.”7
Ross Freeman, the former environment and sustainability manager of Stevens Pass, agrees. He has seen that the best way to build that momentum is to pick two or three programs, make them work, look good, “and make sure you inform management of the success and beneficial outcomes.”8 Then if any of your successes are press worthy, he’s a big supporter of communicating success externally to get positive media coverage from your efforts.
Small wins help breed success because they begin to make what might seem like unattainable goals more reachable. As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says, it’s important to “get points on the board” when you can.
Lastly, when you have small wins, be sure to document what occurred and why. Kevin Hagen experienced that at some point, “a common myth will be born as to why success occurred, with most people thinking it was obvious or the work of smart people, and will overlook the barriers that needed to be overcome and how this occurred.”9 Be sure to write down what happened so that you can build off of those successes and speak the truth years later as to what things it actually took to be successful and how the eventual whole was initially made up of a number of small initiatives.
Activity 16: Management Support Checklist
In what ways does management walk the talk on sustainability? In what ways does it need to improve?
Do you have resources (human and financial) dedicated to sustainability efforts?
Do your managers mention sustainability to people other than you?
Do your managers see sustainability as an opportunity rather than a challenge?
Does management have sustainability embedded into its decision-making criteria?
Has management asked you about situations in which sustainability could be applicable that you have not brought up yourself?
Lessons Learned
The following are key takeaways from the “Management Support Is Essential” chapter:
People need to see, hear, and feel leadership’s support because half-hearted support leads to half-hearted results.
Fight for a dedicated sustainability budget.
You must dedicate time and resources as well. Employees need the time and management approval, and should not be expected to work on sustainability after hours or after everything else gets done.
Find easy and fun ways in which management can walk the talk. Don’t start with the toughest, most painful stuff at first. Be patient and realize that it takes time to bring along the whole management team.
Start with a pilot project if you meet resistance. Don’t bet the farm; prove it out first.
Underpromise and overdeliver. It’s always better to overdeliver than to come up a few dollars short and fall short of expectations.