www.deborahfleischer.com
One of my favorite newsletters arrived today from Patrick O’Neill, a unique management consultant from Canada. The theme of the newsletter is the essential functions that challenges play in the development of a leader. He outlines 4 gifts we can receive from challenges:
* They call forward our personal powers – including our gifts, talents, character qualities, fortitude, skills, aptitudes, knowledge, resourcefulness and creativity;
* They help us develop new powers;
* They teach “right application” of these resources; and
* They expose that which requires change or strengthening in our nature or our approach.
He suggests that, “how we respond to a challenge can often tell us more about who we really are than years of contemplation.”
I feel like I am surrounded by talented, experienced colleagues and friends who are feeling discouraged and a bit beat down by the current economy. Both self-employed entrepeneurs and those who took the more traditional career path of a corporate position are being challenged by the current economy.
I personally am seeing the “gifts” play out at Green Impact as the economy and new boom of “green consultants” is pushing me to refine my niche and get more creative and skillful at marketing my services.
I was pondering this morning the fact that we only have 8 weeks left in 2009 and contemplating what my most significant goal for the rest of the year is. Both professionally, and personally, it is easy to get pulled in so many directions. I have never been a “niche” kind of gal, but have worked on a wonderful range of issues–land conservation, ecosystem services, program development, cross-sector dialogue, green business, stakeholder engagement and blogging.
If we all need to build our talents and skills and be more creative right now, where are the areas to put our energy? What are the steps to take to help us move forward?
I love these questions, but seem to be stuck answering them. Do I focus more on my business the next 8 weeks? Or do I focus less on business and more on my personal pursuits? Or, do I put the list aside and slow down? My list includes the ideas of painting everyday, trying one new activity each week, getting a cardio workout everyday, volunteering more and updating my web site.
What is on your list to accomplish before 2009 ends that can move you toward your goals?
Employee Engagement: AngelPoints Launches New Personal Sustainability Practice (PSP) Tool
As part of a corporate sustainability strategy, there is a growing trend to engage employees on multiple levels, both at work and at home. More and more companies are providing their employees advice and tips on how to green their personal lives. But a key challenge is how to measure and track the benefits of these programs.
AngelPoints, a provider of enterprise software solutions for employee engagement, has recently partnered with Saatchi & Saatchi S, the sustainability strategy firm that helped Wal-Mart create their Personal Sustainability Project (PSP) program, to create a new web-based platform to help make it easier to engage employees in sustainability and to track their progress.
As reported on CSRwire, “The newly launched PSP platform enables employees to chart individual and collective progress on a secure and reliable site easily accessed through a company’s intranet.”
The theory is if you can get employees engaged and excited about being greener in their personal lives, they will bring this excitement and energy to their jobs as well.
At BSR 2009, a missing piece on the agenda was employee engagement. Yet, at the session on Internal Communications: Making the Case for CSR’s Value, all of the speakers acknowledged the challenge of getting both employees and senior management behind sustainability.
The panel included Christopher Corpuel, Vice President, Sustainability at Hilton Hotels, Silvia Garrigo, Manager of Global Issues and Policy at Chevron and Kevin Moss, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at BT Americas Inc. The session, moderated by Eric Olson, Senior Vice President, at BSR, was formatted to allow for deeper dialogue and discussion–much appreciated by everyone!
Yesterday I headed to the Hyatt in San Francisco for BSR’s conference: Reset Economy. Reset World: Delivering Business Value by Thinking Big and Embracing Long-Term Sustainability Trends.
BSR works with a global network of more than 250 member companies to develop sustainable business strategies and solutions through consulting, research and cross-sector collaboration. Upon entering, the sea of black suits, high heels and ties reminded me I was no longer hanging out with activists and social change professionals.
Overall, the attendees I met were sustainability professionals at the conference to network (some were skipping the sessions all together), while others were hungry to learn about best practices and new sustainability tools.
See my full post on Triple Pundit.
By Deborah Fleischer, Green Impact
The 20th Bioneers, a three day conference celebrating breakthrough sustainability solutions, kicked off on Friday in Marin. The agenda is chock full of speakers on a wide range of topics, from the arts, indigenous knowledge and restoring our ecosystems to youth and women’s leadership.
I was excited to hear Michael Pollan speak, a leading critic of our industrial food system and author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire (you can listen to his talk here). For those of you who aren’t attending, you can catch some of the keynotes via live webcast.
