Monthly Archives: March 2019

Should I Leave a Company that doesn’t reflect my Ethical or Sustainability Values?

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There are times in all careers when you have to ask yourself should I move on and find a new employer?

An organization full of employees who believe they belong is an organization full of employees who feel purposeful, inspired and alive — in other words, engaged. These engaged employees are more productive and better performers.

Many organisations are seeking to integrate environmental compliance and management processes into their ways of working, and several are attempting to drive sustainability into their cultural DNA!  To achieve this, they are enlisting a new group of employees – the environmental or sustainability specialist – as change managers.  Many are having spectacular success in altering the organisational beliefs, ways of working and the mindset of their organisations.  In the course of which they deliver a new lease of commercial life in their sectors and marketplace, but others are failing as they become dispirited with entrenched leadership attitudes, lack of accountability and on occasion evidence of organisational acceptance of illegal or unethical practices.

No company is perfect and on many occasions the change management activities that are required to embed sustainability issues and thinking into organisations can feel like draining the Atlantic Ocean with just a recycled Starbucks coffee cup for help!  That is why I was surprised in one recent mentoring session on how dismayed a young sustainability adviser was with her career choice. 

No one said entering the environmental profession would be an easy one or a free pass to career success.  You are after all trying to bring in a new mindset into business before the traditional mindset impacts too severely on the lives and prosperity of people and their environments!  The challenge and the excitement of the role and ultimately why you are here in these positions are why most of us get out of bed each morning. 

We analysed some of the problems she faced and then took them apart to examine the specific issues that were causing her so much grief in detail:

  • Some were clearly based around her lack of experience and could be rectified through training and development coaching;
  • Some were based simply around her lack of misunderstanding of how the industry operated and could be rectified through the identification of a suitable internal mentor to be a guide and someone she could bounce her future ideas off in advance, and
  • In one scenario it was clear that she had mis-communicated badly her case to a group of managers.  She had used technical jargon familiar to sustainability professionals but new to the audience and lost them.  She hadn’t aligned her case close enough to corporate outcomes to interest them and as a result had made an unpersuasive argument for change.  These again could be rectified through further coaching and mentoring.

But in a couple of situations the issues were clear and the challenges she faced significant.  Despite her best endeavours, there were several key sustainability issues where she felt that her efforts were being purposely disregarded, where the context of sustainability claims were being manipulated for greenwashing/marketing purposes without organisational evidence.  Whilst these indicated a lack of responsible leadership or management in those above her, ultimately our conversation had to address a cruel set of question that only she could answer:  

  • Had her contribution as an employee hit a rough patch on these issues that she could work through with time and support?
  • Could she live with the unethical or non-environmental behaviours and with time correct them?
  • Had she reached a performance plateau in how far she could take this company in terms of her own sustainability vision against the willingness of the people within the organisation to change?
  • Was she still excited by the role – or was it time for someone else to take up the reins and try it their way?
  • Should she move on and find a new employer?
Should I stay or should I go now?

Ethics and strong values underline an environmental or sustainability professional’s career choice.  Many of us remain optimistic and holds an altruistic view on how business can work in economic and social partnership with the rest of society for the economic betterment of all.  Your work is integral, not only to how you see the world, but how your chosen sector or employer actively improves their environmental or sustainability performance into the future as core business strategy.

So, when your employer makes headlines for the wrong environmental reasons or continues to act in an unsustainable manner contradicting its stated polies should you look for a new role with a new employer?  To figure that out, you need to closely examine your emotional relationship with your work and with your employer:

  • Do your employers continue to act in the knowledge of the social and environmental impacts they are accountable for?
  • Where is the redline before they will seek to correct the issue?
  • If the issue blows up due to regulatory or negative publicity, will you be innocent of any wrongdoing or culpability?

Dependent on your answers you may not need to leave, many companies weather small environmental scandals and they are often a golden opportunity to enhance changes in behaviour – simply put don’t waste a crisis but be aware of how such situations could damage your reputation.  

