[Part 2 of the Getting Green Done book review]
As we saw last week , in Getting Green Done Auden Schendler says the Enviro movement has to get comfortable talking about their mistakes as well as their successes. Here’s one of his.
When Schendler first started at Aspen Skiing Co., he told Eric Calderon, manager of the luxury resort The Little Nell, that they could cut energy use by 75% if they switched to compact fluorescent light bulbs. They’d save so much money that switching would pay for itself in less than a year. Eric told him no. Schendler was “baffled” — the project had a great return on investment.
The problem was that while I thought I was proposing a money-saving opportunity, for Eric it was a money-losing opportunity, because it threatened the tools he used to generate income — his stylish rooms (P.51)
Eric told Schendler he was worried about how their high-end clients would perceive the compact fluorescent light bulbs even if the light produced by the bulbs created the right ambience. He was even more worried about the reaction of ExxonMobil and AAA auditors.
“If that auditor sees compact fluorescent bulbs in our rooms, he might downgrade us to 4 stars.” In the 5-star hotel world, that’s not just a bad thing — that’s the apocalypse.Again, we can’t blame Eric for this concern. But most environmentalists do. In turn, they lose a potential ally, and they alienate a good person from their cause. (P.51)
So, Schendler called Exxon Mobil and AAA. Both said fluorescent light bulbs wouldn’t reduce their rating.
But that doesn’t matter. The chance that an auditor is even subconsciously affected by a perceived lack of quality is too great a risk to take. Paying a few extra bucks on the energy bill is unfortunate. Losing your 5-star rating is your career.
My solution was something you’ll never hear from the nonprofits or the sustainability consultants trying to make a buck on the great green vision. I gave up in defeat. (P.52)
Schendler ultimately had plenty of wins at Aspen — enough so that being Green became part of their branding. But it was a long, tough slog.
What Schendler’s describing here is the difference between Econ 101 – where People and Organizations are Calculators — and reality.
Return on investment matters in the real world, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. If you’re trying to go Green or make any fundamental change in an organization, you need to figure out the hidden rules and the complex relationships that govern how that organization actually make its decisions. As Schendler succeeded at making Aspen more Green, he discovered, for example, that:
- Sometimes even if you know you’re going to save money, some savings are hard to show. Retrofitting a garage’s lighting may save a bunch of money, but to actually prove it an electrician would need to put the lights on a separate electrical circuit, which would eat up a lot of the savings.
- Mental models matter. “Hotel managers don’t believe they make money by saving — they make money by selling” even though a huge amount of profit gets eaten up by overhead.
- Opportunity costs, a.k.a. the availability of capital. If a mid-level manager only has so much money available, they may decide that spending it on another project is a better deal — especially if their mental model says they make money by selling, not saving.
Understanding the rules that govern a particular organization’s world and figuring out how to either make progress within these rules or organize to change them — that’s what I’m calling The Practitioner’s Perspective. As you’ll see in the next few weeks, it’s a critical piece of the Rethinking the Economy model.
Up next week: Getting Green Done’s Department of Strategery.
