093 – Green team schemes screen fiends
Filed in Business storytelling, Employee Engagement, Podcast
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Emotion leads to action. Listen to hear how an internal group’s sustainability initiative resulted in behaviour change.
In this week’s episode of Anecdotally Speaking, Mark shares the story of a previous client of his, who had an internal group make outstanding behaviour change efforts with one small note.
Shawn mentioned how emotion is a driving force for change and referenced a recent episode of Freakonomics. To listen to the episode on disgust, click here. And to read more on this topic, check out Shawn’s book, Putting Stories to Work.
Tickets are now on sale for our first public Storytelling for Leaders programs for 2021! If you are interested in attending, click here to purchase tickets. We are also hosting invitation-only Story-Powered Sales programs, if this is of interest to you, please get in touch by emailing us at people@anecdote.com.
As Shawn mentioned, we have launched a new program, School Story Lab! Our aim is to help school leaders make their strategy stick, get everyone on the same page, and build momentum for progress. The one-month program will run publicly for the first time in March. Each Lab gathers a cohort of schools looking for help to craft and tell their strategy stories.
For your storybank
Tags: behaviour change, leadership, sustainability
This story starts at 03:01
In 2009, an NSW local government council looked to improve their sustainability practices, both internally and within their community.
The council had an internal group called the Green Champions that consisted of 40 people in the organisation across various disciplines.
They organised initiatives that they thought were useful in making the council more sustainable internally and helping their community be more sustainable.
One of the things that had been a focus for the council was reducing energy consumption. For years they had internal messaging around turning off computers and monitors each night, but with minimal results.
With their Green Ninja mascot, the Green Champions decided to gather after hours and make their way through their building checking if the staff had turned their computers and monitors off.
If they had turned their computers off, the Green Ninja would leave a small ‘well done’ note and a bar of fair-trade chocolate. If they had not, the Green Ninja would leave a ‘not happy’ message and no chocolate.
The next morning, some people were happy, and some people were quite embarrassed and upset.
The CEO had come in early and had seen the notes on the desks. She quickly sent an email around to all staff congratulating the Green Champions on a great initiative.
After that day, energy consumption went down significantly.
Anecdote International is a global training and consulting company, specialising in utilising storytelling to bring humanity back to the workforce. Anecdote is now unique in having a global network of over 60 partners in 28 countries, with their learning programs translated into 11 languages, and customers who incorporate these programs into their leadership and sales enablement activities.