The Clean and Green Club

It’s time for evolved entrepreneurs, visionary creators, and change makers to rewrite the rules of business for the 21st century.”

Imagine a whole new way for your venture to align purpose and profits, merging head and heart (and maybe even a bit of your inner child).

This is a counterintuitive blueprint to create a “baked-in” impact across your entire company by delivering an exceptional customer experience, creating a culture of fully engaged team alignment, and actually driving your bottom line!

This may turn out to be a more personal review than my usual—because I’ve been pretty much living a lot of the principles Leach espouses, for decades, and because it’s been many years since I’ve reviewed an inspirational self-help book in this space. I think the last one, many years ago, was Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer’s amazing The Success Principles.

Yes, we arrived in the same place. However, our paths to this epiphany—our experiences and our perspectives—are very different. Leach is a former athlete who faced unimaginable physical problems, including a near-death illness. He had undiagnosed learning disabilities and was slow to discover the power of reading. He’s a Montana native raised in a rural area, and at publication time, he was 35. And he writes to a generation younger than his own; much of the book uses language that resonates with teens and 20-somethings. And he’s someone who—despite his decision to break away from them—seems to expect “haters” who will dump on him for taking the road less taken, and who call him irresponsible for bypassing the traditional 9-to-5. He seems to encounter them constantly.

By contrast, I’m a whole generation older, at 58. Though I’ve lived in the country for 17 years, and in a small college town for the previous 17, I was raised in apartment buildings in the Bronx (a crowded part of crowded New York City). I was an avid reader who got through a tough childhood with the help of books. And I never found a team sport I wanted to play. When forced to play baseball, I was picked last or almost last, and exiled to the outfield where my low abilities wouldn’t do much damage.

I gave up trying to conform to other people’s expectations in my thought patterns by the time I was 13. I do conform on some of the things that don’t really matter, like what I wear and how I keep my hair—but I think the biggest strength I bring is my ability to think differently, to see both the forest and the trees, to see opportunities for my clients that arise out of completely different situations or industries.

And I’ve found that the more I’m in integrity with my life and my message, the more people respect what I’ve done already, what I’m doing, and what I hope to do: use the profit power of business to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. (Is that audacious enough for you, Michael Leach?)

Where we have common ground is in our dedication to preserving and improving the environment, growing out of our mutual love of nature. In our desire to think bigger and act bigger so we can have real impact on the world (a lesson it took me much longer to figure out than it did Michael). And in our adoption of the principles he lays out. To name a few:

Embrace Multiple Passions/Use the “Slash” Model
Michael’s book (his second) could be categorized as self-help/inspiration/memoir. He uses his own experience as a teaching tool throughout the book, as well as case studies from the kids he’s coached, the people he’s encountered on his speaking tours, or those he guided through the wilderness.

Michael doesn’t fit neatly into little boxes. He uses lots of slashes to join together his different parts into a “renaissance soul” (a term coined by my late friend Margaret Lobenstine to describe a Ben Franklin/Da Vinci/Oprah/Buckminster Fuller/Thomas Jefferson type who explores numerous interests and passions. He describes his own set of slashes (ranger/naturalist, fishing and wildlife guide, freelance writer, basketball coach, and founder of a nonprofit) several different ways in the book, and even breaks down the nonprofit role into “executive director/programming coordinator/chief fund-raising coordinator” (p. 178).

My set might look like this: speaker/writer/consultant/practical visionary/social change activist/community organizer/marketer. Or I could apply a completely different set of labels (parent/vegetarian foodie/traveler/student of cultures—to name a small slice of the possibilities) that would be just as accurate. But for me, it all boils down to the core mission: I help people understand that doing the right thing is an opportunity, not a sacrifice—and I model the possibility of environmentally and socially conscious life and work.

For both of us, all of these slices of ourselves are based in passion—in “permapassion,” to use a term called by Leach’s friend Scottie B. Black. I love this word’s linguistic combination of permaculture and passion. And those passions have to go beyond pure hedonism. Yes, take joy in what you do. And at the same time, keep sight of your higher purpose; channel your energies toward the passions that can change the world.

“If Your Self-Talk Isn’t Helpful, Change It” (p. 103)
While it certainly isn’t the whole story, the idea popularized in the book/movie, The Secret, that our thoughts control our destinies has some truth. If you hit yourself over the head with all the reasons you can’t do a thing, you’re not likely to get it done. But if you focus on the reasons you can accomplish what you want to, those paths have a way of opening. And if you dream those big, audacious dreams, you have a responsibility not to sabotage yourself.

