Sustainability initiatives are missing a trick

Significant progress on sustainability requires transformation of our social and economic systems, including changing tax and subsidy regimes so they support rather than hold back progress, and shifting the dominant cultural narrative from self interest to concern and care for others. Incremental change is important, but alone it is insufficient.

To drive this transformation we need many more leaders of all kinds who are sustainability champions, not just within their organisation, but also across their sector and within a broad alliance influencing social norms, public opinion and government action. Such leaders will only be effective if they are motivated by a deeper purpose than financial success.

We believe that to maximise their effectiveness, the aims of sustainability initiatives should go beyond promoting new technologies and approaches to include inspiring and nurturing such leaders. In this article we look at the social psychology of values, and how designers of sustainability initiatives and projects can work with values to increase their long term impact and effectiveness. 

People who hold compassionate, rather than selfish, values to be more important display deeper concern about environmental and social issues, and stronger motivation to engage in various forms of civic action. But too often sustainability initiatives engage people’s selfish values because they are promoted on the basis that they deliver economic benefits, business success and personal kudos. 

Values work like a seesaw, with compassionate values on one side, and selfish values on the other. As selfish values are engaged, people’s compassionate values are inevitably suppressed and their motivation to take action for social and environmental good is reduced. This plays into, and reinforces, the dominant ways of thinking that are driving unsustainability.

You may argue that this doesn’t matter which values are engaged so long as people get onboard with the sustainability agenda. Unfortunately this is flawed for two main reasons.

Firstly, there is a problem when people are exposed to messages that try to engage compassionate and selfish values at the same time: e.g. “adopting the sustainability agenda is good for society (compassionate) and your business will be more financially successful (selfish)”. When the messages include conflicting values, people are less persuaded by the argument, and they feel ambivalent, conflicted and indecisive – and therefore less likely to engage.

Secondly, when people engage because the agenda speaks to (and reinforces) their selfish values – i.e. it gives them and their organisation business advantage – if at any time it is no longer advantageous they will happily drop it and take up another initiative that is more profitable, etc. regardless of it’s benefit to society and the living world. 

However, if people engage because of their compassionate values, and working with the initiative reinforces those compassionate values, they will be motivated to keep going, even in the face of difficulties. Essentially, in this case they are motivated by a greater purpose, not the resulting benefit for themselves and their organisation.

Of course people need to know that adopting the sustainability initiative can be profitable and that it is important to the long-term survival and success of their business. But the framing and timing of these messages is really important. (We’re talking here about initiatives aimed at organisations, but exactly the same principles applies to those aimed at individuals or households.)

So, what to do? Sustainability initiatives should clearly separate the messages about why sustainability is important, from how businesses can be part of the transition to sustainability. The narrative and the process of engagement should be designed to work with the psychology of values. It should:

• Get people interested and involved by engaging their compassionate values – i.e. why sustainability is needed for the good of all people and the planet.
• Always keep engaging them as real people, people with feelings, people who care about others, about the living world, about the future. People, not job titles.
• At some point the conversation will likely shift from them saying “I agree this is important, I want my business to be part of this, I feel deeply that it’s the right thing to do”, to “how do I avoid my business going bust, etc. if we take action on sustainability?”
• This is the time to introduce the “business case“ – with a subtle, but important difference. Instead of the business case being presented as the reason for adopting the sustainability agenda, it must be presented as a mechanism that allows, or enables, the business to be part of creating the future we all need.
• Ongoing work, training, case studies, etc. should continue to emphasise the compassionate reasons for taking actions. Ensure the business ’success’ elements are presented as “we found a way of doing the right thing, this is important, because otherwise we wouldn’t be part of creating a sustainable future”.

Initiatives designed on these principles will appeal most to leaders who are already concerned about the environmental and social crises facing us all – whether or not they articulate them publicly. Given the constraints of time and money that limit all sustainability initiatives, it makes sense to focus on those people and organisations that have the greatest potential to cascade its impact by championing transformative change across society.

To explore some of these ideas further:

• from the Sustainability Leader’s Kitbag – Reality Two: Humans are naturally kind and caring
• How do we change the system?
• Three Horizons model of change for sustainability

Header image by Campaign Creators on Unsplash