{"id":180,"date":"2012-02-16T16:52:08","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T16:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/?p=180"},"modified":"2012-04-12T16:11:46","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T16:11:46","slug":"sustainable-business-series-is-sustainable-more-productive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/2012\/02\/16\/sustainable-business-series-is-sustainable-more-productive\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainable Business Series\u2014Is Sustainable More Productive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday February 13th it was a full house at Cook + Fox<\/a>\u00a0as Bard MBA\u2019s Sustainable Business Series continued, this time with the theme of \u201cIs sustainable more productive?\u201d Director Goodstein began the night\u2019s discussion by arguing that if sustainability was not more productive then it wouldn\u2019t succeed, thus the kind of leadership that the new Bard MBA<\/a>\u00a0seeks to teach.<\/p>\n

The evening\u2019s program was jam packed with Julie Engerran, Director at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited<\/a>; Serge Appel, Associate Partner at Cook + Fox and project architect for the LEED platinum Bank of America tower<\/a>; and Lee Coker, Project Manager in the Corporate Partnerships Program<\/a> at the Environmental Defense Fund.<\/p>\n

Julie Engerran kicked off the night\u2019s presentations with a conversation about what motivates the workforce, explaining that Deloitte has seen a strong link between how committed and engaged the employee is with how productive they are. She suggested that when employees are engaged, allowed to \u201csee through their own vision,\u201d and pursue their interests they are able to stretch their skills and build on them which enables them to bring those skills back to the company and the client to increase productivity.<\/p>\n

Serge Appel continued the conversation by explaining how a sustainable physical environment can also lead to a productive work environment, with the central example of the Bank of America skycraper at One Bryant Park in New York City. The Bank of America building project\u2019s objective was to put other green building projects by the same firm to shame, and set a high standard for building projects to follow.\u00a0 As Rick Cook puts it, \u201cthe goal is not just to build buildings that are less bad, but buildings that make the world a better place.\u201d And the goal of the building, and of Cook + Fox as a business, was to set a new standard about how to design for the future.<\/p>\n

In terms of the built environment influencing employees\u2019 productivity, studies have shown that companies save $10 million for every 1% increase in productivity.\u00a0 With 82% of a company\u2019s spending going towards human resources, this is not a small chunk of change for a company looking to cut costs, and can actually have a greater influence on business practices than energy conservation.<\/p>\n

Lee Coker closed out the night\u2019s discussion with an explanation of EDF\u2019s Green Returns Team strategy for engaging companies:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Align resources and achieve buy-in. He stated that 90% of a job is selling and trying to influence people.<\/li>\n
  2. Identify opportunity. Find the companies that can make the greatest environmental impacts with their practices and improve their business at the same time.<\/li>\n
  3. Establish metrics and baselines.\u00a0 It\u2019s always important to monitor and evaluate practices, and to keep track of progress.<\/li>\n
  4. Develop goals and action plans.\u00a0 He made the point that supply chain issues are not always the avenue to follow because they can get overly complicated. Instead, he recommended finding more efficient actions with greater payoffs where appropriate.<\/li>\n
  5. Best practices sharing across portfolios. For big corporations it\u2019s important to share successes and lessons learned from one factory or location with others. This will help to green up the company\u2019s entire portfolio.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The night ended with a series of great questions from the audience, and a final thought about the importance of systems thinking and the need to integrate it into our business practices. Join us next week as we host an MBA student roundtable <\/a>\u00a0where we\u2019ll discuss how to integrate the above principles into an MBA degree and what makes an MBA sustainable.<\/p>\n

    –Melissa Provinsal, CEP<\/a>\u201912<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    On Monday February 13th it was a full house at Cook + Fox\u00a0as Bard MBA\u2019s Sustainable Business Series continued, this time with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[41,43,42,40,7,31],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-stories","tag-bank-of-america-tower","tag-corporate-responsibility","tag-deloitte-touche","tag-productivity","tag-sustainability","tag-sustainable-business-series"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}