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CSOs: What Would Kant do?
Last year, I heard James Woolsey said something that has been a useful guide to my behavior in my role as CSO. He said (paraphrasing) that what needs to be done is so important that we can't demand the luxury of people having the motivation we...
A Quarter in the Life of a CSO
Speaking to student groups is absolutely one of the greatest parts of my job. The students are always so inspiring, often quite challenging, and sometimes the source of great ideas. But the most common question they ask is really quite mundane: "...
Contextual Stakeholder Engagement
This past Thursday, I was privileged to attend the Investor Summit on Climate Risk and Energy Solutions put on by Ceres at the U.N. It was well worth the trip and even the wind-blown soaking we got waiting to gain entry. (No, my job is not...
The Sustainability-Innovation Nexus
I so wanted the plural of "nexus" to be "nexes". But it turns out it's either "nexuses", which is awkward, or "nexus", which is ambiguous. I can't bring myself to use the former, so let me disambiguate the latter - I want to talk about more than one...
The Evolution of the My Job
It used to be whenever a group of sustainability professionals got together, we'd debate for a few minutes about whether our job was to work ourselves out of a job. Now, it's a question I get asked whenever I'm interviewed about my role. ...
Signs of Change - In the Eyes of Another
The risk of looking for positive signs of change is that you might see them where they don’t exist. That's why I was tickled pink at this episode a few weeks ago. I'd been invited to have dinner with a local chapter of NetImpact. I almost always...
Signs of Change Crossing the Pond
One of the lessons I'm learning about driving sustainability strategy is that everything takes longer than I hoped, or expected, or wanted - establishing baselines and targets, developing and (especially) getting buy-in to new...
25 Children's Impressions of Sustainability: Simply a Matter of Right & Wrong
One theme that recurred frequently among the children's drawings in our EcoKids contest was that of the dichotomy: before/after, good/bad, right/wrong, healthy/sick, green/gray, now/then, do/don't, clean/dirty, yes/no etc. None was more...
Reporting on Sustainability Reporting: Lessons for Creating Yours
I'm very happy to report that this past week, we published the 2010 EMC Sustainability Report. It's good... It was hard... ...
Sustainability & IT at EMC World : Small Signs Series
I just got back from EMC World - it was awesome and left me more psyched than ever about EMC's strategy. I was particularly inspired by the ways in which Big Data is "transforming the world", in the words of Pat Gelsinger, President of EMC...
Why Incrementalism Matters: Small Signs Series
Should we be "wasting" our time on incremental improvements in environmental and social behavior when the problems we're facing are so gargantuan in scope? This is a valid - and important - debate to have. It's one I have nearly every day. It's...
EcoSmiles: Learning Sustainability From Kids
If sustainability is about creating shared value for our stakeholders and conducting business in a manner that promotes well-being, then doing something that makes people smile has got to count, don't you think? And I think we’re onto something....
