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A Mistake of Historic Proportions

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It’s a mistake of historic proportions for the U.S. to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Once again, forgive me for stepping out of my “business person” role and speaking as a concerned American citizen.

The world needs U.S. climate leadership…

America can lead on climate change solutions.

Experts ranging from scientists to economists to business people explain in blunt, clear times why the U.S. will be the great loser here.  China and European nations will step into the vacuum of climate leadership that we – inexplicably – have created.

That agreement, signed by 195 countries in 2015, put the world on a path to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing our world to warm to a dangerous and unhealthy degree. One of the reasons I launched Great Green Content back in 2011 was because I had done my own reading and learning about climate change. (It helps to have MIT business school professors to call up and ask, “Can you show me the climate models?” – and they do!)

… to help meet climate change risks

I was stunned that a threat so serious was so poorly covered by the media.  And as an MBA with a corporate career that spanned multiple industries, I saw first-hand the often-tepid efforts that companies make to address a problem that may leave them with both no business – and no customers. This despite the fact that – like most problems – the solutions to climate change will create jobs: from wind turbine technicians to solar panel installers and more.

Climate change drives floods, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes and other severe forms of weather. It kills the crops that feed people, enables deadly infectious diseases to spread far beyond their geographic origins, and causes billions of dollars in property damage every year. It’s a “threat multiplier” according to the U.S. military. It’s a business risk that more and more investors demand that corporations report on.

The future – if we are to have one –  has to be green

Green jobs are the future.

Today I am speaking as a citizen, a wife, a mom, a neighbor, a member of my community. This decision will not create one new job here. It will simply make us – and our global neighbors – less safe in the months and years ahead.

I will ignore this decision and push on with what I know needs to be done. Join me!

“The Big Pivot” – Part 5

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Here it is – the end of my short summary of Andrew Winston’s book “The Big Pivot.” The last chapter is called “Build a Resilient, Antifragile Company.”

"The Big Pivot" is Andrew Winston's latest book.

“The Big Pivot” is Andrew Winston’s latest book.

By “antifragile”, he means a company that doesn’t just survive, but gets better. Like a muscle that strengthens when you exercise it.

“You build resilience to protect yourself from the fact that you don’t know what will happen.” According to Winston, “We need systems that deal well with volatility and uncertainty.”

Foundations of a Resilient Business Include:

  • Diversity – of ideas and perspectives makes an organization stronger.
  • Redundancy, with buffers – Businesses dislike redundancy because it seems like waste. But when auto manufacturers got critical parts from just one supplier – and that supplier’s factory flooded – their operations screeched to a halt. Millions of dollars were lost. Buffers are “the margins that provide the short term breathing space needed to absorb shocks.”  Why wouldn’t we set up our businesses with some buffers to better handle extreme situations, especially as those situations are happening more frequently?
  • Speed: Fast Feedback and Failure – real time feedback is powerful. Energy meters that show homeowners their energy use, right  now, change behavior. People turn off the lights and ease back on the air conditioning. We also need to fail quickly and reward people for trying, no matter what the outcome. Each failure can points us in new, more promising directions.
  • Modular and distributed design – for example, distributed power systems would protect us from the large, disruptive power outages we have now.

According to Winston, the “Big Pivot” has to come from the top – the C-Suite. (While I agree, I am less optimistic that these guys will make the right decisions.)

Finally, there will be winners and losers. In Winston’s view, the vast majority of us will win in  this new world, if for no other reason than that “ensuring our survival is a pretty big victory.”

My favorite lines from the book

I started out bookmarking pages of the book on my Kindle. I stopped because almost every page had an eye-popping statistic or gem of a story. The 5 lines below are just a taste of what’s in the book. Enjoy!

  •  “It’s ludicrous to prioritize short-term profit at the cost of our very survival.”
  •  “What if the (stock) market is irrational? Would we be making strategic decisions based on the demands of a raving lunatic?”
  •  “Business needs to treat government – which is the representation of our collective wills – as a partner, not an enemy.”
  •  “ROI is broken.”
  • “When companies say they can’t sell greener products because customers don’t want them, it’s a cop out.”

