What You Need From Your Company’s Eco-Czar
Shapiro
I got a call recently from the head of recruiting at a major company that has been searching high and low for a Chief Sustainability Officer. I asked what experience they were looking for and got an interesting answer: While deep knowledge of green was important, even more critical was experience “running a P&L” at a large company.
This recruiter had recognized what my colleagues and I at GreenOrder have been seeing for some time: In large enterprises, sustainability is a management challenge as much as an environmental challenge.
So how do you manage green? If the past couple of years were notable for the number of big corporations that embraced green as a business opportunity, 2008 marks a new period where leaders are grappling with green implementation and change management.
Of course, it’s critically important to start with the right strategy — one that is credible, relevant, effectively messaged and differentiated (that is, it has “CRED”). A company also needs clear sustainability goals and metrics of success. Getting that strategy into the company’s DNA requires commitment from the CEO to show that green is a business priority, as well as bottom-up opportunities for folks at all levels to contribute ideas and actions.
To drive this new activity, many companies have appointed a Chief Sustainability Officer. While this high-level leadership is welcome, it is not a panacea. Companies need to figure out how these individuals fit within the broader org chart and give them a clear sense of how sustainability should be managed — from organizational design to incentives to performance tracking.
We can learn from other fundamental changes in the business world. During the IT and Internet revolution, companies created new C-suite positions, but the Chief Technology Officer couldn’t do everything solo (getting every employee an email address did not amount to a digital strategy). Nor could the CTO intrude on other functions — for example, creating an online sales strategy without the active involvement of the head of sales. Rather, the effective CTO needed to coordinate with others to make tech a driver of value.
The same is true for environmental strategy. It’s all about coordination.
At GreenOrder, we’ve had a chance to see this first hand at General Electric, where our client Lorraine Bolsinger, a veteran GE corporate officer, runs the company’s ecomagination initiative across the sprawling enterprise. “My job is one part tech and innovation, one part sales, one part communication, and one part public policy,” Bolsinger told me recently.
In global companies with multiple divisions, managing green also means navigating regional differences, as well as figuring out the balance between the priorities of corporate and business units. To get everyone on board, Bolsinger says, “You have to be willing to really engage and bring more to the party than you’re asking for.”
Bolsinger also counsels her peers to use what’s best in an existing corporate culture: “Leverage what’s already working today, and add one or two things that are new to create excitement.”
In short, an eco-czar needs to be a coordinator, champion, catalyst and sometimes provocateur. She or he needs to work with nearly every function in the company, helping them to look at their day-to-day decisions through the lens of green opportunity. This person also needs the ear of the CEO, as well as credibility with peers inside the company, to set up the right structures, processes, and roles to enable a sustainability strategy to succeed.
*This story originally appeared on Harvard Business Publishing’s Leading Green blog.
Last 5 posts by Andrew Shapiro
• Business Can Ignore Climate Deniers - December 21st, 2009
• Copenhagen, Meet Columbus - December 12th, 2009
• Make Every Job a Green Job - August 24th, 2009
• Can Obama Become the Green Leader We Need? - May 1st, 2009
• Take Eco-Efficiency to a Higher Level - April 9th, 2009
