What Yoga Can Teach Us About Sustainability

After a brief hiatus, I’ve recently taken up yoga again as way to inject a little clarity and exercise into my otherwise crazy daily routine.

For those of you not familiar with yoga, let me say first that it’s not just about stretching (although that’s a part of it). In fact, what we Westerners think of as yoga is actually just the physical component of an overarching mental, physical and spiritual practice that originated in India.

In most yoga classes in the U.S., students spend time moving through a series a poses or postures – some seated, some standing, even some inverted or upside-down. Each pose, or asana as they are called in Sanskrit, is a measured movement that aligns physical effort with breath.

Sometimes you do poses quickly (to generate heat) and sometimes slowly (to increase strength and endurance) – but no matter the speed, yoga poses are rigorous, physically challenging, and precise. Each new movement requires focus, concentration and calculated positioning to ensure the alignment of body and breath.

Interestingly, while your body works hard in each pose, your mind and spirit do as well. Each day you come back to yoga, your body responds differently. Some days you’re tired or sore, while other days you feel light and nimble. Each scenario requires both mental and physical adjustments, and those can only happen when you clear your mind of other details and focus solely on the pose at hand.

In yoga, each student brings unique abilities and challenges to class. Some students are more flexible than others, for instance, while other students have more trouble balancing or finding stillness.

In a roomful of yoga students, sometimes I find that it can be easy to get competitive, to want to “be better” than the person next to me, to reach farther or hold a pose longer. Other times when I see someone who’s obviously better than me, I want to throw my hands up and leave the studio, thinking it’ll be easier to save face by walking away entirely.

What I love about yoga, however, is that it’s not about winning. It’s not about being competitive.

Instead, yoga is about a continual acceptance of where you are at that very moment.

In its most basic form, yoga is a practice. It’s a journey.

It’s not about perfection – it’s about checking in with yourself, taking stock of your progress, and making adjustments and corrections to find the right position.

As a recent class wound down, I started to think about all of these things and in the process, had a bit of an epiphany: in many ways, yoga and sustainability aren’t that different.

Like yoga, sustainability is rigorous, demanding, and requires careful and measured movement. Companies must work tirelessly to create sustainability programs of substance, ones that actually have a powerful and lasting impact on communities and our environment. And to make that progress, sustainability officers must somehow find ways to cut through the clutter, clear their desks, and focus on the big questions at hand.

Yet also like yoga, sustainability is a practice – a long journey towards what’s achievable.

Like me in my yoga classes, companies may strive for perfection, and at times may also face the urge to compete against others and to win. Alternatively, some companies may choose to not even give sustainability a try, fearing that they'll be exposed as incapable or inadequate.

In the end, corporate sustainability it isn’t about being perfect.

Instead, it’s about being thoughtful, discerning, and patient in our move toward progress. It’s about taking stock of where we are and recognizing the small and big adjustments we can make to improve and/or reduce our footprint.

Just imagine how powerful our sustainability efforts could be if we stopped thinking about it as a public race to the finish line, and instead saw it like a collection of students, each striving toward incremental yet powerful improvements for our planet and our communities.

Now that’s something to ponder the next time you’re in child’s pose!

CSR from the Inside

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Marcus Chung, director of corporate citizenship at McKesson (To learn more about Marcus, check out his blog and follow him on Twitter).

My purpose for sitting down with Marcus was twofold. First, I wanted to get his take on corporate social responsibility and sustainability efforts at McKesson, as well as ask some questions about the field in general. Second, given that he is a young CSR leader, I wanted to give Marcus a chance to share his own personal story.

Over the course of an hour or so, we talked about:

• Marcus' Professional Background,
• Corporate Citizenship at McKesson,
• Culture and CSR Success
• Reporting on Impact, and
• CSR Going Forward.

It’s a long post, but well worth it! Here's what he had to say:

Marcus' Professional Background

After graduating from Wesleyan University, Marcus worked as a senior research manager at The Corporate Executive Board. While he enjoyed working in the private sector, Marcus felt like he was missing something. It turns out that “something” was a discussion of the social and environmental impacts of business – a realization that led him to enroll in UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

While at Haas, Marcus interned at Net Impact, an experience that was crucial in deepening his understanding of the field of CSR. Throughout his internship Marcus conducted numerous informational interviews with other CSR professionals, who confirmed for him that no two CSR jobs are the same (a key takeaway for anyone looking to find their own CSR job!).

