Leveraging Sustainability for Culture Change

What differentiates sustainability from other culture change initiatives? Most businesses - likely including yours - have undergone some effort to either focus or re-envision their cultural DNA, and there are endless books on the science of getting it right. But we think that fostering a culture of sustainability requires a unique approach due to unique challenges.

Most cultural change initiatives are of a carefully defined scope, limited to one company or a company and its supply chain. Sustainability isn’t. Sustainability is a global, societal paradigm shift, a drive for humanity to better use our tools and resources to ensure a secure future. It can be hard to think in terms of how your business can contribute to a healthy, thriving global community. It’s also, at times, hard to see the benefits of sustainability on your quarterly reports.

These aren’t trivial difficulties. Many practices to promote sustainability happen on a day-to-day basis: recycling and separating your waste, managing power usage during peak hours, or choosing not to print out a report you can read on your computer, to name a few. These activities can be almost invisible on a case-by-case basis, but can have a profound cumulative impact. Often, the internal motivation to adopt a culture of sustainability is that ‘it’s the right thing to do’ rather than ‘it’s what shareholders want.’

Furthermore, many sustainability wins can’t be achieved on your own. These may involve collaboration with your supply chain, your shareholders or other external stakeholders. This means that adopting a culture of sustainability may require support from individuals and organizations outside of your direct control.

These factors make a culture of sustainability a very unique one to promote, requiring unique approaches.

What do you think?

How do you think these will affect your sustainability strategy?