It Ain't Easy Being Green

IT AIN'T EASY BEING GREEN ©

A Presentation By

James E. Lukaszewski, APR, Fellow PRSA

SPONSORED BY GOLIN/HARRIS COMMUNICATIONS

February 18, 1991

Union League Club, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

As Published in Vital Speeches of the Day, June 15, 1991

It's getting tougher and tougher to be green. Public officials, the news media, and even our children have become educated and more sophisticated. They have high expectations about the environment in which they live. It ain't easy being green today because opposition to corporate activities, which affect the environment, has become more energized and less tolerant. Opponents are becoming accustomed to defeating those businesses and governmental units that attempt to carry out projects with environmental impact. Two questions we all have to ask is, "How tough is it going to get until it gets better?" and "Just when will it get better?"

My assessment is that it's going to get tougher for some time. My role this morning is to talk about the pitfalls, potholes, delusions, assumptions, myths, and barriers we put in our own way when it comes to making correct decisions on environmental questions. I think you'll see that it's pretty difficult to predict just when things will ease up.

But most of us can't wait. Our businesses have to analyze what we are doing now and how and why we are doing it; and look for the mistakes, errors, silliness, and stupidity and attempt to develop new decision making processes and patterns of behavior that can be more successful.

Let me talk about the patterns of public response and public expectation - those patterns we seem to ignore until we are threatened with defeat or until we are, in fact, actually defeated. Working as I do all across the United States and Canada on these and other related issues, I see a striking series of common elements that, while they support my view of the difficulties new corporate environmental initiatives face, lend insight into how we'll eventually develop a pattern of success in attempting to expand plants, build new facilities, site landfills, even build new incinerators and other waste management devices.

So let's start with some of the crucial realities each of us face in today's atmosphere of high public environmental concern.

The first reality is that the community is now fully in control of environmental actions, reactions, even remediation. That control is exerted in some very important ways:

Before we talk about delusions, myths, patterns, and assumptions, let's first talk about what the community really wants. It's these wants and needs that must shape our communications, especially about environmental positions.

As I talk about community needs, I think you'll be able to relate to each and every one of them. Even more importantly, you'll recognize that most environmental communication today has very little to do with the issues I'm about to raise. This lack of communication is the principal reason why communities are so angry and are drawing even tighter limits on what businesses and government will be able to do. Communities are looking for:

One bottom line lesson for business now and in the future is that environmentally impacting initiatives will require the community's direct and specific permission. If you don't get it, you won't be able to move ahead. Another important bottom-line lesson for business is that communities increasingly feel they have the right to choose which risks they will accept and that no one has the right to subject them involuntarily to risks of any magnitude.

Unfortunately, it's these very kinds of issues that make business people extremely uncomfortable. After all, we like to deal in the more ephemeral concepts of business like productivity, competitiveness, economic advantage, market share, and jobs. Even when we attempt to talk on an emotional level, we hear the impersonal verbiage of command:

Talk like this doesn't impress a community concerned about getting its children to school each day around the increased truck traffic your expansion will cause, or the loss in property values because your company wants to site a new landfill. Business executives and communicators have to listen to what the community has to say and find more community sensitive ways to phrase their messages. I call it belly button-to-belly button communication.

If my belly button isn't reaching over and touching yours in terms of communicating in gut level, emotional terms, we're simply not communicating. The community will not understand, it will become fearful, and it will prevail. Why does this have to happen? It really doesn't, but let's continue until we eliminate some of the more blatant myths we use to justify the operations of our organization. Perhaps the worst myth of all is one perpetrated by people in my profession - public relations. That's the assumption that good companies have over the years built up a reservoir of good will that will serve them in times when things don't go well and major mistakes are made.

This entire concept is baloney. Who could possibly have more good will in the community than McDonald's? Yet, McDonald's had to make a dramatic announcement about reducing plastics. What about another company that spent millions and millions of dollars on good public projects in communities all across America and other parts of the world - Exxon? What is its reservoir worth after the disaster in Prince William Sound?

Probably a more productive way to think about our relationship to the community is in terms of what I refer to as the theory of mutual inattention. Simply stated, it means that we tend to ignore each other until something happens that forces us to notice each other - my company does something to your back yard, or government does something that affects my company's operations. Then we all focus on the problem, resolve or remove it, and go back to the way we were.

