Page 41 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

20 CHAPTER 1

extent of inclusion (or exclusion) of staff members, the ways in which we listen to one
another, how various opinions are weighed (based on the merit of an argument or sen-
iority or who speaks loudest): All of these details of daily business life speak volumes
about the values a company truly embraces. The practice of our business, day in and
day out, is fundamentally that of re-visiting and refining what we hold to be truly
important.
While these six principles serve to guide us toward a deeper understanding of the
roles individual values play in an organization, our discussion still lacks specificity.
What are the specific concepts that help shape a green bottom line? Can a company
realistically take into account the wide, disparate values of individual staff members
without falling into dysfunctional chaos? How do these values, pragmatically speak-
ing, function together? To address these questions, we need to consider the second
layer of values building within an organization: structural concepts.

Layer Two: Structural Concepts That Shape a Green Bottom Line
There is one overarching organizational concept—the ring to rule all rings, as it
were—that has guided the development of our company from its inception. The con-
cept originates from the philosopher John Rawls, whose foundational work linking
social justice to fairness (A Theory of Justice, 1971) is a landmark of 20th century
political thought. Rawls’ concept begins with a deceptively simple question: If we
began with a blank slate, what type of system would we create without knowing in
advance what our roles would be in that system? Translated into a business organiza-
tional context, the question becomes this: How would we design a business without
knowing in advance what role we would play in that company? Most of us, I believe,
would design a business that we would want to work for over the course of a lifetime.
Simple, really. But too often neglected.
Companies that begin to embrace a sustainable ethos often start by looking at their
operations differently through what is called life cycle assessment (LCA). Life cycle
assessment looks at the total costs (and benefits) over the lifetime of an expenditure,
not just first cost (and recovery). To me, however, a true life cycle assessment begins
not with the materials and equipment a company purchases but with the investment a
company makes from the get-go in its underlying culture. GE, under Jack Welch’s
leadership, was known for having a forced rating system for all its employees, with
the top 10 percent rated as As, the next 70 percent as Bs, and the bottom 20 percent as
Cs. It was Welch’s and GE’s practice to jettison the Cs on a regular basis and replace
them with other workers. It’s a system that may seem efficient, focused on having the
very best work for the company. But what’s the cost of such a system, with all of its
built-in churn and internal competitiveness? Hard to know precisely. But the waste of
human capital, of talent and training, of the potential for collaboration was, in all like-
lihood, huge. GE’s approach to business culture is the very opposite of a life cycle
approach to culture-creation. It is the antithesis of Rawls’ theory of justice, which,
translated into a business setting, comes down to the life cycle investment a company
makes in its fundamental design. What is needed is a life cycle values assessment
(LCVA). What would a life cycle values assessment look like? What would it measure?