Friday 29 January 2010

Dr Graeme Codrington’s elearning courses for environmental sustainability

Highly respected futurist Dr Graeme Codrington has put together 3 excellent elearning courses on:

How to Save Energy and Save Money
How to Make the Public Sector Green
The Carbon Reduction Commitment

Please read about them here.

You can click on the links in the article and view the first two courses in each segment for free before signing up.

Be remarkable
Ian
Founder Differencemakers Community
Sign-up here for a least one free resource per month and to get your complimentary copy of my ebook Differencemakers - how doing good is great for business.

Saturday 23 January 2010

Immediately usable strategies and tactics for sustainability

I read a great book over the recent holidays, Strategies for Sustainability - A Business Manifesto by Adam Werbach the Global CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi S.

I read this book from cover to cover in one sitting and have been back to it several times. It now has a permanent place on my desk. I liked the idea presented of helping people create personal sustainability projects as a key to their work.

For many years now I have been helping organisations to ensure that personal and business goals are in harmony with one another as a key to successful performance management and people engagement systems and adding personal sustainability into the mix I am certain with further enhance the success of this concept.

I like Werbach's book because it is practical. Read it and you can get started on sustainability for yourself and your business right away.

Speaking of practical, Will Marre's Top 10 Things Every Business Leader Should Know About Strategic Sustainability is brilliant. You can read them here. And please spend some time on Will's Thought Rocket blog as I did. I am sure you will find such a visit worthwhile.

While we are on lists Fast Company has a good list here of 51 great sites for those wanting to refine their sustainability strategies and tactics.

I found this list on development crossing where I also discovered Will Marre. Development crossing is the best community site I have come across that focuses on one thing namely corporate social responsibility.

Be remarkable
Ian
Founder Differencemakers Community
Sign-up here for a least one free resource per month and to get your complimentary copy of my ebook Differencemakers - how doing good is great for business.

I like Werbach's book so much it has caused me to update my list of the top 21 books I recommend. You can download this list here.

Monday 18 January 2010

Using water strategically

McKinsey Quarterly.com always provide good insights and I found this interview with CEO of Rio Tinto Tom Albanese concerning using water strategically of value.



Be remarkable
Ian
Founder Differencemakers Community
Sign-up here for a least one free resource per month and to get your complimentary copy of my ebook Differencemakers - how doing good is great for business.

Thursday 14 January 2010

Life/work balance is nonsense - life/work harmony is possible

I hear a lot of talk about life/work balance and I think most of it is nonsense.

The word balance for me implies equal. I prefer the word harmony, therefore life/work harmony.

My personal and business life are not equal or in balance and are never likely to be.

They are in harmony with one another, that is, they work together like a symphony, two sides of the same coin

Here are my 11 laws of life/work harmony. I trust they will help you live a more harmonious life.

1. The Law of Harmony

Opposites attract. There are always at least two sides to every story.

Possible Action/Results: Always think both / and, rather than either / or; accept the good with the bad; appreciate pleasure, gain from pain; focus on the positive, learn from the negative; and you will soon begin to find harmony in your life.

2. The Law of Possibility

The opportunities life offers us are endless. There are no limits, except those we place on ourselves. There is nothing we cannot achieve.

3. The Law of Personal Responsibility

No one else can make us feel or think glad, sad, bad or mad. How we feel and think are choices we make.

Possible Action/Results: We must own our feelings and thoughts and not get tangled in other people’s feelings and thoughts. We must let go of attachment to what other people feel and think. Soon we eliminate guilt and worry; two of life’s most useless and most debilitating emotions.

4. The Law of Attraction

Success is not something we attain, rather something we attract.

Possible Action/Results: Commit to life-long learning; focus on insight more than information and wisdom more than knowledge. The more we become who we are capable of becoming the more we attract success.

5. The Law of the Farm

You find fertile ground, plough it, seed it, and nurture it, and more often than not you reap a harvest. We get what we give. What goes around comes around. These are modern ways of describing an old adage; we reap what we sow.

Possible Action/Results: The message of this law is that we must focus on proven processes and detach from outcomes. If we are taking the right action, results take care of themselves.

6. The Law of Relationships

We gravitate to those we like, know and trust.

Possible Action/Results: Establish shared values with family, friends and work colleagues, and agree on how they will be lived; have shared goals and agree on the key strategies to achieve them; practice non-judgment; give genuine attention to others. Before you know it your relationships will be stronger and the great door of opportunity will open more often.

7. The Law of Service

Giving without attachment to getting back creates one of life’s great paradoxes; we get more back.

Possible Action/Results: Fully understand what others need and provide it; go the extra mile

By adding value to every transaction and interaction; co-create wow experiences at work, home and play. Before long others will be serving you in ways beyond your wildest expectations.

8. The Law of Confidence

Confidence is to maintain a positive inner and outer image and display them. The problem can be that confidence is often perceived as arrogance.