By Deborah Fleischer, Green Impact
Ever since I studied adaptive leadership with Ronald Heifetz at Harvard, I have been interested in the intersection between organizational change, systems theory and sustainability issues. Many sustainability professionals seem to lack an understanding of what it takes to create enduring, lasting change within an organization or system. As illustrated with the recent departure of Van Jones from the White House, a change agent needs a strategic understanding of how to navigate the dangers of leading change without getting scapegoated or sidelined.
I recently learned that Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV) is offering a two-day Sustainability Change Agent Training with Alan AtKisson, November 16th and 17th. I’m excited that I will have the chance to attend (I will be attending to cover the event for Triple Pundit).
I realize many of us have “workshop-itis” these days after attending a few too many workshops and conferences. But I feel this topic has not been well covered at past green trainings. And Sustainable Silicon Valley is offering Triple Pundit readers a discount of $100 off the registration fee (applies only to SSV partner and non-partner rates). Go to the registration page and use the code “triplepundit” when registering.
By Deborah Fleischer, Green Impact
When you think of installing a solar system on your home, what is the first thought that comes to mind? It will cost too much? It will be complicated to install? Or perhaps, you like the idea, but think solar panels are ugly?
A new start-up Armageddon Energy is working to remove these barriers and bring to market a “plug and play,” modular solar system that is visually appealing, smaller and cheaper than a standard home system and will possibly do for the home solar industry what Ikea did for home furnishings.
The business model? Make it easy, accessible and affordable to sell small home solar system to the masses in a “big box” retail setting.
One of the most promising start-ups to watch
While the name, which alludes to the final battle between the forces of good and evil, has been a bit more controversial then CEO Mark Goldman expected, the company was named one of the five most promising start-ups to watch at the Clean Tech Open by Fast Company.
Fast Company reports, “Armageddon’s solar panels are significantly lighter than traditional 40-pound silicon-panels, mainly because the solar cells are coated in Teflon instead of glass. At $6 per watt, the read more…
Green Jobs Training: Emerging Opportunities To Leverage Stimulus Dollars
A centerpiece of the stimulus package is an effort to put 3 and 4 million people back to work over the next two years.
The site Recovery.gov includes a map of the U.S. with the estimated jobs expected under the Recovery Act superimposed over each state. California leads with 396,000 anticipated jobs, while North Dakota and Vermont expect the least job growth with 8,000 each.
I’v been curious to better understand who is leading the charge on training the workforce for the wave of new green jobs we are expecting. Are companies taking the lead? Federal agencies or state governments? It seems to be a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. If you deploy training programs without partnering with business, you will have a trained workforce, but no jobs. And if you create the jobs, but neglect workforce development, critical shortage of specialists in growing professions could occur.
Employee engagement is a growing strategy for driving performance and building competitive advantage for companies with a commitment to sustainability.
“The engaged workforce will find more opportunities to get lean and identify more opportunities to innovate and create products and services that lower customers’ environmental impacts. All of this work will improve the top and bottom lines,” comments sustainable business expert Andrew Winston, in his recent book Green Recovery.
Based on his book, and some of the other recent literature available, I offer the following three tips for engaging employees in sustainability:
- Look at the big picture and identify your greatest impacts across the value chain;
- Involve staff in sustainability on multiple levels, both at work and at home; and
- Integrate sustainability into operations and everyday decisions on products throughout their life cycle.
Catalyzing your employees to integrate sustainability into both their lives and work decisions can be a low-cost strategy for saving money, driving innovation and keeping employees happy.
Planet Metrics: Helping Companies Reduce Their Risk from Embedded Carbon and Energy
By Deborah Fleischer, Green Impact
Planet Metrics is a relatively new start-up with a solution to help corporations model and analyze the life cycle of carbon emissions and energy use throughout their entire supply chain, from cradle to grave. Fast Company covered the start-up in June and called their Rapid Carbon Modeling “a potentially powerful tool.”
What makes Planet Metrics stand out from the crowd of carbon management tools? For one thing, they secured $2.3 million in Series A funding from angel investors and Draper Fisher Jurvetson about nine months ago. They also are working with several large clients, including Method, an environmentally-friendly cleaning product company, a large Canadian retailer and an automobile manufacturer.
The pricing of the software is not public. There is an upfront fee in addition to an annual subscription fee for continued access to the software. They are targeting larger retail, manufacturing and consumer packaged goods companies with complex supply chains, committed to getting started on addressing Scope 3, indirect emissions.
