How to Embrace Sustainability

Hello everybody. This is Jody Ann Johnson with the 78th episode of “Coffee with Jody.” As we enter into Earth Month, I’m going to talking with you about Sustainability in the office, Innovation, and about the things we can do on Earth Day.  Then explore how all of this fits together inside of Lean Principles and creating a world that works. 

As our firm is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #8,  I’d like to share with you our Sustainability Statement:  We use our business as a vehicle to create awareness and to inspire others to engage in sustainable practices that are good for the people and for our planet.  

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.  

One of the sustainability initiatives that’s a favorite of mine has to do with food reclamation and eliminating food waste. At the onset of the pandemic we learned about Paul Akers and his book Two Second LEAN.  We then engaged in his process, which I’ve mentioned many times throughout the “Coffee with Jody” series of learning about LEAN and eliminating waste. Many people think that eliminating waste means cutting costs yet it has more to do with adding value and creating efficiencies.  

One of the stories that was most interesting to me that I read, actually this morning, has to do with a hospital whose MRI machine appointments took four months, 16 weeks! for people to get an appointment. The hospital was looking at how they are going to cut staff, and what they need to do to bring down costs, because the department wasn’t profitable. What they did instead was to reduce the amount of time it took for people to get an appointment and to get through the MRI process itself. 

Simply reducing the time made the difference and it actually generated $5 million in profit for that division over the course of the year. So, it’s not about cost cutting. It’s not about going in and creating a harsh environment or having to go without or anything like that. It has a lot more to do with Creativity, Innovation, Awareness, and as we go into Earth Month, that’s what we want to bring.  

We want to create awareness and inspire people to take actions. To create a LEAN office environment where you’re involved in continuous improvement. Where you’re optimizing your processes and optimizing the whole. Where you’re building quality in and eliminating waste. Where you’re creating the fast delivery of your products or services and creating knowledge and awareness for people. Where you are deferring irreversible decisions and being respectful of people. All the LEAN principles.  

This year’s April Earth Day theme is Restore Our Earth, and a lot of that has to do with creating respectful practices, both for people and for the planet. So we’ll be going into a number of different ideas that we’ll share with you, some personal, some having to do with the business. And I’ll tell you one of the personal ones I learned about last year. 

Last year we said, “we’re going to compost” because we knew we were wasting food when we would go to Costco or go to the grocery store and ended up going to dinner instead. I’m sure you’re familiar with that story. And I will tell you, if you decide to compost, learn all about it first, because I didn’t, then said, “this is disgusting.”  There was so much I didn’t know. I just was like, okay, you throw everything into the composting bin and then we’ve got to tumble it and all of that, no, it’s not that simple. However, when you do know how to do it, it is a wonderful practice that does eliminate the waste by transforming it into something useful.  The other is not going bulk shopping at all.  

When it comes to the office, what we’ve been doing is looking at how we can streamline our processes. Inquiring into how we can create greater efficiencies in less time searching for documents and books.  

If you look behind me, you see the color coding of my books, believe it or not, the neurosciences say we all remember the color of the cover of that book rather than the name of the author or the name of the book. This is so much better than having it either in alphabetical order or by size or something like that. So we’re learning lots of different ways to create a LEAN office environment that works for us and to be able to transform and to be able to transfer that knowledge to our clients, into our community and ultimately the world.  

In celebration of Earth Month, we invite you to take on the conversation in your office “What can we do to Restore Our Earth, as a team or as individuals?” Some of us are very passionate about climate change or for me, I’m very passionate about food waste. Everybody has something different. So rather than saying, okay, we’re all going to go do a beach clean–up, unless everybody’s on board with that,  you might want to just have people take up the thing that matters most to them.  To take action even small actions to recreate a greater sustainability in the office, in their lives and in our world. 

If you liked this video, please like it, share it, subscribe to my YouTube channel and stay tuned for more information, more fun, more ideas on celebrating our Earth and one another.  

That’s it for today.