Houston, we have a problem

Is this worse than greenhouse gases?

There are a lot of dirty businesses out there, and when they can get away with it, engage in some pretty appalling behaviour. Things like getting their products made in sweat shops that use what can only be described as slave labour, using hardwood from clear-felled tropical rainforests or destroying the natural environment to mine for resources. These practices are morally wrong and they’re unsustainable, but because businesses can get away with that kind of behaviour; they will do so in the interests of short-term profit.

But things are changing, and the growing numbers of sustainable businesses are doing things very differently. Can you imagine a sustainably run businesses dumping waste in a river? Or using production methods that left toxins in the environment? Even if they could get away with it and even if everyone else was doing it, no genuinely sustainable business would operate that way.

But what about greenhouse gases?

I recently surveyed `80 New Zealand businesses that described themselves as being sustainable to find out what they were doing about their carbon footprint, and the results were not what I expected.

When asked whether climate change was caused by human activities, 93% agreed that it was, with 71% believing that it was urgent and 84% important for New Zealand businesses to address their carbon footprints. These figures made it clear that the people who run sustainable businesses are in no doubt about the urgency and importance of the business community dealing with their carbon output, so logically they’ve either dealt with their greenhouse gas output, or are actively working on it.

This was reflected by 21% being happy with their current carbon footprint with 54% being reasonably happy, although recognising that there was still room for improvement. So far so good; it would appear that sustainable business owners know what needs to be done and are generally happy with how well they’re doing. Unfortunately, when I started to dig deeper, things got a little less positive.

What gets measured gets managed, so it would be realistic to assume that when managing a business’s carbon footprint is so overwhelmingly recognised as being both urgent and of major importance, it would be measured and managed. Yet only 32% of the respondents had both accurate data about their carbon output and a strategy to manage it, with another 14% having a strategy but had only limited data. Of the remaining 54%, 29% generally tried to minimise their carbon output, but had no strategy or data to measure their success with and 18% liked the idea, but saw no reason for them to do anything.

Less than one third of sustainable businesses take their carbon footprint seriously enough to do something about it, with the remainder doing little more than hoping for the best. Are sustainable businesses in NZ as laissez faire about other forms of pollution? Can a business that is not sufficiently concerned about their contribution to climate change to even measure their pollution be described as sustainable?

As long as the majority of sustainable businesses don’t take full responsibility for their role in climate change we simply cannot expect other businesses or consumers to do anything either.

Quick figures:

71%	Sustainable business people that think it’s urgent that NZ businesses address their carbon footprints.
84%	Sustainable business people that think it’s very important for businesses to address their carbon footprint
75%	Sustainable business people that are happy with their company’s carbon footprint
32%	Sustainable business  people that accurately measure and manage their carbon footprint
43%	Sustainable business people that try to manage their carbon footprint without data.

If you want the original data and questionnaire, please contact me and I’ll  send it to you.

Remember when NZ led the world?

We used to be a nation of innovators and we were defined by our integrity and fairness – remember when we thought apartheid was wrong so we marched in the streets? Or when we decided that women had every right to vote? And what about when we stood up to France and demanded they stop nuclear tests in Mururoa?

It seems that has changed and now we’re lagging behind the rest of the world in what is probably the most important issue that has ever faced humanity.

Climate change wake up for NZ business (www.idealog.co.nz)

It’s about time…

25 years ago the Brundtland Commission) spent nearly 3 years taking a long, hard look at the future, and their final words were unambiguous:

“To keep options open for future generations, the present generation must begin now, and begin together, nationally and internationally…. The Commissioners came from 21 very different nations. In our discussions, we disagreed often on details and priorities. But despite our widely differing backgrounds and varying national and international responsibilities, we were able to agree to the lines along which institutional change must be drawn.

We are unanimous in our conviction that the security, well-being, and very survival of the planet depend on such changes, now.”

