Friday, July 24th, 2009
Wal-Mart’s announcement of its new sustainability index marks the dawning of the age of ecological transparency in the marketplace. This is not just idle speculation; Wal-Mart has signaled that suppliers who ignore the requirements for ecological transparency will become “less relevant” to them. In other words, suppliers may one day compete for shelf space on the basis of their transparency about the ecological impacts of their products.
The retailer’s 100,000 suppliers around the world will have to calculate and disclose the total ecological costs of their products — and that data will be boiled down into a single rating that shoppers will see right next to the price tag. For consumers, this will drop to zero the “effort cost” of finding an item’s ecological impacts, which today often means digging through a confusing forest of rating systems online, then trying to recall that information while strolling the aisles of a store.
As consumer surveys have shown for years, only a small portion, maybe ten percent, of shoppers are passionate about shopping their values; around 25 percent couldn’t care less. The action is the two-thirds in the middle, who say they would value shop if they didn’t have to make any extra effort, and if prices are comparable. And Wal-Mart has the knack for keeping costs down.
The sustainability index will be built from answers to detailed questions about impacts that range from a company’s greenhouse gas emissions and solid waste reduction targets to worker’s wages and human rights — and positive contributions to the local community. Third party certifications will be built into the system. As the 900-pound gorilla of retail presses its suppliers for greener products, it is also inviting other huge retailers like Target and Cosco to adopt the same sustainability index. That will simplify things for both suppliers and consumers. And as more and more major retailers join in, we will see a growing business imperative for perpetually upgrading the ecological impacts of consumer products.
The value chain concept gauges how each step in a product’s life adds to its worth. But value can be seen from another angle, as embodied in the index: all the environmental, health, and social impacts of a product throughout its life cycle. By creating a single standard for evaluation, Wal-Mart opens a window on products that reveals any negatives — what might be called the “devalue chain” — and puts them into competitive play.
The strategic value of these metrics is that every negative value offers a potential for upgrading, as each upgrade improves the item’s overall score. Assessing the ecological pluses and minuses throughout a product’s life cycle offers a metric for business decisions that will boost the pluses and lessen the minuses.
The new metrics Wal-Mart imposes on its suppliers suggest a performance standard for ecological impacts all along the supply chain and throughout a product’s life cycle. This reinvents “green” as a process, not a static label, a verb rather than an adjective. To stay competitive in this arena, companies need to think of themselves as greening, continually looking for ways to improve their ecological footprint.
Andy Ruben was appointed by Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott as the first vice president of the company’s sustainability initiative. Now he heads Wal-Mart’s private brand sourcing strategy; we spoke while I was writing Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. His perspective, as quoted in the book, was telling:
“To me, all negative impacts of products are a discovery about unintended consequences. There can be thousands of consequences from a single decision, and we may be seeing just ten of these unintended impacts. The most competitive companies will engage to uncover these unnoticed impacts and make better decisions. Simply put, they will become more competitive by seeing their business in a broader light.”
The potential business upside here for upgrade innovations is enormous. As Ruben also told me, “This is the largest strategic opportunity companies will see for the next 50 years. This is the most exciting time to be in business, with more opportunity to create change in the world than ever.”
Originally posted at HarvardBusiness.org
Posted in Ecological intelligence | 5 Comments »
Saturday, July 18th, 2009
I recently spent an evening with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, the Tibetan lama who has been dubbed “the happiest man in the world.” True, that title has been bestowed upon at least a few extremely upbeat individuals in recent times. But it is no exaggeration to say that Rinpoche is a master of the art of well-being.
So how did he get that way? Apparently, the same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice.
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Rinpoche a bit over the years, and always found him in good cheer. This meeting was no different. When I called him at his Manhattan hotel to arrange to get together before we were to discuss his new book, “Joyful Wisdom” at the 92nd St. Y, he told me he was in the middle of a shower – but not in the usual sense. The shower, he told me, had run out of hot water midway. When he called the front desk, he was told to wait several minutes and there would be more hot water. In this situation, I probably would have been peeved. But as Rinpoche told me this, he was laughing and laughing.
