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This morning I participated in a Net Impact conference call with Paul Murray, the Director of Environmental Safety and Sustainability at Herman Miller. The topic of the conversation (which can be heard here) was “The Power of One” - how individuals at Herman Miller who are passionate about and committed to the environment are making a big difference at the firm.

His talk ended up being largely about how to implement corporate-wide initiatives. Takeaways for me were:

• Set a solid structure - Set up teams to coordinate actions arcoss the company and tap into individuals’ passions. These teams don’t need to meet full-time or meet for a lot of time (~1 hour/month). In addition, Paul’s staff is actually pretty small. They see themselves as coaches and facilitators rather than environmental police.
• Set ambitious goals - Having something to shoot for motivates people to act. Their first goal, back in the zero solid waste…drives ACTION, 2020 - Perfect vision - zero hazardous waste, air emissions, water, etc… footprint free …more holistic)
• Be measurable - Executives speak the language of numbers and a set of metrics will allow you to track progress over time. And don’t make purely environmental measurements/arguments for new investments or policies - any changes have to first make business sense from a cost or revenue standpoint.

Also, I was interested in how their design team incorporates the environment into their product development process. Their Design for Environment process includes five parameters:

1. Appropriate Durability - Don’t overengineer OR underengineer anything. Design it to meet expected and intended use.
2. Low Impact Manufacturing - Since they were pioneers in the field, they created their own manual back in 1992.
3. Innovative design - First and foremost, folks have to like the product regardless of the environmental impact. It’s not doing anyone any good if it sits in the store and accumulates dust on the top of the box.
4. Longevity of design - Is this thing still going to be in fashion in 12 years?
5. Cradle to Cradle - Herman Miller helped Bill McDonough write the C2C protocol and they have a staff of four chemists that analyzes all of the materials they use and aims for complete recyclability. Their new Mirra chair is the first C2C certified chair.

At the end I asked if he could tell a story about an individual’s actions leading and perseverance leading to a big win. He told a memorable story about a particularly dedicated groundskeeper. In broad strokes:

A nest of wasps had moved into the increased green space that the LEED green building guidelines had required at one of Herman Miller’s plants. They were stinging people and generally wreaking havoc. The grounds-keeper was charged with getting rid of the wasps by whatever means necessary. Instead of blasting them with harmful insectaside, he looked for a more creative, holistic, and environmentally friendly solution. He found that honeybees are natural competitors to wasps - and that they would help pollinate the flowers near the plant - so he worked with a beekeeper to establish hives of honeybees to displace the wasps. It worked - and as an added bonus, Herman Miller now actually harvests honey from the bees and gives small jars of it to customers!

This groundskeeper was acting entirely on his own. He turned what could have simply been an additional cost into a big marketing and customer relations win. What’s more, he helped inspired and empowered others within Herman Miller. That plant manager, who had been an environmental skeptic, set a goal for the plant to have zero landfill waste. They aren’t there yet, but they’ve made dramatic improvements and the plant of 350 employees sends less than 1,000 lbs per year to the landfill.

Now that’s a cool story! Remember, each of us has a part to play!

I recently came across an article from the McKinsey Quarterly about green branding and green product development (Helping Green Products Grow). It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s interesting to see what consulting firms are putting out there in an effort to be thought-leaders in sustainability.

Highlights for me:

• The ever-present rift between the desire to help the environment (87% green is important) vs. willingness to actually do something about it (33% actually buy green).
• Businesses are really failing to to educate consumers re: green. (Understandable given all of the cluttered marketing messages - green and otherwise - out there).
• There are barriers to buying green at every stage of the buying cycle. Now this is an interesting idea that deserves a bit more thought. There is a powerful framework waiting to happen in there.
• Example: P&G’s future friendly campaign (http://www.futurefriendly.co.uk/ - interestingly, only in the UK).

With all this talk about how to green branding, I think more and more about the simple virtues of empathy and honesty. It seems to me like you can get to the core of a lot of this advice by running a company like you would any good relationship. For example, transparency is a theme you see over and over again.

I attended a Commonwealth Club event tonight entitled Wildlands Philanthropy about how individuals and - in some cases - corporations have a long history of helping to conserve the lands that make up our local, state, and national parks around the world. The main presentation was by Kristine Thompkins & Tom Butler, from Conservacion Patagonica and wildlandsphilanthropy.org respectively. After the talk I also had the privilege of also talking with Kim Elliman of the Open Spaces Institute (NYC) and Brad Meiklejohn of the Conservation Fund (Alaska).