Since then we have had major changes:

• The Berlin wall was torn down leading to the end of the Soviet Union, Nelson Mandela became the President of South Africa and America elected an African American president which means we can make substantial political and institutional change.
• America used a massive force to invade Iraq in order to depose a dictator because they believed he posed a threat to the safety of the US population; that which tells me that we have the ability to take rapid and decisive action to protect people from danger.
• The internet has become damn near ubiquitous which means virtually all the knowledge in the world is instantly available to anyone which means we have access to the information and ideas we need to make the necessary changes.
• Between July 15 2012 and November 24th over 800 million people watched Gangnam style on You Tube which means we can share information with vast numbers of people very quickly.
• On October 21st, a flash mob of 20,000 people performed Gangnam Style in Milan and on October 24th the same thing happened in Paris which shows we can mobilise huge numbers of people to take action (even if that action is a strange dance).
• Since 1990 the global economy has grown more than it did during the 10,000 years from the beginning of agriculture to 1950 which shows we can afford to make the changes.

We have no excuses because these things show that we can change the world; all we need is for somebody to do something, now. There’s no point in waiting for our political leaders because they haven’t done anything meaningful in 25 years, industry has just made things worse by sticking to failing business paradigms and even the armed services are too busy trying to stop their personnel from leaving to stage a military coup. So that pretty much leaves it up to you and I to do something.

Which is a big relief because it’s people like you and I who marched against apartheid in 1981, sailed dinghies in front of nuclear war ships and even pulled down the Berlin Wall in 1989. It seems that whenever major change is called for, it’s the ordinary people like you and I who do it: not the political leaders, the generals, the priests or even the teachers. The security, well-being, and very survival of the planet depends on you and I doing something now because nobody else is going to.

Does my bum look big on this?

About the only thing a fat old biker  such as myself can change on his own is oil, so I got together with a few equally ordinary people and we came up with the idea of the Canterbury Sustainable Business Forum . We have all come to the conclusion that it’s too late to wait for Someone Else To Do Something, so have got together to be that someone. Individually we have the same limitations as everyone else does, but together we have all we need to overcome our individual weaknesses and flaws which means we can change the world.

Are you in?

Ordinary people who got sick of waiting for Someone To Do Something

Sustainability is impossible without vision

What do Nokia, the Canterbury Buy Sell & Exchange magazine and Washington Mutual have in common?

The answer is that 10 years ago they dominated their respective markets and now are either bankrupt in the case of Washington Mutual or fighting for their survival. History is filled with stories of the often rapid demise of businesses that once seemed too strong to fail. They all share something else in common: they all fell from grace because they either failed to see the changes coming their way or simply didn’t prepare.

Remember when EVERYONE had a Walkman?

In 1997 if someone had told Nokia that the new iPhone was going to change how we use our phones, or if the various free-advertising weekly magazines had been told when Trade Me launched in 1999 that within 7 years it would be so successful that Fairfax would pay $700m for it, would they still be around? Would the customers of every cafe in town be proudly displaying their new Nokia smart phones and would Sam Morgan have to go to work every day?

Scientists tell us we are in the early stages of the sixth mass extinction which will potentially see most of the species currently living die out, and as a business person I think we’re about to see a mass extinction of businesses. Just some of the changes that are either just over the horizon or well and truly in sight are:

• Rapidly rising energy costs especially for fossil fuel based energy
• Global food shortages including the imminent collapse of many of the world’s fisheries resulting in widespread social dissent
• Increasing numbers of extreme weather events
• Rising prices of resources and raw materials as the easy to extract non-renewable resources are depleted
• Increasing economic failure in Western economies and the inevitable slowing down of the Asian economies

• 

  Do you think he’s dead?
  No, we just need faith that one day we will find a way to bring him to life.

Every one of these changes is both likely and predictable, and every one will impact to a greater or lesser extent on most of the world’s businesses. That means damn near every single CEO should be working long hours planning ways to adapt by using strategies like:

• Identifying ways to replace non-renewable raw materials with something that is sustainable or changing the business direction.
• Preparing for markets to slump
• Minimising energy consumption or only using renewable energy sources and recognising that commuting to work by car will hurt their employees
• Reducing waste production and looking for ways to re-use materials or implementing a cradle to cradle approach
• Reducing carbon footprints to zero

Almost all of the changes coming our way can be prepared for, but that won’t happen until business people start looking beyond the next quarterly report and making vision a priority. Unless this happens most businesses currently operating will, at best, struggle to adapt to changes that can’t be ignored or paid away.