After completing his MBA, Marcus accepted another internship at Gap, Inc. which later turned into a full-time job. His role there focused on strategic planning and communications for the company’s CSR department. In this position he was able to observe how the many different aspects of Gap's CSR program – from ethical sourcing to environmental affairs to the Foundation – all reinforced Gap's key business goals.

In July 2008, Marcus left Gap, Inc. to become director of corporate citizenship for the environment at McKesson. As we’ll hear throughout my conversation with Marcus, this new role challenges him to be entrepreneurial, think strategically, build empowered partnerships, and act as a constant champion for corporate social responsibility.

Corporate Citizenship at McKesson

Headquartered in San Francisco, McKesson is a 176 year-old company that employs 32,000 people and last year had revenues of $106B. As a business-to-business company, McKesson’s two main divisions – distribution services and health care IT solutions – serve business customers like Wal-Mart, Target, and 70% of the nation’s hospitals. While many consumers may not be familiar with the McKesson name, it’s safe to say that we’ve all used or been in contact with McKesson’s products and services at some point in time.

Recently McKesson has experienced very rapid growth, which has mainly been fueled by acquisition; in fact, the company is actually made up of 40+ independent business units, each with its own degree of autonomy. This has interesting implications for McKesson’s corporate citizenship program because, at the corporate level, Marcus and the rest of the team are trying to create company-wide CSR standards. Yet when each business unit operates independently, it can be tough to create a cohesive program.

McKesson's Corporate Citizenship Program takes many different forms. In his role, Marcus reports to the vice president of corporate citizenship, who is also the president of the McKesson Foundation. He splits his time in a few different ways:

• Managing the Environmental Councils: While Marcus directs enterprise-wide environmental strategy for McKesson, he also manages a system to empower different business units and facilities to get involved through the development of environmental councils. Right now there are 17 councils throughout the McKesson network, each staffed by employee volunteers (between 3 and 30 people) who look for location-specific projects to reduce the company’s impact.
• Producing the Corporate Citizenship Report: If you haven’t checked out McKesson’s CSR report, I highly recommend it. While Marcus is the first to admit that McKesson is still wrapping its arms around its environmental impact, I was very impressed by the report and its ability to tell the human side of McKesson’s story.
• Engaging with Internal and External Stakeholders: Whether it’s partnering with vendors, responding to inquiries from the socially responsible investment community, or working with internal groups to champion McKesson’s corporate citizenship program, Marcus spends a lot of time in stakeholder relations. Interestingly, one of the company’s biggest stakeholder communities is real estate – since 50% of McKesson’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from its physical buildings, Marcus sees a huge opportunity to work with McKesson’s real estate constituents to improve the company’s environmental performance.

Culture and CSR Success

One of the questions I often ask CSR professionals is “What is it about your company’s culture that makes your CSR program successful?” There’s clearly a unique recipe for CSR success at each company, and my sense is that culture has a lot to do with it.

Marcus says McKesson's corporate citizenship is a work in progress, and that the company is still trying to get a full picture of its impact. That said, he believes that the company’s culture and commitment to corporate citizenship enables his team to better visualize what the company’s success will look like down the road.

One of the main examples of McKesson’s culture is what is known as the ICARE Shared Principles. These principles are meant to set the tone for all employee behavior and decisions. Yet according to Marcus, they are not just some funny corporate mantra that no one cares really about; instead these principles are truly internalized by employees as a set of values that everyone should follow.

Take this and combine it with a CEO who believes in the importance of corporate citizenship and environmental sustainability, and you have a company that clearly values the right things.

Still, any CSR director knows that changing mindsets and behavior is a slow process. At McKesson, Marcus spends a lot of time educating employees that corporate citizenship goes beyond employee volunteerism and philanthropy.

“It’s an evolution,” Marcus said, “but at least there’s an appreciation for what we do.”

