Signs of Change - in the Eyes of Another

The risk of looking for positive signs of change is that you might see them where they don’t exist. That's why I was tickled pink at this episode a few weeks ago.

I'd been invited to have dinner with a local chapter of NetImpact. I almost always accept these invitations when my schedule permits because I pick up great ideas, I learn more about what I think and what I know by being challenged by bright, passionate people, and I make loads of new friends.

This particular evening was also attended by Dimitra, an MBA student who has a summer internship in EMC's Marketing organization. While we were waiting for the table, I asked one of the other attendees what he was doing in his career. He said he was in sales, but he was thinking of "switching to a sustainability job" and wanted to know what I thought about that.

Dimitra, normally rather quiet and sweet, mumbled under her breath "I bet I know what you're going to say."  Completely unfairly, I totally put her on the spot by challenging her: "Well, fine, then. Go for it - I'd like to hear what you think I'd say."  The truth is, I meant it - I was curious. But I daresay it came across more than a little mean. Still, she's young - she'll get over it.

Anyway, what she said was far better than what I could have said. She explained that she had come into EMC as a marketing intern, not a sustainability intern, and got assigned to Kaisa, our Manager of Sustainability Communications. When she first started working on projects, she expected that she'd be coming to me for all the information, and figured we couldn't be doing much with an office of only 3 people. But it quickly became apparent, she went on, that our sustainability initiatives were diffused throughout the company. She said she had been amazed at how many people were working on different aspects of sustainability in the contexts of their day jobs.  Based on her observation of how we are working at EMC, Dimitra concluded that my response to this question would be to say that we need people not to move their jobs into sustainability, but to move sustainability into their jobs.

She was right.

And that she could figure it out from a month of observing how we are working at EMC tells me that we really are moving in the direction we set out for.

Someone asked me today how I measure whether we're making progress in our own evolution. Some of it is with numbers. Some of it is with feedback. And some of it is in evenings like this!

Comments

[Kathrin Winkler]

Thanks, gdub!

[gclub]

Great idea...you have some of my favorite people contributing to your blog. I enjoy it a great deal. I'm still working out how to do links neatly but in the meantime will keep it as a post...up now.