THE SPEED OF SUSTAINABILITY
Each month, we ask two communications professionals to debate an issue via an exchange of emails. In this month’s discussion, the motion is: What matters more on the journey to a more sustainable world: little and often, or occasional leaps and bounds?
Arguing in favour of the slow and steady approach is BenTuxworth, head of sustainability at Salterbaxter. Arguing in support of bigger and better changes is Fiona Bennie, head of sustainability at Dragon Rouge.
Dear Fiona,
Let’s start with Ghandi and how “a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”. I’m certainly in no doubt that the big challenges that face us all – from climate change, to resource depletion, poverty, biodiversity loss and all the rest – require us all to make much faster progress than we do at present, and business is no exception. But every time I hear someone say “what’s the point of tackling my carbon emissions when China’s building a coal-fired power station every ten seconds?” I worry that we are falling in love with the idea that small changes make no difference - and with the implication that only radical change can save us.
Game–changing innovations, transformative new business models and cultural paradigm shifts all sound very exciting and I’m sure they’ll be part of the solution, but they are very difficult to make happen deliberately. For most businesses – and most people – the real story is about lots of increments – the small changes that become habits and eventually add up. Even the big sustainable business stories of the last few years, from Unilever to M&S to GE have increments at their heart, packaged up in a narrative about transformative change - by comms people like us. The Toyota Production System is founded on Kaizen - continuous improvement - as the cornerstone of a Each month, we ask two communications professionals to debate an issue via an exchange of emails. In this month’s discussion, the motion is: What matters more on the journey to a more sustainable world: little and often, or occasional leaps and bounds? world view that ultimately brought us a game-changer in the form of Prius.
in Cardiff and the spatterings of minor celebrities.)
Sam Goldwyn said “the harder I work, the luckier I get”, and I think increments are often the hard work behind the luck of a great leap forward. At the very least they buy us vital time while the big ideas arrive to save us.
Ben
Hi Ben,
Nice to hear from you!
I wish small steps led to significant change capable of reducing impacts like greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss. I wish we had another 100 years to deal with all the various challenges we face. Maybe then incremental innovation would be enough. But the available evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that we’re all working to a much tighter timeline. And wishing isn’t a strategy for change.
If we’re going for big name quotes, here’s one from Einstein: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
I don’t think incremental change should stop – but I do think the businesses that embrace and invest in radical change and business model innovation will be the winners that ultimately stand the test of time.
You use the Prius as an example of incremental, step-by-step change. I would say the Prius is a decent enough start – but the BMWi model blows it straight out of the water. The BMWi team started with a blank sheet of paper and a simple question: “what do we want,
Thanks for your email – and for starting what will hopefully be a lively debate. Unfortunately, I wholeheartedly disagree with the way in which you have questioned the relevance of social media.our future to look like?” This led them to create, not a vehicle, but an entire system. The Prius might be a step on from where we are today, but let’s face it if we’re all driving one in 20 years’ time, we’ll still be plagued by congestion, air quality problems and resource scarcity.
BMW don’t want to gamble their future on a hope that things will work themselves out eventually. They’re busy creating a future they want to do business in. Their vision for where they want to get to means they can innovate with confidence in the short and medium term because they know where they are heading – and BMWi is a live project the rest of the BMW Group can learn from too.
Radical change is about innovation, not communication. The packaged up narratives you mention sound good at conferences and on corporate websites. But beyond spring-cleaning supply chains, it’s still hard to find evidence of significant impact. For me, there’s little comparison. Meaningful change doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when motivated, intelligent people ask serious questions about the future and prototype what big change looks like. This is going to shift lifestyles a lot quicker than continuing to tweak the current system. Particularly when we already know the current system is broken.
See you soon!
Fiona
Hi Fiona,
Good to hear from you as well and thanks for your last email.
This is a fascinating area and I already have a sneaking suspicion that we might agree that we need both on-going incremental change and the big leaps forward. After all increments don’t have to be small, can get progressively bigger and in doing so create the leaps that you are arguing for. This raises two interesting points. Firstly, when does an increment become a leap? And secondly would these leaps even be possible without incremental change?
To pursue the BMW/Toyota story one step further, it’s worth remembering that BMWi is yet to change the world, whereas Prius is already the world’s third best-selling car, and has proven to everyone that hybrid cars are a commercial proposition – in fact they may even have made it possible for BMW to commercialise BMWi. Who will change the mobility more in the long run? It is hard to say yet, but what is clear is that the launch and marketing of the Prius advanced both the debate about the future of transport and the innovation needed to make potential leaps possible.
I’m also skeptical about the idea that companies that set out to change the world with a great leap forward actually do so. Don’t those big changes come from increments? The example that is often used to illustrate the idea of “creative destruction”, whereby one technology or idea leapfrogs another in creating a new market, is that of mobile phones making landlines all but obsolete in Africa. This move has undoubtedly been fundamental in revolutionising access to healthcare and financial services for millions of people but was it really the leap that it is now positioned as? I would argue that it was not envisioned, planned and executed in a linear fashion but developed as the result of rapid but incremental change in the mobile communications sector and many different entrepreneurs and organisation seeing the value of this transformative technology. I sound like I’m arguing against planning, but in fact I’m arguing for plugging away at the details as well as having the big picture in mind.
