In Ethical Corporation’s “Sustainability professionals – Prove your worth: How to go from sustainability director to chief executive,” the editor makes an interesting case regarding CSR leaders and their career aspirations.  The main thrust being  that they need to be  “more commercially minded . . . Corporate responsibility teams could do more to articulate a clear business strategy for their company that will grow sales.”

On the whole, I agree with the editors comments and the above premise that the leaders in CSR and sustainability must understand and communicate the economic (commercial) value of their work to the senior management. That is also true for any business unit leader in the organization.

The bigger challenge is the corporate leadership’s (board, CEO) understanding that CSR and sustainability are not fads, a PR game, or simply about philanthropy. True CSR and sustainability are fundamental strategies to the long-term success, management and leadership of organizations. True CSR/ Sustainability activities are about efficiency and effectiveness (read commercially viable). The concepts must be embedded from top to bottom and fully integrated into the corporate culture. This takes leadership, courage, strategy, skill, and full board buy-in and support.

I would argue that the inverse of the question of  “Can a CSR Director become CEO?” is more prudent -> Can a CEO become a CSR Director.

This critical role in corporate strategy needs the leadership qualities that we want in an outstanding CEO/President.

• They need business savvy;
• they need to be strategic;
• they need high IQ and EQ;
• they need true leadership ability;
• they need to be both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs (being entrepreneurial from within the system);
• and they need to get the integrative nature of CSR & Sustainability.

Perhaps the question companies and HR departments should be asking is:
If a company is committed to CSR/Sustainability, are they hiring the best, brightest, and greenest (CSR/ Sustainability savvy) professional with the qualities of a CEO and an entrepreneur?

- Or – Are they making due with a marketing/ communications/ or philanthropy manager to do spin for the company (aka elaborate greenwashing)?

My guess and experience says this candidate is not likely to come from the same MBA / corporate gene pool they’ve been pulling from for years. This candidate will see the world differently. They see possibility and strategy. Perhaps the survival & innovation instincts of SME leaders (maximizing resources, opportunities, and costs) better fit the bill.

Matthew Rochte, LEED AP
Sustainability / CSR Consultant
http://www.OpportunitySustainability.com
http://www.matthewrochte.com/resume
http://twitter.com/mrochte

Copyright ©2009 Matthew Rochte, Opportunity Sustainability℠- Share with attribution

Opportunity Sustainability℠  is a Midwest-based sustainability and corporate responsibility (CSR) consulting firm specializing in green innovation and seeing opportunities where others see burdens. Matthew Rochte, an experienced, operations-based sustainability / CSR consultant, works with company management to navigate and realize the opportunities in taking their company green and growing sustainably.

Confused by the green economy and green jobs conversation? Want a green job but unsure where you can fit into the green economy? Don’t want to work on a wind farm but want a green job? As industries and companies are greening themselves, are you positioned to be a meaningful contributor?

Then, you’ll want to check out Greenman Alliance’s Sustainable Career Advice Program.

I’ve recently begun consulting with Greenman Alliance, a green human capital services company based in Milwaukee, WI, on building out their Sustainable Career Advice Program. The Greenman Alliance has been earning a strong reputation for its recruiting and placing experienced individuals in traditional and  new green economy roles.  As a green human capital company they are frequently contacted by college graduates and non-green experienced professionals looking to learn more about green jobs, the green job market, and where they might fit in. They created the Sustainable Career Advice Program to assist this growing market.

Together we’ve built upon their expertise and existing program and are building it out to meet demand. We’ve got a great program to help both experienced professionals to learn where they fit in the green economy as well as new green job seekers to understand what exactly a green job is, where to find them, and what skills they need to be seen as a viable green candidate.

I am excited by this project because Greenman Alliance gets green; they get sustainability. They see through the multiple green job conversations going on in the media.  They know how to navigate both jobseekers and employers through the green economy landscape.  They are the real deal and a complete green human capital company.  I am glad to be a part of their team – check us out.

Check out Greenman Alliance’s Sustainable Career Advice Program. http://greenmanalliance.com/cservices.html

Opportunity Sustainability℠ is a Midwest-based sustainability and corporate responsibility consulting firm specializing in green innovation and seeing opportunities where others see burdens. Matthew Rochte, an experienced, operations-based sustainability consultant, works with company management to navigate and realize the opportunities in taking their company green and growing sustainably.

