My BlogTalkRadio guest today was Kim Callis from General Mills. Kim’s job is integrating sustainability into the fabric of General Mills’ operations. Give it a listen – we had a great conversation – but I want to share one big point I was left with.
General Mills mission is to “Nourish Lives, Nourish Communities, and Nourish the Future”. But what does this really mean, and how will we know if General Mills is actually getting somewhere with this great idea?
Agreement about Metrics.
Having an intention about becoming sustainable requires a way to measure the fulfillment of that intention. Which comes down to Data.
It’s striking how many conversations are going on about creating metrics, indices, datasets of sustainability. Without these, we don’t have an agreement on what we even mean by the term sustainability. For example, in Kim’s work with the Global Reporting Initiative, there are 10 food companies meeting with various NGO’s to define social and environmental measures that these companies can use in their reporting, and even more importantly, in aligning their own internal efforts. They are talking about issues like child labor, animal rights, fair trade practices, and impacts on indigenous communities.
Some things are easier and more objective to measure, like energy and materials. This has been the subject of “lean manufacturing” for a while now. Measuring positive or negative impacts on an eco-system – whether an eco-logical system or an eco-nomic system – is more challenging. It’s less subject to pure scientific or engineering analysis. More subjective, more values-driven. Which is why it makes sense that there are collaborative groups across industries having these conversations.
We are going through a major cultural shift about what we value. For companies in a particular industry, like food, it’s important to have that collective conversation. The players in a given industry share suppliers, production technologies, and even the same industry analysts on Wall Street. Collaboration is essential, especially when it comes to shifting the value proposition for a whole industry, and dealing with issues that balance economic, social and environmental concerns.
Kim summarized the impact of metrics by paraphrasing what he had learned from the work of Dr. Steven I. Simon, who specializes in creating safety culture for large manufacturers. But, the lessons are just as applicable to creating a sustainability culture. Kim said that, when expectations are made clear and communicated, the response of people is to want to live up to those expectations. The result is predictable behaviors – and predictable behaviors are the essence of culture.
We are going through a cultural shift – from one in which business “predictably” focuses on the financial bottom line – to one in which business “predictably” balances the concerns of multiple stakeholders, including financial interests.
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