Are you (1) a patient leader and a systems thinker? Or (2) an impatient leader who likes to build things?
When I counsel students interested in careers in sustainability, I direct them down two paths: policy and business.
A policy career is about changing the rules of the game. Through government action, and within corporations, NGO’s and agencies, policies incentivize behavior, sustainable or otherwise. From international treaties governing trade and investment, to national policies on energy, agriculture and transport, to local zoning and transit regulations, getting rid of bad rules and putting good ones in place is critical for progress .
One example: Microsoft recently introduced an internal carbon tax. This new policy makes carbon intensive activities, like flying, more expensive, and will push company budget managers to find substitutes for their teams— video conferencing for example. The policy also creates a pool of money for Microsoft to incentivize energy efficiency and renewable investments, helping build a more local and resilient energy system within the company.
What are the types of policy jobs? Careers include analysts and decision-makers, administrators and organizers, sustainability professionals, advocates and lobbyists, journalists and educators, and politicians and political staff. Policy work, while mostly located in the NGO and government sectors, is also a big part of what drives CSR and corporate sustainability.
Policy careers are for folks with patience, who understand how natural and social systems work, and who have strong analytical, writing and communication skills. Successful policy people are good at outreach and networking, and politically saavy.
While a policy career works on changing the rules of the game, business is about playing the game. Within the confines of existing policies, sustainable business leaders set about solving social and environmental problems by creating profitable solutions and bringing them to scale. Solutions must be profitable to be financially sustainable and self-replicating, ensuring they spread quickly to seriously address the problem in question.
Careers in this field include all the functional areas of business: from marketing and sales to finance, operations, accounting, strategy, and HR. Sustainable business people are change agents, acting either as entrepreneurs in start-ups or as intrapreneurs in established companies, refocusing the direction of the business on opportunities to profitably solve environmental and social challenges. Business skills can be applied in the corporate, government or non-profit world.
A business career calls to people with impatience, and a talent for building things, who have strong analytical, writing and communication skills. They are good at outreach and networking, and politically savvy.
Next Page: Taking People Where They Otherwise Would Not Go
Notice the overlap in the business and policy skill set here. The common key to career success and satisfaction in the sustainability field is the ability and desire to lead, not to manage. By definition, driving sustainability—either through rule-changing or game-playing—involves taking people where they otherwise would not go, and inspiring others to lead in the same direction.
Imagine: 80 percent reductions in global warming pollution by 2050; rewiring the world with clean energy; re-designing the global food system. We can’t manage our way to these outcomes. Both policy and business demand entrepreneurial, innovative strategies to meet the profound challenges of the coming decades.
The final point: neither business nor policy can get the job done alone. Anyone playing the green business game soon bumps into policy constraints. And sustainable policy advocates need critical business support to drive good changes in the rules. Around the country and across the globe, wherever we see vibrant, emerging green economies are the places where smart policy-makers work synergistically with green industry leaders and entrepreneurs.
So which career suits you best? Glad to talk further. Contact me at ebangood@bard.edu.
Image of Man with blank sign outside by Stephen Finn; inset of pollution and clean energy by Tom Wang, both via Shutterstock. Photo collage by GreenBiz Group
![Ending the alphabet soup in the [insert word here] field](http://www.greenbiz.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/wide_small/130516-voien1-w.jpg "Ending the alphabet soup in the [insert word here] field")
I liked the second half very
I liked the second half very much. Very good and rare points: the overlap in the business and policy skill set; leadership is needed in both, and defined as “taking people where they otherwise would not go;” use of two key words—“imagine” and “innovation;” and the possibility for a synergistic connection between the two worlds.
All true.
But these ideas need to influence the first half, which was rather conventional and, in some cases, not totally true.
I rarely have seen anyone in the biggest part of the policy world, government, seek to change the rules of the game--although I wish they would. Instead, they're ducking their heads, hoping to stick it out until their pension kicks in. They're fighting off the results of years of a beat-down. At most, they may be able to move things ahead slightly (if they don't tick off their bosses) in such a way that, maybe, someday, an initiative they work on may grow to accomplish more than baby steps.
I know how that sounds. It’s unfortunate. I think they need to be change agents, too. It would help if those in the sustainable business world would publicly support the former, but this rarely happens.
Plus, I see few people in government (or in sustainable business for that matter) who seem to know that we have to meet "profound challenges in the coming decade." Those who do also are told, or seem to get, that they're not to even use that argument. It may freeze into inaction those who might be responsive to tamer appeals, or scare off those to whom they answer.
On the sustainable business side, I see few real or self-identified change makers in the field, although perhaps a bit more in recent years. I look forward to seeing a job ad someday that explicitly calls for one, or seeing a letter-to-the-editor writer with that descriptor next to his or her name, showing the editor has allowed it. Finally, I think those in business need to do more than play the game; they also need to change the game.
I've been converging to a view that the people we need in both government and business are more alike than different, which isn’t too surprising if you see a convergence in the future roles of business and government, both seeking a green economy. They both need the mentioned leadership and savvy, but also courage, multidisciplinary knowledge, and ability to take a punch.
Still, the article is pretty good, and, to the degree the ideas in its second half are carried over into the curriculum and job placement, it’s a big benefit to the promising new Green MBA program at Bard, and what its graduates will bring to the rest of us.
Wow! It's an appreciable work
Wow! It's an appreciable work ahead. Sustainability policy means by making use of some natural resources we protect our environment much efficiently and there are lots of opportunities in this field to make career. Its useful not only for the betterment of present but also for the future. The Sustainability policy career starts in each and every country and gives much healthier environment and a very healthy country.
Eban, Your article makes a
Eban,
Your article makes a good point and a shrewd observation, networking, leadership and political savvy are at the heart of 21st century success. I'm reminded of a Tom Fredman interview from some years ago. In it he said that the New York Times would love to hire some engineers, some musicians and some more industry types. However, they'd only want you if you we're also able to speak on how their industry worked in Russia, and do so in Spanish.
I find it remarkable that America lags behind the rest of the west in its willingness to acknowledge many of the sustainability issues of the day for this reason. America has always attracted politically savvy, connected entrepreneurs and political animals. You'd think that would translate to a leadership position not a laggard's.
Great article.
Brian Reynolds
CEO, Global Power Solutions, LLC
www.RenewableGPS.com
Brian@RenewableGPS.com
Brian, like the example. At
Brian, like the example. At Bard, we try and balance the hard environmental management and business skills we teach with effective leadership training.
When some one talk about
When some one talk about sustainability issue ,it seems simple word.But when we go into detail it really matters beyond the word we are talking about sustainability.
My organization ,HOPE2020(Ethiopian Resident Charity Organization -NGO)was established in 2004.Since then ,it has been implemented different developmental projects both conventionally and non-conventionally.But what is real is that HOPE2020 understood later what sustainability means .In the first two years after its establishment ,HOPE2020 had undertaken different development projects simply to be an organization with usual business.Later ,it recognized that there was no any sense of sustainability in its accomplishment.Having learned from its mistake,HOPE2020 then starts to look forward sustainability and ensuring sustainable development.It has switched on to doing things in different manner ,so that sustainable development become fact in its accomplishments.One of HOPE2020's specialization is supplying potable clean water to disadvantaged rural communities in Ethiopia.Initially ,we used to use diesel generator to pump water from boreholes.At this time we couldn't ensure sustainable water supply system to the beneficiary community.The generator itself needed high operational costs.Diesel fuel was other factor with its high pricing cost.Finally,we switched on to solar,wind and bio gas to pump our water .So we are now confident enough in ensuring sustainability ,hence brought "Sustainable Impact to our disadvantaged Society"