The Sustainability Tortoise vs. The Cleantech Hare
Episode Description:
As much as we are in a hurry to see change, being thoughtful about it can pay dividends in the long term. Balancing these two forces out - takes real leadership. So who will win the race? The Sustainability Tortoise or the CleanTech Hare?
Let us hear how our Season 1 experts determined when it was the right time to act fast, and when they made decisions slowly.
Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)
Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com
Show Notes
“Our philosophy was just - fail fast”
“The decisions about major investments were made slowly”
Welcome to this compilation episode of the Levers for Change Podcast. I'm your host, Jimmy Jia.
As much as we are in a hurry to see change, being thoughtful about it can pay dividends in the long term. Balancing these two forces out - takes real leadership. So who will win the race? The Sustainability Tortoise or the CleanTech Hare?
Let us see how our Season 1 guests grappled with the decisions placed in front of them.
Shilpa Patel, ClimateWorks
A decision that seems to have the support of the team. Because, remember, you very rarely do these things solo. You have teams of people you talk to and you have the overall support of the team. it’s a much easier to take rather than something dissonant.
Jimmy Jia (JJ): That was Shilpa Patel, talking about her experience at the World Bank and the International finance corporation. Decisions can be fast if all of the stakeholder engagement has already occurred. This was a running theme across the podcast series. Steve Klein, former CEO of Snohomish PUD, defined his autonomy as what was within the strategic plan.
Steve Klein, former CEO, Snohomish PUD
I could definitely operate within the bounds of the budget and the strategic plan. I believed and followed through very strongly to be on the same page with the board. So therefore, I put together a strategic plan that wasn’t just grand platitudes. It had specific targets and statements of positions on things so that I would have the flexibility. Then when we set the budget up, I would go to the board and explain how this budget I presented to them carries out this strategy
JJ: Some decisions happened surprisingly fast, as Jackie Drumheller of Alaskan Airlines relayed in the removal of plastic straws from the airline.
Jackie Drumheller, Sustainability Director, Alaskan Airlines
Removing plastic straws from people’s cups – almost overnight, it was that simple. It was like, “hey that’s a great idea. Yeah, this is good timing.” - “ok.” - “Let’s use up our stock and then we’re done.” - “Ok”. Once we finally decided now was the time, because we had been talking around and never did it. When we said let’s do it, we just did it!
JJ: Even then, there was consensus among the stakeholders. Rich Sonstelie, former CEO of Puget Sound Energy, believed in the power of teams.
Rich Sonstelie, Retired CEO, Puget Sound Energy
Decisions that had to be made quickly, and therefore were, had to do with getting the right people into the right place. Any utility executive, whether at the CEO level, the managerial level, vice present, or whatever, is only going to be as effective as his or her subordinates are effective. The CEO’s ability to “get things done” is relatively limited. The thing that had to be done relatively quickly all the time was to get the right people into the right job. If there were people that had to be removed, in the utility industry, you did that rather gently, but you had to do it. You have to get the right people in place. I think people make mistakes in all kinds of companies, including utilities, when they sit there and watch non-performers and don’t do anything about it.
JJ: Brewster Earle of Comfort Systems reflected that the executives had much autonomy and making fast decisions was within the scope of the company.
Brewster Earle, former EVP Energy Systems, Comfort System USA
Our philosophy was just fail fast. If something came in, we’d get the right people into a room and just have at it for whatever it took, an hour, two three, about an opportunity to make some changes and make some decisions. Everybody would get the chance to present their perspective and then collectively we would decide. And if we were gong to amek a decision, we were going to go as fast as we possibly could and then adjust to what happened going forward. If there was change or if it didn’t work out like we thought, we’d simply reassess. We’d literally take the hit, said OK, that was a mistake, we’re going to stop doing that.
JJ: So what are the limits to this autonomy? Is the mantra always making fast decisions? Of course not. So when are decisions made intentionally slowly? Brewster?