At the end of the day and to repeat the starting paragraph – An organization full of employees who believe they belong is an organization full of employees who feel purposeful, inspired and alive — in other words, engaged. And these engaged employees are more productive and better performers.  

Ultimately you must consider your own job satisfaction, your well-being, career prospects and future development if you stay.  If the company’s actions (or inactions) violate your moral and professional code of conduct, then you may need to take a professional stand and move on.

If you do decide to leave, be ready to answer the obvious question ‘Why did you leave your last employer’ from the next HR or recruiting manager.  Prepare an answer in advance that acknowledges the organisational risks you identified, the actions you sought to take for that organisation’s benefit, how you personally felt your values and ethics were being compromised by the management responses received and seek to distances yourself from their behaviours.  Turn it back on the recruiter as a first step in what sort of professional they are hiring – How would this company deal with such an issue?  It could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

At Leading Green, our approach to sustainability in business consulting encourages our clients to look closely at their own internal leadership strengths and goals.  Helping them adopt an inquisitive state of mind and supporting them in how sustainability can support their long-term business strategy. In addition we provide a confidential mentoring and coaching services to new and experienced professionals seeking to enhance thier performance and skill sets.

The Leadership role of the EIA Team Leader

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Create your own route towards leadership

‘EIA Project Managers focus on project targets and processes, EIA Leaders focus on project outcomes’

I believe this to be one of the fundamental mindsets that leaders in EIA possess, and a factor that helps them move up a tier in the profession.  The right leadership in the environment of today’s project management world is crucial to providing a clear path and vision for attaining organizational as well as sustainability goals. In the EIA and infrastructure development world, it is also about creating agile teams with S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely) goals backed up by effective team management skills to execute desired outcomes effectively and to become more agile in their approach in handling uncertainties within IA and its related assessments.

As a EIA leader you are ultimately measured on one thing — the results that you deliver within the project scope. Given this ultimate measure and its wider importance to local communities and society in general, it is vital that you are outcomes focussed from the start (pun intended!).

So what are the key benefits of being an outcome focussed EIA Team Leader? As I see it there are 5 key benefits.

Benefit 1: Communication

If you are crystal clear what you want and where you want to take the project, issue or project team during the project, it becomes much easier to communicate it to those that you are interacting with or leading. If you can communicate an inspiring vision for the future, you are much more likely to get project managers, engineers and team members to support you in translating this into design options and ultimately reality.

Benefit 2: Time

No one has ‘too much’ time in projects, it is a rare luxury in our or any profession involved in infrastructure and construction. It is how we use that time that makes the critical difference. When you are outcomes focussed, you spend your time on those areas that are likely to leverage the greatest benefits for yourself as a leader, for the EIA and for the wider project.

Benefit 3: Big picture worldview

It is all too easy, especially in times of project challenge to become obsessed with the detail and trivial stuff.  During these periods it is easy to lose sight of the big picture – reducing residual impacts and promoting sustainable development.  Being outcome focussed helps you remember the big picture and what you want to achieve for the project, the project team, for your organisation and for you personally as an advocate of sustainable development.

Benefit 4: Planning

They say that failing to plan is planning to fail. If you are clear about what you want to accomplish, it becomes much easier to plan what you are doing, when you are doing it and how you will achieve it.  When you sit down to work out EIA priorities you can simply ask yourself – ‘will this move me closer to the outcome I want?’.

Benefit 5: Results

EIA Leaders that focus on the outcomes get more done and as a result deliver better EIA outcomes for society. As you achieve one result, it will act as a reinforcement and motivation to achieve more – this helps start and reinforce the leadership cycle within you.

The take away message — Being outcomes focussed can lift your EIA performance and your own brand of EIA leadership to a new level. So start considering the formal and infomal roles that EIA leaders fulfil in projects and what steps can you can personally take to re-focus on outcomes?

www://leading-green.com

At Leading Green, our approach to environmental leadership mentoring & training encourages our clients to look closely at their own internal leadership strengths and goals.  Helping them adopt an inquisitive state of mind and supporting them in how sustainability can support their long-term business strategy. We run the only EIA leadership course that has been accepted for delivery by the Internation Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) at thier annual conference.

