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From Shame to Solutions: How Honest Climate Conversations Drive Progress · Responsibly Different™

• 0:04
  Jenny Morgan: explore things about ourselves and be curious about others.
• 0:07
  Jenny Morgan: Be curious about your internal motivations and also be curious about others.
• 0:15
  Benn Marine: Welcome to impact chats, a Responsibly Different podcast sharing conversations with industry leaders leveraging business as a force for good.
• 0:28
  Benn Marine: Welcome back to Responsibly Different Impact Chats.
• 0:45
  Benn Marine: I'm your host, ben Marine, and today's episode is a timely and thought-provoking conversation with returning guest Jenny Morgan, author of the new book Cancel Culture and Climate.
• 0:56
  Benn Marine: We recorded this conversation back in January of this year, just as the book was about to launch and the themes we explore feel even more relevant now.
• 1:04
  Benn Marine: Book was about to launch and the themes we explore feel even more relevant now.
• 1:07
  Benn Marine: In a world where outrage often drowns out opportunity, jenny invites us to take a closer look at how our collective desire for accountability can sometimes backfire, especially when it comes to sustainability.
• 1:16
  Benn Marine: Together, we unpack the difference between cancel culture and true accountability, how businesses can embrace transparency without fear, and what it takes to move from perfectionism to progress.
• 1:28
  Benn Marine: Whether you're a consumer trying to use your dollar for good or a business leader unsure how to talk about the challenges you're facing, this conversation offers a powerful framework for showing up honestly and staying in the work, even when it gets hard To kick things off.
• 1:45
  Benn Marine: I asked Jenny what inspired her to write this book, and her answer gets right to the heart of the matter.
• 1:51
  Benn Marine: Here's Jenny.
• 1:55
  Jenny Morgan: I started talking about this topic a few years ago because I was seeing out in the media and then also just in daily interactions, where individuals were spending more time talking about who's made the biggest mistake, or spending more time ensuring that they were right in an argument and trying to win a debate.
• 2:21
  Jenny Morgan: And then I was also seeing that ripple effect happen negatively for organizations that were very much so under a microscope and fearful of that public scrutiny, which would then make them be quiet about some really amazing things that they were doing or actually retract some of the statements or commitments that they had made, because they didn't want to continue going down a journey that would ultimately be a lose-lose situation for them.
• 2:52
  Jenny Morgan: And so I started to see this more and more, and to me it represented, similar to other movements, this kind of cancel culture, shame and blame type of environment that we're creating.
• 3:07
  Jenny Morgan: Shame and blame type of environment that we're creating out of good intention, in my opinion, because we're trying to push progress forward in a very urgent time, but at the same time, this fear and shame is taking more energy and time than actually celebrating successes and positive advancements that we're making.
• 3:23
  Jenny Morgan: And so I started talking about this more and more, and then I was talking about it in the middle of the night and, you know, on Saturdays at the soccer practice, and so I was.
• 3:35
  Jenny Morgan: I started to realize maybe I need to get this out of my head, and so I started just writing and it's been about a year, a process of just writing and editing and iterating in the book and now finally it will be coming out this year and I'm just really excited that people will be able to understand some of the case studies that I go deeper into but then also understand some framework frameworks around just us being able to communicate better with one another frameworks around just us being able to communicate better with one another.
• 4:09
  Benn Marine: Something that I think comes up for me when I think about some of that cancel culture piece to your point coming from the best of intentions, right, like folks want to do the right thing, and a lot of it, you know, from my perspective, seems like it comes from this desire to hold companies accountable.
• 4:20
  Benn Marine: Let's say right and.
• 4:23
  Benn Marine: But it has the opposite effect to your point that, like, people are just maybe abandoning the work or not talking about the work and all that.
• 4:31
  Benn Marine: Can you talk a little bit about the balance, like how do like for consumers, say, how do they balance accountability with progress?
• 4:42
  Jenny Morgan: yeah there, I'm so glad that you you use those words, because there's a really big distinction between cancel culture and accountability.
• 4:50
  Jenny Morgan: Both might have an end point that we're trying to get to, but they come with different intentions.
• 4:58
  Jenny Morgan: Cancel culture is trying to attack an entity because they've failed in some way and it somewhat stops there.
• 5:08
  Jenny Morgan: There isn't a formula to reassess where they are.
• 5:12
  Jenny Morgan: It's basically we've identified that you have failed and you've lied or you've not met expectations and so therefore, you are now bad and you cannot leave this label, whereas accountability we may say you have not met the standards that we've put into in place, where you know we need you to meet XYZ values and improve XYZ aspects of your business model, and we expect that of you, and we'll be back to see how things are going and be very clear about what those expectations are and where we expect improvements to happen.
• 5:52
  Jenny Morgan: And I think it's that clarity that we're often missing, which I think that's where our breaks in communication happen is we're often outraged, but we don't provide a tool toolkit on what we're outraged about, what we hope to see, the timeframe that we need to see it just being really specific about the data points that we want to see change that's often missing.
