Leading Change Toward Sustainability: A Change-Management Guide for Business, Government and Civil Society [Hardcover]

"Based on a study of practices at firms like Interface, Herman Miller, Patagonia, Collins Companies, Chiquita, Xerox and Starbucks, this book serves both as a primer and study of the cutting edge", Business Ethics, Fall 2003 "Anyone involved in a business or agency that wants to transform itself into a better environmental citizen would do well to read this book", Earth Justice, Winter 2004 "Starting from a seldom-discussed reality - that some sustainability initiatives simply fail ... his findings are presented in the form of a theoretical framework and methodology that can be used by managers to help their organizations embrace sustainable development", UNEP Industry and Environment, Oct-Dec 2003 "This book is a really useful read for those leading or indeed aspiring to lead change to sustainability in organizations worldwide ... Read it and you can make a difference", Consultnet, April 2004 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Since "Leading Change toward Sustainability" was first published in late 2003, many leaders have made significant progress in transforming their organizations into better social and environmental citizens. But many have not. As the world struggles to cope with the growing threat of a global carbon crisis, Bob Doppelt has revised one of the best books ever written about change management, leadership and sustainability to focus on de-carbonization. To significantly slash greenhouse gases and prepare for climate change, organizations of all sizes will need to undergo an enormous shift in their thinking, cultures, practices and policies. Making this shift will require the use of proven sustainability-based organizational change strategies. So what are these strategies and why do they work? Bob Doppelt spent years researching how the leaders of both private and public organizations that have initiated and sustained significant sustainability programmes designed and approached them. His findings, presented in this hugely readable book, demystify the sustainability-change process by providing a theoretical framework and a methodology that managers can use to successfully transform their organizations to embrace sustainable development. According to Doppelt, discussions about what to do - which new technologies and policy instruments to apply - have dominated the public dialogue on sustainability. Practitioners place comparatively little emphasis on how organizations can change their internal thought processes, assumptions and ingrained behaviors to embrace new tools and techniques. Organizational and cultural change is the key missing ingredient in the operationalization of sustainable development. Without such change, sustainability efforts usually stall soon after they begin or fail outright. Changing organizational culture requires interventions in two key areas: First, the governance system of the organization must be altered. A majority of organizations today hold a mechanistic, autocratic view of governance. In contrast, organizations that have made the most progress toward sustainability view all of their internal members, as well as external stakeholders, as vital parts of an interdependent system. In the leading sustainability organizations, these beliefs engender a skilful distribution of information, power and wealth among employees and stakeholders because managers realize that all of the parts of the organizational system must feel valued and be meaningfully involved for these higher purposes to be achieved. Transforming systems of governance to achieve these results requires seven core interventions. Each intervention builds on and reinforces the others. Part-II of the book describes these interventions and how the leading organizations employ them to establish an enduring systems approach to change. The second intervention is leadership. Organizations that develop effective governance systems typically have good leadership. Effective sustainability leaders have the ability to keep their organization focused on achieving its higher mission while simultaneously managing numerous, sometimes contradictory, streams of activity. Savvy leaders can inspire and mobilize employees and stakeholders to embrace change as an exciting opportunity to learn. In the exemplary organizations, this style of leadership pervades not only top management, but also most levels of the enterprise. Doppelt found that, when an organization has an effective governance system and effective, forward-looking leadership, it is much more likely to be able to marshal the tremendous forces required to transform its culture and successfully adopt sustainability-based thinking, values and behaviors. When an organization lacks an effective governance system or sufficient leadership, its culture will remain static and the adoption of a more sustainable p