in action
“I often tried to effect subtle, small chang- es or what might be called gentle action. I attempted to enact what I thought good practice might be: reducing the carbon foot- print of my office activities and encourag- ing others in various ways to do the same; remaining in good humour as far as possible when these encouragements were laughed at – for example, meeting people’s gaze with a smile and a twinkle as they called me ‘the resident greenie’; and trying to have some sensible answers to questions such as ‘do you really think you doing this one little thing will make any difference?’ At one particular time, I was advocating a deep intervention into an emerging cross-departmental policy, trying to shift environmental sustainability towards the centre, rather than the periph- ery of the policy. I was having little success. Interventions in senior meetings, submissions of papers to various senior colleagues and ministers were not gaining traction. I began
to fear that familiar, heart-thumping dilemma of somehow hindering the chances of suc- cess through a continual banging of the same drum. Might I just become ‘noise’– if I hadn’t already– and through my continued actions, I could very well be hampering chances of success. Acknowledging this made me more mindful, noticing more keenly the actions, reactions and dynamics of the community activity around me. I began to pay more atten- tion to where there was a chink or an oppor- tunity to drop something into a conversation and judged when the best action was to say or do nothing.”
Alison Kennedy, working in publishing, develops an industry-wide group to address sourcing issues in the publishing industry through operating largely ‘below the parapet’. “After four meetings, in as many months, we had formed a group, PREPS (Publishers’ Database for Responsible Environmental Paper Sourcing), which had agreed to estab-
lish a secretariat to build, populate and main- tain a database of papers which would be graded using our copyrighted grading system. Three years on PREPS now has in excess of 4,000 papers in the database, an annual third- party audit of our system, and a membership of 19 publishers, including publishers from Germany, Norway and the US as well as UK members. We regularly engage with the mills and other key stakeholders such as the environmental NGOs to ensure we keep our joint purpose of being both commercial and sustainable. I don’t intend to stop there. I have instigated a couple of other initiatives, but they are too ahead of their time to be brought out into the light and will stay ‘below the parapet’ until the time is right, and the appro- priate partners are in place. I have learned not to give up but simply to look for that ‘syn- chronicity’ which will confirm that the time is right to move forward.”
Mark Gater has been much more explicit, initiating conversations that deliberately vio- lated all the implicit rules about what can be talked about in his financial services company: “The uncomfortable realisation was that, as an employee of a retail financial institution, I was part of a system that is driving unsustaina- ble growth. My discomfort was heightened by the fact that I had been working in that system for almost 20 years without ever previously giving this a thought. So, my inquiry, started as the focal point of my MSc project, and continued afterwards, was ‘How do I engage the directors of a large financial institution in a conversation about the inherent unsustain- ability of the business that they run?’.” Not all of the graduate stories are about tangible outcomes, and some people have been left with a feeling of, as yet, frustrated ambi- tions. One could argue that success lies not in the achievement so much as in developing collaborative, challenging, processes of learn- ing. Maybe the most useful rule is ‘Light many fires’, which chimes with the tempered radical proposition of ‘small wins’: don’t put your heart solely into one world-changing scheme which might leave you bereft when it fails to measure up to your hopes and plans. Scale and ambition are important to match the chal- lenges ahead, but they must be tempered by addressing what is immediate, engages others, and gradually builds a basis for further change that may take us by surprise when it emerges.
Judi Marshall is Professor of Leadership and Learning at Lancaster University Manage- ment School. This article contains extracts from her book, Marshall, Coleman & Reason, ‘Leadership for Sustainability: An action re- search approach’ (Greenleaf Publishing, 2011)
Sustainable Business | January/February 2012 | 25
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36