So how do you create a culture of heroes in your organization? How do you inspire more employees to think about sustainability, and to share their ideas more broadly? Here are some suggestions:
Start the Green Team. Create a task force of representatives from various parts of the organization to meet regularly to discuss, prioritize and implement organization-wide sustainability initiatives. Think twice about staffing this team with executives. Find the people most passionate about sustainability – those who will most actively mobilize and empower their respective organizations to participate fully in identifying organization-wide opportunities to reduce waste and environmental impact.
Focus on problems and solutions. Many cross-functional groups (no matter what the topic or charter) spend too much time discussing the problems, and not enough time identifying or discovering solutions. Build a set of ground rules for your Green Team, one of which is that problems cannot be discussed or presented beyond the team unless solutions are also provided. It’s OK if those solutions haven’t yet been researched or fully vetted, but it’s important to create a team that’s focused on action and progress, not just opportunity identification.
Make idea solicitation easy. Members of the Green Team are mere facilitators and representatives of their organizations. Create tools and processes where employees throughout the organization are encouraged to identify and submit opportunities for consideration. Make it easy and fun to be part of the process.
Find low-hanging fruit. Start with what’s easy, both to gain momentum and to show quick progress. There’s no better way to ignite the passion and creativity of a wider audience of employees than to show quick momentum and success from your sustainability efforts. No opportunity is too small as long as the effect is positive and measurable.
Reward the heroes! This may be the most important part of creating an ongoing, fun, and productive sustainability focus throughout the organization. Reward and recognize your heroes. Give them something for their desks, and recognition from company leadership. Associate them with the idea and initiative from start to finish, and ongoing if necessary. Will one of your employees be responsible for $35 million in global energy savings someday? Maybe…
And don’t forget to get your customers to become heroes too. Great ideas for your organization and brand – inside and out – don’t just come from employees. Starbucks is the latest company to directly engage customers in idea generation. (Click here to read more about their initiatives and innovations, and how they’re making their own customers into innovation heroes.)
This is a mere start to what’s possible. Now let’s do as we say, and start the interaction. In the comments section below, share a bit about your organization’s opportunity. What can you do – starting today – to encourage employees and customers throughout your organizational ecosystem to become Green Heroes? What one thing will you do before the end of the day today to get things started?
Showing posts with label green technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green technology. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Unleashing Your Inner Green Hero, Part 2
Large organizations worldwide are creating sustainability initiatives, and setting aggressive goals to cut their carbon footprints. Those initiatives are creating mandates across the company to reduce waste, and consider the long-term impact of various processes and decisions – everything from manufacturing to supply chain, IT policy, travel and commute policies and more.
Setting ambitious goals is one thing, achieving them in a measurable way is another.
Deb Horvath at Washington Mutual, by the way, is a hero. According to CIO Magazine, her organization is set to save more than $3 million dollars a year by implementing green IT policies organization wide.
Ron Spalter is also a hero. The deputy COO for City University of New York (CUNY) organized the individual IT departments for more than 15 CUNY campuses to cut their IT power consumption by more than $3 million over five years (PDF), putting hundreds of thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year.
But for every C-level executive who’s taken a leadership and early adopter position on identifying and executing sustainable initiatives internally and externally for their organizations, there are dozens of regular people – like you and I – with sustainable ideas, inspiration and ambition.
I see this every day at Verdiem.com. The vast majority of interest we get in green IT solutions is from individual employees throughout organizations – mostly from IT, but elsewhere in the company as well.
My favorite was the HR manager from a large Midwest-based company who was passionate about helping make her company more sustainable, and also knew that tangible “green” results would help with both employee morale and recruiting.
She was just one example of countless employees throughout your organization who just may hold the secret to true environmental progress and sustainable results – for your products, your processes, your customers and your brand.
And the beautiful thing about individual ideas and initiatives is that their true impact is rarely confined to the pure task at hand.
Forrester Research recently talked about the idea of Green IT Heroes in an attempt to inspire IT professionals to think well beyond the traditional IT boundaries in terms of the sustainability impact they could have on their organization.
Sure, IT groups can directly impact things like equipment lifecycle management, energy consumption and more.
But IT can also impact telecommuting options. By partnering with the HR group, IT can create and implement secure remote-access options that make telecommuting a more meaningful, seamless and productive option for more employees.
By proposing and initiating ideas like this, says Forrester, IT can be an even greater Green Hero in the organization.
And those ideas clearly don’t need to originate from the CIO. They can start anywhere in the organization, as long as that individual has both the passion and the opportunity to share.
