This week, I received the “Green Issues and Opportunities” Leadership Santa Rosa Award – along with 9 others in different categories. I felt truly honored; what a great event! There should be some nice photos coming out soon; I will be sure to post them. Below is the text to a press release that the Sustainable Enterprise Conference released; I really think I won the award because of our collaboration there. As and aside – the conference will be on May 11, at Sonoma Mountain Village, and again I will be MC as well as delivering a workshop “10 Ways to Build Your Dream Green Team” with my colleagues at CircadiaOne.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 5, 2012
Jan Kahdeman, Communications Director
mailto:jan@contactsec.com (707) 799-1646
Sustainable Enterprise Conference Co-Founder Genevieve Taylor
Honored at Santa Rosa Chamber’s Bob Blanchard Excellence in
Leadership Awards
Santa Rosa, California, April 5, 2012 – Genevieve Taylor, co-founder of Sonoma County’s Annual Sustainable Enterprise Conference and vice-president at Global Genesis, is a finalist in the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce’s Bob Blanchard excellence in leadership award. Taylor was chosen for her exemplary work in the category Green Issues and Opportunities.

“I am delighted to be selected as a finalist, and to be included in a group of people who are all making real contributions to Sonoma County,” said Taylor. “It’s been very rewarding to see the increase in interest and effort around environmental sustainability in Sonoma County, and I am pleased to see that Leadership Santa Rosa and the Santa Rosa Chamber are a part of that conversation.”

The Bob Blanchard award is an outgrowth of the Santa Rosa Chamber’s Leadership Santa Rosa program, the purpose of which is to identify, develop, and equip effective community leaders who will help create or support a spirit of cooperation for the resolution of future community challenges. The program provides a series of ten, full-day seminars with community leaders on a wide variety of business and
leadership topics.

Taylor is a graduate of the Leadership Santa Rosa Program, as well as of a similarly structured program that focuses specifically on environmental, economic and social sustainability, offered by the Santa Rosa non-profit Leadership Institute for Ecology and the Economy. As vice-president of consulting firm Global Genesis, she delivers training in leadership, communications, time management, conflict
resolution, and negotiations. In addition, she has been selected as this year’s Sustainable Enterprise Conference master of ceremonies.

In 2005, Taylor co-founded Sonoma County’s Sustainable Enterprise Conference along with Robert Girling, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Business and Economics at Sonoma State University.

“Robert believed we needed a forum for fostering the conversation about sustainability in Sonoma County,” said Taylor. “We gathered people from the business world, from Sonoma State, and from the Green MBA program at Dominican University to create a conference that offers enterprises practical tools for solid change. We focus on topics such as green business programs that are available in Sonoma County, green business venture capital, and how to track sustainability initiatives in local businesses. A host of changes are possible and necessary for improved sustainability, from small, obvious things like eliminating the use of plastic water bottles, to analyzing an entire supply chains to identify ways to make it more environmentally friendly and sustainable.”

Now in its 7th year, the day-long Sustainable Enterprise Conference is dedicated to helping North Bay businesses and organizations transition to economic, environmental, and social sustainability. This year’s program theme, Collaborating for a Sustainable Future, provides insights for organizations and individuals seeking the latest information on how innovation and sustainability will drive the economy while preserving the resources needed for an environmentally responsible and prosperous future. The conference will be held Friday, May 11 at Sonoma Mountain Village, Rohnert Park. For more information and to register, visit www.sustainableenterpriseconference.com/, or contact Oren Wool, event director, at (707) 636-4732, or oren@contactsec.com.

About the Sustainable Enterprise Conference
Produced by a group of Northern California business leaders, university faculty, non-profit leaders and entrepreneurs, the Sustainability Enterprise Conference aims to educate and work with North Bay enterprises and the local community to help integrate environmental responsibility, sustainable business practices, and economic and social equity issues to ensure a high quality of life for future generations.
The conference operates under the fiscal sponsorship of the Leadership Institute for Ecology and the Economy, a 501(c)(3) public charity based in Sonoma County that is dedicated to insuring a sustainable future for California’s North Coast.
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www.SustainableEnterpriseConference.com
Sustainable Enterprise Conference | 555 5th Street Suite #300A, Santa Rosa, CA 95401 | (707) 636-4732

Workplace solutions | PressDemocrat.com.

The question, then, is how?

At Global Genesis, we believe that high performance teamwork is created through a number of different elements, depicted in a model we often use with teams to establish what that foundation might be. 

