I took a long break from this blog, and since my last post I've been busy helping companies along their own path toward a more sustainable existence. It's pretty interesting and enjoyable work. Lately I've been reflecting on some of my experiences.
I like to think of our society’s path toward sustainability as a huge and complex optimization problem. The goal is to maximize the goods and services provided to society while staying within indefinitely sustainable limits of natural capital depletion, environmental impact, and human health impacts. However, it is difficult to quantify the sustainable limits of our varied ecosystems (e.g. how much CO2, mercury, and other emissions can be safely absorbed on a continuous basis?). So alternatively, the goal can be stated as the ability to provide all people with the basics of healthy food, clean water, shelter, and sanitation while producing as little environmental impact and human health impacts as possible, minimizing natural capital depletion and investment cost, and does not sacrifice the ability of future generations to provide the same necessities.
Taking this a bit further, our collective journey to sustainability can be framed as two interwoven and equally important (like a yin-yang relationship) approaches – implementing technology and changing behavior. Both of these approaches will be required to get to a sustainable future. I have no concerns about the technology side of things, I am confident that humanity's technological prowess will continue to expand and astound, and personally think a large portion of short and medium-term sustainability goals can be realized with existing technology. Overcoming resistance to change is, I feel, the biggest obstacle to transitioning to a more sustainable society. I follow a lot of news feeds, blogs, research, and other sources of information on a daily basis to stay up to date on the state of the world of sustainability. Typical hot topics in sustainability usually include renewable energy, green building, transportation, energy & water efficiency/conservation, greener products and manufacturing, performance benchmarking & tracking, strategic planning, transparency/disclosure, green marketing, organizational purchasing policies, recycling & composting solutions, food & agriculture solutions, regulatory drivers (policies & incentives), green certifications, and probably a lot more that aren't off the top of my head right now. So really, most of the collective topics on sustainability are related to technology – innovation, policy, marketing, etc. At first glance, that makes sense to most people. If we're going to get on a path to sustainability while maintaining our current habits and standard of living as much as possible, we'll have to implement a lot of technology. Our society tends to lean toward technology as the answer that will enable our sustainability. Technology is already and will inevitably be a huge part of our future. But technology also allows us to maintain our habits and lifestyle with minimal change in behavior, and it alone is likely not enough in the long term. Even in the short-term it’s often not as efficient or effective as a change in behavior. I think we can supercharge our results and merge onto the sustainability highway sooner by changing only a little. An example of a great combination of technology and behavior change is energy usage reduction based on peer comparisons achieved by upstarts Opower and Efficiency 2.0.
Reflecting more on my personal experiences, I've observed interesting disparities among client organizations. For example, some companies execute the plans and recommendations that my team provides and realize the value proposition that we've outlined. It's a great feeling when that happens. But some other clients are excited to hear about the plans and recommendations, but then do nothing (or something so minimal no real results are achieved). The latter usually occurs because the company lacks a champion with the authority to enable change from within. This is frustrating since I know each of our clients will benefit from the recommendations. Why don't they want to take back their used product which can easily be recycled and decrease material costs? Why don't they install the recommended low flow shower-heads or occupancy sensors? Why don't they want to install that new scrap drying system that will reduce waste and payback the investment in only a few months? It's easy for me to see the value and benefit of implementing these solutions, but I understand that there are conflicting incentives in business. Most often there is a focus on short-term results accompanied by a cultural resistance to change.
Better managing change will accelerate our current progress toward sustainability. Greener habits and technologies adopted at work and school can easily spread to family, friends, and colleagues in other organizations. I think sustainability professionals in general need more discussion of change management methods and better integrate them into sustainability strategies and recommendations. Not to diminish what's already being done - there are some really good publications, methods, and tools that address organizational and social change in a sustainability context. But not a lot (based on the anecdotal data point of what I read every day). We can and should do more, and now that I've stepped back to look at the bigger picture, I am going to keep this in mind when I am dealing with those clients that are more resistant to change than others.
How do you overcome resistance to change? If you have thoughts, experiences, or strategies on how to engage communities or organizations on implementing sustainable practices or technologies, please share! Everyone can benefit, learn from, and leverage your wisdom.
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