Organizations often grapple with effectively promoting their sustainability initiatives and remaining aligned with corporate goals. The emotional and complex nature of sustainability topics makes it challenging to strike the right balance in communicating successes and fostering support without being perceived as disingenuous.
One reality in the realm of sustainability is that the solutions are often highly technical and scientific in nature. The leaders see the benefits of these projects, but the various stakeholders may value other priorities. As such, it is important to protect against the mindset of “if you build it, they will come.” You may have experienced a similar problem with IT projects, which are also very technical in nature. As such, you’ve likely seen the tone-deaf IT implementation that simply fell flat and never realized the ROI. Poor stakeholder engagement is often a contributing factor to this result. Similarly, sustainability projects are usually highly technical as well and therefore tend to be solution forward and are at risk of suffering the same fate. In fact, a Bain & Company study a few years ago attributed that 98% of sustainability projects fail. In this article, we try to help establish the impetus during early phases to fundamentally incorporate a customer experience approach to avoid some of the same pitfalls to deliver high value outcomes.
Understanding the various audiences and their diverse motivations — ranging from saving the planet to supporting organizational goals, regulatory compliance, investor value, political capital, and personal well-being—becomes crucial in navigating this terrain.
While “saving the planet” often dominates sustainability narratives, business leaders must continue to support organizational goals. It’s difficult to recognize these diverse motivations and characteristics of the different audiences, each with their own perspectives on sustainability. Sustainability leaders, driven by lofty goals, want to avoid costly missteps yet often struggle to navigate the minefield of motivations by the various audiences. Remaining connected, at a deeper and more intentional level is a valuable tool to help shape and share the strategy.
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
–Ruth Bader Ginsburg
While Customer Experience (CX) methodologies have been utilized by technology companies for years, the same approach can be applied to help build, or refine, sustainability endeavors. This is key to articulating a clear vision and ensures alignment with organizational goals.
Applying a CX approach will help make the necessary connections between three key areas:
- Sustainable Strategy: Create or revise the sustainability strategy that is organizationally aligned
- Customer Centric Design: Build stakeholder connectivity (both internal and external) into the design to ensure a clear vision and objectives by accounting for the audience emotion
- Intentional Execution: Provide a clear foundation and roadmap to execute the projects with related behavior changes to deliver the intended value
Ultimately, the significance of understanding the emotional aspect of sustainability helps to mitigate blind spots and suboptimal outcomes that introduce risks for companies. The integration of a CX approach into sustainability strategies helps to bridge this gap and create a more impactful and inclusive narrative around your sustainability efforts.
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