Planetary sustainability

Last week I explored examples of people in business doing the right thing when anonymity was lost and empathy was felt for another person. In another blog I also discussed the impact of the hard wired desire for self preservation that sometimes supports wrong, rather than right, doing.

If right doing isn't always a given, especially when in the context of corporate social responsbility, a subsequent blog started to explore how an organisation's cultural web might be used to increase the likelihood of support for right doing.

Today I'd like to think a little more widely - about planetary sustainability!!

It's not going to be a blog with facts and figures that prove or disprove global warming, nor will it discuss how many planets full of resources we need to sustain the current population. I'll leave that to others.

What I'd like to do is continue the conversation and exploration from recent blogs. That is if right doing comes from empathy and/or the threat to personal survival then what does that mean when we're wanting people to seriously act in ways that support planetary sustainability?

Threat to your personal survival

You'd like to think that a link between the current state of the planet and our personal survival could be easily made. 

Many do see the link and do act believing their personal survival is at stake. Many, however, do not, and get annoyed with those on their 'the end of the world is nigh' soap boxes. The evidence may be there but its not easily digested and the impact is still seen as too far away to inspire change in many of the population. 

I don't wish to suggest its not a great strategy, and wholly support the many organisations and people packaging the information and data in ways that hope to convince people of the threat to their personal survival.

I just think we're missing something otherwise why hasn't it worked and why are things seemingly getting worse?

Empathy

Indigenous cultures had, and continue to have, empathy with nature and the planet. This empathy led them to relate to nature and the planet in ways very differently from how we do currently. 

If my hypothesis about empathy leading to right action is correct, then the solution to planetary sustainability isn't just more data and persuasion but more empathy for nature and the planet. It can't only be about logical persuasion of other's minds, it has to be about inspiring their hearts too and that will only come as they each individually find empathy with the planet.

Which then leads to the questions of: how do we get empathy for the planet? And how do we help others get empathy with the planet?

I'd love your views. Here are a few of mine to get us started on what I believe could be a very important solution to getting 'right action' with respect to the planet. 

• Education that is about being with and in nature
• Organisations connecting to nature 
• More recreational pursuits that connect to nature
• Games, books and apps that connect to nature (not sure I mean FarmVille but am open to be persuaded that it does facilitate more empathy for nature and the planet)
• Using nature as our teacher - I'm a practitioner of landscaping your life which is a profound tool because, I believe, of its link to nature 

As you can see not an exhaustive list and one I'd love your input to.

Over coming weeks and months I look forward to exploring further with you this hypothesis and solution.

Alison Smith
Inspiring change in purchasing - inside and out

Picture courtesy of Pixabay 

Organisational culture, CSR strategies & ethics

Yesterday I hypothesised that to inspire leaders to support sustainable and responsible actions these actions needed to be linked to organisational survival. That is so long as someone felt they had a choice they might opt for a different less sustainable and responsible one.

In the blog I suggested that to use 'survival' as the motivation for support for a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy would require understanding the organisational culture.

One model I think enables a better exploration of organisational culture and the potential areas to be considered is Johnson, Scholes and Whittington's cultural web as shown above.

The cultural web is a means of documenting the 'taken for granted assumptions' of an organisation. It's this culture that drives strategy and therefore it's this culture that you can use to get support for the CSR policies you're wanting to implement.

• Stories - what stories are continually told about and within the organisation, who are the heroes and the villains, how is success defined, what about failure, what character traits do they support, what character traits do they disapprove of? How can these patterns hidden within the stories told by employees be used as you develop your strategy for CSR? 
• Symbols - status symbols, language and jargon are all characteristics of this element of the cultural web. Use of appropriate language and threat of loss of status may play a part in a CSR strategy. 
• Power structures - which individuals, departments and business units are the most powerful. Stakeholder mapping will help you understand how to best manage the complex relationships that exist within your organisation and how best to facilitate support for your strategy.
• Routines and rituals - if you try to implement a strategy that is counter to 'the way we do things round here' you're increasing the chances of failure. How can you support 'the way we do things'  in your strategy, its implementation and how you sell it to others? 
• Control Systems - what do the measurement and reward systems in place say about the organisation? How can your strategy support these? 
• Organisational structures - you can spend a lot of time winning over managers who have no say what so ever in the decision to support, or otherwise, your strategy. I'm not saying talking to other managers isn't important, especially if their support will be needed to implement any strategy. However you do need to focus your effort on those making the decision. 

