Most of the speakers yesterday afternoon used it, some even defined it. But I thought as I listened that they’re using the wrong word. Engagement might be all the rage but it is too formal, it is too structured in the way that its meaning is interpreted. We should be talking about involvement and how to get people involved in the process of becoming more sustainable. Engagement implies that we need to set a formal date, agenda and then have some minutes with actions. Or it implies, as in a military engagement, that we must take up arms and beat the **** out of the other guys. Neither of these implied interpretations is correct. We need to find a way to involve people in sustainability. Get them involved.

Engaged also has connotations of marriage and this doesn’t help either. All-in-all engagement is the wrong word. We need people to get involved, get their hands dirty and make mistakes. The idea of making mistakes and having fun has been a theme of previous blogs. I think starting to use the terms involved and involvement would start to make it seem more personal, more informal and yet more effective.

Part of the definition of in-volv’ is to make (oneself) emotionally concerned in, with …. Surely this is the very thing we need people to become. So, please, let’s stop using the words engagement or engage when what we actually want to do is to get people involved in sustainability. Rather than being satisfied with a few presentations and an intranet/internet portal where people can go to find out for themselves about sustainability, we need to get people involved, little by little over a long period of time. This is where passion and persistence become important characteristics of the sustainability professional. But so too is the capacity to listen and to empathise.

This well-known Chinese proverb nails it well – Tell me and I’ll forget; Show me and I may remember; Involve me and I’ll understand. This is why interactive training courses are so much more effective than lectures. And where does engagement fit into this proverb? Is engagement the whole thing? I’m not sure, but I am sure that simply telling and showing doesn’t get the job done.

One other thought, which is related, from yesterday. One speaker – not on sustainability – talked about a steering group and suggested that if you wanted to get your ideas heard you should find you departmental champion and make your point. Surely the ‘champion’ has to get off his or her backside and go out and find the ideas, dig and encourage, ask and listen. Being called a champion is not the end of the process. The champions need to get involved just as much as expecting everyone else to get involved.

Isn’t it funny how, sometimes, you write something, look at it for a while and then suddenly it hits you. If you go to our website homepage you will read “Uncovering Sustainability Potential” – which we came up with more than a year ago, neither of us spotted that the acronym was USP until the other day.

All of us will know USP as Unique Selling Proposition (or Point), something that all businesses seek and few truly find. Each acronym has words that people struggle with, I could go on and on about the misuse of the word unique and the big challenge that the breadth of definition of sustainability has created.

We came up with our version of USP, because we recognised that most organisations have the potential to operate more sustainably. To produce products that are more sustainable to the environment, to society and economically to the organisation. Any business that seeks to operate within the confines of societal expectations – the law – can be USP.

What does USP mean in practice? Fundamentally in order to uncover sustainability potential an organisation must go beyond basic legal compliance. The law sets the acceptable minimum, while others in society set different expectations. Simply complying with the law isn’t going to uncover anything but it is an essential starting point, because ignoring the law is a business risk too far. But looking ahead at the future directions of legislation can help to uncover potential.

Is there a trick to USP? We think there is, and it is that you must get well into the detail. Grand ideas, commitments and strategies all have their point but to uncover sustainability potential you need to get into the detail. Whether it is details of materials, design or understanding the needs of others, the detail is where the answer lies and where the challenges are, if ignored. By understanding the details of components, by challenging ‘business as usual’ and listening properly to others’ views you can see what hasn’t been seen before and begin to change it.

When many discuss our current society’s progress towards being more sustainable there is an expectation that we can instantly change everything for the good. We look back on history and the industrial revolution and expect change to be revolutionary – and this is another word that gets in the way of our understanding. Revolution implies an instantaneous change but the industrial revolution took generations – most believe it took roughly one hundred years between 1750 and 1850.

