A few highlights:

Walt led off saying that business must have a “broader purpose in life” – employees and other stakeholders become much more excited if there is more to it than making money.  This is a natural human desire, for meaning – and it’s surprising in a way that somehow the “common sense” of business tells us to ignore something so fundamental. According to Walt, making money is great and essential, but – has to be a by-product of something bigger. Purpose really has to come first.

Lisa made the point that leadership includes understanding the full impacts of one’s decisions and actions, evaluating and driving reductions in negative impacts, and constantly engaging and communicating.  Ellen and Kim supported this with some very concrete examples of how they do planning, budgeting, and impact measurement in their respective companies.

I posed the question to the panel “In order to be sustainable, is a fundamentally different leadership style required?”

The consensus was that the style was not different, but additional.  Instead of thinking one quarter ahead, it’s having a longer term vision of the business in the world. It’s respecting the need to get buy in throughout the organization, to advocate for sustainability throughout the supply chain, and to act consistently from a set of sustainable values.

These are not in any way something antithetical to good business practice.  This deeper appreciation of time and complexity translates into concrete business results, including financial savings, brand protection, the ability to shape or avoid regulation, protecting resources needed in the supply chain, anticipating and meeting customer requirements.

Another question:  “Doesn’t this all make executive decision making much more complex, and thus more difficult?” The answers surprised me. Everyone said that it wasn’t actually more difficult, and in fact had very positive results. Walt felt that this approach increased employee involvement and satisfaction. Kim said it was hard to quantify but undoubtedly profitable. Lisa said it resulted in more integrated, deeper solutions.

Ellen described it as taking the process of due diligence deeper into the organization, including thinking longer term about potential impacts and risks.  She used the term “greater mindfulness” to describe this way of seeing.

In the end, culture is huge, the major driver of sustainable corporate behavior.  It means basing hiring decisions, rewards and incentives on consistent values – which in New Belgium’s case, includes a commitment to FUN.  (A simple concept they never taught me in business school!).  And Walt spoke of the most important skills for new employees being not technical – he says we can teach that stuff – but more fundamental attributes of passion, integrity and character.

Sustainable leadership is perhaps best seen not as huge and disruptive paradigm shift, but rather a more gentle and ongoing deepening of perspective.

David Secunda runs a kids’ summer camp operation called Avid 4 Adventure www.avid4.com. He talked about setting out to reduce VMT in their vans carrying kids around for summer camps.    They optimized the business, not to get as many kids in as possible, but to ensure that their fleet of vans was utilized as close to capacity as possible, no more, no less. They made the commitment and decided to live with the consequences. As a result, they actually turned away children when they reached that capacity. The surprising result – better profitability in a flat revenue year.  Focusing on optimizing VMT had a direct, and very favorable, impact on costs.

And even more surprising was the experience of David Rubin, of A Spice of Life Catering www.aspiceoflife.com .  A Spice of Life has been in business for 18 years, and was Colorado’s first “sustainable” caterer. They cater all over Colorado, and formerly had employees drive their own vehicles (not reimbursing mileage) to places like Steamboat Springs (a nearly 200 mile trip).  By conventional business logic, this allowed them to send employees home (each in their own car) to drive 200 miles home when they weren’t needed.  Saved a few hours’ wages.  And mileage. David bit the bullet and provided vans for employees to drive together, covering the cost of transportation – which actually increased his costs.  The surprise here was the huge impact on team culture.  It seems that having folks together in the car proved to be a boon in this already very creative, flamboyant team culture – resulting in better performance, happier employees and delighted customers.

The negative consequences of “to each his own car” are pretty evident – we spend our days in a state of isolation from each other, an isolation that is historically unprecedented. In all the conversation about sustainability, we often focus on the technical facts and forget that the way we occupy the landscape and move around on it is directly related to our culture – how we experience ourselves and each other.

I’ve been fond of saying culture change is a driver for sustainability – but these stories show it goes both ways!

We take a big view of sustainability – creating a world we can all thrive in, that does not rob future generations and other species, and is better for us to live in now – environmentally, economically, socially, psychologically, and physically.

Blue Opal Strategies will help you understand new business models, organizational cultures, and leadership practices that are helping business adapt and thrive in this environment. This blog will include observations based on our consulting and coaching work, as well as a series of recorded conversations with green/natural entrepreneurs, corporate sustainability directors, business educators and provocative thinkers from a variety of fields, including finance, anthropology, and science.

For starters, listen to an interview between Dan Montgomery, Blue Opal Strategies, and w3w3.com internet radio’s Larry Nelson on the Three C’s of Sustainable Leadership: Leadership and the Culture of Sustainability

]]> http://www.resilient-strategies.com/2008/08/sustainable-leadership/feed/ 0