I was curious about what business’ role in conservation could and should be. I didn’t get much of an answer besides they should give a lot more money to conserve land abroad and, especially, locally. But to fulfill corporations’ fiduciary duties they have to really make a case for spending money on conservation (vs. reinvesting in the business or funding the arts, for example). I didn’t hear much of a value proposition for businesses other than “corporations are usually grateful about conservation in retrospect.”

It was interesting that the one example of a big corporation taking major action for conservation was Goldman Sachs protecting a huge amount of land in Tierra del Fuego under Henry Paulson (back in happier times for Hank). But ultimately most of the corporate money that finds its way into conservation comes from executives who have made their fortune and want to give it to a worthy cause. In fact, because sustainability is so fashionable nowadays, the rich are starting to buy-up land for conservation just to “keep up with the Joneses”. It’s the new Leer Jet.

I also asked how concerned they were about falling attendance levels at natural parks - and what they were doing to address that (vs. just focusing on getting more land). They of course lamented about how much time young people spend in front of computers and how important it is to instill a love and wonder of nature into our children. One interesting thing the Conservation Fund is trying in Alaska is actually having computer terminals out in the wilderness so that kids don’t have to choose between open space and cyberspace - they can have both.

The last really interesting point I took away is that the current financial crisis is a huge opportunity for conservation. There is a ton of land for sale and the pressure from new housing development has almost entirely evaporated. They’ve just got to scrape together the money to make it happen. Start working on that value proposition.

Information transparency is a huge opportunity - and a huge challenge - when it comes to creating a more responsible consumer culture. The more complete and immediate this background information the better. Just imagine if none of the foods you bought had ingredients listed or nutritional information.

A few weeks ago a friend turned me on to GoodGuide.com, a new website that helps consumers better understand what’s behind the products they buy. Each product is rated on a 10 point score for its environmental, health, and social performance.

You often hear about the importance of voting with your dollars. While it’s a bit clunky now, GoodGuide is working to provide tools to help you vote (keep your eye out for the iPhone ap they have in development).

Taking the Voting metaphor a step further… in addition to its primary product and company search engine, GoodGuide can now show you how companies fall on the political spectrum by analyzing campaign
contributions. Check it out…

Starbucks is all alone over there…

Last week was Jump Associates’ tenth anniversary celebration. Jump, being the learning-centric organization that it is, decided to host a mini-conference for the occasion. We still ate fancy cocktail weenies and drank lots of sangria - but only after listening to two days of fascinating presentations from our friends and colleagues in industry and academia. When we approached these people and asked them to present, we encouraged them to bring new material to the party. We figured they were tired of giving the same old presentations that they continually repeat at other speaking gigs. Plus we wanted to talk with them about what was currently on their minds.

I tried to take pretty good notes at the event (I’m honing my mind-mapping skills) and I thought I’d share this wonderful content with the world at large. Click on the image below to download a PDF of all of my notes (12 pages) and see my top-line thoughts below that.

Jim Adams - Stanford ME Professor
He laid out some basic human characteristics (we like power, we like growth, we like order, we operate on faith, etc…) and referenced the Ten Commandments as a way of beginning to think about why people resist doing what they should do. He mentioned that capitalism, because it is focused on constant short term growth, is inherently unsustainable. But attacking or rewiring capitalism is like seeking to change the Catholic church. Capitalism is taken as an article of faith by so many. Major change takes a long time - so have the long term view but enjoy the fruits of the moment.

Michael Fazio - Archideas - Designing for people with autism
He discussed designing spaces for people with autism - a project in which he is drawing inspiration and insights from his own autistic son. He was able to extract out some design principles by observing how his son is fascinated with patterns, loves sitting near open windows when it was freezing outside, and finds particular lights offensive. What it really comes down to is finding safe and effective ways to give autistic people more control over their environment (furniture you can tip over, adjustable lighting, under-floor air, sound, etc).

