How to Use Journey-Mapping for Sustainability: A Step by Step Guide Part 2
This is where s**t gets real.
It’s the step between strategy and execution, the gap between talking the talk and walking the walk. Because integrating sustainability with commercial objectives is the only possible pathway for most companies to even think about starting their sustainability journey, we prepared this short article to provide some context to mediating between the two, whilst prioritising which initiatives to tackle first.
This article can be read as a standalone piece on considerations to prioritise sustainability initiatives, if you missed part 1, here it is.
Here are the two steps to get started:
If you can, highlight your team’s experience, not the consultant
First things first, get the right people in the room.
When starting this prioritisation activity, the knowledge and energy of individuals who have made strides at almost any level in the organisation can bring the right momentum to the discussion.
For example, “Roger from warehousing” who’s proactively implemented a simple recycling system will influence social conformity for others at his level, by showing what is already done It’s inspiring, contagious and puts the ownership of many actions onto the team. With the support of leadership course.
2. Rank Each Initiative by Strategic Priorities
Assuming you’ve completed the ideation and brainstorming phase of the silo you were journey mapping, you can rank each suggestion and idea based on strategic priorities, utilizing emojis for a visual and engaging approach. Like in the image below.
We like to use Mural.co for their voting functions and their multiple emoji functions as visual tools to provide more context during this clustering and analysis phase. Your first board is free. (disclaimer: we are not affiliated with them, just love the product!)
Here’s a gif example of clustering in action
These three steps will firstly help organise and bring clarity to all the ideas that came up during the brainstorming and ideation phase.
Next step, prioritising. You can rank these in a table or place the sticky notes from highest to lowest during this work-in-progress phase.
5 Considerations for Prioritization
There are five core areas to consider which will help prioritise and organise work-planning between initiatives, both sustainability and commercial:
1. Strategic Context and Leadership Intent:
The strategic context and leadership intent refer to the organizational vision and high-level information that guides decision-making.
Typically, leadership is aware of significant upcoming events, such as mergers, product launches, or market changes, which will impact urgency, importance, and resource allocation. For instance, the SLT (Senior Leadership Team) might know about a planned merger that could necessitate prioritizing certain sustainability initiatives over others.
Information asymmetry can negate all other strategic considerations
Strategic context comes first because information asymmetry can negate all other strategic considerations, leading to wasted time and energy on unnecessary brainstorming. If your organization’s decision-making power rests solely with the founder, ensure this person is part of the prioritization process or has clearly, clearly communicated their priorities.
2. Customer Feedback:
If it isn’t already, feedback should be driving your commercial strategy by highlighting which issues and activities are most important to your customers and clients. If you’re unsure what your customers want, start with a few key conversations before launching extensive surveys.
This targeted approach can save hours of survey design and prevent the need for multiple survey rounds due to insufficient information. By understanding your customers' priorities, you can align your initiatives to better meet their needs and expectations.
3. Team Morale and Feedback:
Team morale and feedback are rightfully seen as the linchpins to actual outcomes as they're the ones delivering!
Use tools like Mural’s voting function to validate which initiatives have the greatest buy-in and interest. During brainstorming sessions, take the opportunity to identify champions—those enthusiastic and supportive team members who can drive initiatives forward. Leveraging the theory of diffusion of innovation, you can roll out initiatives by targeting innovators and early adopters first, ensuring a smoother implementation process.
4. Regulatory Headwinds and Tailwinds:
Knowing the nature and estimated timing of regulatory head or tail winds brings clear timelines and structure to the initiatives to ensure your organisation is ready for compliance. An added scope is ensuring you also understand the regulatory nature of the markets your customers operate in too.
For example, companies servicing clients that are exporting to the EU need to start tracking their carbon emissions thanks to the European Green Deal or lose their contract. Companies manufacturing for Australian consumer goods need to be aware of messaging on their labelling to ensure they’re not greenwashing thanks to the Environmental and sustainability claims or risk millions worth of fines from the ACCC and/ or from ASIC like in this landmark case against Vanguard. Preparing for upcoming regulatory changes can bring key strategic advantages for business, or become major liabilities and risks if poorly managed.
5. Resources Needed:
Financially speaking, you ‘should’ only invest in initiatives, assets and capacity within your financial means. However, the scope of resources expands much further than cash, people and property.
We recommend mapping resources out to include partnerships, customer willingness, public assets and other areas of influence. Just like the Sustainability Mastermind programme, you can utilise the willing perspectives, network and expertise of the network around you to expedite initiatives.
A great example here was Slaprea, a food festival for good, when they first launched their event, they were competing with a USD 100k budget event which attracted over 11,000 people. By utilising partnerships with Government for an ‘almost’ free venue (National Olympic Stadium), over 100 volunteers from Volunteer Nation and plenty of commercial partnerships, they hosted a 12,000 person food festival as a social experiment for waste management with only USD 13,000.
“It’s not about your resources, it’s about your resourcefulness”
- Tony Robins.
And finally, to avoid putting things in the ‘too hard basket’, we categorize initiatives based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology to breakdown complex projects and initiatives into sub projects and tasks to bring time into consideration:
Micro Initiatives: Quick, impactful, and immediately actionable decisions. These are typically implemented in less than a quarter. For instance, switching to an environmentally-friendly supplier with no cost difference and no locked-in contract.
Messo Initiatives: Medium-term initiatives that require multiple steps or stakeholders, more learning and understanding, and potentially more funding and resources. These can usually be implemented in less than a year. An example is changing waste suppliers, which often involves locked-in contracts.
Macro Initiatives: Long-term, investment-heavy decisions, typically spanning multiple years. An example would be investing in an end-of-life material recycling/treatment system.
These are key steps and considerations we take when prioritising and merging sustainability and commercial initiatives. If more support is needed, we offer a Mastermind Session to put this in practice with your team and with a community of like-minded businesses, you can check out the affordable programme here.
If the time and resource commitments seem daunting, remember that help is available. Feel free to reach out to us at greatchangestarts@theideaconsultants.com for one-on-one support.