The McKinsey article, When sustainability means more than ‘green’, is adapted from Adam Werback’s new book, Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto and  reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Press. Copyright © 2009.  Adam Werbach is the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, a former president of the Sierra Club (at age 23 in 1996), and the author of many works on sustainability, including the 1997 book Act Now, Apologize Later. I strongly encourage you to view this accompanying video interview, and then read the article.

True sustainability has four equal components:

• social, to address conditions that affect us all, including poverty, violence, injustice, education, public health, and labor and human rights
• economic, to help people and businesses meet their economic needs—for people: securing food, water, shelter, and creature comforts; for businesses: turning a profit
• environmental, to protect and restore the Earth—for example, by controlling climate change, preserving natural resources, and preventing waste
• cultural, to protect and value the diversity through which communities manifest their identity and cultivate traditions across generations

Although the environmental and human rights movements are sometimes perceived as two different things – especially in many developed countries like the United States – in much of the world they are closely intertwined.

As part of their 30th-anniversary issue, Inc. asked Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, what we might expect in the next 30 years. His answer: uncertainty, chaos, turbulence, and risk.

In the end, I think we need to have absolute faith in our ability to deal with whatever is thrown at us. And we need to have a complete, realistic paranoia that a lot can be thrown at us. It’s our ability to put those two contradictory ideas together: We need to be prepared for what we can’t predict and, at the same time, have this total, unwavering faith that we will find a way to deal with all of it. And I believe we will.

Ms. Novogratz  talks about humility (“I had to learn to have the humility myself to really listen to their perspectives”) but it is her call to action that is the most powerful message.  

Part of the journey that those of us who are privileged, which is pretty much everyone in this country, has to make is not being embarrassed by privilege or guilty for privilege or confused by privilege, but to start from that place of recognizing that your responsibility is to use that privilege in the best way you can to serve the world. And there are lots of ways of serving the world.

Here is the very last thing she says:

You should just start . . . I can’t imagine a more joyful way of living than a life where you are serving in the spirit of adventure as you are of change.

At 1-Focus International, we have made a commitment to not only help sustainable change occur in organizations but also in our community.  This year, 2009, we have chosen to support and promote Kiva.org   a non-profit micro-finance site that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world. You choose who to lend to – whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq – and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.

Check out the Sustaining Change lending team, and learn more about lending teams on Kiva in general.

Barry Schwartz shows us examples and clearly states that the key to “practical wisdom” is the development of character. This has to begin in the classroom and teachers (and parents for that matter) must embody character. The question remains – what constitutes “character”?

It Takes More Than Competence

Everyone is talking about competencies, which are a combination of knowledge, skills, experience, and abilities that have been acquired over the lifetime of a leader’s career. Competencies are critical to performance and are indicative of the CAN DO aspects of the leader. We believe that competencies are the standard expectation today and leaders won’t survive long without them. But, there is something very important missing from the equation if the primary focus is all on competencies.  Most of the competency models out there are missing a comprehensive approach to the aspect of leadership that is MOST critical to sustainable leadership success…namely, who you are being as a person in fulfilling your leadership role.

Rapid change, demands a leader who has character…

The world of work has dramatically changed in the last decade. Leaders with good character are the ones who will make it during a tough downward cycle so those are the leaders we are looking to. Tilt is the only leadership 360 measuring trait-based character strengths.

We are  pleased to announce 1-Focus International as a fellow with Tilt Inc. as a Preferred Independent Consultant in Europe.

Sustainable Cities Collective is a moderated online community for civic sustainability officials and advocates who are on the frontlines in the struggle to build a sustainable future. They encourage you to add your blog.  While we have worked with cities in Europe around solar energy using Future Search Conferences but I won’t be adding ours.  Overall, I feel that we have a slightly different focus but I do want to share what they are doing with you.  We all have a role to play.

To launch this newest endeavor, they have created a special film from the highlights of their interviews with the participants at the 2008 Greenbuild Conference, and here it is:

The National Crime Prevention Council has a program on Cyberbullying. Why is this relevant to businesses and organizations? Where do you think bullies learn to be bullies?  First the playground and then they graduate as teens to cyberbullying and that is one step away from workplace bullying.

In today’s Diversity Executive, Deanna Hartley reports that an estimated 54 million individuals in the United States — or 37 percent of American workers — have been bullied in the workplace at some point in their lives, according to research by the Workplace Bullying Institute.  The article’s title suggests that the costs to employees would be clear but there are not statistics.  However, I checked directly with the Institute and the numbers are clear.

