Head: (4.5 of 5)
Heart: (3.5 of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (4 of 5)

When Andrew Winston speaks to varied audiences of business people, his informal polling has found that 50 to 70 percent of them believe that scientists are in significant disagreement as to the basic facts on climate change. But the reality is, scientists ARE in vast agreement that climate change is real and caused by humans. The largest, broadest groups of scientists ever assembled, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, declared climate change "unequivocal" back in February, 2007.

But you don't have to agree with them, Winston says, to recognize that governments all over the world are moving forward with regulations based on those findings-and you don't have to believe the science to see that most of the world's largest businesses (and the most innovative of the smaller ones) are not only already reducing their own emissions, but those of their supply chains and customers, locking in solid partnerships and customer loyalty. So going green isn't just about doing good or improving public relations:  as Winston says, "businesses that ignore the overwhelming consensus to act will miss out on one of the most seismic shifts in government policy and business strategy in history.  The companies that not only accept this fundamental reality, but innovate to profit from it, will have the advantage." 

Interestingly enough, Winston buries these hard facts about climate change in the fifth and final chapter in the book.  Instead, he starts with a chapter that may be more palatable to cost-sensitive managers, about all the economically-based pressures that have evolved in recent years to force green initiatives.  He stresses that long-term sustainability is not at odds with short-term survival: at its core, being green is about doing more with less, which can save money and free capital for innovation. To use green strategies as a way to recover from the recession, Winston advocates focusing on four strategic areas:

(1) Get lean by revving up your energy and resource efficiency to survive the downturn. Look for the obvious ones first, get everyone looking, don't turn your nose at small improvements. Look at your buildings and facilities budgets and see where you can save on lights and heat-update old systems, and don't rely on individual behavior, automate it by using software. Cool down or shut off your technology (try adding the power bill to the CIOs budget): shrink the data center footprint by updating your server hardware, optimizing servers to reduce idling, even something as simple as opening the door to allow hot air to escape. Add software to put office workers' computers to sleep when idle, cut back on printers and print less. Optimize your distribution system, fill trucks to their max, have truck drivers drive fewer miles and at slower speeds, stop engine idling. Travel less by encouraging telecommuting and teleconferencing. Reduce waste and recycle more.

(2) Get smart by using environmental data about products and value chains to save money, prioritize, innovate, and generate competitive advantage. Get good operations data. After getting the basics (energy, water, other resource use, waste) go for full value chain or product life cycle costs. Ask what did it take for suppliers to produce what comes in the door? What do we do with our inputs, and how much energy and resources do we use? How much energy and resources do our customers use? And, what happens to our products after customers are done with them? What you can't get in-house or directly from your suppliers you may be able to get from public databases such as Carnegie Mellon's, and/or software designed to pull these metrics. This data is not only for cost-cutting and innovation efforts-customers are requiring more and more transparency.

(3) Get creative and rejuvenate your innovation efforts by asking heretical questions such as "Can we run our own business with no fossil fuels?" Don't wait for environmental regulations or customer demands to make your products irrelevant-do it now. Dedicate someone, at least partially, to manage green innovation, assign a committee or cross-functional team, and make it part of the mainstream innovation process. Look for innovation in all parts of the business, rethink packaging, look for scalable actions and close parallels, find inspiration from outside the company, look to nature, look to reduce the customer's footprint as well as your own. Partner with other companies, buy small innovative companies. Don't be bound by the recession: creativity is free.

(4) Get your people engaged and excited by asking employees to solve their own, the company's, and even the world's environmental challenges. Many people want meaning in their work and will be motivated by the dual purposes of profit and environmental concern, Winston says. To tap into this, give employees a base of knowledge on environmental issues and their implications for the business (make sure the executives express how seriously they take it), and involve everyone in sustainability on multiple levels, both as workers and as people, at home and at work. Give people ownership of environmental goals and the tools to act on them. Show how they relate to core business goals and make green behaviors integral to performance success.

Winston lists "Get Lean" first in the four-part model presumably because energy-cutting measures can quickly earn cost savings that can be used to propel a company past short-term cash crunches and fuel innovation efforts.  But as Winston describes in his conclusion, the model works best if you first lay a foundation based on "Get Smart," procuring the environmental and resource data you will need in order to know what to cut, and "Engage Your People," who collectively will be much better at helping with data collection and coming up with ideas to streamline processes and save energy than any one manager.  Then, a powerful positive reinforcement cycle can start between "Get Lean" and "Get Creative," as cost-cutting frees up money to fund innovation, and creative thought can find new ways to get more efficient.  When your company is focusing on all four strategies at once, Winston says, you will create value much faster.

To bring this framework to life, Winston fills the small book with concrete examples from companies that are already doing these things. He talks about companies like Wal-mart, which is forcing its 70,000 suppliers from around the world to meet new environmental and social standards, including for energy use and transparency, within a few years.  Or DuPont, who cut greenhouse gas emissions 72 percent over the last two decades-and today uses 6 percent less energy than it did in 1990 despite growing 40 percent.  He talks about a floor cleaning equipment company that innovated a product that uses ionization from water rather than chemicals to clean floors; airlines that are experimenting by flying jets with non-fossil fuels; and an entrepreneur stocking Israel and Denmark with battery-swapping stations for electric cars. He talks about making simple changes, like reducing packaging, and he talks about asking the big resource questions: what would happen to your business if oil went up to $500 a barrel?  How would your supply chain operate if you had no access to clean water? Buy it.