Changing to become more sustainable as a society will take a long time while the planet we live on is undergoing its own rapid change. Uncovering Sustainable Potential should become the new USP because if we don’t start soon to get into the details of what needs to be done then nothing will change. We will make mistakes and we will be slow but we believe we will get there. Those that get there faster will reap the early rewards and set the agenda.

The biggest difference between the old USP and our new USP is that few truly discover and distil a Unique Selling Proposition, whereas we all need to be Uncovering Sustainability Potential.

We frequently have to justify to potential clients why they should bother about Sustainability, now in a time of further uncertainty and economic turmoil. This blog doesn’t focus on the moral or ethical issues of why now for sustainable development. Those have been well laid out countless times and particularly well in “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore – still as compelling as when it was released in 2006, and the inspiration for many a business leader.

Sustainability cannot be ignored and is included in every recent review of global megatrends from Harvard Business Review to McKinsey. While some may lead, all need to start acting and following those leaders now.

Below are a number of considerations from a marketing and brand perspective of why delay in consideration of this area will be a disadvantage.

1. Corporate Value and Access to Capital

Financial and non-financial reporting is converging. Sustainability reporting is established, but not statutory and recognised as a key part of the consideration of an organisation’s value. About 70% of the FTSE 100 produce sustainability reports in one form or another. The transparency of performance in the economic, social and environmental areas is fundamental to the value now placed on businesses.

A topical example of this is the recent significant increase in applications received by The Cooperative Bank after the revelations at Barclays and Nat West, the strong transparency and ethics of the Mutual looking more and more appealing in uncertain times. Therefore the value placed on a business will be judged against sustainability criteria as well as pure financial ones. If these are weak (or absent) then quoted value and access to capital is likely to be restricted, hampering growth and return to shareholders.

Another example is M&S. Its poor recent figures would have been even worse had they not embarked on their sustainability journey – Plan A contributing over £100m to the bottom line in this year alone.

2. Customer Relationship

Customers are now firmly in the driving seat. Social media has the ability to undermine a brand in a matter of hours and the relationships with brands are more personal and more complex.

However in a very uncertain world consumers will look to brands as one of the few things they can really believe in. Their faith is not blind but very critical and so it is only those brands that live up to real scrutiny that are the ones that are supported.

Brand promises therefore must be genuine, not dull or uninspiring. Honesty doesn’t have to be solemn. Consumers are looking for brands to tell truthful, entertaining and compelling stories. The conviction of a brand can be demonstrated through a sustainable approach.

Importantly this is not the gloss of green – no longer can we simply add ‘eco’ or ‘green’ and expect sales – but an integrated and responsible approach to business, with real value and benefit at its heart. A convincing long-term vision builds trust with customers and this is rewarded with loyalty and advocacy. Delay in this will only serve the competition, so the earlier benchmarks can be set and performance measured, the earlier progress can be reported and the sooner deeper, more sustainable customer relationships can be established.

3. Taking the lead

Consumers now have a giddying array of choices, yet the winning brands will be those who lead consumers and not just blindly follow their needs, for example Waitrose vs Tesco. Choice-editing will play an important role in demonstrating conviction to the establishment of sustainable behaviours as well as a way of driving them (eg FSC in B&Q). Consumers do not want their ideas played back at them but want to be inspired with vision and ideas – summed up very well in by Unilever’s Keith Weed as “More Magic, Less Logic”.

The expectation that consumers will drive a sustainable future is lazy. They are willing followers of those businesses and brands that demonstrate that they are doing the right thing. Consumers cannot be expected to sift through volumes of data to make their own informed choices, their lives are far too pressured for that; as demonstrated by the failure of the Carbon labelling initiative to be established. It is too difficult and conceptual for consumers to grasp, let alone make a choice over and hence Tesco’s decision to withdraw from the scheme (even outside the incredible costs of measurement).

Marketers should also accept that consumers are also people and should also be considered as citizens who expect their leaders to lead. Brands can be included in this (I won’t make the obvious reference to our ineffective politicians). The opportunities are vast for those who invest the time and energy now.