Q:What is the relationship between CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and PR (Public Relations)?

A: The short answer is PR can be both a blessing and a curse to CSR. It is a matter of which comes first and what is the intention.

Done properly and with a company that embraces the strategic and integrated nature of CSR, PR is a vehicle of sharing with the world the progress they are making, or what the world may not know about them. Done improperly, for example when CSR is seen by the company as a marketing problem, the latest market fad, or a PR fix – PR is tantamount to “greenwashing” the “sins” of a company. True CSR guides the company away from making the “sins” or mitigating them in the first place.

CSR should be an integrated, sustainable, and systematic approach to business. It belongs as a core component to the strategies and structure of companies. CSR is about being good corporate citizens to all stakeholders – stockholders, employees, customers, community, supply chain, and the environment. It is the old social contract idea, the right to exist as a company. It is about the sustainability of the business through integrity and smart business decisions that recognize and integrate the impact on and influence of all stakeholders. I like CSR International’s reworking of the CSR acronym as Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility as it speaks to the integrational aspects of CSR. They are calling it CSR 2.0.
Read the rest of this entry »

Pre-Amble: This is a follow up to Twitter, transparency, and CSR I thought I’d post an excerpt from an article that I’ve been working about “the great reset” that is going on in the world. It is germane to the discussion of consumer / social media / and the impact on sustainability for individuals, families and even business.

When the price of gas pushed $4/gallon last summer I started noticing a return to family time, home time, and family dinners. I remember conversations on the news about how surprised people were by the quantity of time they were saving by not driving all over the place shuttling their kids or themselves to activities. Not only were they saving money on gas – they were saving time, quality time – They were, in some cases, saving their families.

Now, I was having this conversation at Milwaukee’s Green Drinks where I shared an aha moment that I had had during a conversation with my father last week on his birthday.  Dad was sharing about his time during his year after college and the Navy. He was talking about driving cross country in a rebuilt vintage roadster, how he rebuilt that engine, bought a car in a box (one that literally was in pieces in a bunch of boxes, rebuilt a motorcycle, and by the end of the story was working on an airplane. This was all in one year’s time and it was not his work. Understand, my father is a workaholic 10-14 hour days are not unusual for him.

WHEN did he have the time to do all of these major projects?

Answer: In his spare time?

WHAT spare time?  Then I got to thinking – When he was doing these massive projects – television was not ubiquitous and unlikely for single, just out of college, person to own? Also, the internet didn’t exist, much less twitter and facebook.

How much of your “free” time is spent in front of the computer?  How much of your “free” time is spent in front of the television? Now consider, how much time you would add to your sleep (and your health) if you were not mesmerized by these two devices. What would you be doing?

As I relayed this story to my fellow Green Drinkers, I remembered this  fascinating presentation that I ran across last summer when I was thinking about gas and family time.  It is by Clay Shirky and he talks about the sea-change that occurred last century and that is occurring again right now.  It is called “Gin, Television, and the “cognitive surplus”” presented at Web 2.0. The transcript can be found here.

As we struggle to find our new place in the world. As we individually reset our living standards, our values, our expectations, new opportunities are emerging.This presentation speaks to the new thinking that is and needs to continue to be generated as we awaken from our long sleep.

The question is not Where will we find the time?

The question is now that we have the time, how will we choose to use it?

Or, the better question is – Where is the mouse not? “every place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, “If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?”

What new ways are we thinking up to be more sustainable?

What are the opportunities to be discovered?

Will we create new products that reflect simplicity,  lower energy consumption, and our values?

This work is excerpted from an article on “The Great Reset”
Copyright © 2009 Matthew Rochte, Opportunity Sustainability℠. Share with full attribution.

Matthew Rochte is an experienced, operations-based sustainability consultant working with company management to navigate and realize the opportunities in taking their company green, leading through corporate responsibility, and growing sustainably.
www.Opportunity Sustainability.com

Twitter and other rapid social media have created a new paradigm in terms of corporate communication, response, and responsibility. These tools have the ability to show the emperor’s clothes of companies and are doing so.  True Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability leadership may help to guide and protect companies from the ravages of these new communication paradigms.  They may in fact become the instruments of corporate success.

