Reply To: Exercise 10: 10 Valuable People
LIVING THE ‘ASK FOR ADVICE’ MANTRA
I’ve been time challenged to compete exercise 10 within the accepted timeline due to other commitments that were set months ago. BUT, I am not wavering in my commitment to do so, rather thinking through it carefully and adapting it into a near term real-life change project I have on the go. In my experience, the sooner I can integrate the INITIATIVE principles into the very fabric of what how and I’m doing, then the faster I change and increase my success.
So here is the story. Nine months ago I committed to giving a presentation at a Product Stewardship Society conference which ran last week. The topic I spoke about had to do with a live case study on leveraging the existing product stewardship function in an organization to enable greater sustainability practices. It is based on my efforts in the company I work for and which included the practice of the INITIATIVE exercises and my topic of employee sustainability engagement. The talk was meant to be an inspiration for product stewardship people in other companies to get more involved in sustainability and how to go about it.
Over the course of the past 3 months, I’ve been defining the business approach for the above and integrating the INITIATIVE principles into this talk. At the beginning of the talk I very clearly indicated my ask of the audience was to ask questions, identify gaps in my approach and give me advice on making it better. I had a full room of 45 people and at the end, the questions and helpful comments were overwhelming. The organizer had to kick us out of the room to run the next event.
The following are examples of the comments,
You are the only speaker (out of 42 or so) who asked for our input and advice.
We want you to come back next year and give us an update.
Can we start a help/working network to progress these ideas further?
What is your moonshot goal that you hope to achieve?
What advice do you have for smaller teams who get pulled in many difference sustainability directions?
An offer to put me in contact with the right person in DuPont (who I mentioned) about my idea to partner on a specific sustainability matter.
Companies in the room: Lockheed Martin, DuPont, Exxon, Johnson Controls, Shell, Michaelman’s, …..