From a Problem to Avoid to an Opportunity for Change: Reframing Sustainability

Sustainability in business, lifestyles, and product design is about meeting human needs within the means of the planet. In general, sustainability is all about harmonising the social, economic and environmental considerations of all that we do. It’s way more than just ‘protecting nature’, or ensuring that workers have safe working conditions; it's about changing the way we value things, taking responsibility for impacts that actions have on the wider world and redesigning the way that materials are extracted, processed and delivered into the economy (taking the full life cycle and systems perspective). 

Sustainability addresses global issues such as climate change, plastic waste, social equity and deforestation through approaches, including the circular economy, sustainable design, supply chain equity, regenerative agriculture, zero waste, ESG, climate action and the green energy transition, to name a few. When it comes to sustainability in business, it goes beyond just minimising your impact, or offsetting your carbon emissions; it’s a process of changing the way you deliver value into the economy, by redesigning the products and services you offer, so that they eliminate waste, cycle materials and are produced in just and ethical ways. This requires shifting company culture, taking on the full responsibility of the impacts that you make and redesigning your business models. Whilst this might appear daunting at first, these parameters offer guidelines for transformation.

At a societal level, sustainability requires us to change our patterns of production and consumption, our economic modeling and our cultural perspectives in order to realign ourselves within the systems that sustain life on Earth. 

Sustainability, done well and with sincerity, is a journey that evolves into us achieving a regenerative and just future. A key challenge we currently face is overcoming pre-established frames, fears and limiting forces —  like team members who think that sustainability is just for hippies, or those that naturally have an aversion to embracing anything they don't understand or already like, or even the ones who are so righteous about it that they think no actions are good enough. A vital part of an effective and positive cultural change process requires reorienting internal narratives, shifting incentive structures and establishing a new company culture, one that embraces sustainability as the core of all business actions and decisions, as an opportunity for innovation and competitive transformation. 

There is no doubt that all companies need to take action now if they want to stay relevant in the age of climate change and global environmental and social issues, now is the time to start or expand the journey. In this article, I’ve put together some useful tools to help with reframing sustainability in all its forms, as the opportunity for innovation that it is. 

How ‘frames’ can impede engagement 

Humans think in unconscious structures called frames, which help us interpret the world around us. A frame is like a bundle of associations that can be evoked or pulled out of your brain's filing cabinet through language. Once triggered, this creates a framed lens through which you see the world or interpret information. 

In Why it Matters How we Frame the Environment, the leading cognitive scientist on frames, George Lakoff, explains some of the issues with framing when it comes to addressing climate change: “...environmental frames are the (typically unconscious) conceptual structures that people have in their brain circuitry to understand environmental issues. Frames are communicated via language and visual imagery. The right language is absolutely necessary for communicating ‘the real crisis’. However, most people do not have the overall background system of frames needed to understand ‘the real crisis’; simply providing a few words and slogans can at best help a very little.” 

Frames often limit the way someone perceives something, as the brain subconsciously evokes frames, which come in systems. Thus, when we encounter an idea, term, concept, etc., we not only get the defining frame, but also the entire system that connects to that frame — i.e. when someone hears the word “environment” or “sustainability”, it evokes the immediate mental reference that person holds (which may be positive or negative) and will draw on all the associated concepts the person has absorbed connected to the main frame. 

To add an additional layer to this, frames are connected to the emotional center of the brain, so a frame will also draw an emotional response (even if mild) and cloud the way someone perceives the issue being discussed. For the last few decades, environmental issues have been spoken about and communicated often in very negative and fear-inducing ways, or in fluffy feel-good ways. As a result, many of the frames people hold about the environment, sustainability, social issues, etc. draw on negative, outdated ideas, especially in relation to business. When triggered, they have the counterproductive effect of limiting interest, and thus, limiting creativity towards engaging and addressing the issue. 

Overcoming limiting frames

Establishing what pre-existing frames people hold towards a topic will help to establish what new frames need to be developed. For example, if a team that has tried to do a sustainability project in the past that didn't work out effectively is asked to take on a new one, perhaps they have a negative frame that associates with failure or work that they don’t want to do. Demonstrating the success that competitors or other teams have had will help to provide new frames on what engaging with sustainability would mean for that team. 

In general, many people experience a sense of fear and dread when they encounter sustainability topics like climate change. They feel a sense of guilt or avoidance, and even if motivated by these emotions to take action, the frames can still limit creativity since fear plays out in different ways for different people. The fight, flight or freeze response that fear evokes means some will be fired up and ready to take action; others will be paralyzed, while some completely avoid the thing that has induced the fear. 

To address negative perceptions of sustainability topics, look for what are called bright spots — the examples of positive change/action that can be leveraged to demonstrate a positive side to the challenges. I don’t mean to show how cold countries will have nicer summers as a result of climate change. I mean, find examples from your industry of companies that have fully embraced sustainability, done well and succeeded as a result of this (trust me there will now be loads of these examples!). Benchmarking success will help to provide a new narrative on what embracing sustainability as an innovation opportunity is all about. 

Contemporary approaches to sustainability are very different to experiences that people may have had in the past. There are high-tech, creative, and yes, lucrative opportunities in embracing sustainability as the great innovation opportunity of our time. The opportunities from transforming a business from the old linear way of doing things to a circular, regenerative and just approach is not only positive for the natural world, but for workers, shareholders and customers. 