• 6:17
  Jenny Morgan: It's usually just the outrage that's left, and then no one really knows what to do with it, and so what I'm trying to do is not only help us, as consumers, be able to express what we need to change, but then also help organizations understand.
• 6:32
  Jenny Morgan: Okay, I've received this feedback.
• 6:33
  Jenny Morgan: It might feel uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean that it's now forever labeled me as such.
• 6:40
  Jenny Morgan: Maybe I've done a poor job communicating what I'm trying to do.
• 6:44
  Jenny Morgan: Maybe I haven't been very honest about the struggles that we've been experiencing, and maybe I should be a bit more forthright about that and really encourage more stakeholders to share their thoughts about ways that I can overcome these obstacles.
• 6:57
  Jenny Morgan: Maybe I need to loop in a third party you know all of these different things that in a more positive and encouraging environment, we can start to see this type of progress rather than this pursuit of perfection that no one can achieve.
• 7:10
  Benn Marine: That makes a ton of sense.
• 7:11
  Benn Marine: Do you have a favorite example that kind of illustrates that pivot of trying not to cancel but rather like improve?
• 7:19
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, a few that I bring up, I mean one that sticks out is Allbirds and Crocs.
• 7:28
  Jenny Morgan: Crocs made an announcement where they were going to have to push back their net zero commitments by a decade because they were struggling and there wasn't a lot of information on what they were struggling with, but that they weren't going to be able to meet their net zero commitment by 2030.
• 7:46
  Jenny Morgan: And that received a lot of pushback and a lot of negative press around that and just jokes on their behalf about their product, and it was a very shame and kind of negative environment for them.
• 8:02
  Jenny Morgan: And Allbirds stepped into the conversation and was very honest about what they did to make a carbon neutral shoe a carbon neutral shoe that they didn't have to rely on offsets either, which is very innovative.
• 8:15
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, they've actually made a shoe that is carbon neutral, based on the materials itself, and so they shared all of that.
• 8:24
  Jenny Morgan: They were very honest about it.
• 8:25
  Jenny Morgan: They came forward, they supported crocs.
• 8:27
  Jenny Morgan: They also said, hey, like these are the struggles that we had to overcome.
• 8:30
  Jenny Morgan: And then they were honest about how they don't view crocs as a competitor.
• 8:36
  Jenny Morgan: They view that if they can advance the shoe industry to be more sustainable and to be able to overcome these obstacles, industry to be more sustainable and to be able to overcome these obstacles.
• 8:45
  Jenny Morgan: It's kind of like the?
• 8:46
  Jenny Morgan: Um, when the tide rises, all ships will rise.
• 8:49
  Jenny Morgan: I just butchered that, uh, that saying but, um, you know the, when the, when the ocean gets rising, tide lifts all boats.
• 9:01
  Jenny Morgan: Yes, exactly, I was going to butcher it for like the third time, but yeah, they, they came with that type of mentality and so it was a really cool exchange that was done publicly, by the way, too, and so we all got to see what it looks like to actually respect someone in your field rather than view them as the enemy and celebrate their demise.
• 9:21
  Jenny Morgan: In the book I talk about schadenfreude, which is a phenomenon that humans enjoy the demise of another person.
• 9:31
  Jenny Morgan: So, whether they're like, you think of them as your rival or you feel as if their pain is justified, but it's often not, it's usually not correlated at all.
• 9:43
  Jenny Morgan: Your little brother calls you a name and they turn around and kind of stub their toe and they're like, yes, they've got karma, but it's a phenomenon that humans often are, you know, troubled with, but it isn't based in reality and it often ends up hurting everyone.
• 10:01
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, I was really proud to see Allbirds and you know a leader in the B Corp movement really talk about what it means to partner with a competitor for the sake of positivity in an industry as a whole.
• 10:19
  Benn Marine: I'm so curious how did Crocs respond to that?
• 10:21
  Benn Marine: Was Crocs like, oh my gosh, thank you so much.
• 10:23
  Benn Marine: Or like was there any public, I mean, who knows what happened behind the scenes?
• 10:27
  Benn Marine: Right, like we'll never know, but to your knowledge, like publicly did?
• 10:30
  Benn Marine: Was Crocs like thanks, guys, yeah.
• 10:39
  Jenny Morgan: Appreciate the support.
• 10:39
  Jenny Morgan: It was just like likes and comments and things, and it seemed like as a collective of, you know, avatars on LinkedIn, we all seem to be very celebratory about that exchange.
• 10:52
  Jenny Morgan: Now again, yeah, I agree with you, we'll never really know what happened behind the scenes and just fashion in general was very celebratory about being so trading secrets, if you will, in somewhat of an open forum, because they all felt like they could actually innovate together, which I think is if we could adopt that spirit in all sectors, that could be something that really helps us as a species and, as you know, a group of businesses overall really continue to succeed if we can continue to learn from one another and grow together so sometimes, too, I'm curious, like how does this come up with teams, you know?