Yet with vision, leadership and creativity we can not only weather the storm but create a better business environment for all of us. Unfortunately that will only happen if we choose to open our eyes and see what is ahead of us, choose to use our creativity to find better ways to do and choose to have the courage to do things differently.

Businesses can survive, but only if they choose to prepare for tomorrow before they get stuck in yesterday. Tomorrow is not a mystery; it’s a certainty.

A selection of future oriented websites:

• McGuinness Institute: A non-partisan think tank working towards a sustainable future.
• The World Future Society: an organization dedicated to exploring the future.
• Futures Thinking: The basics
• BBC Future Thinking
• Futures Thinking (Wikipaedia)
• The Futures Academy
• Emergent by design: When futures thinking meets design thinking
• Power Generation from Renewables: NZ Windfarms Ltd

Giving to the poor – is that really the role of a business?

 

Ports of Auckland – the company played hardball, but how much has that position cost them?

The triple bottom line model is now almost universally applied in sustainable business, but I’ve noticed that the social dimension is frequently limited to various forms of charitable behaviour. Now before I go any further, I agree entirely with businesses donating money, expertise, goods and staff time to charities, but I think there’s another and better way for a business to demonstrate social responsibility. It involves recognising that a business is a member of many different communities, and that every member of those communities has a responsibility to treat every other member fairly or that community and it’s members will fail.

Employees:

Too many businesses treat employees in an adversarial way. They don’t trust them, they watch over everything they do and are fast to punish any infraction while paying as little as possible and making sure that every hour paid is an hour worked. I’ve worked for people like that, and in one case over a 18 month period they had a 100% staff turnover with all but one of the dearly departed taking a successful personal grievance against them. Yes, including me.  They’re an extreme case, but that mindset is very common and hurts everyone, especially the employer. Acting like that exhausts the finite supply of employees and is an unsustainable business practice.

So what’s the sustainable way? The first thing to remember is that your employees have the same goals as you. They want your business to succeed because not only will that improve their job security, but it will give them the pride of being part of something successful – nobody likes being linked with failure. Treat them with respect, listen to them, make it as easy and pleasant to do their job as possible and give them a sense of ownership in your business. In return they’ll reward you by respecting you, coming up with ideas to improve things, working harder and promoting your business to their networks. And you’ll find that if times get tough they won’t mind if you can’t afford to pay as much as your competitor has to because you have treated them as a finite resource to be nurtured and sustained.

Suppliers:

A lot of businesses treat the relationship with their suppliers as a contest to see who can come out on top. Prices are driven down, bills are paid on the last day possible and visits by reps are treated as annoying interruptions.

The sustainable business strategy is to see suppliers as partners who provide the goods and services the business needs to remain sustainable. Prices are fair to both sides because they know that if the supplier doesn’t make a decent margin their economic sustainability is undermined and there is no incentive to go the extra mile with service. They also know that if they treat their supplier as businesses partner, that supplier will always be on the lookout for better ideas, better products and new opportunities as well as passing on savings. And if things get tough and they need support through things like extra credit and more time to pay bills, they’ll get that support. By ensuring suppliers are able to remain sustainable it means they will keep your business sustainable.
This is part one, thanks to a finite number of hours in the day the rest will have to follow in a few days or this blog is unsustainable. Have a look at an earlier post on a sustainable way of looking at the competition here: The art of making an enemy into a friend

Related articles

• Is Everything Better in Threes? Discussion Regarding the Triple Bottom Line (anchalproject.wordpress.com)
• Two Reasons Why Your CSR Program Should Engage Employees (triplepundit.com)
• Focusing on Sustainability, Companies to Collect More Data from Suppliers (greenresearch.com)
• Practising social responsibility without the CSR label (guardian.co.uk)
• Business Sustainability Becoming Business Norm (ichomegrown.wordpress.com)

 

Why on earth should people support sustainable businesses?