Aside from benchmarking business successes, another tip to overcoming limiting forces is to set a challenge to see who can find the most unique sustainable solution in your category/industry. Have the group dissect and stress test the idea to see if it's achieving the combined goals of an effective business solution and offering true environmental and social benefits. Some of the biggest IPOs in the last few years have been for sustainable product offerings! With the rise of ESG, there are even more reasons why team members should be excited by the opportunity to change their business offerings to keep up with the changing times.

A leader's responsibility is to create the conditions for cultural change to emerge, and this starts with reframing limiting forces. 

Embracing change 

Change is all about altering the status quo and making things different to what has been done before. I often see established processes and procedures that restrict creativity and the possibility of transformative change. The statement, “That’s just the way it is” is an immediate way to restrict and disable change, and creativity. It is a reality that change will affect any pre-established equilibrium, and that’s the entire point: to disrupt old ways of doing by opening up spaces for new approaches to emerge.  

The key to success in organizational change is a mix of open dialogue (to reframe the challenges as opportunities), collaboration (ensuring processes are co-created) and motivation (designing incentive structures to create conditions for creativity). People want to feel like they have agency in the process and that any grievances are heard and respected. Likewise, you should celebrate the small wins and highlight bright spots of success to establish the new normal, but be mindful of over-celebrating insignificance, as this can then create a sense of premature accomplishment that could restrict further action.

If you are going to opt for a big ambitious change all at once, make sure that you have implementation stages in place to ensure that the big goal is achievable. Many companies get caught making big claims, like achieving 100% carbon neutral by 2030, going fully recyclable etc., and forget that they need a way to achieve that goal by starting right away. You can’t delay taking action, or the type of change needed further down the road will be painfully harder. Or worse still, the ambitious goal will fail and create further resistance to change, not to mention more environmental and social harm!

Not all change is hard or painful. In fact, many people welcome well-planned and timely change initiatives, especially if there is a pent-up demand for it — which when it comes to values, climate actions and social equity, there is a significant demand from workers through to customers. 

But there are some barriers to cultural change you may experience, such as:

• Pre-existing power structures invested in maintaining the status quo, the dinosaur mindset of avoiding pressing issues like climate change, or those that have more to lose by taking action than perpetuating inaction 
• Fear, or failure of the unknown, as sometimes fear even manifests itself as being part of a change process that is seen as too progressive or doesn't fit the current worldview that the person has. 
• Personality types — we are all different and some people have flexible mindsets and some are fixed. Our personalities affect how willing we are to respond to things based on how they are framed. Some people love challenges, while others need to see a process before they commit to being involved. 
• Perceived loss of power. Power is a resource we often cling onto once we get it, and so the perception that power will be lost as a result of the change leads many people to maintain the position they are currently in. 
• No or low consultation often leads to people feeling excluded or imposed on by the change; by co-designing the process, you can ensure that there is buy-in right from the start and through the process.
• The personal impact of the change, if the change will require someone to learn a new skill or be given more work they may perceive it as unfair. Unless they can right from the start see how it will be positively beneficial to them, it can create resistance and resentment, limiting the process. 
• Myths and rumors about past change — this is a big one for large organizations that tend to have many folklores shared among teams. 
• Habit comfort. We are habitual beings who often find it hard to break free of established routines, unless we are already going through a life disruption or if there is a feasible motivation to create a new habit. 
• Pre-conceived ideas about what the change will result in, which is particularly problematic when it comes to addressing climate change, as people often have their own frames on what this will mean and that may not be the goals or approaches you are seeking to implement. 
• Lack of training to equip people with the skills and support they need to adopt the new changes.

The Enabling Change Curve 

The Change Curve is a tool used by many sectors wanting to embrace a change journey; there are several variations you can find online which are all adapted from psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s work on personal transition in grief and bereavement. I made an adaptation to the change curve to show the possibility that it has in acknowledging limiting forces and then progressing through to enabling ones.

The Enabling Change Curve helps to frame the stages that people may experience when confronted with the realisation that change is happening and needed. 

From the initial shock, we tend to progress through declining stages of denial, anger, bargaining and then depression. From the pits of despair, we can start to progress our way out of the negative emotions and limiting forces, to accepting the change, taking actions, embracing the new state and then opening up future possibilities. A well-designed change intervention can take a different journey, one that hopefully bypasses the pit of despair stage!

Looking at this enabling change diagram above, can you think of how your own journey has been with any big change? 

Think about how you responded to Covid lockdowns or to the threats of climate change. Many organisations are still in the bargaining phase, trying to convince the world and themselves that their pre-existing model is still relevant — like Shell saying during COP26 that they needed to continue to extract oil to fund the development of renewables.

Some organisations get stuck in the valley of despair, not quite able to look forward and see the potential of the bright future that awaits them if they just start to accept that change is needed, and that they can evolve through the challenges to a new future, one that is driven by sustainability, equity and greater value creation. 

Sustainability is by far one of the biggest challenges of our time, but all challenges are opportunities in disguise — it just takes foresight and leadership to turn the negative frames into guidelines for innovation and success. 

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Want to learn more?

I have a range of classes and sprints on activating sustainability in business, you can take a 4 week sprint right now, or download this free toolkit designed to get companies of any size started on their sustainability journey. You can also reach out to the team at Disrupt Design to find out how we can support your company's transformation to a sustainable and circular economy. 

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This article was written as part of the LinkedIn #Changemakers campaign – a campaign shining a spotlight on individuals using LinkedIn to drive genuine change in the world of work. To find out more about the partnership, read more here. And if you want to join the conversation, share the one thing you’d like to change about the world of work in a post on LinkedIn with the hashtag #ConversationsForChange