Sustainability and coaching
Two words that at first glance, might not logically go together.
For me, this is a long post but it covers important and current topics of these times and themes that are coming up in almost every conversation I am having right now. So it felt appropriate to attempt to capture them and synthesise into something which I hope will offer some useful insight and a few take aways for your business too.?
Indulge me in reasoning why these two words do go together and while I attempt to expand on some important concepts and challenge a paradigm that I believe no longer serves when contemplating what sustainability means for your businesses.
So take some time out to enjoy over a cuppa, and as this is intended to be helpful, please do share you thoughts, reflections, questions and challenges.? These are all welcome!
And for anyone short on time, the key takeaways are these:
The challenge with performance management?
Before I committed to becoming an Executive Coach full time, I was an accidental organisational performance specialist.? I say accidental because it wasn’t my plan.? In fact I made a pointed effort to move away from it as an area of specialism. But I just kept gravitating back to it.? I got to becoming a specialist by observing.? I observed what worked and what didn’t work in a number of very different contexts.
One of the things I noticed is that in times of organisational challenge or when big change is an imperative, business leaders have a tendency to focus on the solutions, the “to be” state that they are seeking to achieve.? This isn’t wrong per se, as humans we are wired this way, but without a full understanding of the problem, the “as is” state, and crucially, an understanding of the root causes of the problem, as distinct from the manifestation of the symptoms and impacts, the solutions will only ever be sub-optimal at best, and at worst, can even be damaging to a business over the longer term.
One of the other things I often observed was the focus on tracking performance indicators simply because they existed and were measurable, rather than whether or not they were the right things to measure and whether or not it was possible to demonstrate impact as a result of measuring them.
As a now recovering organisational performance specialist, I’m going to say something that is somewhat contradictory to my mode of operating in my former career.?
Performance management invariably entails setting goals and monitoring progress.? Performance management involves tracking numbers, reporting on data and key performance indicators in order to know if the action being taken is working and moving you towards the outcomes being sought.?
Tracking performance towards a defined goal only really works if it is possible to qualify and quantify the goal as well as what is being tracked.? Tracking performance necessitates a degree of certainty, predictability and control with what is being tracked as well as a degree of certainty, predictability and control, over the goal.
The crude example and indeed where performance management first originated, is a production line with physical inputs and outputs and defined variables such as speed frequency etc.
However, in many sectors and areas of business, inputs and outputs are neither certain nor predictable nor are in our control.? They may not even be quantifiable or qualifiable in clear ways. Performance management does not deal so well with this ambiguity.
So how does what I’ve just said relate to sustainability?
Sustainability & Diversity & Inclusion
I believe that when it comes to sustainability*, it’s ok to NOT know what the goal or end outcome will be.
Allow me to expand on this.
Environmental sustainability doesn’t exist.? Simply put, if it did, we wouldn’t be experiencing a climate crisis.? Nor would we be experiencing environmental degradation in other ways such as acidification of the oceans, biodiversity loss etc.? Media and Politics have a tendency to focus on climate change but if you are interested in all the other ways humans are wrecking the planet, I love the simplicity of Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics: https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/.
I could go much deeper into this point but for brevity (your time is valuable!), what I mean by this is that if we haven’t arrived at environmental sustainability, yet, then how can we meaningfully describe in clear terms that relate to your specific business, what environmental sustainability means, let alone identify the clear steps to take in your business to achieve it?**
I’d also like to draw a parallel here with Diversity & Inclusion (D&I).? The principle is the same, although clearly the concept is different.? Many D&I initiatives fall down because they are driven by what can be measured, but how meaningful, how impactful are these measures?? How much has the needle been shifted because a company has delivered a certain number of training sessions or hosted a given number of employee feedback sessions?? Ok, these activities can be ticked off on a plan, and communicated to an audience and certainly demonstrate some progress if they didn’t exist before, but what impact have they really had?? The challenge with D&I initiatives, and improving business culture more broadly, is that it is difficult to define in a way which can be measured so as to know whether or not it has been achieved. ?
In fact, it is almost impossible for us to conceive what a truly equitable society could be like in a way in which seven billion people can agree, when it has never existed.? And even if we could define it universally, to then set about identifying how it will be achieved seems even more impossible. Why?? Because the steps to achieve it would entail complex and difficult values-based choices which include those with power having to give some or all of it away. ?
So, if it is not possible to clearly define what we are aiming for, then it becomes virtually impossible to know what steps we need to take to get us there.? And inertia can quickly set in.? The gravitas of environmental sustainability and diversity and inclusion can feel overwhelming for business owners and leaders who are genuine in wanting to take positive action, but who can become paralysed in knowing where to start and in identifying what the right first action is.
And this is where performance management can fall down as it relates to environmental sustainability and D&I. Because it can focus too much on ticking the box of an activity delivered and not enough focus on the impact of that activity having been delivered. And also because if the end goal hasn’t been achieved, and the performance report flags this as red, then that is considered a failure.? Performance management reporting can sometimes be too blunt and doesn’t always enable meaningful narrative and framing which positively recognises the distance traveled away from something, rather than the progress made towards something.?
