As I further my work on understanding what makes a company successfully implement a sustainability plan and what factors lead to an unsuccessful sustainability effort, it is almost as though that famous book of the ‘80’s keeps emerging in my mind “All I really needed to learn I learned in Kindergarten”.

Well frankly, as someone who has taken leadership coaching courses, and participated in coaching top level HR leaders, I can tell you as I listened to their issues and situations; somehow communication seemed to be at the root of most of the problems.

Now as I move ahead and learn more about the keys to a successful sustainability plan, while like most things in life, there is really no “silver bullet” , however there is one component that needs to be in place and that is the ability to communicate. Now, not just those up on the soap box preaching the green gospel, but debate, and discussion and pure unhampered feedback.

History has proven that leaders who consistently tell without taking into account feedback get one of two things;

A bunch of “yes sir” subservient followers doing as they are told, marching to one drumbeat.

Or a frustrated group of people who are negatively disposed to much of what they are asked to do.

In the former case the organization loses the capacity to think, and frankly your organizations competitive edge is the human capitol and the innovations they can surface to help your organization not just survive but to thrive and grow and change.

In the latter case the organization has a back biting, destructive and secretive culture that takes years to move away from. Many companies suffer from these two ailments when powerful leaders suppress debate.

So how does this tie back to sustainability planning? A Sustainability plan is like a chameleon in any organization and needs the value of the people in the company to make it work. What works at Subaru might not work at Ford. However, if a business leader comes in and tries to “push” the Green agenda without the proper forum for everyone to express their concerns, or even their input as to how to make it happen etc, then this Green Agenda competes with the other “mission critical” items any management will have already clogging their “to do“list and never get the attention it rightfully deserves.

So, the relationship with good communication and successful sustainability plans are the observation that too many sustainability initiatives fail because of the lack of basic communication inside the organization about how the strategy will work, how it will improve performance, and what role each person should play. I thank Adam Werbach for covering this aspect in his new book- “Strategy for Sustainability”.