The Atlantic recently published an interview with me that included some good questions on trends and innovation in sustainability. Here’s an excerpt:

What’s something that most people just don’t understand about your area of expertise?

How thinking big about the connections of cultural trends, consumer behavior research, and other-things-that-don’t-seem-to-relate-at-all can give meaning and help build momentum for even the smallest individual sustainable business steps. For example, the sustainability efforts of, say, a brewery in Kansas can become a more compelling story when tied to local agriculture and responsible water use.

What’s an emerging trend that you think will shake up the sustainability world?

A new focus on developing relational traits — like communications skills and empathy — in business leaders. Pay as much attention to these as we do to the usual linear trait suspects and you’ll see the leadership paradigm shift before your very eyes. (I was just researching this for a thesis, so it’s fresh in my mind.)

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If you haven’t come across them before, the entire series of The Atlantic Conversations is inspiring.  There are a lot of very cool people out there doing meaningful, sustainability-forwarding work.  It was an honor to be included.

While Abigail Rodgers, VP of Global Sustainability Strategy and Communication for The Coca Cola Company, had a lot of great insight to share in my latest SustainableBusinessForum piece, her idea that sustainability serves as a corporate leadership beacon my have been the most important.  If they are looking for it, I’d guess that many a corporation involved in sustainability is noticing a similar pattern: that many senior leaders, and perhaps mainly women, seem to flock to those positions and roles that are of and about furthering it.

Rodgers’ career experiences and reflections, which I share in this piece, should help you learn more about how your own corporation/organization can draw in, inspire, nurture, engage, and reward its sustainability change agents and leaders (male or female).

And, if you are seeing similar “sustainability as beacon” patterns in your own organization, please let me know!  I’ll follow up on with another article later in the year.

Here’s an excerpt:

To put the three sustainability-encouraging themes Rodgers and I discussed in a nutshell, the advice to other sustainability-striving corporations might most simply be: question assumptions. Don’t assume a particular and set definition of sustainability. Don’t assume your employees/leadership teams leave their home values at the office door (instead, hope and pray they don’t!), and, finally, go way outside of the obvious bounds when brainstorming about potential partners.

My most recent SustainableBusinessForum piece takes a look at Outdoor Afro, the thriving social-media savvy business launched by Rue Mapp.  This business, which emerged from Rue’s personal passion, is now powerfully connecting African Americans with nature – and with each other – and is poised to do so much more.

Here’s an excerpt:

As the business has developed, Mapp has taken cues from the ways in which social media and interdependence of many systems of connections mimic nature. The more diverse, multi-platformed “habitat’ forms the strongest foundation, which lends Outdoor Afro its likely long-term sustainability as a community. 

In order for the business to create and maintain this, as Mapp puts it, “pathway for people to attach to, that is relevant in their own lives,” it must:

• Serve up deep, personal, authentic engagement. Mapp’s audience, for example, knows she truly understands their interests/issues/apprehensions about doing more camping, hiking or biking.

•  Provide many ways by which community visitors and members can connect with one another around the brand.
•  Amplify the passion and engagement of the core audience so that they then go on to influence their own families, friends and communities.
•  Partner with affinity groups and NGOs to broaden reach and influence.

Please check out the entire piece and let Rue inspire you!

In Part 2 of my SustainableBusinessForum piece, More Women, Better CSR, I point out that what women bring to the corporate leadership “table” is practice and comfort using their relational traits.  I see huge potential in recognizing that and developing strategies for nurturing – in everyone – the types of thinking that emphasize (and reward!) the relational.

Here’s an excerpt:

CSR reflects the integration of values and social engagement into what is known – traditional ways of doing business.  In other words, the relational lends purpose to the straightforward.  Without the relational perspective, the status of business will remain “quo,” which is clearly unacceptable.

