Having visions

I haven’t written about what we’re doing at ECUS recently and there’s plenty going on, but more of that in a later posting.

First I want to talk about Environmental Management and what we’re doing. As you may recall the team is four strong now. There’s our Glorious Leader, Alison, who is a great boss. What makes a great boss? For me it is someone who listens to my wild ideas and suggests that they’re worth a look and asks if I can make them work – go flesh them out. Then there’s Catherine, our legal obsessive – every environmental department should have one. We rely on her to make sense of the legalese as ever more regulations are issued. She has taken our newest consultant under her wing as Amanda expands her auditing experience. Finally, I am spending a lot of time at the moment developing and presenting a range of training courses.

One of the most exciting, though, is the one I’m delivering next Friday, training our potential new trainers. Catherine is so knowledgeable that we think she should start passing that on to our clients. Amanda will be taking on some of the waste courses; ideal with her background in the Environment Agency. We’re also training some of the Ecologists who occasionally need to present to clients. Being able to present training in an interesting and interactive way is a real skill and much of it comes from experience and a thorough knowledge of your subject but a lot of the skill can be passed on. We are considering making the course available to those of our clients who are interested.

Our team is looking at how to provide the best service we can. We have been considering this for a long time and a week or so ago we had an ‘away day’ where we looked at our strategy moving into 2011. I’ve suffered through a ‘Visions & Values’ exercise in the past where I felt that the visions were already decided on and the actual embedded values were not necessarily what the company professed. That consultation seemed like a box to be ticked. Not so this time. We spent the morning with Siobhan facilitating our debate about what exactly our aspirations for the department are and the afternoon getting down to the nitty-gritty – ‘given what we want to do how do we start?’ At the end of the day we had a working strategy.

The vision that emerged from our day away was:

Unlimited thinking, unlimited potential, fulfilled through work

Given that we are all working in the environmental field because we want to make a difference the mission that emerged is:

· Improving the environment through encouraging, convincing and challenging our clients

· Changing the world for the better through knowledge and influence

· Helping to integrate the environment and sustainability into our clients’ core business

· Selling solutions not services - working with clients in order for them to achieve self-realised business improvements.

We have an action plan, suitably SMART, with responsibilities and deadlines allocated. I’ll let you know how we progress.