4. Innovation

Establishing a clear sustainability vision creates a new perspective within the organisation, leading to new ideas and innovation. Adaptation to the relentless pace of change will be one of the governing factors for success in the 21^st Century. The blind acceptance of existing and established business models will weaken businesses and mean that they are less adaptable.

Sustainable development can open up new markets and opportunities. Five years ago M&S would have had no credibility in selling energy, but now…

5. Value

Value is being redefined. Consumers have a dizzying volume of information at their fingertips – yet still make decisions based on core emotions. These are then justified by rational reasoning. The core value offer of retailers will still be examined by customers and if price, choice and quality found wanting then the offer will be undermined or rejected. A sustainable approach cannot paper over cracks in a core retail offer but can help to differentiate it in an increasingly commoditised world.

Sustainability is therefore less of a choice more of a question of timing… surely the sooner the better.

I hate to say I told you so, but I did and I have and I believe I will continue to say so for a little while longer. All too often sustainability is disconnected somewhere between the boardroom and the shop floor.

While some may opine that bottom up is better than top down, and others take a diametrically opposing view, in reality – where I seem to be spending a lot my time recently – grand ideas rarely translate.

Why do I rehearse this view now? On Monday I spent a fascinating day in the workplace of a large UK business, watching with a manager the comings and goings, the conversations and actions of a shift of workers. I’m not going to say where or who, because I believe that it would be a common conclusion to be drawn from many a shop, factory or office across the land (I hesitate to say the world, but actually let’s go out on a limb here). We were specifically trying to work out why waste segregation practices in the workplace were not consistent. The company is achieving very high rates of recycling with 90%plus and occasionally achieves zero waste to landfill, but it needs to do better and to start reducing the quantity of waste too.

With one of the team managers I wandered around and stood watching how people behaved. How they used their facilities, followed procedure and how specialists cleared up and smoothed down the rough edges. In the end, the statistics won’t change much but what we wanted to do was try to make the whole thing more efficient (in terms of time) and more effective (in terms of limiting cross-contamination).

After the shift I coined a phrase to describe what we had seen: ” never finish a job yourself if it is easier to leave it to someone else”. It was quite obvious that while key performance indicators rule the workplace, people will play games in order to achieve a KPI. So while it would be simpler, in some cases, and easier in nearly all cases, the prime motivation appeared to be to move the waste material away from “your own area”. As long as is wasn’t in my area, I had done my part. If the option was to move it to someone else’s area close by rather than to the correct machine to start reprocessing, then go for it. If a pile was started by someone else it became acceptable to leave your materials there too, irrespective of being the right place, which usually it wasn’t.

Have I visited the worst workplace in the world, the least environmentally aware, no I don’t think so. Is it the average place with average people – yes it probably is. Human behaviour kicks in early when a path of least of resistance is offered. When creating pressure in the workplace, quality can suffer in areas not subject to that pressure. Targets may be met and progress, and indeed profit, made but not in the most efficient manner.

We need things to be made simple, to have choice taken away from us. When the world is so complex and there are so many competing matters for us to deal with, surely we must take away the risk of the wrong choice when it comes to many sustainable behaviours.

Freedom is a wonderful thing and with freedom comes responsibility. In that window in time, and from that window high above the shop floor I observed the frailty of human endeavour. The management didn’t accept their responsibility to challenge and check, while at the same time chasing the next task, the next deadline. Poor practice was passed by many times by senior people. And it isn’t just environmental issues, there was some extremely poor health and safety practice too. A single bright point in my day was the reaction of my co-observer, the team manager, who was truly and visibly horrified by what he had witnessed. He said at one point, “every manager should do this, should step back and observe”.

This wasn’t an ‘audit’ as we didn’t actually talk to many people, we simply stood back and watched and noted what we saw over 8 hours. And wow, the findings were dazzlingly insightful. The result a simple set of recommendations to make key tasks simpler.