• 11:36
  Benn Marine: so you're talking about how, like there's there's a person behind the business, right, how?
• 11:39
  Benn Marine: What about like for businesses where you know, because I've seen this too, especially in like larger organizations where there's know cause I've seen this too, especially in like larger organizations where there's like maybe a person or like a team of people that are like yes, we're on board with all these initiatives and this is like our mission and this is what we live and breathe for, and then they're like, but we have to convince the rest of the company, right, right, there's like that inter right.
• 12:02
  Benn Marine: So I'm just so curious, like if that dynamic at all came up in your research or any thoughts on that.
• 12:09
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, I mean employee resource groups.
• 12:11
  Jenny Morgan: You can see that a lot where they're like this grassroots movement of employees that are behind some sort of initiative that they're trying to embody into the entire organization and then maybe they have an executive sponsor but then it's not actually put into place.
• 12:27
  Jenny Morgan: I can see that a lot.
• 12:28
  Jenny Morgan: I used to work for a large tech organization where that was often the accusation, where there was so much movement behind sustainability and progress, but then there was a lot of other problematic aspects of the organization.
• 12:43
  Jenny Morgan: So then, which is it?
• 12:44
  Jenny Morgan: Is it good or bad?
• 12:45
  Jenny Morgan: And I kind of would say it's both, and I would say, same as how you would talk to someone within your community what are the motivations, and finding out what those motivations are and then being able to articulate that.
• 13:00
  Jenny Morgan: So if you're talking to the finance person, what are the profit margins that can be achieved if XYZ is put into place?
• 13:08
  Jenny Morgan: What cost-saving initiatives can actually help the bottom line?
• 13:12
  Jenny Morgan: You know, speaking to the finance side of the business.
• 13:16
  Jenny Morgan: And then, if you're talking to human resources, maybe you're talking about longevity of employment, retention, attracting talent, longevity of employment, retention, attracting talent.
• 13:29
  Jenny Morgan: You know, it's really just making sure that you're saying the exact same thing, but you're aligning it to what their motivations are, same as you would with.
• 13:35
  Jenny Morgan: You know whoever you're engaging with in your community.
• 13:38
  Jenny Morgan: And so, again, it's just aligning what your goals are with whatever those motivations are.
• 13:45
  Jenny Morgan: And the great thing, I mean.
• 13:47
  Jenny Morgan: I would say everyone should just cheat and look at the B Corp assessment, because I mean that if you're looking to increase sales, you can do that.
• 13:55
  Jenny Morgan: Through the B Corp methodology.
• 13:58
  Jenny Morgan: You can increase sales and consumer engagement while also being more purposeful and impactful, and so I'm a big fan of the B Corp movement, as you might see.
• 14:08
  Jenny Morgan: But, yeah, I'd say just aligning it with what other team members are trying to achieve and also being empathetic to their challenges.
• 14:16
  Jenny Morgan: They might be stressed out about the amount of resources required in the front end or the amount of investments that would have to be put into place this year, even if the cost savings will come in 2026,.
• 14:28
  Jenny Morgan: I'm concerned about the bottom line of 2025, or I'm down a person because they're on maternity leave and I can't do this all by myself, and so creating an environment where these concerns can come up and they're actually heard, and then now you've got a bigger team to try to figure out how to solve them.
• 14:46
  Jenny Morgan: If you come from a place of trying to say it that way, I think that that can get more people on the same side and, you know, make it an org wide initiative rather than just a small group that's trying to kind of pioneer something on their own.
• 15:01
  Benn Marine: So it sounds like maybe, if somebody asks you a supervisor or somebody about an initiative and it's like no, maybe the response is, rather than being upset, maybe it's like well, what's holding you back, like to try to uncover or understand, like what, why the you know, like not that, not that the no is wrong, but like let's, let's, can we unpack that to better understand it to your point.
• 15:23
  Benn Marine: Then maybe there is, you know, room for a collaborative pathway there.
• 15:29
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, maybe the timing was off or there might be some concern that you're not aware of yet, but once you uncover it, maybe you both can actually now partner to try to solve it together, rather than that supervisor feeling alone and now they've got an employee trying to get them to do something in addition to whatever they're stressed out about.
• 15:48
  Jenny Morgan: So, yeah, it's really just being curious and exploring more.
• 15:52
  Benn Marine: Back to consumers.
• 15:53
  Benn Marine: I'm curious how does this play into that concept of voting with your dollar?
• 16:01
  Jenny Morgan: You should be using your dollar as a way to communicate what your expectations are of the you know the businesses that you're engaging with, but at the same time, being really clear about the why and then also what you hope to see.
• 16:16
  Jenny Morgan: Also, there's a human being behind that business making decisions, and so if you could find out what is important to them and what those KPIs that they're trying to achieve are, and combine it with what those values are, we can be really successful in having it be both.
