Thin Philosophy and the Qualities Needed to Work in Sustainability
Walk to Work #3
Last week I was at two very contrasting events — one was a workshop/conference about how to tell ‘stronger stories’ and the other was a more intimate salon event that we hosted at the Volans office.
Although their purposes were very different, something that did link across for me was that both had elements of how to communicate “Sustainability” to an audience.
The first event was about how to communicate a sustainability story/purpose to consumers. And the second had some themes about what employers look for in new job candidates. This was where the term “thin philosophy” was thrown about — and I loved it.
So what does thin philosophy mean? Thin philosophy is this idea that some people when they talk about sustainability don’t really know what they’re talking about. They can regurgitate the right sentences, pull out the correct statistics but once you probe deeper, you realise they have no true, sturdy understanding of what sustainability means to them.
To be honest, I think a lot of that has to do with how sustainability as a concept has evolved (some people argue it has lost its meaning altogether). For most people, what they are passionate about is the issues — e.g. climate, or waste, or just the desire to protect the planet for their children — not the concept. So we begrudgingly use the word Sustainability.
However, communicating this interest is hard, and this is where the two events provided intriguing insight but also completely diverged. In the stronger stories event, communicating to consumers was all about getting the story out, hard, fast and if possible in one word. It wasn’t about quality, definitely not quantity, and one journalist even went as far as to say that it’s whoever screams the loudest that gets the headline. The bottom line was that getting messages out in a single headline is the best way forward.
During the salon a couple of days later, we talked about how important it is to find the right people to drive sustainability within companies. The salon participants — all of whom were Chief Sustainability Officers (or equivalent) — agreed that specific sustainability knowledge was not the top skill they look for when hiring. Attractive candidates for jobs would be ones that could exhibit deep, holistic understanding of systems change, as well as resilience, an ability to adapt, and mediation skills.
Of course, sustainability needs all of these types — snappy communicators, systems thinkers, resilient mediators — and the very best sustainability professionals combine elements of all three. Building the capability to adapt to different audiences is integral to making progress.
Often, there is no straightforward answer to the question “What is sustainability?”. There are always competing priorities to be balanced that mean there is no single definitive path to sustainability. So, a willingness to experiment is perhaps the most vital quality of all to thrive in the sustainability field.