Following a hectic day in London at Ecobuild and in a stakeholder workshop on research into a construction product framework, my thoughts centre on the triple bottom line (3BL). At the workshop, which had 25 or so people well versed in sustainability, we were asked to chose whether 3BL was split with equally weighted parts (environment, economics and society) or if there was a priority order. The resultant orgy of coloured stickers on a flip chart sheet showed very clearly we didn’t really have any consensus. And surely that’s the very point. But one participant seemed slightly annoyed that others had got it ‘wrong’.

Triple bottom line  was coined by John Elkington in 1997 and suggests that we must treat economic, social and environmental issues together (often represented as equal thirds). It has formed the framework for many a policy, strategy and sustainability report for the past 15 years.

Triple bottom line is a balancing act. 3BL is a state of thinking not an outcome. 3BL is a plastic model and expecting it to be set in one form everywhere, forever is simply wrong. To be meaningful, 3BL and its application is closely related to materiality and maybe that’s what makes it difficult to comprehend. Issues that we face cross over and move between each part of 3BL.

So we must forget 3BL as a rigid box with three compartments and use it as an elastic tool that we use to keep us thinking about the interconnections between the environment, society and economy. I have seen 3BL shown as a Venn diagram with overlapping circles, as a pie chart (the template we were provided in the workshop yesterday) and I have seen it as target with economy as the bulls-eye, surrounded by society and then the environment surrounding everything. Depending on your perspective, education and cultural values one of these images will suit your views and agenda best. In fact, each part of 3BL is a human construct. Predetermining the shape of 3BL will strongly influence how people will interpret sustainability.

So what is it about 3BL that makes it an attractive model? I suppose it is that we do need to consider each of the parts and their interaction to come up with a more sustainable path to the future. The problem comes with how we set up the framework and then apply it. As today is World Water Day, how we prioritise an issue like water will depend on how much we need it (social), how scarce it is (environment) and how expensive it is (economic). Depending on where you are and how much money you have, one or other of the parts of the 3BL is more important today; tomorrow the priority may change.

Our challenge as sustainability professionals is to provide a flexible, intelligent and responsive conceptual framework that involves 3BL elements but is not tied up in a visual illusion that the relationship between the parts is fixed – in time and space. The power of the visual image to influence (I might even go as far as suggest it actually controls) our interpretation of the situation and therefore the plans and strategies we make to move towards a more sustainable future.

If we remain fixed in our minds as to the shape of 3BL, then we remain in a state of mind that won’t help us progress. While we look at a flip chart page and are required to come to a simple and singular solution to the 3BL conundrum, we are failing to see that its conceptual value is huge. So to answer: is triple bottom line misguided – answer, no it isn’t, however a fixed visual representation of the 3BL is misguided. This worthy attempt to engage and simplify creates confusion and argument that isn’t helpful in describing solutions and paths for future development.

It has always struck me as an anomaly that the defining technology of our age, the internet, is powered by words. Search has become the dominant force and Google its leading exponent. However we are a visual culture, where image is far more powerful than the word. Images are conjured up in our minds by our sub-conscious far faster than the rational brain can assimilate words and facts. Maybe one of the reasons for the rise of new social media like Pinterest and Instagram.

Yet we are also a storytelling culture. Where compelling stories are told and acted out in our minds delivering wonderful colour and powerful underlying messages. Can we learn from previous generations and use our imaginations to bring the important messages of sustainable development to life? It seems so obvious but why have we not managed it? Maybe because we have thought of the goal of sustainability and a low carbon economy as a single story not of a whole host of them.

Christopher Booker in his seminal “Seven Basic Plots – Why We Tell Stories” spent 40 years of study to define seven basic plotlines that he argues are the basis of any story. He defines them as:

1. Overcoming the monster e.g. Dracula

2. Rags to Riches e.g. Jayne Eyre

3. The Quest e.g. The Odyessy

4. Voyage and Return e.g. Alice in Wonderland

5. Comedy e.g. Emma

6. Tragedy e.g. The Picture of Dorian Grey

7. Rebirth e.g. Silas Marner

However the sustainability world has focused its persuasion tactics on facts, logic and science; to a plot of overcoming the monster of human greed and neglect. No wonder it has been too much for us all to take in coherently. Let us try and get back to the building blocks of stories, look to create images not arguments and inspire those around us to act… drag up a log I’m lighting the campfire.