In this post, I point to Iain McGilchrist’s book about “the divided brain,” The Master and His Emissary.  It may interest you, as well, if you’d like a deeper look at the interplay of the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

McGilchrist writes that the right hemisphere directs our attention to what is “new” or coming at us from the edges of our awareness.  The right hemisphere alone can bring us something other than what we know, while the left hemisphere prefers what is known.  The right hemisphere is more capable of a frame shift, while denial and certainty are a left hemisphere specialty…and so on. 

‘Tis the season for “best of 2011″ lists and 2012 trend forecasts.  From year to year, few of the items included in these compilations ever seem that earth-shatteringly newsworthy.  However, with an eye on the sustainability-forward business, seeing the longer term may be the point.  As it stands, few businesses undergo complete revolutions in thinking and practices from year to year.  Instead, the greatest corporate sustainability shifts will likely only be visible decades or more from now.

Looking back on the past ten years,  I’d say we’ve seen a significant increase in business awareness of the importance of “emotional intelligence.” No longer a topic only for the geeky social scientist or armchair psychologist, smart businesses are starting to put the wisdom of “EQ” into play, both in serving their customers and toward becoming stronger, more resilient organizations overall.

As behavioral scientist and author Daniel Goleman put it in the subtitle of his book, Emotional Intelligence, it can matter more than IQ.  And this is seeming to be the case in sustainable business.

To be clear, Goleman does not think that IQ and EQ are opposing competencies.  Instead, his point, which I find incredibly relevant to sustainable business thinking, is that cognition is simply not enough. What Goleman wrote in this partiucular book (first published in 1995, mind you) seems advanced for its time.

So, let’s first take a look at what the four core abilities of emotional intelligence are:

• Self-awareness
• Self-management
• Social awareness
• Relationship management

Now, when those abilities are considered as sequential phases of learning, it gets interesting.   Seen as phases, these abilities provide a type of map for an organizational (or personal) evolution toward sustainability:

Phase I, Self-awareness: The ability to realize that you are part of the problem.  While many businesses have gotten to this point with regard to sustainability, I suspect there are still plenty of companies that remain willing to sit with it, deny it, and so not move on to…

Phase II, Self-management: The ability to see, control and process thinking and behavior in a more healthy, responsible way.  For instance, seeing and taking control of energy efficiency and working toward healthier employee engagement could contribute much to a business’s success/development, but it must first have realized the need to work on those things.  For a few years now, the green business press has covered both newly formed and long-established companies that have made it at least this far in their journeys. (Let’s hear it for that!)

Phase III, Social awareness: The ability to allow empathy to influence business decisions.  Companies at this phase understand that doing well is not only about them, but that there are also many other human relationships involved – and in a wide range of ways.   As it stands, tackling the environmental/operational issues first in a sustainable business’s journey seems to be the most usual route, while  the raised awareness of how people interrelate with all decisions (hopefully) comes in time.  Tending to diversity, community engagement and social justice, for instance, is likely a lesser corporate priority due to inherent complexity (i.e. it is not the lowest-hanging fruit).  If I were to predict, I’d say this Phase will start to get much more emphasis over the next few years (so check back in 2017, and monitor conference session topics for their attention to the “social” in the meantime).

Relationship management: This is the ability to use the empathy you’ve been practicing at the Phase 3 level to better understand all stakeholders and see/tend to interconnections and innovative teamwork to tackle problems that may even go beyond any one corporation’s borders.  Better communication and more creative partnering and collaboration are heavily in play at this point.  Patagonia is one company leading the way on this front (their recent “Don’t buy this shirt” ad campaign and their founding member status with the Textile Exchange are two examples).

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So, here we are.  2011 closes with wrap ups and best cases, and 2012 begins with hopeful predictions for the sustainable business movement.  While such lists can certainly inspire, your company may more effectively advance its sustainability action and training practices by examining its unique set of circumstances through the EQ lens.

Wherever you find your business currently rests within the four EQ-related phases, think about how to bring it, sustainably, to the next phase.  If your company is resting comfortably in “self-management,” what do you need to work on to achieve, and get comfortable with, “social awareness,” for example?  Perhaps more importantly, are you willing to not concern yourself with any New Year’s reflection or prediction list for at least a few years? I ask this because having longer-term vision is part of your emotional intelligence learning process.  There is no need for you to get distracted by what everyone else is doing, or not.

