Changing mid-stream

When I left University I focused straight away on finding a company to work for that already "got it" when it came in implementing sustainability practices. I did not want to waste my time working for a company where all the time and effort was spent convincing other people why considering people and the planet was important for the business. That was about changing mindsets and most of you know changing the way someone thinks and acts is an incredibly difficult act.
I was extremely fortunate and worked for two separate companies with strong values in social and environmental responsibility, so they type of work that I got to engage in was leading the field. However, in both situations either company did not start out this way.
If you look across the large organizations in the world, they didn't start out with a mandate to be socially or environmentally responsible. They started out in various ways, but mainly to see a dream fulfilled - to create a great product or service, to make money, to fill a need in the market. So when a company starts out with one direction, to change courses and start doing business differently is incredibly difficult.
It really does start with mind-sets because now the leadership of the business is being asked to think and behave differently than they ever have before. It is much easier when the incentive line up - like the company will be fined, or punished in some way if the change is not made. Like environmental regulations on water pollution. But when it is the "right thing to do" or will reduce future risk, it become s a lot trickier for leaders to make the changes. This is in large part because it is a unknown, we don't have a crystal ball on what the future has in store for us. So often companies take tiny steps, safe steps, in the direction but ignore their elephants in the room. What I mean by this, is that if your business relies on fossil fuels and unfair labor conditions to make your products, the office recycling center is not going to save your company in the long haul. Especially when the company structure and leadership in place is designed on making money in your existing system.

So even though I did get to work for amazing values based companies, they themselves where in legal/corporate structures that prevented a lot of decisions from being made because of fear of working outside the market economic system. So what are other companies to do even when the values based companies are challenged? Invite your leaders to be leaders to try staying in the sustainability solutions for a day - see what comes up and out of those ideas, take it step by step, but in the end make significant changes.