• 16:37
  Jenny Morgan: I mean, in the B Corp movement, that's an easy example that we've shown that it is better to be more impactful and have that be built into your business model.
• 16:50
  Jenny Morgan: More B Corps survived the pandemic and were able to hold tight through that time where many businesses failed because, you know, people weren't going out or the supply chains were breaking, and the B Corps movement, though, held strong, and it's of the belief that that's because we've integrated purpose into how we make profit, and so those statistics and that those data sets are there.
• 17:18
  Jenny Morgan: It's just the way that we communicate it, I think, is really important.
• 17:21
  Jenny Morgan: A personal example is coming up for me right now, where I was talking about my book with a family member, and they kind of felt like it wasn't really a topic area that was relevant to them, because they didn't really adopt the belief that climate change was human, is a human caused problem, and so, rather than me going down that rabbit hole, I just switched my terminology, and I switched it from global warming to pollution, and that made the conversation much more smooth.
• 18:00
  Jenny Morgan: We both agreed that we don't like pollution and that it causes problems in our hobbies and our ability to travel, and we have to, you know, think about time of year and how that can be impactful for wildfires or air quality and so we were on the same page, whereas 10 minutes prior we weren't, because I was talking about global warming and, rather than me using statistics about how carbon warms, I just backed off and changed what I was ultimately talking about, which is the collection of pollution in the air and the atmosphere.
• 18:36
  Jenny Morgan: Same thing.
• 18:38
  Jenny Morgan: I don't need to prove myself to be right.
• 18:40
  Jenny Morgan: I can put my ego aside and focus more so on the eco side of things that I'm trying to push forward, and so I think we can do that with businesses too, where we have our values, we have our standards, but that we can compromise in what we're trying to do and make it win for both.
• 18:57
  Benn Marine: It doesn't have to be an either or Love that I'm curious when it comes to thinking about how the businesses can be transparent in the efforts that they're making.
• 19:08
  Benn Marine: I think a lot of businesses are afraid of greenwashing inadvertently.
• 19:14
  Benn Marine: Even when they are doing the good work, they're afraid to talk about it.
• 19:17
  Benn Marine: Can you speak a little bit to that?
• 19:20
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, I have a hypothetical beginning of a sustainability report.
• 19:27
  Jenny Morgan: That and again, this is a hypothetical, but what if it came from an oil and gas company that puts out their sustainability report but there's a cover letter at the front that's basically saying hey, I know, we're really in a tough spot and a lot of that has to do with our industry, and right now we're kind of floundering because our entire business has been built on something that is causing such havoc.
• 19:51
  Jenny Morgan: But we're having a hard time pivoting as quickly as we need to, and so here are the things that we have put into place.
• 20:01
  Jenny Morgan: Here are the things we're hoping to do in five years, and we're hoping that we can continue to talk and overcome challenges and really meet expectations, but do it transparently so you can understand the profitability that we're trying to uphold, the energy that is required to keep our lights on and protect national security, and all of the things that the energy sector often points to when they're criticized.
• 20:29
  Jenny Morgan: That in the energy sector often points to when they're criticized.
• 20:33
  Jenny Morgan: But we also recognize that there's enormous flaws in our industry that we need to change as soon as possible, and we hope that we can do it together.
• 20:38
  Jenny Morgan: What if there was some sort of transparency and vulnerability that we felt comfortable talking about openly, like that.
• 20:47
  Jenny Morgan: I think a lot of us, if we read that, we might you know there still might be a little bit of us that just kind of like scoffs at that, but then we would be a bit curious about who is this person Like.
• 21:00
  Jenny Morgan: They really seem to understand the challenge that we're all facing, that we've all contributed to some more than others, but we've all contributed in some way.
• 21:10
  Jenny Morgan: And so if I was leading an organization that was often operating in from a place of fear, have you started with being vulnerable and transparent about where those fears are coming from and finding a way to communicate that and open a dialogue with all of your stakeholders so that it can be a back and forth conversation rather than this Attempt to put our best photo forward of ourselves?
• 21:40
  Jenny Morgan: It's kind of like we have this like social media type of attitude with businesses, even where we, you know we want to put our you know best picture and our best foot forward at all times when behind the scenes, we might be struggling, and so I think if we could be a bit more comfortable in accepting a vulnerability and then be really transparent about that, about the steps that we're taking and then the steps that are still posing a challenge.
• 22:07
  Jenny Morgan: That's going to be the first step to be able to really progress forward.
• 22:11
  Benn Marine: That makes a lot of sense.
• 22:12
  Benn Marine: It's almost like Like curating a highlights reel is where we're defaulting to and yeah, we just need to kind of pull the pull the curtain back a little bit just need to kind of pull the pull the curtain back a little bit.
• 22:31
  Jenny Morgan: It's just not based in reality.
• 22:32
  Jenny Morgan: I mean, we have so much um.
• 22:33
  Jenny Morgan: I understand the emotion that comes out of that, because our reality is that we are in the middle of the climate crisis.