Sarah Beckman - UC Berkeley - Is Cross Functional Enough?
Companies nowadays are lauding the value of cross-functional teams. Sarah’s research suggests that understanding the learning style of the people on the team, and optimizing the team leadership to play to the strengths of different members of the team (potentially at different times throughout the course of a project) is actually more important than a person’s “function.” The learning styles she talked about were based upon Kolb’s experiential learning model. In general, she’s found that high performing teams converge AND diverge more, have a diversity of tolerances for ambiguity, and allow for fluid job responsibilities.

Keith Yamashita - SYPartners - Seeing: The missing skill in business
It was interesting to have Keith Yamashita speak after Sarah Beckman because they presented frameworks that mapped on top of one another (bottom center on my hand-written notes). Through his experience at Stone-Yamashita, Keith talked about how important it is to help organizations see the world in a new way. He described a SEE…BELIEVE…THINK…ACT loop. Companies love action but their thinking is bound to their beliefs - and the only way to change beliefs is to permit yourself to go truly explore and see the world. At Jump we talk a lot about having empathy for your customers and your employees - and at the end of the day, that’s what Keith was getting at.

Andy Hargadon - UC Davis - The business of design and the design of business
I’d seen Andy talk about the importance of networks and connections in innovation - a major theme in his new book: How Breakthroughs Happen. This talk went a bit deeper into how to understand the network of players and forces that make that innovations successful in the world. He talked about looking for shifts in the networks that are out there already and finding new ways to connect them. Ultimately, you want to be the conduit through which value flows. I especially enjoyed the case study about a fascinating website called MaxPreps, which is the clearinghouse for information and statistics for high school athletics. It’s designed in a way that athletes, parents, teachers, coaches, colleges, newspapers, and even photographers get something out of contributing content to the site. Since it is a win-win-win-win…, it has grown leaps and bounds.

Robyn Waters - RW Trends - Now What?
Robyn used to be the Vice President of Trend, Design, and Product Development at Target. After leaving that job to set off on life on her own terms, she’s spending some time to reflect on where she’s come from and where she’s going. Hers was one of the most personal and impactful talks of Jump@10. She talked about Finding Success, Finding Me, Finding Meaning, and, finally, Finding Joy. She’s a fabulous storyteller and anchored her stories with really powerful Zen koan-like sayings. Some of my favorites were:

“There’s no traffic jam on the extra mile.” (Chinese Fortune)
“He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.” (Chinese Proverb)

“It’s our choices that show what we really are, far more than our abilities.” (Dumbledore to Harry Potter)

“If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.” (Joseph Campbell)

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” (Confucius)

Amy Edmonson - Harvard Business School - Fear & Failure in Knowledge Organizations
Amy started off by talking about how she worked with Buckminster Fuller after graduating from college - and wrote a book about him after his death. Of course, I liked her immediately. Her talk was about how organizations fear and intolerance of failure hampers performance. She rightly claims that failure is mission critical to innovation - and that the real challenge is to learn how to fail intelligently. A requisite first step is creating an environment of psychological safety so that employees feel confident in sharing ideas that will benefit the organization. Organizations need to have a failure strategy and not send mixed messages about failure by telling employees that its okay to fail and then only compensating them for success. She referenced Sim Sitkin’s five conditions for failing intelligently: 1) Thoughtfully planned actions, 2) Uncertain outcome, 3) Modest scale, 4) Executed with alacrity, and 5) Sufficiently familiar environment to permit learning.

Sam Lucente - HP Design - HP @ 5
Sam talked about the challenges and opportunities that have been involved in his quest to use design more strategically within HP over his five year tenure as VP of Design. His Design to Simplify, Design to Differentiate, and Design to Innovate framework created a common language for executives to talk about how design can help the business (driving both top and bottom line results). While HP is an environment that prizes efficiency and appeals to the mass market, he talked a bit about how important it is to not compromise the “story” of iconic products by cost-cutting them to death (”You shall not kill iconic products”). Two of HP’s iconic products are a Voodoo Notebook thinner than the MacBook Air and the Blackbird gaming PC. He then ceded the floor to Debbie Mrazek of HP and Katherine Wakid from Jump to talk about Jump’s ongoing work with HP to better manage and measure the design process (work that I was involved with for over a year).

Last night I attended (and helped plan/host) the annual Topical Dinner night of the Net Impact San Francisco Professional chapter. The event went really well - which I find to often be the case when you put a lot of smart, motivated, interested, and interesting people together in the same room.

