Going Green with Customer Success tips

It all started when I was working at Unilever and the Lipton Tea Pesticides scandal came out. I realized that every day, while I was trying to eat healthy etc... I was ingesting up to 22 pesticides, just because of this little cup of tea.

I started reading more about environment and joined the Green Movement of LinkedIn in 2019 to start having more impact and started applying zero waste and "green-hacks" into my life after reading Bea Jonhson's book and Julie Bernier's zero waste manual.

While I felt like a hero, doing all these little things and applying so many changes in my life in a short period of time, convincing (or not) my loved one to do the same... People were questioning if all of this really had an impact...

And that's where my Customer Success skills helped me re-focus my green transition! Their question was justified... Am I just a drop in the ocean ? Am I really having an impact ?

If you're in a Green Transition, here are some tips from Customer Success as our role is to help adopting new practices and measure the impact of these:

1. Know your topic!

I started learning more and more about climate change through amazing training programs:

-Climate Reality Project by Al Gore where you will learn what is climate change, how to explain it, how it impacts human being and social justice and what initiatives are happening around the world to tackle it.

-Climate Fresk, a 3 hours workshop to simply explain climate change thanks to cards and end the game by discussing potential solutions. Many large French companies are making this workshop mandatory to all their employees.

-2Tonnes Workshop is my favorite as I have a bias to action ! During this 3 hours serious game, you will have to evaluate your carbon emissions and work in teams to achieve max 2 tonnes by individuals by 2050.

-AXA Climate University, where you will learn how to act against climate change and especially how your job might be impacted. I found the section about how Fighting Climate Change for HR/Leadership section very insightful.

2. Get the best of change by understanding your change curve!

Once you start learning about climate change, you might end up ignoring this issue like governments and media in Don't Look Up or start having more and more eco-anxiety and feel depressed.

The process of adapting to climate change is like any major Change Management Processes. Understanding your change curve helps accepting the different states you will go through and accelerating the path to action rather than staying in depression mood.

3. Define your goals and measure your impact through KPIs

This piece is still the most difficult for me but that's where tools helping measuring our CO2 emissions have been particularly helpful (ex: ADEME or WWF footprint calculator)!

We have a common goal to respect the Paris agreement: All human beings should be at 2 tonnes of Carbon emissions per year by 2050, and we're closer to 10 in France in 2022.

You won't be able to do everything perfectly from the beginning, if you want to have a maximum of impact, here is where you can start:

a. Communicate about Climate Change and how to tackle it! The more we are, the more chances we can tackle it! You can take inspiration from Time For The Planet and how they built a "galaxy" of action takers or Camille Etienne (graine de possible) on social media.

b. Research shows that if you want to start adopting green tips, here are the 6 ones that will really have an impact:

I am not perfect at all on the above, but they give me some directions. I have changed my electricity provider for a green one, subscribed to a fossil fuel free bank, aim at eating meat and fish only twice a week, keeping my electronic devices as long as possible, bike or walk to the office, start entering in 2nd hand stores or repair my clothes through upcycling (if you live in Paris, I recommend Tilli Couture!).

But I still love traveling and quitting flights is one of the most difficult choice I will have to make but when possible I take the train as many European city are accessible by train from Paris.

c. Work for a company acting against climate change and develop your green skills. If you don't know where to find opportunities, LinkedIn has created a link dedicated to green jobs.

4. Celebrate successes and create communities!

Learn more about your circle of influence and celebrate any success you may have on this circle! Join a community like the Go Green group of your company or start one with the help of "les collectifs" who have experience in this!

And you ? What are your Pro-Tips to fight against climate change ?