• 22:41
  Jenny Morgan: It's not we need to be aware of what's going to happen in 100 years.
• 22:46
  Jenny Morgan: No, no, I mean there's significant wildfires happening in the middle of January Like that is highly concerning.
• 22:54
  Jenny Morgan: And then these once a century cyclones that keep being referenced they're not once a century anymore, because we're hearing about them every four weeks of these enormous gusts of wind that are causing all of these additional issues.
• 23:08
  Jenny Morgan: And so we're in the middle of it and there is a sense of urgency and that is scary and we're putting a lot of pressure on one another.
• 23:17
  Jenny Morgan: But we also have to realize that we are in the middle of it and we are still learning, and the only way that we'll be successful is if we can join hands and do it together.
• 23:26
  Jenny Morgan: We will not be successful if we ice out other people that have a different political ideology or have a different priority or are not communicating things exactly the same as we are.
• 23:41
  Jenny Morgan: We need to find ways to join together and boundaries are very important.
• 23:46
  Jenny Morgan: I'm not saying that you should subject yourself to any sort of experience that makes you feel or actually puts you in danger or makes more challenges than successes.
• 24:03
  Jenny Morgan: But really make sure that you are not attacking an individual because of your assumptions or attacking an individual because of something that you've heard.
• 24:14
  Jenny Morgan: Make sure you've really done the due diligence to see if there's an opportunity for growth there, because we're often so quick to judge based on a headline that we don't even have the time to research or look into.
• 24:26
  Jenny Morgan: We just hear like ugh, kit Kat is, you know, polluting the planet.
• 24:32
  Jenny Morgan: I hate KitKat and we're never really like checking to see exactly what is that accusation.
• 24:38
  Jenny Morgan: And that's a real life example.
• 24:39
  Jenny Morgan: John Oliver did a whole monologue about KitKat falsifying their climate commitments, and none of us have time to really research KitKat's sustainability report, and so I just think that type of that type of media is really dangerous if we're looking to really succeed as a entire globe.
• 25:02
  Benn Marine: That makes a ton of sense.
• 25:02
  Benn Marine: I'm curious with all of the research that you've been doing and all of the like, gathering case studies and connecting the dots and all of the things things Are there.
• 25:18
  Benn Marine: Were there any themes that came up where it was like, ooh man, everyone just seems to step in this one spot.
• 25:21
  Benn Marine: You know, as companies, like they're, just people can't get this one thing right or, or maybe even on the consumer side, right Like the perception side.
• 25:30
  Benn Marine: Were there any like trends or or big key takeaways that you found there?
• 25:36
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, I think one of the main challenges that a lot of companies are struggling with is the sustainability leader and the marketer aren't talking to one another or they're not seeing eye to eye on how their growth is being communicated to the outside world.
• 25:55
  Jenny Morgan: And so you might have a chapstick that has done all of this work on.
• 26:00
  Jenny Morgan: You know making more of their materials recyclable and taking, you know, different ingredients out of their product, and you know just operating more ethically and have made all of these changes, but then they have the size of a chapstick to communicate all of that, and so they'll try to consolidate everything into one catchy phrase, and that often backfires because there's usually some other piece that is being ignored.
• 26:33
  Jenny Morgan: And so you know, 30% more recyclable, but then someone will discover that they're still using a toxic chemical within the product, and so it ends up backfiring because they're trying to celebrate something in five words or less.
• 26:49
  Jenny Morgan: And if we can find ways to communicate successes really specifically and then give consumers a way to understand what's next on the horizon, come forward with your successes and also what we're hoping to achieve next, if you're really quick to be able to communicate that first and foremost, it will be much more apparent that you're not claiming to have reached perfection.
• 27:16
  Jenny Morgan: Much more apparent that you're not claiming to have reached perfection.
• 27:17
  Jenny Morgan: You're claiming that you've made some significant changes in 2024, but now you're hoping to remove said chemical from your products through 2025.
• 27:24
  Jenny Morgan: That's the next hurdle.
• 27:26
  Jenny Morgan: So you're coming really forward with these bullets of what we've been successful with and doing and have achieved thus far and what's next, rather than burying that in the sustainability report or your impact report.
• 27:39
  Jenny Morgan: I think that's one of the main things that I've seen, just because you'll get heavily scrutinized if you're just coming forward with all of the confetti and celebrations and then all of the negativity or challenges that you've incurred are buried, that's it.
• 27:53
  Jenny Morgan: It just it isn't a time anymore that you can put a green leaf next to your cleaning product and call it a day.
• 28:01
  Jenny Morgan: It's just not like that.
• 28:02
  Benn Marine: That makes sense.
• 28:03
  Benn Marine: I'm so curious.
• 28:03
  Benn Marine: I'm so curious your perspective on this.
