Just Don’t Call It Change

I attended a very interesting forum yesterday. The topic was what they termed the “triple bottom line” of sustainability: Environmental, Economic and Social. The members of the panel were from varied industries and sizes of companies and all had unique stories and perspectives on how they have approached sustainability in a way that truly benefits everyone. It was thought-provoking and I intend to write some more about it in a different post.

However, a comment that one of the panelists made leapt out at me. In telling how some of the changes that the company had made and continues to make to enhance their sustainability, they had found that couching the efforts as improvement instead of change had a significant impact on the feelings that other team members had about the efforts and their buy-in.

As she said at the time, “No one wants to change, but who doesn’t want to improve?

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