Andrew Winston is a corporate consultant and the co-author (along with my friend Dan Esty), of the well-received Green to Gold.
His new book, Green Recovery, is a welcome update. Winston positions his fine new offering as presenting the case that sustainability (that is, environmental and energy practices consistent with broader community responsibilities) is a key driver for the recovery from the current recession.
Winston offers four approaches to organize and prioritize green thinking:
--Get lean: Invest in energy efficiency, waste reduction and other quick-return strategies, and use the cost savings to fund innovation.
--Get smart: Gather data on your environmental footprint throughout the value chain, and use the data to identify priorities, encourage creativity and support employee engagement.
--Get creative: Encourage staff to ask heretical questions and implement strategies to nurture innovation.
--Get engaged: Galvanize your staff by making a real commitment to sustainability, and encourage alignment with core business goals by linking performance to key metrics.
With a plethora of actionable anecdotes illustrating the ongoing "greening" of corporations worldwide, Winston's book is useful for anyone in this field. Green Recovery may find a notably receptive audience among those seeking to awaken key management decision-makers to the sea change in attitudes toward energy and environmental issues underway among many of the most successful companies.
Smart coroporate sustainability strategies are, increasingly, not only a matter of corporate leadership, but survival. Winston adduces irrefutable evidence that enterprises who ignore or shortchange sustainability issues are doing damage to their shareholder value, in the near-term as well as long-term.
I recommend this outstanding book most highly.
