4 Absolutes of leading green teams
If you are leading the ‘green team’ at your company, there are four absolutes you must have have to ensure your success. This is regardless of the type or size of your company. In our current business climate, a company that does not have a ‘green’ team or a point person for sustainability is foolhardy. A few years ago, companies with ‘green’ teams were considered cutting edge. Now you need one just to keep up with your competition. Unfortunately there are a lot of people leading green teams who don’t know what they’re doing and thus aren’t having much success. I wrote about this on BiggerPockets.com recently.
With that said, here are the four absolutes for leading green teams:
1. REBATES/TAX INCENTIVES/CREDITS/GRANT MONEY
You need to know where to go to research rebates/grants/credits, etc for your business at all times. There are programs available for energy-efficiency, water conservation, purchasing new equipment, reducing city/state zoning/planning time-lines (if you are in construction or going through a remodel). A great starting point I’ve mentioned before for rebate info is Database for State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency.
There are literally billions of dollars available to businesses and real estate owners to go green. If you lead a green team then it falls to you to find these programs for your organization.
2. FUNDAMENTALS OF GREEN BUILDING CONCEPTS
To improve efficiency (and thus save $/reduce environmental impact) you need a general understanding of basic green building concepts. If you learn the basics of how buildings operate and how energy is used/lost in a typical building envelop, you’ll be able to make a bigger impact. A great book for this is Building Green. It will give you a very basic understanding so that you can make the right decisions on your property/in your office. It’s been my experience that once you understand how your building is operating it’s easier to see the problem areas and potential solutions.
3. INTERNAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Let’s say you had a good understanding of green building and know where to get the rebates. You’ve written an ‘eco-charter’ and have a green strategy in place for your organization. This all means nothing if you can’t translate the value of it to your internal team. Put simply, the team won’t implement it if they don’t see the value. Here’s how to get buy-in:
a. Explain that green is more profitable and thus potentially rewarding financially for employees.
b. Explain that green creates a healthier living/work environment for them.
c. Explain that green is a tremendous competitive advantage for the company. Show them the formula: GBS = PG = CS = EJS. Effectively, a green business strategy equals profitable growth for the company which equals company stability which in turn equals employee job stability.
4. EXTERNAL BRANDING SKILLS
Once you’ve gotten buy-in from your internal team, you need to be able to communicate it to your external customers. External customers can include: customers, prospects, vendors, city officials, community, etc. This skill is more art than science because you need to be able to translate the benefits of what you did (going green) to the benefit to them. For example:
a. “We recently insulated our walls with denim insulation to save energy and protect the earth” (Boring and ineffective statement).
b. “We chose to insulate our building with wall insulation because it makes us more efficient and reduces our expenses” (A little better).
c. “We installed denim insulation because it will save us 30% in operations costs annually. This savings allows us to improve the quality of our products while reducing our prices to you” (Much better).
This is the area I see companies get wrong all the time. Either they say too little about what they’re doing and why, or they overstate their ‘commitment’ to the environment. The advice here is to be honest and be specific. Your customers will appreciate your candor.
If you’re able to follow these four absolutes you’ll go a long way to developing a effective green team, regardless of your industry, your age, your position, etc. Remember that efficiency is great, but effectiveness is king.
As always feel free to email any questions to me at: jim (at) jimsimcoe (dot) (com).
