FMYI | For My Innovation

As I prepare for my panel at Fortune Brainstorm: GREEN next week, sustainability employee engagement has been on my mind. What is it and what does it have to do with karaoke? First off, I should say that I’m a terrible karaoke singer. Get me behind a mic and I’m dreadful. So bad in fact, that after just two hours of off-key warbling in a karaoke lounge, my voice will be shot for a week. Fortunately, I can say that I’m a sustainability employee engagement pioneer, having been involved as a change agent for 12 years both as part of a sustainability action team, and as someone who shaped employee engagement strategy at Nike.

Simply put, sustainability employee engagement is empowering your internal stakeholders to create triple bottom line value. As we all know, there’s been a groundswell of interest and commitment to sustainability in the workplace building over the past ten years. But frequently, the percentage of employees within an organization engaged in applying sustainability to day to day responsibilities is small, confined to corporate responsibility/sustainability full time staff, and perhaps a few key employees involved with some aspect of compliance with climate change, recycling, labor practices, etc. Recently, a study showed that 86% of employees aren’t engaged by companies’ sustainability programs. Sustainability employee engagement is all about getting everyone involved with taking daily actions toward creating triple bottom line results. There’s a strong business case for doing it.

Which brings us back to karaoke. How in the world are the two concepts similar? Let us count the ways — allow me to present you with the five keys to successful sustainability employee engagement and bring down the house karaoke:

1. Create an inspiring vision for success.

Sustainability employee engagement: Create a vision of the ideal sustainable future for your organization so everyone has something to shoot for — and be sure to involve a broad cross section of employees to development the vision. The beauty of this kind of exercise is you’ll learn so much about your brand, what employees believe your organization stands for, and you’ll identify areas for triple bottom line growth. The Natural Step offers a framework for creating a vision.

Karaoke: Who are you ultimately trying to emulate? Beyoncé? Tim McGraw? Lin Yu Chun? Whoever you decide on, study the entire package and go for it. (Note: if you’ve developed your own unique singing style, dance moves, and lyrics, then you should be performing at concert venues instead of the karaoke lounge.)

2. Have a process.

Sustainability employee engagement: The New York Times Magazine recently had a feature on “Building a Better Teacher“ which focused in on not the subject matter knowledge needed to be an effective teacher, but the 49 classroom techniques required for getting students to focus and learn. Sustainability employee engagement is the same — you need to at least have a simple process for each team involved with engagement to do things like create ideas for improvement, put them into practice, measure the results, and spread them to other teams. Definitely check out the Northwest Earth Institute’s “Sustainable Systems at Work“ discussion course for an easy way to empower your teams to develop their process solutions.

Karaoke: It’s definitely about the entire performance, not just the singing. How will you grab the audience’s attention at the start? What hand gestures to use during the crescendo? Do you memorize the lyrics so you can look them in the eye during the big finale? Having the process nailed down will guarantee success. That and making sure everyone has enough drinks in their hands.

3. Build up your toolbox for scalability.

Sustainability employee engagement: It’s vital to have effective tools. Otherwise, the engagement won’t spread beyond the initial green teams. Having the right tools is the difference between isolated pockets of sustainability activity and generating widespread triple bottom line results across a broad cross section of employees. When I was involved with Nike’s Shambhala program in 1999, it was a wonderful series of offsites designed to catalyze sustainability employee engagement efforts across the company. 55 middle management folks created their own green teams spanning multiple regions and divisions. But what prevented the momentum to continue after the offsites ended and from spreading to more areas within Nike was the lack of a platform to nurture the innovation community, share best practices, manage projects, and track results. That’s why I started FMYI to build a tool to do just that for sustainability employee engagement and beyond. We have a template for engagement initiatives, and companies like Hyatt are using it to bring people together across the globe to achieve sustainability business integration. It’s wonderful to see FMYI’s passion for sustainability realized with all the sustainability-related initiatives using our platform.

Karaoke: Now, when it comes to karaoke, the tools may be different, but just as vital. Be sure to crank up the echo on your mic when singing to large crowds. And for maximum effect on your target audience, and to try out some new moves before a larger audience, book a private room.

4. Capture the results.

Sustainability employee engagement: Senior management is going to want to see results. Whether it’s metrics or success stories, make sure you’re capturing them along the way. This will help allocate more resources for engagement activities, attract new team members, and generate positive stories for sharing with external stakeholders. Above all, it’ll help you develop best practices for new projects. In an ideal world, each initiative would have its own living “Impact at Work“ guidebook like Net Impact’s.

Karaoke: This one is easy. While someone is up there signing, be sure to capture photos and videos to post on Facebook and Twitter. That way, their performances are immortal reminders of excellence for family and friends to admire for years to come.

5. Evolve constantly.

Sustainability employee engagement: There is no finish line. This is a process of continual improvement and innovation, which can be exciting for everyone involved. For example, how can the concept of a “CarrotMob“ be leveraged? What are ways to embrace social media for building a community of practice? New ideas, new approaches, new people, new goals. And ultimately, scalable triple bottom line results.

Karaoke: In order to keep your audience begging for more, and to keep things entertaining, you’ll have to figure out ways to evolve your act. Adding new artists, songs, and moves to your repertoire will pay dividends. And some day, you might be doing a karaoke performance on stage at the VMAs.

So perhaps this entire blog post was a ruse to make me feel better about my sagging karaoke skills. I guess it’s in my nature to turn challenges into opportunities. I’m sure you can sing better than me, which means it’ll be even easier for you to be a sustainability employee engagement change agent!

-Justin