Work like an Onion (p. 177), and work yourself out from the your soul to the wider community.
I might flip this one inside-out. Yes, work from the inside out, but also from the outside in. Keep going deeper and deeper until you find the inner truth.

See Happiness not as Entitlement but as Opportunity (pp. 241-242)
You can start creating happiness in others—and in yourself—by doing little good deeds, as simple as smiling or holding a door open. As you learn to think and act bigger, more exciting changes will arise.

Leach focuses a lot on adversity creating resilience. And he’s experienced a lot of adversity. That’s one path; I’ve found plenty of other ways to build resilience. Again, there are many paths.

Most of the books I’ve been reviewing the last several years have been published relatively recently, often within three years. With a 2008 copyright, this book is outside of that pattern. And while there are pieces of it that are a bit dated—for instance, evaluating and praising BP’s actions on behalf of the environment pre-Deepwater, and of course the dramatic shifts in the fossil fuel climate due to new (and very invasive/destructive) technology and the concurrent shifts in the economy following the recession.

Yet about 90 percent of this book is still intensely relevant, and the orientation toward holistic approaches and working together from different sectors on common goals (e.g., corporate and NGOs or corporate and major government regulators) yields terrific examples and remarkable insights. I like the way it pays attention to both results and process, and demonstrates repeatedly that inclusivity —when combined with holistic thinking and powerful visioning—creates better, longer-lasting, more future-focused results. In other words, it’s not about being less bad, but about rethinking an entire way of doing things to create a greater good in the first place; they see the solution as based in innovation, not coercion—something Buckminster Fuller, who suggested that we humans learn to live on our energy income (i.e., renewables) rather than energy capital (fossil fuels), would agree with (p. 8). By working backward from the world we want to achieve, rather than patching the failures of today’s world, we can leapfrog the incremental small gains and totally rethink and reshape the business world, and heal the planet. So give it a whirl, even if you think 2007 data is too old.

Some of what you’ll learn will be about the changes brought about by the 20th century industrial model—like the shocking statistics that the number of cars in the world leapt from 50 million in 1950 to 800 million less than 60 years later (six times the growth in population), or that (as of 2007) 90 percent of all raw materials ended up as waste (p. 16).

But that second statistic is cause for hope, because it opens up the possibility to use resources far more effectively. If we can bring that 90 percent down to, say, 10 percent, that means we need far less mining, fewer landfills, less energy and water in manufacturing, use, and disposal, and many other benefits.

You’ll also learn powerful stories about individuals who led their organizations not just to a new understanding of how business can profit while serving a higher social and environmental good, but to new products and services—as well as new corporate structures and partnerships (with competitors, trade associations, NGOs/nonprofits, and government agencies), new tools for inclusive decision making and product creation, and new ways of doing business—based in that understanding. If you’ve followed what I’ve written about practical visionaries like Amory Lovins and Dean Cycon (both cited) over the years, or what I’ve written about partnership success strategies, it will not come as news.

Let’s make that hope much more concrete, by sharing just a few of the numerous case studies in the book:

• After a bunch of folks from Xerox went on a guided wilderness retreat, they saw a Xerox copier rusting in a landfill. This caused an epiphany: they could design copiers that sent nothing to the landfill. Putting this into action meant addressing such issues as product lifecycle and energized the group to reinvent copier technology. While the defunct copier they saw had more than 2000 parts and was not easily disassembled, the Lakes Project model this team developed had just 200 parts and came apart easily for reuse and recycling, and kept 122,000,000 pounds of material out of landfills in a single year (pp. 288-289).
• BMW, which had been developing plans to collect and recycle worn-out cars, expanded to create a consortium of all car manufacturers in the European Union, developed practical methods to design cars for eventual disassembly and reuse, and then went to the EU government as a united front, with workable plans for the makers to take end-of-life responsibility for their products. The EU adopted their recommendations, which avoided certain regulations the manufacturers felt were unrealistic or too restrictive while accomplishing the agreement to collect and recycle with essentially no pushback from industry—because industry designed the program (pp. 230-232, 248). 
• Alcoa piloted a massive water reuse project in one plant, and saw an 85 percent reduction in water consumption (p. 182).
• Meanwhile, Coca-Cola partnered with the global environmental group WWF to examine its total water footprint—including, for instance, the huge amount of water needed to grow its sugarcane. (It turns out that other beverages, including coffee and milk, also have enormous water footprints, once we factor in inputs like the amount a cow drinks.) This initiative got urban corporate executives, environmentalists, residents of environmentally sensitive areas, bottlers, and farmers talking to each other in new ways. (pp. 77-95; the case study doesn’t really address the results of the initiative, which was pretty new at the time).

