How would Sir Alex Ferguson implement your sustainability strategy?

Grappling with implementing a sustainability project or strategy? These four steps are what Sir Alex Ferguson might suggest, based on his experience of the ruthless competition that is the beautiful game.

All right, you may not eyeball your competition for 90 minutes every week like Manchester United. But your opponents will be just as determined to outperform you, and sustainability improvements are a key means to differentiate themselves.

So how can you move further and faster than your opponents?

1. Identify your key players

Assuming you have an agreed strategy or project, who are your Rooneys and Ferdinands? Who will make or break the performance and who do others look to for leadership? In organisations it’s often influential middle and senior managers who determine the success of a strategy. It’s therefore vital you know who yours are.

2. Agree on tactics

Are you playing a 4-4-2 long ball game or 4-2-4 possession football? Involve your key players in deciding the tactics you’ll use to deliver the strategy. By doing this, you benefit from their experience and insight, and ensure they are committed to the tactics.

Many organisations fall into the trap of jumping from strategic goals straight to implementing specific projects or initiatives without deciding on the best tactical approach. For example, you may have a strategic goalto become carbon neutral, but how will you do that? Will you focus on energy efficiency, renewable energy, offsetting or a combination of all three? Each of these is a tactical response. You need to decide on your tactics before you can move onto implementation – otherwise you risk creating confusion and frustration.

3. Keep the management on-side

So you’ve agreed with your key players what you are going to do – now you need to keep the management – or executive team on-side. Often this simply means updating them on your plan and giving them an opportunity to contribute before you put it into action.This will ensure the exec can see how your plan will support the organisation’s goals.

If your exec knows you have consulted their influential managers, they will be much more confident of success.Their permission will also give confidence to those implementing the plan.

4. Deliver, adapt and measure

Now you are ready to play the game. As you do, remember to have huddles to learn from how it’s going and make any necessary changes.

Sustainability is likely to challenge your organisation in new ways, so give yourself the opportunity to tackle this. Pick the right match statistics to know if you are on track and use them to review your progress.

This is also your chance to involve the broader team by giving them roles and the space to contribute. You can engage employees even more by celebrating success when you finally ruffle the net!