Ask anyone if they think environmentally or socially responsible products and services are important, the chances are that they will say yes. A 2015 Cone Communications/Ebiquity Global CSR Study found that 84% of consumers seek out responsible products whenever possible with 81% of consumers saying they will make personal sacrifices to address social, environmental issues.

But dig a little deeper and you will also likely find that this sentiment doesn’t translate into action. A 2015 Neilsen survey found that despite growing consumer demands for eco-friendly products, only 10% of consumers purchased them.

So what is actually going on here?

This is what has been described as the values – action gap. In other words, what people tell you is not what they do. Your customers don’t spend any time thinking about the global politics of climate change, your work colleagues don’t wake up in the morning wondering how they can help the organisation save energy, and the marketing team are not queuing up to find out about your next green initiative. These issues are immaterial to the decisions they are making to purchase sustainable solutions or participate in your sustainability plan so why do we keep framing our sustainability efforts in terms of “doing good”, “reducing carbon emissions”, “saving the planet” or “it’s the right thing to do”.

Sustainability is not about doing good things for the world, goods things are a consequence of a successful sustainability strategy and a sustainability strategy can only be successful if it brings everyone along for the ride.

Why this is good news

Now before you go and sit in the corner, curl up in the fetal position, start rocking back and forth and babbling incoherently about having to save the world – this is actually a good thing. It is a good thing because it is a “known known”, we don’t have to second guess about people’s motivations when we design our sustainability initiatives and we can therefore get on with designing our environmental and social initiatives to deliver things that people do actually care about.

Did you know, according to a study by NYU and Yale University, someone is eight times more likely to install solar panels on their home if one of their neighbours has installed solar panels recently. So if you want people to install solar panels on their homes don’t talk to them about reducing carbon emissions or helping to prevent sea level rise (because they don’t really care about any of that) just tell them about Mrs Jones from number 3 down the street who recently put some nice shiny solar panels on her roof.

What you can do about it

If you have been following us for any amount of time you will know that we draw upon techniques and methods developed in Silicon Valley for startups to help design and implement sustainability strategies for our clients. Startups are masters at identifying problems and matching solutions to these problems that people actually care about. Here are three things that startups do that you should consider next time you come up with your next sustainability initiative to make sure you design it to deliver something people do actually care about:

Identify the Actors. Sit down and work out who needs to be involved in your sustainability initiative to make it work. Do you need the CFO to approve a budget? Do you need the facility managers to conduct some energy audits? Do you want your companies customers to buy a new sustainable product? Identify a problem. Once you have identified the actors, try to understand the problems they are facing – what motivates them? what frustrates them? what challenges do they have trying to get their jobs done? There are three types of problems people are trying to solve; external problems (the job they are trying to get done), internal problems (the pains or frustrations they feel), and philosophical problems (the things they believe in). For example, if wanted to lose some weight, my external problem might be that “I want to lose 5kg”, my internal problem might be that “I want to feel good about myself”, and my philosophical problem might be that “I think a healthy lifestyle is important”. Provide a solution to the problem. Most people are looking for solutions to how those problems make them feel. In other words, people are looking for solutions to their internal problems, however if you can solve their internal, external and philosophical problems at the same time you greatly increase your chances of success. If your sustainability plan helped me to be able to ride my bike to work with others from the office, made me remember and feel what is was like when I was 5 years old just riding around for fun, at the same time helped me lose a bit of weight, and get fitter and healthier then I would be all in – oh and by the way, I might also happen to reduce air pollution, take a car off the road, and reduce my carbon footprint without once having to think about the environment or saving the planet.

When the sustainability team from Kilroy Realty wanted to recognise their chief engineers they created a baseball card for each chief highlighting their significant accomplishments in sustainability and important energy and water efficiency projects. The overwhelmingly positive response from the engineers was unexpected, with responses like ‘“It’s nice that our hard work is being noticed!” and “Thank you… Not many companies out there take care of their Engineers anymore.” The baseball card solved an internal problem for the engineers in that they simply wanted to be recognised for their hard work and they probably got a kick out of showing their kids that they had their own baseball card. They managed to motivate the building engineers to reduce energy usage without once mentioning carbon emissions, saving the world, or doing good – doing good just happened to be a consequence of solving the right problem.

If you would like to try out this approach for yourself we have put together a free guide with templates and trigger questions to help you match the benefits of your sustainability plan with the needs of your customers/participants.

The next time you try to convince people that they should participate in your environmental or social initiative try thinking about what problem you are solving for them and talk to them about it those terms and perhaps something good will happen for the world.