Harrington’s (Photo credit: teachernz)

A few years ago I went to talk to John Harrington, the owner of a fine local brewery called Harrington’s, about his marketing. When I arrived I was told he was “upstairs in the smoko room”, where I found him dressed in work clothes doing the dishes. The first thing he said as “why would I want to get involved with marketing?” That’s usually the first thing people ask, so I was prepared and ready with “so you can sell more beer and make more money”. I sat back and waited for the usual response of “OK, that sounds good, let’s talk”, but instead John just looked puzzled, then he said something I have never forgotten. “Why would I want to do that? A man can only eat and drink so much, and I do too much of both as it is”.

I needed a better answer which meant I needed to understand what was important to John. We sat down at the smoko room table and chatted about the history of his business, the new brewery and the beer that has his name on it. Incidentally, if you haven’t tried a Harrington’s beer you’re missing something because they are mighty tasty, and make the products of the multinationals about as appealing as a lukewarm glass of dishwater. John agreed that it was sad that so many people drank dull beer when a great beer was available, and that it was criminal that the profits from every dollar spent on a certain brand that isn’t brewed in Mangatainoka any more ended up in Singapore. Slowly John started to see why marketing was a good idea and would give him what he wanted –  people enjoying good beer and supporting NZ businesses.

The moral of this story is that that everyone wants something, and because it’s often not what you would expect, getting to know your customer is the key.

If you run a sustainable business, do you know what the people in your market want? And are you marketing what they want or what you think they want? A lot of people, especially SME owners, fall into the trap of thinking that what they want is what everyone else wants. This is a trap that catches a lot of green businesses because they are more likely to be driven by their personal values and many of them are basing their marketing message on the idea that supporting them is good for the environment. That may well be true, but is it enough to get the average Kiwi to change from a familiar and trusted brand to your brand? Is it enough to make them change what they’re doing? International research has consistently shown that consumers, even many self-professed greenies, are unlikely to change their behaviour solely on perceived environmental benefits.

If we assume that all else is equal (price, quality, availability etc) between your product and the non sustainable alternatives, what exactly are the benefits of dealing with sustainable businesses? I’ve put together a table listing just a few of the benefits of sustainable businesses. I suggest you have a look at them and do some brainstorming to find more that apply to you. Feel free to run ideas past me, and let me know what you discover.

Related articles

• Selling sustainability to blokes that drive Holdens, support the Crusaders and listen to the Rock. (makesensereally.wordpress.com)
• The New Metrics of Sustainable Business: Decoding the ROI of Sustainability (sustainablebrands.com)
• Sustainable Business Models and Competitive Advantage for SME (businesswithcommonsense.com)
• What Green Marketing will achieve that Traditional Marketing won’t?

http://linkingsustainability.com/2012/01/19/7-mission-statements-that-inspire-sustainability/

Selling sustainability to blokes that drive Holdens, support the Crusaders and listen to the Rock.

A balanced and nutritious meal containing vegetables (tomatoes and hops), carbohydrate (pastry and malt), water in the beer and protein in the beef.

Personally I think sustainability is a bloody good idea, and my guess is that most  of the people reading this will agree with me, and that’s not because I’m 6 ft 3 biker. But how come so few people feel the same way? Do I need to look more menacing?

As a marketer I m unashamedly from the sales camp, and over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about selling sustainability to Garth and Kylie Citizen – you know who I mean, they’re the type of people who drive V8 Holdens or SUVs and think climate change was invented by Al Gore as a moneymaking venture. It’s them we need to convince, not each other, yet from my observations a lot of the sustainability dialogue is people like you and I agreeing with each other about how important sustainability is. When I look at the various sustainable businesses, they’re run by people like you and they’re targeting people like you and I.