At the center of high performance teamwork – the kind of teamwork that yields synergistic results – is trust and respect.

First comes respect: the kind of respect that comes through observing action over time, values fulfilled, and competency revealed.

Then comes trust: trust that helps the un-discussable be discussed, that allows for an easy play and share of ideas, because everyone knows that their team mates have their back.

Creating respect and trust within a group of people is a dance; it comes over time and in response to how people approach the rest of the key elements for high performance teamwork.   In my experience, it is nearly impossible to enter a new group and automatically respect and trust those around you. It is sometimes even harder to do so with groups that have long histories.   Instead, it is through clarifying shared purpose and roles, clarifying roles, spending time to develop relationships, and fine-tuning teamwork that create room for trust and respect to grow.

So, how do we go about cultivating these other elements?  Below are some ideas for how we approach these essential pieces – and there are  many more.

1. Clarify shared purpose and vision. To help our clients clarify shared purpose and vision,  we like to refer to an article that Jim Collins and Jerry Porris wrote for the” target=”_blank”>Harvard Business Review on Change in 1998.  There they say that a practical, shared vision has the following components:

• Clear Purpose & Values
• Big, Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) and Strategies to accomplish those.

When we work with clients, we typically customize our approach to working with these two paths.  They compose the largest parts of many strategic plans, and are essential to high performance teamwork.

One of my favorite ways to help clients clarify their purpose and values as well as their goals and strategies is to have them interview each other using the Appreciative Inquiry Interviews. Here, you ask people to take about 20 minutes each to question each other on what is most inspiring to them about their organization, what they know that works based on experiences they may have had in other arenas, and what are the exciting possibilities that they see on the horizon for their team.  In those conversations, which are characterized by active, open listening and reflection, both people have an opportunity to Discover (the first step in the AI methodology) new ways of approaching the challenge of uncovering the purpose and vision for the organization.

This is later compared with what other partners have learned, and is funneled into creative ways of expressing and uncovering the most important possibilities at hand.

We might also do some strategy work with the group, helping the group to analyze trends and opportunities at play in the micro and macro world around them.

Ultimately, this leads us to uncovering and clarifying shared purpose and values, and articulating compelling stretch goals – ones that are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound) and that moreover will drive energy and direction for the group as it moves forward.

2. Clarifying Team Roles is the next essential component for creating high performance teamwork.  Particularly when a group is experiencing a lot of change, (adding a new member, losing a member, changing buildings, etc.) doing this well is fundamental to helping them move forward.  As facilitators, our job is to help them clarify expectations and the process for decision-making, as well as fine tune their handoffs and the flow of information.  Teams often get stuck here, creating an enormous amount of stress on the system and on themselves.

It can also be quite fun with a bit of creativity.  In one organization, I helped different departments give a “Day in the Life of…” skits; in another, I asked staff members to give short presentations that included the more prosaic information along with the lighter question of what cartoon character their position would be.

The key here is to help the team do more than simply read off their job description, by cuing them to share what kind of help they need from their team mates, what quirky things they should know about each other, and to find ways to raise the “dumb” questions that people have always wanted to know about their colleague’s work, but never dared to ask.

This leads well into the next key element, which is…

3. Developing team relationships. The quality of the relationships on a team are many times the key reason that a teambuilder is brought into an organization to begin with.   Relationships get stymied, stressed, side-tracked, or stifled for a number of reasons. Many times, clarifying purpose and roles can relieve this tension. The iconic book on negotiations and conflict, Getting to Yes, says that as negotiators, we must “focus on the problem, not the people.” Clarifying purpose and roles may address a number of the problems that can take a toll on the relationships of the team.

Ultimately, however, the success and quality of team relationships is determined by each member’s answers to the following questions:

1. Are you willing to commit to work on the relationship?
   
2. Are you willing to be accountable for your piece of the struggle in the relationship?
   
3. And, are you willing to take a wider view on the systemic stressor that might be affecting others in your team?

After everyone has answered those questions for themselves, the job of the teambuilder is to create a container for crucial conversations to occur, where the “Undiscussables” can be discussed with clear-sighted compassion and intelligence.

If the teambuilder has an opportunity to work with a group over time, they can help the group build their internal capacity to name those undiscussables, talk about them, and resolve them over time.  At Global Genesis, we might help the group build skills around managing the pressure of conflict, or work with them on inflammatory language, or help them question each others assumptions.