The only momentary glitch I’ve witnessed — a few years back — was slapstick: he sat down in an office chair with a faulty seat that suddenly plunged several inches with a thump. Once when this chair had done the same to me I cursed and groused about it for a while. But Rinpoche just frowned for a second — and the next moment he was his upbeat self again. Quickness of recovery time from upsets is one way science takes the measure of a happy temperament.
While annoyances like these are hardly life’s greatest tests, handling them gracefully takes a composure that few of us seem to have at our disposal.
Mingyur Rinpoche was not born into wealth and comfort. He spent his earliest years in a remote Himalayan village lacking even the most basic amenities. Nor was he a lucky winner in the genetic lottery for moods. In his book he recounts being extremely anxious as a child in Nepal, having had what a Manhattan psychiatrist would likely diagnose as panic attacks, and how he cured himself of this chronic anxiety by making his fears the focus of his meditation. He has had to earn his good cheer.
Rinpoche seems eclectic in studying paths to well-being, including Western recipes. A few years ago, he attended a five-day meeting at the Mind & Life Institute that brought together a group of neuroscientists and the Dalai Lama to discuss ways to overcome destructive emotions. He found that the Western scientific findings on emotions had much in common with his own approach to cultivating well-being.
But when it comes to his own pursuit of happiness, Buddhist theory and practice are Rinpoche’s chosen tools. He has done several years-long meditation retreats, under the tutelage of some of the most renowned Tibetan masters. Of course, what we mean by “happiness” can be elusive, what with the myriad varieties of good feeling running from ecstasy to equanimity. One flavor of happiness at which Rinpoche seems to excel has been well-studied by scientists specializing in how emotions operate in our brains.
Richard Davidson, who heads the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, has found one distinct brain profile for happiness. As Davidson’s laboratory has reported, when we are in distress, the brain shows high activation levels in the right prefrontal area and the amygdala. But when we are in an upbeat mood, the right side quiets and the left prefrontal area stirs. When showing this brain pattern, people report feeling, as Davidson put it to me, “positively engaged, goal-directed, enthusiastic, and energetic.”
Mingyur Rinpoche came to Davidson’s lab as one of a dozen or so meditation adepts, each of whom had put in anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 lifetime hours of meditation. Research on expertise in any skill shows that world-class champs have put in at least 10,000 hours of practice; these were Olympic-level meditators.
One of the first findings from the research showed that when these adepts meditated on compassion, activity in key brain areas increased up to 100 percent, notably more than was the case in a control group who were taught the same meditation practice. The more lifetime hours of practice, the greater the increases tended to be. All this seems to confirm the idea that in the realm of positive moods, as in nearly every endeavor, worldly or spiritual, practice matters.
So can we all get a taste of Rinpoche’s bliss?
Davidson worked with Jon Kabat-Zinn, a teacher of mindfulness meditation from the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, to see how a group of novices might gain from these methods. Kabat-Zinn, who has pioneered this contemplative method with medical patients to ease their symptoms, taught mindfulness at a high-stress biotech company; these beginners meditated for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks. Davidson’s measures showed that after the eight weeks they had begun to activate that left prefrontal zone more strongly — and were saying that instead of feeling overwhelmed and hassled, they were enjoying their work. So while the Calvinist strain in American culture may look askance at someone sitting quietly in meditation, this kind of “doing nothing” seems to do something remarkable after all.
Of course, there’s no guarantee of greater happiness from meditation, but the East has given us a promising path for its pursuit.
Another fruit of these spiritual practices seems to be a healthy dose of humility. When Rinpoche told my wife that he was being billed as “the happiest man in the world,” he laughed as though that were the funniest joke he’d ever heard.
Originally posted at the New York Times Happy Days blog.
Posted in Emotional intelligence | 6 Comments »
Welcome to the website and blog of psychologist Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., author of the New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.