Until we get Garth and Kylie on board we’re buggered, and I’m not looking forward to the day I have to explain to my kids why we did such a lousy job selling sustainability. Yet sustainability is such a bloody good idea that it should sell itself, so why isn’t everyone into it?

I believe that sustainability is foundering because we’ve made some fundamental errors that any sales rep worth their company car would avoid, including:

1. Scaring people into submission.

In some situations fear works well as a sales tool, but its effectiveness wears off very quickly because nobody likes being scared and they’ll look for every possible argument to counter that fear. In 2006 Al Gore had everyone freaking out over drowning polar bears and boats in the desert, but it didn’t take long before he, and along with him the IPCC, was taken less seriously than Sarah Palin. If people could find a blog with a scientific sounding name like “international global independent scientific climate change research and analysis center” that said they didn’t have to worry because climate change was invented by the evil and immeasurably powerful Greens to crush the delicate flower of capitalism, they believed it. Just because it was written by a 19 year old intern working for the PR department of Exxon and had no basis on anything at all didn’t make it wrong.  When Sarah Palin agreed that there was no such thing as anthropogenic climate change; hell, that was the end of the argument – that woman can see Russia from her front porch; I challenge you to name just ONE climate scientist who can do that!

2. Blinding them with science.

Just as bad; we’ve used hard data, quoted scientists and long words like anthropogenic and carbon sequestration to sell the idea. In a previous life I worked for a big company as a financial planner, which was a pretentious way to say I sold investment products to rich people. I started at the same time as a chap called M who was a chartered accountant and was in the final stages of qualifying as a financial planner, whereas back then my highest qualification was a full motorcycle license, but I did have over 10 years sales experience including selling insurance. At the end of the first 6 months my sales figures were about 10 times M’s sales, so I was asked to sit in on a client meeting with him to see what he was doing wrong. The clients were a retired farmer and his wife and M kept saying things like “the bond markets are currently demonstrating a positive yield curve, therefore the strategy I have engaged with your asset allocation is….” They felt ignorant because he used long words they’d never heard before so he was obviously much cleverer than they were. As soon as they could they excused themselves and escaped. It’s the same for us, when we tell people that “sustainable business practices are essential because….” and proceed to bang on about “Brundtland definitions”, “Stern Reports” and “exhausting natural capital” we alienate our audience, especially if we talk about how the scientific consensus contradicts what they want to believe. Then they listen to people like Sarah Palin because they don’t feel as though they’re being talked down to.

3. Expecting a miraculous conversion to the One True Path

Probably worst of all we expect people to believe us when we tell them just how good and great sustainability is. You and I know that it’s actually a really good idea, but it calls for a change in attitude leading to a change in behaviour. It calls for to change from the addictive behaviour of consumption. Everyone has been  told it is not just their right but their duty to “stimulate the economy” by going shopping, and the banks have lined up with buckets of cash to buy the cool stuff everyone needs. People have to have cool stuff because it’s what they own that defines them as people and declares their position in their tribe.

Cool and important people are easy to identify.

Is there a better way?

When I was a financial planner I was successful because I always made a point of getting to know my clients. Instead of expecting them to come to my office, I’d go to their homes, and over a cup of tea we’d  talk about their grandchildren and their  gardens instead of about modern portfolio theory or global equity markets. Getting to know them meant I could identify what was important to them which meant I could give them what they actually wanted and the explain it to them using language and terms they understood.

If we want to get more businesses embracing sustainability, we need to “walk a mile in their moccasins” so we can learn what their values and priorities are, understand how they think, share their vision and find a way that they can use sustainable business practices to get what they want in life.

Easy!

Related articles

• The impact of climate change (unicef.org.au)
• Making sustainability relevant to everyone

Do you really know what you’re selling, or how a grizzled old mechanic had the secret to getting new clients for a beautician.

English: John Wanamaker Category:Images of Philadelphia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

John Wanamaker, the man credited with being the father of modern advertising is quoted as saying “half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”. He may have made that comment around 100 years ago, but from what I have observed, that saying still applies to most businesses, and it especially applies to the smaller businesses. Sadly they are the ones that can least afford to waste money, so over the next few months I will be writing a number of articles on how small businesses can find ways to make their marketing more effective. Much of what I write will have little to do with sustainability, but everything I say will be about marketing, and if I can help people develop their sustainably run businesses I’ll be happy.