I work with one group who calls this “Identifying the Elephant in the Room.”  They usually begin these conversations, many times over lunch, as “There is an elephant in the room I would like to point out.”  They might then say how this is difficult for them or for the person who may be singled out, taking some of the sting out of the situation, and then proceed to clearly, kindly, and candidly describe what they are seeing in terms that make it clear it is their perspective.

This practice has improved tenfold their mode of operating together.

It also has a positive impact on the fourth key, Teamwork.

4. Building Teamwork. At Global Genesis, we define teamwork as “the ability to effectively, efficiently organize and coordinate action towards a common cause.” It is easy to see how these four keys to building high performance teamwork all fit into one another.  In a way, this statement summarizes the efforts of the last three keys.

At Global Genesis, we work on the “how” of teamwork.  This tends to be best done through experiential education: offering opportunities for the group to actually solve a problem together, and then to look at how they were doing, what they could improve, what they could build on.

My favorite place to work on this is at a challenge course or ropes course – a veritable paradise of opportunities to create physical, kinesthetic metaphors that have direct correlation to how we work in the workplace.  Here, we have an opportunity to see a group “in live action”, and perhaps dropping their guard a bit as we work through activities together that can then showcase the strengths and potential weaknesses of their teamwork.

However, without the good work done in clarifying purpose and roles, and clearing obstacles that might exist within the team relationships, a pure focus on teamwork can fall flat of the ultimate goal – to build a high performance team.

In my next article, I will discuss how all of this can be used to create the “dream green team.”

Eeegads, did the “teambuilder” say that?  Much of our work at Global Genesis is involved with building teams – it is a primary service, and one that our clients are happy to have help with.  We have helped all kinds of teams in our work – newly starting, re-organizing, functional but not performing, dysfunctional and temporarily performing, the works.

And, in that time,we have seen “working groups” who are missing their potential as  teams;  and vice-versa – “teams” who would have been better off as simple working groups, not saddled with the responsibility of the “team.”

So then, who should be a team?

To answer this question,  we first need to think about what makes a  team.  In our experience, we have to agree with what Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith in the The Wisdom of Teams (1993, 2003) stated: that two major differences between a team and a group is: their shared, common purpose and their mutual accountability. By mutual accountability, their personal success is tied into accomplishing the shared purpose of the group.

A working group may have a shared purpose, but their personal success is not necessarily tied into the success of the group.

Distinguishing itself from the “team” or “potential team” is the high-performance team.  As with the simple team, they share a purpose and a sense of mutual accountability.  However, the high-performance team achieves spectacular results because of its commitment to:

• A common purpose and goals and mutual accountability, AS WELL AS
• Each others’ personal success,
• Continuous learning, and
• Building trust and respect.

As you can imagine, these other pieces take considerable more time and energy.  To have not only your own success, but the success of others in your mind at all times, to keep yourself open to the learning that comes from feedback, experimentation, success and failure, and to constantly be attuned to building trust and respect requires hard work.  And, likewise, the rewards can yield tremendously – a “synergy” of ideas, energy, action, and results has been reported on again and again.

A nice summary of the possibilities is presented in “The Team Performance Curve”, also found in The Wisdom of Teams.

As you can see, working groups can achieve good results; one can see that in the forums and groups for sharing best practices in industry associations. 

The Team Performance Curve

However, where one really sees great performance impacts is with the the High Performance Team.

The question for each potential team and working group to consider is – are we getting the results that we want in the way that we are organizing ourselves?

If the answer is yes, we are getting the results we want, then it is about maintenance – ensuring that the foundation is solidly built and continues that way. In that case, putting the effort to become a team will create frustration and could stall the effectiveness of the original purpose if there isn’t good reason to do so.

However, if you are NOT getting the results you want to achieve, then it is time to consider what is missing:

1. Does the team have a clearly articulated and shared purpose and worthy goals?
2. Does everyone have a personal stake in the success of the effort?
3. Is it mutually accountable, and open to continuous learning?
4. And, does the group trust and respect one another, to accomplish their roles, to support their team members, to speak truth to one another in a kind and constructive way?

Assessing the strength of the team on these qualities of the high-performance team can help the team achieve its potential.

At Global Genesis, we are asked most often to help teams in all levels of effectiveness and impact achieve high-performance  by building skills and incorporating tools and practices.

Stay tuned for the next post, where I will discuss about how your team can build a foundation for high-performance teamwork.