… and why the image of Kenny Everett’s Cupid Stunt? Answers on a tweet please…

Apologies for the deliberately “Carry On” title. I have been re-acquainting myself with the excellent Schott’s Original Miscellany on my visits to the smallest room in the house. It is a great concept of brilliant and random information – a bit like Twitter. I came across the entry for Freud and the Mind today which got me thinking.

I have not studied Freud but understand his basic ideas of how neuroses can emerge and the importance of sex in the direction of our behaviours. The entry in Schott’s Miscellany briefly describes the ID, the EGO and the SUPER EGO. The ID controlling the elemental, unconscious and uncivilised mind; the EGO the conscious and pre-conscious mind that civilises the ID and recognises the wider world; finally the SUPER EGO  - is our conscience, the highest evolved state of mind. These are amazing concepts and have helped to analyse the complexities of the human mind.

It may also help us as we grapple with establishing sustainable behaviours in the mainstream of our societies. The most significant issue that I have discovered is the so called Green Gap. The value action gap between what people say they are concerned about and what they will actually do. This is one of the defining characteristics of the light greens. The 70% of the population who want to do the right thing but only if it fits in to the daily struggle to earn, bring up kids and have some fun.

The majority of their actions are defined and directed by the ID. However the majority of our approaches to them are through the SUPER EGO. I’m not sure how Freud would resolve this one but to me we must be more basic and elemental with how we communicate sustainability. Campaigns and messages must be more visceral than intellectual; making the options appealing in unconscious ways. In short we have to make them sexy. Think about it next time you read or produce a worthy piece on the necessities of change and look at it again through Freud’s eyes. Could be rather revealing.

The Oomph Seminar this time was framed by Vivian Partnership’s recent White Paper:  Sustainability in UK Retail. At the beginning of the seminar the participants were asked to remember the prosperous days of 2007, when sustainability was prominent and in particular retailers were leading the way with Plan A and talk of a revolution in green consumption by Sir Terry Leahy, then CEO of Tesco. Overall the agenda was being set by the Stern Report and An Inconvenient Truth.

With this background in mind, the White Paper investigated what has happened to the revolution, why has it failed to materialise and what lessons can be learned for all, not only by retailers?

The recent government launch of Green Deal provided a surprising topic for early conversation. It  focussed on how DECC’s Greg Barker and Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud had said that the Deal should be promoted by the home makeover message rather than climate change and environmental issues, which was met with some surprise. This illustrated a key theme that would be returned to later in the seminar – which is for the majority, rational fact based messages do not drive behaviour. Green Deal, it seems, is being sold in this way, steering around hackneyed saving the planet messages. No one, however, could actually pinpoint the compelling consumer proposition behind the Deal. Time will tell whether this progressive initiative is adopted or rejected.

Compared with 2007, in 2012 times are harder and everyone agreed that the world is more uncertain and in many ways more complex.  This uncertainty is often generated by a lack of direction and consistency from government, for example the recent furore over the Feed in Tariff.

At the centre of the White Paper and the discussion today was the fact that the population is split into three segments: deep greens, light greens and green rejecters. This distribution hasn’t changed significantly in the past 20 years and yet the vast majority of marketing and communications has been directed at the deep green segment with the aim to expand that share, but has sat firmly at 15% only.

To make meaningful progress we must create messages and describe benefits for the light green majority, which most agree is about 70% of the population. This segmentation was a surprise to some at the seminar but everyone concluded that this approach was fundamental in a wide range of sectors as well as internally when engaging with colleagues.