I sat at the Green Design table with Jeremy Faludi. Jeremy is currently an engineer at Project Frog, a company that designs modular green buildings targeted at the education market. The discussion laddered from the very abstract to the more-or-less concrete. Jeremy has a TON of really deep, applied experience in green design. He’s one of the few folks I know who have completely dedicated their career to sustainable design - and have made it work (or at least the first wave of these people).

It’s hard to get very deep into the practice of green design with a mixed discussion between green design experts/practitioners, those very interested and relatively knowledgeable about about green design (I count myself in this camp for now), and those who are new to it. To move from abstract theory to a deeper understanding of green design, there is simply no substitute for spending a lot of time trying to implement more sustainable solutions, wrestling with LCA tools like SimaPro, etc…

Some interesting tidbits that I did walk away with:

• Between 25 and 40% of all trash in landfills comes from construction waste (Project Frog’s modular system drastically reduces this).
• We had a good, basic discussion of biomimicry and I learned a little bit about Julian Vincent’s work in the UK.
• In many places, the majority of the energy used to condition air is spent de-humidifying it - not cooling it. While it takes 1 calorie to lower the temperature of air one degree, it takes 80 calories to turn the water vapor in that air into a liquid.
• Good product design is inherently evolutionary - i.e. testing lots of ideas, evolving and refining them throughout the process, and letting the best solutions rise to the top.
• While Europe is much further ahead in legislation and social norms around sustainability, America is often on-top for driving sustainable innovation.
• A few tools for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA):
• SimaPro LCA software - really in depth and complete. Leave it to the Swiss and the Dutch.
• EcoInvent - A database of the ecological impact of materials and processes. Plugs into SimaPro.
• A table-mate of mine from the Presidio School of Management talked about modifying the Total Beauty framework to quantify the environmental impact of SF landfill trash. I’ll have to admit I’m a bit skeptical about the rigorous and unbiased business application for a framework that is called “total beauty” and that starts its description with the statement: “Products are the source of all environmental problems.”
• WARM Calculator (WAste Reduction Model) - A tool from the EPA to help solid waste planners and organizations track and voluntarily report greenhouse gas emissions reductions and energy savings from several different waste management practices. (A bit over the top with the “warm” reference?)
• The OLPC’s hardware innovations are great (software…not so much), especially as they relate to energy efficiency. The OLPC can operate on less than 1 watt of power (0.2 watts in “reflective” mode). Regular laptops consume about 25 watts in use.

1) Be honest.

2) Communicate openly.

3) Have integrity.

4) Care about others.

5) Go for it.

(This is still a work in progress…but its a nice rough cut)

I recently read Innovation to the Core: A blueprint for transforming the way your company innovates by Peter Skarzynski and Rowan Gibson. It is probably the best book I’ve read about managing innovation. When folks ask me what I do at Jump, it usually takes some explaining. This book is a really good primer in a lot of the work I find myself doing on a daily basis - and attempts to answer many of the questions I find myself wrestling with.

The book provides good examples (primarily from Strategos’ work with Whirlpool) as well as concrete advice/tools. Their basic premise is that successful innovation can be made repeatable by making it more “core” to a company’s DNA and distributing innovation capacity throughout the organization. They are trying to do for innovation what Six Sigma did for quality…putting a flexible process around it, institutionalizing an innovation training program and job architecture, and making innovation a core value that everyone feels empowered to participate in.

The book is also a great example of affordance in design. Affordance is when an object’s form really conveys its function and method of use. A handle that begs to be gripped in a certain way. A latch that is in exactly the right spot and snaps open and shut intuitively. In this case, the book has wide margins on the edges of the page that invite note-taking and mark-ups. In addition to just being handy, this also messages that the book is meant to be engaged with, absorbed, and referenced back-to.

Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini

My review on Goodreads

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the best book I’ve read in a really long time. It is interesting, very useful, and chock-full of great examples.

Basically the book lays out all of the various ways that people can influence the thoughts, behaviors, and decisions of other people. Cialdini calls folks who do this professionally “compliance professionals”. These are salesmen, Hare Krishnas, and even con-men.

It is essential reading for anyone in management, sales, and business development. And, really, anyone who is curious about how people make decisions - and how those decisions, in aggregate, describe how society works.

View all my reviews.

This “Periodic Table” of visualization methods is amazing!

(http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html)