Reporting on Impact

Having just finished a post on The Basics of CSR Reporting, I was eager to get Marcus’ thoughts on how the Global Reporting Initiative’s guidelines factored into McKesson’s reporting strategy. Given that he had written reports at Gap, Inc. and is now doing the same for McKesson, Marcus had some interesting insights.

In general, he felt that using the GRI was a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the GRI clearly validates any company’s reporting efforts while also pushing it to improve its measurement process every year. Still, Marcus struggled with the idea of trying to fit McKesson’s data collection and reporting process into the rigid GRI categories, stressing that the company does not yet have a lot of the tools in place to measure what the GRI wants (not to mention the fact that some of what the GRI asks for isn't even relevant to McKesson's business).

Beyond the GRI, reporting at McKesson is still a challenge, Marcus said, because as a B2B company it’s not really used to disclosing this kind of information to various audiences (versus a company like Gap where today many end-consumers demand these details).

Not only is it difficult to collect data, then, but the company has to be comfortable with the story that the data tells – a concept that internal groups like marketing and legal might not always applaud. Thus, “reporting is an iterative process” at McKesson – and everywhere else I’m sure!

CSR Going Forward

Our interview concluded with a few final questions about the future of CSR at McKesson and in general. For Marcus, the key to McKesson's success is leveraging the enthusiasm and interest of its employees who clearly want to be involved in these initiatives. He wondered, “How do we connect them, get them educated and involved?”

He also said it’s time for the company to “start putting a stake in the ground” and set goals for measuring and reducing its environmental impacts. That is, rather than always looking backwards to tell stories and report results, Marcus wants the company’s focus to shift toward being pro-active about where McKesson will head in years to come.

As for the field overall, Marcus believes CSR is only going to grow in importance as more companies see the value of getting involved (and feel pressure from their stakeholders).

The big question, however, is how well – and how quickly – companies will realize that CSR goes beyond public relations and becomes instead about a deeper connection with, and impact in, communities worldwide.

Thanks, Marcus, for sharing your thoughts and opinions with The Changebase, and good luck at McKesson!

A Tale of Two (Green?) Cities

We’ve all heard the saying, “You are what you eat.”

When it comes to green living, could we stretch that and say, “You are where you live?”

That is to say, is where you live a determinant of how you live?

Plenty of research and evidence exists to confirm that yes, the city you live in has a big impact on your lifestyle, health, and happiness.

And intuitively, this makes sense: the city or town you live in will play a big role in how well you can access nature and the outdoors, locally-produced food, public transportation, and recycling programs. All of these ideas, to me, make up a green, or more sustainable city - but if you're curious about other initiatives that make a city green, this is a good start.

With the rise in interest and action around "living green," I've noticed an uptick in people who care about the relationship between location and lifestyle. In fact, it seems like every week a new ranking of the greenest U.S. cities is published - just doing a search for “green city rankings” yielded a few of the following lists:

• Environmental Leader
• Popular Science
• SustainLane

So clearly lots of people are thinking about this idea. Additionally, two recent examples do a good job illustrating this connection between location and lifestyle.

The first one comes from a conversation I had with Dave Pedersen, a new Twitter friend of mine who works as supply chain director at Resources Global Professionals (follow Dave on Twitter). It turns out that in addition to his day job, Dave is a member of the Hermosa Beach Green Task Force. Hermosa Beach is a pretty small town in Southern California, with about 19,000 residents. With its proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the abundance of outdoor sports opportunities like surfing, Hermosa Beach is a perfect example of a town where location really does dictate lifestyle.

Recently, the Hermosa Beach City Council realized that something needed to be done about how climate change was affecting its local community. That “something” was creating a Green Task Force to advise City Council members on steps the city needs to take in order to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The Task Force has four main areas of focus:

• Waste reduction, re-use and recycling
• Sustainable private and public transportation
• Water use reduction and storm water management
• Green building including energy and related matters.

According to Dave, the big mandate given to the Task Force from the City Council is first to develop a plan to reduce emissions through the introduction of initiatives like better commuting options, additional biking/walking paths, and improved community recycling and waste reduction programs.