Brewster Earle, former EVP Energy Systems, Comfort System USA
The actual situation in a large company like that was, who else might this impact? If this could have any kind of negative impact on a sister operating company, or even reflect poorly on Comfort, if we were taking that kind of risk, we would move very slowly and we’d engage a whole bunch of people to get other opinions, particularly those who might be impacted.
JJ: Thus if fast decisions happen because the consensus was already built, it is the consensus-building process that takes a long time. Rich Sonstelie elaborates:
Rich Sonstelie, Retired CEO, Puget Sound Energy
The decisions about major investments were made slowly. They were made slowly both because the investments tended to be so large, which they are, and utility boards tend to be conservative by their nature, and should be. They should be people who ask tough questions and don’t readily venture out into new ventures. And we have all of these parties that we’ve been talking about, to convince that this makes sense. You don’t just jump into these investments when you can have regulators decide they weren’t prudent and you never recover the costs. Things like that are what brings utilities to bankruptcy.
JJ: And when stakeholder agreement requires the entire company’s participation , decisions might seem super slow! Sabrina Watkins noticed this in running Sustainabiltiy at ConocoPhilllips
Sabrina Watkins, former Global Head of Sustainability, ConocoPhillips
When you think about the sustainability of the company, is the whole company. In some sense, there is a lot of autonomy in a sustainability group because there’s a function that you are responsible for called sustainability. In then if you look at it in a different way, there’s no autonomy whatsoever because in order to actually get anything done, it requires action by folks outside of the group. To actually move the company forward in sustainability, requires the action of people all over the company.
JJ: Slow and steady wins the sustainability race. Karen Wayland mentioned the Quadrennial Energy Report as an example. It is a massive report, published by the Department of Energy, that reviewed the energy issues across the entire United States.
Karen Wayland, kW Strategies
I think the Quadrennial Energy Reivew. It took us not quite two years to do this huge inter-agency bill, where we had hundreds of different research projects with the national labs that fed in and were synthesized and written and we had many inter-agency meetings and meetings with the White House and stakeholders and that was a long process. The end result was a really incredible report that I’m really proud of having being part of. That turned into legislation that was signed by the president. So it was worth doing it right and doing it comprehensively.
JJ: Sustainability is a long-term goal. Jameson Morrell of Jacobs Engineering reminds us to keep an eye on the ball, even when no one else is paying attention to the Sustainability Game.
Jameson Morrell, Sustainability Intelligence, Jacobs Engineering
Where it’s really slow I think are in areas where we’ve stalled. The pressure has changed or progress has been made good enough. These are long-term risks that certainly impact the bottom line and sometimes in those business cycles we stall out. It’s the ability to have the patience to say we got a good strategy, we’ve got a good plan, we understand we need to address that, it’s just the wrong time. There are different material risks that are more pertinent right now to survive as a company, and so it’s trying not to lose sight of those. It’s trying to say ‘these are still a priority, but we’re going to table them this year.”
JJ: Steve Kline, you get the last word. It's about expectation setting of any decision, regardless of whether it's fast or slow.
Steve Klein
I think the key to any CEO is that you never want to surprise the board. You always want to bring the board along. I followed that same theory even when a problem arose. Some people thought I was foolish or silly to do this but I even did it when I was an early supervisor and manager before I was a CEO. When a significant problem would come up, I’d go to my boss and say “I’ve just become informed of this significant problem” And I knew the first thing they’d say. And before they could get it out, I’d say, “Here is the plan I intent to implement to address this and I will keep you appraised if these milestones aren’t met”. They don’t find out about it from someone else. They know I’m on top of it already. So if their boss came to them and said that they’ve heard about a problem, my boss could say, “hey don’t worry about it”.
JJ: In summary, take your time in building a stakeholder group correctly. It will help you sprint faster and with a stronger mandate if you do. To find out more, visit us at www.leversforchangepodcast.com and look for the What If Sandbox retreats. It is here where stakeholders meet and collaborate across many cleantech sectors.
Thanks again for listening to this compilation episode. Again, my name is Jimmy Jia. The music is by Sean Hart. I hope the advice given by the experts will help you in your journey as you search for your Levers for Change.