Transparency is paramount in truly sustainable and successful business ventures. Only when business are transparent can everyone involved trust each other. Business is fundamentally about degrees of trust. Sustainability is about integrity through corporate responsibility to the triple bottom line.

Twitter is double edged sword. It will just as soon lift you up as cut you down.  It is currently the fastest news source out there. Not only is it fast, it is immediately unforgiving. This can have devastating effects. I think of the recent #amazonfail debacle with respect to Amazon.com’s accidental(?) reclassification of GLBT books. Clay Shirky’s Mia Culpe “I got swept up in the mess” honest critique of the situation and how it happened is classic http://tinyurl.com/ctajxf.

The upside of twitter’s speed? Because of it’s nature of presenting things “right now,” old news (i.e. more than a couple of days) disappears. Try searching for things that occurred days, weeks, or months ago on Twitter. Good luck.

Another positive: If you have some great news, Twitter has an amazing ability to get that news out to lots of places really fast.  If it is not interesting though, no one will retweet it.

I think it is imperative that corporations have communication / social media experts on their teams to watch for threats and opportunities presented by this new media.  How quickly they respond to situations can make all the difference – In a twittered world 5 days is too long – over the weekend, in the case of Amazon  is too long.  Note that ad hoc,  poor interactions by company leadership can be equally devastating.  Good, clear, considered, and quick responses are called for.

Well thought out accountability and apologies can go far – take Jet Blue Airlines in Feb 2007 following a weather shutdown over Valentines day. While customers and media were yelling for explanations and reparations from the airline industry and the status quo message was – “We are not responsible for the weather.” Jet Blue issued a “Customer Bill of Rights” All airlines were affected.  Only Jet Blue said – “We’re Sorry and here is what we are going to do about it.”  Was it the MBA business-case response – no, far from it; it was an expensive thing to do.  What it was however, was the right thing to do and that action won the hearts and minds and business of America.  (Side note: In the twitterverse – the 6 day delay from event to Jet Blue’s apology is too long. Having said that – if it had been twittered it would have spread like wildfire!)

Only a truly embedded culture of sustainability and corporate responsibility is sustainable.  If it is just show, jargon, the latest “values” trend, or marketing/consulting gimmick – It will fail. Remember, sustainability is about integrity (walking the talk).  It is the load stone. Steer your company and communication toward it.

Copyright © 2009 Matthew Rochte, Opportunity Sustainability℠. Share  with full attribution.

Matthew Rochte is an experienced, operations-based sustainability consultant working with company management to navigate and realize the opportunities in taking their company green, leading through corporate responsibility, and growing sustainably.
www.Opportunity Sustainability.com

Ran across another British firm rethinking industrial waste streams as supply streams.  Eako is upcycling.  They are taking condemned fire-hose and waste coffee sacks and creating belts (marrying them with reclaimed pewter), placemats, bags (lined with decommissioned office furniture textiles or scrap sail cloth), purses (made from hoses and optical bags), and wallets.

Turning

Into

Their rethinking/repurposing/reusing philosophy permeates their business from their business card holders to packaging.  They are reusing/repurposing Air Traffic Control flight check strips for their labels.  All of their packaging is reclaimed or recycled: old shoe boxes, glasses boxes or even pink lady grapefruit crates, used Jiffy bags, and stuffed newspaper (always a great packing material IMHO).

Their CSR is real and they recognize the interconnectedness between their supply chain, their community, and their customers.  They give back to the original users of the material (fire-hoses) -  50% of their profits go back to the Fire Fighters Charity.

“We give 50% of Fire Hose profits to the Fire Brigade, which builds community spirit, secures our supply chain, and creates a story that appeals to customers. We’re also exposing the insane margins in the luxury industry – giving away half the profits isn’t remotely a stretch (and our prices aren’t as high as many brands).” ~ from Miranda Newsom’s Eco-preneurs: making money and going green article on EaKo

Kresse Welling, co-founder of Eako, has a history of rethinking waste streams developing ethical and environmental products, from creating packaging alternatives to launching 100 per cent biodegradable disposable nappies.  She has won several social entrepreneur awards.

Eako’s tagline tells it all – “Reclamation Innovation Donation”

Hear an interview with Kresse Welling – my new social/eco entrepreneur hero.  Read more about Eako in an article at Green Goods or at their website http://www.fire-hose.co.uk

What opportunity are you missing out on from your company’s own waste stream?

