We help companies throughout the product supply chain create sustainable businesses.

Our consulting services include creating enterprise-level sustainability visions, goals and strategies; re-engineering internal processes to reflect sustainable best practices; maximizing the sustainability of today's complex supply chains and assisting with communicating sustainability information in writing and in media.

Our training services include webinars and in-person seminars for large to small groups on topics ranging from GHG accounting to Mastering Supply Chain Sustainability and Social Responsibility. We can custom design training to suit your needs.

We work in a variety of industries. We are extremely sensitive to clients' budgets and their capacity for change.

 

Whether it's an environmental or social responsibility issue, our team of professionals is ready to help your business. Please contact us to learn how we can help you.

 

In this first newsletter edition of 2014, we begin a 3-part series on Engaging Stakeholders In Sustainability Initiatives. This month, our Feature Article discusses how you can identify and engage internal stakeholders in your sustainability plan or project. Later columns will discuss suppliers and other external stakeholders.

In our Ideas You Can Use Now section, we provide some specific tips about how to engage internal stakeholders in sustainability, in a way that is meaningful for everyone involved.

   

Finally, in the Calendar section, we suggest some sustainability-related events in the coming few months that you might want to investigate.

 

 

Happy reading!    

 

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Whether you're in supply chain, marketing, R + D, operations or finance, your work in the sustainability arena is likely to need to include others who are also "internal" to your company (we can include company owners in the "internal stakeholders" category in privately- or closely-held companies). Some of these internal players will have very necessary and legitimate reasons for being involved ("participants"), while some are information-seekers at most ("observers"). So, you need a way to identify all those internal stakeholders that are to be involved, decide which type of engagement is appropriate and then engage them in a meaningful way.

 

Identifying which internal stakeholders matter should be seen as more of a process of inclusion than of exclusion. 

• Map out the total universe of internal stakeholders ... every function that you can think of that's internal to your business (don't overlook non-management functions). Assume that every function is "in" on your strategy or project until you have a reason to exclude them, based upon the following proviso:
• some of the people who are "in" will get participant roles; some of the folks who are "in" will be observers only. Remember: those who are totally "out" won't get to participate or regularly receive information about your sustainability plan or project. And, by the way, these designations are for your own use ... there's normally no need to tell people which category they fit in.

Once you have identified the internal stakeholders who you will engage and have decided which type of engagement they will experience (i.e., participant or observer), then you need to develop and implement meaningful engagement strategies that meet everyone's needs.

• For observers, the best practice is to provide them with a set of current "FAQs" either distributed by email or posted on your company's intranet that can be referenced when necessary. You should also appoint a single individual on the project team (with a backup) to keep the FAQs current and respond to inquiries.
• For participants, while no one engagement strategy works in all situations, it is key that your strategy includes new, novel elements of engagement. This is because sustainability is a dynamic, challenging and (often) unfamiliar topic for managers and studies have shown that in those types of situations strategies born out of new and novel methods achieve better results. These studies point to the high level of emotional involvement required on the part of participants in order to achieve success in sustainability as the main reason for changing things up. In the "Ideas You Can Use Now" section below, we provide some specific ideas.

While these "change management" process ideas may seem simple or intuitive to some, approaching your sustainability project's internal stakeholder engagement strategy in this way will, in fact, create superior results for everyone involved ... we've seen it work. 

Ideas You Can Use Now!

Thanks for reading! Please contact us today to discuss anything you've read here, suggest a topic for a future Newsletter edition or learn how we can help you build a more sustainable business.

Sincerely,