You see, I am doing this because I see sustainably run businesses, most of whom are small, as playing a critical part in creating a sustainable future for me, my children and their children, and I want to play a part in that. I don’t want to say “I knew we had problems, but I couldn’t be arsed doing anything about it”, so feel free to print, download and share anything I write because you’ll be helping me to stay in my kids and grand-kids good books.

Back in the days when we still owned ALL of our state assets I worked as a sales rep for an engineering supplies company, and one of the products we sold was a brand of tools called Snap On. Now Snap On are beautifully made and look fantastic, but they are really expensive; often double or treble the price of similar tools from other manufacturers, and as a young and nervous rep I struggled to sell them. Then one day an old mechanic taught me one of the most important marketing concepts I have ever learned.

A man with hands like these taught me how to market beauty therapy

I had my van parked outside a workshop with a group of mechanics had gathered round to check out what I had to sell, when a young apprentice picked up a Snap On spanner and asked how much it cost. When I told him the price he almost dropped the tool. “Bloody hell, is it made of gold or something?” There was an older mechanic standing beside him – the kind of guy who will only ever drink beer served in a jug and would rather be burnt alive than eat vegetarian food. He turned to the young apprentice, put one hand on the apprentices shoulder and said “when you buy Snap On, you don’t buy a tool. You buy being able to finish your job by knock  off because your tools aren’t worn out. You buy not slamming your fist into the side of an engine because your ratchet slipped and you buy having pride that you are the kind of mechanic who takes his jobs so f#@king  seriously he will only use the best tools money can buy. If you ask me, that price is bloody cheap”.

Needless to say, I sold the young mechanic the tool he had been looking at, and that lesson gave me the tool I needed to sell more Snap On than anyone else because I had been taught that I didn’t sell tools, I sold what they could do.

I have never forgotten that lesson, and it doesn’t just apply to spanners and other tangible goods. A while ago I was approached by a beautician called Sarah who was struggling to get customers for her new business, and like too many SME owners she thought marketing was advertising so had spent almost all her marketing budget on radio ads with (predictably) no appreciable change in her sales. We sat down over a coffee, and I asked her what she sold. She looked puzzled, then in a slightly frustrated voice answered “I don’t actually sell anything, I’m a beauty therapist”. I rephrased the question to “what do your customers walk out of your clinic with that they didn’t have before they came in?” I could see that she was having an “aha!” moment, and she soon realised that because people left her clinic looking good they felt more positive, had greater self confidence and felt energised and alive. “That’s what you really sell –your customers get confidence, self assurance and energy in exchange for money”. At that point it would be easy for Sarah to advertise that she can give confidence and self assurance, but that is probably even less effective than advertising a facial, so I asked her another question: “when do people need to feel confident?” Between us we came up with situations like applying for a job, going on a date, after being knocked about by a relationship breakup, before an important business meeting and soon Rachel had a list of the different times and events where she could sell people what they needed.

That meant instead of running an ad telling everyone in Christchurch (including grizzled old mechanics) that, just like every other beauty therapist, she could give them a facial; Sarah was able to tell a job applicant that she could help her get that job by increasing her confidence. She could reassure someone who had been through a relationship break-up that she was able to make them look and feel attractive, sexy and desirable again and help make a date with someone special work out. Instead of advertising a generic product to a huge and mostly disinterested audience, she could tell specific people how she could give them what they wanted and needed.

What do you really sell? What human needs do you satisfy? How will people feel when they deal with you? How will dealing with you help people solve their problems, give them an advantage, make them feel good about themselves or start a new relationship? When are people most likely to need or want what you can do for them?

Sit down with a pen and paper and brainstorm, then when you have a list like the one Sarah made, you need to identify the best way to spread the word, and I’ll cover that later.

Have fun and if you have any questions drop me a line.

