4 Essential Activities for Getting Buy-In on your Sustainability Strategy
Getting buy-in for your sustainability strategy is more than just a nice-to-have—it’s essential for making a real impact at your company. Whether you’re focusing on reducing emissions, improving energy efficiency, or adopting greener business practices, having the support of your key stakeholders is what will help turn your vision into reality. Without that collective support, even the best sustainability initiatives can struggle to get off the ground.
Here, I offer 4 essential activities for how to get buy in for you sustainability strategy, covering:
🍃 Showcasing Rejected Strategies
🍃 Linking Across the Organisation to Demonstrate a Holistic Approach
🍃 Getting Others Involves
🍃 Communicate Like It’s Going Out of Style
Showcase the Strategies You Have Rejected
Talk about the ‘why we’re not going to do X’ can help explain the ’why we are going to do Y’. This approach, explaining why alternative strategies are not recommended / selected path can help others better understand why you have selected the strategy you have.
At the same time, presenting alternatives helps key stakeholders better understand your recommended approach and opens up the floor for questions and clarification. And when questions start to get asked, something strange happens, people engage their brain and reason, key stakeholders internalise your course of action / strategy, and they mentally start to commit. So creating time for questions is good thing - it helps with buy-in.
Doing you homework, and presenting dismissed strategies can be especially effective in building confidence and consensus if the strategy you are presenting will have a significant, order of magnitude change, on your company. And then finally, when you have confidence and commitment for your recommended strategy there is no faster way to secure action than to drop in what you think your competitor is doing in this space!
2. Link Your Strategy to What’s Above
Highlight how your strategy links to your companies goals and ambitions, or its purpose and mission. This also helps people understand the logic behind your choices, and ensures consistency in ‘messaging’ from the company. Focus on what the company will gain if your objectives are achieved. Speak to each of the stakeholders in the room, so to speak, and tailor the messaging and benefits for each stakeholder, what will they gain, what their teams of function or department will gain, speaking to alignment in agendas and view points.
3. Get Others Involved
Strategy shouldn’t be done alone in a room, thinking all by yourself. As an individual we all have cognitive biases and naturally rely on our own heuristics. This narrows our lenses and will leave your strategy, and therefore the reception of it, open to attack and push back. By getting other involved and soft-testing ideas through coffee station conversations you’ll get a better understanding of how any strategic change is going to impact those key stakeholders. Involving the right people, at the right time can, not only offer insights that you may not have but can also help get buy-in at your company. Companies are social systems too.
After you’ve got some initial feedback you want to adjust your strategy, or alternatively formulate a plan on how to get sticky stakeholders on board. Iterate your strategy. Obliterate your blockers.
4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Once you’ve got commitment and consensus, it’s time to communicate, communicate, communicate. Let people in your organization know about what lies ahead.
The strongest form of communication for most people is usually face to face, such as through Town-Halls or ‘walking the floor’. This gives co-workers time to digest what’s happening and ask questions. Doing this is way better than e-mails and internal bulletins, in which the tone or urgency of your new strategy can be lost, or worse buried in a beleaguered mailbox amongst everything else.
I’d recommend working with your internal communication team to devise and roll-out a launch approach, particularly if your new strategy is a huge change from current practice. And, consider using multiple forms of communication, to cater to the range of employees. Give it time and remember to regularly re-iterate to make sure the message lands.
Conclusion
In developing a sustainability strategy, taking a structured, inclusive, and transparent approach is essential for building trust, commitment, and long-term buy-in from stakeholders. The collaborative process fosters a sense of ownership, smoothing the way for broader acceptance. And, a methodical approach not only helps the strategy gain traction, but also reinforces its value and urgency across all levels, paving the way for sustainable change.
