With the growth of corporate sustainability has come an increase in the number of in-house sustainability ‘micro-teams’ consisting of one or two practitioners. They are great news for business – especially when compared with the situation just 10 years ago when only the largest businesses could boast even a single CR manager. These powerhouses often have broad responsibilities and wide experience but are naturally short on resources.
Micro-teams excel at the stewardship roles, eg managing carbon, community investment programmes and communications. Stewardship can be a great force for good but many micro-teams, conscious of their potential for greater change, feel frustration at an apparent ‘green ceiling’ impeding their ability to play a bigger role.
Could it be time to rest on the proverbial laurels, give up the ghost or just despair? Come on, that’s not the sustainability professional way – no way!
Now is the time to punch through that inertia, stop the wondering and find that spark that brought you into this exciting arena. It’s true getting going can be harder in smaller teams, but the world of innovation management offers sustainability professionals some well-tried catalysts to shifting gear. Innovation gurus Tom and David Kelley, in their recent book, Creative Confidence, offer the following approaches to giving yourself a nudge and then keeping up the pace:
- Open up. Seek advice from unexpected quarters, either online or physically. Surprising viewpoints can stimulate and duplicate thinking power.
- Find your personal motivation. Moving outside of the comfort zone can be tough. We all need some social support from peers to make sure things happen and that focus is maintained.
- Gather an audience. Getting ideas into the open and listened to, even if the listener is outside your business, helps creative juices to flow.
- Something to kick against. New ideas aren’t always right first time. Getting something out shows intent, builds engagement and can point you towards improvements.
- Not all or nothing. Indecision in the face of making the right choice can lead to inaction. Lowering personal expectations makes for an easier start.
Across these five catalysts a common theme of reaching out to the ‘unusual suspects’ emerges strongly. For the micro-team this offers its own challenges in terms of finding confidantes who can offer motivation, add stimulation and be critical friends.
Consultants can fill this role, but our own challenge is to better acknowledge that our offers to sustainability practitioners are not simply defined along mainstream service lines. Sometimes we best support clients (especially our smaller ones) via more subtle but equally important means. For instance, we can help in redefining roles, collaborate in overcoming the green ceiling, reinvent their business’s approach to sustainability and ultimately join forces to help them thrive.