Photo by Santeri Viinamäki
Sometimes our leaders gift us with a hugely ambitious goal, publicly committing to it before the details have been worked out. This moonshot or ‘stake in the ground’ approach can be galvanising or dispiriting. How can you make the ‘stake in the ground’ approach work for you?
Stake in the ground
Someone very senior makes a public commitment to a very stretching target, without worrying that it’s not clear how (or even if) the organisation will achieve it. Think of President Kennedy’s commitment to put a person on the moon; or the Paris agreement to ‘holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’.
Here are some more examples:
Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan sets a goal of halving environmental impact per consumer use while improving the health and well-being of more than 1 billion people.
Kingfisher has declared its aim to be ‘net positive’, a restorative company by 2050.
The 400 member companies of the Consumer Goods Forum are aiming for zero-net deforestation in their supply chains by 2020.
The Natural History Museum has stopped selling single-use plastic bottles.
Maybe your organisation, sector or local authority has declared a climate emergency, and committed itself to net zero carbon targets.
Sometimes the stretching target is in line with your existing sustainability direction, and sometimes it can come out of the blue and be disruptive to your existing plans and not coherent with the rest of your sustainability strategy. Politicians are also likely to make these kinds of ambitious commitments, and depending on our point of view we see them as meaningless or inspirational.
Pukka
When Vicky Murray joined Pukka Herbs, there was already a stake in the ground.
“Pukka had committed to being carbon neutral ‘crop to cup’ by 2030. That’s a really positive ambition! But there wasn’t any measurement in place, or interim targets. I’ve been brought in to bring rigour to those ambitious goals. We’re measuring our baseline and will set science-based targets as interim milestones.”
Once a stake has been hammered firmly in, there needs to be both technical work – baselining, interim targets, options for meeting them – and internal and external engagement.
How do people feel about the target?
What do they see as the most promising ways to meet it?
What skills and resources are needed?
Where might people need permission or incentives to adopt new ways of doing things?
'Stake in the ground' is one of five change strategies explored in my book Change Management for Sustainable Development, published by IEMA. Vicky’s quote is from the book.
Making the Path by Walking
This post was first published in my Making the Path by Walking newsletter, November 2019. Scroll down to the footer to subscribe.