Resolve Wicked Business Problems by Decentralizing the Solution

In 2013, Great Britain introduced a tax on carbon dioxide to quell emissions and reduce dependence on carbon-based, finite energy sources. At the time, I served as SVP of innovation and sustainability for a large London-based infrastructure and community investments organization that was required to measure and reduce its carbon across the globe. It fell into my lap to figure out how to collect information such as office electrical consumption, energy used in the 80,000+ homes we managed, and fuel used by workers during their daily commutes. Then, we had to find ways to get everyone onboard to reduce it year over year, without any money for incentives.

In the U.S., climate change had become a political issue. Many citizens, including some of the leaders of our U.S. offices, didn’t trust the validity of climate change information. Our natural resources are vast, and the federal government heavily subsidizes our fossil fuel-based energy costs. Many Americans still believe the danger of energy over-consumption is “fake news” rather than a serious issue. This prevalent attitude impeded a sense of urgency for domestic conservation. Being required to measure and reduce energy consumption for a foreign country’s climate-based carbon tax seemed like an abstract law in a country far away. Our U.S. constituents simply didn’t buy in to the initiative or its necessity.

In the UK, on the other hand, the public and most business leaders were already supportive of taking measures to reduce pollution and mitigate their impact on climate change. They aligned energy costs with “true costs” many years ago, so most UK citizens and corporate leadership teams embraced conservation because it saved them money. They were more willing to trust and adapt the mandate than their cohorts across the pond.

The situation created imbalance across the board: for me personally, for the people who worked for the company, and for the organization itself. I felt pulled in multiple opposing directions at the same time. My own values—preserving our natural habitats from the destruction of fossil fuel extraction and reducing pollution to allay asthma and cancer—were in sync with the benefits of measuring and reducing natural resource consumption. As part of my role, I implemented more stringent sustainable building and operational practices, and sometimes that meant slower initial returns in exchange for higher long-term profits and value. We also introduced renewable energy to power many of our properties including two “net zero” waste, water, and energy communities at Fort Carson, CO, and Fort Bliss, TX. Having a background in the financial sector gave me a way to interpret these changes to decision makers as the economically savvy decision, which avoided the polarizing words that threw them off-balance, like “environmentally friendly”. It also helped me understand the tight budget and time constraints asset managers faced, so I empathized with their frustration in being asked to take on even more responsibility without additional resources.

From the company’s perspective, imbalance came from its American workers who were completely out of sync with carbon legislation in the UK. As busy construction and operational managers, they barely had enough time as it was, much less the time or desire to deal with a pile of extra duties for which they felt no alignment or connection. Why should they have to adhere to UK laws?

To compound the challenges, our job sites were stretched from Florida to New York, and from South Carolina to California, so everyone was communicating virtually. While being remote gave us the leverage to reach dozens of work sites without traveling to them all, the lack of in-person, face-to-face time made it difficult to build empathy and trust, especially when delivering or attempting to enforce unwelcomed mandates from overseas. We tried sending information about the carbon tax requirements but got little response. We set up meetings to discuss the importance of responding to the measurement requirements but saw little movement. The more we nudged, the less they budged.

How could we balance this into a win-win solution together?

Realizing the complexity of the situation and the imbalance it was creating in our culture, we began by leveraging my energy engineering certifications to develop estimates the first year, then co-create an acceptable plan for measuring consumption going forward. This bought us some time to create a strategy for the next requirement, energy reduction.

Instead of positioning the carbon mandates as a separate project, with a heavier burden on regional managers, we set aside one year-end goal for every individual worker, from the CEO to the office clerk. The goal could be any positive action, at their personal discretion, to lower carbon consumption in some way. The activity piggybacked on an existing process that all employees were already required to do—create three to five personalized goals for the following year—so it was simply part of their normal year-end routine.

This changed the balance of the situation in two important ways:

1.????Connection and engagement: The goal became a personal choice, aligned to what each worker felt was most relevant and suited for their area of control. It was no longer something abstract that represented a misalignment of values. Instead, everyone could connect to the overall challenge using the method and reasoning of their choosing.

2.????Movement and momentum: Instead of starting up a new process, which requires more energy to set in motion, we leveraged an existing process, which added momentum to the direction each worker was already moving.

For example, the office manager switched the copier default to using double-sided paper (so she wouldn’t have to restock as often), the facilities manager installed motion sensors in the office space (so he didn’t have to keep reminding the last person to turn the lights?off at end of day), and the construction supervisor got our fleet vendor to install free trackers (so he could tell when trucks left the jobsite in an unsupervised way). The company achieved carbon reduction and its workers improved their own experiences.

By finding a way to create balance within the organization, we created a powerful program that naturally engaged workers across geographies--leveraging the Human Dynamics of change. What’s more, this win-win situation shifted my role from being an enforcer of something abstract that created extra work, to that of a helper to develop individualized, creative, and positive goals. Plus, it gave us thousands of data points to track our energy reduction strategies and their resulting carbon reduction. In successive years, goals were continually adapted, creating self-sustaining value.

Would we ever have become balanced and moved forward in unison if we continued with a top-down mandate versus an individual choice based on personal values and purpose? While I cannot answer that for certain, I do know that being out-of-balance delays progress and gobbles up emotional resources by causing frustration, pain, and a lack of trust.

Article by: Tabitha A. Scott, CEM, CDSM, CHTP

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