A key revelation for many present is that first behaviour must be changed then attitudes will follow. This is the reverse of accepted wisdom and the approach of environmentalists over the past 20 years. Providing the right personal propositions and the right infrastructure will create and establish behaviours in the light green segment.

As an example to demonstrate this concept we discussed the reasons behind why domestic recycling rates have been dramatically improved since the introduction of kerbside collection and bins for segregation. The current government proposal to return to weekly mixed collections was agreed as another example of inconsistency, a lack of leadership and a retrograde step in achieving greater sustainability.

We introduced five mainstreaming components that were isolated in the White Paper for the Retail Sector. All of which translated readily into other commercial sectors and the public sector. These insights could provide valuable elements in delivering successful sustainable development in whatever you do.

In conclusion, we exploded five myths and stated five truths of sustainable behaviours that will be useful in future considerations of the mainstreaming topic.

Finally, many thanks to Donington Park for providing a memorable venue in Race Control above the pit lane and finishing straight on the circuit – today had  a lot of oomph in many more ways than one.

Many advocate that sustainability is a journey, we use the term Pathfinder in our strategic model, which by the way we happened to be using when the watershed moment occurred and both terms don’t quite match up to the feeling we want to create and the nature of the process.

A journey is a bit too mundane, we go on a journey to see our parents or to the seaside. We might go on a voyage to far away places. But adventures are exciting and bring huge rewards psychologically, physically and in terms of progressing the human spirit. Surely it is this sense of excitement that we need to create and promote, not a journey. To give a further image: in the family car on a journey, what do the children say – “Are we nearly there yet?”. And our response is either dismissive or a patronising fib.

By calling it a journey we are giving it an everyday mundanity which is not going to inspire anyone other than the already engaged. Calling it an adventure brings a level of adrenaline and will bring a smile to the face. Another feature about adventures is that the way ahead is unclear, untrodden and full of dead ends. But with a sense of excitement we explore and the adventure unfurls. Surely an adventure is much more energising and accurate description of what we are on.

Finally, an adventure often has a clear end goal, which we need in approaching sustainability, however the path to achieving it is not always the most direct. The fear of failing spurs us on rather than, as is often the case in the corporate world, paralysing us and stopping progress.

I’m sure that Dan and I will explore this more in future blogs, so keep an eye out for more thoughts on the sustainability adventure on which we must all embark. If you want to join us you’ll need good strong boots, a strong stomach and a real sense of adventure.

I have recently rejoined the Marketing Society – an organisation for senior marketers. A recent event involved and evening with Sir Terry Leahy, who, at the helm of Tesco for much of the Nineties and Noughties must be seen as one of the most successful business leaders ever.

Like or loathe Tesco, is it the Marmite of shops?… hmm, one cannot ignore its conspicuous success. At the event Sir Terry spelt out eight lessons for marketers. I believe these could and should equally be taken by sustainability leaders in organisations. It was maybe 25 years ago that marketing was struggling to be really heard and valued – now leaders like Sir Terry and the late Steve Jobs have put it firmly at the centre of corporations. Who will emerge as the champions of corporate sustainability? Certainly people like Ian Cheshire at Kingfisher and Paul Polman at Unilever are championing developments; let’s hope many, many more follow and we all reap the benefits.

Here are Sir Terry’s pearls of wisdom, many thanks to The Marketing Society blog for them:

1/ Find the truth. Research is only as effective as shining a torch into a dark room and you only see what the torch shines on. Research well.
2/ Think big. Makes sure the world notices your marketing.
3/ Take personal risks and be true to your values. But never bet your company.
4/ Be creative. Turn the whole business into a marketing organisation and encourage the company to innovate.
5/ Communicate. Take the organisation with you.
6/ Teach. Don’t be too busy doing and teach the people around you. Pass on your knowledge.
7/ Lead. A leader will take you further than you will go on your own.
8/ Act. Don’t forget you need a process to turn great ideas into great marketing for the customer. Work with operators, don’t assume you have all the talents yourself.