There is one important thing, perhaps the most important thing, that many people overlook when it comes to sustainability, says writer and podcast maker Marnix Kluiters. The discussion is often about what you eat, whether you have solar panels, what you buy, how often you fly. What you may vote for. In a few cases, someone wonders whether he has any business on the A12. Your role as a consumer or as a citizen is often central. “But how often is it about what you do at work?”
In the role of employee, many people put on their jackets, put on their ties, and take off their green consciousness. Then different rules apply and, despite good intentions, they work in a company and a system that is not sustainable at all, that revolves around material growth and making money.
“While we spend approximately eighty thousand hours in our lives working,” says Kluiters during a telephone conversation. He presents the podcast Ecosophy and wrote the book with leadership expert Mark Siegenbeek van Heukelom Sustainable ambition, which was recently published. Moreover, the size of the company where you work allows you to achieve more impact than you could ever have at home.
Kim Putters, chairman of the Social-Economic Council (SER) and now an informant, wrote the foreword: “Ask yourself: If I have completed 79,999 hours of my career and I have the last hour left to look back, what would I like to have served?”
Kluiters: “The greatest talent in this world is simply not being spent on solving the greatest challenge of the 21st century.” It makes you think to recent pieces by writer Rutger Bregmanwho argues something similar and whose book will soon be published about this: all those highly educated, ambitious Dutch people who work for consultancy companies, law firms or banks where they help fossil companies to make even more profits, need to ‘moral ambition’and would prefer to resign, he thinks.
Kluiters and Siegenbeek van Heukelom take a somewhat milder stance. Bregman wants to start a movement to get people out of what he considers meaningless consultant and lawyer jobs. Kluiters believes that you can also reinvent your job. “It is not a battle to drive everyone away from large corporates. I actually think you can have an effect there too.”
Where to start if someone wants to make his or her work more at the service of sustainability? One of the most important strategies, according to Kluiters, is to focus on small steps with a big effect: ‘small wins’as they are referred to in business literature.
People tend to make the tasks so large that they have no influence on them; No one can single-handedly stop the warming of the oceans and the melting of glaciers. “But you can make changes that can trigger major movements,” says Kluiters.
For example, one day a friendly employee of a financial institution decided to no longer conduct searches via Google, but via the more environmentally friendly Ecosia. One problem was that Google was still the default search engine on his work computer. He went to his company’s IT department and managed to make Ecosia the default search engine across the company. Small wins must be aimed at changing the entire organization.
Bought a microphone
If things continue to move too slowly within the company where you work, thinking in terms of small wins can also offer a way out. Kluiters first worked at the investment bank Van Lanschot Kempen. “Then I bought a microphone, went to work for four days and started a podcast about sustainability.” This grew to become the core of his work.
In the book, Kluiters and Siegenbeek van Heukelom also outline how they believe the ideal sustainable leader behaves and what the ideal sustainable organization looks like, drawing on psychology, business administration and research into social and ecological transitions. It is a hopeful book.
But don’t they easily assume that sustainability is an unstoppable process, a process that just needs a final push? Sometimes it is simply too difficult or too expensive to convince the CEO. “I don’t think this movement can be stopped anymore,” says Kluiters. “The last election results also made me think a lot about this. At the same time, it is underestimated how many people would like to contribute to a more sustainable world, as is evident from all kinds of studies.” There is plenty of potential for change in almost every company, he says, more than might seem at first glance.