While this is obviously a crucial first step, Dave told me that an underlying, yet equally important goal is to engage Hermosa Beach residents in these efforts by reducing apathy and driving home that climate change is something that affects everyone (once again, the omnipresent “stakeholder engagement” issue rears its little head!).

So how are they doing this? It turns out that Hermosa Beach has signed on to something called the Cool Cities Initiative, a program created by the Sierra Club to help cities to reduce their carbon footprint through specific, achievable milestones. Probably my favorite feature of this site is that you can actually check out Hermosa Beach’s progress on these milestones – and your own city too!

Hermosa Beach is a pretty inspiring example of how a city can proactively engage its residents in its sustainability efforts. And I’m sure that there are plenty of other cities across the U.S. that are involved in similarly innovative and action-oriented programs.

Yet I have to wonder what’s going on in cities throughout the U.S. that perhaps aren’t as forward-thinking?

What role are city councils in “middle America” playing to help shape the way their residents live sustainably? A recent example comes from a trip I took to visit family in a small town about 40 miles outside of Houston, TX.

I haven’t spent much time in Texas, but even after only a weekend it was clear that strip malls, freeways, fast food, and urban sprawl dominated the scene. Even simply casual observers could have spotted the differences between this Texas suburb and a place like Hermosa Beach.

To make sure that I wasn't making any unfair judgments, I asked my relatives about how their town encouraged certain green behaviors like recycling and water conservation. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like the local city government is doing much of anything to incent or motivate its residents to participate in these types of green behaviors.

Interestingly, on my way to the airport at the end of the weekend, the normally traffic-packed freeways were empty. I wondered aloud where everyone was, and my family said “Church”. This got me thinking: when it comes to green cities, maybe the local city government isn't the only institution that should be encouraging and incenting these behavior changes.

Certainly the City Council in Hermosa Beach is the driving force there, but for other small towns in the U.S., perhaps there are other players who could drive change in their communities. Imagine if your local church, a huge stakeholder in many American towns, started to educate your community on the how’s and why’s of living a green life?

Knowing what we know about the realities of climate change, our overarching goal should be to create radical, sustainable change. It seems to me that this can only come when a collection of organizations – city councils, nonprofits, businesses, and religious institutions – come together to bring the green message to the masses. So maybe it's city councils in one town, churches in another town, and NGO's in another.

At the end of the day, does it matter where the message comes from - as long as it's heard?

What has been your experience in your city or town - are your local community organizations talking about climate change and living green? Whose message has been most influential in getting you to think and act sustainably? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Getting Our Hands Dirty

When I was a freshman in college, I rallied a group of new friends from my dorm to go volunteer one afternoon. It was early in the school year, and I wanted to prove to my hall-mates that community service was a fun, easy, low-impact sort of way to give back and feel good. Minimal commitment, quick pay-off, done-in-a-day – a perfect fit for college students!

The community service day was actually organized by my school, so once each of us signed up we were sent to work on different projects throughout the area. In hindsight, I don’t remember what project I worked on that day. But I do remember what one of my friends did. Assigned to clean up a children’s playground in a rough section of town, my friend was picking up trash when he felt something sharp prick his hand. It was a used hypodermic needle.

When I heard this news, I remember feeling as though my heart had stopped. Suddenly, this was no longer just a day of helping out “someone else’s” community.

It was a day of living in someone else’s reality.

Not to worry: everything worked out ok with my friend. But it’s a story worth telling for a few big reasons.

Often for me (and maybe for you, too?), wanting to help others means doing things that can sometimes feel uncomfortable, messy, scary, or overwhelming. After all, in order to really understand a problem (let alone figure out how to solve it), we have to get our hands dirty. And that can mean pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zones and into new, uncharted, and complicated territory.

Think about volunteering at a soup kitchen. I’ve gone to Glide Church in San Francisco a number of times to help out – and it’s an incredibly heart-warming and satisfying experience. Yet, I’d be lying if I said that working alongside with and for the homeless people eating at the kitchen didn’t also fill me with profound feelings of sadness, empathy, and maybe even a little discomfort. In just a few hours, the sobering reality of their situation had set in – and it’s a feeling I haven’t ever forgotten.