The link between bullying (mobbing) to PTSD  is very clear.  And According to the 2007 WBI-Zogby Survey, 45% of targeted individuals suffer stress-related health problems.

We can no longer tolerate bullying in our schools, our homes or our workplaces.

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Date: Monday, January 26th, 2009
Time: 2pm Pacific/5pm Eastern
What: Get in the Game with LinkedIn,
        An Interview with Roberta Hill, MCC

        of 1-Focus.com

Register:
http://readytoevolve.com/membership/roberta.htm

==================================

So, do you know how Kim and I met?  On Twitter of all places.  I had seen postings of hers on a Discussion Forum where we were both members and I decided to follow” her on Twitter.  All of this brings me to discuss: Why Social Media Is Worth Anyone’s Time – including mainstream executives and leaders.

A year ago, BusinessWeek updated and republished there article from May of 2005, Social Media Will Change Your Business and you ain’t seen ‘nothin’ yet.  This month Steve McKee wrote: Why Social Media Is Worth Small Business Owners’ Time.  He argues that the biggest reason to use social media is that it is free.  This may be helpful for small businesses on a budget but it should not be the primary motivator.

“Because what is louder than a shout? A whisper. Social media is a way to get next to your customer and speak only with them. Whispering is intimate. It’s done up close. And it’s closely related to listening.”  Valeria Maltoni

The above is a great quote from her blog post on Convesation Agent.  And here is why everyone from the individual member of society to the Member of the Board in the Executive Suite needs to know about Social Media . . . it is all about communications.  And communications is all about Trust.  And this brings me full circle to the blog article The Power of LinkedIn and The Speed of Trust by Paul Allen.  Here he draws parallels to Stephen M. R. Covey’s best-selling book in 2006 called The SPEED of Trust.

I am not going to list all the things you SHOULD be doing if you choose to use the various internet social networks. There are enough articles out there to keep you reading for a week.  What I do want to point out to leaders is that this is a tool that will help you listen and if you so choose understand what engages people.  More on communications and leaders in future posts.

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To stress the fact that Social Networks and Media are forces to be addressed the following came across my desk as I write this:

How Many Millions are in Your Network?

- so starts the Executive Book Alert from Soundview Executive Book Summaries. This is a quick review of a new book 33 Million People in the Room:  How to Create,

Influence, and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking by  Juliette Powell.  Here is one point that I allude to above that is well worth mentioning:

Powell devotes some page space to the internal uses of social networking, as well. This is an often-overlooked area of this technology. Executives would do well to pay extra attention to this chapter, as it may help them increase communication between various levels in their organization.

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

I want to recruit you to my lending team, Sustaining Change, on Kiva, a non-profit website that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world. You choose who to lend to – whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq – and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.

If you join my lending team, we can work together to alleviate poverty. Once you’re a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva “count” towards our team’s impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you – but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team’s collective portfolio, so our team’s overall impact will grow!

Check out the Sustaining Change lending team, and learn more about lending teams on Kiva in general.

Thank you,

I want to recruit you to my lending team, Sustaining Change, on Kiva, a non-profit website that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world. You choose who to lend to – whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq – and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.

Here is a YouTube video that a fellow Twitter made with his son on Kiva:

If you join our lending team, we can work together to alleviate poverty. Once you’re a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva “count” towards our team’s impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you – but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team’s collective portfolio, so our team’s overall impact will grow!

Not all entrepreneurs are about making money. Some just want to make the world a better place. Whether converting rice husks into electricity in rural India or using video games to help pediatric cancer patients stay on their meds, Fast Company’s 2009 Social Enterprises of the Year were driven by entrepreneurs exhibiting the “kind of innovative thinking that can transform lives and change our world.”

You can see a slide show of the ten organizations that comprise Fast Company’s honor roll of 2009 Social Enterprises of the Year. We salute each one, especially Civic Ventures for their efforts to develop leadership in the not for profit sector.

In the not-for-profit sector, the severe shortage of managers is estimated to grow to 640,000 by 2016. Among baby boomers, there’s increasing interest in “encore careers,” especially in not-for-profits. Civic Ventures wants to “help supply and demand find each other,” says Marc Freedman, president of the group, which is sponsoring this program to ease the transition for retiring Silicon Valley professionals through mentoring and, yes, internships. The first class of fellows, from HP and Agilent, will be placed as early as January.

Kiva

When you join our lending team, we can work together to alleviate poverty. Once you’re a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva “count” towards our team’s impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you – but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team’s collective portfolio, so our team’s overall impact will grow!

Check out the Sustaining Change lending team, and learn more about lending teams on Kiva in general, by clicking here.