Rachel Madan

If you are given a budget for sustainability, however small or large, how do you evaluate your investment decisions?

Could you take a quick poll?

My prediction is that most people use something like energy reduction or cost savings. At least I hope they do. If you aren’t sure how to evaluate the ROI of your sustainability investment, please get in touch to learn about how to do this before you spend another penny.

Anyway.

Measuring return on investment in financial terms is a good start. It’s way better than having no measures or some sort of “we feel better” measurement with nothing behind it. However, pure financial measures don’t tell the whole story. They never do, whether we are talking about sustainability, or business strength, or quality of life. But they are easy to measure in many cases. However, sustainability is an interesting area. There are benefits that are not directly measurable and there are benefits that are amplified by certain actions. I’d encourage you to have a look at my case study on Creating Sustainability Leaders in the Museum Profession, which describes in more detail the results that can be achieved by implementing strategic sustainability initiatives.

You’ve heard it before:

Common sense isn’t quite so common

Ideas that are simplistic and clear hit us like a lightning bolt. “Why didn’t I think of that??” we ask ourselves. There are so many ideas floating around that many of us seem to believe that if something is to be taken seriously it must sound academic, boring and well, just plain confusing. In addition, there are loads of things that we know we should do that we just simply don’t.

I see this a lot with my sustainability-focused clients. I even wrote a newsletter article about it, entitled “why is recycling so hard.” That particular article is in my top ten of all time for page views. The reasons I found were interesting. For the most part, recycling is hard because people think it is.

At client sites where recycling was considered “the way we do things around here,” where everyone understood the financial impact of recycling waste vs. not recycling waste, where the system was clear and easy, where there was no other alternative– these sites had great recycling rates.

But the interesting thing was, there were plenty of sites where everything was the same, except for the mindset. And the difference could be 20% recycling rate at one location, and an 85% rate at the other one.

This doesn’t just go for recycling.

So many companies and organizations spend money to implement systems that are supposed to do something, only to be stymied at the last hurdle by staff members who don’t understand why they are being asked to change behaviour or what benefit it might possible have. That’s not your staff’s fault, it’s yours.

So here’s a simple idea. Try asking your colleagues if they know why they are supposed to follow a procedure. You might be surprised by the answers you get.

Where do we want to be?

If you’ve been following along with my Strategy Implementation blog series, you now have an idea of the possible impacts within your theme strategy that exist for your organization and why it is important for your business to understand these possible risks and impacts. You should also now be able to gain a basic overview of where your business is by conducting a simple impact audit and starting to think about the bigger issues.

So now it’s time to start thinking about where you’d like your business to go.

We can take some advice from the Cheshire Cat:

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

Thinking about where your organization might want to go is about agreeing your future vision. Because frankly, if you don’t have that, any path will get you there. This is one of the places where the difference between strategy and tactics becomes abundantly clear.

Avoiding a tactical strategy
Tactics are your actions, the things you DO to achieve objectives. But you don’t want to start your strategy this way. For example, don’t plan out your strategy based on the actions you know you can take. It is very tempting at this point to start talking about those specific actions your organization wants to put in place.

Let’s look at an example. Say you want to reduce waste to landfill as part of your sustainability strategy. So you include “put in more recycling bins” in your strategy. If you do that, you’ll be limited by the number and size of recycling bins you can get, where you’ll put them, and the role of recycling in your waste stream. What you really want to be asking is, “how can we reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place, and what are all of the ways we can prevent the waste we do produce from going into a landfill?” This is a more complicated question to answer, but one which will yield more rewards in the long run.

Creating a future vision
A great strategy will set out big ideas that you don’t even know how to achieve. Doing this means your strategy won’t be limited by your current reality, and won’t become just “more of the same, arranged differently.” What we want to achieve is a future vision that sets out the direction, and provides a compass. Actions come later.

If you knew that you couldn’t fail, what would you like your organization to achieve? Imagine your organization twenty years from now. What does it look like, what is it doing? What’s different? What’s the same? Try to imagine possibilities beyond what you consider “realistic”. Create your vision from a starting point of abundant possibility. What would a radical vision of success look like at YOUR organization?

Action Steps: Creating a Vision

1. Find a quiet place and spend 5-10 minutes visualizing a the future for your business or organization. Don’t limit yourself in this visualization.
2. Write down your visualization, you’ll need it for the next post in the series.

I’ve just returned from a business masterminding retreat. I get together with a group of business owners once per quarter, and we each have a chance to work on our businesses. It’s a great opportunity to step back and think strategically, to revisit goals, and to make new goals. It’s interesting to me to notice the different ways of taking action in our group. I’m an action taker. I dive right in, I don’t think too hard, and I learn as I go (if you’ve taken the StrengthsFinder you can guess that one of my strengths is Activator). Other businesses in the group are more of a slow burn, and some seem stuck in neutral. This past weekend, though, was one of forward movement, for everyone.

Why?

I think it was the first time that reality came into start relief for a few of my colleagues. It was clear that there was some hiding from oneself what was really going on in the business. I feel privileged to be able to help someone gain clarity about what it is that they really, truly want and then to identify the steps that would make it happen. But as much as I might, I can’t want it more for them than they want for themselves.

And I think that’s the real key. Each individual business must find its own motivation. If you are a solo entrepreneur, that comes down primarily to your own personal motivation. For larger businesses, corporate identify plays a key role.

What motivates you to take action?

First of all, get your mind out of the gutter. We’re talking about the size of businesses here. In my work with many different sectors I’ve come across a perception that if a business/organization/museum is small, it is necessarily efficient because of its limited resources.

The truth is that unless you actually examine how well things are being run you don’t know.

A great example of this is the Beacon Museum, a small regional museum which is Copeland Borough Council’s museum in Cumbria in the North West of England. It opened in 1996 in a purpose-built building on Whitehaven’s harbourside, and you would think this would mean ultra-efficient operations.

Even though there was concern in the museum and the council about rising costs and the opportunities for sustainability, the Beacon had not taken any real action. After working with me, the Beacon was not only able to better position itself in order to attract council funding, but it was also able to put a number of programmes into place that immediately saved costs.

In fact, in the year that we worked together, the Beacon reduced its carbon footprint by 30%, its costs by £10,000 (about $16,000) per year, and its travel time and water use. When you consider that the Beacon’s electricity bills were only about £24,000 to begin with, it’s clear that some amazing changes were taking place. Even more impressive was that fact that the Beacon alone contributed about 20% of the council’s overal carbon reduction target.

 I’ve been able to get £125,000 of Council funds directed to museum needs as a priority because I could shout louder and in words “they” could understand. I’ve gained understanding and awareness, and our approach now means that Council cash is being spent on the museum first—instead of last.

-Sue Palmer, Museum Manager, The Beacon

So, to end with yet another cliche, small can be beautiful. And it can certainly be more efficient!

Welcome to Rachel Madan’s blog, here at www.rachelmadan.com. My purpose is to provide relevant and useful information, interspersed with examples of past clients who are getting things right. My goal is always to provide you with something of value. You might not always like what you read, but my hope is that you will learn something from it.