• 28:05
  Benn Marine: So something that we've started doing at Campfire to help support our clients is we have we have some folks that we do their impact reports for them, like the kind of beautifying them, making them pretty, and one of the goals that we've had around that is to really make those impact reports honest but also snackable, right so like consumer, because a lot of like the feedback that we've been getting from folks is, or from clients, is like, hey, so we put out this impact report, but like nobody reads it, you know, it just kind of collects dust on a server somewhere, you know, because they'd be these really dense like reports, and so what we've tried to do is kind of, you know, make them tighter and like more snackable, but also still honest.
• 28:50
  Benn Marine: So, even so, even saying OK, so we had this target, but like we're not going to hit it and like we're still saying that we're still very clear about like we're not going to make it, but trying to keep it in layman's terms and trying to keep it more accessible, do you feel like that's the right direction, or would you say there's other things to be keeping in mind with that approach?
• 29:07
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, I do think that's the right direction.
• 29:09
  Jenny Morgan: I there is a meme that's been going around recently about sustainability reports and this person at their desk and they have, you know, stacks upon stacks of paper on their desk and the person's like, all right, spend the next seven months moving these papers to the next desk over.
• 29:24
  Jenny Morgan: So they're just going to like move.
• 29:26
  Jenny Morgan: So it's just this kind of like a hamster wheel of work that then no one reads, but we all have to do it.
• 29:33
  Jenny Morgan: And why am I doing this?
• 29:34
  Jenny Morgan: If I'm spending more time on reporting rather than actual implementation of these improvements, what am I doing with my life?
• 29:41
  Jenny Morgan: And so that's definitely a joke that I think a lot of sustainability leaders understand, and I love that you all are making it that kind of snackable, accessible information that anyone can digest at any time.
• 29:54
  Jenny Morgan: So that's so important.
• 29:55
  Jenny Morgan: I guess I would also highlight the why.
• 29:59
  Jenny Morgan: If there are targets that are not being met, be really transparent on why.
• 30:05
  Jenny Morgan: In the book, air New Zealand talks about how they won't be able to make their commitments in the timeframe that they had allotted because of the delays in sustainable aviation fuel, and it's basically not highlighting.
• 30:19
  Jenny Morgan: Not only will they not be successful, but their entire industry won't be successful because that type of fuel is not to the place that it needs to be to be able to sustain this much travel.
• 30:32
  Jenny Morgan: And so it's really putting the pressure on the why and what needs to happen so that the collective can come together to solve that problem, rather than saying, hey, we're not going to meet our targets, but we're hoping to meet them by 2038.
• 30:48
  Jenny Morgan: Now, really going into no, we need people innovating on this solution so that we can be able to scale this to the amount that's required to actually make sustainable airfare and sustainable airlines truly possible, rather than just being a goal or an objective on a piece of paper or on a website.
• 31:09
  Jenny Morgan: So, yeah, really going deep into the why, really going deep into the why.
• 31:17
  Jenny Morgan: Starbucks also did a really good job with talking about some of their improving their waste percentages and engaging their consumers.
• 31:22
  Jenny Morgan: Not only is that a really innovative marketing plan of, you know, being getting your consumers excited about your brand and getting them involved as somewhat of a leader in the business, so that that, you know, creates a more long term relationship with your customers, but it's also saying, hey, we're struggling with this ability, our ability to scale out these waste or less waste solutions.
• 31:46
  Jenny Morgan: And so what are some?
• 31:47
  Jenny Morgan: You know, zero waste ideas that you all think are possible, and having them submit ideas and, you know, bringing your customer into the process.
• 31:56
  Jenny Morgan: I think that not only is a genius engagement strategy, but it's also something that can help highlight solutions that might not be being brought to the table yet.
• 32:08
  Benn Marine: That's so interesting.
• 32:08
  Benn Marine: You know, I'm curious too.
• 32:10
  Benn Marine: What would you say?
• 32:11
  Benn Marine: Because I think you know this also comes up to that sometimes the reason for not reaching a goal or being behind in a goal might just simply be a capacity issue, right?
• 32:22
  Benn Marine: Like we thought for sure that this was an attainable thing, so we set this goal and as we dug into it, we realized, holy bananas, it's going to take a lot more than we thought it would, and we just aren't.
• 32:32
  Benn Marine: We're just not set up for success.
• 32:35
  Benn Marine: Like we just don't.
• 32:36
  Benn Marine: You know, it's not that there's not the technology or there's not the whatever, it's just that we don't have the people power or the financial resources or whatever, or we underestimated the goal, which I think also happens, right?
• 32:48
  Benn Marine: What would your advice be to those folks and how to like talk about that while being honest about it?
• 32:54
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of businesses got really excited and put the cart before the horse and then they started to realize that they had a lot more that needed to be done, even from a data collection standpoint.
• 33:10
  Jenny Morgan: If you look at organizations that have been measuring their emissions for a few years, they might be increasing the.
