Embedding sustainability through culture - the secret of a successful change agent
Never can an insight be brought more sharply to your attention than when you realise something is lacking. Sometimes we find it hard to place importance on things we find difficult to grab hold of or see, in this case the qualities of change, namely culture. After working with a few organisations who are struggling to embed sustainability – i.e. moving from some great initiatives, people and strategies to sustainability being an organising principle – the importance of cultural change has been brought back into focus.
This is the reason behind our network event on the 27th September on ‘How to become a successful change agent’. The event is designed to support change agents in using practical frameworks and tools to facilitate this embedding process. Our associate Kate Rawles will inspire change agents through an examination of our worldviews, values and culture in the context of sustainability.
So what does ‘a culture that enables sustainability’ mean?
An organisation or society’s values are the basis upon which all else is built. Culture is constructed from commonly-held and relatively stable beliefs and attitudes. It can generally reflect leaders’ beliefs and wider values and is realised through the actions and work practices as it provides the rules of behaviour across an organisation.
Underlying most business culture is the value of financial success above all else, and values across the public sector currently evolve around austerity and the sound use of resources. When we look to embed sustainability in an organisation, we aim to expand its existing values to also include social values as well as the creation of societal value realised within environmental limits.
A sustainability lens or culture is therefore about the future of your business, it’s about an organisation being able to manage complexity and uncertainty and being adaptable to the changing external context it operates in. It also requires the stimulation of experiments and innovation, where permission is given by leaders and programmes for people to act in the interest of values beyond the organisational horizon. It is not about an organisation being equipped to survive or even adapt but about generating new models and approaches into the future. Sustainability becomes a lens to motivate and find an authentic connection with staff, customers as well as wider society. Ultimately, a sustainable organisation is one that places learning at its heart.
For the last 15 years we have worked with many businesses and public sector organisations supporting them to embed sustainability as an organising principle.
Here is what change agents need to include in embedding programmes when creating a culture that is conducive for sustainability:
- An understanding of people’s motivations and values, and the current organisational culture in order to understand where your organisation is today.
- Demonstration of the values and cultural aspiration of sustainability through your programmes, in order to create a bridge from where you are today to where you want to be.
- Find and support a critical mass of the organisation (around 15-25%) who are willing to get involved, and provide the permission and legitimacy for them to experiment and innovate.
- Invest in and support learning networks and organisational conversations that create new social norms and a culture of sustainability. Create incentive structures to support this.
- Alongside more tangible strategies and processes, build the capacity of people who can support the transition so they can help you to facilitate the change.
If organisations – through their change agents – master this learning orientation they are also more likely to leap forward and to become pioneers in their sectors. They can start to shape the context and the systems in which they operate to support sustainability – something crucial for System Innovation.
Come and join us at our network event to look at the different strategies for change agents to embed sustainability, and to understand how sustainability embraced as a worldview and culture can enable us to accelerate the change towards sustainability.
To find out more about our network event click here.
Comments
This is a great post. I especially like your point about critical mass. Too often we think we're supposed to change everybody, so we create incremental change programs that must seem basic and uninspired to more creative thinkers. I wonder what could happen if a company leader challenged its people to come up with solutions to save resources, and then rewarded them with recognition and support in implementing the idea? Of course, such a thing won't happen unless the company's CEO or top-level management are actually interested in sustainability, which many are not. Unless the leader holds it as a core value, decides to actively and consistently champion it, and holds others accountable, sustainability will continue to be a "niche" that only the facility manager and the CSO get to work on. I would like to know what tools work to help get CEO's on board with transformative sustainability.
The recent book Life Rules by Ellen LeConte is quite fascinating on the guiding rules, based on the long history of life on Earth, that human social/political/economic organizations must follow if we are to survive our current planetary crisis.
"Rethinking, reconnecting and evolving our behavior" along the simple, but powerful, idea that we play by the rules for life, or we die out of the evolutionary stream, is, I think, a terrific organizing principle and most of all message for change agents to use.
In a sense, LeConte is reframing the rules for change from "create new rules" to "follow the oldest rules on the planet." It turns being a change agent on its head, really, from wide open creating new rules to reframing the industrial society as a failed experiment in breaking the rules all living systems must obey.
I'd like to make a comment on Ling's post.
I agree completely that silo mentality makes it virtually impossible to embed sustainability within an organisation and I also agree that a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we view our relationship with our environment is long overdue. However, in the interim one can use management systems such as ISO14001 and ISO9001 to give the various people within an organisation an understanding of the interconnectiveness of decisions made within a company. I'm not saying that the penny has dropped where I currently work but it seems that I can only get higher management to listen if I speak management language. I'm hoping when the quick wins start arriving that that will make them braver to try more fundamental change and communication (and action) between the silos.
I live in hope although I do feel it is too little too slowlAs always I applaud the work down by Forum for the Future. shame I missed the event, hopefully there will be another in a simliar vein.
Sustainability and the company cultural change can only truly come about through governmental policy and this normally originates from public pressure and/or over riding social acceptance of what is right or wrong.
To really work this shift in policy is one that spreads from country to country and is therefore seen as "changing times".
As we are dominated by large corporates international policy is the only way to establish a deep rooted change.
Every channel such as the angels suggested in this article should be embraced as a means of shifting attitudes.
It really will take a moral compass reset by governments to kick start any significant change within companies.
I like the reinforcement you placed in the blog page above. Just a comment........ I realised that the governance issue needs to be addressed in parellel to the sustainability change. Governance in traditional organisations, the processes of information appropriating and creation (usually from top to bottom), accountability and decision making (normally only at the top since only the top has the full strategic view and are not passed on to everyone in the organisation who are all currently working in their little silos) and the allocation of organisational resources, needs to change. Otherwise the power and authority are not distributed evenly and everyone in the organisation stands a poor chance of being empowered and be responsible for the systemic big picture change for sustainability.
Would like a further discussion if this comment ever gets to you.
Regards
Ling
Hi Ling, Thanks for your comments. Governance is indeed important, and getting a suitable structure to support the embedding sustainability can be a real enabler. We are currently doing some work with a large retailer on this and it would take another blog to write about it. Only today in Forum we were talking about how a business is organised and structured, and how leaders do or do not enable distributed innovation and learning can have a huge impact on how fast you can take forward sustainability across the organisation... Although for change agents this might not always be an option to influence, out of their reach and control, but that doesn't mean they can't do something.
Food for thought anyway! Anna
I hope you will also address the underlying culture that industrial civilisation is based on, where the idea that man has "dominion" over the Earth is the prevalent meme. This has led to the situation where virtually all economic activity is damaging to the fabric of the ecosystem. So deeply ingrained is the disregard for the environment that Chinese solar panel manufacturing plants are physically attacked by villagers protesting at the dumping of hazardous chemicals into the water supply and Imran Khan can lead a political party called Movement for Justice but bemoan the fact that Pakistan does not fully exploit its coal reserves.
The human species is uniquely challenged to rethink, within the next 30 years, how it makes things, grows things, keeps warm and moves around: to say nothing of how it powers its activities. Change agents aplenty are badly needed.
Harold, this is where we are coming from - we need to see the environment as supporitng the very fabric of our lives - currently we don't have this worldview, we are coming from a industrial civilisation or consumption mindset. Kate at our event will be talking on this topic.
Rethinking, reconnecting and evolving our behaviour will be key for all of us.
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