Possible Action/Results: Demonstrate openness to learning and not asserting your way is the only way while at the same time believe in yourself; believe in others; speak and communicate from your heart; and confidence will rarely get mistaken for arrogance.

9. The Law of Actual Communication

Not all talk is communication. We often talk just for the joy of it. To actually communicate is to agree on some course of action even if it is to agree to disagree.

Possible Action/Results: To communicate better speak with a specific goal in mind and listen simply to understand, and when speaking and listening ask for feedback to ensure message effectiveness. You will most likely find you will speak less and listen more. The result however is to eventually eliminate misunderstanding, one of the great negative stress causes in life.

10. The Law of Adaptability

I heard a great saying one time “better to adapt than be a sitting duck and get run over”

Possible Action/Results: Our willingness to adapt, be flexible, and go with the flow are keys to a negative stress free life. A key seems to be to realize it is not what happens to us that is important rather our response to what happens. Take responsibility for your responses to life and life will respond to you.

11. The Law of Synchronicity/Interconnectedness

Everything is connected in some way to everything else.

Possible Action/Results: Seek coincidence, follow your heart, “do what you love” says Steven Farber “in the service of people who love what you do”; and your life will soon change for the better.

Have a personal sustainability plan (thank you Adam Werbach for the idea from his book Strategies for Sustainability) i.e. do what you can personally for the good of people and our planet. Imagine if everyone did this. We would have universal harmony.

Be remarkable
Ian

Monday 11 January 2010

The 25 Best Givers?

Here is a list of the 25 best givers according to Barron’s and consulting firm Global Philanthropy Group. The idea of listing the best in philanthropy is a tad oxymoronish for me, nevertheless makes interesting reading, and, one of the charities that Torchbearer membership of differencemakers community supports, Room-to-Read comes in at number 11.

Be remarkable
Ian
Founder Differencemakers Community
Partnering passionate people to change what’s normal for the good of people, our planet, and for profit.

Sunday 10 January 2010

Two great poems for sustainability champions by James McCallum

The following are two great poems from a colleague of mine based in New York, James McCallum.

An Al-Chet for Risk Managers:

I was not strong enough to stand up to my boss
I put selfish gain ahead of ethical considerations
I falsified or hid data to conceal results
I failed to be objective
My risk model was too subjective
I ignored warning signs
I was in over my head
I did not understand all the risk factors
I failed to get an outside opinion
I was beholden to monetary gain
I was victim to group think
I placed institutional interest ahead of ethical considerations
I failed to admit I was wrong
I was not honest with regulators
I was not honest with shareholders
I looked the other way
I failed to act
I conveniently overlooked infractions / irregularities
I made exemptions
I did not understand the depth of the problem
I know there are many more.
Please help me to uncover, understand make right and overcome.
Shalom

and this also from James in reponse to a Linkedin group question What will fizzle in 2010?

Now that 2010 is here, 
One asks what will fizzle?
Tough question to ponder, 
I'll answer and not quibble

Most say that twitter 
is yesterdays news
If its truly passe 
lots of tweeters will get the blues

The detractors all say 
twitter can't monetize the biz
If you don't make the moolah any biz will certainly fiz 



I thought social networking 
and crowd sourcing were the rage
Do you think this industry is in a declining stage? 



What of Facebook, Myspace, 
Amazon and LinkedIn?
Profitability for didgie bizness takes time to kick in 



It may be Microsoft Vista or an orphaned smart-phone app,
or a million start ups 
falling into a tech trap

We’ve got IPhones and Droids 
now battling it out
It'a a clash of the Titans. 
How will this turn out? 



How about countries, industries, 
war and recession?
The great danger is to see 
a slide into a depression. 



It’s my fondest hope 
that conflict and division 
will dwindle and fizzle.
Peace without equivocation 



So I send seasons greetings 
to all, front and middle 
and say guard your dreams, don't ever let them fizzle.

You can find out more about James and his work here.

Be remarkable
Ian
Founder Differencemakers Community
Partnering passionate people to change what’s normal for the good of people, our planet, and for profit.

Wednesday 6 January 2010

Ray Anderson - climbing Mt Sustainability

One of the great champions of proving the business case for sustainability Ray Anderson of Interface gives some of the insights he and his people have gleaned in climbing what Ray calls Mt. Sustainability



Be remarkable
Ian
Founder Differencemakers Community
Partnering passionate people to change what’s normal for the good of people, our planet, and for profit.

Monday 4 January 2010

Was Peter Drucker the Founder of CSR?

Toby Webb, founder of business intelligence company Ethical Corporation suggests Peter Drucker, known as the father of modern management is also the father of CSR which shatters my understanding that CSR started in 1953 the year of my birth!

You can read all about this in Toby's excellent blog here.

The most important thing this suggests for me is that good things often take awhile to become the norm and in my view this decade will see corporate responsibility as the norm.

Be remarkable
Ian
Founder Differencemakers Community
Partnering passionate people to change what’s normal for the good of people, our planet, and for profit.