• 33:16
  Jenny Morgan: Maybe they tackled their scope one and two emissions, but then scope three is often massive, and now they're actually starting to calculate that and their emissions are just skyrocketing because it's actually the truth, and so they might still be in the data collection phase, where they thought they were done with their calculations, but then it's continuing to be more and more massive, and so they're really getting buried with the reporting, and so that can often happen, where you know they're starting to uncover emissions they weren't really expecting, and so I think that should be transparent, and people and organizations should be really honest about saying we were really surprised about discovering XYZ about our emissions report, and so we're still going to be continuing this, but we're going to be just tackling this portion of our scope and our footprint, because we can actually do that now, whereas this portion isn't something we can address, and if you put numbers behind it and show we can actually be more successful.
• 34:23
  Jenny Morgan: If we target where we know versus what we're hoping to know in a few years, we can actually continue this movement towards positivity and progress rather than getting hung up in the calculations part.
• 34:35
  Jenny Morgan: And so I think, just being really transparent about the why and making sure it's clear and towards positivity and progress, rather than getting hung up in the calculations part, and so I think, just being really transparent about the why and making sure it's clear and I love that Campfire's, you know, helping companies make that clarity the first thing that comes forward in those lengthy reports that often have a lot of meat in them.
• 34:51
  Jenny Morgan: And so, yeah, I think, just continuing to be realistic, transparent, but then also showing what the next steps are.
• 34:59
  Benn Marine: So we've talked a lot about the role of consumers and accountability and businesses taking ownership and responsibility.
• 35:07
  Benn Marine: Is there like what role does policy have in all of this?
• 35:12
  Jenny Morgan: So anywhere that the government is putting forth regulations, they're going to have better outcomes because there's rules and and policies that everyone has to abide by, and so you're going to see that country advance faster with griping, of course, and challenges.
• 35:37
  Jenny Morgan: I mean, you can see that in the EU, where there's very strict standards that are coming into action and now everyone's kind of trying to figure that out, but at the same time, you'll just see more success that way.
• 35:50
  Jenny Morgan: However, I don't think that we're doomed.
• 35:55
  Jenny Morgan: I do think that there is a pendulum, and I think, if we're not going to see as much government regulation which that seems to be the case we're going to see industry step up in a way, because not only not even just because it's the right thing to do, but also because their businesses depend on it.
• 36:19
  Jenny Morgan: Consumers are still demanding these standards to be upheld.
• 36:25
  Jenny Morgan: However, it's confused in the way that it's being applied from a political standpoint, but those expectations are still there and businesses still need to be able to access all of the things that make them whatever product or whatever service, and so I do think industry will step up.
• 36:45
  Jenny Morgan: My concern is that if they're not supported in that journey, we'll see a similar kind of spike and then a leveling out, like we saw with DEI, with industry that would be.
• 37:03
  Jenny Morgan: My concern is that if we aren't continuing to stress how important these efforts are and I do think equity in general has a lot of there's so much intersection between social and environmental initiatives, but I'm staying in my lane and just focusing a bit on just the sustainability part, but they're so interconnected.
• 37:25
  Jenny Morgan: But if we don't celebrate successes along the way and keep encouraging the carrot and the stick kind of analogy, if we don't have as many sticks, we need to have a lot of carrots, and that way we can encourage businesses to keep going forward.
• 37:41
  Jenny Morgan: And so it's up to us as partners, as manufacturers, as employees, as customers, to continue to put those carrots in place so that we'll continue to see industry do the efforts we need them to, even if they aren't being hit with a stick.
• 37:58
  Jenny Morgan: And so that's my hope, and I do think that we need them to even if they aren't being hit with a stick.
• 38:00
  Jenny Morgan: And so that's my hope, and I do think that we'll see that, and I hope, with the tools and tactics in the book, that we'll be able to communicate that type of encouragement more clearly as we enter into this somewhat murky time.
• 38:17
  Benn Marine: Amazing.
• 38:18
  Benn Marine: I'm curious.
• 38:19
  Benn Marine: Knowing that we're we're approaching time, I'm curious, if you are, would want to share one of maybe your favorite tactics from the book that folks can look forward to reading in more depth about.
• 38:29
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah Well, so you kind of touched of time and I personally have noticed that there's a no matter who you may have voted for, I have noticed that there's a lot of good intention that is still being communicated by all sides of the political spectrum.
• 38:57
  Jenny Morgan: So in the book I talk about ways that you can go through a motivational conversation, and so typically you'll hear about this framework as motivational interviewing, but I tweaked it a bit because that feels so one-sided, where you're like tricking the person to adopt your thoughts.
• 39:20
  Jenny Morgan: So if you think of it more as motivational conversation where you're trying to find out what that common ground is, so first you're asking questions, you're actively listening, you're exploring with curiosity, not judgment, and you're going through those steps and then you're uncovering common ground.
• 39:38
  Jenny Morgan: You'll end up being at the same place and then you can kind of work backwards on what are the things that need to be done to continue to grow that commonality that you both have discovered.
