Sustainability often strikes people as being a six-dollar word for a collection of little things they do. So-called ’sustainability practitioners’ are not always the ones who have written a paper on carbon footprints or ‘food miles.’
They are people you meet every day in the coffee shop, the church group, or the post office. Sometimes they are a bit weird –in a good way.
Two articles crossed my path that made me think about this. The first was an article by Gareth Kane who makes an interesting point ‘getting green out of the boardroom’ in his article in Management Issues. The second was by Park Howell, who applies the lens of ‘Rudolph Thinking’ to look inward for managing business tough times.
Park’s blog post, “The 15 characteristics of Rudolphs and how they can help steer your company thru the fog of the recession” addresses one of our favorite books, The Rudolph Factor by Cindy Laurin who was a guest on our radio show.
You see Rudolphs are a bit ‘weird’ to most people just doing their thing. But in any business, in any generation, they are the ones who get it, who stick their snouts out, and are quickly labeled misfits. It reminds me of the line Apple used when it celebrated the ‘rebels’ and misfits’ who believed in the personal computer back in 1997.
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.”
To bring sustainability into the workplace, we need to recruit –meaning motivate, or hire– more of these square pegs’ and Rudolphs. Because, as the Apple ad had it, “You can ..disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.”
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