I am excited to see this plan – it looks like it has hit the mark.  It has clearly identified the challenge  – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero within the next 10 years.  And it has clearly laid out options for solutions in Australia, using wind and solar.

May we all create plans that are as compelling, audacious, and relevant as this one.

Plan Seeks 100 Pct Renewable Energy in Australia in Ten Years | Climate | GreenBiz.com.

The day was organized as a modified “unConference”. Odin said that morning that “during conferences, the best parts are usually during the coffee breaks.  So, we decided to make a whole day of coffee breaks!”  The day was truly geared to allow us talk with one another, and it was wonderfully stimulating to have a chance to really talk to the professionals, experts, and activists in the room.

I participated as a facilitator during the morning for a session loosely called “Collaborating Effectively to Advance Sustainability.” A small and dynamic group of 8 attended, representing innovative social enterprises and non-profits as well as companies you have heard about on Fast Company and Forbes.   During our hour and a half together, discussion was surprisingly heated and unsurprisingly fast-paced.

The discussion centered around:

1. Is collaboration happening in the field of sustainability?
2. What are some best practices for achieving collaboration in sustainability?
3. What are the barriers to collaboration – why do companies collaborate, and why DON’T they collaborate?

One trend that all of us noted is that sustainability was actually leading to a lot of formal and informal collaboration.  Anecdotally, participants spoke of sustainability managers who reached out to other managers to solve micro to macro problems – from what kind of disposables to use, to how do they help company culture change from disposables entirely. It seems that sustainability cuts across normally competitive barriers.

Participants also noted that a leading barrier was also a leading incentive – organizations must be able to see the value and relationship of sustainability to their own work. If they don’t see that, the initiative will fail.  If they do, then the possibilities are vast.

And that leads us to one of the key best practices – find the “hook.” We turned to the Open Source movement, which seemed to have a quite compelling hook.  In Open Source, thousands of developers from around the world contributed to creating an Open Operating System for their computers.  Why would developers spend countless hours to develop this operating system together?

It all boiled down to two things: Freedom, and Combating the Evil Empire.  Developers wanted to be able to design/control/play in the net, and it just was not possible with the Microsoft Operating System.  They also saw Microsoft as doing everything it could to prevent other Operating Systems from entering the market.  By creating Open Source, they could cleverly defeat both those problems.  A unique and tremendously high-impact collaboration was born.  Our conclusion – hooks may not always be financial, but they do tie into the values of those who are collaborating.  For an organization, collaboration will likely be most effective if it yields gains in efficiency, efficacy, market outreach – all things tied to the company’s survival.

As a side bar, I would add that for the people inside the organization, the hook must be more personal – it must tap into their fundamental values as well.  Hopefully, the collaboration matches with the organization’s values.  But if not, the champion must strategize for how to meet both.

Other best practices were discussed as well – including finding the right people to both lead and facilitate, creating a shared goal, etc.  Take a look at the wiki with the extensive notes (including some great references for collaboration in Sustainability) below.

Collaborating Effectively to Advance Sustainability – SJ – Solutions Labs 2010.

My thanks to Peggy Liu of JUCCCE, who helped me think through my approach to facilitating this topic, and who would have helped lead the discussion had she not been in China (time zones are such drag!)

Collaborate only when necessary | WiserEarth Blog.

Networks that Work

It seems that, as organizations are grappling with an entirely different economic and social landscape, they are realizing that they must collaborate with organizations who at best they have been ignoring, or at worst fully competing with.

This book was a practical guide, laying out a framework for thinking about “Networks” (they point out that these networks are as often called “collaboratives” or “coalitions”).  They describe three different types of networks which require varying levels of risk on the part of their constituents:

1. Cooperative
2. Coordinating
3. Collaborating

Each varies in risk and complexity, (cooperative being the lowest, collaborating being the highest), and each serves a slightly different purpose.  The “collaborating network,” with its high risk, also lends itself to the highest impact outside of the group, and requires a commensurate amount of time, effort, and resource for it to be successful.

What I liked: I think what most impressed me about the book is the fact that even given its size (90 pages), it manages to clearly lay out the key elements needed for a successful network; how (and if!) to go about starting one; three ways to structure a network (Self-Governing, Lead Organization, and Network Manager); as well as directly answering many of the basic questions that come up when starting a multi-organization collaboration.

It also includes a robust appendix, with a sample network agreement or “charter”, a job description for a “network manager”, and several case studies that talk about both the successes and the challenges some networks faced in their process.