• 39:51
  Jenny Morgan: And so I know that kind of takes a bit of a turn from the business side of it.
• 39:55
  Jenny Morgan: But in the book I talk about the individual side too, because behind every business there is a person and we need to be able to communicate with one another in a way that pushes progress forward and if we're motivating each other to find that commonality of safety, security, joy, connection, all the things that we want, if we can continue to lean into those aspects and then building on business models and political ideologies and community structures and all of the bigger systems that we put into place behind these commonalities, I think we'll be much more successful in being able to kind of navigate this somewhat divisive environment that we're living in right now.
• 40:41
  Benn Marine: That's such good advice Be curious.
• 40:43
  Benn Marine: That's so important.
• 40:45
  Benn Marine: I think that comes up a lot I that has come up so much in so many other spaces in my life and I think it is an important one to emphasize.
• 40:53
  Benn Marine: Is that just being curious and like really listening, Cause I think sometimes we get we're we're like of course I'll have a conversation and I'll hear the other side, but we're so busy thinking about, like what we're going to say and how we're going to persuade this person that we're not really listening or like listening for that piece inside of them that drives whatever perspective it is that they have.
• 41:15
  Benn Marine: Yeah, Thank you, I love that.
• 41:17
  Jenny Morgan: Yeah, I mean, and if we are, if we are just focused on winning the argument, if that is what we're hoping for, I will say that you will lose the argument ultimately.
• 41:28
  Jenny Morgan: If you're just waiting to find out what data, stat or what zinger is going to put that person in place, they will not be put in place.
• 41:38
  Jenny Morgan: They will just walk away with the same thought and the same opinion, but then be further away from where you all came from in the beginning of the conversation.
• 41:49
  Jenny Morgan: And so I think, remembering that I talk about some of the climate activists that are expressing their anger and frustration outwardly, and even though I completely understand the defacing art or having these very passionate representations of how they feel about the state of the world, I would just ask who's your audience?
• 42:14
  Jenny Morgan: Because I don't think those that we need to move the needle with are going to respond to that type of anger or that type of kind of aggressive passion, and so I would say that, in our real life too, if we're constantly just waiting to find a loophole in, or like a flaw in, their statement, we we won't win, we'll just stay separated.
• 42:40
  Benn Marine: Yeah, it's.
• 42:41
  Benn Marine: I was listening to NPR recently and they had they were.
• 42:45
  Benn Marine: It was.
• 42:45
  Benn Marine: It was a super, super, super old episode of this American Life and they were talking about the book Dale Carnegie's book how to Win Friends and Influence People, and for anyone who's read it, like if you haven't read it, highly recommend for those who have read it.
• 43:01
  Benn Marine: The key theme is that to influence anybody is to to know what their motivation is and to connect with what they want, less than putting yourself forward and promoting yourself or whatever.
• 43:15
  Benn Marine: Right, it's a nugget that holds true through time.
• 43:18
  Benn Marine: It does Anything else you wanted to add?
• 43:24
  Jenny Morgan: I mean, I hope people just kind of talk about what their struggles are and be really open about that.
• 43:31
  Jenny Morgan: I think if we continue to do that, we can really uncover truths that we're often ignoring, which is making our ability to solve these enormous global challenges more difficult if we're silent about parts that we might feel vulnerable about or embarrassed about.
• 43:52
  Jenny Morgan: In the first iteration of the book, I focused a lot on trauma, because my hypothesis was that we all have this unaddressed trauma that we're ignoring and that's limiting our ability to really communicate and understand each other, because we're either hiding our trauma or we have heightened emotions around them, and so if we don't feel seen or heard, we shut down.
• 44:17
  Jenny Morgan: And then there are other.
• 44:19
  Jenny Morgan: We are part of this group, they're that group, and that really continues to divide us, and I took a lot of that out of the book because I didn't want to distract the reader.
• 44:27
  Jenny Morgan: Maybe that'll be the second book, but I think if we continue to explore things about ourselves and be curious about others, be curious about your internal motivations and also be curious about others, be curious about your internal motivations and also be curious about others I think that that's going to also help us be more successful and be really transparent about that.
• 44:45
  Jenny Morgan: Find your people that support you in that self-assessment and that self-curiosity, and then that should help fuel your curiosity with others that you might not typically engage with.
• 45:13
  Benn Marine: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Responsibly Difference Impact Chats and huge thanks to Jenny Morgan for joining us and for the important work she's doing to shift the narrative around accountability, climate and communication.
• 45:21
  Benn Marine: If you want to dive deeper, be sure to grab a copy of her book Cancel Culture in Climate, available now wherever you get your books, or visit cancelcultureinclimatecom.
• 45:32
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• 45:39
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• 45:45
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• 45:54
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• 45:57
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• 46:03
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• 46:06
  Benn Marine: Thanks again for tuning in and thank you for all the ways you're helping to build a more just and regenerative world.
• 46:12
  Benn Marine: And until next time, be responsibly different.