If you work in sustainability, you’ve likely faced countless roadblocks while trying to move initiatives forward at your company. We’re guessing that, most of the time, these obstacles stem from a lack of leadership buy-in. This is a question everyone in the sustainability space asks at some point: How do you get the C-suite at your company on board with your initiatives — especially when the short-term ROI might not be obvious? In this post, we’ll explore five different ways to get executive buy-in for your sustainability initiatives.
1. Identify what matters to your executives. Sustainability is an inside sales job. In other words, you have to sell the value of what you’re doing to internal stakeholders. According to Marcus Chung, Chief Operating Officer at Coyuchi, to be a great sales rep you have to understand who you’re selling to. “It's really important to know your audience and figure out what's going to resonate with each individual. This is critical for gaining support to build meaningful sustainability programs and advance them within the organization — especially if it's a larger company.”
Here are some questions that might be helpful to ask yourself about the company leader you’re trying to get buy-in from:
What does success look like for this person?
What is the biggest pain point in their role?
What part of my sustainability initiative might they take issue with, and how can I proactively address that?
What part of my sustainability initiative might be beneficial to them, and how can I lean into that?
Let’s use a Chief Marketing Officer as an example. For this role, success might look like an increase in the number of leads they bring into the top of the funnel. Their biggest pain point is probably finding creative ways to do this — without significantly increasing spend. You might anticipate that the potential time investment needed from the marketing team might be an issue for your initiative, so you think of suggestions that would minimize how much of their time you need. And you can lean into brand reputation as a selling point for your initiative.
By going through this exercise with each executive you have to get on board, you’re more likely to secure the buy-in you need to advance your programs internally.
2. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your messaging. After going through the exercise above, you may go into a meeting with an executive and learn that some of your assumptions were slightly off. Don’t take this as a failure. Instead, iterate on your messaging based on what you learn.
When we first started our resale platform, Treet, our messaging was very sustainability-focused. We assumed that our customers would be most interested in that angle. What we eventually learned is that our customers want more support making the case internally for investing in Treet. So we actually saw a lot more success when we adopted revenue-focused messaging, talking about how our resale platform can lead to increased LTV and customer loyalty. We even updated our tagline to be ‘drive revenue, dodge landfills’ so that it’s clear from the start what our value add is.
Our point being: you’re not going to land the messaging perfectly the first time around, and you may not get buy-in for every initiative as a result. But, over time, as you experiment with the language around your sustainability efforts, you’ll figure out what sticks in the minds of your executive team members.
3. Tee off existing policies and processes. One of the best ways to ensure that your sustainability initiative sees the light of day is to attach it to existing policies, strategies and processes. This helps root your initiative in something that the rest of the company is already familiar with.
This is a strategy that sustainability leader, Desta Raines, encourages others to adopt. “For example, if the company has a code of conduct, use that as a jumping off point. Or maybe if they’re already doing public reporting, you can tee off of that. Pretty much anything that already exists in the ecosystem of that organization is a great way to kick off the conversation. It really helps to frame your initiative around something that already exists — you can never advance sustainability in a random way.”
4. Go for the low-hanging fruit — for now. It may be tempting to introduce a brand-new initiative that you feel is going to be high impact. But, if your company is newer to the sustainability realm, consider going for the lower-hanging fruit first — whether that’s introducing a recycling initiative across the company or testing a small sustainability campaign for a specific segment of your customer base. This gives your leadership team time to see the effects of your work on a smaller, lower-risk scale and primes them to approve bigger initiatives down the line.
5. Bring people on the journey. Amanda Lapham, Co-Founder and Chief of Staff of Wolven, encourages sustainability leaders to bring their people on the journey with them. “Even though you might be the decision maker and the person pitching the ideas, try to gauge the interest of your team before making any decisions or even while coming up with the initial idea.”
For example, you can host sustainability brainstorms that span outside of your own team and see which ideas seem to resonate with people. Post updates or start conversations in Slack. Give other employees the opportunity to take joint responsibility for any sustainability initiative they’re passionate about — whether that’s reducing waste in the office or writing a sustainability report.
Fostering this sense of community is powerful for a few reasons: First, it gives the sense of working towards a common mission — rather than sustainability being something that you and your team are solely responsible for. Second, it creates visibility for the executive team. When your C-suite sees that their employees are passionate about the initiatives you’re introducing, they’re more likely to agree to the next one.
Getting sustainability initiatives across the finish line will continue to be an ongoing battle for leaders in the space. But, by honing your approach, strategy and messaging over time, you can increase the odds of getting leadership buy-in for the initiatives that are most important to you. If you’re interested in investing in Treet’s resale solution as one of your next initiatives, you can set up a time to chat with us here!