 

“The Big Pivot” – Part 4

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Here’s Part 4 of my summary of “The Big Pivot,” Andrew Winston’s latest book. The book is 352 pages, so I offer these posts as a shortcut to understanding the gist of it.

"The Big Pivot" is Andrew Winston's latest book.

“The Big Pivot” is Andrew Winston’s latest book.

We’ve covered the mega-challenges, the Vision Pivot and the Valuation Pivot. The third and final pivot is the “Partner Pivot.” It’s all about collaborating – with government, with competitors and with customers.

A Super-Condensed Summary: The Partner Pivot

Because it will take all of us working together to transition to a cleaner, greener economy, businesses need to find new ways to influence stakeholders. Winston suggests:

Become a Lobbyist

According to Winston, “Political action and lobbying are absolutely critical to making the Big Pivot successfully.”

He identifies 5 key policies that companies should lobby for:

  • Put a Price on Carbon – Winston recommends a carbon tax as a “great revenue and deficit-reduction opportunity.”
  • End Fossil-Fuel Subsidies – and subsidize cleaner energy for a while. We have a short time to eliminate carbon. Subsidies that speed the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy – and then decline – make sense.
  • Pursue Public-Private Investment in the Clean Economy – “The private sector alone cannot build the infrastructure we need for a modern, clean economy.” Government’s track record of success with long-term public-private investment programs includes the birth of the computer age, the federal highway system, the fight against AIDS, and the space program.
  • Implement Higher “Clean” Product and Production Standards – if your product uses less energy than your competitors, why not lobby for a higher standard for all? It will level the playing field, and put your competitors in a tough spot.
  • Support Greater Corporate Transparency – Big business spent millions in California and Washington State to defeat proposed laws requiring labels for GMO foods.  Says Winston, “companies that were against the law…were on the wrong side of history.”

According to Winston, “Business needs to treat government – which is the representation of our collective wills – as a partner, not an enemy.”

Collaborate Radically

“The mega-challenges are exactly that – mega – we cannot solve them alone – we have to collaborate.”

One such collaborative effort going on right now is The Sustainability Consortium. Established with funding from Walmart, the group is composed of 80 of the world’s largest retailers, including Coke, Clorox, Colgate-Palmolive, P&G, Pepsi and Unilever.

TSC’s purpose is to reduce the impacts of global consumption by gathering much better data on the life cycle impacts of consumer products. Using TSC’s footprint data, retailers can better decide what goes on the shelves.

It’s a big change for businesses used to thinking only of “cutthroat competition.” But Winston encourages companies to map the “ecosystem” of their industry, identify “hot spots” where joint action can have the biggest impact, and lay out a migration path to lower-carbon solutions.

Inspire Customers to Care and to Use Less

This is a tough one. We live in a “consumer” society, and that mentality is hard to break.

But according to Winston, “The mega-challenges we face can’t be handled by government or business alone…We need citizens as consumers to make different choices.”

Why? Because their impacts may be far greater than those of business. When Unilever measured the impacts (energy, water, waste) of its major products,  it found that its own manufacturing footprint was a small fraction of the total. Consumers were responsible for the lion’s share. “The water we use to shampoo our hair, and the energy we use to heat the water, dwarfs the resources needed to make the product.”

In an ideal world, “a circular economy filled with smartly designed products can help solve some of our resource challenges, but that’s a long way off.”

In the meantime, businesses are trying different approaches. Patagonia had its “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign. The message is not just “use less” but “get more value and live better.”

Marks and Spencer, the British retailer, has its “Shwop Your Old Clothes” campaign. It encourages customers to bring their old clothes back to the store. M&S makes a “Shwop” coat from recycled items that is half the cost of a virgin wool coat.

According to Winston, “when companies say they can’t sell greener products because customers don’t want them, it’s a cop out.” Companies create “needs” all the time. If Marketing focuses on educating consumers about how to make better choices, those messages will motivate action over time.

How is your business partnering around the mega-challenges?