The myth of the reservoir of good will assumes, falsely, that the community harbors a sense of thanks, on a continuing basis, for corporate generosity and interest in its welfare. The theory of mutual inattention, I believe, captures the true nature of our relationship - the public doesn't really care nor should they care about us until we do something to them that affects those six core values I spoke of earlier. When any of those values is jeopardized, you'll have the public's undivided attention and reaction.

One of my client corporations with operations in many parts of the U.S. was interested in building an incinerator on a landfill site they had owned and operated for more than 40 years. Over those decades they had spent millions of dollars in the area for everything from high school equipment and special education programs to supporting major recycling efforts. They even trained local volunteer fire departments and donated equipment including a fire truck in one locale near where they wanted to site the incinerator.

The moment word got out that an incinerator was to be built, even though it was to be sited on the edge of an existing landfill that had been operating for a long time, the antagonism was spontaneous and incredibly intense. During this time there was a special dinner held in the community by the local volunteer fire department to honor the company publicly for the fire truck it had donated the previous year. There were approximately 40 attendees at the dinner. Outside there were over 400 demonstrators from the town chanting and waving signs that read, "Give the truck back."

How could the citizens of the town go against their local volunteer fire department and demonstrate such outrage? The answer is that they perceived the company to be attempting to purchase their support and loyalty - buying them off - while at the same time threatening many core community values.

The other quick story involves a relationship with state officials over the siting of a new technologically interesting treatment process. The company was initially encouraged by state officials to investigate, then to apply for appropriate permits and build the facility. It had some unique applications that could genuinely solve an important pollution problem caused by this company's operation.

The company participated in a series of very encouraging meetings, brought in engineers, even held a seminar for public officials and regulators. However, the moment this project and treatment process were described in the local newspaper, the telephones at various government offices began ringing incessantly. Within a very brief period of time, less than three days, no elected or appointed public official would return telephone calls from this company.

So what are the steps you can take as an organization to learn to communicate effectively in this kind of environment and prepare to succeed or, at a minimum, survive?

The patterns of behavior and response I'm talking about really relate to five areas you'll all recognize - predictable questions, predictable opposition, predictable mistakes, predictable media coverage, and predictable action by public officials.

When it comes to questions about environmental issues, there hasn't been a new question invented by any audience or the news media in the last 30 years. Questions are simply being asked more intensely, more aggressively and more effectively. The questions being asked are in areas we can readily identify. They relate to health and safety. They relate to community responsibility. They relate to rates of progress, potential for errors, protection of community values. There isn't a question we can be asked about any proposed environmental project that will surprise us. Yes, we do get irritated at the implication that we can't be trusted. Yes, we get angry with ourselves because we knew the question was coming and we simply weren't prepared to answer when it finally arrived.

As for patterns of predictable opposition, they're fairly obvious if we simply think about them. Opposition usually starts within a core group of individuals most directly affected by something we propose. Government agencies, that were supportive at first, may well oppose us simply because that's the nature of the governmental process - to stretch out decisions, to assure enough time for public discussion and debate, and, frankly, for us to make the kinds of mistakes that show what our true intentions really are. In spite of our best efforts to reassure them about what we intend to do, neighbors are often become opponents - usually after we make some kind of mistake that makes them angry. And then there are the children, often our own children - increasingly active, highly focused, and relentless in their pursuit of righting wrong.

Large corporations and other organizations make predictable mistakes. Money-saving shortcuts are taken like drilling three monitoring wells instead of six, examining only portions of core samples, disclosing only selected sections from test results. Companies seem to go the political route first, attempting a political fix. If that doesn't work, then the community is wooed with offers of tipping fees, new equipment, investment in education, and other even more blatant efforts to buy the community's support. Someone flies in from corporate, never bothers to talk to the neighbors, but holds a news conference, talks to all the big shots in town, and runs a few ads. They talk only in terms of jobs and economics and leave the implied threat that there won't be any jobs if the community doesn't go along with corporate headquarters. You get the picture.

Media coverage is also quite predictable. A great deal of it is irritating simply because the media appear to be favoring the folks who are affected by what it is we're attempting to do. But the coverage patterns tend to be so predictable that, in many respects, the media are often the easiest special public to manage and respond to. But we become trapped by our perception that they relentlessly sensationalize and relentlessly emotionalize. We're suspicious and fearful because of the kinds of questions they ask.