So, for 2012, and for the sake of helping to further the sustainable business movement, why not work on your company’s emotional intelligence?  If you do, you will be building, in wise, deliberate phases, toward the dramatic sustainability shift we all want our kids and grandkids to thank us for in the decades to come.

“The most impressive thing about them as scholars,” says David Easley, an economist at Cornell University, “is that in recent years they have questioned the assumptions of the models they helped to create, and they have been at the vanguard of the efforts to go beyond them.”

The above quote from Jeff Sommer’s New York Times piece on Nobel laureate economists Christopher A. Sims and Thomas J. Sargent holds universal wisdom.  What if today’s business leaders were willing and became practiced at questioning the assumptions of the models they themselves helped create?

Imagine how much sooner the benefits of  sustainability might have emerged – in terms of operational efficiencies, employee engagement and community relations (to name three) -  if businesses had been thinking the way Sargent and Sims do.  Instead, our economy – up until now – has mainly rewarded people and corporations for doing things generally in line with the way they have always been done, and then… resting on their laurels.  As the sustainable business movement gains momentum, we can clearly see that many an opportunity has been missed, as so many rested.

You may have noticed the continuing theme in what I’ve written in this blog, and for SustainableBusinessForum, HuffingtonPost and The Solutions Journal over the past year or so.  I believe that in order to question assumptions and become the sustainability vanguard, businesses and their big thinkers must get out of line, and gain experience getting “all relational” instead.

Only when we can acknowledge/accept that we may not have seen or addressed the whole picture initially, will we be able to notice how various business systems  relate to, around and through one another.  This is when we will get o the linear + relational solutions, with more emphasis on co-creation and collaborative partnerships being but one example.

This way of considering sustainable business inspires and drives my research and writing explorations.  I have truly appreciated your readership and sharing (via blog post comments, Twitter and Google+) this past year, and look forward to the continuing linear + relational journey, together, in 2012.

If yours is a business striving to become more sustainable, one of the systems worth review is the strength and resiliency of your human capital.  That more women at executive and Board levels will help make an organization more adaptable through challenging times should be common sense.  This is perhaps even more true in tending to corporate social responsibility, because there’s more to ponder than the profit bottom line.  Decision-making teams need thinkers from a wide range on the linear to relational continuum.  And, while adding women doesn’t automatically increase the relational emphasis, it will likely shift the conversation toward a broader range of input and new ideas.

My latest SustainableBusinessForum column introduces recently released Catalyst research that should get us all thinking about some different questions about gender inclusivity (which I’ll cover in Part 2).  Here’s an excerpt:

New research from Catalyst and Harvard Business School (HBS) shows the strong connection between having more women on boards and in executive management and “greater corporate social responsibility.” While these findings focus on philanthropy or corporate giving as the key indicator of corporate social responsibility, this information should be considered just the beginning of the ways corporations will benefit from having more women, and in all ranks.

And now, for a short rant…

I had an interesting conversation today with a friend who is a big thinker on sustainability.  We were bemoaning the fact that sustainability is a topic that can look incredibly boring in the short run, and we (as media and/or sustainable business proponents) are missing a huge opportunity to celebrate and encourage the radical new thinking, boring as it may seem on paper, that is so needed in this movement.  How do we make sustainability sexy, in all its phases and shapes, from compliance to employee engagement to fleet fuel efficiency?  And, this means it has to be sexy enough for the media to want to cover it and sexy enough for younger generations to see sustainability as a very exciting engineering, math and science-oriented career path.  A tall order.

As someone who writes about sustainable business, I am surely guilty of  being attracted to stories about huge new innovations or emerging audiences, for example.  There is something in our culture’s 24/7 news cycle that has jaded us enough that we don’t see some of the foundational work quietly occurring in many industries.  But, the boring stuff really IS moving sustainability in substantial ways, and will eventually serve as models and case studies for all (but perhaps only in hindsight).