I’ve been thinking…

Sustainability makes sense in every way, so why aren’t more New Zealand businesses getting involved?

I was talking to a friend the other day, and I reckon may just have given me the answer to that question. Now my friend is a smart guy – he has an MBA, owns a successful business employing 30 staff that he built himself and is taken very seriously by a lot of other business people.  When I told him that I was doing a Masters studying sustainable business practices he laughed. I asked him what was so funny, and he said something very interesting: “mate, that green hippy shit is all well and good when things are going well, but when business is tough, doing business has to be the priority”. I asked him what sustainability actually meant, and he said “for me today, it’s keeping sales up and costs under control so I make a profit. Sure we recycle our paper, but the fate of dolphins makes no difference to whether I am able to trade tomorrow, so sustainability is a very low priority to me.” I probed further, and he was aware of the triple bottom line, but thought of it as a “nice to have” idea that was well behind simply staying in the black. Shortly afterwards I was talking to my son’s new girlfriend. She is a high flyer, and at the age of 25 is working in Canada for one of the big 4 accounting firms on a 6 figure package. When we talked about my studies of sustainable business she said “our firm does some work on the triple bottom line, but I can’t see how it makes for better business”.

Two very intelligent, well educated and influential people, one a male mid 40s entrepreneur and the other a mid 20s female chartered accountant, and both dismissive of sustainability as a business concept. Why?

After further discussion with them and other business people I know alongside the research I am doing for my degree, I might just have found the reasons why sustainable development has failed to take off: sustainable and development. I believe that they’re the problem because they’re words, and words are how we communicate ideas; whether that idea is to go to the Warehouse because that’s where everybody gets a bargain or to vote for John Key because he promises a brighter future. And we can no longer buy Kentucky Fried Chicken but have no problems getting KFC because fried food is unhealthy.

Let’s start with sustainability. It’s a word that gets used all the time these days, but what does it mean to the people running New Zealand’s commercial sector? Most of them are like my friend – male, middle aged, middle class and pakeha, and my research suggests his perspective is pretty typical. To them it’s a word that means “environmentalism”, and that leads directly to “greenies” which means “idealistic, dope smoking, hippies on bicycles that are anti-business”. And that’s a problem because the people who most have the ability to change the way we do things will never take “dope smoking hippies on bicycles” seriously.

And then there’s development. The business model we have been using for the last century or so seeks continuous growth and expansion, and to most business people, that’s what “development” means to them. That interpretation brings about two problems: first, our finite planet means continuous growth is logically impossible which makes the term “sustainable development” meaningless to the people we need to convince. Alternatively, “sustainable development” allows (unconstrained) expansion and growth under a cover of greenwash.

Making sustainable development as defined and described back in 1987 the only game in town is vital, but the people we most need to convince and persuade have a different perspective on it which means they’re not interested. The academic community have found defining sustainability problematic, and there is little agreement about “operationalising” the concept, so how come we expect a business person to immediately “get it”? I’ve been selling intangibles for most of my working life, and I soon discovered the importance of describing the benefits your prospect will enjoy in their own language. When I was a financial planner I didn’t tell the retired farmer entrusting me with his dollars that my company would place his assets in a portfolio of financial instruments diversified in accordance with modern portfolio theory. I told him we would make sure his investment gave him good returns and we’d keep it safe by not putting all his eggs in one basket.

We need to do the same thing; we need to find a way to describe sustainability and sustainable development that makes it exciting and relevant to a middle aged white man. If we fail to do that, sustainable development will stay a fringe concept until it’s too late.

Finally…

I have got off my arse and started a blog. For someone who is an early adopter, loves the internet, addicted to voicing my opinion and always looking for a way to avoid writing my thesis, I have no idea why  this has taken me so long.

Anyway, this blog is about business, communication, marketing and people – with a central theme – sustainability. At one level it’s my way of trying to get my ideas out there in the hope that there will be some (any?) discussion and debate, but at a more significant level it gives me an excuse to put my thoughts down on cyber paper and in the process clarify my thinking.