I also really appreciated their concluding summary of principles, found on page 61:

• Focus on shared purpose
• Start from pre-existing relationships
• Determine network member tolerance for risk
• Respect organizational and institutional autonomy
• Assure up-front commitment from key players
• Build new types of relationships
• Emphasize equal partnership
• Expect – even embrace – conflict, and develop practices for anticipating, surfacing, and resolving it
• Secure needed resources for operation without letting suppliers distort or diffuse the network purpose

This is a list and concepts that I can use when working with my own clients, and is accessible to inspire the busy executive who knows change is needed, and knows that collaboration is the only way to achieve their vision.

What I would change: This is one of those times when, in my effort to give a well-rounded book review, I have to scratch my head and say, what WOULD I change?  I really admire how the authors have addressed some of the fundamental pitfalls in such a clear and concise fashion.  And while I wouldn’t change their brevity, it does leave one with some questions like, “What is interest-based negotiating?”, “What are my references for dealing with conflict or power?” etc.  They list a few resources; and there are more that could be listed.

The nice thing, however – it leaves room for consultants like myself to explain what those ideas are.  Perhaps that is the ultimate intention – to encourage visionaries to get the kind of support they need to work through conflict, engage in good negotation, and run good meetings – support that external trainers and facilitators are skilled at assisting with.

A thank you to Paul Vandenveter and Myrna Mandell for writing this excellent booklet – and to Patricia and Jona for passing it along!

One of the panels discussed the topic of “Green Marketing in the Age of Transparency.“  Several innovateurs were represented, including Dara O Rourke from Goodguide.com (download the app if you haven’t already!), Wendy Cobdra at Earthsense, Chris Nelson of UL Environment, and Stephen Linaweaver of Green Order.  They said the fundamental challenge for companies who are attempting to integrate sustainability into their marketing plan (of which many can count themselves, now) is the consumer’s love-hate relationship with the companies that they rely on.

On the one hand, consumers want companies to step up and become sustainable.

On the other, they don’t believe that those organizations are doing what they say they are doing.

Further, while everyone knows what a sustainable company is NOT, no one has yet really agreed on what it IS.

This puts good intentioned organizations in a tough spot.  They are trying to do what is right, but at the best are blundering in what they say about their efforts, either sharing too much or raising expectations.  At the worst, they are confirming the suspicions of their customers, with incidences of fraud, exposes of poor environmental, labor, or quality practices, etc.  In an era of Enron, how DO we move forward?

To complicate matters – the “them” in this picture is “us.”  Many of the same people who work in these organizations are those people who distrust what the organizations do. Why that is, we can only speculate.  But it certainly makes for a complex picture.

Enter: the Authentically Sustainable Company.

If you read my last post on this topic, you will see I have noted a series of organizational realms – internally and externally, and at the individual and collective level.

In this era of rapid communication and what some may call “Radical Transparency,” companies who portray themselves must do so with integrity.  Here are some tips, both from the conference as well as my own thinking:

1. Define the Boundaries. Wendy Cobdra explained that many companies try to market themselves as a “sustainable company”, and then when something is leaked that doesn’t portray them in someone else’s brain as sustainable, they lose credibility.  If you are working on energy efficiency, then focus on that.  If your employees are satisfied and feel they are making a difference for their clients and their communities, let us know about that!
2. Strive for Integrity. Even with all of Wal-Mart’s hailed work around sustainability, the world is still deeply suspicious because of their labor practices (low-paying, low-benefits, etc.) and their tendency to squelch rather than enliven local commerce.  While they are still making truly astounding change, they will not make the kind of change that is needed.
3. Don’t sacrifice the good for the perfect. This is a reminder to all of us: a certain amount of compassion and encouragement is in order for all of us.  None of us has it right, yet, and as I have said in previous posts, inspiration is a fundamental avenue for change.

Now, having said all of that, we had a great conversation at the Leadership Institute for Ecology and the Economy recently about B-Corporations – which certainly encourage a holistic perspective on what  sustainability in businesses could be.  In his presentation, founding member Christopher Peck showed a slide that summed it up very succinctly:

One Planet.  One Experiment. No Backup.

Which leads me to ask, is greenwashing even the real problem, if we can’t figure out how to create “one planet businesses?”

Do you know of any “One Planet Businesses?”

It also talks about the qualities that enable employees to respond effectively to “being left out”:

Five particular qualities enable employees and executives alike to minimize the threat response and instead enable the reward response. These five social qualities are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.

DailyGood: Managing with the Brain in Mind.