Here’s what my friend and I were thinking: if sustainability is about systems, and seeing the long term rather than jumping for the sexiest short-term “green” thing a company or brand can do (or that can be seen in quarterly reports), why don’t we operate more systemically in the way we talk and promote sustainable business?  It is a huge risk and a 180 degree shift from our culture’s modus operandi of delivering and eating up sexy, immediate, celebrity-driven “bits.”  But, sustainability doesn’t happen on the 24/7 news cycle or in always astounding ways.

So, what is always sexy about sustainability and the steps businesses take to move in that direction?  That whoever is leading these charges is taking huge, huge risks to limit themselves to the boring work, with their eyes on a bigger, far in the future, and very exciting prize.  It’s almost an extreme sport to step off the cliff of how things have always been done in a business or ignore the traditional view of what makes for big news coverage, and say.. “you know.. we need to be more deliberate,” or “I see a very exciting long-term result if we start with this small step.”

The thing is, systems thinking involves a future-orientation, and I mean so far in the future that we might not be able to claim “we did it” or be on the cover of The New York Times because we did it.  That is what we have to give up in order to really make a difference in this realm.

But, risk-taking IS sexy.  Think fast cars, steep ski slopes, and extreme skateboarding.

So, how about focusing on the ways never-before-taken risk can lead businesses down whole new paths, into incredible collaborations and toward unanticipated innovation for the good of industries and communities overall? This less-newsworthy stuff has to happen. It is the groundwork.

If we want future generations to look back on the incredible sustainability shift that simply must take place, and be proud of us for helping in that, we have to make boring sexy.

I just read the great Grist piece by Andrew Zaleski: Go, Fight… Green? His point about the work needed in order to green professional sports is: how much can we really expect the Bud-drinking, Cracker Jack-eating crowds to care about the environment (or the fact that a stadium is becoming more energy efficient and composting food waste, for example)?  One of the obstacles he mentions comes via a study by OgilvyEarth, which found that 82 percent of responders viewed “going green” as girly. Yikes.

What those involved in greening sports venues are hoping (and getting help from The Green Sports Alliance to do) is that greener consumer behavior might come to be seen as less “Seattle treehugger” and more social norm by these simple nudges that encourage composting, recycling or a similar attitude change.  I could go on and on because I find this challenge so intriguing, but instead let’s just say I spy an opportunity through my gender lens.

If going green is seen as “girly,” why not look to the “girls” who are pro sports fans?  It is not that the percentage of women in those ranks comes close to meeting that number for men, but that the women who ARE fans have a lot of influence over how their households are run, and how their families live their lives.  Women are raising tomorrow’s sports fans, so why not get their help shaping their kids to be the future’s more compost-loving and recycling aware “butts” in stadium seats?

Sustainability is a movement, not something that we’ll see the mass population embrace over night.  If those of us working for change can stand the fact that there will be no immediate and visibly huge shift in consumer behavior in our lifetimes (let’s face it), we should lay some good groundwork for future generations.   In that way, you and I and the sports venues/teams looking to go green might not want to obsess about converting today’s sports fans from their fear of “girly green,” but focus on engaging with those “green girls” who can influence fans to come.

I’m excited to share that I have just launched a regular column on women and sustainable business for the SustainableBusinessForum.  The introductory piece is simply a call to study up on women.  I don’t suggest this solely because women are likely to be a crucial consumer market for your company, but because understanding how they think, make decisions and connect will give you a real advantage in organizational change, product development, marketing, stakeholder engagement, and so much more.

My intention with this column is to introduce concepts, ideas and networks you’ve never noticed before as you wisely develop your sustainable businesses.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

Sustainability and women are inextricably linked.  This is not because of soft inclusive reasons, but for hard inclusive business reasons.  If interconnecting systems of operations, production, shipping, community involvement, environmental responsibility, and more are what we seek, the wider the variety of brains and human traits involved in corporate decision-making, the better. While we have a long tradition of rewarding linear and independent thinking, sustainability will demand a new priority on the relational and interdependent.