This article is part of the Rethinking Waste series at Opportunity Sustainability

Copyright ©2009 Matthew Rochte, Opportunity Sustainability℠- Share with attribution
Opportunity Sustainability℠ is a Midwest-based sustainability and corporate responsibility consulting firm specializing in green innovation and seeing opportunities where others see burdens. Matthew Rochte, an experienced, operations-based sustainability consultant, works with company management to navigate and realize the opportunities in taking their company green and growing sustainably.

Researchers at the University of Essex in Colchester, as part of a £2.5million EU-funded project,  are using biomimicry to study new ways of monitoring waste water and polution.  They are creating a school of  robotic fish.

The first school of five fish will be be let loose in the port of Gijon in northern Spain as part of a three-year research project.  Each fish will be about 50cm long, 15cm high and 12cm wide. They will be packed with pollution sensors that can electronically ’sniff’ harmful chemicals in the water.   (The video of a demonstration model at the London Aquarium)

“There are very practical reasons for choosing this form” said engineer Rory Doyle from BMT Group, which is overseeing the project. “In using robotic fish we are building on a design created by hundreds of millions of years’ worth of evolution which is incredibly energy efficient. . .  Submarines come nowhere near it.”

“This efficiency is something we need to ensure that our pollution detection sensors can navigate in the underwater environment for hours on end.”

This is biomimicry in action.  Looking toward nature to find new solutions for sustainability, design, systems.   Nature has had a lot longer to solve challenging problems than humans.   In addition to their shape and motion they will be using swarm theory intelligence, another bioneered technology,  to navigate and communicate with each other.

Why re-invent the scale?
How does nature approach the same or similar challenge that you have?
How does nature use systems to find easier “cost effective” solutions?
What are the opportunities for sustainability in biomimicry?

Biomimicry Opportunity is a series by Opportunity Sustainability^sm, a sustainability consulting firm, linking issues of sustainability with the science of biomimicry and bioneering.

© 2009 Matthew Rochte, http://www.OpportunitySustainability.com ~ Share with attribution.

New Series from Opportunity Sustainability:

Biomimicry Opportunity

In this series of articles we will explore  sustainability opportunities being found in using biomimicry and bioneering. 

Working Definitions:

Biomimicry is “a relatively new science that studies nature, its models, systems, processes and elements and then imitates or takes creative inspiration from them to solve human problems sustainably.”^[Wikipedia]

A Bioneer is “a biological pioneer, an ecological inventor who’s got an elegant and often simple set of solutions for environmental conundrums.”^{[utne reader]}

Biomimicry Opportunity is a series by Opportunity Sustainability^sm, a sustainability consulting firm, linking issues of sustainability with the science of biomimicry and bioneering.

© 2009 Matthew Rochte, http://www.OpportunitySustainability.com ~ Share with attribution.

From the Economist to the New York Times to you friends on Facebook, there is talk and petitions going around to bring back the Victory Garden at the White House.  Well, as of yesterday, ABC announced that there will be a White House garden.

Why bring up gardens in a business website?
Think it is a silly idea?

We bring it up because gardens represent an interesting set of paradigm shifts for home economics and business: burden to opportunity; obscure notion to practical choices; and unexpected opportunities from being practical. It is opportunity in sustainability.

A typical Victory Garden can produce $2100-$2500 worth of produce on a 1/25 of an acre of land.  Want to look into the economics of one such garden, check out Roger Dorians economic breakdown of his harvest on a his home plot.   Business have a lot more land/ surface to work with.  In some cases equivalent to a small farm, especially if you include the roof.

So, How big is your company’s roof or back lawn?

Business gardens like Victory Gardens have their own perks/ hidden opportunities.  Here are just some practical reasons to rethink your green business landscape or building design and go garden and/or go green roof. Read the rest of this entry »

Game-changing gadget presented at 2009 TED conference may become a game-changer in corporate social responsibility, green products, transparency, and eco-consumerism.   Pattie Maes at MIT lab presents (see below) a “Sixth Sense” gadget project spearheaded by Pranav Mistry.   “It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment” both literally and figuratively.

Access to detailed information about anything, at anytime, and anywhere  has been been the dream of the telecom and digital device industry for the past decade.  Up until recently issues of speed, size, and medium restricted the actual implementation of such a feat.  That is about to change and what will that mean. Read the rest of this entry »