Referencing the Hero’s Journey of Joseph Campbell and the Japanese concept of Ikigai, Nitesh Dullabh, CEO of 2POD Ventures and ISSP Governing Board Vice President, explores the key ingredients to building a sustainability culture in an organization.

Let me know if this is real in your organization or not: your company set some BOLD 2030 sustainability goals like achieving water reduction by 40%, having 85% pay equity in business functional structures and reducing cybersecurity threats in all local and global operations. Your company hired consultants to map your corporate sustainability journey, new working groups were developed and there was great enthusiasm to get sustainability right. Three years into your sustainability journey, you reflect and say, "Where have we in our organization gone wrong?" Your company made no progress on water reduction, pay equity discussions stalled, and cybersecurity was not mentioned for almost eight months.

Reaching the above sustainability goals was not a failure of clear intentions, goals, or objectives rather a failure to manifest your Ikigai, a Japanese concept that means your reason for being. Practically, it relates to an organizational failure in “stepladder culture.” You might be asking what this is – more to come.  In addition, the failure was further compounded by no structure, very little oversight and accountability, and no data-driven scorecard. 

The Hero’s Journey

I am reminded of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey that involves a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed and transformed. He posits the idea that myths are tales with the basic purpose of guiding the human spirit. His work calls on you to be that hero that goes off in search of that gift that is specific to you and improves the world in which you live.

In summary, Joseph Campbell proposed that all myths had a similar basic plot. Essentially, they involved a hero who accepts a call to enter a strange world. In this new world, they have to confront various tests and tasks. Sometimes they obtain the aid of a supernatural being through all of this. If they’re able to overcome the great test, they receive some equally great gift or blessing. Then, they confront the dilemma of whether or not to return to their old world. If they return, they’ll face new problems and, when they do, they’ll bring their gift to their old world to improve it.

I am sharing Campbell’s Hero’s Journey because it involves a personal mission (your Ikigai) and a collective mission that is tied to a collective culture. So, you might be asking how is a Hero’s journey tied to culture.  The most current application of the Hero's Journey model is in experiences and services, and in many cases, I am also making the case that new sustainability cultures need to be developed and nurtured. Cultural foundations can deliver more meaningful and memorable encounters by tapping into their cultural and human capital and by positioning their audiences as protagonists in a journey. In this case, how best to map your organization’s sustainability culture that measures accountability at the top, middle, and bottom of the organizational ladder – hence laying the foundations of a “stepladder culture”

At the very top of the stepladder, we have the board and management, in the middle functional/divisional teams and at the bottom, teams that are on-site. There is a history of the board and management making climate commitments with very little or no consultation with the other two rungs of the ladder. This unfortunately has led to a sustainability plan with no credibility and more importantly no element of collaboration, connection, and trust that are foundational elements of building a culture of sustainability. So yes, we must start somewhere.

Encouraging a Culture of Sustainability

One great example of culture and sustainability is Interface’s story which began in 1973 when Ray Anderson discovered a market for flexible flooring. With its focus on the production and marketing of modular carpet tiles, Interface catered to the quickly rising needs of the office building boom of the mid-1970s. Anderson wanted his firm to lead by example and for Interface to become the first company with zero environmental impact. With that truly inspiring purpose, labeled Mission Zero, the company adopted a sustainability culture that outlived even its CEO. The company’s focused commitment to this purpose instilled a strong and lasting culture of change that resulted in several breakthrough innovations from restorative to regenerative, striving to restore nature.

Interface is regularly quoted as the company internationally that has fully integrated sustainability into its business strategy. As the hero in the Interface story, Ray realized he could not do this alone. He enrolled people at all levels of the organization, taught them issues and basic principles, and challenged them to create a different business using a positive mindset to engage diverse groups and generate truly creative solutions.

Ray Anderson’s hero’s journey at Interface almost 30 years ago will continue to have a lasting impact on the importance of sustainability and the behavioral culture to bring about meaningful change. As the hero on this journey, he had the ability and gift to lead, and the ability to see the opportunities inherent in the sustainability challenge.

Key Lessons

In the example above, Ray Anderson helped build a sustainability culture by ensuring that his teams walked up and down the organizational stepladder. This helped with a culture of innovation that reinforced connection, trust, and collaboration. Key ingredients to building a sustainability culture. Developing a potent sustainability culture requires leadership and management qualities very similar to those required to lead major change processes. Value add movement up and down the stepladder, strong coalition and partnerships between stakeholders and shareholders, and measuring, monitoring, and reporting on the change in behavior are essential for cultural stickiness to have lasting success.

About the Author:

Nitesh Dullabh
CEO, 2POD Ventures
Vice President, ISSP Governing Board

PHOTO: Shane Rounce