Like any model I suspect the benefit when using the cultural web comes in identifying the one thing that's been ignored whilst developing the strategy. That is we're likely to have considered many of the above unconsciously without referenced to these six headings. Although we may view them differently when using 'survival' as the criteria for obtaining motivation.

Would undertaking an analysis of the cultural web for your organisation identify alternate means of obtaining support for your strategies? As it will certainly be easier to understand if this works when applied to a real situation do please let me know how you get on. 

Alison Smith
Inspiring change in procurement - inside and out

Personal and organisational survival

In an earlier blog I argued that many ethical decisions are compromised because personal survival is placed as higher importance than ethics. I can get on my soap box about integrity and doing the right thing, but we're hard wired to survive and need a huge amount of will power to override our internal programming that prioritises personal and family survival.

With thoughts of that blog still in my mind I attended the CIPS Supply Management awards. The overall winner was a team successfully raising the awareness and changing behaviours with respect to sustainable purchasing. 

Before the dinner I spoke to one of the other nominees for the award. As we spoke I realised that for that organisation the choice to support sustainability was clear cut and the right decisions were being made. Then the realisation dawned that the right doing arose because the organisation felt its survival was conditional on not doing the opposite. Brand and customer loyalty would be seriously jeopardised if they didn't get sustainability right - ROI, profit and competitive advantage would all be detrimentally impacted too. 

I wonder therefore how the internal programming to survive can, and is being used by procurement teams to inspire more businesses to do the right thing? That is how can we link sustainable action to survival of our own business and how can we link sustainable action to survival of our suppliers' businesses.

Perhaps more importantly what does that look like in terms of specifics:

• Certainly following through on not dealing with suppliers who don't take the necessary action (all talk and no action is a strategy that's bound to fail if survival is being used as the motivation).
• I also suspect culture will play a big part in how to tell the story to leaders within an organisation to enable them to accept the urgent need for changes in direction. 

Another blog last week suggested having empathy also supported right doing. I wonder how powerful a strategy that uses empathy and personal survival might be in removing the resistance to more sustainable and responsible actions in business? I suspect that's the topic for a future blog.

Alison Smith

Inspiring change inside and out

Picture courtesy of Pixabay

Business values and payment of the living wage

I suspect your business values would point to you paying the living wage - so I do hope you are already paying it or have steps in place to rectify the situation internally and with your suppliers. 

It’s living wage week this week here in the UK - where organisations are being asked by the Living Wage Foundation to sign up to paying a living wage – ie a wage that enables those in receipt of it to meet the basic costs of living. In London that figure is £8.55 and outside London £7.45 (£1.26 more than the recently increased minimum wage).

I can feel the resistance already of many organisations not supporting payment of the living wage. I'm sure as living wage week progresses there will be many others who can more adequately answer some of the concerns raised. One point I'd like to make, and it would be funny if it wasn't so serious a point as I only blogged yesterday about the validity of values statements, is this:  

Values are how we determine what action to take - the same should be the same for business values. If we have a decision to make we should be able use the values statement as criteria for determining if it's a yes or a no! Let's just see how some common business values fair when asked "should I be paying the living wage?"

• Respect 
• Lead by example
• Honest
• Socially responsible
• Integrity
• Open
• Value the individual
• Dignity
• Standards of excellence

That's a yes then.

Even if an organisation has included the need for profitability in their values statement, and most don't, I'd suggest meeting all the other values would negate the extra £44 per week per person you may be needing to pay. Especially as a procurement professional I could save you that in a heart beat from somewhere else. At least you could then hold your head high and know your profitability isn't at the expense of respecting and giving dignity to those who work for you on a wage significantly less than most of us reading this blog.

What can you do to ensure your organisation signs up to pay the living wage internally and to it's suppliers?

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Sowing the seeds for the payment of the living wage by our suppliers too

Living Wage Foundation logo source: livingwage.org.uk via Alison on Pinterest