World Environment Day: Leading Change with Sustainability in Mind
World Environment Day (June 5th) is a powerful opportunity to reflect on our collective responsibility to the planet. This year’s theme, “Beat Plastic Pollution”, highlights the urgency of tackling plastic waste, but the environmental challenges we face go beyond just plastic. As change management professionals, we can play a role to manage and reduce our environmental footprint.
Reimagining Stakeholders in Change
As change leaders, we are accustomed to putting stakeholders like employees, customers, and leadership at the heart of our change initiatives. But what if we began to think of the environment itself as a key stakeholder? And what about future generations – the people who will inherit the outcomes of the decisions we make today?
Rethinking our stakeholder mapping challenges us to consider the long-term effects of our change programs. It requires us to ask: How do our changes impact not just people and processes but also the planet? By recognizing the environment and future generations as a stakeholder, we open the door to sustainable decision-making and more responsible change practices.
Sustainability means “meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs.” United Nations Brundtland Commission, 1987
The Hidden Environmental Impact of Change
As change practitioners, we are often more focused on the people and processes impacted by our initiatives. But what about the resources that sustain those changes? Every decision, from digital tools to team events, uses natural resources – and those resources come with their own environmental costs. For example:
- Energy and Water: Data centres, which power digital transformation and AI, require substantial amounts of water for cooling, as well as energy – today over 50% of that energy still comes from fossil fuels, contributing to carbon emissions.
- Carbon Footprint: Every step of a project, from transportation to energy use, contributes to carbon emissions. This includes the electricity powering office equipment, the travel to meetings, and the daily commuting of staff.
- Minerals and Metals: Even those devices we rely on for communications, like networks, mobile devices and laptops, depend on materials like lithium (used in batteries) and sand (essential for manufacturing glass and electronics). The extraction of these minerals can result in land degradation and pollution.
- Trees and Resources: Many of us still rely on paper for meetings or training materials. Even in a digital age, the production of paper can still contribute to deforestation and carbon emissions.
Celebrating the natural resources we use and understanding their environmental cost, can help us to consciously incorporate sustainability into our decision-making at every level of our projects.
Practical Questions for Change Practitioners
To ensure that sustainability is part of your change efforts, here are some questions to ask yourself and your team:
- How are we integrating sustainability into our project charter? Do your change programs include environmental goals alongside business objectives? Is project success defined beyond time, cost, quality, and adoption to consider impacts on the planet?
- What are the environmental impacts of our initiatives? Are we using more energy, water, or materials than necessary? How can we reduce our footprint and track metrics like energy consumption, carbon emissions, or waste production? Should we set a carbon-budget for our project?
- How might our governance committees or sustainability leaders help us consider environmental impacts? How might we collaborate with sustainability experts in the design of project solutions and operations to improve our environmental and social impact? Do all decision-makers understand the environmental impacts of their decisions?
- What sustainable behaviours can we promote within our teams? How can you encourage resource-conscious decisions, such as promoting low-impact transportation, reducing paper waste, or adopting digital tools over physical materials? Where should we use more light-weight internet searches over resource and energy- intensive AI?
- How might we rethink engagement events to reduce their impact? When we bring people together, how do we encourage sustainable transport options? Could you opt for more planet-friendly plant-based options in event catering?
- How can we build a culture of sustainability in our project team? Could we build sustainability training into our project kick-off meeting? Is environmental impact a regular part of project team discussions? Could team building be centred around environmentally friendly projects like planting or clean-up events?
- Could external resources help us consider new alternatives for delivering our projects with the people and planet in mind? Try Project Drawdown’s Solution Library or the GPM P5 Sustainable Project Management Framework.
Protecting the environment with your change and project teams can also bring a range of positive co-benefits for physical and mental health, reduce cost of our home offices, and creates a sense of collective responsibility for the planet.
Let’s look at change through a new lens
On World Environment Day, let’s take action and think about how we can embed sustainability into our change management processes. By considering the environment and future generations as a stakeholder, our change programs can be impactful for people and organizations, but also for the planet.
What are you doing to incorporate sustainability into your change management practices?
More resources and thoughts on sustainability, change management and responsible change can be found in our member-only Discussion Forum. If you’ve got a story to tell about change and sustainability, let us know!
This article was written by Bronwyn Hall McLoughlin, on behalf of the Institute’s Sustainability Special Interest Group. Bronwyn is a Board Director, and is passionate about the intersection of sustainability and change management, empowering individuals and organizations to create positive, lasting impact for both people and the planet.
