Leaders do things that are new. The problem with being a leader is that you are often poorly understood because, almost by definition, you are one of the few people who understand the potential of your idea. Then you somehow have to convince the managers, who are focused on the current business processes, to give the new idea a go. This can be a really hard thing to accomplish, because try as you might the managers will not see the idea. Almost by definition, they can't.Unless you happen to be Bill Joy. You know, wrote Berkeley Unix, started Sun Microsystems, blah, blah, blah. In this interview with Maria Bartiromo, Joy proclaims that green is the next big thing. The next wealth creation thing. The next MONEY thing. So when you are trying to push your green sustainability ideas to the higher ups, just say "Well, Bill Joy thinks that going green is the next opportunity for massive wealth creation." It can't hurt to have Bill on your side, and it might just help.
1 comment:
paMark-
Interesting article/interview. The problem with corporations these days is that they have been hi-jacked by the "shareholders' rights" movement, which insists that there is one and only one purpose for corporations--make money for the shareholders. They hold this even though the "shareholders" (i.e. people) have a variety of goals they are pursuing when they invest. Obviously making money is significant, but is it really the _only_ thing that people want when they invest. Not killing others to make a buck, not supporting unfair labor practices, not destroying the environment--in the past most SRI practices were negative screens. Now, as we realize how powerful corporations can be (and how in the US we've weakened govts), people are turning to corporations to help them pursue positive social changes. Green computing is just one example of this trend.
Brian
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