But should any of what I say about the challenge in defining environmental sustainability and equity stop us from trying?? No! Of course not.? That’s why I’m writing this article. The point I wish to make is that we can give ourselves permission that it’s ok not to know the end point.? It’s ok not to know the goal.? This is uncharted territory.? We can’t possibly know what the new paradigm is, or will be.? But that shouldn’t stop us from ceasing to operate in ways that we know to be outdated and no longer serving us, even when we don’t yet know what we are aiming for.
Regarding both environmental sustainability and equity, the world needs bold leaders who understand that sometimes in business, it is necessary to take the right first step and to trust that the right path will appear as new information comes to light.
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So what I am calling for is a new way of thinking about performance when we are talking about such complex and existential matters.
The role of coaching in becoming sustainable
Let me talk about coaching now.? Coaching is largely about setting goals. Or is it…?!
I draw on James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” where he challenges the idea of setting goals in coaching.? James talks about the need to focus on the system and not the goal. ? Because the right systems enable the right actions and James writes that the only control we have is over the actions we take and not the outcome.
I agree, but there is some nuance here to breakdown.
If you are a business owner or leader, it is of course important to understand what you are aiming for in regards to why it matters.? The “why” is important because that is what drives momentum in the business, especially during challenging and uncertain times. The “why” becomes the beacon of hope that propels the business forwards.
In business, the why is articulated as purpose, qualified usually by a mission and a vision.? Without setting out a purpose, mission and vision, it becomes challenging if not eventually impossible to attract investment, stakeholders, customers, even employees.
So setting a direction based on purpose and mission is critical as well as defining the values or operating principles that provide the framework for how a business operates.? In other words, values or operating principles govern the systems in place, and with good governance, it is possible to detach from the end goal.
To achieve great intangible things, we must first understand the motivation to change.? Sometimes a future-focused idealised utopia isn’t enough to compel action in the here and now, even if we know intellectually, that we should and that it is the right thing to do.? We know this to be true because we are still in a climate crisis when the scientific evidence has been known and irrefutable for decades.
This is why in order to start taking action, we must also focus on the here and now, the “as is” that I talked about earlier. ?
We must start to focus on what could be different or better from the current state (there may not always be a “problem” to fix per se, as often it is human nature to not consider things a problem especially if the “pain” is displaced and felt elsewhere by others) and begin to get curious and interested in examining and systematically documenting, quantifying and qualifying what “it” is.
When we do this, we can then start to constructively challenge the current state and ask the deeper questions such as:
Once we deeply understand the current state by examining it from all of these angles, we then have a robust benchmark, a reference point from which to begin measuring any progress away from it. Even when we don’t know what we are aiming for.
Here I use the analogy of a flight path: if we change a course by just 1 or 2 degrees, the whole trajectory shifts, even if we don’t know the precise point that we are aiming for. These initial steps, those 1 or 2 degrees, over a period of time can become exponential changes. ?
So in the context of a business becoming more sustainable, or more inclusive and equitable, what I am calling for is identifying the one or two small changes that can be taken in your business away from the current state that have the impact of setting it on a new trajectory.
And then, “performance management” becomes monitoring and assessing these small changes against the baseline and setting in place mechanisms to enable iteration, evolution and course-adjustment, as new insight and information become available that couldn’t have been known when embarking on that first step.
Coaching can help business owners to consider what sustainability and equity mean for their businesses and their specific and unique operating contexts. Where business consultants bring advice and expertise about the strategic and operational aspects of running a business, coaching can help bring sharpness of focus to the things that matter most to business leaders and their stakeholders.? Coaching can help business leaders to laser in on their current “as is” state, introducing different perspectives and vantage points by giving business owners the opportunity to step outside of the immediacy of the day to day and take a more considered, objective and crucially, long term view.
Businesses have to deal with complex, uncertain and interconnected factors.? Coaching can also help business owners and leaders to identify and isolate these factors so they can be examined systematically to understand how they can be managed. Coaching can help to identify and step through possible consequences of any decisions and actions, enabling business owners to identify and avoid any unforeseen or negative impacts.
I’m not saying abandon performance management altogether.? Clearly performance management serves a purpose, even in the context of environmental sustainability and D&I. What I am saying is that more is needed.? And by more, I mean in asking the bigger “so what?” questions, and that is where coaching can serve a purpose far more impactful in dealing with complex and challenging existential matters.
I sincerely hope you have found this insightful.? What I have attempted here is to summarise topics and concepts that have been ever present in recent conversations and it seemed remiss to not attempt to share them in case they help you and your business to reframe the way you think about environmental sustainability and Diversity & Inclusion.
You’re of course welcome to share this and your feedback is always welcome.
If you would like to explore how a coaching conversation can help you and your business to take that first step, I’d love to talk to you.? You can get in contact here.
*I’m talking here about environmental sustainability specifically, as distinct from business/financial sustainability because I am making a broad assumption that financial sustainability is a given for a business.
**Of course there are ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) quality standards and frameworks such as B-Corp, ISO 14001 and 50001, GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), and there are many others, which enable businesses to start to track performance against given criteria.? What I am talking about is broader and is about the mindset required to shift.? A business will only engage with an initiative like B-Corp or others if the leaders of that business already have some idea of what they are aiming for, and/or a strong motivation to operate differently and are commitment to achieving it.? Most businesses haven’t yet reached that mindset, yet. ?