This is what I call being “checked in,” and I’d hazard a guess that truly effective changemakers must be really good at this. Why? In order to do our jobs – to make sure that our nonprofits, social enterprises, schools, hospitals and other community organizations are the best at what they do – we must understand what life looks like on the ground. We must pick up the rock in the dirt and look underneath.

But we can’t just stop there.

If we really want to get at the root of the problems we’re trying to solve, we have to understand the entire ecosystem that lives under that rock. And that can be a pretty messy job.

Another example: I’ve been given the opportunity to travel abroad for two weeks this winter with one of my MBA classes. The trip is focused on sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiatives and challenges currently being tackled in Brazil. On paper, it sounds like a perfect opportunity – a chance to pick up that rock and see with my own eyes just what’s going on underneath.

But it’s a little scary too. I’ve never been to Brazil, I don’t know what to expect. And this isn’t a tourist trip; this is a chance to be on the ground, to travel to the favelas, and learn about what life in Brazil looks like through the eyes of the Brazilian people. On the one hand, I’m thrilled by the opportunity. On the other hand, I’m definitely pushing the outer limits of my comfort zone, beyond any point I’ve been to before. 

A Favela, or Slum, in Sao Paolo, Brazil (Photo courtesy of Ciaran O'Neill, http://bit.ly/aTrbXu)

When I start to get overwhelmed, I try to think about my friend back in college. Yes, that was a frightening moment, one that I am sorry he had to go through. But it was also an experience that neither he nor I will probably ever forget. Why? Because it was real. It solidified the purpose of our day in the park, and it gave us a tangible reference point for going forward.

Each of us, in our quests to bring change to our communities, reaches the point at which it’s time to dig deep. Yes, this can mean getting our hands dirty, facing uncomfortable realities, and maybe even doing something that scares us.

But isn’t that what makes our work worth it?

Don't Be Late. Period.

Recently, at The Feast conference, I was introduced to an organization called Sustainable Health Enterprises (aka: SHE). Elizabeth Scharpf, founder of SHE, was on-hand at the event to share with us how her organization uses market-based approaches to solve a seriously pressing problem.

But first: take a minute to think about what your life would look like in a developing country. For my part, it’s amazing how much I take for granted – whether it’s reliable electricity, supermarkets filled with fresh produce, a stable political system, or even just a roof over my head. In fact, I go through every day taking advantage of many basic necessities that others in the developing world would consider luxuries.

And I know I’m not alone in this. How many times have you stopped to wonder what your life would look like without internet access, for instance? Or, if you’re a woman, when was the last time you thought to yourself, what would I do if I didn’t have a sanitary pad or tampon to use?

Ok, yes, the topic can make some people feel squeamish, but in actuality this basic biological process has huge consequences for women and girls in the developing world: every 28 days their lives are completely disrupted by their menstrual cycles. This isn’t just a minor inconvenience we’re talking about – rather, SHE estimates that on average women in developing nations lose a total of 5 years of productivity over their lifetimes because they have their periods. Without sanitary protection, young girls can’t go to school and women can’t go to work, which ultimately means the entire community suffers.

Interestingly, Elizabeth and her team at SHE have developed a unique solution in which everyone wins. Take a look:

SHE's initial model involves funding women-owned business in Rwanda with enough capital to purchase banana trees (a bio-waste that farmers normally pay to have removed from their property). These women manufacture pads out of the fiber from these trees, and then sell the finished pads at reduced cost to other women in their community. Here’s the kicker: this business not only provides a clever solution to a basic problem, but it provides much-needed employment to other women. Initial revenues are first paid back to SHE, with any remainder going to build equity in the company. Once SHE starts recouping its initial funding, it’s able to lend it out again to other women. And the virtuous cycle continues.

Elizabeth is a true social entrepreneur whose venture produces a win-win for everyone involved. Don’t you just love these kinds of stories? If you want to learn more about SHE and support their work with a donation of $28, visit their website. Or, you can check out their blog to follow their progress. But hurry: their goal is to raise an initial $28,000 to fund their first start-up in Rwanda. They only need $10,000 more and the deadline is October 28^th! Can you help them? As the video says, “Don’t be late. Period.”