- Leverage an existing venue, such as an Employee Council Meeting - OR create a new venue, such as a brown bag lunch session.
- Promote the initiative with open, transparent communication from Senior Leadership on why it's happening - part of the why SHOULD be to help develop more sustainable business practices. This communication should touch on a definition of sustainable business practices to make sure the general context is set.
- Build awareness in more depth around sustainable business practices and why they are important from the organizational to the individual level.
- Brainstorm. Provide a framework for the brainstorming - or don't. There are no wrong answers in brainstorming, and for these grassroot sessions there's really not a wrong way of facilitating it. Ideally, when brainstorming is complete, the group should attempt to map the various options against two scales: 1) How tightly does it align with organizational strategic goals, and 2) How 'individually actionable' is it. The items ranking high on both dimensions are your 'low hanging fruit'.
- Incent the right behaviors. Intrinsic rewards are going to be most effective here - it's all about recognition: company newsletter, email from leadership, and/or a personal 'nice job' from the CEO.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The Eco-Pragmatist: 5 Steps to Promote and Leverage Grassroot Efforts
In the drive toward developing more sustainable business practices, many companies are leveraging internal, grassroot efforts. However, many MORE companies are not - and they are missing out on a major opportunity. The desire and energy is there. Today. Inside your company. So how do you harness it? Here are five steps to take:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hello. We're a new trade association called Ecological Food Manufacturer Association. We are having trouble getting manufacturers to even accept free membership and none of us are paid! But we think the key to reforming the food industry (processed foods) is to appeal in a grass roots way to the consumer through social media. The start of this campaign will start at a meeting in Phoenix with retailers and food manufacturers but then we plan to take the message to the consumer through YouTube vignettes. Randy, interested in your take, see www.foodinitiative.com. Thanks for your thoughts!
ReplyDeleteWinston, thanks for the comment! I did check out www.foodinitiative.com - I think you have captured the challenge quite accurately. I see somewhat of a parallel between what you're all about from a food perspective with the challenges we've seen recently in dealing with the U.S. automaker crisis. The automakers failed to look at their extended value chain - mainly the fact that their biggest issue wasn't in manufacturing operations (although that was a huge issue in and of itself), but that they really weren't addressing the needs of their customers by producing the right mix of products. Your mission is all about getting 'the right products' to the consumers, you just have to get the manufacturers to see how that is their real business driver, and voice of the consumer is going to be key. I'm curious, how closely have you looked at the overall business model of United Natural Foods? I'm certain there must be some major 'ah ha' lessons from their business that would help connect the dots for some of the manufacturers you're working with. Keep me posted on your progress and let me know if I can be of any help!
ReplyDelete