Archive for April, 2010
Can we manage without the outdated rhetoric?
Alex Pollock
There is no law I can find that prevents organizations from being engaging, innovative, adaptable and bureaucracy free.
Yet as we bring our bodies and brains to work each day we often shake our heads with frustration and bewilderment as we observe high sounding corporate principles that bear no resemblance to day-to-day management practices. I read a statement recently that said it better than I could: “There is something going on today in our companies that depletes the natural resilience and creativity of human beings.”
What can we do in the EHS community to reverse this situation for our colleagues and reduce the gaps between rhetoric and reality? What are those misguided beliefs that we’ve grown up with? What are the beliefs are we creating that the next generation will likely abandon?
Some that come to my mind are:
- Change starts at the top
- It takes crisis to trigger a paradigm shift
- Leaders get appointed and perform because on their relationship with those “above” them
- Leaders must be served
- Career advancement means promotion every few years
- Titles matter
- Forced ranking systems keep organizations refreshed
- Annual “performance” awards keep people motivated
- Competency profiles are necessary to get people fitting their job
- Failure is bad for you
What outdated beliefs would you like to add to this list? What insights can you share that would close the rhetoric-reality gap?
Taking sustainability from aspiration to operation
Carol Singer Neuvelt
To succeed in the ‘Age of Sustainability,’ environmental managers need more than technical competency: They need to take a more holistic approach to problem solving, create new systems, inspire others to change and communicate better with the outside world. This week we’re off to our Sustainability Conference at Genentech in Palo Alto, Calif., to discuss each of the skills you’ll need to practice sustainability in the business world.
One of the biggest barriers companies often face in tackling sustainability is how they define what it means to their business. This week we’ll discuss how integrative business thinking can break down the notion of internal silos, generate new solutions and promote greater ownership of the challenge. This shift in perspective can be the difference between a system in which you add a scrubber to the end pipe to one in which you eliminate the need for the scrubber altogether.
Eventually the solutions that come from this new analysis, though, need to be translated into formal processes. How do you define the parameters of a sustainability program? How do you measure energy consumption across your supply chain? How do you evaluate your success? We’ll talk about these questions and look at case studies of how environmental managers have developed programs around sustainability that make sense for the kind of businesses they represent.
And since all this activity increasingly involves individuals from other departments, the environmental manager has evolved from the person who says, ‘You’ve got to change this,’ into the ambassador of environmental stewardship. We will focus on communication strategies for inspiring cultural change within an organization and identify techniques for sharing metrics without ‘greenwashing’ the results.
Every time I attend one of our meetings, I learn that real change happens incrementally, within a formalized framework. For those of you who can’t take part in the discussion in California, what steps have you taken to lead your company forward? What skills are you using today to make sustainability a reality within your business?
Don’t Put Nuttin’ in Writin’
I grew up in Chicago during the reign of “Da Mare” (Richard M. Daley, Sr.) and a generation after Big Al (Alphonse Capone) ran the town. Back then, the quip was that only politicians and gangsters said, “Don’t put nuttin’ in writin.’” As the recent brouhaha over the flippant comments in e-mails between climate researchers illustrates, there may be wisdom in the way the old pols and mobsters operated, particularly when viewed from the perspective of an EHS professional.
The Role of the Environmental Manager in the Age of Sustainability
What often gets lost in the buzz and excitement around corporate sustainability is that at a certain point, someone has to sit down and figure out how to turn this big idea into a reality. For the past thirty years, that person has been the environmental manager.
