Gwen Ruta | December 30, 2009
Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Kathrin Winkler, chief sustainability officer at EMC Corporation. EMC had participated in EDF's Climate Corps last summer and I wanted to get Kathrin's candid take on how the 10-week internship program – designed to help companies find and implement energy savings – had worked for EMC. We quickly agreed that environmental innovation and leadership is all about organizational change. Whether from the inside, like Kathrin at EMC, or the outside, like EDF's partnerships, the key to success is building the environment into the core values of the company. By that, I don't mean the words that are on the corporate website but the everyday motivations that really make an organization – and the people in it – tick.
Is it all about the bottom line? Then environmental costs and opportunities need to be melded into financial planning instruments. If it's a focus on innovation and product design, then what tools and information can help designers create environmental value? Perhaps it's a focus on process efficiency. If so, environmental metrics might be the key.
Kathrin has given this quite a bit of thought, and has even blogged about. She asks, "But how the heck do you instill environmental considerations into every operation of the company?" and later answers, "It requires a culture change, and that's always the hardest thing to do." Take a look at some of the things that EMC is doing to create that culture change, and ask yourself how it's happening at your organization.
But be prepared to take a leap, because once you tap into the heartbeat of your organization, things can move fast. Kathrin says she doesn't even know everything that's going on at EMC, but asks, "How cool is it that it's happening organically?"