Stranded Assets: Why Sustainability Scenario Appraisals are now part of smart business practice

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Two monthas ago I posted a Linked In article identifying how fighting natural disasters is increasingly becoming ‘business as normal’ for some industries faced with increasing climate change impacts. The case study concerned the Pacific Gas and Electricity Company (PG&E) and their mounting liability ($billions) arising from wildfires linked to network infrastructure.

It was with regret that I read that PG&E had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US after being brought to its knees through mounting liabilities for wildfires and the deaths of over 100 people.

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit southern Texas killing as many as 60 people, and caused damages as high as US$180 billion across government bodies, businesses and property owners. In addition, the hurricane shut down, damaged or destroyed Texas energy operations and related businesses. The final bill was estimated at up to 1% of US GDP.

The point in my original article was about how smart organisations, especially infrastructure asset management businesses, are starting to take real note of sustainability risks, notably Climate Change and Megatrends, and had started to incorporate them into thier Enterprise Risk Management portfolios, particularly via futurecasts (looking forward) across various anticipated scenarios. This approach integrates well with marketing and business planning activities where an open commercial mindset is applied. It tests future business strategy, assumptions and investment, but just as importantly it can uniquely identify redundant processes or future ‘stranded assets’.

Asset heavy state and private businesses, often effectively monopolies in terms of the business and customer base are most at risk of encountering this risk. Why? because thier comprative size, thier longevity, lack of real competition, and at times leadership complacency that significant competitive barriers to entry exist can lead to a false sense of security.

Stranded Assets

Stranded assets are assets that suffer from unanticipated or premature write-downs, devaluations or conversion from ‘asset’ to ‘liability’. Stranded assets can be caused by a variety of factors (climate change, policy transfer or societal concern) and are a phenomenon inherent when a company starts to focus internally rather than externally in its search for innovation, market intelligence and forgets to repeatedly ask itself ‘Why do I exist?’. Rapid technology or sociatal value changes in several technology sectors are evidence that it can happen across many market and service serctors. Leaving previously successful companies behind newer entrants, leaving them asset heavy and effectively market redundant in a previously regarded secure sector. Stranded assets can pose a significant risk to shareholders, organisations and the communities within which that business operates as it can effectively wipe out a business’s commercial viability as the balance sheet tips over towards liabilities and the investment call required to catch up with competitors becomes unsustainable as debt. Many coal based supply & generation resources, and other hydrocarbon-based indutries, now have the potential to become stranded through climate change as the world engages in a fossil fuel phase out.

For the financially minded it can be summarised quickly as a once valued asset that is not performing well in the marketplace but which must be kept on a financial statement in order to record a loss of profit!

A recent report by the NGO Climate Tracker outlined that the increasing competitiveness in renewable energy costs and the price drop in energy cost to consumers will leave $60 billion of coal burning plants in Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines ‘stranded’ within 10 years. In Indonesia alone it identified $34.7 billion of stranded assets if policies were brought in to meet the goal of the Paris climate agreement to restrict global warming to less than 2°C.

Sustainability Scenario Analysis

Sustainability Scenario analysis is a useful starting tool for forecasting the potential liabilities and implications of sustainability issues, megatrends and in particular climate change on a business’s asset management strategy, its future investment scenarios and operational practices as a business and as a leadership tool through which to stimulate longer term scenario and strategic thinking. At a leadership level it starts to prompt a movement away from the concept of the ‘effeciency of the existing process’ towards a more sustainable ‘effectiveness of the future outcome’.

This blog is part 1 of a longer discourse on sustainability strategy in business and scenario analysis

At Leading Green, our approach to sustainability in business consulting encourages our clients to look closely at their own internal leadership strengths and goals.  Helping them adopt an inquisitive state of mind and supporting them in how sustainability can support their long-term business strategy.