Setting ambitious goals is one thing, achieving them in a measurable way is another.
Deb Horvath at Washington Mutual, by the way, is a hero. According to CIO Magazine, her organization is set to save more than $3 million dollars a year by implementing green IT policies organization wide.
Ron Spalter is also a hero. The deputy COO for City University of New York (CUNY) organized the individual IT departments for more than 15 CUNY campuses to cut their IT power consumption by more than $3 million over five years (PDF), putting hundreds of thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year.
But for every C-level executive who’s taken a leadership and early adopter position on identifying and executing sustainable initiatives internally and externally for their organizations, there are dozens of regular people – like you and I – with sustainable ideas, inspiration and ambition.
I see this every day at Verdiem.com. The vast majority of interest we get in green IT solutions is from individual employees throughout organizations – mostly from IT, but elsewhere in the company as well.
My favorite was the HR manager from a large Midwest-based company who was passionate about helping make her company more sustainable, and also knew that tangible “green” results would help with both employee morale and recruiting.
She was just one example of countless employees throughout your organization who just may hold the secret to true environmental progress and sustainable results – for your products, your processes, your customers and your brand.
And the beautiful thing about individual ideas and initiatives is that their true impact is rarely confined to the pure task at hand.
Forrester Research recently talked about the idea of Green IT Heroes in an attempt to inspire IT professionals to think well beyond the traditional IT boundaries in terms of the sustainability impact they could have on their organization.
Sure, IT groups can directly impact things like equipment lifecycle management, energy consumption and more.
But IT can also impact telecommuting options. By partnering with the HR group, IT can create and implement secure remote-access options that make telecommuting a more meaningful, seamless and productive option for more employees.
By proposing and initiating ideas like this, says Forrester, IT can be an even greater Green Hero in the organization.
And those ideas clearly don’t need to originate from the CIO. They can start anywhere in the organization, as long as that individual has both the passion and the opportunity to share.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Verdiem Wins Microsoft Partner Award in ISV/Software Solutions, Innovation Partner of the Year Category!
We are really excited to announce that Verdiem has been chosen as the winner of this year’s Microsoft ISV/Software Solutions, Innovation Partner of the Year category. It’s an incredible honor to win this award, and we are especially excited to get this recognition from such a valuable partner.
Click here for more information. To see all of the winners and finalists, you can see Microsoft’s press release here.
Click here for more information. To see all of the winners and finalists, you can see Microsoft’s press release here.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Energy Efficiency Encyclopedia – PC Power Management
This week, I wanted to take a step back and talk about PC power management. Companies that focus on sustainable technologies frequently throw this term around, but lots of folks today still aren’t sure exactly what PC power management is. And I’m not just referring to people outside the tech sector. In fact, last week I mentioned the term to a friend of mine who works at a large software company, and his first instinct was that power management referred to a computer’s processing power. Point being, it’s worth explaining again.
Within the context that Verdiem uses it, PC power management is all about conserving a PC’s energy consumption to save money and indirectly reduce carbon emissions. The most successful way to manage PC power consumption is to make sure that when you are not using your PC, it is either turned off or moved into a lower power state (like sleep mode). Operating systems, such as Windows Vista, enable users to better manage their PC’s power settings. Unfortunately, people often incorrectly assume that power management functionality will limit their PC’s performance, so frequently turn off the power-saving features on their machines. The reality is that PC power management software is generally built to balance saving power with ensuring the end user’s needs don’t suffer, so won't negatively affect performance.
Given rising energy costs, in conjunction with a poor economy and the increasing threat of global warming, saving money and reducing carbon emissions has become more important than ever before. Conserving your PC’s energy consumption is a great way to simultaneously reduce costs while also positively affecting the environment.
Within the context that Verdiem uses it, PC power management is all about conserving a PC’s energy consumption to save money and indirectly reduce carbon emissions. The most successful way to manage PC power consumption is to make sure that when you are not using your PC, it is either turned off or moved into a lower power state (like sleep mode). Operating systems, such as Windows Vista, enable users to better manage their PC’s power settings. Unfortunately, people often incorrectly assume that power management functionality will limit their PC’s performance, so frequently turn off the power-saving features on their machines. The reality is that PC power management software is generally built to balance saving power with ensuring the end user’s needs don’t suffer, so won't negatively affect performance.
Given rising energy costs, in conjunction with a poor economy and the increasing threat of global warming, saving money and reducing carbon emissions has become more important than ever before. Conserving your PC’s energy consumption is a great way to simultaneously reduce costs while also positively affecting the environment.
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