In the last few years we’ve been encouraged to analyse the big systems - such as mobility or cities or retail - and look for innovation at that scale to bring us the big change we need. It’s a very compelling case intellectually – surely we need to change the way the system works rather than just tweak the details of its unsustainability? Hard to disagree, but applying anything useful in practice is very difficult, and usually comes down to new and interesting increments. Call them ‘pioneering practices’ - but most of them are repackaged increments from somewhere else.
I also don’t agree with your argument that communications don’t change the world, whereas innovations do. There are endless innovations – you only have to watch Dragons’ Den to see the tip of an iceberg of ideas, most of which never make it because they have their communications wrong – either in the development of the product or in the marketing of it. The iPod was not the first MP3 player, but it was the first one enough people heard about and wanted enough to take the idea to scale and change our lives. In a funny way, I’d say the great leaps forward we need are in communications because we need to find ways to make people feel differently about their lives, then change them increment by increment. Modern societies and cultures rarely change in response to a radical vision – they tend to edge towards a tipping point that nobody forsees.
So if we do away with incremental change will the leaps continue to emerge or will they simply dry up without the fuel that fires them.
Regards,
Ben
Hi Ben,
Thanks, you’ve made some really interesting points.
Just to clarify, I am not suggesting incremental changes and innovations have no place in sustainable business practice. And we shouldn’t “do away with them”. What I am saying is that for incremental innovation to be meaningful (and commercially sustainable), it must move a brand towards a vision of what great looks like. You say you’re arguing for plugging away at the details as well as having the big picture in mind – I agree. But that big picture needs to be a considered one, with the role of the brand clearly articulated. If a business doesn’t know where it’s heading, how can it choose what innovations and changes are in or out? Too often brands have corporate sustainability goals, which are disconnected from day-to-day innovation and communication decisions. This is the opportunity and the risk that many brands face today.
The past few decades has seen a huge amount of investment in incremental changes designed to breed short-term financial gain. They are not leading to a better way of doing business, because today the indicator for that is growth and not much else. But that’s changing, progressive brands are starting to rearticulate what success really looks like. They realise that understanding better what long-term prosperity looks like for them is a brilliant tool for short-term innovation and strategy. They also realise that focusing solely on short-term wins leaves their long-term future at the mercy of fortune – an uncomfortable place to be.
I like your point about repackaged increments from somewhere else. This is something very close to my heart. I don’t believe for a second that a sustainable future will be built solely on future innovations, on the contrary, many of the technologies and ideas for sustainable business already exist, it’s the investment and behaviour change needed to implement them that’s missing. It’s also leadership and the courage to get on and do it that’s also lacking. The individual ideas that make up the future for a brand don’t have to be entirely novel. The idea of leasing clothing and cars, for example, is not new – but combining these ideas into a plausible future business model, unique to a brand, is new. And it provides, at the very least, a platform for questioning and discussing whether a brand intends to respond to the future, or create it.
Communications do have the power to change the world – I agree. For better, and sometimes for worse. I think we might be saying the same thing here. Communications are weak when they lack substance. To be credible and create positive impact, they need to be bringing to life meaning, ambition and purpose. Innovation with the right drivers can provide that meaning and ambition. An excellent brand strategy can provide that purpose. And a compelling, long-term brand vision can give both strategy and innovation the direction they need.
Are we nearing an agreement on the validity of both approaches? Occasional leaps and bounds, providing direction for initiatives that achieve little (impact) but occur often. The little and often initiatives pushing forward, and crucially holding consumers hands, to enable the leaps and bounds to land successfully. What do you think?
See you soon!
Fiona
P.S. On the Prius/BMWi debate… We’re talking about two different things here. The Prius is a product and BMWi is a product-service system. Both are valid and better than the status quo. You ask, which will change mobility more in the long run? Given one is based on yesterday’s business model and the other rooted in tomorrows, I’d bet on BMWi creating the bigger change!
Thanks Fiona,
I do agree that increments in pursuit of the wrong measure – or even the wrong outcome – are every bit as useless as a great leap over a cliff, and I guess more pernicious because we often choose to ignore the cliff if we’re only edging towards it.
We need the big picture, or at least some sense of it to tell whether our increments are heading in the right direction, and it’s been great to see social purpose reemerge over the last couple of years as a shorthand for the big picture for many businesses. But it seems we also agree we have to test out hundreds of small changes, many of which won’t be the answer in the end, to yield the game-changers.
Oddly enough, I spent the middle of the week with a big FMCG having exactly this debate – and in particular could they be the game-changer as well as the product-obsessed incumbent in their marketplaces around the world. The conclusion seemed to be that they could, but that they had to isolate the radical innovation activity from the mainstream of product innovation or they would keep returning to the incrementalism of the sort you rightly challenge. Which was a useful reminder that the process a business adopts around this question is just as important as the beliefs it may have about the importance of major change. I suspect it’s not much use to say to the same people who have been delivering the percentage gains over many years: ‘OK, stop that and give me a step change!’ And I doubt you think it is either.
So, violent agreement it is then. Have we made a great leap forward in a series of increments?
Ben
Hi Ben,
Increasingly I think isolating the new from the old is a good way to go. It’s hard to experiment and be bold when you’re stuck in a seemingly unbroken cycle. The ‘internal new venture’ model is a great one, less risky and with more freedom to explore future directions for brands and business models. Many big companies already have these, of course, Unilever with their discovery innovation team and Unilever Ventures to name one example. But, I do feel its important that the gap between big picture adventures and dayto- day marketing cycles is addressed, and a plan for transitioning from old to new should be part of both innovation pipelines and brand strategies.
In any case, violent agreement sounds much better than violent disagreement, so I’m in! Fiona
