Keeping the green momentum alive:

How to inspire and sustain environmental action

Companies are facing unprecedented scrutiny and pressure from investors, policymakers, customers, and suppliers to take rapid, far-reaching action to deliver on climate goals. While a lot of good work inside both brick and virtual office walls is happening already, 2022 will be the year corporate climate action becomes mainstream. There’s a fine line to make sure the actions corporations are taking are meaningful and not just a tick box.

Recently, we’ve started our very own Green Movement Group at Magnetic (sponsored by a Senior leader) to kick start our net zero strategy. We’re at the start of our journey and while we don’t have all the answers, here’s some observations and actions we’ve taken to keep the Green momentum alive:

Create a group of green champions to fast-track bottom-up sustainability action. It helps to rally those who have the environmental issues at heart, play on individual strengths to turn ideas into collective action, and put sustainability at the forefront of the company’s agenda. Often green teams struggle with making actual progress, largely due to the nature of the work laying outside of the desk jobs of the team members involved. It’s the businesses and leaders responsibility to help those teams take meaningful action.

We used design thinking on ourselves. We believe we design better solutions when we empathise with the people we’re designing for. So, we started with turning the lens on ourselves; check in on our practices, policies and people and validate that what we do as a business is in line with our values and ambitions. We did tons of research, learned about the attitudes, beliefs, and blockers through employee interviews and planned experiments. We discovered that all parts of the puzzle had a common thread: motivation.

Harness intrinsic motivation to inspire action. In her work exploring the role of motivation in creative processes, Teresa Amabile introduced the distinction between ‘inspired by’ and ‘inspired to’. In any form of creative endeavour, individuals can gain inspiration from a variety of cues and people in their surroundings (‘inspired by’) and turn it into any form of action or outcome inspired by these factors (‘inspired to’). What bridges these two states is intrinsic motivation — a key component to ‘transgress’ inspirational stages by transforming a stimulus into a decision to act upon it. Although not previously discussed in the context of environmental action, Amabile’s distinction can help managers and those involved in driving sustainability agenda forward unlock the power of their green teams.

Keeping the importance of motivation in mind, we’ve tested a variety of approaches, and listed the ones that worked for us:

Start small, don’t get overwhelmed. There’s so much info online about climate, net zero and all environmental matters. It can be easy to drown in a sea of tabs and resources and feel too overwhelmed to turn these bits of inspiration into action. Instead inspire action by sharing little wins.

We start every green team meeting by sharing updates in a stand-up format. It helps to get the team up to date but also — to realise how much can be achieved in a short period of time. Combating climate change is one of the most pressing and complex challenges of our time but breaking it down into little actions, it helps to frame it as a path to continuous progress as opposed to a mammoth impossible thing to tackle. The power of small wins can also be leveraged to boost the team’s motivation — you can read more about it in this HBR article about the Progression Principle.

Experiment, experiment, experiment. To reduce waste and as a more environmental lunch option we experimented with providing reusable packaging for all. Setting up a couple of lunchboxes on the office kitchen counter was warmly welcomed by the team. Folk in our London office started using them for trips to the local market almost straight away.

Visualising success. One of our favourite activities at Magnetic, either during internal kick-offs or forming blended project teams, is asking ourselves and our clients ‘what would amazing success look like in x amount of time’. We often tend to find that it helps to leave the existing concerns that weigh people down and encourage them to think more ambitiously beyond the task at hand. Using that technique paired with a specific timeline can help green teams to push their impact while making sure that the interim goals remain challenging but realistic.

An open invitation. Sharing the load of the climate action with other people in your team makes a lot of sense, and not only for the obvious reasons as exchanging ideas or providing mutual support. The membership in our Green Movement has only two conditions: people join in completely voluntarily and members of all levels of seniority are welcomed. That ensures a mix of expertise, skills and, most importantly, proves that everyone involved is intrinsically motivated to be there. According to a recent study, sharing goals in forums of people across various areas of the business is linked to higher accountability and goal-oriented motivation. At Magnetic, we think a lot about cultivating a work environment where that exchange is welcomed and teams feel psychologically safe so that can happen naturally.

Movements of change will grow as long as people are inspired to act. If you want to chat more about inspiring and cultivating climate action in your team or can think of any other tips to share, feel free to drop me a line at maria.zielinska@wearemagnetic.com.

Maria is a Junior Consultant at Magnetic. We are a design and innovation studio that designs better futures for the people and companies we work with.