Take your Green Team to the next level

Kim Allen

For many companies, the sustainability program begins with a corporate “Green Team.” This group—often a multifunctional mix, and often a volunteer effort—brainstorms ideas for green initiatives, then carries them out in various ways, ranging from hidden skunkworks projects to those with full executive blessing and funding.

Many companies go through the initial year of setting goals and completing some of the low-hanging-fruit projects that could be done with relatively little investment of time or money. But moving on to Phase II projects, which require more stakeholder commitment, money and time, is not always as easy.

These types of volunteer task forces operating a bit outside the normal business process are, for a lack of better words, unsustainable. There is no single solution for how to take a Green Team to the next level: it depends on factors unique to each company. (For tools and ideas, download the Sustainable Industries Green Office Guide.)

Push

The “push” type is still trying to get the organization—either the executives or apathetic employees – to fully support it. Here are a few tips:

• Engage the left brain. If the team was energized purely by enthusiasm about “green,” it may help to quantify. With some solid numbers backing up the team’s ideas (“this packaging change will save us $20,000 and shrink our product weight by 20%”), executive and peer support will have something to coalesce around. Also, the marketing folks’ interest will be drawn by having a clear story.
• Engage the right brain. However, if the team is too numbers-oriented, it may be missing the joy. Smile! Have a celebration to increase people’s interest. Do something fun and silly.
• Improve the alignment. Maybe your team has been trying to sell sweaters in the tropics, basically speaking the wrong language. Look more carefully at how the green effort supports existing company strategy, product lines, or other corporate goals.
• Patiently persist. Some organizations are just slow to change—they need time to digest new ideas. In this case, patiently continuing is the best advice, so they know you are not going away. To keep team members’ interest, try some new activities you haven’t done before—perhaps tree planting, or a newsletter.

To implement any of these options, consider bringing a new person or two onto the team. Even that shift in dynamics can have a large positive effect.

Pull

The “pull” type finds itself in great demand from the rest of the organization, which has embraced sustainability efforts with gusto. A surge of energy can be as challenging to handle as stagnation. eBay’s Green Team grew from 40 to 2,400. Deloitte received a 90 percent response rate in the Bay Area to its solicitation for Green Team members. What to do with hundreds – or thousands – of enthusiastic employees is a good problem to have, but still takes some skillful management to focus the energy in one direction.

• Benchmark. If you have a newly-enlarged team, before diving into ten new project areas, ask them to step back and find the best practices in the industry. This provides needed time for team bonding, and also ensures that you are not reinventing the wheel.
• Create community. Set up an intranet site or use social collaboration software to centralize communications. NVIDIA created an internal online platform for sharing, discussing, and combining green initiative ideas. This allowed better coordination of a geographically extended team.
• Dig deeper. If the initial sustainability efforts were successful and the company’s thought process is maturing, consider larger questions like the company’s business model. Would leasing instead of selling be a viable option? Does the way you price your product contribute to non-green consumption by your customers?
• Standardize/operationalize. In the beginning, openness and individuality bring the most benefit. But later, a more disciplined approach is better. Maybe it’s time for the Green Team to be led by an operations manager, not a “visionary” inspirer? More on standardization in the last section below.
  

Overwhelm

The “overwhelm” type has garnered support for its work in principle, but has lost momentum. In the current economy, nearly all companies are doing more with less. Green Team members may be stressed beyond their capacity to keep contributing. After a round of layoffs, for example, many remaining employees just want to hunker down and get their jobs done, not think about environmental initiatives. Nonetheless, there are ways to stay connected with the essence of sustainability:

• Find the silver lining. It’s a great time to suggest energy efficiency measures. Or, thinking even more creatively: If there are forced shut-down days, use them for volunteerism.
• Flow with nature. In nature, there is day and night, summer and winter. Activity always alternates with dormancy. It’s OK to lie fallow for a few weeks if you do so intentionally. Plan a “spring blossoming” party a month from now and encourage Green Team members to come to it rejuvenated and with at least one fresh idea.

I find the “overwhelm” scenario the most poignant. It exemplifies an all-too-familiar occurrence: When people feel threatened or stressed, their interest contracts to their own self. Even dedicated Green Team members may suddenly feel like they cannot contribute to a larger cause.

We see this same “stress and overwhelm” dynamic at a societal level: People’s over-busy lives lead them to think only of their immediate needs, which is a key factor (although far from the only one) in our current system’s unsustainability. It is important to reflect on whether we lead our life at a truly sustainable pace.

What Gets Transformed?

A Green Team cannot work outside the company’s normal operations, especially if it is a volunteer effort. As a sustainability program takes root, it should be woven into the existing systems in some way.

On the one hand, this is exactly the goal—making sustainability normal, tangible, and an essential part of business strategy. And yet, how sustainability gets woven in is also important. Is the Green Team transforming the business into something new, or is the business simply turning the Green Team into another piece of its existing infrastructure?

The work of Green Teams shades into leadership development, positive culture change, and teambuilding. Sustainability at its best is different from standard operations—it has a broader level of consciousness. This is good to bear in mind as your Green Team takes its work to the next level.

Whatever “Green Team 2.0” looks like for your company, keep your eye on the larger aspiration.

Kimberly Allen is a principal at Pañña Consulting, which helps clients integrate sustainability into their strategy and culture. Services include consulting, workshops, and training sessions for businesses, nonprofits, certified B Corps and public entities. She has an MBA in Sustainable Business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute and can be reached at kim@pannaconsulting.com.