| More About Us |
|
|
Our firm's mission is to help companies throughout the product supply chain create environmentally-sustainable businesses. Our consulting services include: creating enterprise-level environmental sustainability visions, goals and strategies; re-engineering internal processes to reflect environmentally-sustainable best practices; and maximizing the environmental sustainability of product supply chains through the design and implentation of supplier assessment mechanisms.
We are particularly interested in working with small- and medium-sized enterprises. We work nationwide in a variety of industries. We are extremely sensitive to clients' budgets and their capacity for change.
Whether it's an energy, water, chemicals or solid waste issue, our team of professionals is ready to help your business. Please contact us to learn how we can help you.
Call 212-343-1006 today.
| |
|
Greetings!
This Newsletter provides valuable information on the relationship between business and environmental sustainability, one of the hottest topics in business today. This month's Feature Article is on the utility of good stakeholder engagement strategies. We've also included tips on how to apply this immediately to your company.
Happy reading! |
 |
Announcements: New Website and blog | Kuhn Associates Management Advisors has recently updated its website, www.kuhnassociatesllc.com. Among other changes, the site now includes a blog, with news and articles on the most important issues in sustainable business. |
| Feature Article: Meaningfully Engaging
Stakeholders
| More and
more, organizations are coming to understand the business value of
sustainability. A recent survey by eyefortransport found that 77% of supply
chain executives consider 'green' initiatives to be an important part of their
overall strategy. This does not mean, however, that this sort of thinking holds
universally. Indeed, throughout the supply chain of any company, there will be
a wide range of views on sustainability, from skeptics and active disbelievers
to advocates and activists.
This
diversity of views regarding sustainability ... a relatively new challenge for many businesses ... can complicate the way a business goes about crafting and implementing its strategies. New situations and challenges call for new and innovative solutions. It is crucial to make sure that important and valuable voices are
heard, and that unhelpful or disruptive voices are appropriately managed. The likelihood of success in sustainability initiatives can be greatly improved through meaningful engagement practices.
As a
preliminary, a company should ask which of its stakeholders should be involved
in developing its sustainability initiatives. There is a delicate balance to
strike. If too few stakeholders are represented, those passed over may, overtly
or tacitly, undermine the process, and opportunities to profit from distinctive
voices may be lost. If too many are represented, the process is liable to get
bogged down.
The first step is to identify which stakeholders should be
participants in the process, with authority to affect it directly, and which
should be observers, whose role is rather to provide knowledge and commentary.
Participants might include:
- Certain employees, such as representatives of
purchasing and IT teams.
- Suppliers, including, most significantly, members of
the supplier council.
- Customers, who may be represented by members of the
sales department.
Observers might include:
- Other employees, such as representatives of communications.
- Non-core suppliers.
- Representatives of outside bodies, including think tanks, NGOs, and
universities.
The next
challenge for an organization is to get these stakeholders to engage effectively. Sustainability is a complex topic, and a new departure for many businesses. Novel topics demand new methods of engagement in order to build
stakeholders' commitment in the process.
A company will want to make sure, for instance, that participants and observers are involved in a meaningful, energetic way. This may mean giving participants real choices which they are accountable for. It may also mean managing closely the situation and design of meetings, to create an atmosphere that allows for transparency and gives people room to express their doubts. Crucially, participants should have the chance to talk to each other: it's through conversations and mutual engagement that new ideas grow.
Done properly, an effective engagement strategy means that the most valuable voices in a company's supply chain can work together to build new solutions. And new solutions are what businesses need to tackle the challenges of sustainability.
|
|
Ideas You Can Use Now! |
|
Above, we've
suggested developing dynamic new ways of engaging stakeholders when developing
sustainability strategies. Here are some tips about how to do this:
- Pick out the
relevant stakeholders, and divide them into participants and observers.
- Try to avoid
'death by meetings'! Create informal settings like brown bag lunches for people
to share ideas.
- Establish an
environment where people feel safe voicing doubts and concerns.
- Don't
overwhelm participants. Break the project down into manageable increments, with mid-point debriefs to assess successes and failures.
- Decide how best to use observers. How regular will communications be? Which participants will be assigned to liaise with the observer group?
- If you're a team leader, be sure to 'walk the walk'! For instance, it's not enough to simply say you value participation. You need to work with others and value their opinions.
Consider the
specifics of your organization and of the sustainability initiative you want to
carry out. Then use these tips to bring your stakeholders together in the most
effective way possible!
Any comments or questions on stakeholder engagement? Feel free to contact us at info@kuhnassociatesllc.com.
|
|
Calendar of Events |
Sustainability-related conferences and seminars are still somewhat thin on the ground these days. Nonetheless, here are a few events coming up over the next few months that may interest you:
November 18-19, San Mateo, CA ... GreenBeat 2009 is a major space for innovators and business leaders to meet to learn and share ideas about the Smart Grid. Visit the event website here. January 14, Santa Monica, CA ... This Sustainable Industries Economic Forum, the highlight of which is a series of presentations by Paul Hawken, CEO of Pax Engineering Group. Visit the website for the forums here.
| |
Thanks for reading! Please contact us today to discuss anything you've read here, suggest a topic for a future edition or learn how we can help you build a more sustainable business.
Call 212-343-1006 or email us at info@kuhnassociatesllc.com for more information.
Sincerely,
|
|
|