And, patterns of behavior by public officials are also quite predictable. I refer to it as the seven A's. When you first approach a public official with your idea or concept, there is the offer of assistance, help, encouragement, and support. But at the first negative news story, this same public official will express support for the environment and abhorrence for any project, including yours, that might disturb nature's balance. After this beginning negative publicity you call this public official's office and discover that you have been abandoned - he or she will not talk with you until after a much more public discussion has taken place. Next, you read this official's constituent newsletter and are surprised not only by his or her attitude of antagonism toward you and your project but by his or her encouragement of citizens to participate, question, and demand the necessary facts. When the first public meeting occurs, this public official is busy organizing, talking to the other side and engaging in activism to the point of being the first speaker for the opposition. As the issue proceeds, there's more public debate and when it becomes clear you don't intend to leave town, close your plant, or otherwise mistreat the community, the public official will begin working, perhaps behind the scenes or perhaps a little publicly, to begin action to resolve the situation. And when you can formally announce the successful attainment of your goal - whether it's a permit, a license, regulation, or legislation - this same local official will step forward and accept much of the acclaim for having successfully guided your problem through the public process.

These comments are not meant to disparage. They are meant to reflect the reality of the political life these individuals must lead and for which we must hold them in extremely high regard. Otherwise nothing of a public nature would get done in this country.

Let me touch on the second issue briefly, that of developing strategic preparation techniques. The concept here is not so much the development of a firm plan, like tabs in a notebook, but rather a strategic state of mind, a commitment to avoiding the avoidable, planning to accommodate the organizational difficulties you know you will encounter, all tempered with an enormous dose of common sense that recognizes the lengthy timelines required but that are not the accustomed operating procedure in today's performance minded, competitive companies.

Here are the most common organizational assumptions that must be avoided. Otherwise there will simply be additional surprises, mistakes, and unintended consequences.

Perhaps the most valuable message I can leave with you today is my third step for being successful and that is to learn from the defeat of others, even yourself. That means essentially three things. First, practice and test what you intend to say before you appear in front of an audience. The last time you want to do any of these things for the first time is when you must do them in public where there is no opportunity to repair, redesign, reconstruct, or retreat.

Second, talk publicly early. Yes, it's painful. Yes, it's going to generate opposition, activate irritable arguments, and attract attention. But if you have the staying power and the project and your explanation of it can pass the belly button communications test . . . you have a chance of being successful. Talking late in the process will threaten no one but almost certainly ensure defeat.

Third, assemble a team of people who are guided by the communications aspects of this process - more so than the legal, public policy, or engineering demands. The perceptions of employees, retirees, neighbors, interested parties, and the public officials in whose jurisdiction we place these potential projects often become muddled due to hearing only parts of the story told in confusing and technical words and phrases that show our insensitivity to the gut-level concerns of the very people most closely affected. Creating this team of communications-oriented people is a formula for helping prepare for the most challenging, interesting, and most potentially rewarding communications task you can undertake.

I'm reminded of the story of former President Jimmy Carter who is reportedly the only president we know of to go through a training course to learn how to activate the nuclear weapons of this country. During the simulated activity, Mr. Carter was taken to the Command Center in the basement of the White House where he was briefed by a host of people he had never met before, all of whom seemed to know an awful lot and who were virtually commanding that he do certain things. Presidents of companies, like presidents of the United States, do not like to meet strangers and take advice or orders from them when something is hitting the fan. Better make sure that your most important official, the individual who is paying the bill for your project, has a clear sense of the strategic issues we've discussed today. It really ain't easy being green if the boss doesn't want to go along.

Here's how I sum up all of this dramatically to help you hold these thoughts in a useful way. Three corporate oxymorons come to mind. The first is institutional memory. The truth is, bad corporate experiences seem to be brand new every time they occur, no matter how many times they've occurred in the past. Another oxymoron is strategic planning. That's because most of us tend to view plans as notebooks with tab dividers done by committees. True strategic planning implies a thinking, decision and action process that is adaptable to circumstances, can accommodate change and is responsive to sudden alterations in operating conditions.

The final oxymoron is crisis management, or its parallel, organized chaos. If it gets to a crisis, the crisis does the managing.

Perhaps the most critical strategic lesson this morning is that taking appropriate action in a timely way, supported by the language, themes, and messages most important to those directly affected is what will help you carry your day. The right words, the right timing, the right action. If I could paraphrase what Wilford Brimly says in the Quaker Oats commercial, "If it's the right thing to do, it will be easier to be green."