Senge et al tell us it’s crucial to dream big, and to work from a primarily positive vision—that falling a few points short of a massive, world-changing goal is a much greater success than meeting a goal that’s too easy and doesn’t build change (pp. 293, 325-326).

A key point is that innovations, and movements, typically don’t originate at the centers of organizational power—there are exceptions, of course—but at the periphery, with production workers, managers of small units, etc. (p. 364), developing “creative tension” (pp. 294-296). Often, meaningful change happens when one employee champions the cause and makes it happen. Thus, the book features multiple Toolkit sections, which provide an illustrated overview of specific tools that help organizations grapple with these issues—including companies unaccustomed to giving line workers or unit managers a meaningful say in policy. One example is the five pages about understanding when participants are taking on any of four different roles in a meeting (pp. 276-280).

The authors include a zinger at the very end that could be its own book: a brief section (pp. 374-377) on the need to take these group process skills out beyond the human experience, and to not just take the needs of other species into account, but to design processes that include non-human partners. Reading about Amory Lovins’ active collaboration with apes who had learned to communicate with humans, co-designing an ape-friendly living environment, made me jump out of my chair and yell “Wow!”

But let’s put this in perspective; the business use of community is a small fraction of the whole. While many companies have attempted to build communities among their product users, and a fair number have succeeded wildly, from Apple to Harley-Davidson, true community is not about creating shared shopping experiences. It’s about people helping their neighbors, breaking down barriers, caring.

I was particularly moved by Born’s story of first living in a neighborhood where nobody interacted, then discovering what it was like to live in a neighborhood that had created a vibrant and genuine community, to moving back to another hollow neighborhood and taking the initiative to build that sense of community. It turned out to be a lot easier than you might think, and the results were awesome. So another lesson to take away here is that each of us has the power to build community where we live, where we work, and where we interact with others. We don’t have to wait for someone else to do it.

But why make the effort? Because “collective altruism” has positive benefits for those who participate. People feel motivated and rewarded in doing good things for others, and it’s an extra bonus that they experience direct benefits too. Thus, we see communities built around bringing food to an ill neighbor or rebuilding a fire-damaged building.

In other words, you might say, altruism is in our self-interest.

Born identifies three different types of community: shallow, fear-based, and deep (not so different from the three kinds of buyers for green products and services that I discuss in my “Making Green Sexy” talks). Of course, his focus is on achieving deep community. He recognizes that communities may be geographic, but also may be focused on common interests. Some of the others are less-than-healthy, such as fear-based communities organized around keeping out those seen as different. He responds with good suggestions about how to transcend evil by working to do good together. And he points out that this actually goes back at least as far as Charles Darwin, who in his later years modified his ideas about survival of the fittest to determine that cooperative communities of organisms (animal, plant, even bacterial) are “fit” and appropriate in his worldview. Born even uses the phrase, “survival of the kindest.”

Within the framework of deep community, Born highlights five different purposes of successful communities (with a chapter on each)—as:

1. Identity
2. Place
3. Spiritual
4. Intentional
5. Natural living system

He reminds us that each of us have a role to play, as communities develop. He recommends starting any meeting by letting people answer this question: “Why is it important that I am here today?” And one of the things I love is his axiom that community is not about engaging with people who are like us, but with those who are engaged by the same things that engage us.

But even as he cites a successful example of a teen who created deep community via Facebook, he regards nongeographic communities (and particularly online communities) with a certain wary skepticism. And that’s one of the places where I disagree with him. Over and over again, I’ve seen deep communities from online, and I’ve also seen the ability of an online community to provide very firm support to offline communities. Two examples of the latter: the two online discussion groups that gave strength to a community organizing campaign I founded, and the Facebook group serving members of my high school class year—which not only helped us organize our 40th reunion but keeps us actively in touch between events, providing some lubrication to the very rusty in-person relationships.